Fragments (preface-4)

THESE Fragments are entitled Epicteti Fragmenta maxime ex Ioanne Stobaeo, Antonio, et Maximo collecta (ed. Schweig.). There are some notes and emendations on the Fragments; and a short dissertation on them by Schweighaeuser.

Nothing is known of Stobaeus nor of his time, except the fact that he has preserved some extracts of an ethical kind from the New Platonist Hierocles, who lived about the middle of the fifth century A. D.; and it is therefore concluded that Stobaeus lived after Hierocles. The fragments attributed to Epictetus are preserved by Stobaeus in his work entitled Ἀνφολόγιον, or Florilegium or Sermones.

Antonius Monachus, a Greek monk, also made a Florilegium, entitled Melissa (the bee). His date is uncertain, but it was certainly much later than the time of Stobaeus.

Maximus, also named the monk, and reverenced as a saint, is said to have been a native of Constantinople, and born about A. D. 580.

Some of the Fragments contained in the edition of Schweighaeuser are certainly not from Epictetus. Many of the fragments are obscure; but they are translated as accurately as I can translate them, and the reader must give to them such meaning as he can.

THE life which is implicated with fortune (depends on fortune) is like a winter torrent: for it is turbulent, and full of mud, and difficult to cross, and tyrannical, and noisy, and of short duration.

A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweet[*] and communicative (social), and rich and harmless and free from mischief.

If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.

It is better to do wrong seldom and to own it, and to act right for the most part, than seldom to admit that you have done wrong and to do wrong often.