The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, with the Hymn of Cleanthes

About the book

This selection presents Epictetus's teaching through brief passages concerned with judgment, desire, duty, adversity, and the distinction between what belongs to one's agency and what does not. The speaker repeatedly tests a profession of philosophy against ordinary conduct, making patience with another person or a response to disappointment more revealing than an impressive argument. Images of training, performance, and assigned roles place individual action within a larger order. Crossley's arrangement also includes attributed fragments and the Hymn of Cleanthes, giving the volume a devotional as well as an ethical dimension. The pieces invite slow comparison and practical reflection rather than continuous narrative reading. Their challenge lies in asking how much of a person's distress depends on an event itself and how much on the judgment brought to it.

• Agency and judgment
• Self-discipline
• Duty

Why read it

For compact Stoic arguments that repeatedly return philosophy to the test of ordinary responses and conduct.

Selected and arranged by Hastings Crossley · includes the Hymn of Cleanthes