Five words, and in them Epictetus's key term. TERMΠροαίρεσις is "choosing," the faculty of deciding what to accept and what to reject; in Epictetus it is the very name of the person: a human being just is his προαίρεσις. Marcus uses the word rarely, preferring ἡγεμονικόν — and here it arrives with the quotation, as something borrowed.

An image, not an abstraction. Λῃστής is not "violence" (so Rogovin, by sense) nor "man" (so Long) but a brigand, one who takes by force on the road. The assertion is therefore concrete: there is no robber of the προαίρεσις — not because it is well guarded but because there is no purchase on it. Everything else — property, body, station — is by definition seizable; DOGMAhere there is nothing to seize.

The form of the signature. τὸ τοῦ Ἐπικτήτου — literally "Epictetus's," with no verb: the way one labels another man's property. Cf. 11.34 (ἔλεγεν ὁ Ἐπίκτητος, "Epictetus used to say" — with a story) and 11.37, 11.38 (there only ἔφη, "he said," without the name). Three modes of reference in a row, and all three abbreviated: the name is needed only far enough to mark the excerpt off from his own thought.

Its place in the run. From 11.33 to the end of the book there are nothing but Epictetan excerpts. This passage is their thesis: 11.37 will give the technique, 11.38 the stake, 11.39 a Socratic scene; here is the ground from which all of it follows. Cf. 10.32: τίς γὰρ ὁ κωλύων; — "for who is hindering you?" The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one action.