Slave and pupil. Epictetus was born a slave c. 50 CE at Hierapolis in Phrygia. "Epictetus" (Ἐπίκτητος, "acquired, purchased") is not a personal name but a slave-name. At Rome he belonged to Epaphroditus, a freedman and administrative secretary of Nero. While still a slave he attended the lectures of the great Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus, whose influence shaped his own teaching. Ancient tradition (via Celsus in Origen) reports his lameness: on one account a leg was injured/broken in slavery, on another it was the result of disease; Epictetus, the story goes, bore it with composure. (The lameness is likely, the circumstances unreliable.)

Manumission and teaching. After Nero's death (68) Epictetus was freed and began to teach philosophy at Rome. When Domitian expelled the philosophers from Rome (c. 93–95), Epictetus moved to Nicopolis (Epirus, Greece) and founded a school there that became famous, drawing pupils from across the Roman world. He lived ascetically and poor. He died c. 135, under Hadrian.

Writings. Epictetus, like Socrates, wrote nothing. What survives was recorded by his pupil Arrian (Flavius Arrianus): the Discourses (Διατριβαί, originally 8 books, of which 4 survive) and the compact Handbook (Ἐγχειρίδιον). Arrian insisted he had merely taken down the living speech of his teacher.

Doctrine. The core is the distinction between what is up to us (τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν: judgment, impulse, desire and aversion — in a word, προαίρεσις) and what is not (the body, property, reputation, office). Freedom and tranquillity are won by attending solely to the former. Hence the three fields of training (τόποι): the discipline of desire (ὄρεξις/ἔκκλισις), the discipline of action (ὁρμή, social duty), and the discipline of assent (συγκατάθεσις) — and it is precisely this triad that, on Hadot's reading, organises Marcus's Meditations.

• 01-07 — Rusticus gave Marcus "the memoirs of Epictetus" to read (the chief channel of influence).
• 04-41 — a direct quotation: "a little soul carrying a corpse."
• 07-19 — "how many Epictetuses has eternity already swallowed": the name in the plural, in the roll-call of the greatest beside Chrysippus and Socrates.
• Med. 11.33–38 — a set of Epictetan excerpts (several naming Epictetus).
• Indirectly — wherever the dichotomy of τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν / οὐκ ἐφ' ἡμῖν and the three disciplines are at work.

• Arrian, the Discourses of Epictetus (Διατριβαί) and the Handbook (Ἐγχειρίδιον) — the primary source; critical ed. H. Schenkl (Teubner); Loeb — W. A. Oldfather, 2 vols.
• A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life, OUP, 2002 — the best modern introduction.
• A. Bonhöffer, Epictet und die Stoa (1890); Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet (1894) — the classic reconstruction of the system.
• P. Hadot, The Inner Citadel — on Epictetus's three disciplines as the key to Marcus.