To the subject of freedom, and to the power which man possesses to make himself entirely independent of all surrounding circumstances, Epictetus incessantly recurs.  With the possibility of banishment to an ergastulum perpetually before his eyes, he defines a prison as being any situation in which a man is placed against his will; to Socrates for instance the prison was no prison, for he was there willingly, and no man need be in prison, against his will if he has learnt, as one of his primary duties, a cheerful acquiescence in the inevitable.  By the expression of such sentiments Epictetus had anticipated by fifteen hundred years the immortal truth so sweetly expressed by Lovelace: 

     “Stone walls do not a prison make,
        Nor iron bars a cage;
      Minds innocent and quiet take
        That for a hermitage.”

Situated as he was, we can hardly wonder that thoughts like these occupied a large share of the mind of Epictetus, or that he had taught himself to lay hold of them with the firmest possible grasp.  When asked, “Who among men is rich?” he replied, “He who suffices for himself;” an expression which contains the germ of the truth so forcibly expressed in the Book of Proverbs, “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man shall be satisfied from himself”.  Similarly, when asked, “Who is free?” he replies, “The man who masters his own self,” with much the same tone of expressions as that of Solomon, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”  Socrates was one of the great models whom Epictetus constantly seats before him, and this is one of the anecdotes which he relates about him with admiration.  When Archelaus sent a message to express the intention of making him rich, Socrates bade the messenger inform him that at Athens four quarts of meal might be bought for three halfpence, and the fountains flow with water.  “If then my existing possessions are insufficient for me, at any rate I am sufficient for them, and so they too are sufficient for me.  Do you not see that Polus acted the part of Oedipus in his royal state with no less beauty of voice than that of Oedipus in Colonos, a wanderer and beggar?  Shall then a noble man appear inferior to Polus, so as not to act well every character imposed upon him by Divine Providence; and shall he not imitate Ulysses, who even in rags was no less conspicuous than in the curled nap of his purple cloak?”

Generally speaking, the view which Epictetus took of life is always simple, and always consistent; it is a view which gave him consolation among life’s troubles, and strength to display some of its noblest virtues, and it may be summed up in the following passages of his famous Manual:—­

“Remember,” he says, “that you are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the play; of a short part, if the part be short; of a long part, if it be long.  Should He wish you to act the part of a beggar, take care to act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it be the part of a lame man, or a ruler, or a private man; for this is in your power, to act well the part assigned to you; but to choose that part is the function of another.”