It is probable that he never married.  This may have been due to that shade of indifference to the female character of which we detect traces here and there in his writings.  In one passage he complains that women seemed to think of nothing but admiration and getting married; and, in another, he observes, almost with a sneer, that the Roman ladies were fond of Plato’s Republic because he allowed some very liberal marriage regulations.  We can only infer from these passages that he had been very unfortunate in the specimens of women with whom he had been thrown.  The Roman ladies of his time were certainly not models of character; he was not likely to fall in with very exalted females among the slaves of Epaphroditus or the ladies of his family, and he had probably never known the love of a sister or a mother’s care.  He did not, however, go the length of condemning marriage altogether; on the contrary, he blames the philosophers who did so.  But it is equally obvious that he approves of celibacy as a “counsel of perfection,” and indeed his views on the subject have so close and remarkable a resemblance to those of St. Paul that our readers will be interested in seeing them side by side.

In 1 Cor. vii.  St. Paul, after speaking of the nobleness of virginity, proceeds, nevertheless, to sanction matrimony as in itself a hallowed and honourable estate.  It was not given to all, he says, to abide even as he was, and therefore marriage should be adopted as a sacred and indissoluble bond.  Still, without being sure that he has any divine sanction for what he is about to say, he considers celibacy good “for the present distress,” and warns those that marry that they “shall have trouble in the flesh.”  For marriage involves a direct multiplication of the cares of the flesh:  “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:  but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife....  And this I speak for your own profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.”

It is clear, then, that St. Paul regarded virginity as a “counsel of perfection,” and Epictetus uses respecting it almost identically the same language.  Marriage was perfectly permissible in his view, but it was much better for a Cynic (i.e. for all who carried out most fully their philosophical obligations) to remain single:  “Since the condition of things is such as it now is, as though we were on the eve of battle, ought not the Cynio to be entirely without distraction” [the Greek word being the very same as that used by St. Paul] “for the service of God? ought he not to be able to move about among mankind free from the entanglement of private relationships or domestic duties, which if he neglect he will no longer preserve the character of a wise and good man, and which if he observe he