We are told that he lived in a cottage of the simplest and even meanest description:  it neither needed nor possessed a fastening of any kind, for within it there was no furniture except a lamp and the poor straw pallet on which he slept.  About his lamp there was current in antiquity a famous story, to which he himself alludes.  As a piece of unwonted luxury he had purchased a little iron lamp, which burned in front of the images of his household deities.  It was the only possession which he had, and a thief stole it.  “He will be finely disappointed when he comes again,” quietly observed Epictetus. “for he will only find an earthenware lamp next time.”  At his death the little earthenware lamp was bought by some genuine hero-worshipper for 3,000 drachmas.  “The purchaser hoped,” says the satirical Lucian, “that if he read philosophy at night by that lamp, he would at once acquire in dreams the wisdom of the admirable old man who once possessed it.”

But, in spite of his deep poverty, it must not be supposed that there was anything eccentric or ostentatious in the life of Epictetus.  On the contrary, his writings abound in directions as to the proper bearing of a philosopher in life.  He warns his students that they may have ridicule to endure.  Not only did the little boys in the streets, the gamins of Rome, appear to consider a philosopher “fair game,” and think it fine fun to mimic his gestures and pull his beard, but he had to undergo the sneers of much more dignified people.  “If,” says Epictetus, “you want to know how the Romans regard philosophers, listen.  Maelius, who had the highest philosophic reputation among them, once when I was present, happened to get into a great rage with his people, and as though he had received an intolerable injury, exclaimed, ’I cannot endure it; you are killing me; why, you’ll make me like him! pointing to me,” evidently as if Epictetus were the merest insect in existence.  And, again he says in the Manual.  “If you wish to be a philosopher, prepare yourself to be thoroughly laughed at since many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will say, ’He has come back to us as a philosopher all of a sudden,’ and ‘Where in the world did he get this superciliousness?’ Now do not you be supercilious, but cling to the things which appear best to you in such a manner as though you were conscious of having been appointed by God to this position.”  Again in the little discourse On the Desire of Admiration, he warns the philosopher “not to walk as if he had swallowed a poker” or to care for the applause of those multitudes whom he holds to be immersed in error.  For all display, and pretence, and hypocrisy, and Pharisaism, and boasting, and mere fruitless book-learning he seems to have felt a genuine and profound contempt.  Recommendations to simplicity of conduct, courtesy of manner, and moderation of language were among his practical precepts.  It is refreshing, too, to know that with the strongest