Cicero, who embraced the Stoic philosophy from conviction; not for the purpose of vain discussion, as most did, but in order to make his life conformable to the Stoic precepts.  In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption.  There were even then noble minds that could dare and endure, sustained by a good conscience and an elevated idea of the purposes of man’s existence.  Such were Paetus Thrasae, Helvidius Priscus, Cornutus, C. Musonius Rufus,[A] and the poets Persius and Juvenal, whose energetic language and manly thoughts may be as instructive to us now as they might have been to their contemporaries.  Persius died under Nero’s bloody reign; but Juvenal had the good fortune to survive the tyrant Domitian and to see the better times of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.[B] His best precepts are derived from the Stoic school, and they are enforced in his finest verses by the unrivalled vigor of the Latin language.

[A] I have omitted Seneca, Nero’s preceptor.  He was in a sense a Stoic, and he has said many good things in a very fine way.  There is a judgment of Gellius (xii. 2.) on Seneca, or rather a statement of what some people thought of his philosophy, and it is not favorable.  His writings and his life must be taken together, and I have nothing more to say of him here.  The reader will find a notice of Seneca and his philosophy in “Seekers after God,” by the Rev. P. W. Farrar.  Macmillan and Co.

[B] Ribbeck has labored to prove that those Satires, which contain philosophical precepts, are not the work of the real, but of a false Juvenal, a Declamator.  Still the verses exist, and were written by somebody who was acquainted with the Stoic doctrines.

The best two expounders of the later Stoical philosophy were a Greek slave and a Roman emperor.  Epictetus, a Phrygian Greek, was brought to Rome, we know not how, but he was there the slave and afterwards the freedman of an unworthy master, Epaphroditus by name, himself a freedman and a favorite of Nero.  Epictetus may have been a hearer of C. Musonius Rufus, while he was still a slave, but he could hardly have been a teacher before he was made free.  He was one of the philosophers whom Domitian’s order banished from Rome.  He retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, and he may have died there.  Like other great teachers he wrote nothing, and we are indebted to his grateful pupil Arrian for what we have of Epictetus’ discourses.  Arrian wrote eight books of the discourses of Epictetus, of which only four remain and some fragments.  We have also from Arrian’s hand the small Enchiridion or Manual of the chief precepts of Epictetus.  This is a valuable commentary on the Enchiridion by Simplicius, who lived in the time of the emperor Justinian.[A]