a celebrated Stoic philosopher, born at Hierapolis in Phrygia, in the first century, was the slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman and one of Nero's guard. Domitian banishing all philosophers from Rome, about the year 94, Epictetus retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he died in a very advanced age; and after his death, the earthen lamp he made use of sold for 3000 drachmas. He was a man of great modesty; which was eminent in his own practice, as well as in his recommendation to others: hence he used to say, "That there is no need of adorning a man's house with rich hangings or paintings, since the most graceful furniture is temperance and modesty, which are lasting ornaments, and will never be the worse for wearing." Of all the ancient philosophers, he seems to have made the nearest approaches to the Christian morality, and to have had the most just ideas of God and providence. He always possessed a cool and serene mind, unruffled by passion; and was used to say, that the whole of moral philosophy was included in these words, support and abstain. One day, his master Epaphroditus strove in a frolic to wrench his leg; when Epictetus said, with a smile, and free from any emotion, "If you go on, you will certainly break my leg: but the former redoubling his effort, and striking it with all his strength, he at last broke the bone; when all the return Epictetus made was, "Did not I tell you, Sir, that you would break my Epicurean leg?" No man was more expert at reducing the rigour of the maxims of the Stoics into practice. He conformed himself strictly, both in his discourse and behaviour, to the manners of Socrates and Zeno. He waged continual war with fancy and fortune; and it is an excellence peculiar to himself, that he admitted all the severity of the Stoics without their sourness, and reformed Stoicism as well as professed it; and besides his vindicating the immortality of the soul as strenuously as Socrates or any Stoic of them all, he declared openly against self-murder, the lawfulness of which was maintained by the rest of the sect. Arrian, his disciple, wrote a large account of his life and death, which is lost; and preserved four books of his discourses and his Enchiridion, of which there have been several editions in Greek and Latin; and, in 1758, a translation of them into English was published by the learned and ingenious Miss Carter.