From lockyert@mweb.co.za Mon Oct 8 10:57:09 2001 Received: from mailscan6.cac.washington.edu (mailscan6.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f98Hv6N81344 for ; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 10:57:07 -0700 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan6.cac.washington.edu ; Mon Oct 08 10:57:05 2001 -0700 Received: from mono.mweb.co.za (mono.mweb.co.za [196.2.53.170]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f98Hv0Q30585 for ; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 10:57:02 -0700 Received: from [196.30.238.209] (helo=al40) by mono.mweb.co.za with smtp (Exim 3.22 #2) id 15qeY3-00015s-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Mon, 08 Oct 2001 19:50:39 +0200 Message-ID: <002d01c15022$4a7b76c0$d1ee1ec4@al40> From: "Terrence Lockyer" To: "Classics List" Subject: The imprisonment of Epiktetos? Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 19:53:06 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, J. W. Worthy enquired : But back to Epictetus. What I was trying to ask : the List was: is there some scholarly opinion to the : effect that he had experienced (not merely slavery : but) imprisonment? Brad Inwood, on p. 532 of the OCD3, says that Epiktetos was "in early life a slave of *Epaphroditus (1) in Rome. Eventually freed by his master, he studied with *Musonius Rufus. Epictetus taught in Rome until *Domitian banished the philosophers in AD 89." There is nothing about imprisonment, but I wonder if that is an extrapolation from his slavery (unlikely, however, for Gill & Hard - for the full reference see my post of Fri, 5 Oct 2001 - say that he was born into slavery in Phrygia), or has something to do with the Domitianic persecution. That might explain, at least, the idea that he was in mortal danger at some point. Epaphroditus was a freedman and secretary of Nero and Domitian (a pretty pair of employers, don't you think?). Suetonius, Domitian 14, tells us that Domitian had him put to death to demonstrate that one should never be involved in the death of one's master on any pretext whatsoever (Epaphroditus was said to have helped Nero commit suicide). Terrence Lockyer Johannesburg, South Africa .