Transactions. 67 
examination of a camp. What thorough and_ systematic 
excavations at Birrens and Birrenswark might bring to light, no 
one can meantime tell. The expense would be considerable, and 
the results might not be proportionate. But the question that 
has occupied our attention this evening is not likely to be 
satisfactorily answered, unless the camps themselves can be got 
to give the needed evidence. 
2. All that ws known of Hpictetus. 
By Epwarp J. Curnnock, LL.D. 
Arrian wrote a life of Epictetus, which is mentioned by 
Simplicius, the last of the great philosophers. This valuable 
book has not come down to us, and the consequence is that we 
know scarcely anything of one of the most admirable men of 
antiquity. The date of his birth and death are alike unknown, 
and only a few facts in his life have been discovered from the 
incidental remarks of about half-a-dozen authors. These notices 
‘are as follow :— 
Suidas writes :—‘‘ Epictetus, a philosopher, of Hierapolis, a 
city of Phrygia, a slave of Epaphroditus, one of the emperor 
Nero’s bodyguards. He was lame of one leg from a flux, dwelt 
at Nicopolis, a town of New Hpirus, and lived until the reign of 
Marcus Antoninus. He wrotemany books.” This last statement 
we know on the authority of Arrian and Simplicius to be 
incorrect. 
Simplicwws, in chapter 13 of his ‘Commentary on the 
Encheiridion,” says :—“ Epictetus himself, who says this, was 
both a slave and weak in body, and lame from an early age. He 
practised the severest poverty, so that his house in Rome never 
needed any bolts ; since there was nothing within except a straw- 
mattress and a rush-mat, upon which he used to sleep.” The 
same writer, in chapter 46 of the same work, says :—“ This 
admirable Epictetus, after he had passed the greater part of his 
life alone, at length late in life took a woman into his house, as 
nurse for a child, which one of his friends, on account of poverty, 
was going to expose, but which Epictetus took and reared.” 
Lucian, in his life of the philosopher Demonax (ch. 55), has 
the following ancedote :—‘‘ When on one occasion Epictetus 
found fault with him, and advised him to take a wife and beget 
