Transactions. 69 
T not tell you, you would break it?” This anecdote was accepted 
as fact by the early Christian writers as well as the pagans, 
though we know from Simplicius and Suidas, who no doubt had 
the life of the philosopher by Arrian as their authority, that 
Epictetus was lame from his infancy. Origen thus comments on 
this tale :—‘Celsus sends us back to Epictetus, admiring his 
noble saying ; but his speeeh about the breaking of his leg is not 
worthy to be compared with the marvellous deeds of Jesus.” In 
his first invective against Julian, he says :—‘‘ You who praise the 
hemlock of Socrates, the leg of Epictetus, and the bag of 
Anaxagoras, whose philosophy was rather compulsory than 
voluntary.” 
Gregory Nazvanzen (Hpist. 58 to Philogrius) says :—“ Epictetus, 
when his leg was being stretched and tortured, philosophised as 
if in another man’s body ; and it seemed that his leg was broken 
before he perceived the violence.”* Again in his Iambic poems 
(Carmen XVITi.), he says :—‘‘ You say that the leg of Epictetus 
was broken before he uttered any slavish word from the violence 
of pain ; for he said, as we hear, that the body of man is a slave, 
but that his mind is free; and you mention the pounding of the 
hands otf Anaxarchus in a mortar. Do you praise these things? 
So do 1; but they were brave in evils they could not avoid,” &c. 
Epictetus himself says in his “ Discourses” (I., 12, 24) :— Must, 
then, my leg be lamed? Slave, do you then on account of one 
poor leg find fault with the world? Also in L., 8, 14:—“If I 
were a philosopher, ought you also to become lame?” In 
I., 16, 20:—“ What else can I, a lame old man, do than sing 
hymns to God ?” 
Spartranus, in his life of Hadrian (ch. XVI), says :—‘ He 
was a very intimate friend of the philosophers, Epictetus and 
Heliodorus.” 
Thenustius (Oratio ad Jovianum) says:—“Thus also the 
fathers of your kingdom honoured the ancestors of this art— 
Augustus, the famous Arius; Tiberius Thrasylus; the great 
Trajan Dio, the golden-tongued ; the two Antonines Epictetus.” 
This statement of Themistius as well as that of Suidas, that 
Hpictetus lived to the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, is 
*In the margin of one of his manuscripts, at I., 8, 14, Schweighaeuser found 
this note :—“‘ That Epictetus had been wounded on the leg and was lame, the 
Theologus has also mentioned.” This term was applied both to St. John and 
Gregory by the early Christians. 
