( xvii )
I have made a large Index to this book; and any person, who has the necessary industry, may find in it almost every passage in the Discourses in which the opinions of the philosopher are stated; and thus he may acquire a general notion of the philosophical system of Epictetus. But few readers will have the time and the inclination for this labour, and therefore I shall attempt to do the work for them.
I have found two expositions of the system of Epictetus. One is by Dr. Heinrich Ritter in his Geschichte der Philosophie alter Zeit, Vierter Theil, 1839. The other is by Professor Christian A. Brandis.[1] Both of these expositions are useful; and I have used them. I do not think that either of them is complete, nor will mine be. I shall not make my exposition exactly in the same form as either of them; nor shall I begin it in the same way.
Ritter has prefixed a short sketch of C. Musonius Rufus, a Roman Stoic, to his exposition of the system of Epictetus. Rufus taught at Rome under the emperor Nero, who drove him from Rome; but Rufus returned after the tyrant's death, and lived to the times of Vespasian and his son Titus. He acquired great reputation as a teacher, but there is no evidence that he wrote anything, and all that we know of his doctrines is from a work of Pollio in
