~by David Aiken~
§ 2 “Ench”,
1.17.1.1
TRANSLATION (AIKEN)—Always keep in mind that you are, in fact, only a performer who is interpreting a part in a
play—whichever part (2) the director of the play chooses. If the part is small,
then it will be of a humble sort; if the part is big, then it will be of a more
significant sort. It does not matter whether the “director” wants you (4) to play someone who is poor as a mouse, or someone who is
disabled, or one who is in a position of public responsibility or leadership,
or just an average man in the street—you are called upon to play your part eloquently. (5) For your
sole concern is this: to play well the part assigned to you. (6) But selecting
which role you are to play? This task belongs to another.
2 “Ench”,
1.17.1.1
Me÷mnhso, o¢ti
uJpokrith\ß ei• dra¿matoß, oiºou a·n qe÷lhØ 2 oJ dida¿skaloß: a·n bracu/, brace÷oß: a·n makro/n, makrouv: a·n
ptwco\n uJpokri÷nasqai÷ se qe÷lhØ, iºna kai« touvton eujfuw◊ß uJpokri÷nhØ
4 a·n cwlo/n, a·n a‡rconta, a·n i˙diw¿thn.
so\n ga»r touvt’ e¶sti, to\ doqe«n uJpokri÷nasqai pro/swpon kalw◊ß: e˙kle÷xasqai d’ aujto\ a‡llou.
17. Remember that you are an actor in a drama,
of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a
short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you
should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private
person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your
business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is
another's.
§ On Remembering
In
Aristotle’s Metaphysics (980B 21), he claims that bees do not have memory and that,
therefore, although intelligent, they cannot learn:
Such [animals] as cannot hear sounds (as the bee, and
any other similar type of creature) are intelligent, but cannot learn; those
only are capable of learning which possess this sense in addition to the
faculty of memory.
[980B 21] καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ταῦτα φρονιμώτερα καὶ
μαθητικώτερα τῶν μὴ δυναμένων μνημονεύειν
ἐστί, φρόνιμα μὲν ἄνευ τοῦ μανθάνειν ὅσα μὴ δύναται τῶν ψόφων ἀκούειν（οἷον μέλιττα κἂν εἴ τι
τοιοῦτον ἄλλο γένος ζῴων ἔστι）
Whatever the
empirical evidence for Aristotle’s opinion on the learning capacity of the
diffident bee, there does certainly seem
to be an arguable link between memory and the capacity to learn. If we are
eternally forgetting everything, and on this point Aristotle and Epictetus find
common ground, then like the Aristotelian bee, we will not be able to stand in
the World-stream with any sense of having learned something about human
standing, which will serve us as we strive to understand and to act within the
accumulating maelstrom of space and time.
We have already seen in
earlier sections of the Enchiridion
how important Remembering
is to Epictetus; so, it will come as no surprise that he admonishes us again
here in §17 to: Keep always in the front of your mind [memneso = Me÷mnhso]. A perfect middle-passive imperative, or command form of
the verb, memneso reminds us
not to overlook, right now at this point in space-time, what we have learned in
the past. We first saw this in Enchiridion §2, for example, where we read:
The … very first imperative memneso (Me÷mnhso; §1, L.1), … is in the
perfect tense. Standard Greek grammars remind us that verbs in the perfect
tense carry the idea that the progress of an action has been completed in past
time and that the results of that action are ongoing—such as, I started chewing
gum, (and I am still chewing gum to this day). This perfect imperative of the
idea ‘to remember’, then, is that we knew or learned something in past time,
and that we still today are keeping what we learned in mind. Hence our interest
in rendering Epictetus’ phrase, not with Ms. Carter’s foreshortened “Remember
that…,” but rather with the more sustained idea: “You must continue to keep in
mind that the promise implicit in desire…”
Then, in our
consideration of Enchiridion §15, we concluded, and none too hastily, that
“one might almost make the case that a nickname for
the Enchiridion could be ‘My laundry list of philosophical things to remember…’,”
because memnhso is used some 17 times in the Enchiridion (Enchr.
1.2, 1.4; 2.1; 3.2; 10.1; here in 15.1; 17.1; 20.1; 22.7; 25.5; 26.10; 32.1,
32.2; 33.14; 34.4; 36.7; 42.1; 46.4; 51.2), of which 7 occurrences are in the
first sentence of a complex clause, which is to say, in the emphatic position.
All this to say, in a round-about kind of way, that ‘remembering’ is very
important to Epictetus.
§ Various bits
and bobs about theatrical words in ancient Greece
Section §17 of Epictetus’ Enchiridion, which
is essentially a walking, talking bundle of philosophically striking metaphors,
is just chock full of terminology taken from ancient theater, and other socially
relevant tidbits borrowed from daily fare in the lives of the ancient Hellenistic
world. It is a text full of references to actors or performers [hypokrites
= uJpokrith\ß] and theatrical producers or author-directors
[didaskalos = dida¿skaloß]; to the socially vulnerable, in the form
of beggars [ptoxhon = ptwco\n] and the handicapped or lame [cholon
= cwlo/n]; to public leaders or the Restoration English
equivalent of what John Locke will call in his “A Letter about Toleration,” magistrates [archonta = a‡rconta]; and, of course, to members of John Q. Public [idioten
= i˙diw¿thn], which does not mean ‘idiot’, as the
word itself might suggest phonetically, but rather ‘private individual’, relative
to ‘idiosyncratically’.
Essentially,
Epictetus is giving us in this section an adults’ version of the English
counting nursery rhyme that we used to shout out in glee when I was a kid,
Tinker,
Tailor,
Soldier,
Sailor,
Rich
Man, Pie Man,
Beggar
Man, Thief.
The American version, which I most remember, had the
same rhythm but different words,
Rich
Man, Poor Man,
Beggar
Man, Thief,
Doctor,
Lawyer, Indian Chief.
At least one philosophical take-away from this list of
possible parts that we may play in the show of Life, is that the question of a
human’s life will not ultimately concern ontology, or ‘what’ we are. In this
analogy, much after the fashion of Heraclitus*, Epictetus invites us to think
of a life not in terms of essences, not in terms of who I, the actor, think I
“am.” For the actor who is acting well is in fact invisible on stage; so, it is
not a question of who the actor “is.” Rather, what is important is whom
the actor is depicting or portraying on stage, and whether that depiction is
natural and eloquent. So the philosophical framing in this section does not
concern ontology or the question of essences; rather, it is a matter of ethics—a
call to action. Which character am I portraying to the public, and how well
am I acting my part?
Line 1. A performer
(hypokrites; ὑποκριτής).
Epictetus
tells each of us to remember: “you are a performer … interpreting a part in a play.” In
ancient Greek expression, a
performer (hypokrites; ὑποκριτής) is,
literally, ‘one who answers back’,
where the implication is clearly theatrical and discursive. The relationship is in fact a trio, where
the Performer is the dramatic middleman sandwiched in between the authorial intent, which is expressed through the content of the dramatic Text, and the Audience, who is
the enraptured consumer of {the text + the performance}. The performer, the play-actor, is a respondent—he
must give answer to the questions and expectations of the viewers in terms of
the text he is interpreting for them on stage.
Hypokrites is a hapax usage in the Enchiridion,
but the term occurs three times in Epictetus’s Discourses. In Book I of
the Discourses, chapter 24, lns. 17ff. (per the Perseus source), and taking his cue from the Oedipus
Tyrannus of Sophocles, Epictetus says: Whenever you are brought into any such
society, think then that you encounter a tragic actor [τραγῳδῷ], or, rather,
not an actor [ὑποκριτῇ], but
Oedipus himself.
In
Book 4, chapter 1, lns. 63ff, one reads: Socrates is not to be basely preserved. He who
refused to vote for what the Athenians commanded; he who condemned the thirty
tyrants; he who held such discourses on virtue and moral beauty, - such a man
is not to be preserved by a base action, but is preserved by dying, instead of
running away. For even a good actor [ὁ ἀγαθὸς ὑποκριτὴς] is preserved as such
by leaving off when he ought; not by going on [p. 2147] to act beyond his time.
Finally, we find a third usage in Discourses,
Book 4, chapter 7, lns. 13ff: What
hinders a man, who has clearly separated (comprehended) these things, from
living with a light heart and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting every
thing which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened? Would you
have me to bear poverty? Come and you will know what poverty is when it has
found one who can act well [καλοῦ
ὑποκριτοῦ] the part
of a poor man.
§ More
on Hypokrites.
But one may well
ask: is there at least some interesting imagery hiding behind this word, hypokrites,
given its forceful, Tartuffe-esque kind of association in so many Western narratives?
Jungian psychologist David Holt in “Hypokrites
and Analyst”
(1968, No 145), suggests
a brief history of the term:
This Greek word Hypokrites has had an interesting
growth and shift in meaning. In the Ionian dialect used by Homer, the verb from
which it is derived meant something like this: to express a decision, based on
deep reflection, knowledge and intuition, in reply to a question – and the
question is to be thought of not as a cold, logical question, but as informed
with urgency, as much a challenge from one person to another as a question.
From this meaning grew the further sense of explain, expound, interpret, and
the word was specifically used of the interpretation of dreams and oracles in
Homer, and much later in the Attic of Aristophanes and Plato.
A further sense of the word developed in the Attic dialect alone, to
mean “to speak in dialogue, to play a part on the stage”. Thus the noun
Hypokrites was used of the stage actor from about 500 B.C. By the end of the
4th century B.C., in the speeches of Demosthenes, it was beginning to acquire a
negative sense of to play a false part, to deceive. It was this sense of the
word which was picked up in the Greek translation of the New Testament, when
Christ is describing the Pharisees, and it is this sense with which we are
familiar in our modern English word hypocrite.
From his historical perch in the 4th-3rd
century BC, Aristotle does not yet seem to see any shift toward falseness as a
sense of hypokrites, at least to judge by Nicomachean Ethics
1111b: [8] Also
we may wish for what cannot be secured by our own agency, for instance, that a
particular actor or athlete may win.
But this shift has
clearly occurred in Greek language usage by the time we reach the beginnings of
the NT period, where hypokrites is used some 16 times, reflecting not
just a difference in common usage, but also an entirely different cultural
world.
§ Line 2. The director of the play (didaskalos; oJ dida¿skaloß).
What Phrontisterion here translates in English as the play’s ‘director’,
does not actually correspond entirely to the ancient Greek notion of didaskalos,
which is actually a much broader fusion of author, producer, and
director. For clarification, according
to Wright (2009, 161),
In
the Poetics (6.1450b) Aristotle highlights the important fact that the
competitions did not differentiate between plays, playwrights, producers, or actors.
Indeed, it seems inevitable that, despite anyone’s best intentions, the quality
of the acting would have influenced audiences and judges more than any other
aspect of the production. It was probably for this reason that a “Best Actor”
prize was instituted ca. 440 BC, to focus the judges’ attention on the quality
of the plays themselves. Aristotle mentions the acting prizes in his section on
hypokrisis in the Rhetoric (3.1403b-1404a): he says that these prizes are won
by actors who are good at delivery, but he adds that actors still have more
influence than poets in contests generally. Aristotle goes on to compare
dramatic contests to political ones: in both spheres it is the vulgar, ignorant
character of the listeners that is seen as responsible for the conduct and
outcome of events. Dramatic performances are seen as a form of rhetoric (which
is itself a “vulgar” art), winning over the opinion of audiences or judges. Once
again, as elsewhere, the point is the audiences miss the real meaning of the
material presented to them, and that their judgment is based on superficial or
misguided criteria. Elsewhere Aristotle describes the effect of competition on
the literary works themselves. His chief cause for complaint is in the area of
plot. The audiences and judges are said to prefer badly constructed, “episodic”
plot-lines, in which the order of events is not probable or necessary:
Helen Bacon (Fall, 1994 - Winter, 1995, 6) further informs
scholarship on this point of a fusion concept, by actually showing some
meaningful distinctions in the literature, when she writes:
A poet who wished to
produce a play went before an Athenian magistrate and, in the official phrase,
"asked for a chorus." If his play (in the case of tragedy usually
four plays) was approved, he was "granted a chorus," financed by a wealthy
citi zen to whom the city assigned this task as a civic obligation. In the
official records of Athens he is called khorgos, "chorus-leader." The
poet himself is always referred to as didaskalos,
"trainer" (i.e. of the chorus).
Interestingly, for students of Latin as well as for
students of ancient Greek, perhaps the most immediately recognizable
translation for didaskalos is as ‘teacher’. Because didaskalos
is commonly used to
distinguish between the
workman-teacher (didaskalos) and the apprentice-student (mathetes).
§ Line 4. A beggar (ptochon; ptwco\n). It does not matter whether the “director” wants you
(4) to play someone who is poor as a mouse.
In the world of the
politically correct it is difficult to know how to translate some of the words
in this section, such as beggar. But the concept is important, because
Epictetus reminds us that we may be called upon to play this role in the
theater of our lives.
In Greek antiquity,
notions associated with the beggar were of a most interesting, and often, excellent
sort. Comes readily to mind for many of us, obviously, Jesus, an immediate
historical neighbor of Epictetus, who invites us to recall that the ‘poor in
spirit’ (ptochon; ptwco\n)—the
mentally or intellectually and spiritually beggared—are blessed (Matt. 5:3;
Luke 6:20), although heaven only knows what weight that idea yet carries in a
world given over to acquisition of wealth and self-serving consumerism.
Another
heavily textured example of the ‘beggar’ in antiquity is, of course, reflected
in the person of Homer’s Odysseus. By association of words in the Homeric
world, Odysseus is
unable to return to his homeland as the rightful king of Ithaka, so Athena
enables his return home disguised as
a beggar, and therefore as a xeinos, or a visiting foreigner. So, when Odysseus presents
himself, as a visitor and beggar, to his own palace, he automatically becomes
the guest-friend (e.g., Odyssey 1.313; 1.187; 8.145) of the house, which
obligates that house to guarantee him the rituals of hospitality. Strangers,
wanderers, and guests, of course, were under the additional general protection
of Zeus ξένιος (cf.
Odyssey 6.208; 8.546; 9.270)
Two terms for ‘beggar’ in Greek are ptochon and
prosaites, which are fundamentally interchangeable. Incidentally,
however, there is an interesting difference in notional image that the
dictionaries suggest between beggar-ptochon (ptwco\n) and beggar-prosaites (προσαίτης), which seems to
be the NT’s preferred usage. The ptochon-beggar
seems to evoke the posture of ‘cringing’ or ‘crouching’, and touches
upon the notions of being ‘poorly’ or ‘scantily’—dressed; fed; etc., while the prosaites-beggar,
as suggested by its verbal form, seems rather to evoke the act of being bothersome
to someone by insistently asking for a hand-out, or by soliciting.
§ Line 4. A disabled person (cholos;
χωλός). It does
not matter whether the “director” wants you (4) to play someone […] who is disabled.
In the world of the
NT, we normally see cholos translated as lame, such as: Jesus
healing the lame. The word itself means lame in the feet; halting; or limping;
as it could also refer to the type of poetical meter which is truncated or
halting, such as trochaic meter. It would be amusing, in a childish kind of
way, to imagine Jesus healing halting or lame poetry; but then again, such
musing might also be thought a bit offensive and blasphemous, when in fact it
is only intended to be playful and frivolous.
Still, in deference
to our politically correct thought world, it is difficult to know just how to
translate accurately, and tastefully, lame in our text. But the
take-away idea for Epictetus remains important: that we may be called upon to
play this debilitating or lame role in the theater of our lives.
§ Line 5. A person in a position of public responsibility or
leadership (archonta; a‡rconta). It does not matter whether the “director” wants you (4) to play someone […] who is in a position of public responsibility or leadership.
The position of the
archon in Greek antiquity has no immediate correspondent in modern
Western society. Its sense is of one who is a ruler or commander. In earlier
Anglo-iterations, the archon would have been translated as akin to the
public magistrate; or as, perhaps, a mayor, or a member of the city council,
or…. There is no doubt that the archon is a social leadership type of
role, but it is not necessarily political, nor military, nor hierarchically absolute
in nature, such as might be thought with kings or presidents. Per the wiki-source on the
question of archons,
In the early
literary period of ancient Greece the chief magistrates of various Greek city
states were called Archon. The term was also used throughout Greek history in a
more general sense, ranging from "club leader" to "master of the
tables" at syssitia to "Roman governor". In Roman terms, archontes ruled by imperium,
whereas basileis ("kings") had auctoritas. […]
Under the Athenian constitution, Archons were also in charge of
organizing festivals by bringing together poets, playwrights, actors, and
city-appointed choregai (wealthy citizen patrons). The Archon would begin this
process months in advance of a festival by selecting a chorus of three
playwrights based on descriptions of the projected plays. Each playwright would
be assigned a choregos, also selected by the Archon, from among the wealthy
citizens who would pay all the expenses of costumes, masks, and training the
chorus. The Archon also assigned each playwright a principal actor (the
protagonist), as well as a second and third actor. The City Dionysia, an
ancient dramatic festival held in March in which tragedy, comedy, and satyric
drama originated, was under the direction of one of the principal magistrates,
the archon eponymos.
§ Line 5bis. A person who is
just an average man in the street (idioten; i˙diw¿thn). It does not matter whether the “director” wants you (4) to play someone […] who is just an average man in the street.
The notion of the ‘private
man’ stands in clear contrast to the public man, in the way that the private
person or individual is clearly understood to be distinct from a representative
of the State in public office or stately function, such as the archonta
(a‡rconta).The
‘average man’ can also stand over and against a person of distinction, as
Plutarch uses it, as it can be used, as in Aristotle, to represent the
difference between one’s own countrymen, and the ξένοι, the foreigners or guest-friends.
John, Quisquam and
"The Public" first appears in the formation of the United States as a
nation where English and German were being discussed as the official language
of the new United States in the later 1700's. Many new Americans of Lutheran
Germans heritage also spoke Latin and used the term "quisquam" with a
gender neutral meaning of "anyone" where, in English, John was the
generic male term for a person. The term John Q. Public was the name of a
character created by Vaughn Shoemaker, an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago
Daily News, in 1922. Jim Lange, the editorial cartoonist for The
Oklahoman for 58 years, was closely identified with a version of the John Q.
Public character, whom he sometimes also called "Mr. Voter". Lange's
version of the character was described as "bespectacled, mustachioed,
fedora-wearing".
§ Lines 4-5. Ms.
Carter’s “act … naturally” and “to act well.”
Ms. Carter remains faithful to the language of
theater with her translation
in lines 4-5: “see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to
act well the character assigned you.” In exchange for her literal
faithfulness in
the English language medium, however, she gave up some essential richnesses in connotation that belong to the original Greek.
Our
vocabulary here in lines 4-5 is a denotative parallelism drawn between euphuos and kalos [eujfuwק - kalwק], which Phrontisterion renders with: you are
called upon to play your part eloquently. (5) For this is your sole concern: to perform well (meaningfully) the part assigned to you.
Kalos is certainly bland enough in Greek, rather like the
ho-hum English word ‘good’; and will therefore have bland-enough translations,
such as Ms. Carters, For
this is your business, to act well
the character assigned you.
Euphuos, on the other hand, is much more lexically interesting, translating as
well-grown, shapely; of good natural parts, clever; of good natural
disposition—especially when speaking of horses and dogs (per Xenophon);
naturally suited or adapted.
 | |
| A double-bell euphonium |
Euphuos is
an associative intuition for words like euphoria - euphoros ‘borne well, healthy’, from eu
‘well’ + pherein ‘to bear’. Or, euphony, which
is the quality of being
pleasing to the ear. Or again, euphonium, which is, per wiki,
a medium-sized, 3 or
4-valve, often compensating, conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument that
derives its name from the Ancient Greek word εὔφωνος euphōnos, meaning
"well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced" (εὖ eu means
"well" or "good" and φωνή phōnē means "sound",
hence "of good sound").
There is also the English word ‘euphemism’, which, per the
Google-universe, is “an innocuous word or expression used in
place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant.” This word is properly from the Greek euphēmismos, derived from the verbal euphēmizein, which
is to ‘use words auspiciously’, from eu ‘well’, of
course, and phēmē a ‘saying’ or ‘speaking’.
Which all brings us right back around again to the euphuos - kalos [eujfuwק - kalwק]
divide in §17, lns. 4-5 of Epictetus’ Enchiridion: you are called upon to play your part eloquently. (5) For your sole concern is
this: to play well the part assigned to you.
Ms. Carter chooses to render euphuos with ‘naturally’. This is
a reasonable translating solution, because the second part of our adverb here, eu-phuos,
derives precisely from notions of ‘natural’, ‘growth’, ‘stature’—from nature
images relevant to growth and harvests. With this translation, though, Ms.
Carter sacrifices the eu-phuos nuance that seems to interest Epictetus, as well; and
it is precisely the ‘eu-‘ bit of euphuos that suggests an aesthetic outlook on the ‘natural’
part of the adverb. So, other worthy translation contenders for euphuos might be ‘vividly’, ‘impressively’, ‘remarkably’, and
some variation of ‘noteworthy’, each
of which invites us not just to look upon the action as natural, but as also as
performed in such a way as to be noteworthy—as performed so kalos [kalw◊ß] that
we, the audience, actually notice not just the flow of gestures and signs being
framed on the stage in front of us, but also the naturalness of the
performance itself. In order to bring out this nuance, Phrontisterion
has chosen to translate the phrase, you are called upon to play your part eloquently. This word in English, of course, has
overtones of speaking well, which harks back to our foundational concept of hypokrites (ὑποκριτής), of a performer who is naturally ‘one who answers back’.
So, in an amplified translation, our text might read
something like:
Remember, that you are a performer (one who gives
answer; an interpreter or expounder
(per David Holt);
one who plays a part on the stage; actor; pretender;
dissembler) of the deed, act; office,
business, duty; or action, which is
represented on the stage, of the drama or play, of whatever sort the teacher
(trainer of a dithyrambic or dramatic chorus; producer of a play) should
wish—if brief and humble, then of that sort, and if longer running, then of
that sort. If it is the author’s pleasure that you should perform the poor man
(beggar), then in that case you should also play it gracefully; or if disabled,
or if a magistrate or politician, or if just an average man. For this is your
domain, what you bring to the table: to present [well] the ‘face’/character/mask
that has been given to you. The attribution of parts, however, this belongs to
another [touvt’ e¶sti… aujto\ a‡llou].
The ending of this fragment rounds out in a nice
distinction, which is a bed-rock philosophical premise for Epictetus that we
are invited not to neglect, between what is yours or what belongs to you to
accomplish [so\n], and
the pieces of our life and reality over which we have no control. So, we/you
are reminded not to bother with such things that are not yours [so\n], because they
are, precisely, not within your grasp to affect. They are not your affair; but,
rather, they belong to another, to “someone” or “something” else, to determine [\a‡llou].
§ An
ancient virtue ethic.
Aristotle and
Epictetus are on the same ethical page about what it means to “act well.” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes this ethic of excellence.
…“practical wisdom” [is]
excellence in thinking and deciding about how to behave.
[…]
Aristotle
… argues that
since the function of a human is to exercise the soul's activities according to
reason, the function of a good human is to exercise well and finely the soul's
activities according to reason. Given the two aspects of reason that Aristotle
has distinguished, one can see that both can be well or badly done.
[…] For
Aristotle, virtue is perfection of the human function and the Stoics follow in
this line of thinking. While their notion of virtue builds on their notion of
the underlying human nature, their account of the perfection of human nature is
more complex than Aristotle's. (SEP)
 | |
| A little drummer boy |
As a side-note of interest on acting well: Aristotle, in
addition to authoring the Nicomachean Ethics, which is a fairly
definitive ancient work on acting well, was also the author of the Poetics,
the definitive philosophical assessment about Greek tragedy. So, it is
interesting to note that Epictetus here in his Enchiridion does not make
the case that we are all tragodoi, or members of a tragic chorus playing
out our role on the tragic stage of life. The author of the Handbook is
not advancing any commentary here on whether or not the nature of life is
inherently tragic as it plays out in the world. Rather, he is simply reminding
us of the more-than-obvious fact that we are all just ‘players’ in the theater
of life, and that the script will sometimes turn out to be comedy—romantic and
other; sometimes tragedy; and sometimes just hum-drum situational life. And
much like the Little Drummer Boy who
plays his heart out when the situation demands it, we should also be ready,
philosophically, to take on, and to ‘play’ to our very best potential, any part
that comes our way on the world stage. But distinctly unlike the little Drummer
Boy who performs his utmost in season, the point Epictetus wants to make
is that our philosophical situation demands our very best performance each and
every moment of our lives.
To conclude, then:
TRANSLATION (AIKEN)—Always keep in mind that you are, in fact, only a performer who is interpreting a part in a
play—whichever part (2) the director of the play chooses. If the part is small,
then it will be of a humble sort; if the part is big, then it will be of a more
significant sort. It does not matter whether the “director” wants you (4) to play someone who is poor as a mouse, or someone who is
disabled, or one who is in a position of public responsibility or leadership,
or just an average man in the street—you are called upon to play your part eloquently. (5) For
your sole concern is this: to play well the part assigned to you. (6) But selecting
which role you are to play? This task belongs to another.
Many collaborative
thanks on thinking through this translation to Laura du Pree (UCR Greek apasionada)
Further reading: Phrontisterion’s translation of
Epictetus’ Handbook
·
Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_Section §1.15.1.1_On
Well-mannered Dinner Parties. Or,
Living Courteously.
· Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_Section §1.14.1.1_If
Wishes Were Horses…. Or, How to Avoid Being a Slave.
· Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_Section §1.13.1.1_ More on Making Intellectual
Progress; October 2018
· Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_Section §1.12.1.1_Wrong Thinking About
(Perhaps) Right Action; September 2018
· Epictetus’Enchiridion Expanded_§1.8.1.1, 1.9.1.1 and 1.10.1.1_Bits
& Bobs of Fine Advice: Being presumptuous; December 1, 2017
· Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_§1.6.1.1.On Receiving Compliments, On Possessions, & On What is Rightfully Yours; July
1, 2017
· Epictetus’ Enchiridion Expanded_§1.4.1.1.On Activities. BATHING HABITS…., AMONG OTHER THINGS; August
1, 2016
· More On the Question of Freedom_Or, How to be the Consummate Control Freak_Epictetus Expanded_§1bis; August
1, 2015
Phrontisterion on Heraclitus* and
Heraclitana
References and
related reading:
·
Westermann, W.F. “Vocational
Training in Antiquity.” In The School Review Vol. 22, No. 9
(Nov., 1914), pp. 601-610 (10 pages). Published by: The University of Chicago
Press. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1077001]
·
Sansone, David. “The Size of the Tragic Chorus.” In Phoenix
Vol. 70, No. 3/4 (Fall-Winter/automne-hiver 2016), pp. 233-254 (22 pages). Published
by: Classical Association of Canada. DOI:
10.7834/phoenix.70.3-4.0233. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7834/phoenix.70.3-4.0233]
·
Bacon, Helen H. “The Chorus in Greek Life and Drama.” In
Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics Third Series, Vol. 3,
No. 1, The Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture, One (Fall, 1994 - Winter,
1995), pp. 6-24 (19 pages). Published by: Trustees of Boston University; Trustees of Boston University through its
publication Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20163562]
·
Marshall, C. W. and Willigenburg, Stephanie van. “Judging
Athenian Dramatic Competitions.” In The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol.
124 (2004), pp. 90-107 (18 pages). Published by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. DOI:
10.2307/3246152. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3246152]
·
Bexley, Erica. “What is Dramatic Recitation?” In Mnemosyne
Fourth Series, Vol. 68, Fasc. 5 (2015), pp. 774-793 (20 pages). Published by: Brill. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24522849]
·
Wright, Matthew. “Literary Prizes and Literary
Criticism in Antiquity.” In Classical Antiquity Vol. 28, No. 1 (April
2009), pp. 138-177 (40 pages). Published by: University of California Press. DOI: 10.1525/ca.2009.28.1.138. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ca.2009.28.1.138]
