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Very little is known of the life of Epictetus. It is said that ho was a native of Hierapolis in Plirygia, a town between the Maeandcr and a branch of the Maeander named the Lycus. Hierapolis is mentioned in the epistle of Paul to the people of Colossae (Coloss. iv. 13); from which it has been concluded that there was a Christian church in Hierapolis in the time of the apostle. The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown.The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Heine, and his master was Kpaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the emperor Nero. There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how ho became a slave, but it has been asserted in modern times that the parents sold the child. I have not, however, found any authority for this statement.It may be supposed that the young slave showed intelligence, for his master sent or permitted him to attend the lectures of C. Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosophy. It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher^ but Gamier, the author of a Me moire sur les Ouvrages depicted, explains this matter very well in communication to Schweighaouscr, Gamier says: "Epictetus, boreat Hierapolis of Phrygia of poor parents, was indebted apparently fur the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and tinder the fir*t emperors, among the great of Rome to reckon among their numerous slaves Grammarians, Poets, Rhetoricians, and Philosophers, in the same way as rich financiers in these later ages have been led to format a great cost rich and numerous libraries. This supposition is the only one which can explain to us, how a wretched child, born as poor as Irus, had received a good education, and how a rigid Stoic was the slave of Epaphroditus, one of the officers of the Imperial guard. For we cannot suspect that it was through a predilection for the Stoic doctrine and for his own use, that the confidant and the minister of the debaucheries of Nero would have desired to possess such a slave."