Epictetus
Epictetus against the Epicureans — three discourses
Ἀρριανοῦ τῶν Ἐπικτήτου Διατριβῶν 1.23, 2.20, 3.7 · Epictetus taught at Nicopolis in north-western Greece in the late first and early second centuries CE; he died around 135. The Discourses are his pupil Arrian's record of the teaching, written up in the early second century, about four hundred years after Epicurus.
Epictetus, a Stoic and a former slave, taught that a person is made for a household and a city, and in three discourses recorded by his student Arrian he turns on the Epicureans who said otherwise. Against Epicurus himself: why tell the wise man not to raise children, when even a wolf will not abandon its young? Against the school: why does a man who denies any natural bond between people stay up at night writing books for them? And to a Roman official who was an Epicurean: if pleasure is the good, why should anyone trust you with a deposit, a verdict or a neighbour's wife? It is the strongest ancient statement of the charge that Epicureanism undermines civic duty and family life.
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George Long (Q1507776, 1800-1879), English classical scholar, translated the Discourses, the Encheiridion and the fragments; the Perseus file is from the George Bell edition of 1890. Perseus serves it under CC BY-SA 4.0. It is a Victorian scholar's translation: literal, careful, and sometimes stiff, with the Greek term given in parentheses where Long thought the English inadequate — 'substance (οὐσία)', 'the principal (leading things, τὰ προηγούμενα)'. Two habits to know. Long brackets his own supplements, so '[suspicious]' or '[you must act thus]' are his words and not Epictetus's. And his 'the husk' at 1.23 stands for the Greek word for a shell or husk, the Stoics' contemptuous image of the body, not a figure of Long's own. The English is divided only by chapter, while the Greek is divided into numbered sections, so each unit here is a whole chapter and the notes cannot cite a section within it more finely than the Greek text supports.