Epictetus and the Imperial Court

Abstract

What we know of Roman political life under the early Empire we owe mostly to senatorial writers, and to an eques, Suetonius; a single Imperial freedman, Phlegon of Tralles, has left some scraps of information about the Court in his own time and before. It is therefore worth paying some attention when we have a lengthy text which reproduces the observations on human life and fortune of a man who was himself the slave of an Imperial freedman. Epictetus has been little used as a historical source; it is the aim of this paper to bring out both the extent and the value of his references to Roman society and politics in his own time.Before we can assess the value of these references, we must examine both the experience on which they are based and the authenticity of the text in which they occur. Epictetus originated from Hierapolis in Phrygia; according to an inscription he was born a slave. Either by birth or sale, he belonged to Epaphroditus, the freedman and a libellis of Nero, who after Nero's death survived unharmed until relegated, and then (in 95) executed, by Domitian. Whether Epaphroditus remained a libellis under the Flavians is not clear, though the likelihood is that he did not. This view would be supported if we could be sure that it was the same Epaphroditus who encouraged Josephus in the writing of his Antiquitates, completed in 93–4.