Under these conditions it was evident that the teaching of Epictetus could never win half the influence which its essential qualities fitted it to exercise. And accordingly, as another and better vehicle for this influence, Arrian compiled and condensed from the _Dissertations_ the small handbook of the Stoic philosophy known as the _Encheiridion of Epictetus_. This little work has made Epictetus known to very many whom the _Dissertations_ would never have reached. It had the distinction—unparalleled in the case of any other Pagan writing, if we except the doubtful _Sententiæ_ of Xystus—of being adopted as a religious work in the early Christian Church. Two paraphrases of it—still extant—one of which was specially designed for the use of monastic bodies, were produced about the sixth century A. D., in which very few changes were made in the text, beyond the alteration of Pagan names and allusions to Scriptural ones. About the same time it was made the subject of an elaborate and lengthy commentary by a Pagan writer, Simplicius, wherein chapter after chapter is dissected, discussed, and explained. It was elegantly rendered into Latin by the well-known scholar of the Renaissance, Angelo Politian, who dedicated his translation to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Down to the present day, as numerous translations testify, it has remained the most usual means of access to the thought of Epictetus. But inestimable as the _Encheiridion_ is, he who knows it alone has gained nothing like all that Epictetus has to give. It is a compendium; and although much more stirring and forcible than is usual with such works, it cannot give us the wealth of interesting allusion, reflection, humor, the bursts of eloquence, the abrupt and biting style, the vivid revelations of personal feeling, which marked the teaching of Epictetus in the form in which he delivered it. It seems, therefore, that to make him as accessible as he can be to those for whom such things have any value or interest, it were necessary to produce from the _Encheiridion_ and the _Dissertations_ a third work, which should have the advantages of each. This is what I have endeavored to do in the present work. In it the whole of the _Encheiridion_ is given, and the divisions of subject-matter into which the _Encheiridion_ falls have been observed by the division of my translation into five Books, corresponding with the natural divisions of the _Encheiridion_—Book I., treating of the first principles of the Stoic philosophy; Book II., dealing with the general application of these principles to life; Book III., with man’s relations to his fellow-man; Book IV., with his relations to God; Book V., containing, besides a couple of concluding chapters, chiefly practical counsels of behavior on various particular occasions, and _obiter dicta_ on the use of the faculties. Such is the scheme of arrangement suggested by the _Encheiridion_; and I have filled it in by setting among the