THE ARTICLE · 9 MIN
The Enchiridion, Greek for “handbook”, is a short manual of the teaching of Epictetus, a Stoic teacher of the first and second centuries AD. Here are its big ideas in our own words, what is known about the man and the book, how its line about “views” reached modern cognitive therapy, and a few small practices drawn from the text itself.
About the book
Epictetus was born sometime in the 50s AD in Hierapolis, a Greek city in Phrygia, in Asia Minor. He spent part of his life as the slave of Epaphroditus, an administrator at the court of Nero, and studied for a time under the Stoic Musonius Rufus. Once freed, he lectured in Rome until he was forced to leave, presumably by an edict of the emperor Domitian banning philosophers from Italy, around 89. He set up his own school at Nicopolis in Epirus, on the coast of north-west Greece, and taught there until his death around 135. He taught in Greek.
On the usual account he wrote nothing himself; a minority view, argued by Robert Dobbin in 1998, holds that he wrote the Discourses and the handbook himself. On that usual account, his student Arrian, later a historian and official under Hadrian, composed the four surviving books of the Discourses and this handbook, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls “a brief abridgment of the Discourses”. The same entry adds a fair warning: the handbook “at some points gives a misleading impression of his philosophical motivations”, and the Discourses are the fuller record. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests, as a conjecture, that Arrian wrote the Discourses and the handbook around 104–107, when he was most likely Epictetus’s student; the Stanford Encyclopedia puts the teaching in the Discourses in his later career, around the year 108 by one scholar’s dating. A 2023 paper says only that Arrian wrote the handbook down in the first half of the second century.
In Higginson’s translation it runs to 51 short chapters, from a single sentence (chapter 8) to a page or more (chapters 24, 29 and 33). The Discourses it draws on had at least one famous early reader: Marcus Aurelius thanks his teacher Rusticus for acquainting him with “the discourses of Epictetus” (Meditations 1.7).
We read the whole handbook in Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s English translation, first published in 1865 and, by his own title page, “based on that of Elizabeth Carter”. The copy we read is the Liberal Arts Press edition (first edition 1948, second edition 1955) on Project Gutenberg (#45109), with Albert Salomon’s 1948 introduction. Quotations from the handbook below are Higginson’s, with Higginson’s chapter numbers.
The big ideas
1. Some things are within our power, and some are not
The handbook opens with its central split: “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power” (chapter 1). Within our power are “opinion, aim, desire, aversion”; beyond it are “body, property, reputation, office”. Everything else in the book builds on this.
2. It is the view we take that disturbs us
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things” (5). His example is death: it is not terrible, or it would have seemed so to Socrates; the terror is in our notion of it. The same chapter sketches a path of progress: the uninstructed blame others for their troubles, a beginner blames himself, and the fully instructed blame neither.
3. Aim desire at what is yours
If you set your heart on things beyond your power, he argues, you are bound to be disappointed, so he tells a beginner to restrain desire for now and keep aversion for things within his power (2). The same chapter softens it: where you must pursue or avoid something, do it “with discretion and gentleness and moderation.”
4. Remember what things are
He asks his students to remind themselves of the nature of what they love, starting small: if it is a favourite cup, remember it is a cup, so that if it breaks you can bear it; and he applies the same thought to people (3). In chapter 11 he goes further: of any loss, say not “I have lost it” but “I have restored it”, and hold what you have “as do travelers at an inn”. These are hard sayings, and the handbook states them without softening.
5. Play your part well
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses” (17): the part may be short or long, poor or powerful, and the task is to act it well. Duties, he says, “are universally measured by relations” (30): a son owes something to a father, even a bad one, and a brother keeps his side of the relation even with an unjust brother.
6. Everything has a price
Chapter 25 compares favours and invitations to lettuces sold for an obol: if someone else pays with flattery and attendance and gets the invitation, you kept your obol. Chapter 29 asks you to consider “what precedes and what follows” before taking anything on, using the athlete who must train, diet and risk defeat.
7. Other people’s insults run through your own judgement
“When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you” (20). He suggests gaining “time and respite” before responding, saying of someone who acts badly “It seemed so to him” (42), and taking a brother’s wrong by its other handle, “that he is your brother” (43). If someone speaks ill of you, his suggested reply is: “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone” (33).
8. Practice, not display
Its last chapters turn to practice. Do not proclaim yourself a philosopher; show it, as sheep show what they have eaten by producing wool and milk, not by bringing the grass back up (46). The most necessary part of philosophy, he says, is the practical one, “We ought not to lie”, and “we do just the contrary” by spending our time on the proofs (51).
What holds up
The split in chapter 1 and the line about views in chapter 5 are genuine, and they say what they are quoted as saying. What does not hold up is some of the story around them: the book was most likely put together by his student, Epictetus did not teach in Rome to the end, and one line credited to him, “No man is free who is not master of himself”, is not in the handbook. The account of how he came to limp rests on stories that disagree.
His link to modern therapy is documented in the therapists’ own words. Albert Ellis, who founded rational emotive behaviour therapy, quoted chapter 5 in 1962, and so did a 1979 treatment manual by Aaron Beck and colleagues. Cognitive behavioural therapy has a large body of evidence: a 2012 review of 106 meta-analyses found that “the strongest support exists for CBT of anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, bulimia, anger control problems, and general stress”. That evidence is about the therapy, not about reading Epictetus. Direct tests of Stoic exercises are few, small and mixed, and none tests the handbook itself. The rows below give each claim, the verdict and the source.
How to use it
These describe practices drawn from the text. They rest on what Epictetus taught, not on trials; where research touches them, we say so. None is treatment.
- Two lists. When something weighs on you, one way to use chapter 1 is to write what is within your power about it (what you think, aim at, want, avoid) and what is not. In a 2026 trial of Stoic training, posted as a preprint, a possible effect on beliefs about control did not hold up after correction, so this is offered as his practice, not as a finding.
- Finding the view. Chapter 5 suggests looking for the judgement behind a reaction, and chapter 20 adds a pause: “if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.” This is the move cognitive therapy later built on; the evidence for that therapy is not evidence for this exercise on its own.
- Starting with little things. Epictetus tells beginners to start small, with a little spilled oil or a little stolen wine, and say “This is the price paid for peace and tranquillity” (12). The same goes for the favourite cup of chapter 3.
- The other handle. When someone close does wrong, chapter 43 suggests picking the matter up by the handle that can be carried: the relation, not the injury. It is a way of choosing the frame, not of excusing the act.
- Counting the price. Before taking something on, chapter 29 asks what comes before and after it; chapter 25 asks what the thing you want is actually sold for. Both can serve as a check before a commitment.
Who it’s for, and who can skip it
It suits readers who want the Stoic ideas in their shortest form: the whole handbook, about 7,000 words in Higginson’s translation, can be read in under an hour. It is blunt, and some chapters belong to its time: it takes servants and their punishment for granted (12), and its chapter on women (40) and its rules on pleasures and company (33) read as products of that time. Readers who want the reasons behind the rules will find more in the Discourses, which the handbook abridges, or in our Stoicism overview. Anyone in acute distress is better served by professional help than by any book.
If you liked this
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: summary, the notebook of an emperor who learned from Epictetus.
- Stoicism: what it is, where it came from and what it is not, our overview of the school.
- Your fears, answered by the Stoics, with chapters 9 and 11 of the handbook alongside Marcus and Seneca.
- Epictetus, Discourses, the longer record of his teaching, in George Long’s translation (selection on Project Gutenberg) or W. A. Oldfather’s (Loeb).
Sources
- Epictetus, The Enchiridion, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, with an introduction by Albert Salomon (Liberal Arts Press, 1948; second edition 1955), Project Gutenberg #45109.
- T. W. Higginson, The Works of Epictetus (Boston: Little, Brown, 1866 printing, entered 1865), archive.org scan, title page.
- George Long, introduction to A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion, Project Gutenberg #10661.
- Epictetus, Fragments, tr. W. A. Oldfather, Wikisource.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Epictetus”; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Epictetus”.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.7, tr. George Long, Project Gutenberg #15877.
- F. Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (The Gay Science) §276, tr. Thomas Common, Project Gutenberg #52881.
- A. E. Cavanna, G. Purpura, A. Riva, R. Nacinovich and S. Seri, “The Western origins of mindfulness therapy in ancient Rome”, Neurological Sciences 44 (2023).
- S. G. Hofmann, A. Asnaani, I. J. J. Vonk, A. T. Sawyer and A. Fang, “The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: a review of meta-analyses”, Cognitive Therapy and Research 36 (2012).
- A. Boostani, S. A. Vahhabzadeh Mousavi, K. Momeni and M. Arab-Zozani, “Application of Stoic philosophy teachings in nursing and allied health: a scoping review”, SAGE Open Nursing (2025).
- A. Momeni, A. Boostani and M. Moshtagh, “Evaluating the effectiveness of stoic teachings on spiritual coping strategies in patients undergoing hemodialysis”, Journal of Health Psychology (2026).
- G. King, “Modern Stoicism and Mental Health: A Randomised Controlled Trial”, PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London (2025), unpublished; abstract read on the university’s research portal.
- M. W. Lewis, C. Kalarchian and A. MacLellan, “Effects of Stoic training on fear of negative evaluation and responses to social-evaluative stress”, PsyArXiv preprint (2026).
Checked October 2026. What we read: the whole of the Enchiridion in Higginson’s translation, with Salomon’s 1948 introduction and the editor’s notes; the title page of Higginson’s 1866 printing; the opening of George Long’s introduction to his selection from the Discourses; the encyclopedia entries above; Oldfather’s fragments; and the research abstracts listed. We did not read the Greek or the full Discourses. Ellis’s and Beck’s words are quoted as given in the 2023 paper by Cavanna and colleagues, because we could not open their books.
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