Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/449

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FRAGMENTS

Introductory Note

The genuine fragments of Epictetus are not very numerous, and since several of them are of unusual interest, it has seemed best to add them at this point. One fragment, No. 28 b, I have added to those listed by Schenkl, since its discovery was subsequent to his latest edition.

Earlier editions have included a large number of aphorisms gathered from Stobaeus, and from a gnomology purporting to contain excerpts from Democritus, Isocrates, and Epictetus. The researches of a group of scholars, principally H. Schenkl,[1] R. Asmus,[2] and A. Elter,[3] have thrown such doubt upon the authenticity of these aphorisms that it would scarcely serve any useful purpose to reproduce them in the present work.

  1. Die epiktetischen Fragmente, Sitzungsberichte der philos. hist. Classe der K. Akad. der Wiss., Wien, 115 (1888), 443-546. Also ed. maior 1916, Chapter III, pp xlviii-lii.
  2. Quaestiones Epicteteae, Freiburg i. B., 1888.
  3. Epicteti et Moschionis Sententiae, Bonn, 1892.
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