 Though much cultivated in person by the nobles of local Greek cities (as Brunt 1997 describes), Epictetus exerted far more influence through the written works produced by Arrian. The emperor Marcus Aurelius was never in fact his pupil, but was so deeply impressed with what he had read as to consider himself a follower of the freedman philosopher. In the early third century Origen remarks on the popularity of Epictetus with his own contemporaries, which he finds to rival that of Plato (Contra Celsum 6.2). Whether Origen was himself much influenced by Epictetus’s version of Stoicism is another matter, for Origen had studied the writings of Chrysippus on his own account and the strands cannot easily be separated. More demonstrable is the homage paid to Epictetus by Simplicius, the sixth-century Aristotle commentator, who composed a long philosophical commentary on the Encheiridion combining Stoic elements with his own Neoplatonism.