 Plotinus wants to allow the wise person untrammeled mastery, and so he restricts the scope of their freedom to their reasoning and will, and not, strictly speaking, to their actions. If I am wise, I have control over my reasoning and the decisions I make on account of my reasoning. But which actions I perform are not entirely up to me, but depend on external circumstances beyond my control. If I am a brave person, I will stand ready to risk my life in war for a noble cause, but such a war may never arise. And of course, the effects of my actions are not up to me—perhaps my daughter will die of her heart condition despite my best efforts (Enn. VI.8[39].5). However, because happiness consists in wisdom and virtue, the wise person’s inability to entirely control their actions or their actions’ effects does nothing to prevent them from having the sort of power that matters—the power to obtain what is good. This aspect of Plotinus’ thought echoes the Roman Stoic Epictetus. In order to be happy, says Epictetus, we must distinguish between what is up to us and what is not, and the one thing that god has placed under our control is the correct use of impressions i.e., to decide rightly what to believe and what to do (Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.7–12, LS 62K). Because Epictetus thinks that freedom consists in our control over an internal power of assent, Frede (2011) claims that the notion of a “free will” first appears in Epictetus.