 Born sometime in the 50s C.E. in Hierapolis, a Greek city of Asia Minor, Epictetus spent a portion of his life as the slave of Epaphroditus, an important administrator in the court of Nero. The date at which he came to Rome is unknown, but it must have been either prior to 68, at which time Epaphroditus fled the capital, or after the accession of Domitian in 81, under whom Epaphroditus was allowed to return and perhaps to resume his position. The circumstances of Epictetus’s education are likewise unknown, except that he studied for a time under Musonius Rufus, a Roman senator and Stoic philosopher who taught intermittently at Rome. Eventually receiving his freedom, he began lecturing on his own account but was forced to leave the city, presumably by the edict of Domitian (in 89) banning philosophers from the Italian peninsula. He then established his own school at Nicopolis, an important communications hub and administrative center in Epirus, on the Adriatic coast of northwest Greece, and remained there teaching and lecturing until his death around 135. The teaching represented in the Discourses is that of his later career, around the year 108 by Millar’s (1965) dating, at which time he walked with a limp attributed variously to arthritis or to physical abuse during his time of slavery. Epictetus never married, but for reasons of benevolence he late in life adopted a child whose parents could not provide for its maintenance.