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Work and failure

Arrian and the notes

Epictetus wrote nothing himself. Everything we have of him we owe to Arrian: a young Greek of good family who attended his lectures in Nicopolis and wrote them down. Arrian expressly did not want to make a book; he wrote down, as he explains in his preface, only what he heard, in the speaker's own words, to keep it for himself. It went into circulation without his knowledge. Arrian went on to a distinguished career as an administrator and historian, but we know him mainly as the man who took notes. Without those notes Epictetus would have been a name and nothing more, and Marcus Aurelius would never have read what formed him.

The crossroads

Something valuable is happening and nobody is recording it. Recording it gains you nothing and nobody is asking for it.

The sorting

Whether Epictetus would be remembered, whether the work would survive, who would ever read it: all beyond Arrian's power. The writing down was his, evening after evening. This is the quietest case in the series and perhaps the most important: almost everything we know about the sorting exists because one student refused to leave it to chance.

The question for you

Which knowledge or experience around you exists only inside somebody's head? And what would it cost you to write it down tonight?

Practice this yourself

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Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases