Epictetus is an ancient Greek philosopher; slave in Rome, then a freedman; founded a philosophical school in Epirus Nikopol. He preached the ideas of stoicism: the main task of philosophy is to teach to distinguish between what is in our power to do and what is not. We are not subject to everything that is outside of us, the corporeal, the external world. Not these things themselves, but only our ideas about them make us happy or unhappy; but our thoughts, aspirations, and, consequently, our happiness are subject to us. Epictetus himself did not write treatises. Excerpts from his teachings are preserved in the records of his pupil Arrian. Epictetus was highly valued and quoted by another famous ancient philosopher - Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

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