CHAPTER II.
LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS _( continued)_.
Whether any of these great thoughts would have suggested themselves _spontaneously_ to Epictetus--whether there was an inborn wisdom and nobleness in the mind of this slave which would have enabled him to elaborate such views from his own consciousness, we cannot tell; they do not, however, express _his_ sentiments only, but belong in fact to the moral teaching of the great Stoic school, in the doctrines of which he had received instruction.
It may sound strange to the reader that one situated as Epictetus was should yet have had a regular tutor to train him in Stoic doctrines.
That such should have been the case appears at first sight inconsistent with the cruelty with which he was treated, but it is a fact which is capable of easy explanation.

In times of universal luxury and display--in times when a sort of surface-refinement is found among all the wealthy--some sort of respect is always paid to intellectual eminence, and intellectual amusements are cultivated as well as those of a coarser character.

Hence a rich Roman liked to have people of literary culture among his slaves; he liked to have people at hand who would get him any information which he might desire about books, who could act as his amanuenses, who could even correct and supply information for his original compositions.

Such learned slaves formed part of every large establishment, and among them were usually to be found some who bore, if they did not particularly merit, the title of "philosophers." These men--many of whom are described as having been mere impostors, ostentatious pedants, or ignorant hypocrites--acted somewhat like domestic chaplains in the houses of their patrons.

They gratified an amateur taste for wisdom, and helped to while away in comparative innocence the hours which their masters might otherwise have spent in lassitude or sleep.