Arrian assures his readers, moreover, that Epictetus would not have cared what anyone thought of his words in written form, because his sole concern was an immediate one of stimulating the listeners of his audience, then and there, to think about the best and highest things and embark on the path to wisdom. Scholarly consensus has not yet been achieved regarding the validity of Arrian's claim. Some look to internal evidence, such as Arrian's deliberate use of Koine Greek, the common dialect, rather than the more literary Attic Greek, for proof of the pristine status of the recorded words of Epictetus. Others consider Arrian's prefatory comments a commonplace often used in informal philosophical style. Some go so far as to say that one's intellectual focus should not be on Epictetus's so-called Discourses at all, but rather on Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus
In any case Arrian's schoolboy enthusiasm for his teacher provided him with the basic materials for what was perhaps his own first work, the Discourses, and later a summation of the major points of that work, the Encheiridion, which is known by two additional titles, The Manual and The Handbook. Their contents were taken from the lectures Arrian had originally attended along with other young men from families who possessed the means to support long periods of study.
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