Enchiridion

Why it’s on the list: Epictetus’ short handbook of Stoic practice, compiled by his student Arrian and built around the single distinction between what is within our control and what is not — an afternoon’s read that the rest of Stoicism elaborates.

Where I heard about it

• rroudt — put it forward in the Thread of Classics, a crowd-sourced Twitter thread pairing classic texts with the people recommending them (the tweet), May 2020.

About this edition

A condensation of the longer Discourses, meant to be carried and reread rather than studied once. The page count reflects a standard short-form edition; these texts vary widely by edition and translation.

Connections

• Thread of Classics — the reading list it came from