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There is a valuable commentary on the Enchiridion by Simplicius, who lived in the time of the emperor Justinian. Indeed, the doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions. But the method of the two philosophers is entirely different.
Simplicius, so entreated, excused the fault, recognised the patriarch of Antioch though he had been consecrated in Constantinople by its bishop but insisted that such a violation of the canons should not be repeated. Presently Stephen III. died, upon which Acacius committed the same fault anew, and in 482 consecrated Calendion patriarch of Antioch.
No less admirably, therefore, than Platonically does Simplicius, in his Commentary of Epictetus, observe on this subject as follows: "The fountain and principle of all things is the good: for that which all things desire, and to which all things are extended, is the principle and the end of all things. The good also produces from itself all things, first, middle, and last.
Others, as Ammonius and Simplicius ad Aristotelem, derive the name of Cynics given to these philosophers from the ridicule attached to their manners. Whose ardour appears to have been soon damped. They lost but forty men, and then retired at once to Thessaly. This reminds us of the wars between the Italian republics, in which the loss of a single horseman was considered no trifling misfortune.
When the wound had been attended to, he besought Simplicius not to go forth again to-day, and with some difficulty prevailed. 'Why should it perturb you, O most excellent Decius, said the sage, 'that a lover of wisdom is an offence to the untaught and the foolish? Was it not ever thus?
But he was a really religious man, and he concludes his commentary with a prayer to the Deity which no Christian could improve. From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men.
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