Around 50 CE, in the city of Hierapolis, a child was born into slavery — a condition that would define the early circumstances of his life and stand in sharp contrast to the work he would later pursue as a philosopher and writer.

That man was Epictetus, a subject of Ancient Rome who lived for a considerable period in Rome itself before being banished from the city. The banishment proved consequential. He relocated to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece and remained there for the rest of his life. Throughout his career he worked as a philosopher and writer, conducting his thought in Ancient Greek.

Epictetus was a member of the Stoic movement. His years in Nicopolis appear to have been ones of sustained philosophical activity, and it was in that city that he died, around 138 CE. His life had carried him from Hierapolis, where he was born into slavery, through Rome, and finally to Nicopolis — a trajectory shaped at every stage by forces both imposed and chosen.

He died in Nicopolis, the city that had been his home since his banishment from Rome. The arc of his life — from enslaved person in Hierapolis to philosopher and writer working in the Greek-speaking world under Roman rule — is the frame within which his place in the Stoic movement must be understood.