11/07/2022
OR...maybe I wanted people with daughters to have a book that spoke to them too. It's also more historically accurate than you might think: Epictetus' philosopher teacher, Musonius Rufus was controversial in his own time for believing that both men and women should be taught philosophy and that virtue didn't have a gender. Nor would I be so certain that Epictetus was a 'white male.' In real life, he was born a slave in what is modern day Turkey (Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was almost certainly not white--as we're told repeatedly of his 'swarthy' complexion) and his name literally meant 'acquired one.' But look, if this little artistic choice in a work of fiction upsets you (before the book was even out), Epictetus addresses that too: "Whenever you are offended, remember you are complicit in taking offense."
