For unknown reasons, Vespasian allowed one sage, Musonius Rufus, to stay in Rome during this diaspora and continue giving lectures. Attending these talks was a young man, a foreign-born slave, whose name would soon be known across the Roman world: Epictetus. Once a member of Nero’s staff—he belonged to Epaphroditus, the freedman who had helped Nero die—Epictetus somehow obtained freedom and began giving philosophic lectures of his own, attracting even bigger crowds than those of Rufus.
