How did Socrates influence the Stoics?

Epictetus does not treat Socrates as a distant historical figure. He treats him as the working example of what Stoic theory is trying to produce: a person whose judgments are sound enough that nothing external can shake him. Three things stand out in how Socrates is used: his verdict on death, his method of argument, and his conduct when he was actually killed.

Death is not terrible, Socrates proves it

The Handbook opens its most famous psychological claim with Socrates as the test case. Men are disturbed not by things but by their judgments about things, and death is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates (Handbook 5). The logic is simple. If death were bad in itself, it would look bad to everyone, including the wisest man available. Since Socrates did not treat it as terrible, the terror is not in death but in our notion of death. This is the cognitive core of Stoic ethics, and Epictetus reaches for Socrates to make it concrete rather than argue it in the abstract.

A method, not just a mood

Epictetus also credits Socrates with a specific way of arguing, described in the Discourses. Rather than lecturing an opponent or mocking him for ignorance, Socrates used the conclusions his adversary already held and drew out their contradictions, so that the man saw the problem for himself and withdrew from it (Discourses II 12). Epictetus's example is envy: Socrates gets his interlocutor to admit that the envious man is pained, not pleased, and then to admit that this pain is felt over good things, not evils, exposing envy as a confused judgment about what is good. Epictetus contrasts this with how his own students handle an untrained opponent, who they often just ridicule instead of guiding, and says a philosopher should act as a guide who leads a man back onto the road rather than abandoning him on it (Discourses II 12). Socrates is the model for how philosophical conversation is supposed to work: not winning, but exposing a false judgment so plainly that the other person sees it too.

Constancy under threat

Among the maxims Epictetus recommends keeping ready at hand is a line drawn straight from Plato: Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be, Anytus and Melitus may kill me indeed, but hurt me they cannot (Handbook 53). Socrates accepts his death sentence without treating his accusers as capable of harming what actually matters, his character. That is the dichotomy of control in a single sentence, applied at the moment it costs the most.

The popular misreading

It would be easy to read all this as Epictetus simply admiring Socrates, the way people today admire a hero. That is not what is happening. Epictetus tells his students that Socrates became perfect by improving himself in everything, attending to nothing but reason, and then adds the demand: though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates (Handbook 51). Socrates is not a legend to praise from a distance. He is the standard against which your own procrastination is measured. The chapter's real subject is the reader's own delay, the habit of always finding one more day before you finally attend to yourself, and Socrates is introduced precisely to remove the excuse that no such standard exists.

What this changes

If Socrates is evidence that judgment, not fortune, decides whether death or accusation can hurt you, then admiring him is not enough. The Stoic use of Socrates asks you to treat his verdicts as testable claims about your own mind: is what disturbs you really the event, or your opinion of it. One concrete practice follows directly from Handbook 53: keep a short line like Socrates's own ready in advance, so that when a real threat to your reputation or safety arrives, you already have a judgment on hand that refuses to call it harm to what is truly yours.