Roman Era
Nicopolis was a monument in stone. After defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Octavian—soon to be Augustus—founded the city on the promontory of Epirus, peopling it from the surrounding towns and endowing it with games to celebrate his triumph. Its true fame in the history of ideas came around 93 CE, when the emperor Domitian expelled the philosophers from Rome and the lame former slave Epictetus settled in Nicopolis and opened a school of Stoicism. There his pupil Arrian recorded the famous 'Discourses' and the 'Enchiridion,' teaching that we should distinguish what is in our power from what is not—a doctrine that would later guide Marcus Aurelius himself.