On the thing that arrives early
“It is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.”
Epictetus is making a point about timing, not about bravery. Pain arrives when it arrives and takes its own duration; the fear of it starts much earlier and has no fixed end.
He is not claiming the feared thing is harmless. He is observing that most of the suffering is already happening, in advance, and that this portion is the one part with a different cause — and therefore the only part open to argument.