Epictetus and Descartes: Related?

Epictetus (55 AD) and Descartes (1596) are two philosophers that lived in very different time periods. Nonetheless, both have very similar philosophies, and as I read Epictetus's Handbook of Epictetus I was constantly reminded of Descartes’ Discourse on the Method. At first I thought that there was no way that a Stoic Greek philosopher thought along the same lines as a "liberal" 17th century French philosopher. Going over some of Descartes’ thoughts, though, are very clear and concrete examples that this is so. The first item that was present in both their ideals was the fact that both saw fortune as related to wishes and to desires. Descartes says that fortune cannot be changed, and that this is the order of the world, how things are meant to be in other words, and so it is better to change one's wishes than try to change reality to get what you wish for. Epictetus states that misfortune is when one falls into an aversion that one does not want, while being unfortunate is not being able to do what one wants. Both of these are followed by the ideas that desires bring nothing else than sorrow because things have been planned out from the start and only the things that are bound to happen will happen. Another shared concept ties into this and it is the concept that we are to focus on what is OURS and what we can control. They both narrow this down to our thoughts, because everything else, they say, cannot be controlled, and so we should let go of the other things (i.e. feelings) and focus all our attention on our thoughts. Is this far fetched connection possible? Can Descartes have a little bit of what before I would have thought a complete different philosophy in him?