Category Archives: epicurus

Book Review: Uniqueness of Carvaka Philosophy in Indian Traditional Thought

India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. The problem’s name is God. – Salman Rushdie

Over the years, I have taken an interest in sister traditions to Epicureanism that have emerged elsewhere: the sumac kawsay philosophy of South America’s indigenous populations, the pleasure-ethics of the Taoist sage Yang Chu, and the Lokayata (aka Charvaka) School of India.

There isn’t much left on the Charvaka tradition–the most concise ancient introduction I found are fifteen statements that comprise the Lokayata chapter of the Sarva-Siddhanta-Sangraha. All that is left of their ancient writings are commentaries by enemies. The book Uniqueness of Carvaka Philosophy in Indian Traditional Thought by Bhupender Heera caught my attention because it promised to fill the information gap, so I have enjoyed reading it, and this is my review of it.

Of their character, although they were greatly maligned by the orthodox, I found this quote which reminded me of (biographer) Laertius’ defense of the character of Epicurus from the attacks of his enemies:

Under the heading “Nastika” Abul Fazl has referred to the good work, judicious administration and welfare schemes that were emphasised by the Charvaka law-makers.

While searching for evidence of a Charvaka movement in India–and trying to discern the extent to which it’s a living, evolving, modern tradition–I came across this Charvaka Manifesto, where we see the beginnings of a (much needed) neo-Charvaka revival in India which is inspired, in great part, in the New Atheism personalities like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. Salman Rushdie is, of course, also among the influences in modern Charvaka, as are the modern political and social realities of India, and (since India is so close to the Islamic world) there is some solidarity with the ex-Muslim movement.

The fervor towards a reform or evolution of the Charvaka Philosophy is inspired, in part, by accusations of being anti-social that go back to over 2,600 years ago, and which parallel the treatment Epicurean philosophy has also often received. Orthodox Hindus consider that there are four aims of life: pleasure (kama), wealth (artha), duty (dharma), and liberation (moksha). Charvakas originally only accepted the first two, and rejected dharma or virtue (which involved upholding the caste system) and moksha (liberation, salvation or redemption is typically interpreted in religious terms). Some modern Charvakas argue that if dharma is only understood as treating others fairly and kindly, then they can accept that; and that they understand death as liberation, or moksha.

The enjoyment of heaven lies in eating delicious food, keeping company of young women, using fine clothes, perfumes, garlands, sandal paste … while moksha is death which is cessation of life-breath … the wise therefore ought not to take pains on account of moksha. A fool wears himself out by penances and fasts. Chastity and other such ordinances are laid down by clever weaklings. — Sarvasiddhanta Samgraha, Verses 9-12

The view that there is a soul separate from the body, which on reaching the other world enjoys rewards, is like the hope to get tasty fruits from the big flower of a tree in the sky. – Prabodhacandrodaya, Act II, Sloka 16

The Sub-Schools

There are two camps within Charvaka: The Dhurta Charvakas deny that the soul exists, while the Susikshita Carvakas say that the soul exists as long as the body lasts. This group is subdivided into the Dehatmavada (soul = body), Indriyatmavada (the soul is the senses), Mano-atmavada (the soul is the mind), and Pranatmavada (the soul is the vital breath). Aviddhakarṇa, Bhavivikta, Kambalasvatara, Purandara and Udbhatabhatta are the five commentators who developed the Charvaka system in various ways.

It would be interesting to evaluate (perhaps in the future with other content) the merits of each sub-school’s potential arguments. That so many different views coexisted among the Charvakas should be a testament to the robust, free-thinking intellectual life that they once had, and reminds us of the many schools that also existed under the umbrella of the Cyrenaics.

Some Terms

The author notes that “there is a huge aversion to the body in Indian thought“. Instead, Charvaka is a world-affirming (pravitti) philosophy, whereas from the Charvaka perspective, ascetic religious philosophies are nivrtti (world-denying). To Charvaka disciples, heaven is pleasure, hell is pain.

The author rejects the nastika (heterodox) classification for Charvaka within Indian philosophical systems, and instead prefers to classify Charvaka as “non-Vedic”. In order to be a heterodox/non-Vedic philosophy, it always and necessarily self-identifies in contrast to whatever is “orthodox” or Vedic. Therefore, I think both labels fail to appreciate the mortal blow on religiosity and the pre-scientific impulse that is Charvaka’s insistence on a canon of sense perception–even if this canon has not yet been perfected, in my view. Charvaka philosophy recognizes pleasure and the senses as guides, but rejects common-sensical methods of inference, and this is one of its main weaknesses–or a main target for potential reform by the Neo-Charvakas. For instance, in page 67 the author makes the argument that materialists can’t assert universal truths, but this is true only for materialists who adhere to the old Charvaka epistemology that rejects methods of inference. Modern scientific materialism is not of this kind, and neither is Epicurean materialism.

On the Need for inference: Consciousness and Matter

Charvaka teaches that “consciousness is born from elements just as seeds of kinva (fermenters) produce intoxicant“. This is a fascinating insight: 2,600 years ago, a group of materialist Indian philosophers compared awareness or consciousness to other biochemical processes (in this case, fermentation). They viewed consciousness as an organic, natural phenomenon, and used a metaphor that would have been at home in De Rerum Natura.

The author of “Uniqueness of Charvaka Philosophy” argues (correctly, in my view) that therefore the Charvakas DO infer by analogy in the case of the above-quoted proverb. He also argues (correctly) that the Charvaka MUST infer, and since inference is not part of their method, this renders their method inconsistent or impossible to practice. This is known as the problem of apraxia. Impracticality.

Conclusion

The author of Uniqueness of Carvaka Philosophy mixes praise with criticism in the book. He constantly acknowledges the “low position” or status of materialism, even as he acknowledges that it was initially the “only” system of philosophy worthy of its name. He apologizes for defending it, and uses terms like “gross” materialism or hedonism. At times, he seems to have acquired many of the biased attitudes he criticizes elsewhere: in page 33, he laments that “we are all Charvaka” today. In page 72, the author argues that the “body can’t cause consciousness”, and seems to endorse supernaturalism. In page 38, he accuses Charvakas of being extremists and entertaining “uncontrolled thoughts breaking loose from all restrictions”. Therefore, the reader of the book should know that the author is not entirely without bias.

Also, the reader should bear in mind that the author’s first language is not English. However, overall, considering the scarcity of material available in English, Uniqueness of Carvaka Philosophy is still a useful resource to get acquainted with the basics of the Charvaka system of philosophy.

Happy Twentieth! Philosophy as Self-care

Happy Twentieth to everyone and Happy 2022! The essay Victor Frankl and the Search for Meaning is a review of the best-selling book on logo-therapy and the therapeutic benefits of making meaning, written from an Epicurean perspective. Please enjoy our past Eikas essays, which have all been compiled here.

The essay Utility and Affection in Epicurean Friendship is in academia.edu.

“Practice these and similar things day and night, by yourself and with a like-minded Friend, and you will never be disturbed whether waking or sleeping, and you will live as a god among men: for a man who lives in the midst of immortal goods is unlike a mere mortal man.” – Epicurus, to Menoeceus

You may remember that the Letter to Menoeceus has a “meleta portion” with instructions on how to practice philosophy “by ourselves and with others of like mind“. Here, Epicurus uses the term “μελέτα πρὸς σεαυτὸν ” (meléta prós seautón) to speak of the practice of philosophy by oneself (se-auton).

We have touched on this, but not delved too much in depth into what it consists of, except to observe that it must involve a balance of both self-nurturing and self-discipline. Without self-nurturing, one risks engaging in ascetic self-abuse in the name of philosophy. Without self-discipline, one risks being too soft and fearful, and remaining unprepared for the occasional harshness of life.

According to the essay Ascetic self-cultivation, Foucault and the hermeneutics of the self, by Michael A. Peters:

“the word epimeleia is related to melete, which means both exercise and meditation”

Epicurus’ meléta prós seautón reminds us of epimeleia heautou–the Greek term for self care. In fact, the terms share semantic roots, and half of the meleta we are supposed to do (meleta by ourselves) could be characterized as self-care, or epimeleia heautou. If we search for epimeleia heautou or for self-care online, however, we will be taken in many unwanted directions. Many products are being sold in the name of self-care, and philosophers like Michelle Foucault and Pierre Hadot have influenced how people understand the term today. This can be useful, but within the Society of Epicurus we’re specifically interested in the Epicurean sense of self-care.

Let us unpack the twin notions of meléta prós seautón and epimeleia heautou into bits and pieces, so that it’s easier to appreciate why self-care is important.

It is impossible to take care of oneself if we do not have time for leisure, time to think and practice philosophy, time for introspection. So this practice of self-care must therefore be a feature of a certain civilized, self-cultivated quality of life that affords time for leisure.
A lifestyle of “self-care”–to whatever extent it is implemented–seems distant from the lifestyle that the polis / state requires of citizens, which involves preparing for warfare or for civil administration. It’s a private lifestyle that makes us look within and centers on intimate concerns. It therefore dignifies the individual.
Self-care requires that we assume, first, a degree of causal responsibility for our own happiness, dispositions, habits, and our choices and avoidances. It must therefore be a feature of moral maturity.
Again, in order to avoid the excesses of self-indulgence or self-abuse, it seems fair to say that self-care must include a balance of self-nurturing and self-discipline–which may at times require a willingness to rationally renegotiate and shift our emotional investment into greater degrees of self-love or self-reproach, as needed. This reminds us of Nietzsche’s declaration:

He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one can command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience! – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

Self-rule (autarchy) requires self-obedience: we do not truly rule ourselves if we do not obey ourselves also. Therefore, some of our ongoing projects of self-care must relate to autarchy (self-governance, or the art, science, and virtue of self-sufficiency).

In the second field of praxis (meleta “with others of like mind”), we rely on the efforts, wisdom, and example of others, who may also plant seeds in us and become the causes of our happiness, a benefit which we reciprocate. This field includes friendly conversation, the celebration of Eikas, the evaluation of case studies through the framework of philosophy, etc. But in the first field of praxis (meleta by ourselves), we rely on our own effort and we become the cause of our own happiness.
Self-care includes all the practices related to moral development (re-habituation, or turning away from vices and towards virtues), study (including the study of the self), memorization, repetition, carrying out our choices and avoidances with the help of the Doctrines, and any other practices of self-cultivation, contemplation, “placing before the eyes” (Epicurean visualization), or meditation that we find to be advantageous for our happiness.

There are many more techniques (like journaling) that could be incorporated into self-care, as well as circumstances (like the pandemic) that pose particular challenges. In the end, it’s up to each individual philosopher to adopt into her hedonic regimen whatever methods work for them. I hope that these initial deliberations help our readers to carefully consider and plan their own process of meléta prós seautón.

Happy Eikas: the Method of Multiple Explanations

Happy Twentieth to all! This month, news came out that a skeleton recovered at Herculaneum “reveals secrets of ancient Roman town obliterated by volcanic eruption“. This month, I also found the video 4 Ways To Practice Epicureanism.

The Cārvaka Darshana is a discussion by the Charvaka YouTube channel. The host identifies as Neo-Charvaka and claims that this lineage is as legitimately a part of Hinduism as any other philosophical school, and that if they go to the Indian government with the desire to get organized as a philosophical School, the state should acknowledge their existence as a sect. The Charvakas are a somewhat parallel tradition to Epicureanism which evolved in the context of India. Only fragments of their ancient scriptures survive, and only thanks to the reports of their enemies. Modern Charvaka discourse is greatly influenced by the new atheism, but distinct from it, as it is not an activist philosophy, but rather one of pleasure (kama).

The SNS essay On Immersive Storytelling contributes to the push to decouple myths, art, and ceremony from superstitious trappings and to channel them into ethically useful purposes. It cites Eikas, and also Lucretian passages as examples of how this can be done. Curiously, it seems like our second Scholarch Hermarchus may have initiated the tradition of telling the story of Epicurus as if it was a “legend”:

Epicurus’ life when compared to other men’s in respect of gentleness and self-sufficiency might be thought a mere legend. – Vatican Saying 36, attributed to Hermarchus

That storytelling was part of the education that took place in the Garden is demonstrated by the many anecdotes that Philodemus of Gadara told 200 years later about the lives of the founders. He must have spend many hours listening to these stories.

Multiple Explanations and Hedonic Calculus

For a number of things, it’s not enough to state one cause, but many, of which one would be true. – Lucretius, De rervm natvra, Liber Sextvs, 703-4

Our last Eikas zoom was facilitated by Alan and was titled “On the method of multiple explanations” (an ancestor to modern multi-valued logic). This method was used by Epicurus in his Epistle to Pythocles, where he explained astronomical phenomena.

The idea here is that, in a universe complex enough to have infinite particles and infinite space, it is possible that there are multiple explanations to phenomena and that, so long as these explanations do not contradict each other or the evidence of nature, they can all be true. For instance, weather systems are caused by pressure patterns in the atmosphere, but they’re also part of annual seasonal cycles, and are affected by patterns of rain condensation and by global temperatures. All these things are true and observable simultaneously. Here is how Diogenes of Oenoanda explains the method of multiple explanations in his Epicurean Wall Inscription:

Let us now discuss risings and settings and related matters after making this preliminary point: if one is investigating things that are not directly perceptible, and if one sees that several explanations are possible, it is reckless to make a dogmatic pronouncement concerning any single one; such a procedure is characteristic of a seer rather than a wise man. It is correct, however, to say that, while all explanations are possible, this one is more plausible (πιθανώτερον) than that. – Diogenes’ Wall

During our discussion of the method of multiple explanations, we agreed that this method was mainly a way of gathering and considering plausible hypotheses, without necessarily settling on only one of them as the only explanation. It would be interesting to consider the intersection between the preoccupations that led to the development of the method of multiple explanations and the post-modern rejection of any one single meta-narrative as inherently authoritarian.

One additional note on the method of multiple explanations: it allows for the existence of many fields of knowledge, each with their own rules, methods, interpretations, and ways of understanding nature.

I consider myself privileged in having wise Epicurean friends who contribute to help me gain depth in Epicurus’ teachings. One of those friends is Jason, who during our second dialogue on the Epicurean gods said this:

The Epicurean method of multiple explanations lands squarely on pleasure as the end and aim. It pleases me more to think that humanity is not alone in the universe. It pleases me more to say that the supernaturalists are hurting themselves in their confusion and the only creature worthy of adoration is that which is actually possible, material beings who have shucked off their vices and live like sages. A race of people whose choices and avoidances have led them to perpetual bliss.

This is because Pleasure is the Guide of Life in all our choices and avoidances, including our choice of what to do, what to say, and even what to think. Jason’s reading of the method of multiple explanations as requiring our choice, for which we must use the faculty of pleasure (and dwell on the most pleasant views), aligns with what we’ve discussed before in our meleta on PD 28 and has great potential benefits in the context of a belief system that is advantageous for our happiness. For me, Jason’s words also constituted the very definition of what Zen Buddhists call “satori”: instant enlightenment concerning a key philosophical concept. This is one of the great benefits of practicing “meleta with others of like mind” with our friends for a long time.

Basically, Jason was saying that if many explanations are equally plausible according to our method and based on how far empirical data can take us, then we must be content to make a choice concerning what theory is most plausible to us, which of the theories pleases us the most and adds the most to the removal of our fears and other hindrances to happiness, and this choice of a hypothesis is not without a component of FEELING. If there are several “worlds” we can imagine ourselves living in that are equally plausible, then let us choose the most pleasant one. Let us unhypocritically make the choice to assent to the truths that add the most to our happiness.

This, of course, does not mean that we suspend the importance of empirically based reasoning, as per our canon. Our views must also be based on the study of nature. But we have a limited time and attention span, and not all knowledge adds the same value to us, so we must choose. In a private message, I later told Jason what this brought up for me:

Our choice to follow scientific truth / study of nature, and our choice to follow pleasure, are not mutually contradictory … they’re mutually inclusive in true philosophy according to our Scholarchs. So your way of thinking about multiple plausible explanations, and our eventual choice of the most pleasant, deserves a deeper look.

They say ignorance is bliss. We disagree.

So the key take-away here is that there is blissful knowledge, or at least knowledge that is both correct and worth-choosing, and that the method of multiple explanations can be an efficient means to greater pleasure.

To say that multiple explanations for a phenomenon are all plausible, is perhaps also to say that, within the range of what is naturally possible, some explanations produce greater pleasure than others, or are more important for our happiness than others. So then, pleasure being the Guide of Life, we tend to take refuge in the most pleasant of the plausible explanations as a matter of choice. This is because the goal of our choices and rejections is the pleasures.

If we diverge from either pleasure or scientific truth, we are not practicing what our Scholarchs considered true philosophy. In this way, philosophy to us can be both true and advantageous for our happiness. The point at which the choices of truth and pleasure converge is where we must sculpt our hedonic regimen, our lifestyle, and our beliefs.

Happy Eikas! On Language, Creativity, and Power

Happy Twentieth to Epicureans everywhere. We are grateful to our friend Alan, who devoted many hours of work to the script and video for Parable of the Hunter, which places before the eyes Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 5. Please watch, like, comment and share the video. We also published Vegetarianism as a Life Choice for Epicureans, based on our discussions in the Garden of Epicurus group.

We also became aware of the We Are All Epicureans Now episode of “Young Heretics”. He’s not Epicurean, and fails to grasp the idea of pleasure as a faculty, but he does invite people to a deeper study of Epicurean ideas.

This Lucretius lecture by David Goodhew, titled ‘Life, love, death and atomic physics’ was quite enjoyable. It focuses on a few particularly brilliant passages by Lucretius, to show his genius and the many layers of art in his poetry.

I’d like to thank my Patreons Anthony Adams, Steve & Carmel, Roberto Kingsley, Tom Samuels, Ron Warrick, and my dear friend Jason, whose support has been a great morale booster and who has been a steady presence in SoFE for many years. If you’d like to support the work I do, please consider a one-time donation or a Patreon subscription.

On Language, Clarity, and Power

In recent weeks, I had the pleasure of reading The Book of Sh_zd_r, a work by a SoFE member (Nathan) who also authored the Dude’s Letter to Menoeceus, which was published back in May of 2020. He’s also an admin in the Epicurean memes for hedonistic beings Facebook group.

“The beauty of our poetries flows from sincerity” – Book of Sh_zd_r

The book is an artist’s manifesto on the use of language for creative self-expression, and a critical evaluation of the many ways in which language and power are intertwined. This, plus the Hermetic-like undercurrent that runs throughout the work (Hermetic as in the tradition of Hermes, the Divine Scribe), was my favorite part of the Book of Sh_zd_r.

The first half of the book is (appropriately) written in a beautiful conlang (constructed language)–an artlang (artistic language) from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, and the second half is in English, but still uses multi-colored fonts and other artistic devices. The Book of Sh_zd_r is a work of art, first and foremost.

The latter part of the book includes some musings on grammar, and historical notes that accentuate the connection between power and language. The use of language as art, and the deconstruction of some of the trappings of language and power, makes the work disruptive and subversive. It reminded me of ideas I encountered while reading Black Orpheus and learning about the Négritude movement:

Sartre argues in Black Orpheus that liberating literature for Africans must be poetic, and that prose can’t be used because the French language evolved elsewhere, is too analytical, and can’t express the Black reality and psyche well. There are also the problems of inherent bias: we see examples of how whiteness is associated with innocence and virtue, while Blackness is associated with brokenness or with crime, with being soiled (so that Sartre says that “As soon as (the Black man) opens his mouth, he accuses himself“). Language is power, and Négritude calls for the wielding of power by these “Black Evangelists” to make the French language theirs and make it express the Black reality–so that Sartre says that “to build his truth, (the Black philosopher-artist) must first destroy others’ truth”.

Relabeling: a Technique of Empowerment

One of the therapeutic practices in Epicurean tradition is that of relabeling (renaming, or re-categorizing). In modern psychotherapy, this is sometimes known as cognitive restructuring, and is used together with other techniques to help people diminish their catastrophic or harmful thinking patterns.

Relabeling is an empowering practice whose power dynamics becomes most obvious when seen in action and placed before the eyes. For instance, Lucretius uses this technique to take back power when passionate love has power over him (or perhaps over some other patient of passionate love). We must imagine that, in the initial stage, the patient would have felt crushed and overpowered by his infatuation with the object of his desire or passion, but through re-labeling said object in many unflattering ways and re-imagining it as ugly, old, dirty, smelly, or with other undesirable attributes, the passion subsides and the patient slowly regains power over his mind, emotions, and states.

That (re-)naming is an act of power is an ancient idea that mystified many ancient peoples. Ancient Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs had magical power because they are “words that stay”, and they divinized the concept of magical words in the deity of magic, Heka (who represents words of power). Later, authors of the Bible attribute the power of naming all the animals and all of nature to Adam, the mythical first member of the human species, so as to say that this linguistic faculty of naming is one of our “superpowers”. But we do not need to be mystified by the power of language, simply to understand it and to employ it for our ethical purposes.

“Leaving the Chorus”: the Doctrine of Hesuchia

Principal Doctrine 14 gives us another layer of commentary on the relationship between language and what Foucault would have called pervasive, or dispersed, power:

Although some measure of safety from other people is based in the power to fight them off and in abundant wealth, the purest security comes from solitude and breaking away from the herd.

Here, Peter St. Andre translates hesuchías (ἡσυχίας) as “solitude” (I may have translated it as “retreat”, since this is the same word used in orthodox Christianity for the tradition of the desert fathers), and he translates exchoréseos (ἐκχωρήσεως) as “breaking away from the herd”. But let us look at the prolepsis of this last word: it implies exiting or leaving (ex-) the chorus.

What is a chorus? A chorus is a group of people who (in theater, or in some event) are all saying the same thing in unison. The implication is that all the members of the chorus think alike, so that “chorus” comes to imply convention and peer pressure, as well as the erasure of the individual and his private ideas. “Exiting the chorus”, in this context, means leaving the power dynamics of societal peer pressure, and not blindly repeating what others are saying–or taking it as truth–until we have chosen and applied the criteria for truth to those propositions. It means thinking for ourselves, rather than being circus seals trained to clap mindlessly as part of the show.

Doxa 14 is the first of three Doctrines that focus on autarchy (15 focuses on economic autarchy, and 16 on existential autarchy). It sets the stage for these other two Doxai by inviting us to separate ourselves from the crowd, and it cites safety as one reason for this. Now, we all have to give up some level of personal sovereignty in most of our relations and in the execution of our responsibilities, but by expressing their invitation to avoid giving up our autarchy in terms of exchoréseos in a Doctrine that introduces autarchy, the founders are inviting us to a more dignified life of self-sufficiency and self-rule by specifically evading the power dynamics that are expressed verbally and collectively, which are represented as “a chorus” (a group of drones that all think and say the same thing).

The “diffused power” in the chorus is expressed via language, and in concrete words. The chorus represents here the degrading loss of our safety and personal sovereignty, and so leaving it is a pre-requirement for our enjoyment of a dignified level of autarchy and for our ability to free our practice of philosophy from the demands of the polis and of mindless collectives. There is a different type of safety in being part of “the herd” (as we see in nature), but this safety is accused as false and degrading by this Doctrine.

Philosophy requires withdrawal from “the crowd” so that we may be able to think for ourselves rather than blindly repeat what people in our social circles are saying (and blindly believing the underlying and expressed premises of whatever they are saying). By virtue of PD 14 being an authorized Doxa, the founders were saying that this act of autarchy, of personal sovereignty, of “exiting the chorus”, is necessary for the practice of philosophy.

But if we are robbed of our power by the collective voice of “the chorus”, this also seems to imply that we retain, regain, and express our power by the willful and skillful use of our individual voices. So I believe this Doctrine means (among other things) to restore our voice (which is to say, our authority) as individuals who enjoy autarchy / personal sovereignty.

Meleta on Definitions

At the Society of Epicurus, we’ve been delving into in-depth meleta (study and deliberation) of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicurus for months, and deriving great pleasure from the new insights we have gained.

I noticed that when one reads the 40 Principal Doctrines systematically, the very first thing one finds in the very first words of the very first Doctrine is distrust of words. The editors of the Doctrines chose the definition of “gods” (immortal and blissful animals) for the sake of clarity, rather than the word “gods” to convey their meaning.

This is because we sometimes do not trust words as much as their clear definitions.

This issue of mistrusting words is one of the first problems addressed in Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus (beginning from Fragment 35 of Book X of Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers), where he instructs his disciples to always clearly define words prior to any philosophical investigation in order to avoid being carried into error by the use of empty words.

The founders sometimes found words that were simply inadequate, and felt the need to reform their expression for the sake of clarity in their study of nature. They had a practice of re-defining words according to the evidence of nature, so that their expression would always be aligned with nature. We know, for instance, that the Epicurean Guide Polyaenus wrote a treatise “On Definitions” which is not extant, and one of the 37 books On Nature by Epicurus is titled “Against the use of empty words“. Here, it is revealed that Metrodorus and Epicurus had been discussing the best rules by which it is possible and advantageous to re-define words, with Epicurus insisting that using common words as they are commonly used is the best policy, although they had gone back and forth over the years on this, and Epicurus in this book admits that his thinking has evolved on the matter. The ancient Guides’ preoccupation with the adequacy of language, and insistence on clarity, was not unique. Two millenia later Wittgenstein (who championed and insisted on clear speech) said:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The second and third phases in the evolution of language, according to Epicurean anthropology, is where philosophers, inventors, cultural creatives and others coin new words and lead the ongoing process of rationally perfecting the shared language. Wittgenstein says that each language, dialect or jargon is a “game” into which are embedded rules and notions that act as a social contract for the users of the language. We could say much more about this, but we risk going on a tangent, and this deserves a separate discussion.

And here is the intersection between the worries of the Kathegemones (Epicurean Guides) and these considerations concerning the entanglement of language and power: was clarity the only criterion in language reform? Can we identify clear patterns in whatever confusing tendencies were they fighting in their native Greek language? Were they fighting Platonic, or political, webs of power that had gotten entangled in common (koine) Greek language?

To what extent might it be advantageous and practical for modern speakers of English, Spanish, and other languages who practice Epicurean philosophy together to go through a similar process of purging or perfecting our own languages, for the sake of clarity–the only rhetorical requirement we have–and in order to embed and will our own social contract into our jargon?

From the third stage in our doctrine on the evolution of language, we know that the founders believed that philosophers have to be actively engaged in the natural and inevitable process of language evolution, otherwise the vehicle of expression will always be mediocre and the utility of language will be limited. The fact that they established this Doctrine, we imagine, served to justify their linguistic projects, which meant to purge their language game of unwanted traits and steer it in an ethically correct and choice-worthy direction. I imagine they did this, concretely, through a slow and organic editorial process that involved all communication and content, since they were always known to be careful in their expression.

But, did the founders create a basic naming language, a type of conlang (as some modern Epicureans have speculated) made up of a small number of concepts that were unavailable in the culture? Or did the Guides simply coin a few expressions and words? Since language is inherently communitarian and collective, I wonder to what extent they saw these projects as a natural extension of their self-concept as a sect, as an ethically and culturally autonomous philosophical tribe with its own mores.

Did clarity become the only requirement in our rhetorics after failed experiments to communicate efficiently, or was it so from the onset? How did this preoccupation with clear speech evolve? We know that Epicureans were known for their suavity, or sweet speech, as well as their clarity and conciseness, and that this served their ethical purposes. Are there any additional criteria for perfecting our communication?

From reading Epicurus’ insistence (in “Against the use of empty words“) that people should use common words as they are commonly used, we may infer that he believed that some of the other Kathegemones may have previously gone too far in their language-reform experiments. However, it is difficult for us today to gauge exactly the extent to which Epicureans reformed koine Greek.

In our circle, we have for many years discussed the need for taking back words that have been monopolized by Christianity and other Platonized religions and ways of thinking (words like gods, soul, salvation, virtue), and we’ve discussed the inadequacy of some words, and whether we should use Greek terms that are obscure, or words from our own language. When I wrote Tending the Epicurean Garden, my editor insisted that I coin an English translation for katastematic (I ended up coining the term “abiding pleasure” for the book), and to avoid obscure Greek terms in general. Curiously, Epicurus himself might have agreed, since he established clarity as his only rhetorical criterion.

In recent years, there have been efforts from some feminists, and some in the LGBT community and allies, to reform English to make it more gender-neutral and to move away from patriarchal language conventions. Many Churches and synagogues are moving towards gender-neutral language for God. English is a great language for this, since–unlike Semitic and Romance languages–it does not use gendered nouns. These efforts are, to some extent, praise-worthy (and also natural, because language naturally evolves) … but they also reach what some of us may consider ludicrous excesses, and make it seem prudent to be pragmatic and generally conservative in our efforts to perfect our native languages.

Further Reading:
Wittgenstein: A Wonderful Life (1989)
PHILOSOPHY – Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Book of Sh_zd_ar

Happy Eikas: Prometheus Unbound

Unbinding Prometheus

“It is unworthy of the truthfulness of a philosopher to use fables in his teaching.” – Colotes, a first-generation disciple of Epicurus

I am writing this in refutation of Colotes and in the tradition of Lucretius, who would strongly disagree with Colotes. In the past, I’ve written about the myth of Venus as an ethical guide. This Twentieth, it was my turn to facilitate the Eikas zoom discussion, and I chose to discuss the myth of Prometheus, re-interpreted from an Epicurean perspective. Here are some highlights:

The Fire-Giver

Fire is associated with civilization, creativity, and enlightenment, as opposed to uncivilized wilderness. In fact, fire scares wild beasts. It also helps us to cook, gives us warmth during the winter, and serves as a ritual technology.

Epimetheus and Prometheus

Prometheus’ name means Forethought or Foresight, whereas his brother’s name (Epimetheus) means Afterthought, or Hindsight. It seems like Prometheus is meant to represent progressive, future-looking Prudence, while Epimetheus represents the regressive mentality that looks to the past.

All creatures sense their powers and how to use them. – Lucretius, in Liber Qvintvs

Epimetheus gave animals their faculties, but forgot to include humans, therefore Prometheus endowed humans with civilizing gifts. In this story, we are reminded of Lucretius’ arguments (against creationism) that faculties arise blindly (in hindsight, or as non-guided legacy from the past through evolution by natural selection), and are only later utilized and refined by culture.

A Promethean View of History

Prometheus (as the instinct for progress) helped the Olympians against his own people, the Titans. He hated tyranny and helped to castrate and depose Uranus. He also participated in the rebellion against Chronus, and held inside him knowledge of who would eventually replace Zeus (the Orphics believed Bacchus would eventually sit on the right side of the throne of Zeus as co-ruler, but we know that Christians eventually appropriated this theme).

When given the opportunity to release the name of who would replace Zeus in exchange for his liberty, Prometheus refuses. It seems like his knowledge that the current regime would be replaced was enough to give him mental resilience through his trials.

The Bull Sacrifice Scene

Prometheus tricks Zeus out of the better part of his sacrifice, but this is also the foundation myth for how all sacrifices were made in ancient Hellenistic religion, and established a new ritual order. The Olympian cult was Promethean in origin.

“Yet who but I assigned clear rights and privileges to these new deities?” – Prometheus

What does this mean? It indicates a strong tension, from the outset, in Hellenistic culture between humanist tendencies and fear of the gods (or of the political and social powers that wielded these gods).

This reminds me of the Lucretian image (in Liber Primvs) where religion is trampled underfoot by mortals thanks to philosophy. The moral of the story is that religion should serve the people who utilize it, their communities, and their shared projects. It must serve humans, never the other way around. In the case of the bull sacrifice, the meat went to the people, and the bones and fat went to Zeus.

The Betrayal and Passion of Prometheus

Hephaistos (The God of Technology) had been closely related to both Prometheus and Athena, and in fact they were all three worshiped together (they are all tied to progress, civilization and science). However, in Prometheus Bound, Hephaistos betrays his friend and–even while expressing sadness for his friend–he’s the one who built the chains and bound Prometheus, against his own will, out of obedience (and/or fear?) of Zeus.

Throughout Prometheus Bound we see Zeus impiously referred to as a tyrant. The ethical problem of blind obedience to tyranny (the problem of the “good German” during the Nazi era), and the remorseless cruelty it produces, is seen in the Prometheus myth.

Hephaistos’ role also raises questions about the ethical utility of science and technology. In Principal Doctrines 10-13, Epicurus establishes an ethical purpose for science, however Prometheus Bound raises questions about what can happen when Technology serves the interests of power rather than ethical values.

A Herculanean Task

Hercules is the only one who is able to save and liberate Prometheus. This may indicate that liberating our Promethean instincts and potentials is a Herculanean task. It may also be indicative of the legacy of future generations, since Hercules is a son of Zeus: frequently the following generation inherits the sins or mistakes of the previous generations, and must atone for them.

Additional Notes

When Zeus tried to destroy the entire human race–as happens in the Bible–it is Prometheus who saves humankind from total annihilation.

“Power” is personified in Prometheus Bound as a character (or a choir) that is ever-present and/or on the sidelines, or in the background. This is a theatrical device to help us imagine that the structures of power are ever-present, and that this is part of the psychological background for the Prometheus myth. Perhaps these structures of power are embodied in royal servants, or in the mobs or groups of people who enforce conformity.

There are many other ethical and philosophical points that can be made about Prometheus (he has particular moral flaws and undergoes psychotheraphy while bound; he must tame his eagerness and zeal; and provides insights into Principal Doctrine 4 and on mental endurance while suffering in the flesh). The myth is an interesting exploration of many issues concerning power, the importance of choosing our battles wisely, the different types of ethical challenges that come with looking to the past versus looking to the future, and other philosophically interesting questions.

Please leave your comments below, or join us at the Garden of Epicurus FB group for further discussion. Also, please consider supporting me on Patreon if you like the content that we’re creating at SoFE. It’s good for my morale, and it keeps the Promethean fire of Epicurean philosophy burning!

Philosophy as Medicine for the Soul, Part III – English Transcript

Philosophy as Medicine for the Soul, Part II – English Transcript

Happy Twentieth: On “Love Your Neighbor”

Happy Twentieth to all the disciples of Epicurus! Psyche Magazine published an essay titled Sprinkle a little ancient philosophy into your daily routines, and the Ad Navseam podcast published an episode titled The Whole Enchilada: Epicureanism and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Unfortunately, midway through the episode the authors cast doubt on whether Epicureans can be good citizens–never mind the historian Diogenes Laertius’ testimony about the character of Epicurus. To balance this, I would invite the student to read John Thrasher’s essay on Epicurean contractarianism.

This month, the latest episode of the Newstalk podcast “Talking History” is titled “Epicurus: a Life”. Several scholars were interviewed.

Love Your Neighbor

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

– Jesus the Nazarene, in The Gospel according to Mark 12:28-31

Having been raised in a Christian household has made me aware of both the utility and the futility of Christian ethos–whether we delve into the details, or stick to the basics. Christianity provides a formative ethical framework for almost all of my family members and a large portion of the society I live in. Even after people leave Christianity behind, or stop taking most of its claims seriously, many still consider themselves Christian Humanists and frequently still unquestioningly accept the wisdom of “Love your neighbor“. Not wanting to embrace it or dismiss it without careful consideration, I decided to take a second look at the second of the two Christian commandments through the lens of my Epicurean ethical framework to see if “Love your neighbor” still works.

I believe that Epicurus would argue that a commandment to love God is a bit strange: if one is commanded to love someone, is it love or is it fear? Can sentient beings be ORDERED to feel an emotion? Furthermore, the Principal Doctrines on justice recognize the personal sovereignty of the individual, and so we do not have “commandments”, only doctrines and adages.

So the first Christian commandment is irrelevant to us, but I believe the second commandment is not only sound, but also that Epicurus and most of the Epicurean Guides might argue that it’s generally advantageous to love our neighbors–maybe not as much as we love ourselves, but we can still argue that it’s advantageous to let our brain brew its oxytocin and endorphin rush for them. I believe that they would argue this from the perspective of the safety and the advantages it brings, rather than merely virtue-signal around the teaching, as a sign of respect for the intelligence of their pupils. In fact, Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura 5:1015-27 includes compassion for the weak among the foundational cultural traits of human societies listed in Liber Qvintvs:

Then, too, did neighbours ‘gin to league as friends,
Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,
And urged for children and the womankind
Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures
They stammered hints how meet it was that all
Should have compassion on the weak.

But first, let us clarify what the second Christian commandment says and what it doesn’t say. “Love your neighbor”, on its face, does not mean that we should love everyone everywhere and always. No one has the attention span or time to love everyone. It’s naturally impossible to love everyone. Love, if it’s true, if the word has any real meaning, is a time-consuming pleasure. Two individuals must have wholesome exchanges and get to know each other with some level of depth, which takes some time. They must take time to communicate, and to demonstrate care with concrete tokens of friendship.

Notice that the word chosen in English to translate the Gospel teaching is “neighbor”–which in its prolepsis implies physical proximity. In Spanish, the word chosen is “prójimo”, which is related to words like proximity and also implies nearness. Our friend Nathan adds:

Within the ancient Hebrew context of Leviticus, ‘neighbor’ does not refer to ‘humanity’, it only refers to ‘other members of our tribe’. The full quotation from Leviticus is important for context: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (19:18 NRSV)

PD’s 27 and 39-40 argue for the benefits of loving our neighbors and keeping them near. The Doctrines seem to argue that it’s advantageous to love those who are in our proximity, for the sake of our safety and happiness. Although PD 39 is often used to justify the exclusion from our circles of people who bring trouble or conflict, it starts by spelling out the following ideal scenario:

The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can. – Principal Doctrine 39

Other issues we must discuss are the feasibility argument and the argument for a complete ethical education. We don’t know to what extent it’s possible to TRULY love all of our neighbors. It’s impractical for a community to set up a rule in its social contract that is impossible to follow, however, it’s not irrational to expect an agreement of harmlessness (rather than love) from relative strangers. While the Christian commandment is noble, it potentially imposes and breeds hypocrisy, whereas the Epicurean conception of justice founded on an agreement to neither harm nor be harmed is much more realistic and practical.

That is the feasibility argument. The argument for a complete ethical education, on the other hand, says: while a commandment by a god to love him makes that god sound narcissistic, and while his commanding us to love others sounds authoritarian, Epicurus’ approach of expounding arguments for the advantages and benefits of befriending and loving our neighbors constitutes a more complete ethical education, and appeals to both our self-interest and our prudence. Most importantly, it does not produce false reasons to love our neighbors, and respects the intelligence and autarchy of the practitioner of philosophy.

Some enemies of Epicurean philosophy have argued that Epicureans would not make good citizens, or have concern for others outside of their immediate circle, however:

Epicurus took care of orphans: he adopted and provided for the daughter of his best friend Metrodorus when she was orphaned. She must have been very young when Metro died, as he died eight years prior to Epicurus’ death and, as of the writing of his final will, Epicurus had not yet made arrangements for her to get married. Therefore, Epicurus had assumed responsibility for her and helped to raise her into adulthood
Epicurus taught his friends how to live properly and pleasantly: he had a concrete and useful curriculum that provided an ethical and philosophical education for both young and old in his community which specifically contributed to their happiness and to living correctly
The practice of friendship (philía) was a central aspect of the teaching mission. Each friend furnishes a concrete instance of loving our neighbor
Epicurus fed the people every month in a feast: his Kepos functioned like what we would think of today as a communal non-profit organization. The welcome sign at the gate in the garden said “_STRANGER_, here you do well to tarry”. Since strangers were welcome in the garden, this means that Epicurus fed strangers, which sounds like near-universal charity

Epicurus, I would argue, was an exemplary citizen by any measure who sought to make into one tribe all the creatures that he was able to befriend. When asking about this subject in our FB group, one of the group members Shahab had this to say:

I think showing affection toward a neighbor makes you feel more safe beside them. Nothing is guaranteed, as men wish more harm upon each other. In any case, your neighbor may be a religious, a superstitious family, or they may be from people working for the government (as in authoritarian regimes). In these cases you wouldn’t feel safe if you don’t show them friendly feelings, or once upon a time, inviting them for a party where they can find, at least, Epicurean friendly attitude, reassuring for a healthy happy life. Malevolent neighbors can sabotage your reputation, making you feel unsafe in the neighborhood. So, as long as it benefits an Epicurean, showing a well-calculated love and friendliness toward one’s neighbor is, to me, a wise thing to do.

Not everyone considers “Love your neighbor” as being useful. Jason says:

PD 39 sums it up for me. Enroll everyone possible into the social contract. Benevolence meets benevolence. If they cannot or will not keep the contract, avoid them and their disturbance. If they cannot be avoided, expel them. The English word love is too much of a catch-all term for all of the varieties of positive feeling I experience to apply it universally to all sentients.

The biochemistry of my brain responds differently to different people and circumstances. Putting all those feelings under one word makes for vague speech, something Christianity, out of all the Abrahamic faiths, excels in. It is precisely that vagueness that makes it incompatible with Epicurean philosophy.

Nathan also says:

“He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance” (Principal Doctrine 39).

I invite everyone to heed scientific research, get vaccinated, and wear a mask. To those who are unable to get vaccinated, I understand and encourage safe practices. To those who take unnecessary risks, I’ll avoid like the plague.

To answer your original question: no, Epicurus would not have endorsed (Love thy neighbor), because that proposition is justified by devotional worship of a Creator and does not consider any negative consequences of unconditional love.

From PD 39, and from the above discussion, we conclude that he wisdom of setting boundaries must be balanced with making into one tribe everyone we can … and it’s up to each one of us to determine the extent of each.

Therefore, I believe Epicurus loved his neighbors just as well or better than any good Christian, because he demonstrated life-long love for those who were near him (and taught them by example how to love each other) not with naive, religious idealisms but with concrete tokens of benefits, and for the right reasons.

The Doctrine of Immortal Goods

“For people lose all appearance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal goods (athanatoi agathoi).” – Epicurus in his Epistle to Menoeceus

“I’ll think of you as an immortal, and you think of us as immortals!” – Epicurus, to Colotes

As we continue our deliberations about the meleta portion of the Epistle to Menoeceus (about which I’ve already written two essays here and here), the concept of “immortal goods” has come up for deepening.

Furthermore, the passage links the immortal goods to the “surroundings” or “ambience” of someone who is living a godlike lifestyle. This is because the life state of each sentient being is contextual to its environment. What are the surroundings of one who lives like an immortal?

Friends as Immortal Goods

The first and least controversial item that belongs in the official list of immortal goods is our friends. We know this with certainty because:

The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these the one is a mortal good, the other immortal. – Epicurean Saying 78

VS 78 says that friendship is immortal, and wisdom is not. Therefore, in our sources, friends are the only thing that are clearly included among the “immortal goods” mentioned in the Epistle to Menoeceus, and each one of our true friends may therefore serve as a case study to better understand the doctrine of immortal goods.

So following this interpretation, we live like gods if we are surrounded by our friends, each of whom is an immortal good, and we should treat our Epicurean true friends as immortal goods–so long as we remember them with gratitude, they ARE part of us and, in some way, immortal.

Worthy of Immortal Life

The idea of “Athanatoi agathoi” is expressed differently in De rerum Natura. Rather than say there are eternal goods, Lucretius mentions that some things are or aren’t “worthy of immortality“, attaching an “immortal quality” to the worth or value of the thing it describes, as if there was a transcendental quality that makes some things have more value than others.

Philodemus also laments that people give worship to things that are not at all “worthy of immortality and blessedness”. It’s clear that, to the Epicurean Guides throughout history, the Doctrine of Immortal Goods has served as an invitation to deliberate about what things are worthy of immortality, and to deliberate about values. What do you think is worthy of immortality?

If each one of our true friends is, to us, either “worthy of immortal life” or an immortal good (“athanatois agathois“), and if we wish to place before our eyes the ways in which our truest friends are immortal, we should consider what makes them our closest friends. What advantages and pleasures do we share with them? The two undeniable attributes of the Epicurean gods in our writings are invulnerability and bliss: how do our friends contribute to this?

The Pleasures and Fearlessness of the Gods

When I asked about possible interpretations of “athanatoi agathoi” in the Garden group on FB, one of the members (Beryl) said: “I saw this phrase as pertaining to the letter as a whole as meaning (that) when one has rooted out fear of death then it’s as if one is immortal. When one has understanding of nature, one can simply (be) satisfied so as to enjoy life with no suffering as if one is immortal. When one has retired from the hurley-burley of the throng or understands one’s true reasons for involvement, one’s mind is peaceful even amongst storms like an immortal being. I thought the important word is appearance. Folk are still mortal, however, releasing fear and creating an ease full path for satisfying one’s necessary needs gives the peace of mind of an immortal.”

So in this interpretation of “immortal goods”, it’s the mental state and the existential achievement of calm and tranquil abiding that gives mortals the appearance of godliness.

The Theory of Pleasant Remembrance

In Epicurean ethics, visualization (the “placing before the eyes” exercise) and the use of happy memories (the “pleasant remembrance” exercise) are useful ethical practices. The full theory behind them is beyond the scope of this essay, but it is clear that memory plays an important part in how we practice them.

One way to unpack why true friends are considered “immortal” is to think that they are sources of ongoing bliss and pleasure, at least for as long as we remain grateful and remember them. In fact, any object of enjoyment that we practice “pleasant remembrance” with is, to some extent, experienced as immortal or undying.

Experiences and friends around whom we have built pleasant memories are, by definition, memorable, and since the pleasure continues for as long as we are grateful, they are in some way “immortal goods”.

Once we have carried out the exercise of placing before our eyes our friends and the ways in which they are immortal, we may consider other possibly immortal goods–for instance, the Doctrines of true philosophy, or the Four Sisters mentioned in PD 5. Reasons to include them among the “immortal goods” have been sufficiently expounded in our reasonings and video about PD 5. They are important points of reference in our ethics, and in our expectations of each other and our social contract–and since the LM mentions that these “immortal goods” must be a feature of our surroundings, and it’s hard to imagine a godlike lifestyle without them, The Four Sisters (Pleasure, Nobility, Justice, Prudence) must also be “athanatoi agathoi“.

If we apply this criterion of “memorability” to the immortal goods, we must also recognize that practices that produce blissful or pleasant states (even if not anchored in a past memory) can also be counted among the immortal goods if they have a similar transcendental quality as our remembered pleasures. I would argue that anything that helps us to feel fresh pleasures without fail (whether it is yoga, exercise, laughter practice, etc.) can also be counted among our immortal goods for a long as the enjoyment persists.

If Wisdom Dies …

We must also consider why wisdom (sophia) is mortal–but not phronesis (“practical wisdom”)–while friendship is immortal, as per VS 78. If Wisdom dies, if she’s not immortal, this is an interesting philosophical statement.

It may be that the statement that Wisdom is mortal is meant to diminish our sense of pride in our intellectual achievement, and to cure the pedantry that is often part of how other schools practice philosophy.

Might it also be that knowledge (or wisdom) does not produce the memorable feeling of pleasure that friends and salient experiences produce? Maybe this refers to cognitive decay: our brain’s abilities decay as we age, so that wisdom is seen to fade. If the first is the case, then the “memorable” criterion for things that are “immortal goods”, or at least “worthy of immortality”, is accurate.

Furthermore, we must consider Lucretius’ passage that calls the Doctrines of Epicurus “golden, and worthy of immortal life” in light of these considerations. It seems like he, at least, considered the words of true philosophy (epitomized in Epicurus’ Doctrines) to be among the immortal goods, incarnations or instances of phronesis (practical wisdom).

Memorable Experiences and our Hedonic Regimen

If memorable experiences are what characterizes immortal goods, then we may survey what memorable experiences we carry in our souls, so as to cultivate them. If it is true friends, then we may seek them out. If it’s the virtues mentioned in PD 5, then we may seek to find orientation in our choices and avoidances so as to ensure the presence of those virtues in our environment.

What goods do we consider worthy of immortality? How do we gain a godlike appearance, or create a godlike lifestyle and godlike surroundings? And, finally, how can we plan our life so as to live surrounded by immortal goods? These are some of the questions that may help us to gain clarity concerning the “athanatoi agathoi“. Of course, these considerations are meant to bear on our choices and rejections, so that we may swerve in the direction of these immortal goods.

Epicurean Philosophers by Nathan H. Bartman

EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHERS
Epicurean History by Nathan H. Bartman (2022)

[T]here are plenty of witnesses of the unsurpassable kindness of [Epicurus] to everybody; both his own country which honored him with brazen statues, and his friends who were so numerous that they could not be contained in whole cities; and all his acquaintances who were bound to him by nothing but the charms of his doctrine […] Also, the perpetual succession of his school, which, when every other school decayed, continued without any falling off, and produced a countless number of philosophers, succeeding one another without any interruption. (Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book X)

387 BCE: Plato founds his Academy.
384 BCE: Aristotle is born in the Central Macedonian city of Stagira.
348 BCE: Plato dies at the age of 80 due to natural causes.
341 BCE: Epicurus is born on the Island of Samos.
338 BCE: Aristotle begins three years of teaching 13-year-old Alexander III of Macedon.
334 BCE: Aristotle founds his Lyceum at the age of 50.
327 BCE: A 14-year-old Epicurus is tutored by a Platonist named Pamphilus
326 BCE: Alexander III of Macedon invades India; Pyrrho follows. As a result …
325 BCE: Pyrrho adopts the Indian school of Ajñāna and develops Skepticism
323 BCE: An 18-year-old Epicurus serves two years of Athenian conscription
322 BCE: Aristotle dies at the age of 62 due to natural causes.
321 BCE: A 20-year-old Epicurus moves with family to Colophon and studies under the Peripatetic Praxiphanes; he later studies under Nausiphanes of Teos, a Democritean pupil of Pyrrho whom he criticizes in his works
316 BCE: A 25-year-old Epicurus observes Halley’s Comet with Nausiphanes
311 BCE: A 30-year-old Epicurus begins teaching in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos
310 BCE: A 31-year-old Epicurus relocates Northward to Lampsacus
309 BCE: A 32-year-old Epicurus directly witnesses a Total Solar Eclipse
306 BCE: A 35-year-old Epicurus moves to Athens and establishes the Garden

HEGEMON – HΓEMΩN – /hɛːɡe.’mɔːn/ – “Leader” of the Epicurean Community

Hegemon: EPICURUS* of SAMOS (c. 11 January 341 – 270/69 BCE) the founder

KATHEGEMONES – KAΘHΓEMΩNHΣ – /ka.tʰɛːɡe.’mɔːniːz/ – “Guides”

Kathegemon: POLYAENUS* of LAMPSACUS (c. 345 – 286 BCE)
Kathegemon: METRODORUS* of LAMPSACUS (c. 331/0 – 278/7 BCE)
Kathegemon: HERMARCHUS* of MYTILENE (c. 325 – 250 BCE)

*The founder and his three allies are called HOI ANDRES – OI ANΔPEΣ – “The Men“

DIADOCHOI – ΔIAΔOXOI – /diː’a.dɔːkʰoi̯/ – “Succession” of Epicurean Scholarchs

Scholarch (1st): HERMARCHUS* (c. 325 – 250 BCE) Scholarch from 270 to 250 BCE
Scholarch (2nd): POLYSTRATUS (c. 300 – 219/8 BCE) from 250 to 219/8 BCE

NOTE: Scholarchs after Polystratus will NOT have personally known Epicurus.

Scholarch (3rd): DIONYSIUS of LAMPTRAI (c. 280 – 205 BCE) from 219/8 to 205 BCE
Scholarch (4th): BASILIDES of TYRUS (c. 245 – 175 BCE) from 205 to 175 BCE
Scholarch (5th): PROTARCHUS of BARGHILIA (c. 225 – 150 BCE) from 175 to 150 BCE
Scholarch (6th): APOLLODORUS of ATHENS (c. 200 – 125 BCE) from 147 to 125 BCE
Scholarch (7th): ZENO of SIDON (c. 166 – 75 BCE) Scholarch from 125 to 75 BCE
Scholarch (8th): PHAEDRUS (c. 138 – 70/69 BCE) Scholarch from 75 to 70/69 BCE
Scholarch (9th): PATRO (c. 100 – 25 BCE) Scholarch from 70/69 to 51 BCE

In A.D. 121 the then incumbent, Popillius Theotimus, appealed to Plotina, widow of the emperor Trajan and a devoted adherent, to intercede with Hadrian for relief from a requirement that the head should be a Roman citizen, which had resulted in unfortunate choices. The petition was granted and acknowledged with all the gratitude that was proper to the sect. (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 332)

Scholarch (16ish): POPILLIUS THEOTIMUS (early 2nd-century CE)
Scholarch (17ish): HELIODORUS (2nd-century CE) Hadrian writes him.

“Later in the century it is on record that the school became a beneficiary of the bounty of Marcus Aurelius [161-180 CE], who bestowed a stipend of 10,000 drachmas per annum upon the heads of all the recognized schools” (Epicurus and His Philosophy 332)

KATHEGETES – KAΘHΓHTEΣ – /ka.tʰɛːgɛː’tʰiːz/ – “Down from the Guides” or Teachers

Kathegete: ARISTOBULUS of SAMOS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) brother of Epicurus
Kathegete: CHAERDEMUS of SAMOS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) brother of Epicurus
Kathegete: NEOCLES of SAMOS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) another brother of Epicurus

GNORIMOI – ΓNΩPIMOI – /gnɔːriː’moi̯/ – “Known Familiars” or Disciples

APELLES (4th – 3rd-century BCE) the recipient of one of Epicurus’ many epistles
APOLLODORUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) the brother of Leonteus
BATIS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) Idomeneus‘ wife and Metrodorus‘ sister
BOIDION (4th – 3rd-century BCE) “calf-eyes” hetaera who studied at the Garden
CALLISTRATUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
CARNEISCUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) dedicated a book to Philainis
COLOTES of LAMPSACUS (c. 320 – 268 BCE) a popular Greek writer known for satire
CRONIUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) a former student of Eudoxus
CTESSIPUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) attested in a letter fragment written by Epicurus
DEMELATA (4th – 3rd-century BCE) attested by Philodemus
DEMETRIA (4th – 3rd-century BCE) a companion to Hermarchus
EROTION (4th – 3rd-century BCE) “lovely” hetaera who studied at the Garden
EUDEMUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) mentioned in a letter written by Epicurus
HEDEIA (3rd-century BCE) “delectable” companion to Polyaenus
HIPPOCLIDES of LAMPSACUS (c. 300 – 219/8 BCE) born on the same day as Polystratus
IDOMENEUS of LAMPSACUS (c. 310 – 270 BCE) the main financier of the Garden
LEONTEUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) the husband of Themista
LEONTION (4th – 3rd-century BCE) “lioness“, a respected writer and courtesan
LYCOPHRON (4th – 3rd-century BCE) a correspondent of Leonteus of Lampsacus
MAMMARION (3rd-century BCE) “tits“, a possible lover to Leonteus
MENESTRATUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) pupil of Metrodorus
MENOECEUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) of Epicurus‘ Letter to Menoeceus
MENTORIDES of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) the eldest brother of Metrodorus
MYS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) “mouse” a male slave who managed publishing
NICANOR (4th – 3rd-century BCE) student of Epicurus attested by Diogenes Laërtius
NIKIDION (4th – 3rd-century BCE) “victress” possible lover to Idomeneus
PHILAINIS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) attested by Philodemus
PHILISTAS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) inspired Carneiscus to write
PYTHOCLES of LAMPSACUS (c. 324 — 3rd-century BCE) of Epicurus’ Letter to Pythocles
THEMISTA of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) wife of Leonteus
THEOPHILIA (4th – 3rd-century BCE) attested by 1st-century Roman poet Martial

HELLENIC PHILOI – ΦIΛΩI – /’pʰi.loi̯/ – “Friends” or Associates

ANAXARCHUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
ARCHEPHON (4th – 3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
CHARMIDES (4th – 3rd-century BCE) a friend of Arcesilaus the Academic Skeptic
DOSITHEUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) the father of Hegesianax
ERASISTRATUS of CHIOS (c. 304 – 250 BCE) of the Alexandrian school of medicine
ZOPYRUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
ALEXANDRIA the ATOMIST (3rd-century BCE) associated with Alexandria
ANTIDORUS THE EPICUREAN (3rd-century BCE) who wrote a work against Heraclides
APOLLONIDES (3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
APOLLODORUS the EPICUREAN (3rd-century BCE) a pupil of Polystratus
ARTEMON of LAODICEA (3rd-century BCE) one of several teachers of Philonides
AUTODORUS the EPICUREAN (3rd-century BCE) criticizes Heraclides
CINEAS the EPICUREAN (3rd-century BCE) advised King Pyrrhus of Epirus (Plutarch)
DIODORUS (3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
DIOTIMUS OF SEMACHIDES (3rd-century BCE) a pupil of Polystratus
EUGATHES (3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
EUPHRONIUS (3rd-century BCE) ridiculed by Plutarch
HEGESIANAX (3rd-century BCE) son of Dositheus
HERMOCRATES (3rd-century BCE) who proposed natural explanation for prayer
PYRSON (3rd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
THEOPHEIDES (3rd-century BCE) a friend of Hermarchus
ANTIPHANES (3rd – 2nd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
ANTIOCHUS IV EPIPHANES (c. 3rd-century – 164 BCE) king and student to Philonides
ARISTONYMUS (3rd – 2nd-century BCE) a friend of Dionysius
DIOGENES of SELEUCIA (c. 3rd-century – 146 BCE) was put to death by Antiochus VI
HELIODORUS OF ANTIOCH (3rd – 2nd-century BCE) an official of Seleucus IV
ALCAEUS (2nd-century BCE) Sent and expelled from Rome with Philiscus in 154 BCE
CEPHISOPHON (2nd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
DAMOPHANES (2nd-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
DEMETRIUS I SOTER (c. 185 – 150 BCE) a student to Philonides
EUCRATIDES of RHODES (2nd-century BCE) was known only by his gravestone
HERACLITUS of RHODIAPOLIS (2nd-century BCE) an Athenian physician
IOLAUS OF BITHYNIA (2nd-century BCE) a physician associated with Epicureanism
NICASICRATES of RHODES (2nd-century BCE) called a “dissident” by Philodemus
PHILISCUS (2nd-century BCE) Sent and expelled from Rome with Alcaeus in 154 BCE
PHILONIDES of LAODICEA (c. 200 – 130 BCE) Founded school in Antioch
THESPIS the EPICUREAN (2nd-century BCE) student of Basilides; taught Philodemus
TIMASAGORAS of RHODES (2nd-century BCE) called a “dissident” by Philodemus
ATHENAEUS (2nd – 1st-century BCE) a pupil of Polyaenus of Lampsacus
ATHENAGORAS (2nd – 1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
ASCLEPIADES of BITHYNIA (124 – 40 BCE) Physician with atomic drug theory
IRENAEUS OF MILETUS (2nd – 1st-century BCE) a pupil of Demetrius Lacon
PHILODEMUS of GADARA (c. 110 – 30 BCE) manuscripts preserved in Herculaneum
ANTIGENES (1st-century BCE) friend of Philodemus
ANTIPATER (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
APOLLOPHANES of PERGAMUM (1st-century BCE) sent to Rome to teach
BACCHUS (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
BROMIUS (1st-century BCE) peer to Philodemus; Zeno of Sidon’s pupil
DEMETRIUS LACON (1st-century BCE) Founded Milesian school; taught Philodemus
DIOGENES of TARSUS (1st-century BCE) travels with Plutiades of Tarsus
EGNATIUS (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
LYSIAS of TARSUS (1st-century BCE) Tyrant of Tarsus who butchered the wealthy
ORION the EPICUREAN (1st-century BCE) Epicurean “notable” per Laërtius
PLATO OF SARDIS (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
PLUTIADES of TARSUS (1st-century BCE) travels with Diogenes of Tarsus
PTOLEMEUS the BLACK of ALEXANDRIA (1st-century BCE) “notable” per Laërtius
PTOLEMEUS the WHITE of ALEXANDRIA (1st-century BCE) “notable” per Laërtius
TIMAGORAS (1st-century BCE) attested by Cicero
ARTEMIDORUS OF PARIUM (1st-century BCE/CE) fragmentary attestation
ATHENODORUS (1st-century CE) fragmentary attestation
ATHENODORUS OF ATHENS (1st-century CE) fragmentary attestation
AMYNIAS of SAMOS (1st-century CE) only known due to a stone inscription
BOETHUS OF SIDON (1st-century CE) an acquaintance of Plutarch
DIONYSIUS OF RHODES (1st-century CE) a friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda
MENNEAS (1st-century CE) fragmentary attestation
POLLIUS FELIX (1st-century CE) a patron of the poet Statius
THEODORIDAS OF LINDUS (1st-century CE) a friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda
XENOCLES OF DELPHI (1st-century CE) an acquaintance of Plutarch
XENOCRITOS (1st-century CE) known only from a stone inscription
EPICURIUS (1st – 2nd-century CE) a philosopher attested by Plutarch
CELSUS [1] the EPICUREAN (2nd-century CE) a friend of Lucian of Samosata
CELSUS [2] the EPICUREAN (2nd-century CE) a Greek opponent to the Christian church
DIOCLES the EPICUREAN (2nd-century CE) a Greek opponent to the Christian church
DIOGENES of OENOANDA (2nd-century CE) posted teachings on a 205-ft. wall
DIOGENIANUS (2nd-century CE) who wrote a polemic against Chrysippus
HERACLITUS of RHODIAPOLIS (2nd-century CE) known from a stone inscription
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA (c. 125 – 180 CE) a Syrian satirist
NICERATUS of RHODES (2nd-century CE) a close friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda
PHILIDAS HERACLEONOS of DIDYMA (2nd-century CE) known from a stone inscription
ZENOCRATES THE EPICUREAN (2nd – 3rd-century CE) a hedonist
EXUPERANTIA (3rd – 4th-century CE) the wife of Heraclamon Leonides
HERACLAMON LEONIDES (3rd – 4th-century CE) the husband of Exuperantia

ROMAN AMICI – AMICI – /a’miːkiː / – “Friends” or “Associates”

ANTONIUS (2nd-century BCE) Exchanged views with Galen on medical matters.
GAIUS AMAFINIUS (late 2nd-century BCE) among the first Epicureans to write in Latin
RABIRIUS (late 2nd-century BCE) among the first Epicureans to write in Latin
TITUS ALBUCIUS (late 2nd-century BCE) studied in Athens; passed teachings to Rome
AULUS TORQUATUS (2nd – 1st-century BCE) a relative of L. Manlius
CATIUS INSUBER (c. 2nd-century – 45 BCE) popular Celtic author from Northern Italy
LUCIUS CORNELIUS SISENNA (2nd – 1st-century BCE) a historian
LUCIUS MANLIUS TORQUATUS (2nd-century – 46 BCE) a friend of Cicero
NERO THE EPICUREAN (2nd – 1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
TITUS POMPONIUS ATTICUS (110 – 32 BCE) Close friend of Cicero; wisely apolitical
ANTHIS (1st-century BCE) a freedwoman of Calpurnia Caesaris
AURELIUS OPILIUS (1st-century BCE) Freedman who retired to Mytilene
DION (1st-century BCE) A philosopher for whom Cicero had no regard
LUCIUS AUFIDIUS BASSUS (1st-century BCE) Used philosophy to deal with illness
LUCIUS CORNELIUS BALBUS (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
LUCIUS LUCCESIUS (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
LUCIUS PAPIRIUS PAETUS (1st-century BCE) good friends with Cicero
LUCIUS SAUFEIUS (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero and Atticus; seemingly apolitical
LUCIUS VARIUS RUFUS (1st-century BCE) Roman poet and associate of Virgil
MARCUS FADIUS GALLUS (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
MARCUS POMPILIUS ANDRONICUS (1st-century BCE) correspondent with Cicero
MARCUS VALERIUS MESSALLA CORVINUS (1st-century BCE) a friend of Horace
MARIUS the EPICUREAN (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero and subject of a text
MATIUS the EPICUREAN (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
PLAUTIUS TUCCA (1st-century BCE) Roman poet and associate of Virgil
PUBLIUS CORNELIUS DOLABELLA (1st-century BCE) Senate declared him an “enemy”
PUBLIUS VOLUMNIUS ETRAPELUS (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
SIRO (1st-century BCE) Pupil of Zeno; taught Virgil; founded the school in Naples
STATILIUS the EPICUREAN (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
TREBIANUS (1st-century BCE) fragmentary attestation
VELLEIUS the EPICUREAN (1st-century BCE) a friend of Cicero
LUCIUS CALPURNIUS PISO CAESONINUS (c. 100 – 43 BCE) friend of Cicero
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS (99 – 55 BCE) writes De Rerum Natura
GAIUS VIBIUS PANSA CAETRONIANUS (c. 90s – 43 BCE) Friend of Cicero
AULUS HIRTIUS (c. 90 – 43 BCE) a friend of Cicero and former lobbyist against Caesar
GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS (86 – 42 BCE) a friend of Cicero
CAIUS TREBATIUS TESTA (84 BCE – 4 CE) a friend of Cicero
CALPURNIA CAESARIS (c. 75 BCE – 00s BCE) Daughter of Piso
PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO (70 – 19 BCE) student of Siro at the Garden of Naples
GAIUS CILNIUS MAECENAS (70 – 8 BCE) political advisor to Octavian/Augustus
QUINTUS HORACE HORATIUS FLACCUS (65 – 8 BCE) Coined carpe diem or “seize the day!”
CAIUS STALLIUS HAURANUS (1st-century BCE – 1st-century CE) a student in Naples
LUCIUS CALPURNIUS PISO PONTIFEX (48 BCE – 32 CE) the son of Piso Caesoninus
PUBLIUS QUINTILIUS VARUS (46 BCE – 9 CE) a general and fellow-student of Virgil
ALEXANDER the EPICUREAN (1st-century CE) who was “fond of learning”
DIODORUS the EPICUREAN (1st-century CE) who allegedly committed suicide
GAIUS PETRONIUS ARBITER (c. 27 – 66 CE) who allegedly committed suicide
MARCUS GAVIUS APICIUS (1st-century CE) a gourmet during Tiberius’ reign
NOMENTANUS (1st-century CE) a Roman Epicurean during Tiberius’ reign
PUBLIUS MANLIUS VOPISCUS (1st-century CE) a patron of the poet Statius
CAIUS ARTORIUS CELER (1st – 2nd-century CE) a philosopher from North Africa
EMPRESS POMPEIA PLOTINA CLAUDIA PHOEBE PISO (c. 68 – 121/2 CE) Trajan‘s widow
MAXIMUS THE EPICUREAN (1st – 2nd-century CE) fragmentary attestation
AURELIUS BELIUS PHILIPPUS (2nd-century CE) Head of Apamean school
DAMIS THE EPICUREAN (2nd-century CE) whose historical personage is poorly attested
PUDENTIANUS (2nd-century CE) Galen wrote a lost work to him
TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS LEPIDUS (2nd-century CE) Founded school in Amastris
EMPEROR LUCIUS SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS (145 – 211 CE) Emperor from 193 to 211
ZENOBIUS (2nd – 3rd-century CE) the target of a book by Alexander of Aphrodisias
PALLADAS of ALEXANDRIA (4th-century CE) the “last known ancient Epicurean”

We have seen that at the beginning of the third century AD, some five centuries after the death of its founder, Epicureanism was still alive both in major centres and in remoter parts of the Graeco-Roman world. It is generally held, however, that its demise lay not far off, that by the middle of the fourth century it would have become a virtually forgotten creed, overwhelmed, along with Stoicism, by the spread of Christianity, fully justifying St. Augustine’s boast that ‘its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them‘. (Jones, Epicurean Tradition 94)

MEDIEVAL EPICUREANS:

FREDERICK II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR (1194 – 1250) who burns in Dante’s Inferno
FARINATA DEGLI UBERTI (1212 – 1264) a Florentine who burns in Dante’s Inferno
CAVALCANTE DE’ CAVALCANTI (c. 1230 – 1280) who burns in Dante’s Inferno
MANFRED, KING OF SICILY (1232 – 1266) the son of Frederick II
GUIDO CAVALCANTI (c. 1250 – 1300) best friend of Dante and son of Cavalcante

MODERN EPICUREANS AND NEO-EPICUREANS:

LORENZO VALLA (1406 – 1457) wrote On Pleasure and sympathized with Epicurus
ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM (1466 – 1536) a Dutch philosopher and Humanist
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO (1474 – 1533) a poet who employed Epicurean themes
GIOVANNI DI LORENZO DE’ MEDICI, POPE LEO X (1475 – 1521) a Humanist
FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI (1483 – 1540) of the Italian Renaissance
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE (1533 – 1592) of the French Renaissance
ELIO DIODATAI (1576 – 1661) a Genevan jurist and supporter of Galileo
FRANÇOIS DE LA MOTHE LE VAYER (1588 – 1672) a writer and friend of Moliére
ISAAC BEECKMAN (1588 – 1637) a Dutch philosopher who advised Gassendi
THÉOPHILE DE VIAU (1590 – 1626) banished from France on charges of immorality
PIERRE GASSENDI (1592 – 1655) tried to reconcile Epicureanism with Christianity
JACQUES VALLÉE, SIEUR DES BARREAUX (1599 – 1673) a French poet
FRANÇOIS LUILLIER (1600 – 1651) known as a practicing Epicurean
GABRIEL NAUDÉ (1600 – 1653) a French librarian and friend of Gassendi
GUILLES DE LAUNAY (c. 1600– 1675) wrote that Epicurus was the ideal natural philosopher
GUI PATIN (1601 – 1672) a French doctor and great friend of Gabriel Naudé
EMMANUEL MAIGNAN (1601 – 1676) a French physicist and Christian Epicurean
JEAN FRANÇOIS SARASIN (1611 – 1654) a French writer and Epicurean devotee
MARION DE LORME (1613 – 1650) a famous French courtesan
CHARLES DE SAINT-ÉVREMOND (1613 – 1703) a follower of Gassendi
FRANÇOIS VI, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613 – 1680) a French author
ANTOINE MENJOT (c. 1615 – 1696) a French doctor and follower of Gassendi
WALTER CHARLETON (1619 – 1707) a main transmitter of Epicureanism to England
SAVINIEN DE CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1619 – 1655) a French novelist and playwright
FRANÇOIS BERNIER (1620 – 1688) a French physician and follower of Gassendi
NINON DE L’ENCLOS (1620 – 1705) an author who left her inheritance for 9-year-old Voltaire
THOMAS WILLIS (1621 – 1675) an English doctor and contemporary of Charleton
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE (1621 – 1695) a widely-read French poet and fabulist
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS (1623 – 1673) an atomist but not a classical Epicurean
MADAME MARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL, MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ (1626 – 1696)
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, 1st BARONET (1628 – 1699) an essayist and friend of Wilmot
ANTOINETTE DESHOULIÈRES (1634 – 1655) a French, epicurean poet
GUILLAUME AMFRYE DE CHAULIEU (1639 – 1720) a convinced Epicurean poet
APHRA BEHN (1640 – 1689) an English playwright, poet, writer, and libertine translator
GUILLAUME LAMY (1644 – 1683) a French physician who taught La Mettrie
CHARLES AUGUSTE DE LA FARE (1644 – 1712) a French poet and friend of Chaulieu
JACQUES PARRAIN DES COUTURES (1645 – 1702) who wrote La Morale d’Epicure
JOHN WILMOT, 2nd EARL of ROCHESTER (1647 – 1680) a satirist; friend of Temple
JEAN DE LA CHAPELLE (1651 – 1723) the “father of French epicurean poetry.”
FRANÇOIS COURTIN (1659 – 1739) abbot of Mont-Saint-Quentin by age nineteen
WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670 – 1729) an English playwright of the Restoration Period
BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670 – 1733) an Anglo-Dutch economist and satirist
CELESTINO GALIANI (1681 – 1753) an Archbishop and “Christian Epicurean”
JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE (1709 – 1751) grounded mental processes in the body
FREDERICK II of PRUSSIA (1712 – 1786) also known as “Frederick The Great”
DENIS DIDEROT (1713 – 1784) a French author, social critic, and religious skeptic
CLAUDE ADRIEN HELVÉTIUS (1715 – 1771) a French utilitarian philosopher
PAUL-HENRI THIRY, BARON D’HOLBACH (1723 – 1789) an atheist
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743 – 1826) the third President of the United States of America
JEREMY BENTHAM (1748 – 1832) an English philosopher and founder Utilitarianism
RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT (1751 – 1824) an English classical scholar and collector
PIERRE JEAN GEORGES CABANIS (1757 – 1808) a French physiologist and materialist
WILLIAM SHORT (1759 – 1849) an ambassador and friend of Thomas Jefferson
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775 – 1864) an English writer, poet, and activist
CHARLES GREVILLE (1794 – 1865) an English diarist and amateur cricket player
FRANCIS WRIGHT (1795 – 1852) a Scottish-American writer, feminist, and abolitionist
WALT WHITMAN (1819 – 1892) an American poet whose father attended Wright’s lectures
WILLIAM WALLACE (1844 – 1897) a Scottish philosopher inspired by Epicurus
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850 – 1894) an American author (see: Treasure Island)
JEAN-MARIE GUYAU (1854 – 1888) a French author and anarchist who died at the age of 33
HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK (1861 – 1957) wrote Memoirs of an Epicurean
CHARLES LEOPOLD MAYER (1881 – 1971) a French biochemist and Liberal
JUN TSUJI (1884 – 1944) a Japanese dadaist, absurdist, poet, essayist and playwright
H. P. LOVECRAFT (1890 – 1927) Cosmicism was inspired by Epicureanism
YAAKOV MALKIN (1926-2019) Rabbi of the Secular Humanist Jewish denomination
JOSÉ MUJICA (1935 – PRESENT) a farmer and 40th President of Uruguay (2010-15)
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (1949 – 2011) a writer, polemicist and religious critic
HARIS DIMITRIADIS (1952 – PRESENT) writer and promoter of Epicurean philosophy
CASSIUS AMICUS (1958 – PRESENT) a writer and proprietor of New Epicurean
HIRAM CRESPO (1975 – PRESENT) a writer and founder of SocietyOfEpicurus.com
NATHAN H. BARTMAN (1988 – PRESENT) author of this historical investigation.

FORMER EPICUREANS:

TIMOCRATES of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) brother of Metrodorus
HERODOTUS of LAMPSACUS (4th – 3rd-century BCE) a friend of Timocrates
METRODORUS of STRATONECIUS (2nd-century BCE) converted to Academic Skepticism
CICERO (106 BCE – 43 BCE) a student of Phaedrus and fierce critic of Epicureanism
SAUL of TARSUS (c. 5 – 65 CE) who is better known as St. Paul the Apostle

EPICUREAN COMMUNITIES:

[Epicurus] philosophy rode this tide. It had reached Alexandria even before his arrival in Athens. By the second century it was flourishing in Antioch and Tarsus, had invaded Judaea, and was known in Babylon. Word of it had reached Rome while Epicurus was still living, and in the last century B.C. it swept over Italy. […] Both Thessalonica and Corinth must have been strongholds of Epicureanism.” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 29, 338)

After the third century BCE there were Epicurean centres in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt: adherents, identified from their cities, came from Tyre, Sidon, Tarsus, and Alexandria. Epicureanism also expanded west. […] The existence of communities in the Naples region is attested by both Horace and Vergil. […] Epicureanism can be attested in a board variety of locations: Herculanem, Sorrento, Rhodes, Cos,Pergamon, Oenoanda (the Lycus valley), Apameia (Syria), Rhodiapolis, and Amastris (Bithynia). Locations like Athens and Oxyrhynchus provide evidence for the preservation fo Epicurean writing, as well as Herculaneum. […] Asia Minor (notably Ephesus, Alexandria, and Syria are all suggested as prime candidates for its location. (King, Epicureanism and the Gospel of John: A Study of Their Comparability 11-13)

It will be worth our while to observe how admirably Epicureanism was equipped for the penetration for Asia. As mentioned already, the branch school at Lampsacus was strategically situated for dissemination of the creed along the coast of the Black Sea. On the west coast of Asia there was another school at Mytilene […] Still further to the south was the original school at Colophon, close to Ephesus. […] The gateway to Asia, however, had been open to the cred of Epicurus for three centuries before Paul’s time and Tarsus was a center of Epicureanism. […] Epicureanism was the court philosophy of Antioch during the reigns of at least two kings of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes and Demetrius Soter. (King, Epicureanism and the Gospel of John: A Study on Their Comparability 62)

In it he attests the widespread Epicurean communities of Athens, and Chalcis and Thebes in Boeotia. […] We meet Epicureans not just in Athens, where they were amongst Paul’s audiences, but we also come across Epicurean communities in the West, in Herculaneum or Sorrento, in the East, on Rhodes and Cos, in Pergamon, Lycian Oinoanda, Syrian Apameia, in remote southern Lycian Rhodiapolis or in Amastris in Bithynia on the Black Sea. (The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism 20, 48)

School at LAMPSACUS (modern Northwestern Turkey) Founded by Epicurus
The GARDEN (O KHΠOΣ) of ATHENS (Central Greece) Founded by Epicurus
Community in CORINTH (Peloponnese peninsula, Greece)
Community in CHALCIS (Euboea island, Greece)
Community in THEBES (Boeotia, Central Greece)
Community in THESSALONIKI (Macedonia region, Greece)
Community in KOS (Southeastern island of Greece)
School at RHODES (Southeastern island of Greece)
School at AMASTRIS (Northern Turkey) Founded by Tiberius Claudius Lepidus
Community in TARSUS (Northwest Turkey)
Community in PERGAMON (Western Turkey)
Community in COLOPHON (Western Turkey)
Community in EPHESUS (Southwestern Turkey)
School at MILETUS (Southwestern Turkey) Founded by Demetrius Laco
Community in OINOANDA (Southwestern Turkey) Supported by Diogenes
Community in RHODIAPOLIS (Southwestern Turkey)
School at ANTIOCH (South-central Turkey) Founded by Philonides
School at APAMEIA (Western Syria) Lead by Aurelius Belius Philippus
Community at SIDON (Lebanon)
Community at TYRE (Lebanon)
Community in ALEXANDRIA (City of Alexander III of Macedon in Egypt)
Community in OXYRHYNCHUS (Southern Egypt)
School at NAPLES (Southwestern Italy) Founded by Siro
Community in HERCULANEUM (Southwestern Italy) Lead by Philodemus
Community in ROME (Western Italy) Inspired by Albucius

Greek Philoi:

“Epicurus, son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, was an Athenian […] he took up philosophy at the age of fourteen. […] Epicurus was joined in his philosophical pursuits, at his urging, by his three brothers—Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus—as Philodemus the Epicurean [110 BCE – 30 BCE] says in the tenth book of his collection On Philosophers […] (Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 492-493.)

“Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who studied with Epicurus and then left his school, says […] that other courtesans consorted both with [Epicurus] and with Metrodorus, including Mammarion, Hedia, Erotion, and Nicidion (Ibid. 494-495.)

“[Timocrates] withdrew in anger and returned home to take service under Lysimachus in Lampsacus [a ruler to whom Epicurus owed money]. There he joined up with the other deserter Herodotus, whose feelings may have been similarly hurt, and began a campaign of pamphleteering with a view of stirring up trouble for Epicurus among the Athenians […] Two desertions are on record from this early group of adherents, an occurrence notoriously rare in the camp of Epicurus. One was that of Timocrates, the unpredictable brother of the capable Metrodorus […] The other deserter was Herodotus, who made common cause with the spiteful Timocrates and discovered specious grounds for impugning the genuineness of the loyalty of Epicurus to Athens” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 54, 82-83).

“Metrodorus tells us how even Timocrates [harmed] the eldest of his brother Mentorides.” (Philodemus, On Angercol. XII.7-8)

“ … Metrodorus of Stratoniceus, defected to Carneades [the head of the skeptical Platonist Academy], perhaps because he found Epicurus’ incomparable goodness oppressive ….” (Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 497)

“There also appears to have been both slaves and women in Epicurus’s schools. Gilles Ménage lists three female Epicureans: Themisto, Leontium, and Theophilia.” (Allen, The Adoption of Aristotelian and Platonic Concepts 133)

“The oversight of these [publishing concerns] would undoubtedly have fallen to the talented slave whose name was Mys. […] He was rewarded by freedom at the master’s death, and tradition reports him as a philosopher in his own right” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 95).

“The hetairai Boidion, Leontion, Hedeia, Nikidion, Mammarion, Demelata, Erotion, and Philainis were connected with the school. Metrodorus’ sister Batis married Idomeneus […] Leonteus married Themista […] We know that Metrodorus and Polyainos were married and had children….” (Frischer, The Sculpted World, Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece 62)

“Epicurus had many students, and among the most distinguished was Metrodorus of Lampsacus […] Such was his character that he gave his sister Batis in marriage to Idomeneus, and took the courtesan Leontion of Athens as his concubine. […] Epicurus also had as a student […] Timocrates, Metrodorus‘ shiftless brother.” (Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 501)

“Preserved in the collection at Herculaneum is a fragment of an essay by one Carneiscus, a contemporary of Epicurus, that discusses the proper attitude toward the death of a friend. The work derives its title from Carneiscus‘ fellow-Epicurean Philistas (appropriately named), who manifests the right outlook and demeanor.” (Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World 109)

“Among the Herculaneum remains there is a letter of Epicurus to a little child, who may possibly be this daughter of Metrodorus. The letter runs thus: ‘We came to Lampsacus, Pythocles, Hermarchus, Ctesippus, and myself, and we are quit well. We found there Themista and our other friends, and they are quite well.” (Courtney, Studies in Philosophy: Ancient and Modern 32)

“Epicurus promised Menoeceus that if we develop a firm identity and conviction in our naturalist faith, we would live as gods among mortals.” (Crespo, Tending the Epicurean Garden)

“‘Let them also take care of Nicanor, as I [Epicurus] have always done, so that no members of the school who have been helpful to me in private life and shown me every kindness and chosen to grow old with me in philosophy may lack the necessities, so far as my means allow.” (Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 500)

“There was also Polyaenus of Lampsacus […] and Epicurus‘ successor, Hermarchus […] There is also Leonteus of Lampsacus and his wife, Themista, with whom Epicurus corresponded; and Colotes and Idomeneus, both from Lampsacus. All of these were well-regarded, as was Polystratus, who succeeded Hermarchus. (Polystratus was succeeded by Dionysius, and Dionysius by Basilides.) Apollodorus, the ‘tyrant of the Garden,’ was also distinguished […] and the two Ptolemies from Alexandria: the Black and the White; and Zeno of Sidon, a student of Apollodorus, a prolific writer, and Demetrius, who was called the Laconian, and Diogenes of Tarsus who compiled The Selected Letters; and Orion and others whom the genuine Epicureans call ‘sophists.’” (Ibid. 502.)

“ … particularly influential contemporary of Zeno in the Garden, who, however, did not become school head, wasDemetrius of Laconia who also set up school at or near Miletus” (The Cambridge Companion To Epicureanism 32-34).

“Of Epicurean scholars in the city [of Alexandria] we have the names of only two, Ptolemaeus the White and Ptolemaeus the Black, which may mean that the former was Greek and the second a native” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 340).

“[M]embers and followers of the Athenian Garden found themselves more than once in conflict with the very independent Epicurean community at Rhodes, each group invoking Epicurean scripture in its own support and each ready to condemn the other as unfaithful to the canonical teachings.” (Sedley, Epicurean Theories of Knowledge From Hermarchus To Lucretius and Philodemus)

“Cicero’s first systemic lessons in philosophy were given him by the Epicurean Phaedrus, then at Rome because of the unsettled state of Athens. […] The pupil seems to have been converted at once to the tenets of the master. Phaedrusremained to the end of his life a friend of Cicero, who speaks warmly in praise of his teacher’s amiable disposition and refined style. […] Cicero abandoned Epicureanism, but his schoolfellow, T. Pomponius Atticus received more lasting impressions from the teaching of Phaedrus. […] Atticus and his friend became acquainted with Patro, who succeeded Phaedrus as head of the Epicurean school.” (Reid, M. Tulli Ciceronis Academica 1)

“In A.D. 121 the then incumbent, Popillius Theotimus, appealed to Plotina, widow of the emperor Trajan and a devoted adherent, to intercede with Hadrian for relief from a requirement that the head should be a Roman citizen … ”(De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 332)

“[Emperor Hadrian’s] letter is followed by a document which begins with the name (in the dative) Heliodorus, who, whether or not he was the new head of the school, was clearly an Epicurean.” (Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor182)

“I [Epicurus] call you blessed, Apelles, [3rd-century BCE] because you have set out for philosophy undefiled by any paideia.” (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists)

“Furthermore, Autodorus the Epicurean [3rd-century BCE] criticizes him in a polemic against his tract Of Justice.” (Diogenes Laërtius, On the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book V 92)

“Antidorus: It is unclear which Antidorus Diogenes is referencing. […] Diogenes also tells us that a certainAntidorus the Epicurean [3rd-century BCE] wrote a work against Heraclides.” (Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 256)

“How should we regard, for instance, the Epicurean Diogenes of Seleucia, who long enjoyed the king’s favor in spite of his offensive behavior, until he was finally executed (Ath. 5.211a-d)?” (Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism 303)

“The talented physician Erasistratus of Antioch [3rd-century BCE] and Alexandria, an atomist, if not certainly an Epicurean, had proposed the theory that the air [atmosphere] breathed into the lungs was transformed by the heart into the vital breath, pneuma, Latin spiritus, and these words became regular designations for the immortal part of man [to Christians]. […] the brilliant physician Erasistratus, at least an atomist, if not an Epicurean” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 259).

“There is also the inscription honoring the Epicurean Eucratides of Rhodes […] From Rhodiapolis comes the inscription honoring the physician and philosopher Heraclitus—if not an Epicurean at least connected with the Epicureans of Athens” (Clay, Paradosis and Survival 235)

“The fragmentary nature of the text makes it difficult to ascertain whether Euphronius is meant to be an early Epicurean or Aelian’s contemporary.” (Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 156)

“Proclus solves a problem in the Platonic theory of prayer which had already been pointed out by the Epicurean Hermocrates [3rd-century BCE] – does one have to pray to be able to pray properly? – by using Epicurean ideas of prayer as meditation, when the good is not a result generated from outside, but consists in the act of the prayer itself and, consequently, in looking after the self.” (The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism 60)

“A senatus consultum decreed the ejection of two Epicurean philosophers, Alcaeus and Philiscus. […] The texts indicate that Alcaeus and Philiscus were removed because they introduced unnatural pleasures to the young. The charge may derive from a source hostile to Epicureanism which added the motive because of the negative stereotype attached to the school, rather than from the actual wording of the senatus consultum.” (Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy 177)

“The gateway to Asia, however, had been open to the creed of Epicurus for three centuries before Paul’s time and Tarsus was a center of Epicureanism. In the second century B.C. a renegade Epicurean [Lysias of Tarsus] had made himself a tyrant of the city and ruled it for a time. In the same century a famous Epicurean philosopher named Diogeneshad flourished there; his writings on the doctrines of Epicurus were in circulation for centuries. Meanwhile, Epicureanism was the court philosophy at Antioch during the reigns of at least two kings of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes and Demetrius Soter.” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 62)

“[A]t Tarsus an Epicurean philosopher who had become the tyrant of that city, Lysias by name; who having been created by his countrymen Stephanephorus, that is to say, the priest of Heracles, did not lay down his command, but seized on the tyranny. He put on a purple tunic with a white centre, and over that he wore a very superb and costly cloak, and he put on white Lacedaemonian sandals, and assumed also a crown of golden laurel leaves. And he distributed the property of the rich among the poor, and put many to death who did not surrender their property willingly.” (Deipnosophists, Book V)

“With Thespis [2nd-century BCE], another Epicurean, he played a role in an argument concerning the subject of anger, both of them [with Philonides] taking a position against Nicasicrates and Timasagoras.” (Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism 22)

“An inference similar to the one made by Velleius can be found in a discussion by Demetrius Laco about the forms of the gods […] as well as in Zeno of Sidon’s discussion on inference from analogy as quoted by Philodemus in On Signs[…] Of greatest relevance is a section of the treatise that quotes notes from Zeno’s lectures taken by Philodemus‘ fellow student Bromius ….” (Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition 141)

“Among the other philosophers from Tarsus […] are Plutiades [1st-century BCE] and Diogenes, who were among those philosophers that went round from city to city and conducted schools in an able manner.” (Strabo, Geography 14.5.15)

“The first and most dogged sees Asclepiades as a medical atomist, and the corpuscular hypothesis as an adaptation of Epicurean atomism.” (Vallance, The Lost Theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia 10)

“According to Seneca, an Epicurean philosopher named Diodorus who committed suicide in the mid-first century CE chose as his last words the penultimate declaration of Virgil’s Dido […] (‘I have lived, and I have run the course that fortune granted,’ Aen. 4.653). Diodorus the Epicurean is otherwise unknown, and it is difficult to appraise Seneca’s claim that Diodorus quoted Dido before slitting his own throat.” (Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus68)

“The evidences from the second century are remarkable. Parallel to the previous refutation of the Epicurean Diocles by the Peripatetic Sotion we find the Christian Origen of Caesarea refuting the Roman Epicurean Celsus […] Celsus was the attacker.” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 349)

“An Epicurean named Xenocles, for example, weighs in on the salubriousness of fruit, as opposed to elaborate dishes (635b-c). Alexander the Epicurean is ‘accomplished and fond of learning’ […] whereas Plutarch, who is avoiding eggs because of a dream about them, drolly presents himself in that dialogue as superstitious. The mild Boethus [1st-century CE], an Epicurean and mathematician who appears in Table Talk as well as in Why the Pythia No Longer Delivers Oracles in Verse, is never pilloried, though it is possible that we should regard him as the recipient of ‘incidental polemic’” (Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 157)

“Xenocritos […] son of Aresteas, who is listed with the title ‘Epicurean philosopher’ among the molpoi who made a votive dedication for the health of the archiereus G. Julius Apollonides, son of Gaius, on the island of Amorgos.” (Ahlholm, Philosophers in Stone: Philosophy and Self-Representation in Epigraphy of the Roman Empire 72)

“Little is known of the Epicurean Diogenianus. He likely flourished in the second century AD; Eusebius preserves what is known of his works. For criticism of the pagan belief in oracles Eusebius quotes from Diogenianus‘ attack on Chrysippus’ doctrine of Fate ….” (Carriker, The Library of Eusebius of Caesarea 89)

“Throughout Lucian’s work, the classic enemies of the Epicureans – the Platonists, the Stoics, the Academics, and others – are the prime targets of his biting words. But Epicurus himself is never treated with less than courtesy, and rarely if ever is the later Epicurean a target of derision. In general, Lucian refers to Epicurus in tones that can only be described as reverential …” (Amicus, Lion of Epicurus – Lucian and His Epicurean Passages 1)

“The new investigations at Oenoanda initiated by Smith in 1968 have led to the discovery of two new letters from Diogenes‘ epistolary: a letter to Dionysius of Rhodes […] and a long letter Diogenes [of Oenoanda] addressed to his associates in Rhodes concerning an Epicurean by the name of Niceratus.” (Clay, Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters in the History of Epicurean Philosophy 241)

“A third case of an Epicurean priest comes from Miletos. Those who held the year-long post of prophet in charge of Apollo’s sanctuary at Didyma often ended their year by setting up an inscription documenting their role, and one of these involves Philidas, an Epicurean philosopher …” (Harland, North Coast of the Black Sea, Asia Minor)

“In Alciphron’s Letters of Parasites, the philosopher guests at a birthday feast exhibit the typecast appearances appropriate to each school. The Stoic is grubby, with scraggly beard and unkempt hair. But the Epicurean (a man namedZenocrates [2nd-century CE]), who relies on his full beard to affect a solemn air, is ‘not neglectful of his locks. The well-coifed Epicurean stares at the harp girl with a melting, lascivious look through half-closed eyes and publicly takes her into his arms.'” (Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 159)

“‘Zenocrates the Epicurean took the girl harpist in his balm, the quintessence of pleasure.’” (The Philosophy of Epicurus 247)

“This is all the life there is.
It is good enough for me.
Worry won’t make another,
Or make this one last longer.
The flesh of man wastes in time.
Today there’s wine and dancing.
Today there’s flowers and women.
We might as well enjoy them.
Tomorrow — nobody knows” by Palladas of Alexandria
(Rexroth, Poems from the Greek Anthology)

Latin Amici:

“It is impossible to say precisely when Epicureanism appeared at Rome. […] an obscure statement tells us, two Epicureans, Alcius and Philiscus, were expelled from Rome on the ground of immoral influence on the young. […] The earliest expositor of Epicurean in Latin was a person called Amafinius […] A host of writers sprang up in his train, and, in the words of Cicero, took possession of all Italy. But the only names recorded in literature are those of Rabirius, and Catius the Insubrian. […] There are other indications of the progress of Epicureanism at this epoch. A professor of Greek, Pompilius Andronicus, by birth a Syrian, who must have been contemporary with Lucretius, spoiled his chances as a teacher of literature by his devotion to Epicureanism. […] Amongst the circle of Cicero’sfriends there were many Epicureans — more perhaps than members of any other sect. Atticus, a wealthy, cultured, and kingly man, who steered clear of politics, stands first in the list: and with him one may join Verrius, Saufeius, PapiriusPætus, Trebatius Pansa, and Cassius, one of the assassins of Cæser. […] Phædrus, an illustrious member of the sect, contemporary with Zeno fo Sidon, its head for the time, had found his way to Rome, and about the year 90 B.C. Gave young Cicero his first philosophical lessons. […] Patro, who was now the head of the sect, wrote to Cicero […] Philodemus, another Epicurean writer of the Ciceronian epoch …” (Wallace, Epicureanism 250-255)

“Amafinius was the oldest confirmed Roman Epicurean author, and Gaius Memmius was the dedicatee of the De rerum natura. Servius’s treatment of the Eclogues, and the Georgies passage, so often read as Epicurean, justifies adding Virgil to the list. Cicero’s Epicurean friends Atticus, Cassius, and Lucus Papirius Paetus are also logical choices, as is Lucius Torquatus, the Epicurean interlocutor from the De finibus.” (Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance 151)

“Appius and Lucius Saufeius were also known Epicureans who had studied in Athens under Phaedrus. The production of the works of Rabirius, Amafinius, and Catius suggests that Epicureanism was beginning to spread among non-Greek-speaking Romans.” (Montarese, Lucretius and His Sources: A Study of Lucretius, “De Rerum Natura” I 635-920 8)

“In the case of Siro, Philodemus, and Amafinius the supply of biographical testimony is not generous, but it is sufficient to enable us to assign them their relative places in the context of current Epicurean activity. What is lacking, at least for Siro and Amafinius, is a record of their actual teachings. With Lucretius the situation is quite the reverse. The De rerum natura present a complete record of his philosophical output.” (Jones, Epicurean Tradition 70)

“Toward the end of the century the fiery Lucilius was satirizing Titus Albucius, whom Cicero dubbed ‘a perfect Epicurean’ […] by measures taken in 92 B.C. the school of one Aurelius Opilius, freedman of a noble Epicurean, was forced to close along with the others. […] Of distinguished family also was Statilius Taurus, mentioned by Plutarch as excluded from the conspiracy against Caesar, which was headed by Cassius, both of them known to have professed the creed […] Little is known of Velleius, whom Cicero chose to be a spokesman for Epicureanism in his Book On the Nature of the Gods; he may have pursued his studies in Athens. Atticus certainly chose that city as a fit place in which to practice that Epicurean political neutrality by which he won a singular fame. Among Epicureans who pursued a similar course at home were Cicero’s friends Marius and Matius. […] Matius, a loyal Epicurean friend who defied both the assassins and their sympathizers after the tragic Ides of March” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 342-343).

“Moreover, there is external evidence found mainly in the exposition of Torquatus, the Epicurean spokesman in the first and the second books of Cicero’s De finibus. Torquatus‘ account derives either from Philodemus‘ own writings or from some other source of which Philodemus would approve.” (Tsouna-McKirahan, The Ethics of Philodemus 14)

“A few adherents of this philosophy were not in the party of Cæsar, and among these may be mentioned Lucius Manlius Torquatus […] Aulus Torquatus, a man of the same high character, was, we may infer, of the same sect, from the Epicurean tone of the consolation which Cicero addressed to him in exile. Saufeius, the intimate friend of Atticus, seems also to have been of good repute.” (Jerome, Aspects of the Study of Roman History 234)

“On the other hand, Cicero, addressing and no doubt gently needling his friend Marcus Fabius Gallus, an Epicurean, conjures up a decidedly less heroic …” (Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism 42)

“In the late first century A.D., after the villa and library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus had been overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius, the local aristocrat, Pollius Felix, practiced his Epicurean philosophy in his magnificent villa at Surrentum (Sorrento).” (Armstrong, Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans 32)

“Cicero had mentioned the excellent character and record of Pansa […] As Cicero acknowledges, Pansa happened to be an Epicurean.” (Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 131)

“Against those Epicureans who supported Caesar […] L. Piso Caesoninus and Philodemus […] C. Vibius Pansa […] and A. Hirtius, consuls in 43 BC, P. Cornelius Colabella […] the jurist C. Trebatius Testa […] P. Volumnius Eutrapelus […] and C. Matius […] must be set others who opposition to Caesar is confirmed […] L. Manlius Torquatus, consul in 65 BC, Aulus Torquatus […] L. Papirius Paetus […] M. Fadius Gallus […] Trebianus […] and Statilius […] For a good many (L. Varius Rufus, T. Pomponius Atticus, Valerius Messalla), including some who had been moderately pro-Caesar (Piso Caesoninus, Hirtius, Pansa, Trebatius Testa, Matius), declared themselves not against the liberators but against Antony and the triumvirs. Just as the tyrannicide Gaius Cassiushimself had turned Epicurean in 46 BC ‘not to enjoy the hortulus, but to reach quickly the conclusion that the tyrant had to be eliminated …” (Jones, Epicurean Tradition)

“Piso’s daughter, Calpurnia Caesaris (born ca. 75), was an Epicurean, and so probably was her much younger half-brother L. Calpurnius Piso Pontifex (48 BCE—32 CE)…” (Philodemus, On Anger 7-8)

“In epigram 27 Sider, Philodemus‘ patron Piso […] is asked to grace a dinner of Epicurean philosophers who rank as his [companions] on the 20th, the day of Epicurus’ birthday, and a favorite day for the school’s feasts. ( Piso’s daughter Calpurnia, Julius Caesar’s wife, had an Epicurean freedwoman Anthis who named her own son Ikadion, ‘Mr. 20^th.)” (The Philosophizing Muse: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry 93)

“The influence is marked by the new vogue of the word candor and the adjective candid. Horace was resorting to this new terminology when he declared that Earth had never produced ‘whiter souls’ than Virgil, Plotius, and Varius[Rufus], a trio still Epicurean […] Horace ascribed to the Epicurean Quintilius Varus, the kind but unsparing critic” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 302)

“Avallone (1962, 60) writes that Maecenas was Epicurean; André (1967) believes that he was Epicurean, but not totally committed to the philosophy; Le Doze (2014) considers him to be an Epicurean, not a true Epicurean, but a Roman version of one.” (Mountford, Maecenas)

“Horace’s Satires owe debts of influence to a wide range of genres and authors, including […] the moral tradition of Epicureanism.” (Yona, Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire)

“In Letter 30, he [Seneca] recounts a conversation with an elderly Epicurean named Aufidius Bassus, who he says is facing the approach of death with enviable tranquility.” (Mitsis, Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism 501)

“Along with caution and control goes the active hope of good things to come, as exemplified by the words of Cicero to the merry Epicurean Papirius Paetus: ‘You, however, as your philosophy teaches, will feel bound to hope for the best, contemplate the worst, and endure whatever shall come’” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 316).

“One writer by the name of Marcus Pompilius Andronicus was more interested in his Epicurean sect than in giving special attention to matters of grammar in his writing.” (McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority)

“In the first century of the Empire the heroism of suicide among the aristocracy in opposition to the despotism of the Caesars became associated with Stoicism, but the most dramatic of the death scenes described by Tacitus is that of the Epicurean Petronius …” (Epicurus and His Philosophy 344).

“If we are to believe Cicero and Seneca, the image projected onto the Epicureans by detractors influenced the self-fashioning of later Epicureans like Apicius, Nomentanus, and Piso, who misunderstood what Epicurus meant by pleasure” (The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus 11)

“Pollius Felix is an Epicurean (113), like Manlius Vopiscus of I 3 and Septimius Severus of IV 5.” Stace, P. Papinius Statius, Silvae Book II: A Commentary)

“More direct evidence comes from an Epicurean character from Apamea, recorded in an inscription made by Aurelius Belius Philippus [2nd-century CE].” (King, Epicureanism and the Gospel of John: A Study of Their Compatibility 18)

“Also, Alexander refused responses to anyone from Amastris in Pontus because an important citizen of that city, Lepidus, was an Epicurean with many followers.” (Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda 114)

“These lines encourage Vessey […] to label Septimius Severus an Epicurean. Plausible enough.” (Birley, Septimius Severus: The African Emperor 233)

“[Paul of Tarsus] was a Jew by birth, by early education an Epicurean, and by conversion a Christian” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 168)

“Yet [Paul’s] youthful allegiance to the creed of Epicurus so far prevails over the convictions of his mature age that he finds it quite easy to write ‘according to nature’ and ‘contrary to nature’ and in First Corinthians 11:14 actually recognizes the principle he elsewhere repudiates: ‘Does not Nature herself teach you?’ This phraseology is foreign to the New Testament except in his Epistles. In spite of himself he shares the Epicurean slant of the public mind of the time.” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 171)

“… Paul, who in his impressionable youth had been captivated buy the siren voices of Epicurus […] When [Paul] wrote, ‘All things are lawful,’ asserting his liberty of choice, it was the ex-Epicurean who spoke.” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 176-177)

“The affinity of Paul‘s teachings to those of Epicurus will become still more clear for us if we glance at the topics of fame, power, and riches, especially the last.” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 179)

The Dark Ages:

“‘Praise be the Gods,’ exclaims the Emperor Julian, ‘for having annihilated Epicurean doctrine so completely that its books even are grown scarce.’ Naturally, in the closing struggle between paganism and Christianity, a system like Epicureanism was out of place. The only philosophy in which dying polytheism could hope to find comfort was the spiritualist doctrine of Neo-Platonism. […] From the third to the seventeenth century, Epicureanism was dormant as a system. The name, however, still survived as a stigma.” (Wallace, Epicureanism 258-260)

“… a few lines by the emperor Julian (c. 331–363), written in approximately the same period and concerning the most appropriate readings for a priest, cast a clear light on the decline that the school had already undergone at the time: Let us not admit discourses by Epicureans […] though indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books are no longer available.” (Floridi, Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission of Recovery of Pyrrhonism 13)

“[B]y the middle of the fourth century [Epicureanism] would have become a virtually forgotten creed, overwhelmed, […] by the spread of Christianity, fully justifying St. Augustine’s boast that ‘its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them.’” (Jones, Epicurean Tradition 94)

“In the Middle Ages […] Epicurus is represented in company with Sardanapalus, an infamous oriental voluptuary. It matter little that this charge was false.” (De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 22-23)

“With the rise of Christianity, Epicureanism went into decline. In the medieval period, the two primary sources of philosophical inspiration were Plato and Aristotle. The little attention that Epicurus received was usually in the service of criticizing atheistic materialism. However, Epicurean atomism was revived in the seventeenth century. […] Unsurprisingly, Christians by and large were inimical to Epicurus, and even though he was a voluminous author, few of his writing survived the Middle Ages.” (O’Keefe, Epicureanism 5-7)

“Outside of strictly Christian circles the tradition of ancient philosophy shrank to a trickle but never quite perished. […] The trickle of the literary tradition was of course confined to the Byzantine region of Europe until the revival of learning int he West. On the other hand, the repudiation of Epicurus as a sensualist did not depend upon knowledge of Greek. […] In spite of Christian hostility, however, it need not be inferred that the loss of Epicurean writings was due to deliberate destruction.” (De Witt, Epicurus and His Philosophy 354-355)

Medieval Amici and Vriunt:

“The Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) is in the circle of the Heretics because of the commonly held belief that he was an Epicurean.” (Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno 88)

“He [Farinata degli Uberti] was of the opinion of Epicurus, that the soul dies with the body, and maintained that human happiness consisted in temporal pleasures; but he did not follow these in the way that Epicurus did, that is by making long fasts to have afterwards pleasure in eating dry bread; but was fond of good and delicate viands, and ate them without waiting to be hungry; and for this sin he is damned as a Heretic in this place.” (Boccaccio, Expositions on Dante’s Comedy)

“And, again, speaking of Manfred [son of Frederick II], Villani says:—“His life was Epicurean, not believing in God or the saints, but only in corporeal delight. […] The great Epicurean of the time, in some of its good, as well as its bad senses, was the free-thinking and free-living emperor Frederick II, of whom Gregory IX wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that he held it wrong for a man to believe anything which he could not prove by the force and reason of nature.” (Wallace, Epicureanism 261)

“Through Manfred, the converted Epicurean, Dante may therefore highlight his polemic against those of his ‘Epicurean’ intellectual contemporaries who refused to believe in the gospel of miracles […] The Epicurean excommunicate Manfred …” (Corbett, Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfillment)

“In line with Cicero’s treatment in De finibus, Dante elects the noble Roman Torquatus as the advocate for Epicureanism in his prose works, the Convivio and the Monarchia. Aside from the pagan Torquatus, Dante identifies four thirteenth-century magnates as ‘disciples’ of Epicurus in Inferno X: the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the influential Ghibelline Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, and the Florentine statesmen Farinata and Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti. To this list we may add Guido Cavalcanti who is indirectly associated with Epicureanism and named in the canto.” (Corbett, Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfillment)

Modern Friends, Amici, Amis, Vrienden, and 友達:

“Three centuries later the scene has changed. Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406-1457), one of the greatest figures of the early Italian Renaissance, ventures to write a work On Pleasure in which he contrasts the Stoics with the Epicureans and declares his sympathy with the latter. That was in 1431. […] Soon after, Montaigne (1533-92) everywhere throughout his Essays, and Bruno (1548-1600) in his Degli Eroici Furori, avow themselves champions of Epicurus’s doctrine of pleasure.” (The Faith of Epicurus 149)

“In one of his first writings, the De Contemptu Mundi of the 1480s, Erasmus appropriated Epicurean doctrine. He praised the Epicurean retreat from the world, politics, and marriage […] Erasmus never accepted the ascetic principle of self-denial. Instead, he openly praised the Epicurean stress on modest pleasures, telling the dedicatee that ‘indeed, the whole rationale (ratioI) of our life is Epicurean!’” (Monfasani, Renaissance Humanist, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times)

“… the first two great Epicureans of the Renaissance were Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) in France and Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) in Italy. Epicurean in everything, as man and as poet, was the early classicist Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). But not until the French abbot Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) was the system of Epicurus to rise again in its entirety—this time, however, by approaching truth through faith.” (Thinkers and Theories in Ethics 31)

“The glory of the Holy See under the highly educated humanist and Epicurean Leo X knew few limits.” (Hagan, What Great Paintings Say 118)

“The Epicurean critique of religion, combined with the Epicurean accounts of the self-formation of the cosmos and the spontaneous emergence of living forms on earth, had a significant impact on European philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. […] there was a decided attempt at this time to articulate the notion of a creator God of infinite power whose responsibility for the world is exhausted in the initial instantaneous act of creation […] a challenging task set for philosophers by a Pope with definite Epicurean leanings, Leo X.” (Wilson, Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction)

“Desbarreaux, La Fare, Chaulieu, Chapelle, Dehenault, and Mme Deshoulières […] La Fontaine […] It is justifiable to refer to them as a school of Epicurean poets; a network of correspondaence in prose and verse links them together.” (Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire 152)

“Pascal condemns Des Barreaux’s Epicurean thought and audacious behavior. The libertine Des Barreaux, like Théophile de Viau before him […] Epicurean libertines, like Des Barreaux …” (Boitano, The Polemics of Libertine Conversion in Pascal’s Pensées 119)

“The work was preceded by a prefatory letter to François Luillier (c. 1600—51) who was something of a Maecenas and had the reputation of being a practicing Epicurean in ordinary life.” (Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire 138)

“Parisian Epicureans of the early seventeenth century included Gabriel Naudé, Elio Diodatai and François de la Mothe le Vayer, and, on the periphery, the storywriter Cyrano de Bergerac, and the playwright Moliére.” (The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism 268)

“The general view of Cyrano [de Bergerac] that he was a disciple of Gassendi, may require no correction, but he went far beyond Gassendi in the daring of his Epicurean naturalism.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-172973)

“Gilles de Launay, a professor of philosophy and historiographe du roi, began his Introduction a la philosophie, […] by invoking Epicurus as the ideal model of the natural philosopher. […] He was what all philosophers should aspire to be: He had ‘withdrawn from commerce with the world,’ seeking a happiness of the mind that was ‘very pure and very innocent.’ He was ‘this great genius of Greece . . . [and] the great master of ethics.’” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 59)

“Epicureanism resurged at different times, though usually with regard to this or that particular aspect of its doctrines. A fuller resurgence, which some have called neo-Epicureanism, took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its most notable representatives were the French philosophers Claude Gillermet de Bérigard (CE 1578–1663), Emmanual Maignan (CE 1601–76), and Pierre Gassendi (CE 1592–1655), who advocated a fuller version of Epicureanism than the others.” (Iannone, Dictionary of World Philosophy 175)

“In this, [Gassendi] was followed by Saint-Evremond, by Sarasin, and by a whole long line of epicurean poets—Dehénault, Mme Deshoulières, La Fare, and Chaulier—which in fact extended from Théophile de Viau to Chaulieu and thence to Voltaire.” (Wade, Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment 229)

“The Epicureanism of the likes of Ninon de Lenclos, Marion de Lorme, the Marquis de Sévigné and the La Fares, the Chaulieus, the Saint-Evremonds, in short, of the whole of that delightful company of souls […] their Epicureanism, I say, somewhat altered the tone of fiction.” (de Sade, The Crimes of Love: Heroic and Tragic Tales, Preceded by an Essay on Novels 305)

“Théophile is thus a perfect Epicurean by birth and by principle, an Epicurean in the diversity and the brevity of his enjoyments, an Epicurean in the prudent and wise administration of his pleasures.” (Hallays, The Spell of the Heart of France 165)

“Thus, if our melancholy Epicurean [Jean Dehénault] has left few traces of his literary talents, he has at least the somewhat remarkable distinction of having written a piece of prose which passed as the word of Saint-Évremond, and perhaps a play which men of taste have thought was Molière’s.” (Aldington, Literary Studies and Reviews 97)

“The poet Jean-François Sarasin, in a ‘Discours de morale’ devoted to Epicurus […] attributed the fact that ‘Epicurus fell into public hatred’ to the ignorance, prejudice, and hasty verdict of his judges (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 10)

“Montaigne writes with the mellowed and kindly cynicism of an Epicurean sage. […] The most conspicuous of these efforts [to rehabilitate Epicureanism] was the exposition and adaptation of the Epicurean system by Pierre Gassendi(1592-1655). […] The lighter graces and easy-going morality of Epicureanism found a skillful advocate in St. Evremond, whose letters to the modern Leontion, as he calls Ninon de l’Enclose, give what we may style the French-novel version of the liaison between Epicurus and his lady disciple.” (Wallace, Epicureanism 263-264)

“Similarly, the ostensibly fideistic Antoine Menjot, in his Opusculus post humes (1697), urged his readers to see Epicurus and Gassendi as in many ways the most pious of the ancient and modern philosophers, respectively.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 60)

“ … an erudite and closely argued case for seeing La Rochefoucauld as an Epicurean, continuing the antistoical Pyrrhonism of the later Montaigne.” (Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice 211)

“The ‘baptism’ of Epicurus was the achievement of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi […] Walter Charleton was the most significant disseminator of Epicureanism in England, drawing on him in both his moral and natural philosophy […] A translation of Antoine Le Grand’s early work on Epicurean philosophy was published in 1676 as Divine Epicurus, or, The Empire of Pleasure over the Virtues.” (Hutton, British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century61)

“Cavendish‘s friend, Walter Charleton, the main vector for Epicurean philosophy in England, edited and published J.B. van Helmont’s A Ternary of Paradoxes, which discussed corpuscular effluvia, in 1650.” (The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, 268)

“The Cartesian Antoine Le Grand, along with Walter Charleton, and later Charles de Marguetel de Saint Denis, sieur de Saint-Évremond, promoted openly Epicurean systems of morals. They insisted that Epicurus had been unjustly maligned by his enemies, and the earlier image of the Epicurean pig swilling in a filthy trough was replaced by a new image of the Epicurean as a man of taste, refinement and delicate feeling” (The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, 278)

“As Catherine Wilson in her study of Epicurean reception laconically remarks, while intellectual historians have been unable to gauge the exact sources of Locke’s epistemology, he ‘owned two copies of Diogenes Lartius’ Lives, three copies of On the Nature of Things‘ and ‘was associated with well-known Gassendists François Bernier and Gilles de Launay.’” (Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism 175)

“ … many readers, even if they did not read Gassendi directly, indeed were deeply familiar with François Bernier’sAbrege […] was one of the learned world’s most significant Epicurean voices.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 59)

“The word ‘pleasure’ recalls to mind the name of Epicurus, and I confess, that of all the opinions of the philosophers concerning the supreme good, there are none which appear to me to be so reasonable as his.” (L’enclos, Life, Letters and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L’Enclos)

“La Fontaine shared the Epicurean view that the happy man is one who lives a simple, trouble-free life, retired from the world, where, like the brute beasts who are cared for by nature, he has just what he needs and no more.” (Calder, The Fables of La Fontaine: Wisdom Brought Down to Earth 150)

“All the Fables are steeped in La Fontaine’s Epicurean humanism, his passion for liberty, for friendship …” (Blackham, The Fable as Literature 123)

“… Cavendish ‘expounded an Epicurean atomism at once so extreme and fanciful that she shocked the enemies of atomism, and embarrassed its friends.’ […] But Cavendish was not a classic Epicurean.” (Sarasohn, The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish 35)

“The epicurean poet, Antoinette Deshoulières (1634–1694), a disciple of the atomist natural philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) could also be considered a libertine.” (Stanton, The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France 33)

“By far the most outstanding of the Epicurean poets in Chaulieu, the man whom Voltaire called his master. He was the acknowledged leader of the Epicureans of the Temple. […] His thought was more truly Epicurean in the strictly philosophical sense of the word than one would have expected in a light poet.” (Rozenblum, A Seventeenth-century Epicurean Poet: Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu 3)

“Wilson also mentions the attraction of seventeenth-century women intellectuals (including Margaret Cavendish,Lucy Hutchinson [a devoted Puritan and Calvinist], and Aphra Behn) to Epicureanism.” (Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism 137)

“Guillaume Lamy (1644 – 1683) was a self-proclaimed Epicurean, a philosopher and physician based in Paris, who published his major works between the late 1660s and the late 1670s.” (Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy 355)

“The most prominent heterodox neo-Epicurean was Guillaume Lamy, doctor-regent of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris.” (Kors, Epicurean and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 49)

“Toward the end of the grand siècle La Fare, the Epicurean and inseparable friend of the Abbé de Chaulieu, translated the famous second ode.” (Robinson, Sappho and Her Influence: Volume 2 168)

“The yet more successful translation of Lucretius’s poem into French was by the baron Jacques Parrain Des Coutures […] While noting that the Christian obviously would reject the Epicurean denial of an afterlife as manifestly false, it urged readers to recognize the value of the Epicurean views of ethics and the force of the Epicurean assault against superstition and polytheism.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 34)

“In 1678 he discussed his political theory of religious revolutions with the Epicurean libertine, court poet and dramatist John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, who rejected immortality and providence.” (Hudson, The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment 68)

“The controversial Epicurean moralist, Bernard Mandeville, makes a distinction between Christian Epicureans like Erasmus, Gassendi and Temple, who claim that piety and virtue are the only true sources of voluptas, and libertines such as Hobbes’s follower Charles de Saint-Évremond, who associate it with more straightforwardly sensual pleasure.” (Bullard, Edmund Burke and the Art of Rhetoric 91)

“In 1685 the English Epicurean Sir William Temple signaled a very different attitude by abandoning a promising early diplomatic career and retiring to his garden at Moor Park in Surrey, there to devote himself to writing moral essays (including Upon the Garden of Epicurus) and raising apricots.” (Most, The Classical Tradition 323)

“François Courtin, who was given the abbey of Mont-Saint-Quentin at the age of nineteen, was a poet and Epicurean described by Voltaire as ‘big, fat, round, short, and lazy.’” (Buchan, John Law: A Scottish Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century 1753)

“Congreve wrote all of his plays during the 1690s, when he was in his twenties, and under the influence of his Epicurean philosophy of self-restrained morality.” (Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London 77)

“He [Rousseau] belonged to a school which is traceable to Chapelle, the father of French epicurean poetry.” (Hutson, A History of French Literature 146)

“As evidenced by the use of Guillaume Lamy by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, this neo-Epicurean influence played a significant role in the development of a later Enlightenment materialism.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650-1729 49)

“There is more than enough to suggest that its author [Celestino Galiani] was committed to a moderate, Christian Epicureanism, in which morality and natural law were in accordance with men’s natural desire for the pleasures …” (Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment 206)

“Frederick [the Great] replies to Sweerts that he is only too happy to obey, for he loves all the pleasures condemned by “un faux mystique” (Christianity) and would always follow the Epicurean gospel.” (Blanning, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia 156-157)

“Diderot denounces the way this philosophical perspective had been vilified and misrepresented as vulgar hedonism […] Diderot, a partisan of the Epicurean rather than the Cartesian understanding of matter, challenged Descartes’ plenum of vortices and whirlpools …” (Kavanagh, Enlightened Pleasures: Eighteenth-Century France and the New Epicureanism 4-5)

“Epicurean theory […] was used to state perhaps the central naturalistic doctrine of Holbach’s text: ‘The indestructible elements, the atoms of Epicurus, whose movement, concourse, and combinations have produced all beings, are, without doubt, more real causes than the God of theology” […] Holbach, by intellectual spirit, deep philosophical family resemblance, and reflective temperament, was indeed an Epicurean disciple.” (Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France 1650-1729 201)

“ … As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter To William Short, October 31st, 1819)

“The fundamental starting point of Bentham’s theory was thus the observation […] that ‘nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’. Associating pleasure with happiness and pain with unhappiness then, Bentham maintained that ‘[p]leasure … and the avoidance of pains, are the ends which the legislator has in view’. For him, questions of ethical conduct, or indeed just legislation, lay in measuring happiness, and for this reason, he is right labelled an Epicurean.” (Jeffery, Reason and Emotion in International Ethics 105)

“June 26th, Delbury.—I rode to Downton Castle on Monday, a gimcrack castle and bad bouse built by Payne Knight, an epicurean philosopher, who after building the cast went and lived in a lodge of cottage in the park: there he died, not without suspicion of having put an end to himself, which would have been fully conformable to his notions.” (Greville, The Greville Memoirs 190)

“Given what Bentham says later about his formative influences, one of these Epicurean writers, and perhaps the most important, was the French materialist philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius.” (Bentham and the Arts 24)

“A typical more modern Epicurean, in theory if not in practice, is Walter Savage Landor. He is typical at any rate in his enthusiasm for the atomic philosophy and the personality of Epicurus, and his hostility to Plato.” (Shorey, Platonism, Ancient and Modern 18)

“Then there was Charles Greville […] a friend when friendship was most wanted; high born, high bred, avowedly Epicurean …” (Taylor, Autobiography of Henry Taylor. 1800-1875: Volume 1 315)

“Wright’s novel, in which she implicitly advanced her own arguments against organized religion and for women’s equality, had offered a favorable account of the unfairly maligned Epicurus and his Garden […] Wright’s epicurean critique of religion …” (Hull, Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers 472)

“But in its frank acceptance of the realities of our human life, and of the laws of universal nature—in its emphasis on friendly love as the great help in moral progress—and in its rejection of the asceticism which mistakes penance for discipline, Epicureanism proclaimed elements of truth which the world cannot afford to lose.” (Wallace, Epicureanism270)

“Heavily influenced by the Epicurean hedonism, Guyau emphasized the principle and power of life that naturally lead the human beings to moral decisions.” (Lee, Ham Sok Hon’s Ssial Cosmopolitan Vision 17)

“M. Guyau treats Epicureanism mainly as the ancient forerunner of utilitarian and hedonistic theories. Signor Trezza gives a somewhat idealized picture of it, as the ancient gospel of a full and free humanity, living in the perception of the great law of nature and of love, and anticipating by two thousand years the advent of true philosophy.” (Wallace,Epicureanism 266)

“As to the word spiritual, I frankly don’t know what it means. The dictionary tells me that spirit ‘is the intelligent or immaterial part of man, soul.’ I look up soul and learn that it is ‘the immaterial part of man.’ And that spiritual means “of spirit, as opposed to matter, I am on the side of the materialists.” (Sedgwick, Memoirs of an Epicurean 156)

“‘[L]ife is linked with sensation and cannot be understood except through sensation […] in human affairs, Epicureanism is the only natural ethics which does not demand profound or subtle reasoning.’” (Holmes, “Reviewed Work: Sensation: The Origin of Life by Charles Leopold Mayer” 118-119)

“Tsuji was not devoted to massively propagating ideas of class war […] Tsuji was instead an Epicurean, seeking a simple lifestyle and reveling in a peaceful enjoyment of modest pleasures, both physical, social, and intellectual. […] Tsuji was not interested in striving for monetary wealth and fame as the foundations for his happiness. Rather, the ability to live freely, play his flute, and socialize were his espoused means to wellbeing and he did not feel bound by some sort of civic duty.” (Erana Jae Taylor, Tsuji Jun: Japanese Dadaist, Anarchist, Philosopher, Monk 2)

“…it is plain that [humanity’s] only logical goal […] is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, and which shall help along his natural impulse […] Here, then, is a practical and imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation and being essentially that taught by Epicurus and Lucretius.” (H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, Volume 5, 241)

“Christopher Hitchens also declared himself an Epicurean …” (Evans, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations: Ancient Philosophy for Modern Problems 91)

“Onfray is anarchistic in proclivity, yet above all, and concomitantly, he is a hedonistic Epicurean.” (Quadrio, New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates 151)

Fragmentary Attestations:

“ANTIGENES (first century BC)
Antigenes was a friend of Philodemus of Gadara and probably also an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 27)

“ANTIPATER (first century AD?)
Antipater was an Epicurean and a friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 27)

“ANTIPHANES (third/second century BC)
Antiphanes was an Epicurean who for unknown reasons fell out with the school.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 28)

“ANTONIUS (second century BC)
Antonius was an Epicurean who exchanged views with Galen on medical matters.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 30)

“APOLLODORUS [of Lampsacus] [1] (fourth century BC)
Apollodorus was an Epicurean and a brother of Leontius of Lampsacus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 31)

“APOLLODORUS [the Epicurean] [2] (third century BC)
Apollodorus was an Epicurean, perhaps a pupil of Polystratus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 31)

“APOLLODORUS [of Athens] [4] (second century BC)
Apollodorus was an Epicurean, heading the school for most of the second half of the second century BC. His long tenure earned him the nickname of ‘Tyrant of the Garden’. He wrote many books, including a life of Epicurus, and was the teacher of Zeno of Sidon.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 31)

“APOLLONIDES [2] (third century BC)
Apollonides was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 32)

“APOLLOPHANES OF PERGAMUM (first century BC)
Apollophanes was an Epicurean and a leading citizen of Pergamum, sent on a mission to Rome on his city’s behalf.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 35)

“AMYNIAS OF SAMOS (first century BC/first century AD)
Amynias was an Epicurean and priest at the temple of Hera on Samos.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 21)

“ANAXARCHUS (fourth/third century BC)
According to Plutarch of Chaeronea, Anaxarchus was the recipient of a letter from Epicurus. He is assumed to have been an Epicurean himself.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 22)

“ARCEPHON [1] (fourth/third century BC)
Arcephon was an Epicurean and the recipient of a letter from Epicurus himself.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 36)

“ARISTONYMUS [2] (third/second century BC)
Aristonymus was an Epicurean and a friend of Dionysius [3].”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 36)

“ARTEMON [1] (third/second century BC)
Artemon was an Epicurean and the teacher of Philonides of Laodicea.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 51)

“ATHENAEUS [1] (second/first century BC)
Athenaeus was an Epicurean, a pupil of Polyaenus of Lampsacus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 54)

“ATHENOGORUS [1] (second/first century BC)
Athenogorus was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 55)

“ATHENODORUS OF ATHENS (first century AD)
Athenodorus was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 56)

“ARTEMIDORUS OF PARIUM (first century BC/first century AD)
Artemidorus wrote a book on celestial phenomena with which Seneca entirely disagreed. He may have been an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 50)

“BACCHUS (first century BC)
Bacchius was a friend of Philodemus of Gadara and probably also an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 59)

“BALBUS, LUCIUS CORNELIUS (first century BC)
Balbus came from Gades (Cadiz) in Spain and went on to become the first foreign-born consul of Rome in 40 BC. He became a friend of Cicero, who successfully defended him in a legal action. Comments made by Cicero suggest he was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 59)

“BASSUS, LUCIUS AUFIDIUS (first century BC)
According to Seneca, Bassus was an Epicurean who bore witness to his school’s teaching in a way he coped with prolonged ill health. He was an historian but none of his writings have survived.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 59)

“CALLISTRATUS (third century BC?)
Callistratus was an Epicurus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 69)

“CELER, CAIUS ARTORIUS (first or second century AD)
Celer was an Epicurean philosopher from North Africa.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 72)

“CELSUS [1] (first century AD)
Celer was an Epicurean who lived during the time of Nero.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 73)

“CELSUS [2] (second century AD)
Celsus was an Epicurean and friend of Lucian of Samosata.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 73)

“CEPHISOPHON (second century BC?)
Cephisophon was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 74)

“CHARMIDES [2] (fourth/third century BC)
Charmides was an Epicurean and a friend of Arcesilaus of Pitane.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 74)

“CINEAS (third century BC)
Cineas was an advisor to Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus. He was clearly well-versed in philosophy and may have been an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 79)

“CRONIUS OF LAMPSACUS (fourth/third century BC)
Cronius studied under Eudoxus of Cnidus before becoming an Epicurean and correspondent of Epicurus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 88)

“DAMIS [2] (second century AD)
Damis is an Epicurean mentioned by Lucian of Samosata. Opinions are divides as to whether he is to be regarded as an historical figure or not.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 100)

“DAMOPHANES (second century BC?)
Damophanes was probably an Epicurean. His name appears in fragments of a text in which an Epicurean position on religion is articulated.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 91)

DEMETRIA (fourth/third century BC)
Demetria was a member of the community of Epicurus and the female companion to Hermarchus of Mitylene.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 93)

“DIODORUS [3] (third century BC)
Diodorus was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 100)

“DIODORUS [5] (first century AD)
Diodorus was an Epicurean who committed suicide in a state of contentment and with a clear conscience, according to Seneca.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 100)

“DION [2] (first century BCE)
Dion appears to have been an Epicurean with whom Cicero was acquainted but for whom he had little time or respect.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 105)

“DIONYSIUS OF RHODES (first century AD?)
Dionysius was an Epicurean and a friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 107)

“DIOTIMUS OF SEMACHIDES (third century BC)
Diotimus was an Epicurean in Athens and perhaps the pupil of Polystratus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 109)

“DOLABELLA, PUBLIUS CORNELIUS (first century BC)
Dolabella was an Epicurean and for a time the son-in-law of Cicero. Politically active, he achieved the dubious distiction of being pronounced a public enemy b y the Roman Senate. In 43 BC, utterly defeated, he ordered one of his soldiers to kill him.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 109)

“DOSITHEUS (fourth/third century BC)
Dositheus was probably an Epicurean. A letter written to him by Epicurus on the death of his son Hegesianax [2] was copied by Diogenes of Oenoanda. His name sometimes appears as Sositheus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 111)

“DOSSENNUS
Dossennus appears to have been a philosopher, perhaps an Epicurean. Seneca mentions a monument to him with an inscription testifying to his wisdom.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 111)

“EGNATIUS (first century BC)
Egnatius was an Epicurean who wrote a poem On the Nature of Things. It bears some resemblances to the work of the same name by Lucretius and is generally thought to have been written after it.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 113)

“EPICURIUS (first/second century AD)
Epicurius was an Epicurean who appears in a work by Plutarch of Chaeronea.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 116)

“EUDEMUS (fourth century BC)
Eudemus was an Epicurean mentioned in a letter by Epicurus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 121)

“EUGATHES (third century BC?)
Eugathes was a barber from Thessaly who abandoned cutting hair in order to become an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 123)

“EXUPERANTIA (third/fourth century AD)
Exuperantia was a philosopher in Hadrumetum. Like her husband, Heraclamon Leonides, she was probably an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 131)

“HAURANUS, CAIUS STALLIUS (first century BC/first century AD?)
Hauranus was a member of the Epicurean community of Neapolis (Naples).”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 138)

“HEGESIANAX [2] (third century BC)
Hegesianax was probably an Epicurean. The son of Dositheus and brother of Pyrson, he died young and Epicurus sent a letter of consolation to his family.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 139)

“HERACLAMON LEONIDES (third/fourth century AD)
Heraclamon was an Epicurean from Hadrumetum. His wife was Exuperantia.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 139)

“HELIODORUS [2] (first/second century AD)
Heliodorus was an Epicurean and close friend of the emperor Hadrian. He succeeded Popillius Theotimus as head of the school in Athens.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 139)

“HELIODORUS OF ANTIOCH (third/second century BC)
Heliodorus was an Epicurean who held a senior position at the court of Seleucus IV. He fell out with the king over a political matter and assassinated him.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 139)

“HERACLITUS OF RHODIAPOLIS (first century AD)
Heraclitus was a physician, poet and Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 144)

“HIPPOCLIDES (fourth/third century BC)
Hippoclides was an Epicurean. According to Valerius Maximus, he was born on the same day as Polystratus, was close to him all his life, and died on the same day as he did.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 152)

“HIRTIUS, AULUS (first century BC)
Hirtius was an Epicurean and a correspondent of Cicero, although none of their letters survive.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 154)

“IOLAUS OF BITHYNIA (second century BC)
Iolaus was a physician and perhaps an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 158)

“IRENAEUS OF MILETUS (second/first century BC)
Irenaeus was an Epicurean and a pupil of Demetrius Lacon.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 158)

“LUCCESIUS, LUCIUS (first century BC)
Lucceius was an historian and a friend of Cicero. Some of Cicero’s letters to Lucceius suggest that he may have been an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 170)

“LYCOPHRON [2] (fourth/third century BC)
According to Plutarch of Chaeronea, Lycophron was an Epicurean. Leontius of Lampsacus corresponded with him.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 172)

“MAXIMUS [1] (first/second century AD)
Maximus was an Epicurean and a friend of Pliny the Younger. He was sent to Rome to reform the constitutions of Greek cities. He was an acquaintance of Epictetus and a supposed discussion between them is preserved in Discourses III.7.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 178)

“MENESTRATUS (fourth/third century BC)
Menestratus was an Epicurean, a pupil of Metrodorus of Lampsacus.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 185)

“MENNEAS (first century AD?)
Menneas was an Epicurean and a friend of Diogenes of Oenoanda.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 185)

“MESSALLA CORVINUS, MARCUS VALERIUS (first century BC)
Messalla was an Epicurean and a friend of Horace. As young men, they studied together in Athens. He opposed Julius Caesar but eventually made his peace with Augustus. As an author he wrote a number of works, including philosophical treatises, but none survive.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 185)

“NERO (second/first century BC)
Demetrius Lacon dedicated a book to Nero, making it likely he was an Epicurean himself.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 194

“OPILLUS, AURELIUS (second century BC)
Opillus was originally the slave of an Epicurean and may have been one himself. In any event, when he was freed he became a teacher of philosophy, although he later switched to rhetoric and grammar. When Publius Rutilius Rufus was sent into exile, Opillus went with him.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 201)

“PLATO OF SARDIS (first century BC)
Plato was an Epicurean who taught in Athens.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 223)

“POLLIUS FELIX (first century AD)
Pollius was an Epicurean and a patron of the poet Statius.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 223)

“PUDENTIANUS (second century AD?)
Pudentianus was an Epicurean. Galen wrote a lost work about him.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 236)

“PYRSON (third century BC)
Pyrson was the son of Dositheus and brother of Hegesianax [2]. He was probably an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 238)

“VOLUMNIUS EUTRAPELUS, PUBLIUS (first century BC)
Volumnius was a friend of Cicero and Marcus Brutus. According to Plutarch of Chaeronea he was also a philosopher, and it seems most likely that he was an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 238)

“SISENNA, LUCUIUS CORNELIUS (second/first century BC)
Sisenna achieved acclaim as an historian. Cicero suggests he was an Epicurean, but not a very consistent one.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 249)

“THEODORIDAS OF LINDUS (first century AD?)
Theodoridas was a philosophical acquaintance of Diogenes of Oenoanda. He was probably an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 263)

“THEOPHEIDES (third century BC)
Theopheides was a friend of Hermarchus of Mitylene. Hermarchus wrote him a letter in which he attacked Alexinus of Elis. It seems likely Theopheides was an Epicurean”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 266)

“TIMAGORAS (first century BC)
Timagoras was an Epicurean mentioned by Cicero.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 266)

“TREBIANUS (first century BC)
Trebianus was a friend of Cicero who took an interest in philosophy and may have been an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 274)

“TUCCA, PLAUTIUS (first century BC)
Tucca was an Epicurean, a pupil of both Philodemus of Gadara and Siro. Virgil and Horace were amongst his friends and he edited the manuscript of Virgil’s Aeneid when the poet died.
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 247)

“ZENOBIUS (second/third century AD)
Zenobius was an Epicurean, the target of a lost book by Alexander of Aphrodisias.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 285)

“ZOPYRUS (fourth/third century BC)
Carneiscus dedicated a book about friendship to Zopyrus, suggesting he was probably an Epicurean.”
(Curnow, The Philosophers of the Ancient Worlds: An A-Z Guide 285)

Thanks to my Epicurean friends.

– Nate

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Society of Friends of Epicurus

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