The Writings of Epicurus Epicurus

Upbringing and influences

Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC.[5][6][7] His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen.[5] Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period.[8] Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia.[9] As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ancient Greek education.[10] As such, according to Norman Wentworth DeWitt, "it is inconceivable that he would have escaped the Platonic training in geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric."[10] Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years.[10] His Letter of Menoeceus and surviving fragments of his other writings strongly suggest that he had extensive training in rhetoric.[10][11] After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey.[12][11] Epicurus joined his family there after the completion of his military service. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus,[11][12] and later those of Pyrrho,[13][14] whose way of life Epicurus greatly admired.[15]

Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as "confused". Instead, he insisted that he had been "self-taught".[17][18][19] According to DeWitt, Epicurus's teachings also show influences from the contemporary philosophical school of Cynicism.[20] The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was still alive when Epicurus would have been in Athens for his required military training and it is possible they may have met.[20] Diogenes's pupil Crates of Thebes (c. 365 – c. 285 BC) was a close contemporary of Epicurus.[20] Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their "insolence and vulgarity", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness.[20] Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.[21]

Epicurus's Letter to Menoeceus, possibly an early work of his, is written in an eloquent style similar to that of the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BC),[20] but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid.[20] Epicurus's epistemology also bears an unacknowledged debt to the later writings of Aristotle (384–322 BC), who rejected the Platonic idea of hypostatic Reason and instead relied on nature and empirical evidence for knowledge about the universe.[16] During Epicurus's formative years, Greek knowledge about the rest of the world was rapidly expanding due to the Hellenization of the Near East and the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms.[16] Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks.[16] He may have had access to the now-lost writings of the historian and ethnographer Megasthenes, who wrote during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator (ruled 305–281 BC).[16]

Teaching career

During Epicurus's lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education.[23] Epicurus's opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought.[24][25] Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism.[24] In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene.[24][11] Around this time, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, arrived in Athens, at the age of about twenty-one, but Zeno did not begin teaching what would become Stoicism for another twenty years.[24] Although later texts, such as the writings of the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero, portray Epicureanism and Stoicism as rivals,[24] this rivalry seems to have only emerged after Epicurus's death.[24][24]

Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c. 306 BC, where he remained until his death.[6] There he founded The Garden (κῆπος), a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place, about halfway between the locations of two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy.[26][11] The Garden was more than just a school;[7] it was "a community of like-minded and aspiring practitioners of a particular way of life."[7] The primary members were Hermarchus, the financier Idomeneus, Leonteus and his wife Themista, the satirist Colotes, the mathematician Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the most famous popularizer of Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception, and the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius lists female students such as Leontion and Nikidion.[27] An inscription on the gate to The Garden is recorded by Seneca the Younger in epistle XXI of Epistulae morales ad Lucilium: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."[28]

According to Diskin Clay, Epicurus himself established a custom of celebrating his birthday annually with common meals, befitting his stature as heros ktistes ("founding hero") of the Garden. He ordained in his will annual memorial feasts for himself on the same date (10th of Gamelion month).[29] Epicurean communities continued this tradition,[30] referring to Epicurus as their "saviour" (soter) and celebrating him as hero. The hero cult of Epicurus may have operated as a Garden variety civic religion.[31] However, clear evidence of an Epicurean hero cult, as well as the cult itself, seems buried by the weight of posthumous philosophical interpretation.[32] Epicurus never married and had no known children. He was most likely a vegetarian.[33][34]

Death

Diogenes Laërtius records that, according to Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract.[35][36] Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end.[35] Possible insights into Epicurus's death may be offered by the extremely brief Epistle to Idomeneus, included by Diogenes Laërtius in Book X of his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.[37] The authenticity of this letter is uncertain and it may be a later pro-Epicurean forgery intended to paint an admirable portrait of the philosopher to counter the large number of forged epistles in Epicurus's name portraying him unfavorably.[37]

I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.[38]

If authentic, this letter would support the tradition that Epicurus was able to remain joyful to the end, even in the midst of his suffering.[37] It would also indicate that he maintained a special concern for the wellbeing of children.[39]