Greek Texts & Translations

Ye toil, O men, for paltry things and incessantly begin strife and war for gain ; but nature's wealth extends to a moderate bound, whereas vain judgements have a limitless range. This message Neocles' wise son heard from the Muses or from the sacred tripod at Delphi. ^note

And, as we go on, we shall know this better from his doctrines and his sayings.

Among the early philosophers, says Diocles, his favourite was Anaxagoras, although he occasionally disagreed with him, and Archelaus the teacher of Socrates. Diocles adds that he used to train his friends in committing his treatises to memory. ^note

Apollodorus in his Chronology tells us that our philosopher was a pupil of Nausiphanes and Praxiphanes ^note ; but in his letter to Eurylochus, Epicurus himself denies it and says that he was self-taught. Both Epicurus and Hermarchus deny the very existence of Leucippus the philosopher, though by some and by Apollodorus the Epicurean he is said to have been the teacher of Democritus. Demetrius the Magnesian affirms that Epicurus also attended the lectures of Xenocrates.

The terms he used for things were the ordinary terms, and Aristophanes the grammarian credits him with a very characteristic style. He was so lucid a writer that in the work On Rhetoric he makes clearness the sole requisite. 10.1.14 And in his correspondence he replaces the usual greeting, "I wish you joy," by wishes for welfare and right living, "May you do well," and "Live well."

Ariston ^note says in his Life of Epicurus that he derived his work entitled The Canon from the Tripod of Nausiphanes, adding that Epicurus had been a pupil of this man as well as of the Platonist Pamphilus ^note in Samos. Further, that he began to study philosophy when he was twelve years old, and started his own school at thirty-two.

He was born, according to Apollodorus in his Chronology, in the third year of the 109th Olympiad, in the archonship of Sosigenes, ^note on the seventh day of the month Gamelion, ^note in the seventh year after the death of Plato. 10.1.15 When he was thirty-two he founded a school of philosophy, first in Mitylene and Lampsacus, and then five years later removed to Athens, where he died in the second year of the 127th Olympiad, ^note in the archonship of Pytharatus, at the age of seventy-two ; and Hermarchus the son of Agemortus, a Mitylenaean, took over the School. Epicurus died of renal calculus after an illness which lasted a fortnight : so Hermarchus tells us in his letters. Hermippus relates that he entered a bronze bath of lukewarm water and asked for unmixed wine, 10.1.16 which he swallowed, and then, having bidden his friends remember his doctrines, breathed his last.

Here is something of my own about him ^note :

Farewell, my friends ; the truths I taught hold fast :

Thus Epicurus spake, and breathed his last.

He sat in a warm bath and neat wine quaff'd,

And straightway found chill death in that same draught.

Such was the life of the sage and such his end.

His last will was as follows : "On this wise I give and bequeath all my property to Amynomachus, son of Philocrates of Bate and Timocrates, son of Demetrius of Potamus, to each severally according to the items of the deed of gift laid up in the Metroön,