And in his letters he wrote to Leontion, ‘Lord and Saviour, my dearest Leontion, what a hurrahing you drew from us, as we read aloud your dear letter,’ and to Themista, Leonteus’ wife, "If you two don’t come to me, I am capable of arriving with a hop, skip and jump, wherever you and Themista summon me.’ And to Pythocles, who was young and beautiful, he writes, ‘I will sit down and wait for your lovely and godlike appearance.’ And again in writing to Themista he calls her (by a most flattering name), as Theodorus says in the fourth book of his attack on Epicurus. He is also said to have used degrading flattery towards Mithres, the steward of Lysimachus, calling him in his letters both ‘Saviour’ and ‘My lord.’ Idomeneus too and Herodotus and Timo crates, who divulged his secrets, he is said to have praised and flattered all the same. Further, that he was not an Athenian born, as Timocrates says, and Herodotus too in his book The Youth of Epicurus. Also that he took Democritus’ atomic theory and Aristippus’ theory of pleasure and taught them as his own. They add that one of his brothers prostituted himself and kept company with Leontion, the hetaera. For they say that he used to go round from house to house with his mother reading out the purification prayers, and assisted his father in elementary teaching for a miserable pittance. Also a slave called Mys, as Muronianus says in his chapters on historical coincidences.ĭiotimus the Stoic, who is ill-disposed to Epicurus, has calumniated him most bitterly by producing fifty lewd letters as Epicurus’ work so has the writer who has assigned to Epicurus the collection of ‘billets-doux’ which were attributed to Chrysippus, and also Posidonius the Stoic and his followers, as well as Nicolaus and Sotion in the twelve books of the ‘Arguments of Diocles’ which are named after the Epicurean celebration of The Twentieth also Dionysius of Halicarnassus. His three brothers, Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus, joined him in studying philosophy at his suggestion, according to Philodemus the Epicurean in the tenth book of his Comparison of Philosophies. Last and most shameless of the scientists, infant school teacher from Samos, the most stubborn of all living beings. Hermippus says that Epicurus was at one time a schoolmaster and then after he met with the writings of Democritus, he took eagerly to philosophy. Apollodorus the Epicurean in the first book of his Life of Epicurus says that he took to philosophy because he despised the teachers of literature, since they were not able to explain to him the passage about Chaos in Hesiod. He tells us himself that he first made acquaintance with philosophy at the age of fourteen. For a while he joined with others in the study of philosophy, but later taught independently, when he had founded the school called after him. Having stayed there some time and gathered disciples he returned again to Athens in the archonship of Anaxicrates. After the death of Alexander of Macedon, when the Athenians were driven out of Samos by Perdiccas, he went to join his father in Colophon. In his eighteenth year, as they say, he came to Athens, when Xenocrates was at the Academy and Aristotle was living in Chalcis. Heraclides in his epitome of Sotion and others say that the Athenians having colonized Samos, Epicurus was brought up there. For discussion of this biography, please go to the forum devoted to the biographies of Epicurus.ĮPICURUS, son of Neocles and Chaerestrata, was an Athenian of the deme of Gargettus, and the family of the Philaidae, as Metrodorus says in his work on Nobility of Birth. In the transcription below, the English word “preconceptions” has been marked with an asterisk and used instead of Bailey's “concepts.” In order to avoid duplication, the translations of the letters are linked to separate pages of this website. The original translation is available here.
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