Ancient Epicureanism of the
Garden after Epicurus's death in 270 BC After Epicurus's death, his follower
Hermarchus had succeeded him as the
scholarch of the Garden in Athens. Hermarchus' successor,
Polystratus (died ), probably never knew Epicurus himself; one work by him survives criticizing philosophers who have contempt for public opinion. The next two heads of the school were
Dionysius of Lamptrai (died ), about whom little is known, and
Basilides (died ). Epicurus's doctrines seem to have become rather popular in
Asia Minor in the 2nd century BC; before becoming head of the school in Athens, Basilides appears to have originally studied under an Epicurean community in Syria, where he collaborated with the mathematicians
Apollonius of Perga and
Hypsicles, and taught
Philonides of Laodicea, a mathematician and Epicurean philosopher who was a member of the
Seleucid court of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes and
Demetrius I Soter. There were also several divisions within the school early on; even in Epicurus's lifetime,
Timocrates of Lampsacus, the brother of his closest disciple Metrodorus, had left the school and published several tracts critical of Epicureanism. During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, dissident sects of Epicureans established themselves in
Cos and
Rhodes who broke with the scholarchs of the Garden. While these Epicureans still considered the works of Epicurus and his closest followers to be authoritative, disputes arose about the interpretation of the works; determining which works were genuine,
textual criticism of corrupt or contradictory passages, and clarification of difficult passages, which occasionally seemed to present errors. in
Herculaneum, which contains a library of Epicurean works collected by
Philodemus. After Basilides, there is a gap in the historical record; the next known head of the Garden in Athens was
Apollodorus, nicknamed "the tyrant of the Garden" who served as head from roughly the middle of the second century BC until 110 BC; though he apparently wrote over 400 books, only traces of a life of Epicurus and a few other works survive. Another Epicurean writing at the same time whose works are more thoroughly preserved is
Demetrius Lacon (), who taught at an Epicurean school in
Miletus. Demetrius wrote works not only on traditional Epicurean subjects such as cosmology, theology, and ethics, but also mathematics, poetry, and rhetoric, testifying to the expanding interests of the school, as well as philological works defending the orthodox readings and interpretations of the works of Epicurus. He was followed in this approach by
Zeno of Sidon (), who took over as the next head of the Athenian school. Both Zeno and Demetrius seem to have been in communication with important figures in Rome, and Zeno's most prominent pupil,
Philodemus, left to establish a school there. During Zeno's tenure, Athens' role in the
First Mithridatic War (88-86 BC), and
Sulla's subsequent reconquest of the city in 86 BC, plunged all of the philosophical schools in Athens into crisis; after Zeno's death, the next two heads of the Garden,
Phaedrus (died ) and
Patro (died after ), both returned to Athens from Rome, where they had fled during the war, to head the school, and the middle of the 1st century BCE last evidence for the Athenian Garden's existence. In Rome, the first Epicureans to attempt to spread their doctrines there,
Alcaeus and Philiscus, had been expelled from the city in 155 BC, while the earliest Epicurean writers in Latin,
Amafinius,
Catius, and
Rabirus, mostly drew the ire of
Cicero for their ethical shortcomings and poor prose. However, three Epicurean philosophers in the 1st century BC, Philodemus,
Lucretius, and
Siro, did much to establish Epicurus's reputation in Italy, being later defended by Roman consul
Lucius Manlius Torquatus and Gaius Velleius in the works of Cicero, even as Epicureanism began to decline in Athens. Philodemus, a student of Zeno of Sidon, attracted a wealthy patron,
Calpurnius Piso the father-in-law of
Julius Caesar, and founded a school that was intended to be a continuation of the Epicurean Garden in Athens, circulating the works of his predecessors and writing treatises on the whole scope of Epicurean philosophy, many of which have been found at the
Villa of the Papyri. Lucretius, a poet who seems to have read Epicurus's works outside the Epicurean school tradition, wrote
De rerum natura, a long didactic poem in Latin
dactylic hexameter verse, which is still extant, that explained Epicurus's natural philosophy to a Roman audience, covering roughly the first 15 books of Epicurus's
On Nature. Meanwhile, Siro established another school in Italy where he instructed a circle of Roman poets in Epicureanism, which included
Virgil. , an Epicurean philosopher living in
Lycia, in the early 2nd century AD, inscribed roughly 260 square meters of Epicurean writings onto the portico walls of his own residence, which were rediscovered in the 1880s. In the first and second centuries AD, Epicureanism gradually began to decline as it failed to compete with Stoicism, which had an ethical system more in line with traditional Roman values. Prominent critics of his philosophy include prominent authors such as the Roman Stoic
Seneca the Younger ( 4 BC – AD 65) and the Greek
Middle Platonist Plutarch ( 46 – 120). Some time in the 2nd century CE, an otherwise an unknown Epicurean philosopher,
Diogenes of Oenoanda, attempted to preserve the doctrines of his school in an enormous wall inscription in
Lycia that originally spanned 260 square meters and contained several treatises totalling over 25000 words of writing, roughly a third of which has been preserved. During the third century AD,
Christianity rapidly expanded throughout the Roman Empire. Of all the Greek philosophical schools, Epicureanism was the one most at odds with the new Christian teachings, since Epicureans believed that the soul was mortal, denied the existence of an afterlife, denied that the divine had any active role in human life, and advocated pleasure as the foremost goal of human existence. As such, Christian writers such as
Justin Martyr ( 100– 165 AD),
Athenagoras of Athens ( 133– 190),
Tertullian ( 155– 240), and
Clement of Alexandria ( 150– 215),
Arnobius (died 330), and
Lactantius (c. 250-c.325) all singled it out for the most vitriolic criticism. By the early fifth century AD, Epicureanism was virtually extinct. The Christian
Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) declared, "its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them."
Middle Ages 's
School of Athens (1509–1511). In the Middle ages, Epicurus was depicted in popular culture as a vain pleasure-seeker. While Plato and Aristotle enjoyed a privileged place in Christian philosophy throughout the
Middle Ages, Epicurus, whose ideas could less easily be adapted to suit a Christian worldview, was not held in such esteem. Information about Epicurus's teachings was available, through Lucretius's
On the Nature of Things, quotations of it found in medieval Latin grammars and
florilegia and encyclopedias, such as
Isidore of Seville's
Etymologiae (seventh century) and
Hrabanus Maurus's
De universo (ninth century), but there is little evidence that these teachings were systematically studied or comprehended. During the Middle Ages, Epicurus frequently appeared in popular culture as a gatekeeper to the Garden of Delights, the "proprietor of the kitchen, the tavern, and the brothel." He appears in this guise in
Martianus Capella's
Marriage of Mercury and Philology (fifth century),
John of Salisbury's
Policraticus (1159),
John Gower's ''
Mirour de l'Omme'', and
Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales. Epicurus and his followers also appear in
Dante Alighieri's
Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, where they are imprisoned in flaming coffins for having believed that the soul dies with the body. In
Medieval Jewish philosophy, several philosophers discussed Epicurean doctrines. Although the first apparent reference to Epicurus in
Rabbinic literature appears much earlier, the term
epikoros, cited in the
Mishnah, meaning "a heretic," earlier uses of the term do not show any knowledge of specific Epicurean doctrines. However, in the 10th through 12th centuries,
Abraham ibn Ezra,
Abraham ibn Daud, and
Judah Halevi reference specific Epicurean doctrines, such as the treatment of pleasure as the only good and the eternity of the world, which they were likely introduced to via Arabic translations of the works of the Aristotelian commentator
Alexander of Aphrodisias. A much fuller discussion of Epicurean doctrines, however, is given by
Maimonides in
The Guide to the Perplexed, where he compares Epicurean atomism to the atomistic doctrines of
Saadia Gaon and other philosophers of the
Jewish Kalam school, which Maimonides believed were ultimately derived from Epicurus, and may derive from earlier encounters between
Rabbinic Judaism and Epicurean literature during
Late antiquity.
Renaissance '' manuscript, c. 1483. The rediscovery of this ancient Epicurean work in 1417 by
Poggio Bracciolini provided
Renaissance humanists with a thorough account of Epicurus's teachings In 1417,
Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's
On the Nature of Things in a monastery near
Lake Constance, which contained a comprehensive account of Epicurus's teachings. The first scholarly dissertation on Epicurus,
De voluptate (
On Pleasure) by the Italian Humanist and Catholic priest
Lorenzo Valla was published in 1431. In the treatise, Valla presented the treatise a discussion on the nature of the highest good between an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a Christian. Although Valla's dialogue ultimately rejects Epicureanism, by presenting an Epicurean as a member of the dispute, Valla lent Epicureanism credibility as a philosophy that deserved to be taken seriously.
Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417),
Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481),
Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), and
Leonardo Bruni ( 1370–1444) also gave Epicureanism a fairer analysis than it had traditionally received. Nonetheless, "Epicureanism" remained a pejorative, synonymous with extreme egoistic pleasure-seeking, rather than a name of a philosophical school. Even liberal religious skeptics who might have been expected to take an interest in Epicureanism evidently did not;
Étienne Dolet (1509–1546) only mentions Epicurus once in all his writings and
François Rabelais (between 1483 and 1494–1553) never mentions him at all. Although
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) quoted 450 lines of Lucretius's
On the Nature of Things in his
Essays, his interest in Lucretius, however, seems to have been primarily literary and he is ambiguous about his feelings on Lucretius's Epicurean worldview.
Revival is responsible for reviving Epicureanism in modernity as an alternative to Aristotelianism. The French Catholic priest and scholar
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) published several books expounding Epicureanism that exerted a profound influence on later writings about Epicurus. However, he modified some of Epicurus's doctrines in order to make them more palatable for a Christian audience; for example, by stating that atoms were not eternal, uncreated, and infinite in number, instead contending that an extremely large but finite number of atoms were created by God at creation. Gassendi's version of Epicurus's teachings became popular among some members of English scientific circles, who treated Epicurean atomism as a starting point for their own idiosyncratic theories. To orthodox thinkers, however, Epicureanism was still regarded as immoral and heretical until
Walter Charleton (1619–1707) provided the English public with readily available descriptions of Epicurus's philosophy and assured orthodox Christians that Epicureanism was no threat to their beliefs. The
Royal Society, chartered in 1662, advanced Epicurean atomism; one of its most prolific defenders of atomism was the chemist
Robert Boyle (1627–1691).
John Locke (1632–1704) also adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential on English empiricism. Epicureanism was also beginning to lose its associations with indiscriminate and insatiable gluttony, which had been characteristic of its reputation ever since antiquity. Instead, the word "epicure" began to refer to a person with extremely refined taste in food, for example, "such an epicure was
Potiphar—to please his tooth and pamper his flesh with delicacies" from
William Whately's
Prototypes (1646). Around the same time, the Epicurean injunction to "live in obscurity" was beginning to gain popularity as well. In 1685,
Sir William Temple (1628–1699) abandoned a promising career as a diplomat and instead retired to his garden, devoting himself to writing essays on Epicurus's moral teachings. That same year,
John Dryden translated the celebrated lines from Book II of Lucretius's
On the Nature of Things: "'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore / The rowling ship, and hear the Tempest roar."
Modern , which was rediscovered in
Herculaneum in the 18th century. The
Herculaneum Papyri, which were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, contain numerous Epicurean treatises. In 19th century Britain,
Jeremy Bentham,
John Stuart Mill, and
Henry Sidgwick adapted Epicurus's
psychological hedonism to their own ethical theories of
Utilitarianism, which sought to maximize overall happiness. Although Epicurus himself, unlike the Utilitarians, did not promote the idea of pursuing happiness as a general ethical goal, these philosophers drew on Epicurus explanations of happiness (
Eudaimonia) in terms of the relations between pleasures and pains for insight into their own ethical theories. In his
doctoral thesis,
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,
Karl Marx (1818–1883) interpreted Democritus as a rationalist skeptic, whose epistemology was inherently contradictory, but saw Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose worldview is internally consistent and practically applicable. The
British poet
Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) praised "the sober majesties / of settled, sweet, Epicurean life" in his 1868 poem "Lucretius". Epicurus's ethical teachings also had an indirect impact on the philosophy of Utilitarianism in England during the nineteenth century.
Friedrich Nietzsche once noted: "Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former – although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity." Academic interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject. The texts from the library of
Philodemus of Gadara in the
Villa of the Papyri in
Herculaneum, first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated, and published by scholars part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the
United States National Endowment for the Humanities, and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in
Naples. Epicurus's popular appeal among non-scholars is difficult to gauge, but it seems to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical subjects such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato. ==References==