The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
And the most shameless too, did come from Samos,
A grammar teacher, and the most ill-bred
And most unmanageable of mankind.
And he had for his companions in his philosophical studies, his three
brothers, Neocles, Chæredemus, and Aristobulus, who were excited by his
exhortations, as Philodemus, the Epicurean, relates in the tenth book of
the Classification of Philosophers. He had also a slave, whose name was
Mus, as Myronianus tells us in his Similar Historical Chapters.
III. But Diotimus, the Stoic, was very hostile to him, and calumniated
him in a most bitter manner, publishing fifty obscene letters, and
attributing them to Epicurus, and also giving him the credit of the
letters, which generally go under the name of Chrysippus. And Posidonius,
the Stoic, and Nicolaus, and Sotion, in the twelfth of these books, which
are entitled the Refutations of Diocles, of which there are altogether
twenty-four volumes, and Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, have also attacked
him with great severity; for they say that he used to accompany his
mother when she went about the small cottages, performing purifications,
and that he used to read the formula, and that he used also to keep a
school with his father at very low terms. Also, that he, as well as one
of his brothers, was a most profligate man in his morals, and that he
used to live with Leontium, the courtesan. Moreover, that he claimed the
books of Democritus on Atoms, and that of Aristippus on Pleasure, as his
own; and that he was not a legitimate citizen; and this last fact is
asserted also by Timocrates, and by Herodotus, in his treatise on the
Youth of Epicurus.
They also say that he used to flatter Mithras, the steward of Lysimachus,
in a disgraceful manner, calling him in his letters Pæan, and King; and
also that he flattered Idomeneus, and Herodotus, and Timocrates who had
revealed all his secret practices, and that he flattered them on this
very account. And in his letters to Leontium, he says, “O king Apollo,
my dear Leontium, what transports of joy did I feel when I read your
charming letter.” And to Themista, the wife of Leonteus, he writes, “I am
ready and prepared, if you do not come to me, to roll myself to wherever
you and Themista invite me.” And he addresses Pythocles, a beautiful
youth, thus, “I will sit quiet,” says he, “awaiting your longed for and
god-like approach.” And at another time, writing to Themista, he says,
“That he had determined to make his way with her,” as Theodorus tells us
in the fourth book of his treatises against Epicurus.
He also wrote to many other courtesans, and especially to Leontium,
with whom Metrodorus also was in love. And in his treatise on the Chief
Good, he writes thus, “For I do not know what I can consider good, if
I put out of sight the pleasures which arise from favours, and those
which are derived from amatory pleasures, and from music, and from the
contemplation of beauty.” And in his letter to Pythocles, he writes,
“And, my dear boy, avoid all sorts of education.”
Epictetus also attacks him as a most debauched man, and reproaches him
most vehemently, and so does Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, in
his treatise entitled the Merry Guests, and this Timocrates had been a
disciple in his school, though he afterwards abandoned it; and he says
that he used to vomit twice a day, in consequence of his intemperance;
and that he himself had great difficulty in escaping from this nocturnal
philosophy, and that mystic kind of re-union. He also accuses Epicurus
of shameful ignorance in his reasoning, and still more especially in
all matters relating to the conduct of life. And says that he was in a
pitiable state of health, so that he could not for many years rise up
from his sofa; and that he used to spend a minæ a day on his eating,
as he himself states in his letter to Leontium, and in that to the
philosophers at Mitylene. He also says that many courtesans used to
live with him and Metrodorus; and among them Marmarium, and Hedea, and
Erotium, and Nicidium.
IV. And in the thirty-seven books which he wrote about natural
philosophy, they say that he says a great many things of the same kind
over and over again, and that in them he writes in contradiction of other
philosophers, and especially of Nausiphanes, and speaks as follows, word
for word: “But if any one else ever was afflicted in such a manner,
then certainly this man had a continual labour, striving to bring forth
the sophistical boastfulness of his mouth, like many other slaves.” And
Epicurus also speaks of Nausiphanes in his letters, in the following
terms: “These things led him on to such arrogance of mind, that he
abused me and called me a schoolmaster.” He used also to call him Lungs,
and Blockhead, and Humbug, and Fornicator. And he used to call Plato’s
followers Flatterers of Dionysius, but Plato himself he called Golden.
Aristotle he called a debauchee and a glutton, saying that he joined the
army after he had squandered his patrimony, and sold drugs. He used
also to call Protagoras a porter, and the secretary of Democritus, and
to say that he taught boys their letters in the streets. Heraclitus,
he called a disturber; Democritus, he nicknamed Lerocritus;[138] and
Antidorus, Sænidorus;[139] the Cynics he called enemies of Greece; and
the Dialecticians he charged with being eaten up with envy. Pyrrho, he
said, was ignorant and unlearned.
V. But these men who say this are all wrong, for there are plenty of
witnesses of the unsurpassable kindness of the man to every body; both
his own country which honoured 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, none of whom ever deserted him, except Metrodorus, the
son of Stratoniceus, who went over to Carneades, probably because he
was not able to bear with equanimity the unapproachable excellence of
Epicurus. 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. We may also speak here of his gratitude towards his
parents, and his beneficence to his brothers, and his gentleness to his
servants (as is plain from his will, and from the fact too, that they
united with him in his philosophical studies, and the most eminent of
them was the one whom I have mentioned already, named Mus); and his
universal philanthropy towards all men.
His piety towards the Gods, and his affection for his country was quite
unspeakable; though, from an excess of modesty, he avoided affairs of
state. And though he lived when very difficult times oppressed Greece, he
still remained in his own country, only going two or three times across
to Ionia to see his friends, who used to throng to him from all quarters,
and to live with him in his garden, as we are told by Apollodorus. (This
garden he bought for eighty minæ.)
VI. And Diocles, in the third book of his Excursion, says that they all
lived in the most simple and economical manner; “They were content,” says
he, “with a small cup of light wine, and all the rest of their drink was
water.” He also tells us that Epicurus would not allow his followers to
throw their property into a common stock, as Pythagoras did, who said
that the possessions of friends were held in common. For he said that
such a doctrine as that was suited rather for those who distrusted one
another; and that those who distrusted one another were not friends. But
he himself in his letters, says that he is content with water and plain
bread, and adds, “Send me some Cytherean cheese, that if I wish to have a
feast, I may have the means.” This was the real character of the man who
laid down the doctrine that pleasure was the chief good; whom Athenæus
thus mentions in an epigram:—
O men, you labour for pernicious ends;
And out of eager avarice, begin
Quarrels and wars. And yet the wealth of nature
Fixes a narrow limit for desires,
Though empty judgment is insatiable.
This lesson the wise child of Neocles
Had learnt by heart, instructed by the Muses,
Or at the sacred shrine of Delphi’s God.
And as we advance further, we shall learn this fact from his dogmas, and
his apophthegms.
VII. Of all the ancient philosophers he was, as we are told by Diocles,
most attached to Anaxagoras (although in some points he argued against
him); and to Archelaus, the master of Socrates. And he used, Diocles
adds, to accustom his pupils to preserve his writings in their memory.
Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, asserts that he was a pupil of
Nausiphanes, and Praxiphanes; but he himself does not mention this; but
says in his letter to Euridicus, that he had been his own instructor. He
also agreed with Hermarchus in not admitting that Leucippus deserved to
be called a philosopher; though some authors, among whom is Apollodorus,
speak of him as the master of Democritus. Demetrius, the Magnesian, says
that he was a pupil of Xenocrates also.
VIII. He uses in his works plain language with respect to anything he
is speaking of, for which Aristophanes, the grammarian, blames him,
on the ground of that style being vulgar. But he was such an admirer
of perspicuity, that even in his treatise on Rhetoric, he aims at and
recommends nothing but clearness of expression. And in his letters,
instead of the usual civil expressions, “Greeting,” “Farewell,” and so
on, he substitutes, “May you act well,” “May you live virtuously,” and
expressions of that sort. Some of his biographers assert that it was he
who composed the treatise entitled the Canon, in imitation of the Tripod
of Nausiphanes, whose pupil they say that he was, and add that he was
also a pupil of Pamphilus, the Platonist, at Samos.
IX. They further tell us that he began to study philosophy at twelve
years of age, and that he presided over his school thirty-two years.
And he was born as we are told by Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, in
the third year of the hundred and ninth olympiad, in the archonship of
Sosigenes, on the seventh day of the month Gamelion, seven years after
the death of Plato. And when he was thirty-two years of age, he first
set up his school at Mitylene, and after that at Lampsacus; and when he
had spent five years in these two cities, he came to Athens; and he died
there in the second year of the hundred and twenty-seventh olympiad, in
the archonship of Pytharatus, when he had lived seventy-two years. And
Hermarchus, the son of Agemarchus, and a citizen of Mitylene, succeeded
him in his school.
He died of the stone, as Hermarchus mentions in his letters, after having
been ill a fortnight; and at the end of the fortnight, Hermippus says
that he went into a brazen bath, properly tempered with warm water, and
asked for a cup of pure wine and drank it; and having recommended his
friends to remember his doctrines, he expired. And there is an epigram of
ours on him, couched in the following language:—
Now, fare-ye-well, remember all my words;
This was the dying charge of Epicurus:
Then to the bath he went, and drank some wine,
And sank beneath the cold embrace of Pluto.
Such was the life of the man, and such was his death.
X. And he made his will in the following terms:—
“According to this my will, I give all my possessions to Amynomachus, of
Bate, the son of Philocrates, and to Timocrates, of Potamos, the son of
Demetrius; according to the deed of gift to each, which is deposited
in the temple of Cybele; on condition that they make over my garden
and all that is attached to it to Hermarchus, of Mitylene, the son of