![]() ![]() Diotimus the Stoic, who was very hostile to him, assailed him with bitter slanders, attributing fifty obscene letters as being written by Epicurus and so too did the author who ascribed to Epicurus the letters commonly attributed to Chrysippus. According to Hermippus, however, he started as a school-teacher, but on coming across the works of Democritus turned eagerly to philosophy, which accounts for Timon's allusion in the lines: “Again there is the latest and most shameless of the natural philosophers, the school-teacher's son from Samos, himself the most ill-bred and undisciplined of mankind.”Īt his encouragement his three brothers, Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus, joined in his studies, as Philodemus the Epicurean relates in the tenth book of his comprehensive work On Philosophers as did his slave named Mys, as stated by Myronianus in Historical Parallels. ![]() He says himself that he first came to study philosophy at the age of fourteen, Apollodorus the Epicurean (in the first book of his Life of Epicurus says that he turned to philosophy in contempt of the school-teachers who could not tell him the meaning of “chaos” in Hesiod. įor a while, it is said, he pursued his studies in common with other philosophers, but afterwards put forward independent views by founding the school named after him. ![]() After the death of Alexander of Macedon and the expulsion of the Athenian colonists from Samos by Perdiccas, Epicurus left Athens to join his father in Colophon for some time he stayed there and gathered students around him, then returned to Athens again during the archonship of Anaxicrates. He is said by Heraclides (in his Epitome of Sotion) as well as by others, to have been brought up at Samos after the Athenians had sent colonists there and to have come to Athens at the age of eighteen, at the time when Xenocrates was head of the Academy and Aristotle was in Chalcis. Use the dictionary lookup tool to examine difficult English words used by the translator, or quickly find information on a specific philosopher or school of thought by searching the entire collection for keywords.Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X Diogenes Laertius Home/Ancient Texts | Beliefs | Relationships | History | Resources | Epicurean Philosophy Listĭiogenes Laertius (3 rd Century A.D.) is the primary source for the surviving complete letters of Epicurus and for biographical and other pertinent information about him:Įpicurus, son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, was an Athenian of the Gargettus ward and the Philaidae clan, as Metrodorus says in his book On Noble Birth. Logos Bible Software tools allow you to go deeper into the Greek text and explore Laertius’ language and the thinkers he describes. Full of facts and quotations from a range of Hellenistic philosophers, this collection is a perfect starting point or everyday reference tool for those interested in history, philosophy, or the classics.Įach text includes the original Greek and an English translation for easy side-by-side comparison. The 10-book history is loosely divided into two sections: “Ionian,” describing Anaximander, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, and others and “Italian,” describing Pythagoras, Epicurus, the Eleatics, the Skeptics, and others. Little is known about the ancestry or birthplace of the great biographer however, his Lives of Eminent Philosophers remains a superior source of information for students and scholars. ![]() Diogenes Laertius, who carefully compiled his information from hundreds of sources, enriches his accounts with important quotations from his subjects. This rich compendium of the lives and doctrines of philosophers ranges over three centuries, from Thales to Epicurus (to whom the entire tenth book is devoted), portraying 45 significant figures of Greek philosophy. ![]()
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