789 



EPICURUS. 



EPIMENIDES. 



790 



by Perdicoas after the death of Alexander the Great, and went to 

 Colophon to join his father. In his thirty-second year, B.C. 310, he 

 went to Mitylene, where he set up a school. Staying only one year at 

 Mitylene, he next went to Lampsacus, where he taught for four years. 

 He returned to Athens in the year B.O. 306 ; and now founded tha 

 school which ever after was named from him. He purchased a garden 

 for eighty minte, wherein he might live with his disciples and deliver 

 his lessons, and henceforth remained in Athens, with the exception 

 only of two or three visits to his friends in Asia Minor, until his death 

 in the year B.C. 270. The disease which brought on his death was 

 the stone. He was in his seventy-second year when he died, and ho 

 had been then settled in Athens as a teacher for thirty -six years. 



Epicurus is said by Diogenes Laertius (x. 9) to have had so many 

 friends "that even whole cities could not contain them." Pupils 

 came to him from distant places, very many from Lampsacus; ami 

 while mn often deserted other schools to join that of Epicurus, 

 there were only two instances at most of Epicuru? being deserted for 

 any other teacher. So remarkably was this the cass (and it continued 

 to be so as long as the Epicurean school lasted), that it is related as a 

 question put to Arcenlau.*, " why men change from other sects to 

 that of the Epicureans, but never leave this i" (Diog. Laert., iv. 43.) 

 Epicurus and his pupils lived together, in the garden which has been 

 mentioned, in a state of friendship, which, as it i i usually represented, 

 could not be surpassed ; abstaining from putting their properties 

 together, and enjoying them in common, for the quaint yet significant 

 reason that such a plan implied mutual distrust. The friendship 

 subsisting between Epicurus and his pupiU i-i commemorated by 

 Cicero ('De Fin.,' i. 20.) In this garden too they lived in the most 

 frugal and virtuous manner, though it WAS the delight of the enemies 

 of Epicurus to represent it differently, and though Timocrates, who 

 had once been his pupil, and had abandoned him, spread such stories 

 as that Epicurus used to vomit twice a day after a surfeit, and that 

 many immodest women were initiates of the garden. (Diog. Laert., x. 

 6, 7.) An inscription over the gate of the garden told him who might 

 be disposed to enter, tint barley-cakes and water would be the fare 

 provided for him (Senec., ' Ep.' 31) ; and such was the chastity of 

 Epicurus, that one of his principal opponents, (Jhrysippus, endea- 

 voured to account for it, so as to deny him any merit, by saying that 

 he was without passions. (Stob., 'Serrn.' 117.) Epicurus did not 

 marry, in order that he might be able to prosecute philosophy with 

 leas interruption. His mo-t attached friends and pupils were 

 Hermachus of Mitylene, whom he appointed by will to succeed him 

 as master of the school ; Metrodorus, who wrote several books in 

 defence of his system, and for whose children Epicurus in his will 

 liberally provided ; and Polyamus. Epicurus'a three brothers, Neocles, 

 Ctueredemus, and Aristobulus followed his philosophy ; as also one of 

 his servants, Mys, whom at his death he made free. Besides the 

 garden in Athens, from which the followers of Epicurus in succeeding 

 time came to be named the philosophers of the garden (Juv., ' Sat.' 

 xiii. 122, xiv. 319), Epicurus possessed a house in Melite, a village 

 near Athens, to which he used often to retire with his friends. On 

 his death, he left this house, together with the garden, to Hermachus, 

 as head of the school, to be left by him again to whomsoever might 

 be hU successor. 



Epicurus divided the whole field of knowledge into three parts, to 

 which he gave the names respectively of ' cauonics,' ' physics,' and 

 ' ethics.' The first two were subordinate to the third. The end of 

 all knowledge, of ethics directly or immediately, of canonics and 

 physics indirectly or mediately through ethics, was, according to 

 Kpicurus, to increase the happiness of man. 



Canonics, which was a subject altogether introductory both to physics 

 and ethics, treated of the means by which knowledge, both physical 

 ami ethical, was obtained, and of the conditions or (as they were called 

 by Epicurus) 'criteria' of truth. These conditions or criteria were, 

 according to him, sensations (ai<rOr)<reis), ideas or imaginations (irpo- 

 \fi\lttis), and affections (irdffri). From these three S'-i'ts of consciousness 

 we get all our knowledge. What Epicurus then called canonics, viewed 

 in relation to physics and ethics, is, viewed absolutely or in itself, 

 psychology. Epicurus seems to have explained rightly the depend- 

 ence of ideas upon sensations (Diog. Laert., x. 33) ; but in accounting 

 for sensations, he, like Democritus, left the path of sound psychology, 

 and introduced the fanciful hypothesis of emanations from bodies. 



In physics he trod pretty closely in the footsteps of Democritus 

 [DEMOCRITUS] ; 10 much so that he was accused of taking his atomic 

 cosmology from that philosopher without acknowledgment : he made 

 indeed very few and unimportant alterations. According to Epicurus, 

 as also to Democritus and Leucippus before him, the universe consists 

 of two parts, matter and space, or vacuum, in which matter exists and 

 moves ; and all matter, of every kind and form, is reducible to certain 

 indivisible particles, atoms, which are eternal. These atoms, moving, 

 according to a natural tendency, straight downwards, and also obliquely, 

 have thereby come to form the different bodies which are found in the 

 world, and which differ, in kind and shape, according as the atoms are 

 differently placed in respect of one another. It is clear that in this 

 system a creator is dispensed with ; and indeed Epicurus, here again 

 following Democritus, set about to prove, in an a priori way, that 

 this creator could not exist, inasmuch as nothing could arise out of 

 nothing, any more than it could utterly perish and become nothing. 



The atoms have existed always, and always will exist; and all tho 

 various physical phenomena are brought about, from time to time, by 

 their various motions. 



It remains to speak of the Epicurean system of ethics. Setting out 

 from the two facts, that man is susceptible of pleasure and pain, ami 

 th:vt he seeks the one and avoids the other, Epicurus propounded that 

 it is a man's duty to endeavour to increase to the utmost his pleasures 

 and diminish to the utmost his pains ; choosing that which tends to 

 pleasure rather than that which tends to pain, and that which tends to 

 a greater pleasure or to a lesser pain, rather than that which tends 

 respectively to a lesser pleasure or to a greater pain. He used the 

 terms pleasure and pain in tho most comprehensive way, as including 

 pleasure and pain both of mind and of body ; and he esteemed the 

 pleasures and pains of the mind as incomparably greater than those of 

 the body. Making then good and evil, or virtue and vice, depend on 

 a tendency to increase pleasure and diminish pain, or the opposite, he 

 arrived, as he easily might do, at the several virtues to be inculcated 

 and vices to be denounced. And when he got thus far, even his adver- 

 saries had nothing to s-iy against him. It is strange that they should 

 have continued to revile the principle, no matter by what name it 

 might be called, when they saw that it was a principle that led to 

 truth. But even in our own ago and country the same cry has been 

 raised ; and men, ignorant of the principles of tho ancient and of the 

 modern philosopher alike, have endeavoured, by bringing to bear on 

 it as a hird name the name Epicurean, to crush the philosophy of 

 Bentham. 



Though Epicurus dispensed with a Divina Being as creator of the 

 world, he yet did not deny the existence of gods. That there was an 

 inconsistency in this is obvious. But he professed that the universal 

 prevalence of the ideas of gods was sufficient to prove that they 

 existed ; and thinking it necessary to derive these ideas, like all other 

 ideas, from sensations, he imagined that the gods were beings of human 

 form, hovering about in the air, and made known to men by tha 

 customary emanations. He believed that these gods were eternal and 

 supremely happy, living in a state of quiet, and meddling not with 

 the affairs of the world. He contended that they were to bo wor- 

 shipped on account of the excellence of their nature, not because they 

 could do men either good or harm. (Cic., ' De Nat. Deor.,' i. 41 ; Senec., 

 'De Benef.,'iv. 19.) 



The two chief sources of knowledge concerning the doctrines of 

 Epicurus are the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius, and the poem of 

 Lucretius ' De Rerutn NatunV In the first of these are letters from 

 Kpicurus himself to three of his friends, which give a brief account 

 of all the parts of his system. Information is furnished also by the 

 writings of Cicero, principally the 'De Finibus' and the 'DeNatura 

 Deorum;' by those of Seneca; and the treatise of Plutarch, entitled 

 ' Against Colotes." 



Epicurus was, according to Diogenes Laertius, a more voluminous 

 writer than any other philosopher, having written as many as 300 

 volumes, in all of which he is said to have studiously avoided making 

 quotations. All that now remains of his works are the letters con- 

 tained in the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius, and parts of two books 

 of his treatise on Nature (irtpl tpvrrfas), which were discovered at Her- 

 culaneurn. The last were published at Leipzig in 1818, being edited 

 by OrelH. A critical edition of the first two letters of Epicurus was 

 edited by J. Glo. Schneider, Leipzig, 1813. 



Diogenes Laertius is the principal authority for the life of Epicurus ; 

 brief and incidental notices are also supplied by Suidas, Cicero, Seneca, 

 and Plutarch. There is an account of the life and defence of tho 

 character of Epicurus, in eight books, by Qassendi (Lugd. Bat., 1647), 

 and a life by a Frenchman of the name of Hendal (Par., 1679). It is 

 unnecessary to mention the accounts given in Fabricius, Bayle, and all 

 the cojimon histories of philosophy. 



The Epicurean school was carried on, after Hermachus, by Poly- 

 stratus and many others, concerning whom nothing particular is known ; 

 and the doctrines which Epicurus had taught underwent few modi- 

 fications. When introduced among the Romans, these doctrines, 

 though very much opposed, were yet adopted by many distinguished 

 men, as Lucretius, Atticus, Horace ; and under the emperors, Pliny 

 the Younger and Lucian of Samosata were Epicureans. A list of 

 Epicureans among the Greeks and Romans will be found in Fabricius, 

 ' Bibliotheca Grseca,' ed. Harles., vol. iii. pp. 598-614. 



EPIME'NIDES was born in the year B.C. 659 (Suidas), at PliEcstus, 

 in Crete, according to some accounts ; or at Cnossus, according to others; 

 he was certainly a citizen of the latter place, though his father appears 

 to have been a Phajstian. (Diog. Laert., i. 109.) He pissed his youth 

 in solitary retirement, which is explained in the ancient account as a 

 supernatural sleep into which he fell when a youth, and did not awake 

 till more than fifty years after, when he made his appearance among 

 his fellow-citizens with long hair and a flowing beard, and with know- 

 ledge of medicine and natural history, which then appeared more than 

 human. The event of his life for which he is best known, was his 

 visit to Athens at the request of the inhabitants, in order to pave the 

 way for tho legislation of Solon by purifications and propitiatory 

 sacrifices. These rites were calculated, according to the spirit of the 

 age, to allay the feuds and party dissensions which prevailed there ; 

 and although what he enjoined was mostly of a religious nature (for 

 instance, the sacrifice of a human victim, the consecration of a temple 



