Epicurus

the Garden

Revolutionary for antiquity: women and slaves were welcome too.

💡 Did you know? His school was simply called „the Garden“, for it met in one and unusually, he taught women and slaves there too.

pleasure

No call to gluttony: a piece of cheese, he said, was a feast to him.

💡 Did you know? By „pleasure“ Epicurus meant not indulgence but the absence of pain and fear: a modest, tranquil life.

ataraxia

Achieved through frugality, friendship, and seeing through unnecessary fears.

💡 Did you know? „Ataraxia“ is unshakeable peace of mind: the true goal of the Epicurean life.

Death is nothing to us

For good and bad exist only in sensation and death is the end of all sensation.

💡 Did you know? „While we exist, death is not; when death is, we are not“: so the fear of death is groundless.

Democritus

Everything consists of atoms and void, including the soul, which dissolves at death.

💡 Did you know? Epicurus adopted Democritus's atomism: everything, even the soul, consists of atoms in the void.

none

The gods exist, but live blissful and undisturbed in the spaces between worlds: no reason for fear.

💡 Did you know? For this, pious contemporaries and later the Church branded Epicurus a dangerous denier of the gods.

Live hidden

Instead of politics and fame: private happiness in the circle of friends.

💡 Did you know? „Láthe biósas“ (live unnoticed): happiness is found in private life rather than public ambition.

friendship

'Of all the things wisdom provides for happiness, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.'

💡 Did you know? Of all that contributes to happiness, friendship is the greatest, said Epicurus.

Samos

To Athenian settlers: like Pythagoras 200 years earlier, a famous son of the island.

💡 Did you know? Epicurus was born on the island of Samos: the same island as Pythagoras.

pleasure-seeker

In fact the Garden lived plainly: yet 'epicurean' became a word for gourmets.

💡 Did you know? Epicurus himself mostly drank water and ate simple bread.

Lucretius

Of Epicurus' roughly 300 writings, only three doctrinal letters and collections of sayings survive.

💡 Did you know? The Roman Lucretius set out Epicurus's teaching in the poem „De rerum natura“: our most important source for it.

Memory of friends outweighs the pain

He died in Athens in 270 BC after a long illness: serene to the end.

💡 Did you know? Dying of a kidney ailment, he wrote that the joy of conversations with friends outweighed all his pain.

Epicurus

Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who saw happiness in a modest, fear-free life and in friendship.

💡 Did you know? The dismissive term „epicurean“ for a mere pleasure-seeker misreads his teaching of moderate contentment.