Character Catalog

Letter expounding Epicurean ethics: classification of desires, the fourfold remedy (tetrapharmakos), and the path to happiness. It is the most accessible of Epicurus's texts, often studied in philosophy classes.

Summary of Epicurean physics: atomist theory, the nature of the infinite universe, and a materialist explanation of phenomena. It serves as an abridgment of his major treatise On Nature.

Letter devoted to celestial and meteorological phenomena, aimed at freeing people from superstitious fear by offering rational natural explanations.

A collection of forty maxims summarizing the fundamental principles of Epicureanism. They served as a memory aid for disciples in the daily practice of philosophy.

A collection of 81 sayings discovered in a Vatican manuscript in the 19th century. They complement the Principal Doctrines and offer practical advice on friendship, pleasure, and wisdom.

Major work in 37 books laying out the entirety of Epicurean physics. Largely lost, fragments have been recovered from the carbonized papyri of Herculaneum.

When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of the dissolute nor those consisting in physical enjoyment, but rather the absence of pain in the body and of disturbance in the soul.

Nothing comes into being from what does not exist. For everything would come from everything, with no need of seeds whatsoever. And if what perishes were destroyed by passing into non-being, all things would have perished, lacking the existences into which they might have been resolved.

Death is nothing to us: for that which has been dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.

Epicurus, son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, an Athenian of the deme of Gargettus. He began to study philosophy at the age of fourteen. He founded his school in a garden which he purchased for eighty minas.

When human life lay prostrate upon the earth, crushed beneath the weight of religion, a man of Greece was the first to dare raise his mortal eyes against it and the first to stand firm against it.

Greek island in the Aegean Sea where Epicurus was born and raised. His father was an Athenian settler and schoolteacher there.

Garden located between the Academy and the Dipylon gate, where Epicurus founded his school around 306 BC. It is there that he taught for more than thirty years until his death.

City where Epicurus founded his first school around 311 BC, before being forced to leave due to the hostility of local Aristotelian philosophers.

City in Asia Minor where Epicurus taught before settling in Athens. There he recruited loyal disciples such as Metrodorus and Polyaenus.

City in Ionia where Epicurus's family took refuge after the expulsion of Athenian settlers from Samos. It is there that he began to deepen his philosophical thinking.

Epicurus's main writing medium — he is said to have composed around 300 scrolls. His disciples copied and studied his texts within the Garden.

Common writing tool for daily notes and philosophical exercises. Students of the Garden used them to memorize the master's maxims.

Symbols of Epicurean frugality. Epicurus was content with a simple diet, claiming that a little cheese was enough to make a feast.

An everyday object that enabled philosophical discussions in the evening. Conversations in the Garden often continued after sunset.

Metrodorus of Lampsacus was Epicurus's closest disciple. Busts and portraits of Garden members adorned the school, underscoring the importance of friendship.

Epicurus had his maxims carved on the walls of the Garden so that everyone could meditate on them. This practice was imitated by Diogenes of Oenoanda centuries later.