EPICU'RUS was born in the year me. 31], seven years atter the death of Plato. He was born iu the island of Samos, whither his father had gone from Athens In the year sae. 352, among 2000 colonists thou sent out by the Athenians. (Stmb. xiv., p. 638.) Ile was how ever an Athenian born, belonging to the demo Gargettue, and to the tribe sEgeis. His father Neocles Is said to have been a schoolmaster, and his mother Chreristmta to have practised arts of magic, in which It was afterwards made a charge against Epicurus that, when he was young, he assisted her. (Dlog. Laert., x. 4.) Having passed his early years In Samos and Tees, Epicurus went to Athena at the age of eighteen. We are told that he had begun to study philosophy when only fourteen, having been incited thereto by a desire, which the teachers whom he had applied to had failed to satisfy, of understanding Ilesiod's description of chaos; and that he began with the writings of Democritus. In Samos he is said to have received lessons from Pamphilus, a follower of Plato. (Suidas; Cie. ' De Nat. Door.; i. 26.) At tho time when Epicurus arrived in Athens, Xenocrates was teaching in the academy, and Theophrastus in the Lyceum; and we may suppose that he did not fail to avail himself of tho opportunities of instruction which were thus within his reach. Indeed it was stated by Demetrius binaries (Diog. Leert., x. 13) that Epicurus was a pupil of Xenoerstas. Ha is also said, on the testimony of Apollodorue, to have received lessons from Lyalphanes and Praxiphanes ; and again it Is stated that ho was a pupil of Natniphanes. (Id. x. 14; Suid.) It was however Epicurua's wont to boast that Le had learnt from uo man but himself.
On the occasion of his first visit to Athena, Epicurus stayed there fur a very short time. Ile left it in consequence of the measures taken by Perdiccas 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 be 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.C. 306; and now founded the school which ever after was named from him. He purchased a garden for eighty minx, 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 n.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; and while men often deserted other schools to join that of Epicurus, there were only two instances at most of Epicurus being deserted for any other teacher. So remarkably was this the case (and it continued to be so afi long as the Epicurean school lasted), that it is related as a question put to Areesilaus, "why men change from other sects to that of the Epicureans, but never leave this?" (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 is 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 pupils is 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 inmates of the garden. (Nog. Laert., x. 6, 7.) An inscription over the gate of the garden told him who might be disposed to enter, that barley-cakes and water would be the fare provided for him (Senco., Ep.' 31); and such was the chastity of Epicurus, that one of his principal opponents, Chrysippus, endea voured to account for it, so as to deny him any merit, by saying that he was without passions. (Stub., 'Serra.' 117.) Epicurus did not marry, in order that he might be able to prosecute philosophy with less interruption. His mo't attached friends and pupils were Hermachus of Mitylene, whom lie 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 Polymnus. Epieuruis three brothers, Neocles, Chreredemum, and Aristobulus followed his philosophy ; as also ono of his servants, 3Iys, whom at his death ho 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 hie 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 his successor.