THE LIFE OF EPICURUS

FROM BOOK X of
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS’
THE LIVES & OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS

TRANSLATED BY C.D. YONGE.
 

EPICURUS'S FOLLOWERS & NAMESAKES

Among his disciples, of whom there were many, the following were eminent: Metrodorus, the son of Athenaeus (or of Timocrates) and of Sande, a citizen of Lampsacus, who from his first acquaintance with Epicurus never left him except once for six months spent on a visit to his native place, from which he returned to him again. His goodness was proved in all ways, as Epicurus testifies in the introductions to his works and in the third book of the Timocrates. Such he was: he gave his sister Batis to Idomeneus to wife, and himself took Leontion the Athenian courtesan as his concubine. He showed dauntless courage in meeting troubles and death, as Epicurus declares in the first book of his memoir.

He died, we learn, seven years before Epicurus in his fifty-third year, and Epicurus himself in his will already cited clearly speaks of him as departed, and enjoins upon his executors to make provision for Metrodorus's children. The above-mentioned Timocrates also, the brother of Metrodorus and a giddy fellow, was another of his pupils.

Metrodorus wrote the following works:

Against the Physicians, in three books.
Of Sensations.
Against Timocrates.
Of Magnanimity.
Of Epicurus's Weak Health.
Against the Dialecticians.
Against the Sophists, in nine books.
The Way to Wisdom.
Of Change.
Of Wealth.
In Criticism of Democritus.
Of Noble Birth.

Next came Polyaenus, son of Athenodorus, a citizen of Lampsacus, a just and kindly man, as Philodemus and his pupils affirm. Next came Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, son of Agemortus, a citizen of Mitylene, the son of a poor man and at the outset a student of rhetoric.

There are in circulation the following excellent works by him:

Correspondence concerning Empedocles, in twenty-two books.
Of Mathematics.
Against Plato.
Against Aristotle.

He died of paralysis, but not till he had given full proof of his ability.

And then there is Leonteus of Lampsacus and his wife Themista, to whom Epicurus wrote letters; further, Colotes and Idomeneus, who were also natives of Lampsacus. All these were distinguished, and with them Polystratus, the successor of Hermarchus; he was succeeded by Dionysius, and he by Basilides. Apollodorus, known as the tyrant of the garden, who wrote over four hundred books, is also famous; and the two Ptolemaei of Alexandria, the one black and the other white; and Zeno of Sidon, the pupil of Apollodorus, a voluminous author; and Demetrius, who was called the Laconian; and Diogenes of Tarsus, who compiled the select lectures; and Orion, and others whom the genuine Epicureans call Sophists.

There were three other men who bore the name of Epicurus: one the son of Leonteus and Themista; another a Magnesian by birth; and a third, a drill-sergeant.