The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (best free ebook reader txt) 📕

Hippobotus and Sotion, he had as pupils, Dioscorides of Cyprus, and Nicolochus of Rhodes, and Euphranor of Seleucia, and Praylus of the Troas, who was a man of such constancy of mind that, as Phylarchus relates in his History, he allowed himself to be punished as a traitor wholly undeservedly, not uttering one word of complaint against his fellow citizens; and Euphranor had for his pupil Eubulus of Alexandria, who was the master of Ptolemy, who was the master of Sarpedon and Heraclides. And Heraclides was the master of Aenesidemus of Cnossus, who wrote eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses; he was also the master of Zeuxippus Polites, who was the master of Zeuxis Goniopus, who was the master of Antiochus of Laodicea, in Lycia. Antiochus again, was the master of Menodotus of Nicomedia, a skillful physician, and of Theodas of Laodicea; and Menodotus was the master of Herodotus of Tarsus, the son of Arieus; Herodotus was the master of Sextus Empiricus, who left ten books of Skeptic Maxims, and other excellent works; and Sextus was the master of Saturninus Cythenas, who was also an empiric. Book X Epicurus

Epicurus was an Athenian, and the son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, of the burgh of Gargettus, and of the family of the Philaidae, as Metrodorus tells us in his treatise on Nobility of Birth. Some writers, and among them Heraclides in his Abridgment of Sotion, say that as the Athenians had colonised Samos, he was brought up there, and came to Athens in his eighteenth year, while Xenocrates was president of the Academy, and Aristotle at Chalcis. But after the death of Alexander the Macedonian, when the Athenians were driven out of Samos by Perdiccas, Epicurus went to Colophon to his father.

And when he had spent some time there and collected some disciples, he again returned to Athens, in the time of Anaxicrates, and for some time studied philosophy, mingling with the rest of the philosophers; but subsequently, he somehow or other established the school which was called after his name; and he used to say that he began to study philosophy when he was fourteen years of age; but Apollodorus the Epicurean, in the first book of his account of the life of Epicurus, says that he came to the study of philosophy having conceived a great contempt for the grammarians, because they could not explain to him the statements in Hesiod respecting Chaos.

But Hermippus tells us that he himself was a teacher of grammar, and that afterwards, having met with the books of Democritus, he applied himself with zeal to philosophy, on which account Timon says of him:

The last of all the natural philosophers,
And the most shameless too, did come from Samos,
A grammar teacher, and the most ill-bred
And most unmanageable of mankind.

And he had for his companions in his philosophical studies his three brothers⁠—Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus⁠—who were excited by his exhortations, as Philodemus the Epicurean relates in the tenth book of the Classification of Philosophers. He had also a slave, whose name was Mus, as Myronianus tells us in his Similar Historical Chapters.

But Diotimus the Stoic was very hostile to him, and calumniated him in a most bitter manner, publishing fifty obscene letters and attributing them to Epicurus, and also giving him the credit of the letters which generally go under the name of Chrysippus. And Posidonius the Stoic, and Nicolaus, and Sotion, in the twelfth of these books which are entitled the Refutations of Diocles, of which there are altogether twenty-four volumes, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, have also attacked him with great severity; for they say that he used to accompany his mother when she went about the small cottages performing purifications, and that he used to read the formula, and that he used also to keep a school with his father at very low terms. Also, that he, as well as one of his brothers, was a most profligate man in his morals, and that he used to live with Leontium, the courtesan. Moreover, that he claimed the books of Democritus on Atoms, and that of Aristippus on Pleasure, as his own; and that he was not a legitimate citizen; and this last fact is asserted also by Timocrates, and by Herodotus in his treatise on the Youth of Epicurus.

They also say that he used to flatter Mithras, the steward of Lysimachus, in a disgraceful manner, calling him in his letters Paean, and King; and also that he flattered Idomeneus, and Herodotus, and Timocrates who had revealed all his secret practices, and that he flattered them on this very account. And in his letters to Leontium, he says: “O king Apollo, my dear Leontium, what transports of joy did I feel when I read your charming letter.” And to Themista, the wife of Leonteus, he writes: “I am ready and prepared, if you do not come to me, to roll myself to wherever you and Themista invite me.” And he addresses Pythocles, a beautiful youth, thus: “I will sit quiet,” says he, “awaiting your longed for and godlike approach.” And at another time, writing to Themista, he says: “That he had determined to make his way with her,” as Theodorus tells us in the fourth book of his treatises against Epicurus.

He also wrote to many other courtesans, and especially to Leontium, with whom Metrodorus also was in love. And in his treatise on the Chief Good, he writes thus: “For I do not know what I can consider good, if I put out of sight the pleasures which arise from favors, and those which are derived from amatory pleasures, and from music, and from the contemplation of beauty.” And in his letter to Pythocles, he writes: “And, my dear boy, avoid all sorts of education.”

Epictetus also attacks him as a most debauched man, and reproaches him most vehemently, and so does Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, in his treatise entitled the Merry Guests, and this