Epicurus was an Athenian philosopher from the demos of Gargettus, son of Neocles and Chaerestratus, born in 341 BCE on Samos, where his parents had moved as colonists. In Samos, he began studying the writings of earlier philosophers, Anaxagoras and Archelaus. His teachers were the Platonists Pamphilus in Samos and Xenocrates in Athens, and the Democritean Nausiphanes, who introduced him to Democritus’s atomic theory.

At the age of 18, he went to Athens to register at the civic registry and to serve his military duty. His stay there coincided with the death of Alexander the Great and the beginning of a long period of turmoil that troubled Greece. In Athens, where he stayed for a few years, he must have attended the teachings of Xenocrates who taught at the Academy.

He then went to Colophon to meet his parents, who had been expelled from Samos, along with all Athenian colonists, by Perdiccas. From Colophon, he went to Mytilene at the age of 32, where he first appeared as a teacher of philosophy. He did not stay in Mytilene for long and was soon forced to leave the city due to threats from the conservative administration.

He moved to Lampsacus, where democrats were dominant, and found fertile ground. We do not know exactly what he taught, but we imagine that he gradually tested what later became the foundations of his philosophy. However, we know the most important aspect of his life and perhaps his perception of philosophy: he made good friends and faithful students, who followed him and philosophized with him throughout their lives. Thus, it seems he realized from then on that a community of philosopher friends constitutes a unique opportunity to live justly, pleasurably, and happily.

During the 118th to 3rd Olympiad (306 BCE), at the age of 36, Epicurus, along with his friends, settled in Athens, bought a small garden for 80 minae, as Diogenes Laertius tells us, between the city and the Academy. There, he founded a school and taught his philosophical system. The school was named “The Garden.” In a short period, the Garden of Epicurus gained great fame, resulting in his followers being called “the men of the Garden.” The expansion of Epicurean teaching was facilitated by Epicurus’s love for his students and his gentle character, and on the other hand, the practical spirit of his ethical teaching, which was an oasis in the corruption-filled turbulent Greek society after the death of Alexander the Great and the military conflicts of his successors.

The Garden had a carefully designed program of education and public promotion to attract students. Those who accepted Epicurean teaching were encouraged to publicly declare their identity as Epicureans, to build friendships among themselves, to honor and take as models the founders of the Garden, and to participate in its special festivals.

A uniqueness of the Garden was its avoidance of any cooperative or communal form of organization. Legally speaking, the Garden was an association of teachers and scribes working in Epicurus’s house, and it was financially supported by teaching, book sales, and voluntary contributions. There was no communal ownership among the Epicureans, nor were there mandatory payments to the “leaders” of the Garden by the students, which pleasantly resulted in authentic authority for the teachers and the absence of factions and friction due to money. The long duration and stability of the Epicurean movement owe much to Epicurus’s organizational talent, who from the beginning eliminated the root causes of authoritarianism and internal conflicts in Epicurean communities and established an effective modus vivendi in the Garden’s relations with non-Epicureans.

Through such an environment, Epicurus became famous for his friendships and his generally liberal attitude, which allowed even women (among them the courtesan Leontion, who wrote a treatise against Aristotle’s follower Theophrastus) and slaves to participate in his close circle, in stark contrast to the elitist direction of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum.

The Garden allowed everyone to enter and attend classes, meaning people of all ages, any social status (even slaves), any financial situation or education, and regardless of gender. Despite her low status in Athenian society, Epicurus honored the woman within the Garden. Along with men, several women philosophized. This indeed constitutes a unique originality of the Garden. Epicurus was the first to see women as equal to men. It could even be said that the Athenian philosopher is known among the masses for gender equality, as well as for human rights. However, for this stance, as was natural, he was criticized.

Epicurus’s biographer, Diogenes Laertius, to prove his integrity and virtue, cites the following evidence: Firstly, that his homeland recognized his benefits and honored him with bronze statues, and secondly, that the number of his students was huge, and those who came to him were enchanted and never betrayed him. After teaching his students and friends for 36 years in the Garden, Epicurus died in Athens during the 127th to 3rd Olympiad (270 BCE), at the age of 71, after suffering unbearable pains, which he endured for fourteen days with great patience.

Epicurus divided his philosophy into three parts: a) Canonics or concerning the criterion (theory of knowledge), b) Physics (materialistic philosophy), c) Ethics (way of life). He usually taught canonical or logical philosophy, which he considered a science of knowledge, along with physics. He ranked them in this order so that logic would serve as an introduction to physics, and then both would help in understanding ethics, which was the main teaching.

The supreme good for Epicurus is life itself, life on earth, because there is no other. The happy life, whose foundation is the tranquility of the soul, ataraxia, as he said, and the measured enjoyment of goods

Epicurus based his Physics on Democritus (atomic theory). Fundamental principles of Epicurean physics are that nothing is created from nothing (“Nothing comes from what does not exist”), and that no thing, upon dissolution, ends in complete nonexistence (the principle of the conservation of matter).

The goal of Epicurus’s teaching was to give people a new freedom, not political or social, but individual freedom. That is, to liberate them from their fears and anxieties, to make them self-sufficient and capable of conquering mental tranquility. The purpose of life is “Pleasure,” and the avoidance of pain (algos). Prudence (practical wisdom) is considered the main means to achieve a happy life (eudaimonia), which guarantees the observance of limits even in enjoyment and the correct choice of what we will prefer or avoid (algorithm of desires). Epicurus considered mental pleasure much more important than physical pleasure. The mind not only shares the pleasurable sensations of the body at the moment they are experienced but also derives pleasure from the memory of past pleasures and the anticipation of future ones.

Mental pleasure can overcome physical pain. The mind can be affected by unnecessary desires, mainly the desire for wealth (greed), and the desire for power or for authority and glory (ambition). Both have no limit. It is impossible to satisfy them, so they entail pain and therefore must be eliminated (vain desires). Hence Epicurus’s statement “poverty, if measured by the natural purpose of life, is great wealth,” while limitless wealth means great poverty.” He also said: “Poverty is not having little but desiring more.” In line with this, his advice to Idomeneus: “If you want to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money, limit his desires.”

Epicurus advised his students to abstain from public life (to remain in obscurity) and, by extension, politics (Lathe biosas), because participation in public affairs would cause compromises and antagonism, resulting in their harm and consequently losing their tranquility and ataraxia. However, the teacher said that if someone is burning with the desire to engage in political affairs, then they should do so because the pain of deprivation will be greater than that of engagement.

Diogenes Laertius claims that all negative things said about Epicurus were slanders, as he was a simple and frugal man, did not drink, did not get involved in politics, loved his country, and respected the Gods. He did not oblige, as Pythagoras did, his friends to contribute their properties to the school. He also refutes that Epicurus criticized and slandered all contemporary and earlier philosophers, such as Democritus. Plutarch mentions that Epicurus honored Democritus because he had touched on the correct knowledge before him, and that the entirety of his teaching was named Democritean because Democritus found the first principles of physical philosophy. The founder of the Garden believed that theoretical engagement (philosophy) had no purpose in increasing knowledge but served the happy life. A happy life is not theoretically virtuous life but one that entails the reduction of pain, the quelling of anxiety and turmoil, and the calming of the soul.

Epicurus’s views on the soul and separately on its future fate made a deep impression on the educated class of the Greco-Roman world, were greeted with relief as the last word of science. The Roman patrician, Titus Lucretius Carus, sang warmly the teachings of the Greek sage, the first mortal who dared to face the mystery of the dark and threatening religion and taught people not to fear the gods and to despise death.

Epicurus was a prolific writer. Diogenes Laertius lists forty-one titles of Epicurus’s best books, with the most important being “On Nature,” which contained 37 books. He also mentions that his writings covered three hundred scrolls and that he far exceeded all previous authors.

We largely derive information concerning the details of Epicurus’s philosophy from secondary sources. His original works were lost due to their opposition to Christianity and every kind of authority. The most important of these is the Roman poet Lucretius, who wrote two centuries after Epicurus the poem “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things). A grand work, written before the Aeneid and rivals it as a literary masterpiece. The six books of the poem detail the Epicurean arguments concerning the basic constituents of things, the motion of atoms, the structure of the body and mind, the causes and nature of sensation and thought, the development of human civilization, and natural phenomena.

After Lucretius, the best secondary sources are Diogenes Laertius, who preserved three letters of Epicurus. The first two to the Epicurean Herodotus and to Pythocles concern physical philosophy, i.e., the composition of the world, the explanation of natural phenomena, and the existence of gods as well as meteorological phenomena. The third letter to Menoeceus is a summary of Epicurus’s ethical philosophy. Diogenes Laertius also preserved the “Principal Doctrines,” which are the teacher’s advice, simple and understandable to the masses, for achieving a happy life.

Other sources include Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. The Platonic Cicero and Plutarch felt great antipathy for Epicurean philosophy, and their criticism is interesting for understanding the hostile reception often encountered by the Garden. Seneca, although a Stoic, ends most of his “Moral Letters” with an Epicurean saying.

The skeptic Sextus Empiricus, who felt he was closer to Epicurean philosophy than to other dogmatic philosophical schools, offered a useful supplement to our knowledge of Epicurean empiricism. Finally, we have significant excerpts from the huge stone inscription of the Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda and from the “burnt” by the lava of Vesuvius papyri of Philodemus of the “Villa of the Papyri” of Herculaneum, Italy, whose reading has not been completed.

Epicurean philosophy became known in the Middle Ages through Cicero and the fathers of the Church with their negative stance and their warfare against Epicurus. Specifically, in the Middle Ages and the early years of the Renaissance, being an Epicurean meant rejecting divine providence and the immortality of the soul.

In modern times, Epicurean philosophy finds its vindication. Voltaire spoke very sympathetically of Epicurean philosophy, after saying the following: “Epicurus was a great man for his time. He saw what Descartes questioned, but Gassendi accepted and Newton proved, namely, that there cannot be motion if there is no empty space.”

Nietzsche and Marx speak very warmly about Epicurus and his philosophy. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence of the USA, declared himself an Epicurean. Existentialist philosophers directly base themselves on Epicurus. The famous professor of psychiatry and author Irvin Yalom recognizes Epicurus as the first existential psychotherapist.

In summary, happiness lies in the tranquility of the mind. The primary conditions for mental peace are the control of desires and detachment from riches and honors, and an unshakable self-confidence regarding the gods, pain, and death. This confidence can only be achieved with accurate knowledge of the nature of the world, and the causes of phenomena, i.e., that the essence of the world is material and everything happens according to mechanical laws (natural causes) and random events. Those who have not felt this, even if they are excellent scientists and wise in details, do not differ from the crowd tormented by superstitions.