Epicurus

Epicurus himself, the very censurer of Stilbo, uttered a like saying, which you must take in good part, even though I have already cancelled today's debt.

Nonetheless, although he is the most loving of friends, although he sets them on a level with himself and often above himself, he will limit every good within himself and will say what Stilbo said—that Stilbo whom Epicurus's letter assails.

You desire to know whether Epicurus is right when, in a certain letter, he blames those who say that the wise man is content with himself and for that reason has no need of a friend.

This Epicurus places in pleasure, which he holds to be the highest good, and pain the highest evil;

But Epicurus thinks that the highest pleasure is bounded by the absence of all pain, so that afterwards pleasure may be varied and diversified, but cannot be increased or enlarged.

But if the highest pleasure is, as Epicurus holds, to feel no pain, then, first, the point was rightly granted you, Chrysippus, that the hand lacked nothing while it was so affected;

Are we, then, to allow Theopompus and Timaeus to compose fables and slanders, and Epicurus besides, the founder of atheism, and Hipponax and Archilochus to write with such shamelessness, and yet forbid the man who proclaims the truth to leave behind a benefit for those who come after?

Thus Plato thinks that some of the barbarians too are philosophers, while Epicurus, on the contrary, supposes that the Greeks alone are able to philosophize.

"See, then, that there be no one who carries you off as spoil through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ" — not all philosophy, but the Epicurean, which Paul also mentions in the Acts of the Apostles, slandering it as doing away with providence and deifying pleasure, and any other that has over-honoured …

No one says that — though Epicurus charges it upon Democritus, the Democriteans deny it.

I do not require of you that you treat pain in the same words in which Epicurus, a man, as you know, given to pleasure, treats pleasure.

What pain, then, follows Epicurus, when he says this very thing, that pain is the highest evil?

For he alone saw, first, that the gods exist, because Nature herself has imprinted a notion of them in the minds of all.

that we have this anticipation, as I said before, or prenotion of the gods — for to new things new names must be given, as Epicurus himself called it prolepsis,

for the surpassing nature of the gods would be worshipped by the piety of men, being both eternal and most blessed (for whatever excels has a just claim to reverence), and all fear of the violence and anger of the gods would have been driven off;

Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports

A Greek it was who first opposing dared

The flaming ramparts of the world, until

And I do not mean only those who fashion it out of manifest bodily things — as Hipparchus and Heraclitus out of fire, as Hippo and Thales out of water, as Empedocles and Critias out of blood, as Epicurus out of atoms (if atoms too compose corporealities by their conjunction), as Critolaus and his Peripatetics out of some fifth substance I know not what (if that too is a body, since it includes bod …

these draw its origin from one quarter, those draw its departure off to another — according as either the prestige of Plato, or the vigour of Zeno, or the steadiness of Aristotle, or the stupor of Epicurus, or the gloom of Heraclitus, or the frenzy of Empedocles has persuaded them.

And so, if even the causes themselves are freed from infamy, how much more the senses, before which the causes now freely go — since precisely from this very thing truth and faith and integrity must be claimed for the senses, in that they report nothing otherwise than that reason ordained which causes a thing to be reported by the senses otherwise than it is in fact.

for I am not the man to say that whatever appears is such as it appears — let Epicurus see to that, and to much else besides.

For Epicurus, who wished to succour these errors of men who seem to throw the knowledge of truth into confusion, and said that it was the part of the wise man to separate opinion from clearness, accomplished nothing;

Epicurus says his senses are truthful.

If he affected to entitle, under the name of Christ, some god out of the school of Epicurus — to the end that, being blessed and incorruptible, he should offer molestation neither to himself nor to another (for chewing over this maxim Marcion removed from him severities and judicial powers) — he ought either to have conceived a god altogether immobile and stupefied (and what has he to do with Chri …

We are taught God by the prophets and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus.

But let Marcion acknowledge the chief boundary of his faith from the school of Epicurus, bringing in a dull lord, that he may say he is not to be feared;

In most pains, indeed, let the saying of Epicurus come to your aid:

"In my sickness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, nor did I talk such things to those who came in, but I went on discussing the chief points of natural philosophy, and was intent on this very thing:

For my own part I am of this opinion—and I shall say it to the displeasure of my own school—that Epicurus's teachings are holy and right and, if you draw nearer, austere;

And so it is not at Epicurus's urging that they run riot, but, given over to their vices, they hide their debauchery in the bosom of philosophy and flock to the place where they hear pleasure praised.

And so I shall not say, as most of my school do, that the sect of Epicurus is a teacher of vice, but I say this:

So too Epicurus cheapens all torment and pain, pronouncing the slight to be contemptible, and the great to be not lasting.

some say he is of atoms, others of numbers, as Epicurus and Pythagoras;

For whether you follow Zeno, it is a great task to bring anyone to understand what that true and simple good is which cannot be sundered from the honourable (a good of what kind it is Epicurus altogether denies he can so much as conceive without pleasures that stir the senses);

Zeno cries out, and that whole Porch is in an uproar, that man was born for nothing else than honourableness, that honourableness by its own splendour draws men's minds to itself with no advantage whatever set outside it and no enticing reward, and that the pleasure of Epicurus is shared only among the beasts, into whose company it is a sin to thrust both man and the wise man.

As for natural philosophy, if I approved of Epicurus, that is, of Democritus, I could write as plainly as Amafinius does.

For Epicurus, while granting that every proposition is either true or false, may yet not fear that all things must therefore come to pass by fate;

so that ‘Philoctetes will be wounded’ was true through all the ages before, and ‘He will not be wounded’ was false—unless perhaps we wish to follow the opinion of the Epicureans, who say that such propositions are neither true nor false, or, when they are ashamed of that, nonetheless say what is more shameless still:

nor, since these things are so, is there any reason why Epicurus should dread fate and seek refuge from the atoms, and turn them aside from their course, and at one stroke take upon himself two insoluble difficulties:

Of Epicurus alone I will willingly be forgetful, who thinks that God cares for nothing, being impious through and through.

for in banishing the providence of God from his system, he made justice nothing but an empty name, springing from human conventions, founded on self-interest, and restraining men from the commission of crimes by no other principle but that of fear.

And among them is Epicurus (Abīqūrus) (1), the philosopher of Athens, the contemporary of Democritus, whose doctrine is that the principle of existing things is small bodies (that is, tiny particles which the senses do not perceive because of their smallness);

As for the living thing, for Democritus and Epicurus it is generated only from a living thing (2).

Epicurus and Democritus hold the perishing of the soul and its effacement.

"And so a god does not give benefits, but, untroubled and careless of us, turned away from the world, he does something else, or, what to Epicurus seems the greatest happiness, does nothing, and benefits no more move him than injuries.

Why should it not be in action, when Epicurus himself says that at times he will withdraw from pleasure and will even court pain, if either regret is likely to attend the pleasure, or a lesser pain is to be taken on in place of a heavier one?

"The wise man will not approach public affairs, unless something intervenes";

' Why do you preach to us the precepts of Epicurus in the very headquarters of Zeno?

We may dispute with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, conquer human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics.

Epicurus, whom you take as the patron of your idleness, and whom you suppose to teach soft and slothful doctrines that lead to pleasures, says:

But if Epicurus too, who indulged the body most of all, rises up against injuries, how can this seem to us incredible, or beyond the measure of human nature?

This house of the wise man is narrow, without adornment, without din, without pomp;

But Epicurus, who had said, "What is above us is nothing to us," when he too desired to inspect the heaven, found the sun's orb a foot wide.

Therefore, since this world contains the elements — to treat summarily of the whole, as supplying its parts (for whatever its condition is, the same surely will be that also of the elements and members) — it must either have been instituted by someone, as Plato's humaneness has it, or by no one, as Epicurus's hardness has it;

For Enthymesis—or now Achamoth, which name from here on is written by this alone as untranslatable—when, with the vice of the inseparable Passion, she was expelled into the regions foreign to light (which is a thing of the Pleroma), into that void and empty of Epicurus, she is pitiable even by reason of place.

Let this Bythos, then, be in greatest and deepest quiet through infinite past ages, in the abundant ease of a placid and, so to say, stupefied divinity, such as Epicurus enjoined.

That nothing exists after death is the school of Epicurus.