After a number of bruising altercations, Epicurus changed his way of teaching. However, it was a competitive and contemptuous business. His contempt for other philosophers might be part of the reason why he was so vehemently attacked by his contemporaries, the Stoics of Athens.Īs was typical of philosophers of the time Epicurus started his school by teaching in the public squares of Athens. In fact, Epicurus was dismissive of the work of many other philosophers, including Socrates and Plato, partly because he saw philosophy as a practical system for achieving a happy life, not as a way to investigate abstract ideas of logic and mathematics. Although parts of Epicurus’s philosophy owe a lot to Democritus’s ideas, particularly his belief that the world was made up of atoms, Epicurus was disparaging of his former teacher, referring to him as “The Mollusc.” In the year after he returned to his family, he is thought to have studied with a man named Nausiphanes, who was himself a student of the philosopher Democritus. Little is known about how Epicurus learnt philosophy or which experiences led him to his conclusions. He lived and taught in Athens for the rest of his life and died there in around 271 BC at the age of 70 as one of the most famous philosophers of his era.Ĭast of Epicurus, Hellenistic era, via Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge The resulting upheaval in the Greek world was probably the impetus behind the Athenian colonists of Samos being forced out by the local population.Įpicurus had taken to the study of philosophy around the age of fourteen and when he reunited with his family, who had now become refugees in Asia Minor, he took to establishing his own philosophy school in two places along the coast of Turkey before returning to Athens to set up his school around 307 B.C. At the age of eighteen Epicurus set off for Athens to establish his citizenship, around roughly the same time as Alexander the Great died. The island is off the coast of modern Turkey, but Epicurus’s family were colonists from Athens. He lived in relative poverty on the island of Samos where his father worked as a schoolteacher, a profession that wasn’t paid well nor was well respected.

Epicurus was born in 341 BC, towards the end of what is now marked as the Classical Era in Greek history.

Epicurus on the nature of things