Diogenes of Oenoanda
A wealthy citizen of a small town in Lycia who had a summary of Epicurean teaching carved in stone, for anyone passing to read.
2 min read · Updated 11 November 2026 · Last checked 11 November 2026
Life and work #
Diogenes was a citizen of Oenoanda, in Lycia, and clearly a wealthy one. He had an account of Epicurean teaching carved on the wall of a stoa beside a public space in the town. It is usually dated to the first half of the second century CE.1
The inscription may have filled about 260 square metres of wall and run to some 25,000 words, which would make it the longest inscription known from the ancient world. It covered physics, how we know things and ethics.2
He says he wanted to help travellers as well as his fellow citizens.3
The wall did not last. Its blocks lie scattered over the ruins, and the text has been recovered piece by piece since 1884. By the end of 2012, 299 pieces had been found.4,5
What to be careful about #
Apart from the inscription, I have found no biographical detail in the sources I have used, so this page says little about the man himself.
The date is a range, and the reason the wall came down is Martin Ferguson Smith’s hypothesis.
On this site #
See also: Epicurus, Philodemus of Gadara.
Notes
- Martin Ferguson Smith, 'Excavations at Oinoanda 1997: the new Epicurean texts', Anatolian Studies 48 (1998), 125–70. ↩
- Smith 1998. The figures are estimates, made by reconstructing how much text is missing. ↩
- Eric A. Powell, 'In Search of a Philosopher's Stone', Archaeology, July/August 2015. Reported in a translation by Martin Ferguson Smith; I have paraphrased it. ↩
- Powell 2015. ↩
- Jürgen Hammerstaedt and Martin Ferguson Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda: Ten Years of New Discoveries and Research (Habelt, 2014). ↩
Modern works cited
- Martin Ferguson Smith, 'Excavations at Oinoanda 1997: the new Epicurean texts', Anatolian Studies 48 (1998), 125–70
The opening pages summarise what is known about the inscription, its date, size and discovery. - Jürgen Hammerstaedt and Martin Ferguson Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda: Ten Years of New Discoveries and Research (Habelt, 2014)
Source of the count of 299 pieces found by 2012. I have used the publisher's abstract, not the book itself. - Eric A. Powell, 'In Search of a Philosopher's Stone', Archaeology, July/August 2015 — read online
A readable magazine account of the discovery and the recent survey.
Cite this page. The Garden, ‘Diogenes of Oenoanda’, https://camelmaps.org/garden/person.php, last updated 11 November 2026, last checked 11 November 2026. What has changed.