The Garden

Epicureanism · people

Epicurus

341–270 BCE · Founder of the Garden

The Athenian philosopher who taught that the good life is a calm one, free of fear and of needless desire, and who founded a school in a garden.

2 min read · Updated 11 November 2026 · Last checked 11 November 2026

Life and work #

Epicurus was born on the island of Samos in 341 BCE, into an Athenian family. He studied philosophy as a young man, including with a follower of the atomist Democritus, and began teaching around 311 BCE in Mytilene on Lesbos and then in Lampsacus on the mainland coast.1,2

Around 306 BCE he bought a house with a garden in Athens and taught there to a mixed circle of friends, women and slaves included. The school took its name from the place: the Garden.3,4

He died in Athens in 270 BCE. His will left the house to the school and provided for a yearly remembrance of his birthday and a monthly gathering of friends on the twentieth.5,6

Epicurus is said to have written about three hundred scrolls, including a 37-book work On Nature. Almost all of it is lost. What survives is a small set: three letters, the forty Principal Doctrines and a collection of sayings.7

What to be careful about #

Nearly everything we know of his life comes from Diogenes Laertius, who wrote centuries later and quotes documents we cannot check. The dates are the traditional ones.

Much of what is said about his thought comes second hand, from admirers like Lucretius and critics like Cicero and Plutarch.

On this site #

See also: Lucretius, Philodemus of Gadara.

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Notes

  1. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book X (Epicurus), trans. R. D. Hicks (Loeb Classical Library, 1925), 10.1, 10.2, 10.14. ↩
  2. Diogenes Laertius, 10.15. The dates are worked out from the ages Diogenes gives, so they are approximate. ↩
  3. Diogenes Laertius, 10.10. ↩
  4. Diogenes Laertius, 10.21. His will frees several slaves of his household. ↩
  5. Diogenes Laertius, 10.14–15. ↩
  6. Diogenes Laertius, 10.18. ↩
  7. Diogenes Laertius, 10.26–10.28. ↩

Ancient sources cited

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