C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.)

Epicurus (ep-i-kū’rus). A famous Grecian philosopher; lived from about 341 B.C. to 270 B.C. He was a teacher of philosophy rather as a rule of life than as a system of knowledge, and began to teach when he was about thirty-two first at Mitylene, then at Lampsacus; but his great school was at Athens, where he settled about 305 B.C. His discipleship there led a life of austere abstemiousness in common, after the manner of a conventual establishment, but the membership comprised both men and women. Their common dwelling was a country-house surrounded by a garden, which yielded to the labor of the brethren the simple material of their frugal fare. Of his numerous writings little remains. According to him the supreme good of life is found in pleasure, but not in the momentary gratification of sense, rather in the delight inseparable from the practice of virtue. Rightly interpreted the doctrine of Epicurus is as adverse to all sensualism as that of La Trappe; but the Epicurean doctrines were in time misinterpreted and misunderstood, and Epicureanism became a synonym of self-indulgent and sensuous pleasure.

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