I further enjoin them to give all my books to Hermarchus; and, if anything should happen to Hermarchus before the children of Metrodorus are grown up, then I desire that Amynomachus and Timocrates shall take care that, provided they are well behaved, they shall have everything that is necessary for them, as far as the estate which I leave behind me shall allow such things to be furnished to them. And the same men shall also take care of everything else that I have enjoined; so that it may all be fulfilled, as far as the case may permit.
Of my slaves, I hereby emancipate Mus, and Nicias, and Lycon: I also give Phaedrium her freedom.
And when he was at the point of death, he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus:
We have written this letter to you on a happy day to us, which is also the last day of our life. For strangury has attacked me, and also a dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which arises from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplations, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the youth to me, and to philosophy.
Such then as I have given it, was his will.
He had a great number of pupils, of whom the most eminent were Metrodorus the Athenian, and Timocrates, and Sandes of Lampsacus, who from the time that he first became acquainted with him never left him, except once when he went home for six months after which he returned to him. And he was a virtuous man in every respect, as Epicurus tells us in his Fundamental Principles. And he also bears witness to his virtue in the third book of his Timocrates. And being a man of this character, he gave his sister Batis in marriage to Idomeneus; and he himself had Leontium, the Attic courtesan, for his concubine. He was very unmoved at all disturbances, and even at death, as Epicurus tells us in the first book of his Metrodorus. He is said to have died seven years before Epicurus himself, in the fifty-third year of his age. And Epicurus himself, in the will which I have given above, gives many charges about the guardianship of his children, showing by this that he had been dead some time. He also had a brother whom I have mentioned before, of the name of Timocrates, a trifling, silly man.
The writings of Metrodorus are these: Three books addressed to the Physicians; one essay on the Sensations; one addressed to Timocrates; one on Magnanimity; one on the Illness of Epicurus; one addressed to the Dialecticians; one against the Nine Sophists; one on the Road to Wisdom; one on Change; one on Riches; one against Democritus; one on Nobility of Birth.
Likewise Polyaenus of Lampsacus, the son of Athenodorus, was a man of mild and friendly manners, as Philodemus particularly assures us.
And his successor was Hermarchus of Mitylene, the son of Agemarchus, a poor man; and his favorite pursuit was rhetoric. And the following excellent works of his are extant: Twenty-two books of letters about Empedocles; an essay on Mathematics; A treatise against Plato; another against Aristotle. And he died of paralysis, being a most eminent man.
There was also Leonteus of Lampsacus, and his wife Themista, to whom Epicurus wrote.
There were also Colotes and Idomeneus, and these also were natives of Lampsacus. And among the most eminent philosophers of the school of Epicurus, were Polystratus, who succeeded Hermarchus, and Dionysius who succeeded him, and Basilides who succeeded him. Likewise Apollodorus, who was nicknamed the tyrant of the gardens (κηποτύραννος), was a very eminent man, and wrote more than four hundred books. And there were the two Ptolemies of Alexandria: Ptolemy the Black, and Ptolemy the Fair. And Zeno of Sidon, a pupil of Apollodorus, a very voluminous author; and Demetrius, who was surnamed the Lacedaemonian; and Diogenes of Tarsus, who wrote the Select Dialogues; and Orion, and others whom the genuine Epicureans call Sophists.
There were also three other persons of the name of Epicurus: first, the son of Leonteus and Themista; secondly, a native of Magnesia; and lastly, a Gladiator.
And Epicurus was a most voluminous author, exceeding all men in the number of his books, for there are more than three hundred volumes of them, and in the whole of them there is not one citation from other sources, but they are filled wholly with the sentiments of Epicurus himself. In the quantity of his writings he was rivalled by Chrysippus, as Carneades asserts, who calls him a parasite of the books of Epicurus; for if ever this latter wrote anything, Chrysippus immediately set his heart on writing a book of equal size; and in this way he often wrote the same thing over again, putting down whatever came into his head, and he published it all without any corrections, by reason of his haste. And he quotes such numbers of testimonies from other authors that his books are entirely filled with them alone; as one may find also in the works of Aristotle and Zeno.
Such then, and so numerous are the works of Epicurus, the chief of which are the following: Thirty-seven treatises on Natural Philosophy; one on Atoms, and the Vacuum; one on Love; an abridgment of the Arguments employed against the Natural Philosophers; Doubts in Contradiction of the Doctrines of the Megarians; Fundamental Propositions; a treatise on Choice and Avoidance; another on the Chief Good; another on the Criterion, called also the Canon; the Chaeredemus, a treatise on the Gods; one on Piety; the Hegesianax; four essays on Lives; one on Just Dealing; the Neocles; one essay addressed to Themista; the Banquet; the Eurylochus; one essay addressed to Metrodorus; one on Seeing; one on the Angle in an Atom; one on Touch; one on Fate; Opinions on the Passions; one treatise addressed to Timocrates; Prognostics; Exhortations; a treatise on Spectres; one on Perceptions; the Aristobulus; an essay on Music; one on Justice and the other Virtues; one on Gifts and Gratitude; the Polymedes; the Timocrates, a treatise in three books; the Metrodorus, in five books; the Antidorus, in two books; Opinions About the South Winds; a treatise addressed to Mithras; the Callistolas; an essay on Kingly Power; the Anaximenes; Letters.
And I will endeavor to give an abridgment of the doctrines contained in these works, as it may be agreeable, quoting three letters of his in which he has made a sort of epitome of all his philosophy. I will also give his fundamental and peculiar opinions, and any apothegms which he uttered which appear worthy of being selected. So that you may be thoroughly acquainted with the man, and may also judge that I understand him.
Now the first letter is one that he wrote to Herodotus, on the subject of Natural Philosophy; the second is one that he wrote to Pythocles, which is about the Heavenly Bodies; the third is addressed to Menoeceus, and in that there are contained the discussions about lives.
We must now begin with the first, after having said a little by way of preface concerning the divisions of philosophy which he adopted.
Now he divides philosophy into three parts: The canonical, the physical, and the ethical. The canonical, which serves as an introduction to science, is contained in the single treatise which is called the Canon. The physical embraces the whole range of speculation on subjects of natural philosophy, and is contained in the thirty-seven books on nature, and in the letters again it is discussed in an elementary manner. The ethical contains the discussions on Choice and Avoidance; and is comprised in the books about lives, and in some of the Letters, and in the treatise on the Chief Good. Accordingly, most people are in the habit of combining the canonical division with the physical; and then they designate the whole under the names of the criterion of the truth, and a discussion on principles, and elements. And they say that the physical division is conversant about production, and destruction, and nature; and that the ethical division has reference to the objects of choice and avoidance, and lives, and the chief good of mankind.
Dialectics they wholly reject as superfluous. For they say that the correspondence of words with things is sufficient for the natural philosopher, so as to enable him to advance with certainty in the study of nature.
Now, in the Canon, Epicurus says that the criteria of truth are the senses, and the preconceptions, and the passions. But the Epicureans in general add also the perceptive impressions of the intellect. And he says the same thing in his Abridgment, which he addresses to Herodotus, and also in his Fundamental Principles. For, says he, the senses are devoid of reason, nor are they capable of receiving any impressions of memory. For they are not by themselves the cause of any motion, and when they have received any impression from any external cause, then they can add nothing to it, nor can they subtract anything from it. Moreover, they are out of the reach of any control; for one sensation cannot judge of another which resembles itself, for they have all an equal value. Nor can one judge of another which is different from itself, since their objects are not identical. In a word, one sensation cannot control another, since the effects of all of them influence us equally. Again, the reason cannot pronounce on the senses, for we have already said that all reasoning has the senses for its foundation. Reality and the evidence of sensation establish the certainty of the senses, for the impressions of sight and hearing are just as real, just as evident, as pain.
It follows from these considerations that we ought to judge of things which are obscure by their analogy to those which we perceive directly. In fact, every notion proceeds from the senses, either directly, or in consequence of some analogy or proportion or combination; reasoning having always a share in these last operations. The visions of insanity and of sleep have a real object, for they act upon us; and that which has no reality can produce no action.
By preconception, the Epicureans mean a sort of comprehension as it were, or right opinion, or notion, or general idea which exists in us; or, in other words, the recollection of an external object often perceived anteriorly. Such for instance, is this idea: “Man is a being of such and such a nature.” At the same moment that we utter the word man, we conceive the figure of a man, in virtue of a preconception which we owe to the preceding operations of the senses. Therefore, the first notion which each word awakens in us is a correct one; in fact, we could not seek for anything if we had not previously some notion of it. To enable us to affirm that what we see at a distance is a horse or an ox, we must have some preconception in our minds which makes us acquainted with the form of a horse and an ox. We could not give names to things if we had not a preliminary notion of what the things were.
These preconceptions then furnish us with certainty. And with respect to judgments, their certainty depends on our referring them to some previous notion, of itself certain, in virtue of which we affirm such and such a judgment; for instance: “How do we know whether this thing is a man?”
The Epicureans call opinion (δόξα) also supposition (ὑπόληψις). And say that it is at times true, and at times false; for that, if it is supported by testimony, and not contradicted by testimony, then it is true; but if it is not supported by testimony, and is contradicted by testimony, then it is false. On which account they have introduced the expression of “waiting,” as if, before pronouncing that a thing seen is a tower, we must wait till we come near, and learn what it looks like when we are near it.
They say that there are two passions—pleasure and pain—which affect everything alive. And that the one is natural, and the other foreign to our nature; with reference to which all objects of choice and avoidance are judged of. They say also that there are two kinds of investigation: the one about facts, the other about mere words. And this is as far as an elementary sketch can go—their doctrine about division, and about the criterion.