The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius (first ebook reader .TXT) 📖

old with us in the study of philosophy, may never be in want of anything as far as our power to prevent it may extend.

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;