Sedley Epicurus Rivales

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EPICURUS AND HIS PROFESSIONAL RIVALS.
David Sedley
Epicurus and his professional rivals
in J. Bollack and A. Laks (eds.),
Etudes sur lEpicurisme antique
dLille 1976
121-59
I. Introduction
For a historical appreciation of any system of thought a

certain amount of biographical information is needed. Otherwise we may never progress beyond vague speculation about
its philosophical ancestry ; for the same doctrine can just as
well be fostered by the negative influence of one school of
thought as by the positive influence of another. If, on the n I
other hand, we can . find out whom its founder
"1
and what he thought of them, our hand is immediately
strengthened. In this respect we are very much better furnished
with clues about the origins of Epicureanism than we are
about those of Stoicism and Scepticism, the other two
schools that grew up in the generation following the death of
Aristotle. But my feeling is that writers on Epicureanism have
either ignored these clues or handled them far too uncritically.
The object of this study is to establish just what Epicurus did
think of certain philosophers in whom he was especially
interested.
The first essential is a brief outline of Epicurus' early career.
Born is Samos in 341 B.C., he was the son of an Athenian
cleruch, a schoolmaster named Neocles. He turned to the
study of philosophy in his early teens, impatient, it was said,
at his schoolteacher's inability to answer his question : <f
Hesiod says 'There first was created Chaos', what was the Chaos
created from? . The teacher replied that it was the job
of the so-called philosophers to answer such questions. It was
probably at this time that Epicurus began to attend the
lectures of a local Platonist named Pamphilus. At the age of
eighteen he had to travel to Athens for his year's military
training. This was in 323, when Aristotle had already quit
Athens for Chalcis. At the Academy Xenocrates was .in charge,
and Epicurus could have attended his lectures, but did not. I
At some stage, probably after his year in Athens,2 he studied
under Nausiphanes ofTeos, a disciple ofDemocritus. In 311/0,
at the age of thirty-one, he set up his first school. This was
in Mytilene, but he quickly moved on to Lampsacus, where
he taught until 307/6. Then, at the age of thirty-five, he
travelled to Athens, bought the plot of land which was to
122
David Sedley
become famous as the Garden, and established his school

there. He had already while in Asia Minor gathered around
him most of those who were subsequently to stand out as the
leading figures of the Epicurean movement. Many, including
his closest associate Metrodorus, joined him in Athens, but
some stayed behind to keep up the Epicurean groups in
Mytilene and Lampsacus. In his travels, Teos, Lampsacus and
Athens had provided the settings for a series of encounters
with other philosophers, and these did not fail to leave their
mark on him.
'
20
ii,
i1
f
25
2. Diogenes Laertius X 6-8.

Epicurus still retains a reputation for having set a depth of
polemic hitherto unplumbed among ancient philosophers)
One product of this is a massive study published by Ettore
Bignone in 1936,4 in which Epicurus' formative period is pictured as one of sustained and bitter polemics against philosophies which can in some sense or other be described as sceptical,
and especially against the early works of Aristotle. Such misrepresentations (as I believe them to be) have been made
possible by the uncritical acceptance of an ancient tradition
about Epicurus' malice towards other philosophers, preserved
in Diogenes Laertius X 6-8. It is around this passage that I
shall construct my own argument. Diogenes is listing the
claims of Epicurus' detractors, before moving on to those of
his sympathisers.
And also Timocrates, the
K.ai p.ilv K.ai Ttp.oK.poxf/<: ev
brother of Metrodorus, and
role; bwypa!.pop.evot<: Ev!.ppavof Epicurus until he
pupil
roic;, o Mf1rpo8wpov p.ev
left
the
school,. says in his
abAI.f!O<;, p.a'IJfiTil<: 8 avrov
work
called
Euphranta that
rf]c; axo"Af]c;
'-Pf/OL
Epicurus
vomited
twice daily
8ic; avrov rf]<; fzp.epac; ep.eiv
from
overeating,
and tells
CJ:/1'0 rpvi.PfJc;, eaV70V 7 bLf/
how
he
himself
hardly
ma'"'fElrat p.6'"'ft<: eK.I.f!V'Yeiv Laxvnaged to escape those lateaat 7a<: vvK.7eptvac; eK.eivac;
night philosophy sessions
!.pLAOOO!.pLac; K.ai rilv J.l.VOTLK.iiV
and that mystical fraternity.
eK.EiVfiV OVVDLa'"'fW'"'ff]V. TOV
He says that Epicurus argued
7 'E11'iK.ovpov 1ro"AA.a K.a7a
ignorantly and lived much
7ov AD'"'fOV il'"'fVOf/K.evat K.ai
more ignorantly ; that his
1ro"Av p.a"li.A.ov K.ara 7ov {3iov
physical
condition was pitiTO 7 awua EALVW<; bLa
Text
30
35
40
45
50
55
K.eia'!Jm, we: 1ro"AA.wv erwv

P.il Mvaa'!Jat a11'0 TOV !.pOpeiov
8tavaarf]vm p.vav re avaA.iaK.etv fzp.epfla{av de; 71!v
rpa11'etav, we; avro<; ev rf1
1rpoc; Aeovnov emaro"Af1 '"'fpal.f!EL K.ai ev mic;
TOV<; ev
MvnA1Jv'!1 l.f!LAOOOI.f!OV<; avveivai 1' avni) 1' K.ai Mf/T po8wpJ? emipac; K.al a"AA.ac;,
Map.p.apov K.ai 'H8eiav K.al
'Epwnov K.ai NtK.iowv. K.ai
ev TaL<; f11'T0: K.ai TptaK.OVTa
{3{{3)\0Lc; mic; Tiepl !.pVOEW<; Ta
1r"ll.eiam mvra A.fl"Yew K.ai
CtVTL'"'fpa!.pELV EV avmic; aAAOL<;
7 K.ai Navat!.pavEL ra 11'"ll.eiara, K.ai avrf1
!.paOK.LV
ovrwc: a"AA.' er nc: d.AA.oc;
elxe K.CtK.ELVOc; w8ivwv rilv
a1ro rov ar6p.aroc; K.aVXfiOLV
71!v OOI.f!WTLK.f]v, K.a'l9a1rep K.al
QAAOL 11'0AAOi TWV avopa11'0bWV. K.ai avrov 'E11'LK.OV
pov ev mic; E11'WTOAaic; 11'pl
Navat!.pcivovc; A.f.'"'fetv mum
1i'Ya'"'fV avrov eic; EK.OTaOW
rotaVTf/V ware p.ot A.otoopeia'!Jat K.al a11'oK.a"ll.eiv DL
8aaK.a"ll.ov. 11'AVJ.l.OVa 7
aV70V eK.aAEL K.al Ct'"'fpap.p.aTOV K.al a1rarewva K.al 11'6pVf1V rove; re 1repl TIA.arwva
K.ai avrov
TIA.arwva xpvaovv
K.ai
'ApWT07EAf/ aawrov,< K.al >
K.aTU!.pa'"'fOVTa rilv 1rarp<J.;av
OVO{av 07paTEVO'!JaL, K.at
!.papp.aK.011'WAEiv '-POPJ.l.OI.f!O
pov 7 Tipwra'"'fopav K.ai '"'fpal.f!Ea
K.al ev
K.wp.atc; '"'fpap.p.am 8toaaK.ew 'HpaK.ALTOV TE K.VK.f/
123
ful, so that he had for many

years been incapable of ri-.
sing from his litter ; that he
would spend a mina a day
on food, as he himself writes
in the Letter to Leontion
and in those To the Philosophers in Mytilene ; that
he and Metrodorus also had
other courtesans living with
them-Mammaron,S Hedeia,
Erotion and Nicidion ; that
in the thirty-seven books
On Nature he says little that
is new, 6 and in them attacks,
among others, especially
Nausiphanes, and says in his
own words, ((That man, if
anyone, was in labour with
the sophistical pomposity
issuing from his mouth, like
many another slave ; and
that Epicurus himself in his
letters says of Nausiphanes,
((This made him so beside
himself as to insult me and
nickname me 'schoolteacher'>>. And he called him
'jelly fish', and 'illiterate',
and 'swindler' and prostitute'. And the Platonists
he called 'Dionysus-flatterers' ; Plato himself'golden';
Aristotle a debauchee, and
one who had squandered
his family property and
joined the army, and a druggist ; Protagoras a porter,
Democritus' secretary, and
a village schoolmaster; Heraclitus 'The Stirrer' ; Democritus 'Lerocritus' (Judge of
Idiocies) ; Antidorus 'Sanni-
124
David Sedley
dorus' (Giver of Foolishness) ; the Cyzicenes 'enemies of Greece'; the Dialecticians

'destruction-mongers' ;7 and Pyrrho 'uneducated' and 'uncultured'.
n]v, Kai Ll.1]JJ.OKptrov A17p6.

KpLrov, Kai
'Avr{8wpov
'Lavvi8wpov rove; re
K1JVOV<; exiJpovc; rf]c; 'EA.f..a.
8oc;. Kai rove; DWAEKTLKOV<;
noA.v..p-(}6povc;
ITvppwva
8 CLJJ.af}f] Kai ana{8evrov.
26 Miq..Lpapov : Mappapwv BPOH f : Mappcipewv F : Mappcipwv

Spengel, Usener
34 a'A/1.'
nr; a!I.A.or; Stephan us : a/1./1.' etrwr;
af..X B : a/1./l.mw a/1./1.' pac : a/1./1.' 1/ nr; a/1./1.' F : a/1./1.' trwaav Usener
35 KaKeivor; dgt : "fap Keivor; sac FaC pac
51< Kcu'>supplevi:
<ov> Hermann 64 rro"A.vl(J{}opovr; Bake : rro"A.vl(J{}ovepovr; codd ..
er
This catalogue of abuse has done Epicurus' reputation no

good. It has given the impression of an upstart who, for lack of
good arguments of his own, resorted to wholesale character-assassination. But then Herodotus m,ight have a similar reputation tf we had nothing but Plutarch's De Herodoti malignitate to go on. We should suspend judgment long enough to
ask ourselves how and why anyone might have compiled this
De Epicuri malignitate. Unfortunately throughout this century credence has been given to the extraordinary view of
Wilhelm Cronert that the source of these epithets was a
single letter by Epicurus.S Cronert himself, reconstructing
this bizarre letter, arbitrarily incorporated in it a variety of
further att(!cks by Epicurus for which he thought he had
found evidence, and concluded that the one letter - which
has since become famous as the Letter to the Philosophers in
Mytilene9 - vilified Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus,
Democritus, Protagoras, Hipparchus, Nausiphanes, Socrates,
Plato, the Platonists, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Heraclides of
Pontus, Phaedo, Aristippus, the Cynics, Stilpo, Alexinus,
Antidorus, Pyrrho, and Zeno of Citium.l 0 Then, as if to
refute his own argument, he commented that Epicurus would
never have written a letter like this, and that it must have
been a forgery. At least two subsequent scholars have also
welcomed the forgery theory, as an easy way of getting
'Epicurus off the hook.ll
Such an indiscriminate barrage of abuse, even if it could
be fathered on Epicurus, might persuade us that we were
dealing with a psychopath, but would leave us none the wiser
as to his philosophical ancestry. However, even at first glance
the various epithets look too heterogeneous to fit Cronert's
125
account. They must have been culled from a number of

different sources. Some are merely nicknames, habitual ways
of referring to opponents rather than insults applied on one
particular occasion. That this is how he used 'The Jellyfish'
of his former teacher Nausiphanes is clear from its occurrence
in a sentence which survives verbatim from one of his
letters.l 2 On the other hand the epithet 'illiterate', also
applied to Nausiphanes, is presumably not a nickname but
a description. These and other differences will become clear
in the paragraphs which follow.
3. Aristotle and Protagoras.
The sayings about Aristotle and Protagoras are sharply
distinguished from the others by their anecdotal character.
Diogenes' source has tried to present them as straightforward
abuse, but fortunately we can compare his version with a less
biased report of Epicurus' original words, and the contrast is
revealing. In Book VIII of Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae the
Cynic Cynulcus concludes a disquisition on Aristotle's zoological works with these words :1 3
Although I've still plenty to say about the Druggist's
foolish words, I'll stop - although I know that even
Epicurus, that great devotee of truth, says this of him in the
Letter on Occupations, that having squandered his family
property he joined the army, and that, doing badly in it,
he took up the drug-trade ; then, he says, since Plato's school
had opened, he entered it and attended the lectures, being
not ungifted, and gradually attained the character14 for which
he is known. I know that Epicurus is the only person to have
accused him of this, and that neither Eubulides nor even
Cephisodorus dared make such an accusation against the
Stagirite, although they even published works against him.
And in the same letter Epicurus also says that the sophist
Protagoras, having been a porter and a wood-carrier, first
became Democritus' secretary. He impressed Democritus by
some special way he had of tying up logs, and through this
start he was taken under his wing. He also became a schoolteacher in some village. And it was from these activities that
he embarked on the business of sophistry. And I too, fellow
diners, from this long speech shall now embark on the
business of gluttony.
Although this story of Aristotle was a well known one
127
David Sedley
when Athenaeus wrote,l 5 Epicurus was the sole source for

it, and we had better be more cautious than Athenaeus
about believing it.l 6 On the other hand, the account of
Protagoras' early career belongs to a biographical tradition
going back at least to Aristotle.! 7 Protagoras, as a young
man, had a job carrying logs. He invented some device which
made the work easier. This won him the admiration of his
fellow-Abderite Democritus, who, seeing in him a potential
philosopher, undertook his education.
Now clearly these tales could sound slanderous to an
unsympathetic ear, especially if quoted without a context.
But if Epicurus' aim in recounting them had been malicious,
would he have weakened his account of Aristotle's dissolute
early life by adding that when he discovered philosophy he
turned out to be gifted? The title of the letter, On Occupations, confirms that the theme was the occupations which
some philosophers had pursued before turning to philosophy.
Now it happens that in later literature examples are sometimes
cited of people who progressed from ignoble beginnings to
become distinguished philosophers. And among them are two
pupils of Epicurus - Mys, a slave, 18 and Leontion, who had
been a courtesan.19 It must have been to pupils like these
that Epicurus addressed his Letter on Occupations, in an
attempt to convince them that their humble past careers
need not stand in the way of their becoming philosophers.
In a context of this kind his citation of Aristotle's career,
however little basis it may have in fact, points not to contempt but to esteem.20 A New York art school used to
advertise its courses with a poster which read, At the age of
thirty-five Gaugin worked in a bank. The point was not, of
course, to mock Gaugin as a bank-clerk.
This account of Epicurus' attitude to Aristotle lends
support to some important work done since Bignone, by
Furley and others.21 This is beginning to reveal an Epicurus
acquainted with some portions of Aristotle's school treatises,
and sometimes making constructive use of their arguments
in formulating his own doctrines. I doubt if Bignone's
picture of the young Epicurus vehemently polemicising
'against the early, Platonising works of Aristotle, while
remaining altogether ignorant of the school treatises, can
any longer be taken seriously. That Epicurus knew at least
some of Aristotle's school treatises is virtually proved by a
by Epicurus or by one of
fragment of a letter,. written
his contemporary followers; in which Aristotle's Analytics

are specifically named.22 The only attack by Epicurus on
Aristotle for which any real evidence exists was one in which
he denounced the teaching of rhetoric.2 3 If, as remains
probable, Epicurus had further occasion to refute.Peripatetic
doctrines, his target is more likely to have been Theophrastus.
For Theophrastus was head of the Lyceum during most of
Epicurus' residence in Athens, and by all accounts enjoyed
enormous popularity. He was credited 'with a following of
some two thousand pupils, and it was said, with some exaggeration, that the entire population of Athens turned out for
his funerai.24 It comes as no surprise to find that the attested
titles of Epicurus' works include one Against Theophrastus, 2 5
though none against Aristotle. A living rival is more of a
threat than a dead one.
126
4. Timocrates.
The report of the Letter on Occupations in Diogenes
Laertius is meticulously accurate in its vocabulary but
thoroughly deceitful in the slant it puts on it. Clearly then
the other supposed insults, stripped of their original context,
must also be approached with caution. To explain the
hostile reporting, we need look no further than the special
grudge borne by its source, Timocrates.26 A brother of
Metrodorus, he too joined the school, but in time broke with
it and became its implacable opponent.2 7 Epicurus wrote
a work Maxims concerning Emotions, against Timocrates,
and another work against him in three books.28 Metrodorus
also wrote extensively against him.2 9
A digression at this point will help show how extraordinarily successful Timocrates was in contaminating the biographical tradition about Epicurus and Metrodorus. One example
can be found in the first book of Cicero's De natura deorum.
Cotta, the Academic spokesman, in his refutation of Epicurean
theological doctrine, complains of the general belligerence of
Epicureans to their opponents. Among others he cites the
case of Epicurus himself :-3 o
...... although Epicurus slanderously attacked Aristotle,
vilely defamed Phaedo the Socratic, wrote whole books
tearingapart Timocrates, the brother of his friend Metrodorus,
because of some philosophical disagreement or other, was
.,
David Sedley
ungrateful even to Democritus whose teaching he followed,

and showed such hostility to Nausiphanes, his.owrr teacher
from whom he had learned nothing.
.
list coincides with that of Diogenes Laertius in naming
slanders against Aristotle, Democritus and Nausiphanes. The
defamation of Phaedo is attested only_ here, but is not hard
to explain. Phaedo, although he wrote Socratic dialogues and
even founded a short-lived school at Elis, was best remembered for the fact that before becoming a pupil of Socrates
he had been a slave and a male prostitute.31 It is not easy
to believe that Epicurus found. cause to wage a philosophical
polemic against this long-dead and uninfluential figure, but
only too likely that he gave an account of Phaedo's unusual
background alongside those of Protagoras and Aristotle in
the Letter on Occupations, and that this too was later
distorted by Timocrates into the appearance of slander.
But what is most revealing in Cicero's list is its inclusion
of an attack on Timocrates himself. After his own lifetime
Timocrates seems to have been unknown as a philosopher,
being remembered only as someone who had fallen out
with Epicurus. So what is he doing here in the company of
Aristotle, Phaedo, Nausiphanes and Democritus? The difficulty : vanishes -once we recognise that Timocrates himself
was not only Diogenes Laertius' source but also Cicero's. For
Timocrates had an obvious axe to grind. Epicurus had
denounced him ; and in his own defence he set out, it seems,
to show that Epicurus had similarly slandered all the great
philosophers, and that he was thus in good company.
>' For confirmation that Timocrates was Cicero's ultimate
source we need only read on a few pages. For the only other
mention of Timocrates in Cicero's entire works occurs soon
afterwards in the same speech of Cotta, this time in his
critique ofthe Epicurean concept of p,leasure. Cotta tells how
the . Academic philosopher Philo of . Larisa often quoted
verbatim. Epicurus' . sayings on pleas:ure, and many more
shameless ones of Metrodorus :32 For Metrodorus attacks
his own brother Timocrates for hesitating to make the belly
the measure of everything contributing to a happy life.
Notice the similarity to the previous passage, with Timocrates
once again cast in the role of innocent victim of persecution.
My confident guess is that both these parts of Cotta's speech
derive from a single Academic source, presumably Philo,3 3
Cicero's former teacher, whose information will have come
ultimately from Timocrates' anti-Epicurean writings .. '.
Timocrates re-appears in this guise of innocent victim in

some anecdotes preserved by another voice of the Academic
tradition, Plutarch. These are found in a section of his antiEpicurean work Against Colotes and in a very similar passage
of his later work Epicurus' Doctrines Make a Pleasant Life
Impossible. Both passages seem to contain many echoes of
Timocrates' attacks on Epicurus and Metrodorus ;34 and at
one point we are given fuller details of the charge preserved
by Cicero, that Metrodorus assailed Timocrates for doubting
that all happiness can be . measured by the belly :-3 5
Does this not resemble Metrodorus' words written to his
brother, ((There is no need to save the Greeks or to win
honours from them for wisdom, but to eat and to drink wine,
Timocrates, gratifying not harming the belly? And again
in the same letter he says, <dt brought me joy andfortitude
to learn from Epicurus the right way to gratify the belly)),
and <dt is the belly, natural philosopher Timocrates, with
which the good is concerned)),
I feel strongly that the source of these remarks was not
Metrodorus' letter itself, but Timocrates' distorted report of
it - with the vocatives inserted to strengthen its air of
authenticity. There is no doubt that both Epicurus and
Metrodorus taught that a stable condition of physical
wellbeing, including in particular absence of hunger, is a
major factor of happiness. But the advocacy of gluttony
.quoted by Cicero and Plutarch reads like a malicious parody
of the doctrine. Furthermore, there is good independent
evidence that it was parodied in this way in Epicurus' own
lifetime, and that Timocrates was one of the culprits. The
chief item of evidence is Epicurus' own words in a passage
of his Letter to Menoeceus, which also deserves attention as
a correct statement of the Epicurean doctrine on gastronomic
pleasures :-3 6
Sellsufficiency we consider a great good, not so that we

may in all circumstances make do with little, but so that
if we do not have much we may make do with the little, in
the true persuasion that luxury is best enjoyed by those who
need it least, and that anything natural is easilv attainable
Plain
while that which serves no purpose is hard to
flavours bring the same pleasure as a luxurious diet whenever
all the pain brought about by want is removed, and bread
and water afford the highest pleasure when taken by someone
.128
129
David Sedley
in need of them. Therefore to grow accustomed to plain, and

not luxurious, fare is an essential ingredient of health, makes
a man resolute for the necessary activities of life, disposes us
the better for the luxuries when we do meet them from time
to time, and makes us courageous in the face of fortune. So
when we say that the end is pleasure, we do not mean the
pleasures of the debauched and those that are found in high
living, as some people out of ignorance and lack of sympathy
or through misunderstanding us believe we do ( w<; ILV\
a"(VOOiwre<; K.ai ovx Of.J.OAO"(OVV7\ 11 K.aK.W\ EK.oex6p.evot
but the absence both of bodily pain and of
mental disquiet. For it is not endless drinking bouts and
parties, nor the enjoyment of boys and women, nor that of
fish-dishes and the other contents of a luxurious table, that
makes the pleasant life, but reasoning which stays sober, seeks
out the reasons for all choice and avoidance, and banishes
the opinions that cause most of the disturbance in men's
minds.
There is no good in the world that compares with eating, for

it combines goodness with pleasure.
130
Here we have seen Epicurus complaining that his doctrine

of qualified hedonism bordering on asceticism37 is being
mistaken for one of downright debauchery. And so it was.
Timon of Phlius, Sceptic philosopher and younger contemporary of Epicurus, rlescribed him in the third book of his
Silloi as "(aarpl
rfl<; ov A.ap.vpwrepov ovov3 8
- gratifying his stomach, the greediest thing in the world.
Still in the third century B.C. (although we cannot assign

exact dates) we find Epicurus singled out in New Comedy as
the high-priest of gluttony. Damoxenus in the Syntrophoi39
has a cook who claims to have learnt the techniques and
refinements of his art in Epicurus' school. Baton in the
Synexapaton40 has an enraged father accusing his son's
paedagogos of debauching the boy ; and the paedagogos
replies that he has merely been acting in accordance with
the teachings of wise men, or at any rate of Epicurus, who
says that pleasure is the good. The same playwright in his
Androphonos41 has one character arguing as follows :
Being able to go to bed with
women, and to buy
two jars of Lesbian wine - that is the wise man, that is the
good. What 1 am saying now is what Epicurus said. If everyone lived the life I live, there'd be no misfits and no adulterers. Finally Hegesippus in the Philetairoi :42 The wise
Epicurus, when someone asked him what is the good which
men always seek, replied 'Pleasure'. Well said, great sage!
131
These entertaining distortions are no doubt typical of

the misrepresentation bewailed by Epicurus. Why did they
pick on Epicurus, who recommended only the neutral
pleasures of absence of pain and absence of worry? Of
course, he was not the first philosopher to be unfairly
satirised in Greek comedy ; and a professed hedonist
always runs the risk of being portrayed as a sensualist. 4 3
Nevertheless, in this case there are reasons for pinning a
major share of the blame on one man, Timocrates. Notice,
for instance, that Timon's description of Epicurus as "(aarpl
p.evo<; recalls Metrodorus' supposed words to Timocrates
A stronger
that Epicurus taught him "(aarpl
indication comes from Alciphron's imaginary letter from
Leontion, the mistress of Epicurus, to Lamia, the mistress of
Demetrius Poliorcetes. Leontion bewails her fate in the clutches of this hypochondriac, suspicious, abusive old lecher.45
How often, she asks Lamia, do you suppose that I've
taken him on one side and said What are you doing,
Epicurus? Don't you know that Timocrates the brother46
of Metrodorus is making fun of you for this in the assemblies,
in the theatres, among the other sophists?)) But what can he
do? He is shameless in his passion. Now Alciphron, although
writing in the second or third century A.D., was well

informed about the literature of the fourth and third
centuries B.C., and his description of Timocrates publicly
making fun of Epicurus' lechery, even allowing for a degree
of exaggeration, certainly contains a core of truth. We have
already seen ( 2) some examples of the debauched life
which Timocrates attributed to Epicurus : he vomited twice
a day from overeating ; he spent a mina a day on food ; he
and Metrodorus shared five courtesans.
My suggestion is that Timocrates waged a one-man campaign against Epicurus and Metrodorus, trading on his special
position as a former member of the school's inner circle.47
His campaign was extraordinarily successful, for from that
day to this the name of Epicurus has been associated with
gluttony. It is probably Timocrates whom we have to thank
for the modern meaning of epicure. The misnomer first
occurs in English literature in the sixteenth century, when
Plutarch, whose anti-Epicurean works trade heavily on the
gluttony charge, enjoyed enormous popularity.
David Sedley
132
, ,,,, It does not of course follow that all Timocrates' allegations

'against Epicurus and Metrodorus are false. His handling of
Epicurus' biographical accounts of Protagoras and Aristotle
: suggests that he preferred to bend the truth rather than
jettison it altogether. That Metrodorus did write to Timocrates
on the topic of pleasure is not in doubt,48 and we know that
' in doing so he defended Epicurus' doctrine that in addition
to momentary kinetic pleasure (i7oovi] Kara KtVT/OtV) there
. is a long-term state of katastematic pleasure, which for the
body consists in absence of pain (a1rovia) and for the mind in
It is quite possible that he also
absence of worry
quoted with approval Epicurus' remark that The pleasure
of the stomach is the beginning and root of all good, and
wisdom and excess are judged by reference to it. What 1
., suppose Epicurus means here is that until you learn
' moderation in eating and drinking you will never learn the
, moderation necessary for the achievement of other plea" sures ;49 but the saying was easily misrepresented as giving
pride of place to gastronomic pleasures. If Metrodorus
really wrote to Timocrates that he had learnt from Epicurus
. how to gratify the belly, he must have added that the
way to do so was to limit its desires. If so, Timocrates' crime
was to quote him out of context: But when we come to the
remarks that seem to rriake gastronomic pleasures the only
good, I can see no alternative to regarding them as maliciously
fathered on Metrodorus by Timocrates. My most charitable
suggestion is that Timocrates meant to denounce Metrodorus'
doctrine of pleasure, combined with the well-known Epicurean disrespect for political careerists,S o as tantamount to
saying that there was no need to save Greece or to win
honours for wisdom, and that all that mattered was eating
and drinking, but that for rhetorical effect he used the form
of direct quotation.
5. Heraclitus.
. With these clues as to the type of distortion practised by
Timocrates, we can now return to the list of abusive names
whose use he attributed to Epicurus. It is obvious to-anyone
browsingin the surviving writings of Epicurus that he suffered
from a deep-seated aversion to mentioning his rivals by name.
Usually they appear simply as someone or some people,
.
,J
'
'
133
or else generically as the physicists, the sophists, or

the astronomers. (Only once in his surviving philosophical
works does he name a philosopher outside his own school,
and this is Empedocles'Sl ). No doubt the nicknames listed by
Timocrates served a similar function. But even nicknames are
not necessarily indicative of contempt. Epicurus' contemporary Timon of Phlius had nicknames for everybody including
himself - Cyclops, because of his one eye -::- and called
Anaxagoras o Noik,52 a tag which picked out his central
doctrine but at the same time expressed esteem for him.
the
Similarly when Epicurus labelled Heraclitus o
Stirrer, he was neatly picking out what was regarded as
Heraclitus' central doctrine, that of eternal flux, and at
the same time punning on his metaphor of the KVKewv, or
barley-drink, which in the words of Heraclitus separates
you do not stir it.53 It would need something more than
Timocrates' word to persuade me that Epicurus' intention
here was malicious.
6. Plato .
On Timocrates' list there remain Democritus, Nausiphanes,
Pyrrho, Plato and the Platonists, the Dialecticians, the
Cyzicenes, and Antidorus. I shall have nothing to say about
Antidorus, since I do not know who he was.54 The others
are all either contemporaries with whom Epicurus was
personally acquainted or, in some sense, his direct philosophical forerunners.
I include Plato as a forerunner for the reason, mentioned
earlier, that Platonism seems to have presented the young
Epicurus with his first excursion into philosophy. There are
few of his mature doctrines which could not be explained
in some sense as reactions against Platonism. But the only
polemic that can be pinned down with certainty is in the
papyrus fragments of Book XIV of his Tie pi
55 Much
of the small surviving portion is devoted. to criticising the
theory of elements put forward in Plato's Timaeus. But in all
probability it is part of a systematic refutation of all rival
physical theories ;56 and if so it has no special significance for
Epicurus' reaction against Plato. When Epicurus called Plato
the Golden he probably had in mind Plato's proposal in
Republic III to divide the citizens into three classes called
135
David Sedley
Golden, Silver and Bronze, the Golden ones being the

philosophers. 57 As for the title Dionysus-flatterers which
he gave to the Platonists, this was a name in regular use for
the flatterers of the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius, 58 and in
using it of the Platonists he was clearly mocking their quest
for political influence, especially in Sicily. But Epicurus'
reaction against Platonism is already a well-worked topic,
and I shall move on.
the nature 'of things before him. And Metrodorus, in his

work On Philosophy, stated that without. Democritus' lead
Epicurus would never have attained wisdom.66 I do not
detect any rabid anti-Democritean sentime:qt here. It is
precisely because it was to Democritus' physical system
that Epicurus owed his own that he had frequent occasion
to spell out his disagreements with it.67 At worst his view
is Amicus Democritus sed magis arnica veritas.
It is still common to be told that Epicurus denied any debt
to previous philosophers and absurdly claimed complete
originality for his doctrines. Nothing in our ancient sources
supports this assumption. Epicurus' well-known claim to be
self-taught was merely a denial that he had learnt anything
from those under whom he had studied, namely Pamphilus
and Nausiphanes, and the ancient writers who report it
recognise it as such. 6 8
134
7. Democritus.
No one will dispute that the greatest single influence on
Epicurus' thought was Democritus. It is impossible to say
whether it was the works of Democritus that led Epicurus
to the school of Nausiphanes, or vice versa. But we can
safely assume that by this time he had decisively rejected the
philosophy of Plato and shifted his main interest to the
Presocratics. Of these Democritus was not in fact the one he
most admired. According to the biographer Diodes his
favourite Presocratics were Anaxagoras, although he sometimes criticised him, and his disciple Archelaus.s 9 Of his
direct predecessors in atomism, Leucippus was stated by
both Epicurus and his eventual successor Hermarchus never
to have existed,60 although this view was not shared by all
members of the schoo1.61 As for Democritus, Epicurus is said
by- Cicero and Plutarch to have spoken of him offensively
and ungratefully.62 This can be connected with Timocrates'
report that he bestowed on him the title Lerocritus Judge of Idiocies. The nickname invites comparison with
those of Heraclides Ponticus, who because of his wide girth
;6 3 and
and luxurious attire was known as
Alexinus the Megarian philosopher who was dubbed Elenxinus because of his use of the dialectical elenchus.64 No
doubt Epicurus' name for Democritus is offensive.65 Nevertheless, it need signify no more than occasional exasperation
with the man to whom he still acknowledged his chief
philosophical debt. I suggest this not as an apologist for
Epicurus, but on the express word of two of his leading
pupils. Leonteus, head of the Epicurean group at Lampsacus,
wrote in a letter quoted by Plutarch that Epicurus for a iong
time called himself and his system Democritean, and used
to honour Democritus for having arrived at the truth about
8. Nausiphanes.
It is only against Nausiphanes that we find Epicurus in
truly vitriolic mood. We have already seen in the examples
quoted by Timocrates the highly personal nature of his
invective. Sextus quotes some similar remarks from Epicurus'
Letter to the Philosophers in Mytilene :69 I suppose the
declaimers 7 0 will think I'm a disciple of the J ell.vjish,
because I attended his lessons in the company of some
juvenile alcoholics. The nickname Jellyfish meant insensitive. 7 1 Later in the same letter, Sextus continues, he
commented that Nausiphanes was a scoundrel, and occupied
himself with matters from which it is impossible to attain
wisdom. Sextus understands these 'matters' to be the
t.talJflt.tam, especially rhetoric, which Nausiphanes taught.
This sounds plausible, 7 2 though since we know that Epicurus
also called him a prostitute and a swindler other interpretations are clearly possible.
Just what Epicurus did owe to Nausiphanes is uncertain.
At least one critic 7 3 claimed that his epistemological
handbook the Canon was filched from Nausiphanes' work
the Tripod, and this may mean that Nausiphanes had
anticipated him in some aspects of his theory of knowledge. 7 4
But the scarcity of evidence for Nausiphanes' doctrines makes
it hard to go further. A papyrus of Philodemus preserves some
136
David Sedley
quotations, possibly from Epicurus' Letter to the Philosophers

in Mytilene, 7 5 in which Nausiphanes seems to be described
as reading the works of Anaxagoras and Empedocles and
heatedly quibbling about them ; and soon afterwards the
works of Democritus are mentioned in a similar context.
It may well be that the chief benefit which Epicurus derived
fro:q1 his studies in Teos was a thorough grounding in the
Presocratic philosophers.
9. Pyrrho.
But his stay there did acquaint him with at least one other
philosopher, his older contemporary Pyrrho of Elis, not long
back from his travels in the east with Alexander the Great. We
are told that Nausiphanes, who recommended his pupils to
adopt Pyrrho's disposition (though not his doctrines), often
recalled how Epicurus had shared his admiration for Pyrrho's
lifestyle and had always been asking questions about him. 7 6
The story does not state explicitly that Epicurus ever met
Pyrrho in person ; but even if he did not, he certainly learned
a great deal about him while in Teos. His reported esteem for
Pyrrho has largely been overlooked by scholars too eager to
see in Epicurus and Pyrrho themselves the prototypes of the
dogmatism and scepticism that separated their respective
followings in later generations. This oversimplification ignores
some salient facts. For one thing, Pyrrho was less the systematic Sceptic his later followers wanted to make of him,
than a Socratic figure, teaching not by the written word but
by personal example and by undermining dogma in debate ;
while Epicurus himself was hardly a dogmatic dogmatist, for,
at any rate in his cosmological teachings, he was not averse
to recommending suspension of judgment.77 For another
thing, both had their. roots in the Democritean tradition of
philosophy. 7 8
What are we to make of Epicurus' admiration for Pyrrho's
lifestyle? The overriding feature of Pyrrho's character was
by all accounts his a:rr pa"fJ.l.OOVVf/, his detachment from worldly
affairs and circumstances, 7 9 and this reappears prominently
in Epicurus' moral philosophy, for example in the doctrine
of airrapK.ew.80 In principle Epicurus could equally well
have learnt this doctrine from the Cynics, or from the
Megarian philosopher Stilpo. But we know, as it happens,
137
that he rejected their versions of it, shrinking from the

begging humility of the Cynics81 and opposing Stilpo's
extreme view for its denial of a place for friendship in the
life of the wise man.82 So a process of elimination83 brings
us back to Pyrrho. But if, as I am suggesting, Epicurus
allowed his moral philosophy to be shaped by his admiration
for Pyrrho, can we still believe Timocrates' report that he
also labelled Pyrrho uneducated and uncultured? We
can - and for a reason suggested by a fragment in which
Epicurus praises natural philosophy for imparting to us not
the nad5ela for which most people vie, but selfsufficiency
(avrapKeta) and pride in the good things that belong to us
rather than to our circumstances. 84 This contrast between
popular paideia and the philosopher's autarkeia is a revealing
one, for Epicurus was well known in antiquity for his opposition to paideia, the traditional Greek education rated so highly
in the Academy and Peripatos, with its emphasis on rhetoric.
grammar, music and mathematics. These mathemata, he felt,
served as a distraction, if not a positive hindrance, to philosophy's true task of allaying human fears. To hispupil Apelles
he wrote, I congratulate you for embarking on philosophy
while untainted by any nad)e{a.85 There is every reason to
think that Pyrrho, like his later followers, also took a stand
against the mathemata. To take one example, Sextus is
adamant that Pyrrho's own love of poetry is not to be
equated with a belief in its usefulness as a subject of study ;8 6
and this is reminiscent of Epicurus, who taught that the wise
man will enjoy musical recitals but will steer clear of disputes
about musical theory.87 I am in no doubt that when Epicurus
described Pyrrho as aj.l.atJr/c:; and imaloevToc:; he was not
calling him an ignorant yokel but praising him as untainted
by any mathemata or paideia. And we should see in Pyrrho
the source ofEpicurus' conviction that the truly philosophical
life does not require education along the traditional lines.
10. The Cyzicenes.
. Up to this point I hope to have shown some reasons for
disbelieving in the purely calumnious Epicurus, and for
seeing him as one whose acquaintance with contemporary
philosophers produced a variety of stimuli - some negative,
some positive - on his intellectual development. His reaction
"'
David Sedley
to Pyrrho suggests that accidents of personal acquaintance

may have exercised more influence than any of the major
school doctrines which we assume to have held the field
in his day. This point is confirmed by Epicurus' hostility to
' the two schools remaining on Timocrates' list. But for the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D-. and the consequent survival of an
Epicurean library at Herculaneum, we would be reduced to
guesswork about Epicurus' relations with .the Dialecticians,
and would not even know who the Cyzicenes were. The
Herculaneum papyri contain the vital clues, and, now armed
with new readings of some key passages, I can throw light
on both questions. 8 8
c According to Timocrates, Epicurus insulted the Cyzicenes.
H.S. Long's recent Oxford Classical Text of Diogenes Laertius
still carries the old emendation Kvvuwv<: for Kvtucrwov<: surprisingly, since as long ago as 1936 Bignone8 9 pointed out
an ' unmistakeable parallel with a fragment of Philodemus
On Epicurus 11,90 which cites a letter of Epicurus concerning a certain Cyzicene astronomer-geometrician. This
offered the vital clue as to the identity of the Cyzicenes.
For Eudoxus of Cnidos, the great mathematical astronomer
and associate of Plato, taught for a period at Cyzicus, and
produced there several distinguished pupils. One of these,
Polemarchus, in turn became the teacher of Callippus of
Cyzicus, who was later to move to Athens and exert a
profound influence on Aristotle's astronomical thinking.
All this points to an established Eudoxan school at Cyzicus,
which our fragment suggests was still going strong in
Epicurus' day.
\The Cyzicene astronomer-geometrician seems to be the
subject of a letter addressed to someone called Arcephon,
and also to the circle of Idomeneus and Leonteus, which
is simply a formula for the Epicurean group at Lampsacus.
Since Lampsacus and Cyzicus were neighbouring towns on
the Hellespont, it is not surprising that the Epicureans of
Lampsacus should have shown an interest in the Eudoxans
of Cyzicus. But it was much more than an idle curiosity ; for.
in fragment of a different letter, written by a first-generation
Epicurean . and again preserved by Philodemus,9 1 a new
recruit to the Epicurean school named Cronius is described
as without experience of logic-chopping, because Eudoxus
himself did not spend enough time on philosophy, as
Arcephon also told us. This implies that the new recruit
had originally been trained in the school of Eudoxus, and

also that the character called Arcephon, whom we met in
the previous fragment, had himself some past connexion
with the Eudoxans. So it begins to look as if the proximity
of the Epicurean and Eudoxan schools on the Hellespont
had resulted iri a rivalry for the custom and allegiance
of the young men of the area. Epicurus himself taught for
four years at Lampsacus before moving to Athens, and
afterwards maintained his close connexion with the town,
revisiting his followers there two or three times. Perhaps this
local rivalry was the context in .which he developed his
hostility to the discipline of geometry. The theoretical
objections to geometry were set out in a work entitled
Aporiai, not by Epicurus himself but by one of his leading
pupils Polyaenus ; and Polyaenus was a native of Lampsacus
who, before meeting Epicurus, had himself had a brilliant
career as a mathematician, very probably at the Cyzicene
schoo1.92
Eudoxus had also had an interest in ethics, making his
name as a leading exponent of hedonism. Here is a palpable
overlap with Epicurus' own preoccupations, and there is
reason to think that the rivalry between the two schools
touched on this question too.93 But it is astronomy that
seems to have been the chief area of dissension, and it was
probably the legacy Of Eudoxus' interest in Babylonian
astronomy and astrology that led Epicurus to call the
Cyzicenes enemies of Greece.94 For one illustration of
the astronomical dispute, we can turn to a passage of
Epicurus, On Nature, Book XI :-9 5
138
'
t.
10
139
]avarei\i\wv, avaretvovre<; el<; ro [The sun; if we walk toJJ.Epo<;

1raa11<; 'Y1i<:, ov J,J.ETE{31'/JJ.EV wards the place from which
it appeared to us] to rieK rovroy 17JJ.iv ov6J,J.evo<; lf)aiveraL, se,
and head up into the
OVOf 1r0i\i\'f7v ev{ore 'TrCtVV 'Y1iV mainland zone, appears to
JJ.E[ rafJ]e{3nK6atv. Ka[i aWrov ovK us to set where we previously passed by, someeanv av T[o]v<; 'TrAa'YLaaJ,J.OV<; times
even when we have
a[l]n[aaa]!JlJaL. T[i] 'Yap . r'f7v moved in all only a short
ev[ lJevo ]e K[a]TaaralJJ,J.'l'/aLV'[ i]] r'f7v distance. And this time
evlJevoe KaraaralJJ,J.'l'/aLv i1 r'f7v we cannot blame it on
the lateral deviations. For
evlJevoe i] r!]v[oe] ae [1r]oteiv oei . why should you make the
ma[ rorep ]av Karaard lJ[JJ.'l'/aiv j rwv measurement taken from
here, or the measurement
ava[r]oi\c;:)v[i] o]vaewv; ware[ ...... ] from
or the one from
' '
.. [ aL ... here, here,
r a 1 VV{3 awo [ .. .... )
LKOTW<;
OLJJ.
or this one, a more
reliable measurement of ri. (lacuna about 170 letters)
sings or settings? So [........
o]poiwpa n
f!VAAO'YirealJai
rrepl TOVTWV. ra pev 'YCtP
voovvrec;
Af'YW ora [op ]'Yavaev o[] roic;
]oovvrec; avrovc;,
ov p6vov K.ara rae; [c:ivopa]rrooeiac;
[r]ac; vrro r[wv]
avr[o]ic;
af..(..a K.ai rae;, K.ard
rwv ..paaparwv rwv r[o ]v 1]A.iov,
c:iopwreiac; c:ivaroA.wv K.ai ovaew[v ],
elK.6rwt; [iK.avo ]v ov o[
TWV
Op'YaVWV
o[v]lJev
-rrapnrovr[ wv] 9wvoim opoiw[pa]
c:iA.A.' ec;[n... op]'Ya[va ...
7L
(lacuna about 170 letters)

] rrpoarroinpa
K.ai
TOV ra erri TOV
op'Yavov
oei'Ypam n] v avrrzv
c:ivaA.o'Yiav
ro[i]c;
K.ara rc:i perwpa ..p[
owpwre[o]v 'Yap olpal rrpwr9v
ev..ppovovv[ 7 ]a
[pev] TOV
omv rreiXi-ov K.oap[ov]
K.alfwv e[v]
rrepl..paapa[r6]c; nvoc;
eK. [avprr]rw[p]cirwv nvwv TWV
K.ar'
c:ivarreprro[pe]vwv rrpoc;
emv6n[ ]v ii
alel<ae> awapevnv
arr[ ......... ] roaavr[a ...... ]rowvT[o ....... ]
[ .......... ]a[ ............... ..
on
]o.
David Sedley
140
omv olpaL err/: 70 VJrOK.eipevov

rvxu, K.a[l] piJ owpwv TOre
K.ara TO vrroK.eipevov A.[ eh9pev[ 0 ]v
K.al TO K.ara TO
............ They cannot hope 1

to form a Lmental] model
and to reason out anything
about these matters. For it
seems to me that when they
spend their time contriving
some of them - their instruments, I mean - and
amusing themselves with
others, it is no wonder, in
view not only of the enslavements brought upon
. them by their doctrines but
also (as far as concerns the
appearances of the sun) of
the indeterminacies of risings and settings, that they
cannot form and adequate mental model by means
of their instruments which
produce no regularity. But
their instruments are [.......
This only] leaves a pretence and a perverse claim
that the indications on the
instrument create an analogy that corresponds with
what we see in the heavens.
For our friend must, it
seems to me, make the distinction :(a) that when he
argues about the cosmos
and what we see in it he is
arguing about a certain image arising from certain accidental properties of things
passed through the medium
of vision into a thought
process or into a memory
process permanently preserved by the mind itself
[conveying certain] quantities, qualities, retc. ; but
(b) that when he speaks
about the indications on
his instrument he is speaking about the intrinsic
properties ofan object (lmo
KeLf.1.VOV).
...... So] when, as I see it,

he finds himselflooking"at
the object and failing to
distinguish a statement based on the object itselffrom
one based on that which is
50
55
[om r]ov
piJ]
rroA.A.ai oe [a ]rro [ 70 ]v
[<.pavr ]aaiat
r ]QV
rcir[ov, p]i] onrov K6ap[ov, e]tK.orwc;
aonpovei vrro TWV rrepi TOV i/A.iov
apriwc; pnlJeprwv avaroA.wv K.ai
ovaewv. [ EX]WV pev 'YCt[p] Kai
ni[xa] rr(anv eK.aara
TWV
..paa[parwv ... ]wv K.aL[ ..... ]aa[ ....... ]
VOVO [.] KT [ ...... ]q,[ ....... ]nva[ ....... ] l}VP
[..... ]peKT'Y/[ ............ <.p ]awo ............... ..
141
conceived by means of the

object, and the object does
not give rise to many presentations of theminiature,
let alone of the cosmos, it
is no wonder that he is
puzzled by the risings and
settings of which I have
just spoken in connexion
with the sun. For by trusting, presumably, that each
of the images [.................. .
................. ]rnv[ ........ .

65
70
]i/pWV piJ evavr{ac; avarof..f/c; Kai

ova ewe;
n avva
<.paapa
evrrepwevonpevov eK. TOV
A.nrrreov ..popav nva
i/A.iov J<al aeA1}[v]nfc;l
[elc;]
Ka[i
Kai OV
riJp [o]iff[wc; aieH
[ou]o
70 OVTW
e]vavriwc;
<.pareov exr'e 1LV Kara 'Ye oiJ TO
vrro!'[ei]pevov 'J<alJ' eavr6, Kal pi/
rrpoc; 1]piic;,
aA.A.ac;
J<al af..f..ac;
[T]OVTWV .
J<ai rrepi pev r[o]Vrov < rov >
pepOVC: OVrW OW]\r}JrTEOV.
... If ... ] we do not want to

attach to them an image of
reversed rising and setting
contrived from the object,
we must arrive at a mental
conception ofa motion of
sun and moon towards their
rising and setting, and must
not say of motion which
always occurs in this way,
nor of whatever moves in
this way, that it happens
in the opposite way according to the intrinsic properties of the object, and that
from some view-point other
than our own these things
are arranged in various dif
ferent patterns.
That then is the distinction which we must make
with regard to this topic.
7 alniwaat'hu Vogliano
8-9 [1)]- Ka7aa7cd}f.1.1'/0tv secl. Vogliano
17 Kv[:Nv]&ovvreo; Vogliano
18 [av&pa]1ro&eiao; Hayter: [1Tapef.1.]1To&eiao; Vogliano
20 ?Tapa['Yt')'v]of.l.E!vao; Vogliano
25 a?TapCronert ap. LSJ :
Vogliano
33 f.l.EV Vogliano
40
; aXatJr)aw Vogliano
48
: V1TO Vogliano
50 [ <.pavr ]aairu Hayter
52 70V i(l\iov PHerc. 1042 : 70 ]vo; i)iv:ovo;
PHerc. 154
66 eio; Hayter :
Vogl iano
67 [o )V7[ wo; :
[a]i>7[iJv Rosini; : ale]i : aei Vogliano
67-68 [ov]&e 70 OU7W
f.1.VOV PHerc .. 154, om. PHerc. 1042
73 7oiJ Gomperz.
David Sedley
142
Here we have seen Epicurus attacking some anonymous

opponents for their use of mechanical instruments to
illustrate mathematical laws for the orbits of the sun and
moon. (Epicurus calls these instruments organa ; we should
probably call them orreries, or planetaria). This has a particular topical interest, because a mechanism rescued in 1901
from the Antikythera shipwreck has recently been identified
as a similar instrument, but of the first century B.C .. The
most famous one in antiquity was that built by Archimedes,
nearly 'a century later than those mentioned in our text. Do
not mistake Epicurus' dislike of them for mere opposition
to " technology. They were weapons in the campaign to
- save the phenomena by proving that apparently irregular
planetary motions could be explained as complex combinations of regular circular motions. Their purpose was thus to
vindicate the divine nature of the stars ; while for Epicurus
the only purpose of astronomy was to disprove the divinity
of the stars.
l
,\l.; That the builders of these organa were followers of Eudoxus
is' in itself likely enough, especially in view of the story,
preserved by Plutarch, that the followers of Eudoxus and
Archytas were the first exponents of organike, the construction of mechanisms to solve mathematical problems.96 But
the confirmation is to be found in the first column of
Epicurus' text. Here he is attacking the assumption that
objectively valid measurements of celestial orbits can be
taken from a terrestrial viewpoint. The first sentence describes
a familiar optical illusion produced by the sun. If you walk
of
eastwards just before sunset, the sun can give the
s,etting at the place where you were standing a few minutes
earlier. This is intended to underline the impossibility of
finding a single correct vantage point for astronomical
observations, a deficiency which for Epicurus contributes
to making mathematical astronomy a bogus science.
His use here of eic; ro JJ.Epoc; rflc; 1raaf1c; "file; to describe
eastward movement puzzled me until I considered the
possibility that when he wrote these words he was not in
Athens but in Lampsacus. The Attic peninsula east of
Athens is hardly a zone of the whole land, but the phrase
can easily be understood as a reference to the continent of Asia,
stretching eastwards from Lampsacus with no known limit.
1
And a detailed contour map of Lapseki, the modern site of
confirms that there is. a gently sloping path .
\ lit'!:
r:
,.
')
' '
143
leading eastwards from it on which the illusion described by

Epicurus would be very apparent. If I am right, and Epicurus
wrote this book while at Lampsacus,97 the probability that
the Cyzicenes . are his target is immediately strengthened.
The argument about the impossibility of calculating where
the sun sets includes the remark, And this time it cannot be
blamed on the 1TAa"(taaJ.tol. The implication is that some
other irregularity previo:usly discussed was attributed by the
opponents to these 1Til.a"(taaJ.tol. To learn more about this
mysterious term, we must turn to Simplicius' account of the
three concentric spheres by. which Eudoxus explained the
sun's movements.9 8 The outer sphere coincided with that
of the fixed stars, rotating from east to west once in twenty-four hours. Inside this was the second sphere, carrying the
sun in the reverse direction through the zodiac and completing one revolution a year. It is this evavrla Jdvnatc; that we
find Epicurus objecting to near the end of our passage (61 ss.). ,,
The third sphere was introduced to account for supposed
deviations of the sun to north and south of the ecliiptic. The
sun is described as deviating to the sides, 1TapeKTpe1T6J.tevoc;
elc; ra 1TAa"(ta , and it must be to these deviations eic; ni
1Til.a"(ta that Epicurus is referring when he speaks of the
1TAa"(taaJ.toi. They may, he says, use this third sphere to
explain away north-south variations in the sun's course, but
they can never use it to explain east-west variations in its
observed position at sunset. The significant point is that
these lateral movements of the sun are a fiction, a product
of faulty observations, peculiar to the Eudoxan system. Here
we have the strongest possible indication that the opponents
under attack are followers of Eudoxus.
In the next fragment (14-26) we are told of the Cyzicenes'
obsession with their instruments and of the' enslavement
brought upon them by the doctrines of their school. The
mention of this enslavement in the use of their instruments
([av5pa]1Tooelac;, if the conjecture is correct) enables us to
recognise an allusion to them in a famous passage of the
Letter to Pythocles where Epicurus warns against the slavish
devices of the astronomers (rae; av5pa1To5woetc; aaTpOAO"(WV
rexvtrelac;).99 His preoccupation with denouncing these
planetaria makes it hard to doubt that they were on open
display in Cyzicus and exercised a considerable fascination on
visitors to the town.
For the remainder of the text I can offer here only a brief
''.
,,
.' :144
David Sedley
summary of the argument, reserving detailed .commentary

for another occasion. The understanding of celestial pheno, mena requires the formatio:t;t of a mental picture of them
(owvoiq, op.oiwp.a A.a{3eiv), and Epicurus seems to be saying,
reasonably enough for a .materialist philosopher, that the
purely mathematical model .of interconnecting spheres fails
, on this score. Then, from the third column onwards, he
. borrows heavily on the language of Scepticism, in stressing
the distinction that must be made between the V1TOK.LJleVOV
, and.; the l{)aw6p.evov-- on the one hand the objectively
existing body, on the other the subjective appearance that
derives from it. The. planetarium, whose intrinsic properties
we can know by close examination, counts for Epicurus as
a vnoK.eip.evov ; whereas. the movements of the heavens are
so distant as to be. mere subjective appearances which we
have no means of
The fatal error of the Cyzicenes
is to assume that they can validly argue from the one to the
other. "
hciThe Cyzicenes then, thanks to these fragments, can be
promoted from a textual corruption to a school which
survived for at least fifty years, long enough to collaborate
with Plato, to influence Aristotle, and to feud with Epicurus.
'1!
'\
'
11 !'The Dialecticians.
,;
Used as the name of a school, ota"A.eK.TLK.oi at this da:te

means the Megarians,l 00 against whom both Epicurus and
Metrodorus wrote works. This school was founded by
Euclides of Megara, a cont'emporary and friend of Socrates,
and survived until the time of Epicurus, after which it was
eclipsed by the Stoa. The later Megarians were known as
DLaAK.7LK.Oi, because they had reduced their philosophical
method to one of questions demanding <<yes or no
answers.l 0 1 By common consent, their leading dialectician
at this timel 0.2 was Diodorus Cronus, a flamboyant character
who, I suspect, had 'considerable influence on all three
Hellenistic schools, less through the intrinsic importance of
. his doctrines than through the force of his personality. Like
his Megarian predecessors, his formal commitment was to the
. doctrines of Parmenides .. He clearly saw himself in the role
of Zeno of Elea, as depicted by Plato in the Parmenides,
seeking l out;, supplementary arguments ., to ; back : up the
Epicums and his professional rivals
145
Eleatic denials of motipn, change, plurality, and the know ability of the physical world. For example, taking a leaf out of
Zeno's book he devised his own four paradoxes ridiculing the
idea that anything can be in motion, although he conceded
that things can be said to have moved.l 03 It is symptomatic
of his impact on the new Hellenistic schools that the Sceptics,
who were deeply interested in refutations of motion,
knew only Diodorus' paradoxes and not those of Zeno.l 04
What is more, one of Diodorus' pupils was the other Zeno,
the future founder of Stoicism ; and the debt of the Stoa
to Diodorus' pioneering work in modal logic needs no proof
from me.
In looking for his impact on the third Hellenistic school, the
Epicureans, one immediately thinks of their rejection of
owA.eK.nK.i} as .superfluous to philosophy.105 Was this a
reaction specifically to Diodorus and his circle? Not necessarily. But I am encouraged to think so by the name
no"Avl{)lJ-6pot, destruction-mongers, which Epicurus gave
to the otaA.eK.nK.oi.l 06 Of course, this name would be
appropriate enough to anyone who was fond of destructive
arguments ; but it is supremely apt for Diodorus, who had
an argument to prove that destruction is impossible.l07
Diodorus is best remembered today for his Master
Argument, whose conclusion is that nothing is possible
which neither is nor will be true.l 08 It was probably this
powerful. defence of determinism that pushed Epicurus, not
unlike Aristotle before him, to assert that statements about
the future are neither true nor false.l 09 Indeed, one of
Epicurus' outstanding contributions to the history of thought
was as the first true champion of free will against deterministic
arguments. II O This is usually seen as a reaction to Democritus, but I have long suspected that Epicurus was provoked
in tms more by the debating skills of Diodorus than by the
tacit assumptions of his atomist predecessor. Ill
Epictirus had chosen to set up his school in Athens, and
Athens was not just a prestige address for philosophy schools,
but a central forum for the exchange of ideas. It is inconceivable that he spent his thirty-five years there just sitting in
the Garden. Contact with rival schools was both desirable
and inevitable .
For confirmation, we have merely , to eavesdrop on a
conversation held between Epicurus and Metrodorus ten
years after the foundation of the school in Athens. This
David Sedley
Epicums and his professional rivals
unique opportunity is afforded by the fragments of Epicurus'

On Nature, Book XXVIII, written in 296/5 B.C .. 112 The
book is a monologue addressed to Metrodorus, whose
comments are from time to time relayed to us by the author
in the way that a film character engaged in a telephone
conversation will echo the gist of what is being said to him
for the benefit of the viewers.
The first surviving portion discusses their views on the
function of language in philosophy. Epicurus admits the
shortcomings of his previous view, according to which the
philosopher must try to reform ordinary language into a more
accurate medium of expression. He also criticises a doctrine
once professed by Metrodorus, comparable to that of Hermogenes in Plato's Cratylus, that names are purely arbitrary
labels of which one is not to be preferred to another. Thus
their former viewpoints had been diametrically opposed ;
but by the time of writing they appear to have agreed on a
midway position. You might think that these changes of
heart arose purely from debate within the school. But the
text suggests that this is not the whole story. At one point
Epicurus seems concerned to. distinguish their former views
from those of some unnamed opponents :-113
I am convinced that I see these names clearly in the way
in which we used to distinguish them, as you took the
meaning, and not in the senses in which certain people
them. Perhaps, though, you'll say this
would
isn't the time to prolong the discussion by bringing this up ?
Quite so, Metrodorus. For I'm sure you'd be able to bring up
lots of names which you used to see certain people taking in
various ridiculous senses, and indeed in any sense rather than
their actual linguistic meanings, whereas our own usage never
flouted linguistic convention and we did not alter names for
perceptible things.
These opponents sound very like Diodorus and his followers.114 For Diodorus took. the extreme view that the
meaning of a word is nothing more than that intended by
the speaker while
,uttering it. To establish this he renamed
I
one of his slaves with the conjunction 'AA.A.a f.J.TJV. According
to another story, he had two slaves, whom he
Mev and
.Ll. And no doubt he used to produce these unfortunate
slaves during debates as living proof of his theory. As a
consequence, he also taught that ambiguity is impossible,
since a word can only have one meaning at a time. So when
Epicurus adds at the end of the column that he has already

exposed these opponents' errors in a work. On Ambiguity,
little doubt can remain as to their identity. It sounds very
much as if Metrodorus' retraction of his former linguistic
doctrine had been brought about in part by contact in debate
with Diodorus and his associates, whose theory had looked
uncomfortably like a reductio ad absurdum of his own.
A little later in the same book, Epicurus outlines his ideas
for a new method of testing opinions, by examination of
their practical consequences. He then gives an example of
an argument that can easily be refuted by this method :-11 5
This is also what makes it easy for everyone to laugh
when somebody secures another's agreement that it is
impossible to know and not know the same thing, and then
brings up the Veiled Father and other such riddles.
Now, the Veiled Father is known to us as a dialectical riddle
employed by Diodorus.11 6 The opponent is first asked to agree
that it is impossible to know and not know the same thing,
and does so. The dialectician then asks him, Do you know
your father? Yes, he replies. And if I show you
someone with his head veiled, will you know him? No,
replies the opponent. But, says the dialectician triumphantly, the man with his head veiled is your father. Therefore
you will both know and not know your father, and it is
possible to know and notknow the same thing.
This is usually dismissed as a harmless riddle. But Epicurus
cannot have taken it so lightly, or he would hardly have
devoted the next two and a half columns to its refutation.
A different riddle, but with the identical conclusion, was
apparently used by earlier Megarians and is quoted in Plato's
Theaetetus as an argument against the doctrine that knowledge
is perception.11 7 There is every reason to think that
Diodorus' riddle was designed for the same purpose, and
hence as a weapon against anyone like Epicurus who
defended the link between perception and knowledge. In
On Nature XXVIII we see Epicurus busily revising and
tightening up his epistemological doctrines. A precious
insight into the motives that led him to seek these improvements is afforded to us by the discovery that when he wrote
the book he was still smarting from clashes with Diodorus
and his followers.
146
147
148
David Sedley
149
NOTES
12. Conclusion.
This study 11 8 has no pretensions to completeness, but
I hope- to have contributed to two goals. The first is to
pinpoint the role of Timocrates in the anti-Epicurean
tradition, and to show that evidence derived from him should
never be taken at its face value. The second is to replace the
traditional Epicurus, who heaped indiscriminate abuse on
his elders and betters in a desperate attempt to mask his own
unoriginality, with one who, while as content as any Greek
philosopher to engage in polemical skirmishes, recognised
many merits in his professional competitors, and was not
ashamed to learn from them.
D.S.
1. Some sources (Aristocles ap. Euseb. Praep. ev.>XIV 20; 14), including
Demetrius Magnes (D.L. X, 13), asserted that he had studied under
Xenocrates. Tliis was probably just guesswork, and should certainly not
be believed in the face of Epicurus' own express denial (Cicero N.D. 1,72).
2. The majority of modern writers on Epicureanism put his studies under
Nausiphanes before his military service (cf. P. Boyance, Gnomon 46,
1974, p. 753). But according to Hermippus (D.L. X,2) before becoming
acquainted with Democritean philosophy he had worked as a schoolteaif true, can hardly have been before the age of 18.
cher, and
Besides, the sources that claimed that he had studied with Xenocrates
dated his period with Nausiphanes later than this (Aristocles, lac. cit.
in previous note). Strabo's biographical summary- XIV, 11l8a_rpa#/vcu ...
evrfaoe (sc. ev L<l/lw) Kai ev Tew Kai e<.prJ{3evacu AvfwrtaL - is
sometimes cited in support of the orderTeos-Athens. But I doub't if these
words express a chronological sequence.
3. J.M. Rist, Epicurus, An Introduction (1972),p. 9.
4. E. Bignone, L 'Aristotele perdu to e !a formazione filosofica di
Epicuro (1936).
5. Editors since Usener have accepted Spengel's Mapp,apwv as an
emendation for MapJ.uipwv, following col. V of Philodemus Adversus
[sophistas 1. There an op2onent is derided, amo.ng other things, for
cla1ming (falsely, it is implied) that NtKiowv and McitlJ..ta[p]ov were the
mistresses of Idomeneus and Leonteus respectively. As Sbordone
1947), the papyrus has
correctly states on p. 139 of his edition
insufficient space for the termination -[pt JOV, and Mappapov has two
attestations m Attic inscriptions. Names in Mappap are to my
knowledge unattested. By other courtesans D.L. presumably means
other than Leontion - the clarity of the entire passage has suffered in
the abridgment of source material.
6. Usener (Epicure a, 1887, p. 362-3) emends the text in such a way as to
construe raiJra AE"fELV with Navatt,oaveL (says the same things as
Nausiphanes). This may well have been tne meaning intended by
D.L.'s source, but D.L. clearly did not understand it in -this way, since
the point of his v aiJraic; can only be to sever raiJra from Navatt,oavet.
7. The form rroA.vt,ofJ6povc;, whose use Plutarch (Non posse 1086e)
attributes to Epicurus, is clearly more afpropriate to the dialecticians
than the rroA.vt,orfovepovc; of the mss., and have little doubt that it is the
word which Epicurus used. Of course, the incorrect form may
nevertheless be what D.L. wrote in our passage. But I print the emended
form for convenience in the ensuing discussion.
8. W. Cronert,Kolotes und Menedemos ( 1906),p. 16-24 ; Bignone, L 'Ar.
perd. II,Chapter VI, esp. p. 43-153 ; A. Vogliano1 Epicurea Ii A erne I
(1948), p. 95-119 ; H. Steckel, Epikuros
suppl. X, 1968,
579-652), col. 601 ; G. Arrighetti, Epicuro, Opere (2nd' ed., 1973)
p. 680-1 ; and, to my knowledge, all others who have touched on the
question. According to Cronert, it is sehr wahrscheinlich that the
source is a single letter, apparently for the following reasons. The
Aristotle and Protaggras slanders are attested (see 3) as belonging
to Epicurus' letter llepi (rwv) emTf'/OEVJ.larwv. The denunciation of
by Sextus (see 8) to the letter Ilpoc; rove;
t'l'aUSlphapes is
ev MvnA.rwn tpLAOOOtpOVC:. But the latter, as quoted by Sextus, contains
the word E1rLTT'TJO EVK we;. So the two titles must be alternatives for one
and the same letter, which, by a further stretch of the imagination we
regard as the source of all the abusive epithets attested for Epicurus.
Ep1curus' letters were classified both according to recipient and
according to subj_ect-matter, it is claimed, and hence each had two
alternative titles. The evidence for this last point (p. 20) is insufficient
and the whole theory is open to numerous objections. But it is enough
to
as the following discussion will make clear, that the letter
Ilepi (TWVJ E1rLT'TJOVJ1arwv had
specific theme quite unconnected
David Sedley
with Epicurus' attacks on Nausiphanes or anyone else. Bignone took

over and elaborated Cronert's account, incorporating all sorts of other
fragments in the supposed letter - now re-titled Epistola ai filosofi di
Mitilene sulle occupazioni dt!gne (sometimes indcgne) di un filosofo.
This is depicted as a major document of Epicurus' early period,
denouncing a heterogeneous collection of philosophers, especially the
platonico-perip(!tetici 1 on countless topics ranging from debauchery
to scepticism. Hidden m the tangle of fanciful speculation there are
some sound ideas, but it is no easy task to unravel them.
9. See fr. 101-4 Arr., with commentary. Usener ( fr. 11-4 and 171-3)
was the last to distinguish correctly between the Letter to the Philosophers in Mytilene and the Letter on Occupations.
10. Cronert includes Zeno of Citium on no evidence whatever (p. 20).
Many of the others qualify only on the basis of tenuous evidence that
Epicurus, or other early Epicureans, were rude about them. I have
ciiosen to regard all invectives by Epicurus' disciples as irrelevant to the
present study - they can tell us nothing about Epicurus' own philosophical development.
11. S. Luria,Symb. Osl. XV-XVI (1936),1?. 21 s. ;A. Vogliano,Acme I
(1948), p. 108. Cronert himself later pnvately retracted the forgery
theory, according to Bignone (L 'Ar.perd. Il,56 note 2).
12. Quoted below, 8.
13. 354 a-d. 1TOAACL o exwv en AE"feLV 1Tepi wv e'A71pf1GV 0 <.papJ.l.aK0-
age, and certain

he did nC?t,
at J:lis death his consid.erab.le
wealth included famtly properties m Chalets and Stagna (as his will
proves, D.L V, 11-16). Epicurus' story is probably linked to an alternative tradition, expressly repudiated by at least one Aristotelian
biographer (Vita Syriaca I, 6 ; cf. Timaeus, FGH 566, 156 ; Vita
Marciana 11 ; Fihrist 6 ; all in I. DUring, Aristotle in the Ancient
Biographical Tradition, Goteborg 19 57) that Aristotle turned to
philosophy at the age of 30, having previously practised medicine.
Charges of high living had been levelled at Aristotle by detractors
older than Eptcurus - Cephisodorus, Theocritus of Chws. and the
historian Timaeus (see Diiring,p. 373 ss., testimonia 58 hf k ; 60a1 b,
d ; and p. 386 s., 389-92 ; During's attempt to make al these smrs
dependent on Epicurus is chronologically implausible). The story of
a squandered inheritance was also told of Democritus, D.L. IX,36 39 ;
and Plato was said1 before turning to philosophy, almost to have enfisted
as a mercenary so1dier,Aelian, Var. hist. III,27.
17. D.L. IX 53=Aristotle fr. 63 Rose; Aulus Gellius V,3. For Protagoras'
invention. see P.-M. Schuh!, Aristote, Cinq ceuvres perdues (1968),
p. 143-6. For chronological doubts about the story of Democritus and
Protagoras_. see W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, II
(1965),p. 586 note 2.
18. Aulus Gellius II, 18 ; Macrobius Saturn. I, 11,42. For a general study
of such stories, see 0. Gigon, Antike Erzahlungen iiber die Berufung zur
Philosophie, Museum Helveticum 3 (1946),p. 1-21.
19. Theon, Progymnastica (Spengel Rhet.II,lll-2). Cf. Lactantius
Div. inst. III, 25, 7 (=fr. 227a Usener) : Epicurus ... rudes omnium
150
1TWAf/<: 1TaVOJ.l.at, KaiTot elow<: Kai 'E1TiKovpov Tov '{J!.'Aa'AflfJeamTov

TaiJT' ei1Tovra 1Tpi cWTOV ev TV 1repi e1TLTf/O VJ.l.aTWV emaTo'Afl,
Kam<.pa"fWV Ta 1TaTpya e1Ti aTpaTeiav WPJ.l.f/0 Kai
ev mUTT/ KaKWC::
1Tpanwv e1Ti TO <.papJ.l.aK01TWAeiv 1}'AfJev. elm ava1T1TmJ.l.EVOV TOV
TI'AaTWVOC:: 1Tpt1TaTOV, '{J11ai, 1Tapa{3a'Awv eavTOV 1TpoaeKafJwe TOi<;
AO"fOL<:, OVK wv a'{JI.Jf/<:, Kat' KaTa J.l.tKpov elc:; Ti]V fJewpOVJ.l.EVf/V
<tV>
1}'AfJev. oloa oe on TaVm J.l.OVO<: 'E1TiKOVpO<; efpf/KV KaT' aUTOV. OUT
0' Ev3ov'Aiof1<;' a'A'A' avo Kwwoo wpo<; TOLOVTOV n eTOAJJ,f1UV ei1Teiv
KaT a TOV l:,m"fLptTOV, KaiTOL KaL GV"f"fpitp.J.l.aTa eK/5ovre<: KaT a TCtVO poe;.
ev oe Tfl aiJTfl E1TWT0Afl 0 'E1TiKOVpO<: Kai TipWTa"fOpav '{J11ai TOV
GO'{J!.GTi)V eK
Kai
1TpWTOV J.l.EV "fVeafJat "fpa<.pea
!:.f/J.l.OKPtTOV. fJaVJ.J.alJfJevra 0' V1T' eKetVOV e1Ti
nvt' ioi{L avvfJeaet
a1TO TallTfl<; Tfi<; apxfi<: aVUAfl<.fJMiVat V1T' cWTOV Kai otoaaKetv ev KWJ.l.T/
nvi 'YPitp.J.l.aTa. a<.p' wv E1Ti TO UO'{JWTVLV owfiaat. Ka"fW oe, avope<;
avvoatm'Afic;' a1TO TWV 1TOAAWV TOVTWV AO"fWV Ti]V OpJ.l.i]V exw
TO iiofl
"fUGTpiteafJat.
and is strongly
14.
< LV> i)'AfJev is Usener's emendation for
1Tpte3a'AeTO in Aelian's paraphrase (see next note}.
supported by
15. Cf. Aristocles ap. Euseb. Praep. ev. XV, 2, 1 : - Tiwc; "fUP
olav Te, KafJa1Tep '{J110iV 'E1TtKOVpO<: ev Tfl 1repi TWV e1TtTf/OVJ.l.aTWV
emaTo'Afl, veov J.l.eV cwra KaUJ>PU'Yeiv cWTOV Ti]V 1TaTPctJaV ovaiav, E1TLTa
o E1Tt TO aTpaTeveafJat avvwaat, KaKW<: oe 1TpaTTOVTa ev TOVTOt) e1Ti TO
<.papJ.l.UK01TWAeiv e'AfJeiv, E1TtTa ava1T1TTQ}.1EVOV TOV TI'AaTWVO<; 1Tpt1TaTOV
1ram 1rapa{3a'Aeiv aiJTov ;
Also Aelian, Var. hist. V, 9 : - 'AptaTOTEAf/<: aawTevaaJ.l.VO<; Ta eK
TOV 1TaTpO<; XPfiJ.l.aTa WPJ.l.f/GV e1Ti OTpaTeiav, elm a1Ta'A'AaTTWV KaKW<:
ev TOVT4J, <.papJ.l.aK01TWAf/<: ave<.pd.Vf/. 1Tapewpveic; oe el<: TOV Tiepi1TaTOV
Kai 1Tapauovwv TWV AO"fWV, aJ.J.etVWV 1T'{JVKW<; 1TOAAWV elm
1Tepte3a'AeTo, i)v J.l.Ta TaiJra eKTf/aaTo.
em
on
em'
16. According to the best trusted sources, Aristotle, orphaned at an

early age, was brought up under the guardianship of Proxenus of
Atarneus, and joined the Academy in 367 B.C., aged 17. It is unlikely
that he had the legal power to .squander his inheritance at this tender
't,,,
151
litterarum ad philosophiam inuitat.
20. Only Arrighetti, to my knowledge, has observed that D.L. X,S may
misrepresent Epicurus : Sia in DL che in A ten eo i particolari della
vita di Aristotele prima di darsi alla filosofia sono gli stessi ; solo che
nel secondo
aggiunto un giudizio nettamente positivo sul valore
dello Stagirita che nel prima manca, e cia basta per dare un colore tutto
diverso alle due testimonianze. Queste le conseguenze dell' omissione
di un particolare : pensiamo ai risultati cui si poteva giungere anche
so/tanto procedendo con questa metoda. (p. 680). Mr. M.D. Reeve
has drawn my attention to the parallel case of Stifpo, who, according

to Cicero De jato, 10, was said by his own associates to be a drunkard
and a lecher. This was not an msult but a compliment (neque haec
scribunt uituperantes, sed potius ad laudem), because they went on to
point out how by adherence to his doctrines he had completely
conquered these natural weaknesses. For sentimentality_ about humble
origms, cf. Aristotle, Rhet. I, VII,32 ; Valerius Maximus III,4.
21. I have in mindJarticularly the First Study in D.J. Furlev's Two
Studies in the Greek to mists ( 1967), and J .M. Rist's Pleasure 360-300
B.<;:., Phoenix 28 ( 1.974), p. 167-79. The latter argues persuasively that
Eptcl.!rus had read Anstotle EN VII. But in his Epicurus, An Introduction
R.tst m .my '?Pinion overstates the case for Aristotelian influence. Cf.
hts Stozc Phzlosophy (1969), p.l : Now that the phrase ((post-Aristo-
telian philosophy)) is gradually being taken to refer to philosophy

largely governed by Aristotle...
22. Philodemus,Adversus [sophistas] fr. }3 Sbordone = fr. 127 Arr.
23. Philodemus, Vol. rhet. I ed. Sudhaus, LIV, 10-17.
24. D.L. V,37,41.

25. Plutarch,Col. 1110c=fr. 30 Usener, fr. 16 Arr.
26. <:;ronert (p. 16 note (4) denies that Timocrates is the source,
assertmg t.\lat the quotation from his book Euphranta stops at
avvfJta"fW"ff/V. I cannot agree that this is a natural or even a possible
way . to read the passage. The aqcusative and infinitive construction
down to otoaaKa'Aqv. There Diogenes changes to
cont!nuys
the
<Ka'Aet)J but
I thin!c, .to avoid confusion with
the mfmttives 'AotoopewfJat Kat a1TOKa'Aetv m the direct speech that
precedes - CP.rtainly not to signal his own reporting, since in
9 he

David Sedley
. , strongly dissociates himself from all the preceding allegations (But

, these people are mad... ).
' ' 21/ For 1 attempts to elapo_rate the history of this episode, see
. R. Philippson, Timokrates (RE VI A;l266 ss.), and F. Sbordone;
. ,, Per la storia dell' epistolario di Epicuro (Miscellanea Rostagni1 1963,
c; p: 26-39). These studies, thougli valuable, should be recogmsed as
. extremely speculative, since they rely largely on fragments from the
Herculaneum papyri in which Timocrates is not named. Sbordone
. (p 30-3) takes him to be the subject of Philodemus, llpa-y,uaTeicu
coi. XI-XVIII, on the strength of two or three occurrences of his
' name. But, although his naine does occur in col.XII (see C. Diano,
; Lettere di Epicuro e dei suoi, 1946, p. 7), I find his role in the
passage by no means as clear as Diano and Sbordone think it. And
. although he is mentioned again in col.XIV 2 (aoe'Atp(;c; Mev[TO]P.[io]ov
Tt,UOK.paT'f/C: ; Sbordone's aoe/1.1/)jJc; ,uev [aiJr]oii might just fit the lacuna,
, but the text does not supply a 8 ; _Mentondes "':as the .elder b!other of
zra XII,9 ss. Wilke); the
1. :. Timo_crates and .Metrodor)ls,
j. remamder of hnes 1-8 IS umntelhgible m the present state of the
;. , papyrus. I have, however, through a new examination of the papyrus,
, :been able to establish the correct reading of lines 8-12 : Ofll A.ovTcu
. o' a,u1\et K.ai 'Y.(eh.-yovvia nc; I vn' avTOV TW[v] nepi TOV 'EniiKovp]ov l
<J>povn(c;). en' 0AVJ.l1Tt00WpOV -yfap 1] J J<ai) npoTefpOV 70Jt'a0 -ypa- .
1 tpwv L .. l ... Whoever is the subject of biographical investigation in this
; sec:tion of tJ:te ?JOrk is argued by Philodemus, on
strength a letter
wntten by him m or before 294/3 B.C. (the archonship of Olympwdorus),
.;r;::: to have been the father of a. female disciple of EQicurus named
,, ' Phrontis (hitherto unknown to us). This cannot be Timocrates. If
.. Timocrates' daughter had joined the Epicurean school it would hav(;l
been a celebrated triumph of the Garden, not an obscure inference from
. a letter of uncertain date. I cannot find any evidence for Philippson's
.. statement (col. 1266) that Timocrates apparently did not go to Athens,
or for Sbordone's (p. 30) that the rift occurred c. 301 B.C .. What is,
however, clear to me is that Timocrates' Euphranta cannot have been
'' written much before 290 B.C., since it referred to the 37 books of the
': nepi tpvaewr:;, and Epicurus did not reach Book XXVIII until 296/5
(seenote 112 below). As for the title of Timocrates' book, I have
. followed Susemihl ( Geschichte der Griechische Litteratur in der
Alexandrinerzeit, I, 1891, p. 105) and LSJ in favouring the neuter
. EVtppaVTa (Frolics?). Philippson prefers EiJtppaVToUdie Vergnygli11ge,
coL 1'?.67). For another possibility, see Usener, Index s.v. bVtpaVTO<:;
( cf. Cronert ; p. 2 6-8). .
..
28. Fr. 41, 72-3 Usener; Cronert,p. 24 note 136.Timocrates became

proverbial in Epicurean literature for the excessive strength of his
emotions : see Philodemus De ira XII,9 ss. Wilke, on his hot temper,
and De lib. die. XX b, 3 ss. Olivieri, on his self-confessed extreme love
and hate for his brother.
.
Epicurei fragmenta, Jahrb.
29.' Fr. 29-30! 39-42 Korte
fur class. Philo., Suppl. XVII, Leipzig 1890, p. 531-97).
30. N.D. 1,33 : ... cum Epicurus Aristotelem uexarit contumeliosissime,
. Phaedoni Socratico turpissime male dixerit, Metrodori sodalis sui
fratrem Timocratem, quia nescio quid in philosophia dissentiret, totis
uolu_miJ:tibus conciderzt, in Democritum ipsum, quem secutus est,
fuerzt zngratus, Nausiphanen, magistrum suum a quo nihil didicerat
tam male acceperit.
, 3). For the evidence about Pl);aedo, see L. Preller, Ausgewiihlte
. satze ( 1864), p. 363 ss .. Cronert (p. 22) suggests that the abusive
, word erawnaetr:; whose use Plutarch attributes to Epicurus and
, Metrodorus (Non posse 1086e) alluded to Phaedo's work as a prostitute;
, 32. N.D. 1,40 : Nam etiam Philo noster ferre non poterat aspernari
Epicureos mollis et delicatas uoluptates ; summa enim memoria
., pronuntiabat plurimas Epicuri sententias iis ipsis uerbis quibus erant
' : scriptae , ; ,. Metrodori uero; qui est Epicuri collega sapientiae, multa
. ':
1 recitabat ; accusat, enzm . Timocratem fratrem
suum
f.-:',.
153
Metrodorus quod dubitet omnia quae ad beatam uitam pertineant uentre

metiri.
33. Cotta adds the comment, Neque id semel dicit sed saepius.
Adnuere te uideo ; nota enim tibi sunt ; proferrem libros si negares.
This is of course dramatic window,dressing, not evidence that Cicero
knew the works of Metrodorus at first hand. Cf. Tusc. Il,8 : Epicurum
et Metrodorum non /ere praeter suos quisquam in manus sumit. For
Philo as a source o Cotta's .speech, see I. Heinemann, Poseidonios' .
metaphysische Schriften II (1928), p. 148 ss. ; R. Philippson, Des
Akademikers Kritik der epikureischen Theologie im ersten Buche der
Tuskulanen Ciceros,Symo. Osl. 20 (1940), p. 21-44, andRE 2te Reihe
VIla ( 1939), col. 1154. Philo's material may itself have been derived,
through. Clitoinachus, from Carneades, who, to judge from his
remarks quoted by Plutarch in Non posse 1089c, also knew Timocrates'
book. Tlie Academy clearly made it a standard reference work for
anti-Epicurean propaganda. Was it to the Academy that Timocrates
deserted ( cf. Bignone, L 'Ar. perd. II,46)?
34. Plutarch, Col. 1124e'-1127e, and Non posse 1097a-1098d. At
Non posse 1097 d-e the account of life in the Garden, with expensive
foods on the table and the courtesans Leontion1 Boidion, Hedeia and
Nicidion dancing attendance, seems to be basea on a memory of the
passage from Timocrates cit(;ld in D.L. X, 7. And in 1098b Plutarch
gives, as an example of the base pleasures which the Epicureans
enjoyed, the exultation of Metrodorus' mother and sister at his
marriage to a courtesan and at his polemical works against his own
brother Timocrates. In the other passage, at' 1126c, there is a further
allegation manifestly derived from Timocrates :Plato, who sent out his
disciples to reform state constitutions, is contrasted with Epicurus,
who sent people to Asia to defame Timocrates and to get him
banished from. the king's court, because he had offended Metrodorus
whose brother he was. Not only do the two passages share a great
deal of their source material, but they also have in common the fact
that , nearly all their anti-Epicurean accusations are either directea
against Metrodorus or concerned with him in some way - another
pointer to Timocrates as source. (It should however be added that
Plutarch's interest in Metrodorus is by no means confined to these two
pas.sages). R. Westman, in his important study Plutarch gel{en Kolotes
(A eta Philosophica Fennica VII, 19 55), allots only one bnef mention
to Timocrates (p.
35. Non posse 1098 c-d : r'i "fOP ov rovTotr:; eotK.e Ta M'f/Tpoowpou npor:;
TOV aoe'Atp(;v -ypa<.pdvr.or:; <<OVOev 0 ei
'EA.X'f/var:; ovo' eni
OO<;iQ. OTetpavwv nap' aVTWV TVYX.CtVtv, aA./1.' eathetV Kat' nt'vetv .OLVOV,
W Tt,UOKpaTe<:;, b.[31\af3wr:; Tfl-yaaTpi Kai KEXapw,uevw<:;. K.ai nal\tv nov
'P'f/Otv ev Toir:; aVTOi<:; -ypa,u,uaatv W<:; K.ai exap'f/V Kat el'Japavva,U'f/V,
e,ual'Jov nap' 'EtnKOVpOV opiJwr:; -yaaTpi
Kai nepi -yaaTepa
-yap, wtpVOto/1.6-ye Tt,UOKpaTec;, TO a-yal'JOV.
Cf. Athenaeus VII,279. f : Kai aVTOC:: o nov 0 M:r)Tp6owpoc:; OVK
anoKpvnr6,uevor:; Tar:; KaMr:; TaVmr:; -&eaetr:: 'PfiOiv nepi -yaaTepa -yap,
w tpvawM'Ye Tt,u6KpaTEr:;, nepi -yqmepa o Kara tpvaw
rrw anaaav exet anovo7]v.
36. Ep. Men. 130-2.
37. For further testimony to Epicurus' asceticism, see Seneca,Ep. mor.
18.9=Epicurus fr. 158 Usener, and D.L. X, ll=fr. 1R2 Usener .
38. Athenaeus VII 279f =Timon fr. 7 Diels (Poetarum Philosophorum
Fragmenta, 1901).
39. CAF 3, 349-51. On the following passages, and their relation to
anti-Epicureanpropagandaisee especially P. De Lacy, Cicero's Invective
against Piso, TAPA LXXI ( 1941), p. 49-58.
40. CAF 3, 328.

41. CAF 3, 327.' .
on
,.
David Sedley
42: CAF 3, 414. I have omitted other probable parodies which do not
mention Epicurus by name, most notably tile Asotodidaskalos of
Alexis(?), CAF 2, 306 s.
43: Cf.,Thomas Carlyle's denunciation of Profit-and-Loss Philosophy
(i.e.,, Utilitarianism) Sartor Resartus,Book II,Chapter 7 (1835): ,Soul
is not synonymous w1th Stomach.
44. Notes 38 and 35 above.
Alciphron, Epistulae amatoriae IV, 17,1 0 : JToocuw: ofet Jle,
sun, see my forthcoming article cited in note 88 below.

54. Antidorus was the subject, or addressee, of a work in two books by
Epicurus ('Avriowpo<: a' W, D.L. X,26), and of a polemic by the
Epicurean Colotes (Plutarch,.. Col. 1126a). If he can be identified with
tlie 'Avr6owpo<: of D.L. V,9.d., he was himself an Epicurean, presumably
a renegade hke Timocrates. For a full discussion of the problem, and of
the nickname Lavv{owpo<:, see Cronert's fundamental study, Kolotes
undMenedemos, p. 24-6; also B.A. Miiller,RE Suppl. III (1918), p. 120-1.
55. Ed. A. Vogliano, I frammenti del XIV libro del ITepi <fJVOeW<: di
Epicuro (Rend. Accad. Scienze Bologna, Classe Scienze Morali, serie
terza, vol. VI, 1931-2 1 pp. 3-46) = fi. 29 Arr. ; see also W. Schmid's
important study, Epzkurs Kritik der platonischer Elementenlehre,
Klass. -Philo!. Stud. 9 (Leipzig 1936).
56. See D.
The Structure of Epicurus' On Nature, Cronache
ercolanesi 4 (1974J,p. 89-92.
57. 41Sa ss. ; this is B. Farrington's interpretation (Science and

Politics in the Ancient World, 1939, p. 98, 130), followed by Arrighetti,
p. 681. Note also that the silver class are called eJTiKoupot!
58. Athenaeus 249f, 254b, 435e.
59. D.L. X,12. Anaxagoras spent his final years at Lampsacus, where ne
was honoured as a local hero for centuries after his death (fr. 59 A 23
Diels-Kranz ; D.L. II, 14), and where Archelaus is said to have succeeded
to the headship of his school (fr. 59 A 7 Diels-Kranz). Epicurus, in
establishing his own school at Lampsacus, may have set out quite
deliberately to assume the mantle of Anaxagoras and Archelaus,
presenting himself as their philosophical heir.
60. D.L. X, 13. Epicurus' claim has had its modern adherents. For an
account of the controversy, see V.E. Alfieri, Gli atomisti : frammenti
e testimonianze (1936), p. 8 note 27 ; and Guthrie H. G.P. 11,383.
61. Apollodorus the Epicurean accepted that Leucippus was the
master of Democritus (D.L. X,13).
62. Cicero, N.D. I, 33; Tusc. I, 34; Fin. I,6 1 8 ; Plutarch,Non posse
11 OOa. Epicurus' attitude to Democritus w1ll receive a much fuller
treatment in a forthcoming article by Pamela Huby, with whose
findings I am in full agreement. But I differ slightly over the interpretation of these passages, which she regards as attributing to Epicurus a
moderate and constructively critical attitude to Democritus. I read
them as trying to show Epicurus in a less friendly light than this, but
suspect that, with the possible exception of Tusc. I,34, they are based
not on knowledge of Epicurus' actual writings but on a generalised
anti-Epicurean tradition within the Academy, probably deriving ultimately from Timocrates.
63. D.L. V, 86.
64. D.L. 11,109.
65. Unless (which I doubt) he was praising Democritus as the man
who judged other people for their idiocies.
66. Plutarch,Col. 11 08 e-f.
67. Epicurus must have Democritus particularly in mind in a passage of
his ITepi I{J!Jaewr; where he criticises his forerunners' shirking of the
free will question :The first men to give a satisfactory account of causes,
' 154
Ab.pta, 1rpor; aixrov lo {g,JTaparevoJlbrqv el1reiv T{ JTote'ir; 'Em'Kovpe; oiJK

otoiJa wr; OLaKWJli.t)01. 0 TtJ10KpaTf/\ 6 Mf/Tpoowpov < aOAI/)0\ > m'
TOVTOL\ ev ra'ir; EI<K Af/OLat\, ev roir; iJeaTpOL\' 1Tapa ro'ir; ii'A'AOL<: 00'/)W
rai<:; i aXA.a r{ eanv aVT{i; 1Totf7oat; avaioxvvr6<: ean rij) epcw.
46."; Following Mf/Tpoowpov some mss. signal a lacuna, making the
standard editorial insertion aoe'AI{J6<: a near certainty.
47. I read Timocrates' allusion to his escape from the Epicureans'
JlVOTLKi? avvowrwriJ (D.L. X,6) as an attempt to prove his credentials
as an authoritative source. Cf. D.L. X,5, the story that Epicurus praised
and flattered Idomeneus, Herodotus and Timocrates for revealing his
secrets ; however, the reference here may be to the assertion of
Timocrates and Herodotus that Epicurus was not a genuine' Athenian
citizen,, D.L. X, 4. That Timocrates became a major source of anti' Epicurean propaganda was first suggested by Usener (p. 419) ; and
B1gnone (L Ar. perd. 11,223 ss.) names him as the source of the parodies
in New Comedy.
'
48., D.L. X,136=Metrodorus fr. 29 Korte.
Fr. 409 Usener : apxi? Kai
JTavro<: araiJoii 1i rf7<: raorpo<:
, 1/oovi},' Kat ra 00'/)CL Kai Ta 1TpLTTa elr; TaVTf/V EXeL T1JV aVai(Jopav.
Wisdom and excess strikes me as the natural meaning of ra ooi{Ja,
Ka( ra JTeptrra. Translators normally take 1TeptT7a here as denoting
something good (culture Bailey, refinements LSJ), presumably

following the lead of Plutarch (Col. ll25b), who attributes to Metrodorus,. not Epicurus 1 the opinion that ra Ka'Aa 1ravra Kai aoi{JCL Kai
1TpLTTa ri?<: 1/JVXi?<:
always have physical pleasure as their
goal. For there 1TptT7U must mean <<Unusual rather than excessive.,
It sits
in the phrase, and indeed when Pl1;1tarch paraphrases this passage m Non posse 1087d he prefers to om1t the word.
My guess is that Metrodorus had quoted Epicurus' original saying, and
was in turn perversely misinterpreted by Plutarch's source (probably
note 34 abov:e)
me.aning by
clever inventlons - an 1mprobable meamng 'ln Ep1curus' ongmal context, and one
which debases the entire maxim.
50. Cf. fr. 558-60 Usener.
51.. ITepl lfJVOew<: XIV, fr. 29.28.17-18 Arr.
52. D.L. IX,112 (Timon) ; IIJ6 =Timon fr. 24 Diels (Anaxagoras). For
a comprehensive list of Greek nicknames, see Hug's article 'Spitznamen',
RE 2te Reihe IIIA,1821-40.
53: Fr. 22 B 125 Diels-Kranz : Kai 0 KVI<WV odararat<Jlfl>J<LVOUJleVO<:.
I accept this traditional emendation of Theophrastus,De vertigine 9-1 0
(vol. III p. 138 Wimmer). J. Bollack and H. Wismann (Heraclite, ou la
separation, 1972, p. 340 s.) dt::fend the transmitted text, taking the
maxim to stress the enduring separateness of the elements. But their
'attempt to show that Alexander Aphr.,Problemata IV, 42, where the
negative occurs, preserves a quite different saying of Heraclitus
overlooks the fact that this whole passage is a mere paraphrase of the
Theophrastus text. For my present purposes the important point is that
in antiquity the KVKewv was regularly understood as a symbol of
universal flux (Chrysit>pus,SVF II, 937 ; Lucian, Vit. auct. 14). I can
find no evidence for Epicurean hostility towards Heraclitus over the
flux doctrine. To Lucretius (I, 635-704) and Diogenes of Oenoanda
(5, I, 10-12; III, 7 ss. Chilton) his heresy is to have made fire the sole
element. For Epicurus' receptiveness to his views on the nature of the
.,_;
..
,: _(
155
greater men than their predecessors and man1 times greater than those
who came after them, unwittingly ... made l!ght of weighty matters in
assigning alf causation to necessity and chance (34.30. 7-17 Arr. ;
Diano, Epicuri Ethica, 1946, p. 45-7 ).
68. Sextus,Math. 1,2-4 ; Cicero,N.D. I,72 ; D.L. X,l3. Cf. Aristocles ap.
Euseb.,Praep. ev. XIV,20, 14: AE"fTat o 0 'E1TiKovpo<; V1TOJ1EVTLVWV
Jlf/OeVO<:. b.i<f/KOeVat, evrvxe'iv oe roi<: TWV 1TaAaiwv
69. Math. 1,2-4 : OVK a1TeOLK oe Kai oui TflV 1Tpor; Navat'/)CLvrw TOV
llvppwvo<; b.Kovari?v ex&paV' 7TOAAOlJ\ "fclP TWV vewv ovveixe Kai
I
'- _,_ ....

' 'TWV /).alJruJ.arwv anovoaiwc;

/).aNO'Ta oe P'fi'TOPLK.i]c;. '}'VO. /).evoc; ovv 'TOV'TOV JJ.a1'lflrilc; 0 'EniK.ovpoc; vnep 'TOV OOK.eiv aV'TOOLOaK.roc;
1 elvm K.ai aV'TOipvi}c; \{A-ADOO'{!Oc; iJpveiro eK. navroc; rponov, rf7v re nepi
a!Jrov
eanevoe, no"l\vc; re e'}'ivero rwv /).a1'lf//).arwv
K.a7f7'}'opoc;, ev ole;
eaeJJ.VVvero. 1/)f/OL '}'OVV ev rfl npoc; rove; ev
MvnAf7vn \{A-AOOOI{)Ovc; enwro"Afl 07/J.at o e'}'w'}'e rove; {3apvar6vovc; K.ai
! JJ.a1'lf/rf7v !J.
rov n"/\eVJJ.OVoc; elvat, J.l.eTCl JJ.etpaK.iwv nvwv
K.patnaAWV'TWV CtK.OVaavra, vvv n"AeV/).OVa K.a"Awv 'TOV Navm\{)aVf/V we;
. avaia1'lf/rov K.ai naAl.v npo{3ac; rro"AM re K.aremwv ravopoc; vneJJ.tpaivet
'TfJV ev roic; /).afYt1/).aatv aV'TOV npoK.oni}v AE'}'WV K.ai '}'G,P nOVflpOc;
- av1'Jpwnoc; iiv K.ai emre'Tf/OVK.Wc; TOWV'Ta
wv ov ovvarov elc; aotpiav
. e"/\1'Jeiv, alvwao/).evoc; ra /).afYt1/).ara".
. 70. f3apvarovot is a colloquial name for actors (Demosthenes 18,262).
81. D.L. X, 119 : the wise man will not live like a Cynic or be a beggar.
82. Fr. 173-5 Usener .
83. Although the self-sufficiency of the wise man is a doctrine which
in its various forms looms large m the Socratic tradition of philosophy,
it is much more central to Cynicism than to the politically-minded
schools of Plato and Aristotle. Furthermore, the Democritean tradition
may have an even stronger claim to it. It is already foreshadowed in the
fragments of Democritus (68 B 246 Diels-Kranz; cf. B 176, 210), and
takes on an
importance with Pyrrho and Epicurus. Most
striking of all, Pyrrho s pupil Hecataeus of Abdera went so far-as to
name avrapK.eta as the ret..oc; (73 A 4 Diels-Kranz). For a general
history of the concept, seeP. Wilpert,RAC I, col. 1039-50.
84. SV 45 .
85. Fr. 117 Usener; cf. the more famous advice to Pythocies, fr. 163
Usener.
86. Math.I, 272, 281 ss .. In this context Sextus specifically links
Pyrrho and Epicurus as the two 'YPCL/.J.!J.anK.f]c; K.arf7'}'opot (at Math. I,l
it is not they but their schools that are named as the opponents of the
!J.aiYt?JJ.aTa). For Pyrrho's indifference to erudition, see a:lso Timon's
verses quoted at D.L. IX,65.
87. Fr. 20 Usener.
88. A full examination of the evidence concerning the Cyzicenes
requires a good deal of papyrological, philological and biographical
discussion, which I cannot undertake here_ without upsetting the
balance of this paper. What I therefore offer is a summary of my
results, inculding the relevant texts, but omitting most critical apparatus
and discussion of detail. For a fuller account the reader is referred to
my forthcoming article in Cronache ercoldnesi, Epicurus and the
Mathematicians of Cyzicus. For earlier discussions1 see Bignone,
L'Ar. perd. II, 76 ss,; C. Diano, Lettere di Epicuro e aei suoi (1946),
p. 29-30 ; W. Liebich Aufbau, Absicht und Form der Pragmateiai
Philodems ( 1960), p. 44-53 ; L. Spina,_ Eudosso e ciziceni nei papiri
ercolanesi, Cronache ercolanesi I (1971;, p. 69-72.
89. L 'Ar. perd. II, 76 ss.
90. Fr. 6 coL III Vogliano (Epicuri et Epicureorum scripta in Herculanensibus papyris servata, 192 8). I now give my own readings of the
papyrus, since Bignone and all since him have been badly misled by
Vogliano's text. This numbers among its errors the astonishing
misreading of the name Arcephon in line 3 as Xenophanes, as a
result of which this fragment even infiltrated the appendix to
Diels-Kranz (Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 8 th ed., 1956, p. 491).
Could Epicurus here be expressing anxiety about being misrepresented

on the stage (cf. 4)? Plutarch (Non posse 10B6 e-f) includes the
word in a list of e1ght abusive terms whose use he attributes jointly
to Epicurus and Metrodorus ; he then lists seven philosophers as
_targets of the invective.
the t"':o lists do not seem to .correspond
closely, and the Loeb ed1tors (B. Emarson and P. De Lacy, Plutarch's
Moralia, vol. XIV, 1967, p. 16-17) are perhaps overconfident in
connecting [3apvar6vovc; with Theophrastus by a process of elimination.
In the present study I am attaching less weight tha:n is usual to this
l'_assage, since it does not specify which of the terms were used by
.: Epicurus and which by Metroaorus.
71. Sextus1 loc. cit. in note 69 above ; Aristotle,PA 681 a 18 ; cf.
Plato,Phileo. 21 c.
. 72. The fragments of Philodemus' rhetorical works take Nausiphanes
. to task at great length. For bibliography, see F. Longo, Nausifane nei
papiri ercolanesi (Ricerche sui papirt ercolanesi, ed. F. Sbordone, vol. I,
1969, p. 9-21), p. 13 note 12.
73. Ariston, D.L. X,14.
74. However, the only explicit testimony for Nausiphanes' theory
of knowledge puts him in the mainstream of fourth-century Democritean scepticism about knowledge of the phenomenal world. Seneca,
.. Ep. mor. 88.43-5.: Nausiphanes ait ex his quae uidentur esse nihil
magis esse quam non esse ; ... si Nausiphanz (sc. credo), hoc unum
certum est, nihil esse certi. I agree 'with Bignone (L 'Ar. perd. II, 65 ss.)
that Seneca's source for this entire

is Epicurean (but not
Epicurus himself, as Bignone thinks1 since in 44 the Academic!, qui
nouam induxerunt scientiam, ninil scire must be the men of
Arcesilaus' New Academy). We thus cannot discount the possibility
that Nausiphanes' scepticism is being exaggerated for polemical
. purposes.
7 5. Philodemus,Adversus [sophistas] fr. X Sbordone = Epicurus fr. 104
Arr.
7 6. D.L. IX,64.
77. I have in mind the doctrine of no"/\"1\axwc; evo exea1'lat in the Letter
to Pythocles, and the sceptical tone of the passage from Tiepi I{)Vaewc;
XI quoted in 10 below.
78. Pyrrho was at any rate an avid reader of Democritus (D.L. IX, 67),
. as well as being the teacher of the Democritean Nausiphanes.
79. D.L. IX,62-8.
80. Ep. Men. 130 ; SV 44-5, 77 ; fr. 476 Usener ; fr. 135a Usener
(p. 345)=fr. 58 Arr .. For Epicurean anpa'}'iJ.OOVVf/, see Usene;:,p.
2, 6 ; p. 328, 21 ; cf.. also the title of a work by Metrodorus, uepi rov
,
elvat TfJV nap' iJJJ.ac; air{av npoc; VOaLJ.WViav rf}c; eK. n0v
._,} npa'}'/).arwv (Metrodorus fr. 5 Korte). Closely linked to this concept
pursuit._. of
'
157
David Sedley
156
,_:-,_ .. :,-_:,:_::
-.,
an overriding goal. for both schools.
ne] jpi
nvoc; aarpoi"Ao'}'O'}'[e]wiJ.erpov napialrflatV ['A]pK.eI{JW!i?'L K.ai roic; n[ep]i rov 'loo!J.eveja K.ai [A]e[o]vrea nwppwjre,bwt
?TPof3aivov[a]t nejpi
avmpeaewc; rf]c;
.]tp[ ......... J ........... ]!J
6[K.]VfljLo]ovc;
ovaxej[p]aivwv, roo' en[i] nav AVJJ.f/c; [ ... ]vov!J.evov j[ .. ]woao.[ ..... ]rwlj[ ..... ] ro [ .....
fHis opinion l concerning a certain astronomer:seometrician .of Cyzicus
he makes clear to Arcephon and to the followers of Idomeneus
and Leonteus who go too far in arguing against the doctrine of aponia
[.; ....... , and] seems angry at their cowaraice,
91. Philodemus TipaYJJ.areiru (PHerc. 1418) col. XX (Diano op. cit. in
The
note 88 ab<;)Ve, p. 9-10 ; Liebich, OR. cit. 1 p. _32
. I
text corrects a large number of m1sreadmgs m D1ano's versiOn :-'-
1! ]JJ.ac; npo[ ..... j ............. ]o11awova. [ .... ]fi'YJJ.[ I-- K.ru' np ]9e"A1'Jwv Kp6vt0c;
K9[tv]'o,"Ao['Yei] I
iiv 'TV[X]T/, K.ainep, ov!K. [ ... ]01T0c;' wv,
anetpoc; Be "/\enrol AO'}'iac; ota 'TO J.l.f/Oe 'TOV
lK.avwc;
ev I \(A-AOaoi{Jiru, K.a1'Janep iJIJ.iV e"AeyevJ!fai 'Ap[K.]etpw[v] K.a[i] 'TO
OVJJ.f3!=[f3]17K.[oc;] I !J.il[v]vev. Kpoviwt o' avrwl' r'Y 1 [p,i'] j<,qwv' OVK
OALUKt<; '}'ap K.ai Aeoi>IT[w]v npoc; "En{K.ov[p]ov V\{)f/J.l.Wc; n[eJip[i] aov
ll'mtr-_:. :c
,<
>
158
K.ai npenovrwr;
K.a[i] TWV viwv
David Sedley
7Japa oov
?WV I<. at
nap'
I<. at
r[ar;] wr; 1<.[ .... ]. [ ....... ]o[ ... j
And later in the same letter : Cronius debates skilfully when the
occasion arises, even though he is not r... ] and lacks experience of
logic-chopping 'because Eudoxus himself did not spend enough time on
philosophy, as Arcephon also told us as well as recounting what had
happened)). And in a letter to Cronius himself: ((For Leontion too has
frequently spoken of you to 'Epicurus in kind and appropriate terms,
and so has Pythocles, whom you have sent to stay with us, and who is
taking charge of your sons and considers that it was under the
influence of Eudoxus and Diotimus that those letters were written
which ...... .
92. Cf. Bignone, L 'Ar. perd. II, 83 ; Diano, Zoe. cit. in note 88 above ;
Rist, Epicurus, An Introduction, p. 7 (where he is wrongly called
Polyaenus of Cyzicus ).
93. For Eudoxus' hedonismA see AristotleiEN X, 1172b 9 ss. . The
fragment quoted in note
above imp ies a connexion between
Ep1curus' hostility to the Cyzicenes and the opposition of some
. Lampsacene Epicureans to the doctrine of anovia, the doctrine. that the
absence of bodily suffering is necessary to the truly Qleasurable life.
. Vogliano's misreadings Ze< V>OI,O[avet in line 3 and anoo[
in line
_ 8 have led to a wide-spread misapprehension that the dispute concerned
scepticism and theology.
94. See Bignone, L 'Ar. perd. 11 1 85, and Conferme e aggiunte all'
Aristotele perduto (Melanges Bmsacq I, 1937, p. 87-116),98 ss .. For
Babylonian influences in Hellenistic mathematics and astronomy, see
0. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (1957, 2nd ed. 1969\
Chapter VI.
. 9?. I JII - rL] b III Vogliano (1 resti dell' XI libra del lle.oi 1,0voewr;
ctz Epzcuro, 1940, p. 36-43)=fr. 26.37, 1 - 41, 21 Arr.. The book
is preserved in two copies among the Herculaneum papyri (PHerc. 154,
in Naples, and PHerc. 1042, now in London). The text offered here
which corrects Vogliano's misreadings, amalgamates my readings of
the two papyri into a single draft without any indication of the
original line divisions. I have already discussed the first column in
Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists
(Oxford 1974),p. 269-75.
96. Plutarch, Vit. Marc. 14. For a full account of the Antikythera
mechanism,>, see now Derek de Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks
(1975).
97. Either Epicurus had already written Book XI before his move from
Lampsacus to Athens in 307/6, or he wrote it during one of his
subsequent visits to Lampsacus (D.L. X>10). The former would mean a
surprising gap of seven or more years between Book XI and Book XV
(wntten m 300/299).
98. Simplichis, In De caelo 493, 11 ss.
99. Ep. Pyth. 93.

100, Some of this section on the Megarians is based on my article
Epicurus, On Nature1 Book XXVIII (Cronache ercolanesi 3, 1973,
p. 5-83), which shoula be consulted for the texts quoted here and for
further comment (especially p, 16-7,21,62-5, 71-3).
Wl. D.L. II,l06.
102. In my article cited in note 100 above, I have maintained (p. 63)
that Diodorus did not die as is usually said, in 307 B.C., and was
probably still alive in 296/5. To the arguments adduced there. I can
. now add the following. An anecdote preserved by Sextus (PH II 245)
makes Diodorus a friend of the phys1cian Herophilus. The latter was
active in Alexandria in the first half of the thud century B.C., and
hisfioruit is placed by Jaeger about 270-60 (Vergessene Fragmente des
Peripatetikers Diokles von Karystos, Abh.d.preuss.Akad.d. Wiss., 1938;
159
Phil.-Hist.Kl., 3, p. 15, 36 ss.) ; for further evidence supportin_g

Jaeger's dating, see P.M. Fraseri Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) vol. If,
504 note 58. Fraser himself (vo . I, 481) dates Diodorus' floruit to the
second quarter of the third century, forgetting that Zeno of Citium
was his pupil in the late fourth century (D.L. VII,25), but this at least
is an error in the right direction : it is time that we stopped thinking
of Diodorus as the determinist to whom Aristotle reacted, and placed
his career firmly in the Hellenistic period.
103. Fr. 121-9 Doring (Die Megariker, 1972). There is certainly some
connexion between this argument of Diodorus' and Epicurus' similar
theory about motion (fr. 278 Usener). H. von Arnim ( Epikurs Lehre
vom Minimum, Almanach d.Kais.Akad.d. Wiss., Wien 1907 p. 14)
and J. Mau ( Uber die Zuweisung zweier Epikur-Fragmente, Philologus
IC, 1955, p. 93-111, esp. 107 ss.) see here a direct dependence of
Epicurus on Diodorus. I think it more likely that both derived their
views from Aristotle (cf. Furley's study, cited in note 21 above).
104. In Sextus' discussion of motion (Math. X,37-168), the deniers of
motion are listed as Parmenides and Melissus, who are even made the
authors of the Zenonian dichotome argument (ib.46-7),and Diodorus
(ib.48). Zeno is known to Sextus only as the inventor of dialectic
(Math. VII, 7). Another Sceptic source (D.L. IX, 72) informs us that
Zeno denied the existence of motion, and then promptly saddles him
with one of Diodorus' most characteristic arguments : ro K.tVOVJ.1VOV
our' ev i}l eon T01T4J K.tvei.Tat our' ev 0 JJ.fJ eon. This ( pace Vlastos,
Phronesis XI, 1966, p. 4) is not identical to Zeno's arrow argument :
the Zenonian arrow is trapped in an instant of time, while the
Diodorean would-be mover 1s trapped in a pocket of s2ace without
any reference to time (Diodorus fr. 124, 127 Doring). The form of
argument is strongly associated with Diodorus (cf. fr .. 126, 128 fin.),
and I am doubtful about crediting Zeno with its invention.
.
105. D.L. X,31.
106. See above, note 7.
107. Fr. 126, 128 fin. Doring.
108. Fr. 131-9 Doring.
109. Cicero,De fato 21 ; cf. 37, and the texts cited in fr. 376 Usener.
110. Aristotle,EN III,l-5 hardly counts as a fundamental investigation
of t}.le
will
Epicurus'.
study of it, ip. a book of the
Ilept I,OVOewr;, survlVes iragmentanly m three cop1es among the
Herculaneum papyri, published by C. Diano, Epicuri ethica ( 1946)
p. 24-51 =fr. 34 Arr .. D1ano's readings, supnlied to him by Vogliano, are
largely unsound, and I am now working ori a revised editwn.
111. Epicurus' arguments in his book on free will (see previous note)
are' largely, phrased as criticisms of contemporary determinism. In the
fragment cited in note 67 above, his assertion that the earlier atomists
were unaware that they were making light of weighty matters in
calling necessity and chance universal causes is sandwiched. parenthetically between comments on the self-contradictoriness of an implicitly
present-day determinist.
.
112. For the date, see my edition (art. cit. in note 100 above), p. 56, 79..
113. 13 IV 5 inf.- V 12 sup.
114. Cf. fr. 111-5 Doring.
115. 13 IX 11-18 sup.
116. Fr. 109-10 Doring; cf. Lucian,Vit.auct. 22.
117.Plato,Theaet.165b-c
118. Among those who have read thispaper and discussed its contents
with me, lam particularly endebted to Dr. J rgen Mejer of Copenhagen.

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EPICURUS AND HIS PROFESSIONAL RIVALS.

For a historical appreciation of any system of thought a

Epicurus and his professional rivals

become famous as the Garden, and established his school

2. Diogenes Laertius X 6-8.

K.eia'!Jm, we: 1ro"AA.wv erwv

ful, so that he had for many

dorus' (Giver of Foolishness) ; the Cyzicenes 'enemies of Greece'; the Dialecticians

n]v, Kai Ll.1]JJ.OKptrov A17p6.

26 Miq..Lpapov : Mappapwv BPOH f : Mappcipewv F : Mappcipwv

This catalogue of abuse has done Epicurus' reputation no

Epicurus and his professional rivals

account. They must have been culled from a number of

Epicurus and his professional rivals

when Athenaeus wrote,l 5 Epicurus was the sole source for

his contemporary followers; in which Aristotle's Analytics

Epicurus and his professional rivals

ungrateful even to Democritus whose teaching he followed,

Timocrates re-appears in this guise of innocent victim in

Sellsufficiency we consider a great good, not so that we

Epicurus and his professional rivals

in need of them. Therefore to grow accustomed to plain, and

There is no good in the world that compares with eating, for

Here we have seen Epicurus complaining that his doctrine

Still in the third century B.C. (although we cannot assign

These entertaining distortions are no doubt typical of

writing in the second or third century A.D., was well

Epicurus and his professional rivals

, ,,,, It does not of course follow that all Timocrates' allegations

or else generically as the physicists, the sophists, or

Epicurus and his professional rivals

Golden, Silver and Bronze, the Golden ones being the

the nature 'of things before him. And Metrodorus, in his

quotations, possibly from Epicurus' Letter to the Philosophers

Epicurus and his professional rivals

that he rejected their versions of it, shrinking from the

Epicurus and his professional rivals

to Pyrrho suggests that accidents of personal acquaintance

had originally been trained in the school of Eudoxus, and

]avarei\i\wv, avaretvovre<; el<; ro [The sun; if we walk toJJ.Epo<;

(lacuna about 170 letters)

(lacuna about 75 letters)

Epicurus and his professional rivals

omv olpaL err/: 70 VJrOK.eipevov

............ They cannot hope 1

...... So] when, as I see it,

conceived by means of the

................. ]rnv[ ........ .

]i/pWV piJ evavr{ac; avarof..f/c; Kai

... If ... ] we do not want to

Epicurus and his professional rivals

Here we have seen Epicurus attacking some anonymous

leading eastwards from it on which the illusion described by

summary of the argument, reserving detailed .commentary

Used as the name of a school, ota"A.eK.TLK.oi at this da:te

Epicums and his professional rivals

Epicums and his professional rivals

unique opportunity is afforded by the fragments of Epicurus'

Epicurus adds at the end of the column that he has already

Epicurus and his professional rivals

Epicurus and his professional rivals

with Epicurus' attacks on Nausiphanes or anyone else. Bignone took

age, and certain