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Saturday, September 8, 2012

Diogenes Laërtius: The Life of Epicurus

EPICURUS was an Athenian, and the son of Neocles and Chærestrate, of the burgh of Gargettus, and of the family of the Philaidæ, as Metrodorus tells us in his treatise on Nobility of Birth. 

Some writers, and among them Heraclides, in his Abridgment of Sotion, say, that as theAthenians had Colonis and Samos, he was brought up there, and came to Athens in his eighteenthyear, while Xenocrates was president of the Academy, and Aristotle at Chalcis. But after the deathof Alexander, the Macedonian, when the Athenians were driven out of Samos by Perdiccas,Epicurus went to Colophon to his father.

And when he had spent some time there, and collected some disciples, he again returned toAthens, in the time of Anaxicrates, and for some time studied philosophy, mingling with the rest of the philosophers; but subsequently, he somehow or other established the school which wascalled after his name; and he used to say, that he began to study philosophy when he was fourteenyears of age.
Diogenes Laërtius - The Life of Epicurus

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