Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

"Mankind, you toil for the baser things, and through greed, insatiable, you stir up strife and wars; yet the wealth of nature keeps a narrow bound, while empty judgments take the boundless path. This did the prudent child of Neocles hear either from the Muses, or from the holy tripods of Pytho." And we shall know this still better as we proceed, both from his doctrines and from his sayings. Diocles says that of the ancients he most accepted Anaxagoras, though he spoke against him in some things, and Archelaus, the teacher of Socrates. He also trained his disciples, Diocles says, to keep his own writings in memory.

​Apollodorus says in his Chronology that he was a hearer of Nausiphanes and Praxiphanes; but he himself denies this, saying rather in his letter to Eurylochus that he was his own hearer (self-taught). Moreover, both he and Hermarchus say that no such philosopher as Leucippus ever existed, whom some—including Apollodorus the Epicurean—say was the teacher of Democritus. Demetrius of Magnesia says that he was also a hearer of Xenocrates. He uses ordinary and literal language for matters of fact, which Aristophanes the grammarian criticizes as being extremely unpolished. But he was so clear that even in his work On Rhetoric he insists that one should demand nothing else than clarity.

​And in his letters, instead of "Rejoice" (greetings), he used "Fare well" and "Live earnestly." Ariston says in his Life of Epicurus that he wrote the Canon from the Tripod of Nausiphanes, of whom he says Epicurus was indeed a hearer, and also of Pamphilus the Platonist in Samos. He began to study philosophy at twelve years of age, and took charge of his school when he was thirty-two. Apollodorus says in his Chronology that he was born in the third year of the hundred and ninth Olympiad, in the archonship of Sosigenes, on the seventh day of the month Gamelion, seven years after the death of Plato.

​When he was thirty-two years old, he first established a school in Mytilene and Lampsacus for five years; then, having thus removed to Athens, he died in the second year of the hundred and twenty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Pytharatus, having lived seventy-two years. Hermarchus, the son of Agemortus, a Mytilenaean, succeeded him in the school. He died, as Hermarchus also says in his letters, of a urinary obstruction caused by a stone, after an illness of fourteen days. At that time Hermippus says that he stepped into a bronze bathtub tempered with warm water, asked for unmixed wine, gulped it down,

​and, after enjoining his friends to remember his doctrines, so passed away. And our own epigram upon him runs thus: "Farewell, and remember the doctrines! This last word did Epicurus speak to his friends as he was dying; for he had entered a warm bath and drained unmixed wine, and then drew down upon himself cold Hades." Such was the man's life, and such his end. And he made his will as follows: "According to these provisions I give all my property to Amynomachus, son of Philocrates, of Bate, and to Timocrates, son of Demetrius, of Potamus, according to the deed of gift registered for each in the Metroon,

​on condition that they shall provide the Garden and its appurtenances to Hermarchus, son of Agemortus, of Mytilene, and to those who study philosophy with him, and to whomever Hermarchus may leave as successors in philosophy, to spend their time there in philosophy; and I entrust the pursuit of life in the Garden also to those who continually study philosophy after our lineage, that they may help Amynomachus and Timocrates preserve it to the best of their ability, and to their heirs, in whatever way may be most secure, so that they too may preserve the Garden, just as they themselves do for those to whom our fellow-philosophers may hand it down. And let Amynomachus and Timocrates provide the house in Melite for Hermarchus and those who study philosophy with him to inhabit, as long as Hermarchus lives.