Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​He further says that Epicurus was ignorant of many things in doctrine and far more so in his way of life; that his body was in a wretched condition, so that for many years he was unable to rise from his litter; and that he spent a mina daily on his table, as he himself writes in his letter to Leontion and in the letter to the philosophers in Mytilene. Moreover, he states that both he and Metrodorus lived with other courtesans, namely Mammarium, Hedeia, Erotion, and Nicidion. And in the thirty-seven books of On Nature he says mostly the same things and in them writes against others, especially Nausiphanes, saying in these very words in most places as follows: "Let them be gone! For that man was continually in travail bringing forth the sophistical boast from his mouth, just like many others among the slaves."

​And he adds that Epicurus himself says in his letters concerning Nausiphanes: "These things drove him into such a frenzy that he abused me and called me 'teacher'." And Epicurus called him a "lung", illiterate, a cheat, and a prostitute. The followers of Plato he called "flatterers of Dionysius" and Plato himself "the golden man"; Aristotle he called "a profligate", who, after devouring his paternal estate, went into the army and sold drugs; Protagoras he called "a porter" and Democritus' copyist, who taught reading and writing in villages; Heraclitus he called "the jumbler"; Democritus, "Lerocritus"; Antidorus, "Sannidorus"; the Cynics, "enemies of Greece"; the dialecticians, "corrupters of many"; and Pyrrho, "ignorant and uneducated."

​These slanderers are raving mad. For sufficient witnesses to the man's unsurpassed goodwill toward all are his native land, which honored him with bronze statues; his friends, so great in number that they could not even be measured by entire cities; and all his disciples, who were held fast by the sirens of his doctrines—except for Metrodorus of Stratonicea, who went over to Carneades, perhaps weighed down by his unsurpassed kindnesses; and his school succession, which, while almost all the other schools died out, has lasted forever, discharging one leader after another in countless numbers from among his followers.

​Sufficient witnesses, too, are his gratitude toward his parents, his beneficence toward his brothers, and his gentleness toward his domestic slaves, as is clear both from his wills and from the fact that they themselves studied philosophy with him—of whom the most famous was the aforementioned Mys; and in general his philanthropy toward all men. Indeed, his disposition in reverence toward the gods and affection for his native land was beyond words; for out of an excess of modesty he did not even touch politics. And though the hardest times held Greece in their grip back then, he lived out his life there, only making two or three excursions to the regions around Ionia to visit his friends. And they came to him from all quarters and lived together with him in the Garden, as Apollodorus also says; and this Garden he had purchased for eighty minae.

​Diocles, in the third book of his Summary, says that they lived in the cheapest and simplest manner: "At any rate," he says, "they were content with a half-pint of thin wine, and their drink was entirely water." Furthermore, Epicurus did not deem it right to deposit their property into a common fund, as did Pythagoras, who said that the goods of friends are common; for such a practice belongs to those who distrust, and if to those who distrust, then not to friends. Epicurus himself says in his letters that he is satisfied with water alone and simple bread; and he says: "Send me a small pot of cheese, so that whenever I wish to feast sumptuously, I may be able to do so." Such was the man who dogmatized that pleasure is the end, whom Athenaeus also celebrates in an epigram as follows: