Topical Outline of Concepts and Key Quotations

This document was initially prepared based largely on the organization scheme of Long & Sedley’s “The Hellenistic Philosophers.” Unless noted otherwise, quotations should be presumed to be from that work. This outline is in the process of extensive revision and addition of subcategories based on comments and input from EpicureanFriends.com.

A. PHYSICS

A-1 Nothing Comes From Nothing Or Goes To Nothing

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 38-9

Having grasped these points, we must now observe, concerning the non-evident, first of all that nothing comes into being out of what is not. For in that case everything would come into being out of everything, with no need for seeds. Also, if that which disappears were destroyed into what is not, all things would have perished, for lack of that into which they dissolved. Moreover, the totality of things was always such as it is now, and always will be, since there is nothing into which it changes, and since beside the totality there is nothing which could pass into it and produce the change. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:159-73

For if things came into being out of nothing, every species would be able to be produced out of everything, nothing would need a seed. Men, to start with, would be able to spring up out of the sea and scaly fish from the land, and birds hatch out of the sky. Cattle and other livestock, and every species of wild animal, would be born at random and occupy farmland and wilderness alike. Nor would the same fruits stay regularly on the same trees, but would change over: all trees would be able to bear everything. In a situation where each thing did not have its own procreative bodies, how could there be a fixed mother for things? But since in fact individual things are created from fixed seeds, each is born and emerges into the realm of daylight from a place containing its own matter and primary bodies; and the reason why everything cannot come into being out of everything is that particular things contain their own separate powers. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:225-37

Again, if time totally destroys the things which it removes through age, and consumes all their material, from where does Venus bring back living creatures, each after its species, to the daylight of life? Or from where, thereafter, does the creative earth nourish them and make them grow by supplying each species with its food? From where do internal springs, and rivers flowing from afar, replenish the sea? From where does the aether feed the stars? For infinite time past ought to have consumed those things whose body is perishable. But if in that expanse of time past there have been bodies out of which this sum of things is reconstituted, they are indeed endowed with an imperishable nature. Therefore it cannot be that all things are reduced to nothing. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:670-1

For if something changes and leaves its boundaries, that is immediately the death of the thing that it previously was. (L&S-THP)

A-2 All Things Are Composed Of Atoms And Void

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 39-40

Moreover, the totality of things is bodies and void. That bodies exist is universally witnessed by sensation itself, by reference to which it is necessary to judge by reason what is non-evident, as I have already said above. And if there were not that which we name void and room and intangible substance, bodies would not have anywhere to be or to move through in the way in which they are seen to move. Beyond these nothing can be conceived, either by comprehensive grasp or analogically to things grasped, as fully substantial entities, and not rather spoken of as the accidents or properties of such entities. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:419-48

But lest you happen to mistrust my words on this, because the primary bodies of things escape the eye, let me tell you of others which, although you must admit they are in the class of bodies, yet are invisible. First, when it has gathered strength, the aroused force of the wind lashes the sea, capsizes huge ships and scatters the clouds; sometimes sweeping across the lands in rapid tornado, it strews the plains with massive trees, and batters the mountain-tops with forest-splintering blasts. That is when the wind howls with a fierce roar and storms with a threatening rumble. So winds, undoubtedly, are unseen bodies, which sweep the sea and lands and clouds in the sky, and assault and whirl them in sudden tornado; and their flow and the havoc they make are just the same as when water, which is of soft nature, carries a sudden flood. … Next, aromas of various kinds we perceive, though we never see them coming to our nostrils; and we do not observe heat, nor can cold be caught by the eyes, nor are we used to seeing voices; yet all these things must consist of a bodily nature, since they can affect the senses. For nothing can touch or be touched without body. Furthermore, clothes hung up on a wave-beaten shore get moist, then spread out in the sun they get dry; yet we haven’t seen how the moisture of water settled on them, nor again how it left under the influence of the heat. Therefore moisture is divided up into small parts which the eyes are quite incapable of seeing. Moreover, over many circuits of the sun a ring is worn thin on the finger by friction, dripping water hollows out stone, the curved iron ploughshare imperceptibly thins in the fields, and we see the stone pavement worn away by the feet of the crowd; then too the bronze statues by the gates show their right hands thinned by the frequent touching of people who pass by and greet them. We see, therefore, that all these things diminish as they are rubbed away; but nature has grudged our sight the power of discerning what particles leave at any particular time. (L&S-THP)

Aetius 1:20.2 (Usener 271)

Epicurus says that the difference between void, place, and room is one of name. (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus, Against The Professors, 10.2 (Usener 271)

Therefore one must grasp that, according to Epicurus, of ‘intangible substance’, as he calls it, one kind is named ‘void’, another ‘place’, and another ‘room’, the names varying according to the different ways of looking at it, since the same substance when empty of all body is called ‘void,’ when occupied by a body is named ‘place’, and when bodies roam through it becomes ‘room’. But generically it is called ‘intangible substance’ in Epicurus’ school, since it lacks resistant touch. (L&S-THP)

A-3 Atoms - General Nature

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 40

Moreover, among bodies, some are compounds, and others those from which compounds are made. And these latter are indivisible and unchangeable - if, that is, all things are not going to be destroyed into what is not, but are going to remain firmly in being during the dissolution of compounds - full in nature, and incapable of dissolution at any point or in any way. Therefore the principles of bodies must be the indivisible natures. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 41

Lucretius 1: 329-45

Now I return to the sequence of my argument. All nature, then, as it exists in itself, is made up of just two components: there are bodies, and there is void in which those bodies are situated and through which they move this way and that. That body exists as an entity in its own right is declared by our sensation, universally shared. Unless confidence in this is firmly grounded in the first instance, there will be nothing by reference to which we could establish anything about what is hidden from our view, by proceeding through reasoning. Next, if there were no room and space, which we call void, bodies could not be situated anywhere, nor could they move this way and that at all, as I showed to you a short while before. Moreover, there is nothing you could posit which is separate from all body and distinct from void, to be discovered as a third nature: for whatever exists must be something in its own right; and if it admits of touch, however slight or great, as long as it exists, it will increase the tally of body by an increment large or small and be added to its sum; but if it is intangible and unable to prevent anything from moving freely through it in any direction, then it will certainly be that which we call empty void. Further, whatever exists in its own right, will either act, or must itself be acted on when other things act, or will be such that things are able to exist and happen in it. But nothing can act or be acted on without body, nor provide room except empty void. Therefore, other than void and bodies, no third nature could be left in the tally of things, either to fall under our senses at some time, or to be grasped by anyone through reasoning of the mind. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:503-98

First, since we have found a vast difference between the twin natures of the two things - body, and the place in which everything happens - each must in itself be absolute and unmixed. For wherever there is the empty space which we call void, there no body exists, while wherever body is in occupation, there the emptiness of void is totally absent. Therefore the first bodies are solid and without void… These can neither be dissolved when struck by external blows, nor be dismantled through internal penetration, nor succumb to any other kind of attack, as I proved to you a little earlier. For we see that without void nothing can either be crushed, broken or cut in two, or admit moisture, permeating cold or penetrating fire. These cause the destruction of all things, and the more void each thing contains the more it succumbs to internal attack from them. So if the first bodies are solid and without void, as I have taught, they must necessarily be everlasting. Besides, if matter had not been everlasting, everything would before now have been totally annihilated, and all the things which we see would have been regenerated from nothing. But since I have taught earlier that nothing can be created from nothing and that what has been generated cannot be reduced to nothing, there must be principles with imperishable body, into which everything can be dissolved when its final hour comes, so as to ensure a supply of matter for the renewal of things. The principles, then, are solid and uncompounded, and in no other way could they have survived the ages from infinite time past to keep things renewed… Furthermore, since things have a limit placed on their growth and lifespan according to their species, and since what each can and cannot do is decreed through the laws of nature, and nothing changes but everything is so constant that all the varieties of bird display from generation to generation on their bodies the markings of their own species, they naturally must also have a body of unalterable matter. For if the principles of things could in any way succumb and be altered, it would now also be uncertain what can and what cannot arise, and how each thing has its power limited and its deep-set boundary stone, nor could such a long succession of generations in each species replicate the nature, habits, lifestyle and movements of their parents. (L&S-THP)

A-4 Properties of Atoms - Minimum Size

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 56

Furthermore, we must not consider that the finite body contains an infinite number of bits, nor bits with no [lower] limit to size. Therefore not only must we deny cutting into smaller and smaller parts to infinity, so that we do not make everything weak and be compelled by our conceptions of complex entities to grind away existing things and waste them away into non-existence, but also we must not consider that in finite bodies there is traversal to infinity, not even through smaller and smaller parts. For, first, it is impossible to conceive how [there could be traversal], once someone says that something contains an infinite n u m b e r of bits or bits with n o [lower] limit to size. Second, how could this magnitude still be finite? For obviously these infinitely many bits are themselves of some size, and however small they may be the magnitude consisting of them would also be infinite. And third, since the finite body has an extremity which is distinguishable, even if not imaginable as existing per se, one must inevitably think of what is in sequence to it as being of the same kind, and by thus proceeding forward in sequence it must be possible, to that extent, to reach infinity in thought. As for the minimum in sensation, we must grasp that it is neither of the same kind as that which admits of traversal, nor entirely unlike it; but while having a certain resemblance to traversable things it has no distinction of parts. Whenever because of the closeness of the resemblance we think we are going to make a distinction in it - one part on this side, the other on that — it must be the same magnitude that confronts us. We view these minima in sequence, starting from the first, neither all in the same place nor touching parts with parts, but merely in their own peculiar way providing the measure of magnitudes - more for a larger magnitude, fewer for a smaller one. This analogy, we must consider, is followed also by the minimum in the atom: in its smallness, obviously, it differs from the one viewed through sensation, but it follows the same analogy. For even the claim that the atom has size is one which we made in accordance with the analogy of things before our eyes, merely projecting something small onto a large scale. We must also think of the minimum uncompounded limits as providing out of themselves in the first instance the measure of lengths for both greater and smaller magnitudes, using our reason to view that which is invisible. For the resemblance which they bear to changeable things is sufficient to establish this much; but a process of composition out of minima with their own movement is an impossibility, (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:599-634

Then again, seeing that there is always a final extremity of that body which is below the threshold of our senses, it is presumably partless and of a minimal nature, and never was or could be separated by itself, since its very existence is as a part of something else: it is one part, the first, and is followed by similar parts in sequence, one after another, filling out the nature of the body in dense formation. Since these cannot exist by themselves, they must stick together inextricably. Therefore the primary particles are solid and uncompounded, being tightly packed conglomerations of minimal parts, not composed by assembling these but rather gaining their strength through being everlastingly uncompounded. Nature is still preventing anything from being prised away or subtracted from them, but preserves them as seeds for things. Besides, unless there is going to be a minimum, the smallest bodies will consist of infinitely many parts, since half of a half will always have a half and there will be nothing to halt the division. In that case, what is the difference between the universe and the smallest thing? None. For however utterly infinite the whole universe is, the smallest things will nevertheless consist equally of infinitely many parts. Since true reasoning protests against this and denies that the mind can believe it, you must give in and concede the existence of those things which possess no parts and are of a minimal nature. Since these exist, you must admit that those things too [the atoms] are solid and everlasting. Finally, if nature the creator of things were in the habit of forcing everything to be resolved into its minimal parts, she would by now be unable to renew anything out of them, because things which are not swollen by any parts cannot possess the properties required in generative matter - the variety of connections, weights, blows, conjunctions and motions which are responsible for everything that happens. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:746—52

[Proponents of the four-element theory are mistaken] secondly in that they place absolutely no limit on the cutting up of bodies and no end to their fragmentation, and no minimum in things, even though we see that final extremity of each thing which to our senses seems to be a minimum — from which you can guess that the extremity which invisible things possess is the smallest thing in them. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 68-71

Furthermore one should not suppose that every size exists among atoms, lest the evidence refute us, but one must think that there are some differences in size. For if this obtains, then that which occurs in our feelings and sensations can better be accounted for. But the existence of every size is not useful to the explanation of the differences in qualities, and at the same time it would be necessary for some atoms to come within our purview and be visible. But this is not seen to occur, nor is it possible to conceive in what way an atom could become visible. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 68-71

Furthermore one should not suppose that every size exists among atoms, lest the evidence refute us, but one should think that there are some differences in size. (2) For if this obtains, then that which occurs in our feelings and sensations can better be accounted for. But the existence of every size is not useful to the explanation of the differences in qualities, and at the same time it would be necessary for some atoms to come within our purview and be visible. But this is not seen to occur, nor is it possible to conceive in what way an atom could become visible. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2: 730-864

(1) Now it is time for me to explain that there is nothing visible which consists of atoms of just one kind, nothing which is not formed from seeds of mixed birth; and the more powers and capacities anything possesses in itself, the more it declares that there are in it the greatest number of kinds of atoms and the variety of their shapes. (2) First of all, the earth contains in herself the atoms from which springs, forever rolling cool waters, renew the boundless sea; she has atoms from which fires arise. For in many regions the earth’s surface burns and blazes, while raging Etna erupts in flames from her deepest furnaces. Next she has the seed from which she can raise shining crops and joyful trees for the human race, from which she can supply to the mountain-wandering tribe of wild beasts streams and leaves and gladsome pastures. (3) Wherefore she alone has been named Great Mother of the gods, mother of beasts, and parent of our body. … (4) Wherefore I repeat that there must be many atoms common to many things in common combinations, as we see letters common to words; and yet you must admit that different things are constituted of different letters. Not that only a few letters run through them in common, or that any two things are made up of all the same letters, but that not all in general are alike to all. (5) So in other things likewise: although many atoms are common to many things, yet they can none the less constitute altogether dissimilar wholes; so that the human race, crops, and joyful trees are rightly said to be created from different atoms. (L&S-THP)

A-5 Properties Of Atoms - Shape, Weight, and Size

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 42-3

In addition, these bodies which are atomic and full, from which compounds are formed and into which they are dissolved, have unimaginably many differences of shape. For it is not possible for as many varieties as there are to arise from the same shapes if these are of an imaginable number. For each species of shape, also, the number of atoms of the same kind is absolutely infinite; but in the number of their differences they are not absolutely infinite, just unimaginably many, if one is not going to expand them to absolute infinity in their sizes too. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 46-8

Moreover, there are in the atoms no quality at all except shape, weight and size, and whatever is a necessary concomitant of shape. For every quality changes; but the atoms do not change in any way, since it is necessary in the case of the dissolutions of compounds for something solid and indestructible to remain behind, which will not bring about changes into what is not, or out of what is not, but changes in arrangements, and in some cases additions and subtractions of atoms. Hence what is indestructible must not have the nature of quality, but only of shape and size and weight. (4) For these necessarily remain, whereas qualities do not remain but change with the general aggregate. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 49-50

Moreover, one must not postulate that every shape belongs to the atoms; otherwise each one will come into view. One must rather suppose that the shapes are dissimilar, but not every dissimilarity, and the totality of dissimilar shapes not infinite but merely incomprehensible. And the atoms have no quality at all except shape, size and weight. (4) But colour varies according to the disposition of the atoms. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 54

Moreover, the atoms themselves must be considered to exhibit no quality of things evident, beyond shape, weight, size, and the necessary concomitants of shape. For all quality changes. But the atoms do not change at all, since something solid and indissoluble must survive the dissolution of the compounds to ensure that the changes are not into, or out of, the non-existent, but result from transpositions within many things, and in other cases from additions and subtractions of certain things. Hence those things which do not admit of [internal] transposition must be indestructible, and must lack the nature of that which changes. And their own peculiar masses and shapes must survive, since this is actually necessary. After all, also in familiar objects which have their shape altered by shaving, it can be ascertained that in the matter which undergoes change, as it is left, shape remains whereas the qualities do not remain but vanish from the entire body. So these properties which are left are sufficient to bring about the differences of the compounds, given the necessity for some things to be left and not be destroyed into the non-existent. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 55

W e must not adopt, either, the view that every size is to be found among the atoms, lest it be contested by things evident. On the other hand, we must suppose that there are some variations of size, for this addition will yield better explanations of the events reported by our feelings and senses. But the existence of every size is not useful with respect to the differences of qualities. Indeed, we ourselves ought to have experienced visible atoms, and that is not seen to happen, nor is it possible to conceive how a visible atom might occur. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 56

(1) One must think that in limited bodies there is something which cannot even be seen. (2) It is clear that this thing is without parts and is the minimum in nature; and it neither arose as self-constituted on its own, nor could it ever arise as such, but it was and is always in being as a part of something else, being the first and unique and in sequence next primary part of a thing, until other such parts in order constitute by their collective union the full nature of the body. (3) Just as in the case of the soul it is impossible to conceive of the aggregate nature apart from the whole compound, so in these cases too it is impossible; evidently, therefore, these parts necessarily pre-exist. (4) Now, it is necessary that these minimal parts in the atoms should also be thought of as boundaries providing length’s measure in themselves both for the smaller and the greater; for the analogous study of what is visible through reason leads to that which is non-evident. (5) For the partlessness that there is in them is sufficient to produce this result by analogy with compound bodies, though such precise identification is impossible. (6) It is necessary also to suppose that limited bodies contain a sum total of such parts, whether they be smaller or greater ones. (7) And it is clear that this minimum is similar in a certain analogous way to the things which undergo change; but that it differs also by its special mode of compounding. (8) For indeed by analogy to this we have declared the atom’s nature to be continuous, although we can isolate and define the individual measures by means of distinctive qualities. (9) But it is necessary also to postulate that in continuous things length is not built up out of contact, nor is it necessary to suppose that, in any magnitude whatsoever, there is infinity in the direction of decrease. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 61-2

But in the case of atoms one must not suppose that they have every magnitude, lest the evidence refute us, but one must think that there are some differences in size. For if this obtains, then that which occurs in our feelings and sensations can better be accounted for. But the existence of every size is not useful to the explanation of the differences in qualities, and at the same time it would be necessary for some atoms to come within our purview and be visible. But this is not seen to occur, nor is it possible to conceive in what way an atom could become visible. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 46-8

Moreover, there are in the atoms no quality at all except shape, weight and size, and whatever is a necessary concomitant of shape. For every quality changes; but the atoms do not change in any way, since it is necessary in the case of the dissolutions of compounds for something solid and indestructible to remain behind, which will not bring about changes into what is not, or out of what is not, but changes in arrangements, and in some cases additions and subtractions of atoms. Hence what is indestructible must not have the nature of quality, but only of shape and size and weight. For these necessarily remain, whereas qualities do not remain but change with the general aggregate. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1.599-634

(1) Now come: since I have shown that there exist completely solid bodies of matter flying around for ever, unconquered through eternity, let us unroll whether or not there is any limit to their total number; likewise let us elucidate whether the void which has been discovered, or room or space, in which individual things take place, is altogether finite or stretches away boundless and immeasurably deep. (2) Well then, the universe as a whole is bounded in no direction; for if it had a limit it would have to have an extremity. But it is seen that nothing can have an extremity unless there is something beyond to bound it, so that something is seen to exist up to which the nature of our sense can follow it no further. Now since we must admit that there is nothing beyond the totality, it does not have an extremity, it therefore lacks end and measure. (3) And it makes no difference in which region of it you take up your position: whatever spot anyone occupies, he leaves the universe just as infinite as before in all directions. (4) Moreover, supposing for the moment that the whole of space were bounded, if someone ran right to its furthest shores and hurled a flying javelin, do you choose to think that that javelin, hurled with great force, would go where it was sent and fly far, or do you think that something could block its path and stop it? (5) For you must adopt and admit one of the two; yet both cut off your escape and compel you to grant that the universe extends without limit. For whether there is something to block it and prevent it from arriving where it was sent and lodging in its target, or whether it passes out, it did not start from the end. By this method I shall follow you up, and wherever you place the furthest shores I shall ask, ‘What then happens to the javelin?’ (6) The result will be that the boundary cannot stand anywhere, and that the chance of flight will always prolong the chance of escape. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1.951-1007

Moreover, if anyone thinks that the atoms can stop, and by stopping generate new motions in things, he is straying far away from true reasoning. For since the atoms are wandering through the void, they must all be borne along either by their own weight or by a chance blow from another atom. For when, as often happens in their movements, they have met and clashed together, the result is a sudden leap apart in opposite directions; which is not surprising, since they are extremely hard with solid weight, and there is nothing behind to obstruct them. And the better to perceive that all particles of matter are in a state of turbulence, recall that there is no bottom in the universe, and that the atoms have no place in which to come to rest, since space is without end or limit and extends immeasurably in every direction, as I have shown by sure proof and as from the facts has been truly established. Since this is certain, beyond doubt no rest is granted to the atoms moving through the profound void, but driven on rather by varied incessant motion, some when they have collided leap back leaving great spaces between, while others are thrust only a short way from the impact. And those which, having been more closely massed in denser union, recoil through minute intervals, entangled by their own interlocking shapes, these constitute the strong roots of stone and the savage body of iron and other things of that kind. Of the remainder which wander through the great void, a few leap far apart and recoil far back with great spaces between; these provide us with rare air and brilliant sunlight. And many more besides wander through the great void, having been rejected from combinations of things, unable anywhere to be admitted and to link their movements in harmony. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.62-79

(1) Herein lies another fact which I want you to grasp. (2) When bodies are being borne downwards through the void by their own weight, at absolutely unpredictable times and places they deflect slightly from their vertical course, just enough that you can call it a change of direction. (3) If they did not swerve, they would all fall downwards like drops of rain through the profound void, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. In that case nature would never have created anything. (4) But if anyone happens to believe that heavier atoms, through being carried more swiftly in a vertical line through the void, can fall from above upon lighter ones, thereby producing the blows which can give rise to the generative motions, he is straying far from the path of truth. (5) For the reason why things falling through water and thin air must accelerate their fall in proportion to their weight is simply that the body of water and the subtle nature of air cannot retard each thing equally, but more quickly give way, overpowered by heavier bodies. (6) But on the other hand the empty void cannot offer resistance to anything at any time or in any place, but must, as its nature demands, go on giving way. (7) Therefore all things must move at equal velocity through the unresisting void, though they are of unequal weight. (8) Thus heavier things will never be able to fall from above upon lighter ones or of themselves produce impacts capable of generating the varied motions by which nature carries on her work. (9) Wherefore again and again the atoms must swerve slightly - but only by the minimum amount, lest we appear to be inventing oblique motions and the facts prove us wrong. (10) For we see this to be manifest and evident, that heavy things, in so far as they are heavy, cannot travel obliquely of their own accord, when they fall from above, as far as you can observe. (11) But that nothing at all swerves from a straight course, who is there who can perceive? (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2:381 - 407 (Smooth and Round Particles)

It is very easy, with the mind’s reasoning, for us to work out why the fire of lightning flows with much more penetration than the fire which we produce from torches here on earth. All you need say is that the lightning’s fire up in the sky is finer and consists of smaller shapes, and hence passes through passages through which this fire which we produce from logs and torches cannot pass. Besides, light passes through horn, while rain water is rejected by it. Why, unless the particles of light are smaller than those which make up water’s nourishing draught? And however instantaneously we see wine flow through a sieve, olive oil, by contrast, is sluggish and takes its time. This is naturally either because it consists of larger elements; or because they are more hooked together entangled, with the consequence that individual primary particles cannot be so immediately separated and flow individually through each thing’s passages. A further point is that the liquids of honey and milk, when taken by mouth, are pleasant to the tongue’s sensation, while, by contrast, foul wormwood and pungent centaury twist up the mouth with their repellent flavor. Thus you can easily recognize that those things which can have a pleasant effect on the senses consist of smooth round particles, while by contrast all those which seem bitter and harsh are joined and interwoven with more hooked particles, and for that reason tend to make violent inroads into our senses, and to wrench our body when they enter it. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2. 478 - 531

Having explained this, I shall go on to attach to it a point which depends on it for its proof; that the primary elements of things have a finite range of different shapes. Should this not be so, it will again necessarily follow that some seeds have infinite bodily extension. For within one and the same narrow compass of a given body there cannot be much variety of shapes. Say, for example, that atoms consist of three minimal parts or a few more. Well obviously, when you have taken all these parts of one body, positioned them cop and bottom, swapped left with right, and in short tried every permutation to see what shape of the whole body each arrangement yields, should you want to vary the shapes further you will have to add more parts. And the next stage will be that, should you want to vary the shapes even further, the arrangement will require more parts in just the same way. Thus a consequence of adding new shapes is bodily increase. So there is no way in which you can suppose the seeds to have infinitely many differences of shape, lest you force some to be immensely huge, which I have already explained above to be unacceptable. You would find, too, that exotic garments, glowing Meliboean purple dyed with the colour of Thessalian shells, and the golden generations of peacocks bathed in their smiling charm, would by now lie neglected, outshone by some new color appearing in things. The fragrance of myrrh would lie in disrepute, as would the taste of honey. And the melodies of swans and the intricate string music of Apollo would likewise have been outshone and silenced. For one thing would constantly be arising to eclipse the others. And in the same way all things would be able to change in the reverse direction for the worse, just I have said they could change for the better. For one thing would also in the reverse direction be more revolting than all the rest for nose, ears, eyes, and the mouth’s taste. Since this is not so, but the totality of things is held in check at either end of the scale by the assignment of a fixed limit, you must admit that matter also has a finite number of different shapes. Again, from fire right down to the icy frosts of winter is a finite passage, and in the reverse direction it is measured in the same way. For all heat, cold, and lukewarm temperatures, making up the whole range in succession, lie in between. Therefore they are generated with a finite range of differences, since they are marked off by two points, one at either end of the scale — hemmed in by fire at one end and stiff frost at the other. Having explained this, I shall go on to attach to it a point which depends on it for its proof: that the primary elements of things, within each group of the same shape as each other, must be called infinitely many. For since there is a finite variety of shapes, it is necessary that those of a single shape be infinitely many. Otherwise the totality of matter must be finite, which I proved not to be the case when I showed in my poem that particles of matter from the infinite permanently maintain the totality of things with a continuous succession of impacts from all sides. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2: 730-833 (Absence of Color)

Come now, mark what I say, the fruit of my pleasant labors - that you should not suppose those white objects which you see before your eyes as white to consist of white primary particles, or those which are black to be the product of black seeds, or that objects dyed any other- color exhibit it because their particles of matter are imbued with the same color. For particles of matter have absolutely no color, whether like or unlike that of the objects. You are quite wrong if you think that the mind cannot be focused on such particles. For given that those who are blind from birth and have never seen the sun’s light nevertheless from their first day know bodies by touch without any association of color, you can be sure that our mind too can form a preconception of bodies without any coating of color. In fact, we ourselves sense as colorless everything that we touch in blind darkness. Besides, if the primary particles are colorless, and possess a variety of shapes from which they generate every kind of thing and thus make colors vary — since it makes a great difference with what things and in what sort of position the individual seeds are combined and what motions they impart to each other and receive from each other - it at once becomes very easy to explain why things which a little earlier were black in color can suddenly take on the whiteness of marble, as the sea, when its surface has been churned up by great winds, is turned into waves whose whiteness is like that of gleaming marble. All you need say is that what we regularly see as black comes to appear gleaming white as soon as its matter is mixed up, as soon as the ordering of its primary particles is changed, as soon as some particles are added and some subtracted. But if the sea’s surface consisted of blue seeds, there is no way in which they could turn white. For things that are blue could never change to the color of marble, no matter how you were to jumble them up… Moreover, the tinier the pieces into which any object is shredded, the more you can see the gradual disappearance and blotting out of its color. This happens, for example, when purple cloth is pulled apart into little pieces: when it has been dismantled thread by thread, the purple and the scarlet color, by far the brightest there is, is completely wiped out. So you can tell from this that fragments breathe away all their color before they are reduced to the seeds of things. (L&S-THP)

A-6 Atomic Motion

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 43

Moreover, the atoms move continuously for all time, some recoiling far apart from one another, others maintaining the vibration when they happen to be caught in an interlocking or covered by interlocking atoms. For the nature of void brings this about by separating each atom by itself, since it is unable to provide support; and their own solidity makes them, on rebounding, vibrate to whatever distance the interlocking permits them to return from the collision. And there is no beginning to this, because of the eternity of the atoms and the void. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 46

Moreover, the lack of obstruction from colliding bodies makes motion through the void achieve any imaginable distance in an unimaginable time. For it is collision and non-collision that take on the resemblance of slow and fast. Nor, on the other hand, does the moving body itself reach a plurality of places simultaneously in the periods of time seen by reason. That is unthinkable. And when in perceptible time this body arrives in company with others from some point or other in the infinite, the distance which it covers will not be one from any place from which we may imagine its travel. For that will resemble [cases involving] collision - even if we do admit such a degree of speed of motion as a result of non-collision. This too is a useful principle to grasp. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 61

Moreover the atoms must be of equal velocity whenever they travel through the void and nothing collides with them. For neither will the heavy ones move faster than the small light ones, provided nothing runs into them; nor will the small ones move faster than the large ones, through having all their trajectories commensurate with them, at any rate when the large ones are suffering no collision either. Nor will either their upwards motion or sideways motion caused by knocks [be quicker], or those downwards because of their individual weights. For however far along either kind of trajectory it gets, for that distance it will move as fast as thought, until it is in collision, either through some external cause or through its own weight in relation to the force of the impacting body. Now it will also be said in the case of compounds that one atom is faster than another, where they are in fact of equal velocity, because the atoms in the complexes move in a single direction even in the shortest continuous time, although it is not single in the periods of time seen by reason; but they frequently collide, until the continuity of their motion presents itself to the senses. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2:80-124

If you think that the primary particles can stand still, and can thus initiate motions of things from scratch, you are wandering far from true reasoning. For since they wander through void, they must necessarily all be borne along either by their own weight or, if it should so happen, by the impact of another. For as a result of their frequent high-speed collisions they recoil suddenly in opposite directions - not surprisingly, given that they are entirely hard with their solid weights and unobstructed by anything from behind. And to see more clearly that all particles of matter are being tossed about, remember that in the totality of the universe there is no bottom and that the primary bodies have nowhere to stand still, since room has no limit or boundary and I have shown at length and proved with conclusive argument that it stretches measureless in all directions. Since that is established, naturally the primary bodies are granted no rest throughout the depths of void. But rather they are driven in continuous and varied motion, and some after being squeezed together rebound over great intervals, while others are tossed about over short spaces from the impact. And whichever ones are in a denser aggregation and rebound over small intervals from that impact, held back by the interweaving of their own shapes, these form the strong roots of stone, the brute bulk of iron, and the like. Those others which go on wandering through the great void, few and far between, and recoil and rebound a long way over great intervals, these supply the thin air for us and the sun’s brilliant light. In addition many wander through the great void, which have been rejected by compounds and have also failed to gain admittance anywhere and harmonize their motions. Of this fact, as I have recounted it, there is a pictorial representation regularly present and taking place before our eyes. Take a look where the sun’s rays weave their way in and pour their light through a darkened room. You will see many tiny bodies intermingling in many ways throughout the empty space right there in the light of the rays, and as if in everlasting combat battling and fighting ceaselessly in their squadrons, driven by frequent meetings and separations. So you can conjecture from this what it is like for the primary particles of things to be for ever tossed around in the great void. To some extent something small can give a model of great matters, and the traces of their preconception. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2:142-64

Here now, Memmius, is a brief account from which you may know the speed which the particles of matter possess. First, when dawn spreads new light over the earth, and the various birds flying about the pathless woods through the soft air fill the place with their flowing voices, we see it plainly revealed to all how suddenly the risen sun at such a rime regularly swamps all things and clothes them with its own light. And yet the heat and calm light which the sun emits does not travel through empty void, and so is compelled to go more slowly as it beats its way through the waves, so to speak, of the air; nor do the particles of heat travel individually, but in interlinked aggregations. Hence they are simultaneously retarded by each other and obstructed from outside, and are thus compelled to go more slowly. But when the solid and uncompounded primary particles travel through empty void, and are both unimpeded from outside and, being such a unity of its own parts, borne hurtling onward in their one initial direction of movement, they must naturally be of supreme swiftness, and travel much faster than the sun’s light, and traverse many times the extent of space in the same time as the sunlight takes to cross the sky. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2:216—50

On this topic, another thing I want you to know is this. When bodies are being borne by their own weight straight down through the void, at quite uncertain times and places they veer a little from their course, just enough to be called a change of motion. If they did not have this tendency to swerve, everything would be falling downward like raindrops through the depths of the void, and collisions and impacts among the primary bodies would not have arisen, with the result that nature would never have created anything. But if anyone should suppose it possible that heavier bodies, by virtue of their faster travel in a straight line through the void, should land from above on lighter ones and in that way produce impacts capable of leading to creative motions, he is departing far from true reasoning. For whatever things fall through water and thin air must necessarily fall at a speed proportionate to their weight, since the body of water and the rarefied substance of air cannot impede everything equally, but succumb and yield faster to heavier things. But the emptiness of void, by contrast, can nowhere and at no rime stand up to anything, but must constantly, as its nature demands, give way. Through the passive void, consequently, ail things must travel at equal speed, regardless of differences in weight. Hence it will never be possible for the heavier ones to land from above on the lighter ones and by themselves produce impacts resulting in the variety of motions through which nature does her work. Thus it follows once again that the bodies must veer off a little - no more than one minimum, lest we item to be inventing oblique motions and be refuted by the facts. For we see as plain and obvious that weights when hurtling downwards have no intrinsic power to travel obliquely. But who in the world can see that they do not swerve from their straight trajectory at all? (L&S-THP)

Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 038,17-22 (Usener 277)

For unless every magnitude were divisible, it would not be possible for the slower always to move less distance than the faster in equal time; for that which is atomic, and that which is partless, are traversed by the faster in the same time as they are by the slower. For if the slower takes a longer time, in the equal time it is going to traverse a distance smaller than the; partless. That is why Epicurus’ school holds that all things move at the same speed through the partless places, lest their atoms be divided and thus no longer atoms. (L&S-THP)

Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 934,23-30 (Usener 278, part)

That this obstacle which he [Aristotle] has formulated is itself not entirely beyond belief is shown by the fact that despite his having formulated it and produced his solution, the Epicureans, who came along later, said that this is precisely how motion does occur. For they say that motion, magnitude and time have partless constituents, and that over the whole magnitude composed of partless constituents the moving object moves, but at each of the partless magnitudes contained in it it does not move but has moved; for if it were laid down that the object moving over the whole magnitude moves over these too, they would turn out to be divisible. (L&S-THP)

A-7 The Void - Proof of the Existence

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 40

And if there were not that which we name void and room and intangible substance, bodies would not have anywhere to be or to move through in the way in which they are seen to move. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1: 334—90

So there exists intangible place, void and emptiness. Otherwise there would be no way in which things could move. For that which is the function of body, to hinder and block, would be there to affect everything at all times; so that nothing would be able to move forward, since nothing would start the process of giving way. But as it is, we see before our eyes many things moving in many different ways, through seas, lands and the lofty skies. If void did not exist, these things would not just be deprived of their restless motion: they would never have come into being at all, since matter would everywhere be jammed solid and at rest. Besides, however solid things may be thought to be, you can see that their bodies are porous from the following facts. In rocks and caves the liquid moisture of water seeps through and everything weeps with an abundance of drops. Food spreads itself throughout animals’ bodies. Trees grow and in season pour forth their fruits because their food spreads throughout them from the tips of their roots up, through their trunks and through all their branches. Voices permeate walls and fly across between closed houses. Brittle cold penetrates to the bones. There is no way in which you could see this happen without the existence of voids for the individual bodies to pass through. Next, why do we see some things exceed others in weight without being larger than them? For if there is as much body in a ball of wool as there is in lead, they ought to weigh the same, since the function of body is to push everything down, while the nature of void on the contrary remains weightless. It naturally follows that what is equally large but seems lighter reveals that it contains more void, while by contrast what is heavier announces itself as containing more body and much less void. Naturally, then, the thing we call void, which we are seeking with keen reasoning, is mingled with things. On this topic, I am compelled to forestall a fiction of some people, in case it leads you away from the truth. These people say that the waters give way to the pressure of scaly fish and open liquid paths because the fish leave places behind them into which the waters which give way then flow; and that this is also how other things can move in relation to each other and change place, even though everything is full. You can see t the theory in its entirety has been accepted on false reasoning. For which way, after all, will the scaly fish be able to move forward unless the waters have provided space for them? And which way, moreover, will the waters be able to retreat, when the fish will be unable to move? Therefore either we must deny motion to all bodies, or we must say that void is mingled with things and provides each thing with the beginning of motion. Finally, if two broad bodies, which have come together, quickly spring apart, it is of course necessary that air come to occupy all the void created between them. Now however fast the currents with which the air converges from all sides, it will still be impossible for the entire space to be filled at one and the same time. For it must occupy each successive place before the whole space is occupied. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1.483-502

Now since I have shown that things cannot be created from nothing, and likewise that once created they cannot be called back to nothing, let me now add, lest you start to mistrust my words because the primary elements of things escape the eyes, a list of other bodies, which you too are bound to admit to be in the class of things and yet not to be visible. In the first place, aroused by force, the wind batters the sea, sinks huge ships and scatters clouds. Sometimes in a rapid whirlwind it sweeps across the plains, strewing them with large trees, and hammers the mountain peaks with forest-splitting gusts. So savagely does the wind howl in its shrillness and storm with menacing roar. Undoubtedly, therefore, there are unseen bodies of wind which sweep the sea, the lands, and finally the clouds in the sky, and assault and carry them off in a sudden tornado. They flow and cause destruction in just the same way as the soft nature of water, when all at once an overwhelming river of water rushes down from high mountains after massive rains, hurling together broken branches from forests and entire trees; nor can strong bridges withstand the sudden onrush of advancing water. The river, swollen with heavy rains, dashes against the piers with mighty force; with loud noise it makes havoc, and rolls huge boulders under its waves and demolishes whatever opposes its current. So then must the blasts of wind too be carried along. When like a mighty river they have hurled themselves in any direction, they push things before them and sweep them away in repeated assaults, and sometimes seize them up in swirling eddy and bear them away in a rapidly whirling tornado. (4) Therefore I repeat, there are unseen bodies of wind, since in their effects and behavior they are found to rival the great rivers, which are of manifest body. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.80-141

In this connection, there is one fact which I wish you to grasp; when atoms are being carried downwards through the void by their own weight, at absolutely unpredictable times and places they deflect slightly from their straight course, to a degree that could be described as no more than a shift of movement. If they were not apt to swerve, all would fall downwards through the profound void like drops of rain, no collision would occur, and no blow would be brought about amongst the atoms. In that case, nature would never have created anything. But if anyone happens to think that heavier atoms, in virtue of being carried more quickly in a straight line through the void, can fall from above on the lighter ones and thereby bring about the blows capable of giving rise to creative motions, he is straying far from true reasoning. For the reason why things which fall through water or rare air must speed up their fall in proportion to their weights is simply that the body of water and the rare nature of air cannot slow down each thing equally, but give way more quickly when overcome by heavier bodies. On the other hand, the empty void cannot on any side, at any time, support anything, but must, as its nature demands, go on giving way. Therefore all things must be borne on through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights. Hence heavier atoms will not ever be able to fall on lighter ones from above, or by themselves generate the blows which vary the motions through which nature carries out her work. Therefore, again and again, the atoms must swerve slightly - but no more than the minimum; otherwise we will seem to be inventing oblique movements, and the truth of the matter will refute us. For we see this manifestly and evidently, that weights, in so far as they are weights, cannot move obliquely when they fall from above, as far as you can observe. But who is there who can perceive that they in no way deflect from a precisely straight course? (L&S-THP)

A-8 Secondary Attributes - Emergent Properties Arising From Atoms Coming Together To Form Bodies

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 40-1

Moreover, among bodies, some are compounds, and others those from which compounds are made. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 68-73

Now as for the shapes, colours, sizes, weights, and other things predicated of a body as permanent attributes - belonging either to all bodies or to those which are visible, and knowable in themselves through sensation - we must not hold that they are per se substances: that is inconceivable. Nor, at all, that they are non-existent. Nor that they are some distinct incorporeal things accruing to the body. Nor that they are parts of it; b t that the whole body cannot have its own permanent nature consisting entirely of the sum total of them, in an amalgamation like that when a larger aggregate is composed directly of particles, either primary ones or magnitudes smaller than such-and-such a whole, but it is only in the way I am describing that it has its own permanent nature consisting of the sum total of them. And these things have their own individual ways of being focused on and distinguished, yet with the whole complex accompanying them and at no point separated from them, but with the body receiving its predication according to the complex conception. Now there often also accidentally befall bodies, and impermanently accompany them, things which will neither exist at the invisible level nor be incorporeal. Therefore by using the name in accordance with its general meaning we make it clear that ‘accidents’ have neither the nature of the whole which we grasp collectively through its complex (of attributes] and call ‘body’, nor that of the permanent concomitants without which body cannot be thought of. They can get their individual names through certain ways of being focused on, in concomitance with the complex, but just whenever they are each seen to become attributes of it, accidents being impermanent concomitants. And we should not banish this self-evident thing from the existent, just because it does not have the nature of the whole of which it becomes an attribute — ‘body’, as we also call it — nor that of the permanent concomitants. Nor should we think of them as per se entities; that is inconceivable too, for either these or the permanent attributes. But we should think of all the accidents of bodies as just what they seem to be, and not as permanent concomitants or as having the status of a per se nature either. They are viewed in just the way that sensation itself individualizes them. Now another thing that it is important to appreciate forcefully is this. We should not inquire into time in the same way as other things, which we inquire into in an object by referring them to familiar preconceptions. But the self-evident thing in virtue of which we articulate the words ‘long time’ and ‘short time’, conferring a uniform cycle on it, must itself be grasped by analogy. And we should neither adopt alternative terminology for it as being better — we should use that which is current — nor predicate anything else of it as having the same essence as this peculiar thing —for this too is done by some —but we must merely work out empirically what we associate this peculiarity with and tend to measure it against. After all, it requires no additional proof but merely empirical reasoning, to see that with days, nights, and fractions thereof, and likewise with the presence and absence of feelings, and with motions and rests, we associate a certain peculiar accident, and that it is, conversely, as belonging to these things that we conceive that entity itself, in virtue of which we use the word ‘time’. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:445—82

Therefore no third substance beside void and bodies can be left in the sum of things, neither one that could fall under our senses at any time nor one that anyone could grasp by the mind’s reasoning. For all things which are spoken of you will find to be either fixed attributes of these two or accidents of them. A fixed attribute is that which can at no point be separated and remove d without fatal destruction resulting — as weight is to stones, heat to fire, liquidity to water, tangibility to all bodies, and intangibility to void, By contrast slavery, poverty, wealth, freedom, war, peace, and all the other things whose arrival and departure a thing’s nature survives intact, these it is our practice to call, quite properly, accidents. Time, likewise, does not exist per se: it is from things themselves that our perception arises of what has happened in the past, what is present, and further what is to follow it next. It should not be conceded that an y on e perceives time per se in separation from things’ motion and quiet rest. Moreove , when people say that the rape of Helen and the defeat in war of the Trojan tribes are facts, we must be careful that they do not force us into an admission that these things exist per se on the ground that the generations of men of whom they were accidents have by now been taken away by the irrevocable passage of rime. For all past facts can be called accidents, either of the world or of actual places. And besides, if there had been no matter for things, and no place and space, in which all events occur, never would that flame kindled deep in Paris’ Phrygian heart and fanned with love through Helen’s beauty have ignited the shining battles of savage war, nor would that wooden horse by giving birth to its Grecian offspring at dead of night have set tire to the citadel undetected by the Trojans. Thus you can see that it is fundamental to all historical facts not to exist per se like body, and not to be or to be spoken of in the way in which void exists, but rather in such a way that you can properly call them accidents of body and of the place in which all events occur. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1.449-82

Now what in themselves are called elements, you can see to be all either primary, if of a single nature, like heat and moisture and earth and breath, or not primary, like bones and blood and sinew, when each borrows its nature from the joining together of several different seeds. For of things which are named after atoms and are constituted out of atoms, some take on the names of those atoms from which they are mostly made; but some take on the names and nature of something other, in virtue of whichever element is predominant. … Next, accidents of things you could by no means regard as a nature independent in its own right, nor can they be said to exist in the manner of void: rather, it is correct to call them accidents of body, and of the place in which all things occur. But time does not exist in its own right. Rather, from the facts themselves there follows a sense of what has been completed in past time, of what is presently to hand, and further of what is going to follow afterwards; and we must accept that no one has a sense of time in its own right, as distinct from the movement or the quiet rest of things. (L&S-THP)

C Sextus Empiricus, Against the professors 10:219—27

Epicurus, as Demetrius of Laconia interprets him, says that time is an accident of accidents, one which accompanies days, nights, hours, the presence and absence of feelings , motions and rests. For all of these are accidents belonging to things as their attributes, and since time accompanies them all it would be reasonable to call it an accident of accidents. For - to start at a slightly earlier point so as to make the account intelligible — it is a universal principle that of things that exist some are per se while others are viewed as belonging to per se things. What exist per se are things like the substances, namely body and void, while what are viewed as belonging to per se things are what they call ‘attributes’. Of these attributes some are inseparable from the things of which they are attributes, others are of a kind to be separated from them. Inseparable from the things of which they are attributes are, for example, resistance from body and non-resistance from void. For body is inconceivable without resistance, and so is void without non-resistance: these are permanent attributes of each — resisting of the one, yielding of the other. Not inseparable from the things of which they are attributes are, for example, motion and rest. For compound bodies are neither always in ceaseless motion nor always at rest, but sometimes have the attribute of motion, sometimes that of rest (although the atom in itself is in everlasting motion, since it must approach either void or body and if it should approach void it moves through it because of its non- resistance, while if it should approach body it ricochets and moves away from it because of its resistance). Hence the things which time accompanies are accidents — I mean day, night, hour, presence and absence of feelings, motions and rests. For day and night are accidents of the surrounding air: day becomes its attribute because of its illumination from the sun, while night supervenes because of its deprivation of illumination from the sun. And the hour, being a part either of day or of night, is also an accident of the air just as day and night are. And co extensive with every day, night and hour is time. That is why a day or a night is called long or short: we pass through the time which is an attribute of it. As for presence and absence of feelings, these are either pains or pleasures, and hence they are not substances, but accidents of those who feel pleasant or painful - and not timeless accidents. In addition, motion and likewise rest are also, as we have already established, accidents of bodies and not timeless: for the speed and slowness of motion, and likewise the greater and smaller amount of rest, we measure with time. (L&S-THP)

Polystratus, On Irrational Contempt 23: 26-26.23

Or do you think, on the basis of the foregoing argument, that someone would not suffer the troubles which I mention but rather would make it convincing that fair, foul and all other matters of belief are wholly believed in, just because unlike gold and similar things they are not the same everywhere? After all, it must stare everybody in the face that bigger and smaller are also not perceived the same everywhere and in relation to all magnitudes … So too with heavier and lighter. And the same applies also to other powers, without exception. For neither are the same things healthy for every body, nor nourishing or fatal, nor the opposites of these, but the very same things are healthy and nourishing for some yet have the opposite effect on others. Therefore either they must say that these too are false — things whose effects are plain for everyone to see - or else they must refuse to brazen it out and to battle against what is evident, and not abolish fair and foul as falsely believed in either, just because unlike stone and gold they are not the same for everybody… Relative predicates do not have the same status as things said not relatively but in accordance with something’s own nature. Nor does the one kind truly exist but not the other. So to expect them to have the same attributes, or the one kind to exist but not the other, is naive. And there is no difference between starting from these and eliminating those and starting from those and eliminating these: it would be similarly naive to think that since the bigger and heavier and sweeter are bigger than one thing but smaller than another, and heavier, and likewise with the other attributes, and since nothing has the same one of these attributes per sea it has in relation to something else, in the same way stone, gold and the like ought also, if they truly existed, to be gold in relation to one person while having the opposite nature in relation to another; and to say that, since that is not the case, these things are falsely believed in and do not really exist. (L&S-THP)

A-9 The Universe Is Infinite In Size And Eternal In Time

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 41-2

(1) Moreover, the totality is infinite. For what is limited has an extremity, and the extremity of something is viewed in contrast to something else. Consequently, since it has no extremity, it has no limit; and since it has no limit, it must be infinite and not limited. (2) Moreover, the totality is infinite both in the number of bodies and in the size of the void. (3) For if the void were infinite and the bodies limited, the bodies would not remain stationary anywhere, but would be moving scattered through the infinite void, lacking any support or impediment from collision. (4) And if the void were limited, the infinite bodies would not have room to occupy. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 60

Moreover in speaking of the infinite we must not use ’ up ’ or ’ down ’ with the implication that they are top or bottom, but with the implication that from wherever we stand it is possible to protract the line above our heads to infinity without the danger of this ever seeming so to us, or likewise the line below us (in what is conceived to stretch to infinity simultaneously both upwards and downwards in relation to the same point). For this (i. e. that there should be a top and bottom) is unthinkable. Therefore it is possible to take as one motion that which is conceived as upwards to infinity, and as one motion that which is conceived as downwards to infinity, even if that which moves from where we are towards the places above our heads arrives ten thousand times at the feet of those above, or at the heads of those below, in the case of that which moves downwards from where we are. For each of the two mutually opposed motions is nonetheless, as a whole, conceived as being to infinity. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1:958-97

The totality of things is not limited in any direction. For if it were, it would have to have an extremity. Now it is a visible fact that nothing can have an extremity unless there is something beyond it to limit it— so that the same can be seen to be true beyond the reach of this kind of perception. But since, as it is, it must be admitted that there is nothing outside the totality of things, it has no extremity and hence no limit or boundary. Nor does it make any difference what part of it you stand so true is it that wherever someone goes to take up position, he is leaving the universe just as infinite in all directions. Besides, supposing tor the moment that the totality of room is finite, if someone at the very edge ran up to its outermost frontier and hurled a flying javelin, do you prefer that after being hurled with great force the javelin should g o in the direction in which it was aimed and fly far, or do you think that something can obstruct and block it? You must concede and choose one of the two answers, and either one cuts off your escape and forces you to admit that the universe stretches without end. For whether there is something to obstruct it, to prevent it traveling in the direction of aim, and to station itself as a limit, or whether it is earned outside, what it started from was not the limit. I shall pursue you in this way, and wherever you place the outermost frontier I shall ask what is the outcome for the javelin. It will turn out that a limit cannot exist anywhere, and that the availability of flight will delay escape for ever. Besides, if the totality of room in the whole universe were enclosed by a fixed frontier on all sides, and were finite, by now the whole stock of matter would through its solid weight have accumulated from everywhere all the way to the bottom, and nothing could happen beneath the sky’s canopy, nor indeed could the sky or sunlight exist at all, since all matter would be lying in a heap, having been sinking since infinite time past. But as it is, the primary bodies are clearly never allowed to come to rest, because there is no absolute bottom at which they might be able to accumulate and take up residence. At all times all things are going on in constant motion everywhere, and underneath there is a supply of particles of matter which have been traveling from infinity. (L&S-THP)

A-10 There Is Life Elsewhere In The Universe

Lucretius 2: 1052 - 1104

Now it is not to be thought at all likely, when there is an infinity of empty space in every direction and countless seeds flying through the depths of the universe with their varied, everlasting and restless motion, that this is the one world and heaven to have been created, and that all those particles of matter outside it do nothing. Moreover, nothing in the universe is the only one of its kind to be born and to grow, as opposed to belonging to some species, with many members of the same kind. Focus your mind first on animals. You will find that the wild beasts of the mountains, the human race, the speechless swarms of scaly fish, and all flying creatures, have such an origin. Therefore we must likewise admit that heaven, earth, sun, moon, sea, and all other existing things, are not unique but, rather, countless in number. After all, these are just as much products of birth, just as much awaited by the deep-set boundary stone of life, as any of the prolifically reproducing species in our world. Provided you fully understand this, nature is at once revealed as rid of haughty overlords, the free autonomous agent of everything, without the gods’ participation. For I appeal to the holy hearts of the gods, in their tranquil peace, leading their life of calm serenity. Who is capable of ruling the totality of the measureless, of holding in his hands and controlling the mighty reins of its depths? Who could run all those heavens at the same rime? Who could warm all those bountiful earths with celestial fires? Or be present everywhere at all times to darken the earth with clouds, to shake the calm sky with thunder, to despatch thunderbolts (often rocking his own abodes with them!) and to withdraw to the wilds and furiously hurl his weapon (which often misses the guilty and wipes out the innocent!)? (L&S-THP)

A-11 The Universe Has No Gods Over It And Has No Design Or Goal

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 45

First, that nothing comes into being out of what is not - for in that case everything would come into being out of everything, with no need for seeds. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 88

A world is a certain envelopment of a heaven. It envelops celestial bodies, an earth, and the whole range of phenomena. It is cut off from the infinite, and terminates in a limit which is either rare or dense, on whose dissolution all its contents will undergo a collapse. It has its terminus either in something revolving or in something stationary, which has its outer perimeter round, triangular, or of whatever other shape. All are possible; for they are contested by none of the things evident in this world, in which we cannot discover a terminus. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 73

In addition to what was said earlier, we must suppose that the worlds, and every limited compound which bears a close resemblance to the things we see, has come into being from the infinite: all these things, the larger and the smaller alike, have been separated off from it as a result of individual entanglements. And all disintegrate again, some faster and some slower, and through differing kinds of causes. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.167-83

(1) And not by design did the primary bodies of things station themselves each in their right place, guided by keen intelligence, nor indeed did they make contracts about the movements each was to perform; (2) but because many primary bodies of things in many ways, struck with blows and carried along by their own weight from infinite time up to the present, have been accustomed to move and meet in every way and to try everything that they could produce by coming together, on this account it happens that, scattered abroad through a vast time and trying every kind of combination and motion, at length those come together which, being suddenly brought together, often become the beginnings of great things - of earth, sea, and sky, and the generation of living creatures. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4:823-857

One mistake in this context, which I am determined you should shun and take precautions to avoid, is that of supposing the clear lights of the eyes to have been created in order that we might see; that it is in order that we might be able to take lengthy strides that the knees and hips can be flexed above their base of feet; and again that the forearms were jointed to the powerful upper arms, and hands supplied on either side, as our servants, in order that we could perform whatever acts were needed for living. All other explanations of this type which they offer are back to front, due to distorted reasoning. For nothing has been engendered in our body in order that we might be able to use it. It is the fact of its being engendered that creates its use. Seeing did not exist before the lights of the eyes were engendered, nor was there pleading with words before the tongue was created. Rather, the origin of the tongue came long before speech, ears were created long before sound was heard, and all our limbs, in my view, existed in advance of their use. Therefore they cannot have grown for the sake of their use. By contrast, fighting out battles with bare hands, mutilating limbs, and staining bodies with blood, existed long before shining weapons began to fly. Nature compelled men to avoid wounds before the time when, thanks to craftsmanship, the left arm held up the obstructing shield. Presumably too the practice of resting the tired body is much more ancient than the spreading of soft beds; and the quenching of thirst came into being before cups. Hence it is credible that these were devised for the sake of their use, for they were invented as a result of life’s experiences. Quite different from these are all the things which were first actually engendered and gave rise to the preconception of their usefulness subsequently. Primary in this class are, we can see, the senses and the limbs. Hence, I repeat, there is no way you can believe that they were created for their function of utility. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5:156-234

Now to say that they [the gods] conceived the wish to create a world wonderful in nature for the sake of men, and that tor that reason the gods’ work is praiseworthy, so that it is proper for us to sing its praises and consider that it will be everlasting and imperishable, and that it is wrong that what was built by an ancient plan of the gods for the sake of mankind, in perpetuity, should ever be disturbed from its foundations by any force, or assailed with words and turned upside down — to elaborate such a fiction, Memmius, is folly. For what profit could imperishable and blessed beings gain from our gratitude, to induce them to take on any task for our sake? What novelty could have tempted hitherto tranquil beings, at so late a stage, to desire a change in their earlier lifestyle? For it is plainly those who are troubled by the old that are obliged to delight in the new. But where someone had had no ill befall him up to now, because he had led his life well, what could have ignited a passion for novelty in such a person? Or again, what harm would it have done us never to have been born? Did our life lie in darkness and misery until the world’s beginning dawned? Although anyone who has been born must wish to remain in life so long as the caresses of pleasure hold him there, if someone has really never tasted the passion for life and has never been an individual, what harm does it do him not to have been created? Also, from where did the gods get a model for the creation of the world, and from where was the preconception of men first ingrained in them, to enable them to know and see in their mind what they wished to create, or how did they come to know the power of the primary particles and what they were capable of when their arrangement was altered, if nature itself not supply a blueprint of creation? For so many primary particles have for an infinity of time past been propelled in manifold ways by impacts and by their own weight, and have habitually traveled, combined in all possible ways, and tried out everything that their union could create, that it is not surprising if they have also fallen into arrangements, and arrived at patterns of motion, like those repeatedly enacted by this present world. On the other hand, even if I were ignorant what the primary constituents of the world are, I would still dare to assert, from the very working of the heavens, and to prove from many other things, that the world’s nature is certainly not a divine gift to us: it is so deeply flawed. First, of all that is covered by the heaven’s vast expanse, mountains and beast-infested forests have appropriated a greedy share. It is occupied by rocks, vast swamps, and sea, which keeps the coastlines of the lands far apart. Of nearly two-thirds of it mortals are robbed by scorching heat and constant falls of frost. What farmland is left nature would use its force to smother with brambles, but for the resistance of human force. Besides, why does nature sustain and multiply on land and sea the dreadful hordes of wild beasts? Why do the seasons bring diseases with them? Why is untimely death rife? A child, when nature has first spilt him forth with throes from his mother’s womb into the realm of light, lies like a sailor cast ashore from the cruel waves - naked on the ground, without speech, helpless for life’s tasks. And he fills the place with his miserable wailing, not without justification, in view of the quantity of troubles that lie ahead for him in life! On the other hand, the various domestic and wild animals grow without the need for rattles, for the smiles and broken speech of a nurse, and for different clothes to fit the different seasons. Nor, moreover, do they need weapons and high walls to protect their possessions, since the earth itself and creative nature supply all their wants in plenty. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.195-234

(1) For certainly the nature of the gods must enjoy immortal life in supreme tranquility, far removed and separated from our affairs; free from all pain, free from dangers, itself mighty by its own resources, needing nothing from us, it is neither propitiated by services nor touched by wrath. (2) And the earth, in her own nature, has no sensation, but because she receives into herself the atoms of many things in many ways through vast ages, she brings forth everything. (3) And he who has decided that we should call the sea Neptune and corn Ceres, and has preferred to misuse the name Bacchus rather than utter the name appropriate to that liquor - let us grant him to proclaim that the earth is Mother of the gods, provided only that he does in fact forbear to taint his mind with base superstition. (4) Often the fleecy flocks and the martial breed of horses and horned cattle, cropping the grass under the same canopy of sky, slake their thirst from the same stream of water, yet live lives dissimilar, preserving the nature of their parents and each imitating their ways according to their kind; so great is the variety of matter in any kind of grass you please, so great in every stream. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.416-31

(1) To think that the gods designed to set up the glorious nature of the world for the sake of humankind, and that therefore this work of the gods is something to be praised and believed to be eternal and immortal, and that it is sacrilege to shake by any force from its established seat what was set up in ancient plan by the gods for everlasting for the human race, and to assail it with words and overturn it from top to bottom - to invent and add these and other ideas of this kind, Memmius, is folly. (2) For what advantage could our gratitude confer on the immortal and blessed beings, that they should attempt to do anything for our sake? And what novel factor could have provoked them so long afterward, after they had been at rest before, to desire to change their former life? (3) For it appears that he should rejoice in a new state of affairs who is pained by the old; but he who has experienced no ill in times past, when he was leading a pleasant life, what could have inflamed such a being with love of innovation? (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.837-77

(1) And before the human race began to lay out fields and to cut down forests with iron, and before the light of the sun shone forth, wild animals occupied the entire face of the earth and the whole of the sea. (2) And you should not suppose that someone began to arrange all this, planning it with keen intelligence and assigning to each its station - knowing which combinations to institute, which to keep separate - (3) but because many atoms of things in many ways struck together and carried along by their own weight from infinite time up till now have been in the habit of moving and meeting in all manner of ways and trying out all the combinations that they might create by their coming together, (4) for this reason it comes about that scattered abroad through vast time, trying every kind of motion and congregation, at length those atoms come together which, being suddenly combined, often become the origins of great things - of earth and sea and sky and the races of living creatures. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1:18-23

Velleius: Listen to no ungrounded and fictitious doctrines: no creator and builder of the world like the god from Plato’s Timaeus; no prophetic hag like the Stoics’ Providence, no world which is itself an animate, sentient, spherical, glowing, rotating god. These prodigies and marvels are the work of philosophers who dream, not argue. By what kind of mental vision could your Plato have envisaged that great building enterprise by which he has god construct the world? What were the building techniques, the tools, the levers, the machines, the laborers, for such an enterprise? How were the air, fire, water and earth capable of complying with and obeying the architect’s wishes?… To crown it all, having introduced a world which was not merely born but virtually hand-made as well, he said that it would be everlasting. Do you suppose that this man had so much as sipped at the cup of natural philosophy - that is, of the rationale of nature — when he thinks that something with an origin can be everlasting? What compound is not capable of dissolution? What is there that has a beginning and no end? As for your [the Stoics’] providence, Lucilius, if it is the same thing as this, I repeat my earlier question about the laborers, the machines, and the entire planning and execution of the project. If it is something different, why did it make the world perishable, and not everlasting, as the Platonic god did? A question for both of you [Plato and Stoics] is why the world-builders suddenly appeared on the scene, after sleeping for countless centuries. For if there was no world, it does not follow that there were no centuries. By ‘centuries’ here I don’t mean the ones which are made up by the number of days and nights as a result of the annual orbits. Those, I concede, could not have been produced without the world’s rotation. But there has been a certain eternity from infinite time past, which was not measured by any bounding of times, but whose extent can be understood, because it is unthinkable that there should have been sometime at which there was no time. Was it for the sake of men, as you [the Stoics] are in the habit of saying, that all this world was assembled by god? For wise men? In that case this massive fear of world-building was accomplished for just a handful of people. For foolish men? But, first, god had no reason to do the bad a favor. And second, what did he achieve, seeing that all fools are beyond doubt utterly wretched, above all because they are fools (for what can be called more wretched than folly?), but also because there are so many disadvantages in life that, whereas the wise mitigate them with compensating advantages, fools can neither evade those still to come nor bear those which are present. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1:52-53

[Velleius] We can rightly call this god of ours blessed, and yours [the Stoics’] extremely overworked. For if the world itself is god, what can be less tranquil than rotating about an axis without a moment’s break at the heaven’s amazing speed? And yet nothing is blessed if it is not tranquil. Or if god is some being within the world, there to rule, to control, to maintain the orbits of the heavenly bodies, the succession of seasons, and the variations and regularities of things, to watch over land and sea and guard men’s well-being and lives, he is surely involved in a troublesome and laborious job. We, on the other hand, place the blessed life in peace of mind and in freedom from all duties. man to whom we owe all our other teaching taught us too that and has made infinitely many worlds. Just because you don’t see how nature can do this without some mind, finding yourselves unable to work out the denouement of the argument, you resort, like the tragedians, to a deus ex machina. (L&S-THP)

Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 371, 33 - 372, 14

Thus Empedocles says that under the rule of Love parts of animals first came into being at random - heads, hands, feet, and so on - and then came into combination: There sprang up ox progeny, man-limbed, and the reverse. And those which combined in a way which enabled them to preserve themselves became animals, and survived, because they fulfilled each other’s needs — the teeth cutting and grinding the food, the stomach digesting it, the liver converting it into blood. And the human head, by combining with the human body, brings about the preservation of the whole, but by combining with the ox’s body fails to cohere with it and perishes. For those which did not combine on proper principles perished. And things still happen in the same way nowadays. This doctrine seems to be shared by all those early natural philosophers who make material necessity the cause of things’ becoming, and, among later philosophers, by the Epicureans. Their mistake, according to Alexander, springs from the supposition that all things that come into being for some end come into being through decision and reasoning, coupled with the observation that natural things do not come into being in that way. (L&S-THP)

A-12 The Soul Is Material and Mortal

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 63-7

(1) Next one must observe, by reference to our sensations and feelings (for these will provide the most secure conviction), that the soul is a body of fine texture, distributed throughout the whole aggregate, most closely resembling breath with a certain admixture of heat, and in some respects resembling the one, in some respects the other. (2) But there is also a part which differs greatly from even these in fineness of texture, and because of this is more closely in harmony with the rest of the aggregate. (3) All this is made evident by the powers of the soul, its feelings, its ease of movement, its thought processes, and those things whose removal brings death to us. (4) Next one must observe that the soul is mainly responsible for sensation. (5) Yet it would not have acquired this, had it not been somehow enclosed by the rest of the aggregate. (6) But the rest of the aggregate, while providing this cause for the soul, itself acquires a share of this property from the soul; yet it does not acquire all that the soul acquires. (7) Hence on the departure of the soul it does not have sensation. For it did not have this power in itself, but provided for another thing - the thing which had come into being along with it - the conditions for it to have it; and this thing, through the power now perfected in it as a result of motion, was at once producing for itself the property of sensation, and giving it back to the aggregate as well, by virtue of closeness and reciprocity of motion, as I have said. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 65-6

(1) Hence, whenever the whole aggregate is broken up, the soul is dispersed and no longer has the same powers nor performs its movements, and consequently does not possess sensation either. (2) For it is not possible to conceive of it as sentient if it is not in this organism and is not performing these movements, when its containers and surroundings are not of the kind which now contain it and in which it performs these movements. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3.94-135

(1) I say therefore that the mind and the spirit are interconnected and constitute a single nature, but what I might call the head and dominant principle throughout the whole body is the will or mind, which we call mens and animus. And it is firmly seated in the region of the breast. (2) For here throb fear and terror, around these parts dwell soothing joys; here then is the seat of will and mind. (3) The rest of the soul, dispersed throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves at its will and inclination. (4) The mind by itself has understanding for itself and joy for itself even when nothing moves either the soul or the body. (5) And just as when an injury attacks our head or eye, we are not tortured over our whole body, so the mind sometimes suffers pain by itself or grows strong with joy when all the rest of the soul throughout the limbs and frame is stirred by nothing novel. (6) But when the mind is excited by a more vehement fear, we see the whole soul feel in unison through the limbs; sweat and pallor then break out all over the body, the tongue falters, the voice dies away, the eyes grow dark, the ears ring, the limbs give way; in short we often see men collapse from terror of mind. Hence anyone can easily perceive from this that the soul is interconnected with the mind, and when it has been struck by the force of the mind it immediately pushes and strikes the body. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:136-176

My next point is that the mind and the spirit are firmly interlinked and constitute a single nature, but that the deliberative element which we call the mind is, as it were, the chief, and holds sway throughout the body. It is firmly located in the central part of the chest. For that is where fear and dread leap up, and where joys caress us: therefore it is where the mind is. The remaining part of the spirit, which is distributed throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves at its beck and call. The mind by itself possesses its own understanding and its own joys while nothing is affecting either the spirit or the body. And just as, when our head or eye is hurt by an attack of pain, the agony is not shared by our whole body, so too the mind sometimes itself suffers pain or waxes with joy while the rest of the spirit throughout the limbs and frame is receiving no new stimulus. But when the mind is affected by a more powerful fear we see the whole spirit throughout the limbs share its sensation, with sweat and pallor arising over the whole body, the tongue crippled and the voice] choked, the eyes darkened, the ears buzzing, the limbs buckling - indeed, we often see men collapse through the mind’s terror. From this anyone can easily tell that the spirit is interlinked with the mind: when it is impelled by the mind’s power it immediately hurls the body forward with its own impact. This same reasoning proves the nature of the mind and spirit to be corporeal. For when it is seen to hurl the limbs forward, to snatch the body out of sleep, to alter the face, and to govern and steer the entire man - and we see that non e of these is possible without touch, nor touch without body — you must surely admit that the mind and spirit are constituted with a corporeal nature. Besides, you can see that the mind is affected jointly with the body and shares our bodily sensations. If the frightful force of a spear, when it penetrates to wrench apart the bones and sinews, fails to strike at life itself, there nevertheless follows relaxation and an agreeable descent to the ground, and on the ground a turmoil which develops in the mind and at times a half-hearted will as if to rise. Hence the nature of the mind must be corporeal, since it suffers under the impact of corporeal spears. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3.417-24

(1) Moreover, if the nature of the soul is immortal and can feel when separated from our body, we must, I think, suppose it equipped with five senses. Nor in any other way can we picture to ourselves the souls wandering in the lower world of Acheron. (2) Therefore painters and bygone generations of writers have presented souls thus equipped with senses. (3) But eyes and nose and hand cannot exist for the soul apart from body, nor again tongue apart from body, nor can ears exist or perceive apart by themselves. (L&S-THP)

Aetius 4.3.11 (Usener 315)

Epicurus [said that the soul is] a blend consisting of four things, of which one kind is fire-like, one air-like, one wind-like, while the fourth is something which lacks a name. This last he made the one responsible for sensation. Th e wind, he said produces movement in us, the air produces rest, the hot one produces the evident heat of the body, and the unnamed one produces sensation in us. For sensation is found in none of the named elements. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:262-322

The primary particles of the elements so interpenetrate each other in their motions that no one element can be distinguished and no capacity spatially separated, but they exist as multiple powers of a single body. Just as, familiarly, in any animal flesh there is odor and a certain heat and flavor, and yet between them these go to make up a single mass of body, so too heat, air and the unseen force of wind when mixed form a single nature, along with that mobile power which transmits the beginning of motion from itself to them, the origin of sense-bearing motions through the flesh. For this substance lies deeply concealed, deeper than anything else in our body. It is, moreover, the very spirit of the entire spirit. Just as the power of the mind and that of the spirit, interspersed in our limbs and entire body, lie hidden because compounded out of tiny particles few and far between, so too this nameless power, made of minute particles, lies hidden, and is moreover the very spirit of the entire spirit and holds sway throughout the body. In a similar way wind, air, and heat must so interact in their mixture throughout the limbs, with one deeper than the others and one more prominent, as to be seen to constitute between them something unitary, lest in separation from each other the heat, the wind and the power of air destroy and dissipate sensation. The mind also has that kind of heat which it takes on when it boils with anger and the eyes shine with a fiercer flame; it has plenty of cold wind, the companion of fear, which excites fright in the limbs and rouses the frame; and it has that state of the still air which is found in a tranquil chest and in a calm face. But there is more heat in those with fierce hearts and angry minds which easily boil over in anger. A prime example is the lion, which regularly bursts its chest with roaring and groaning and cannot contain the billows of rage in its chest. But the cold mind of stags is more windy, and quicker to rouse through their flesh those chilly gusts which set the limbs in trembling motion. The nature of cattle, on the other hand, is characterized more by calm air. Neither does ignition by the smouldering brand of anger ever over-excite it and cloud it with blind darkness, nor is it transfixed and numbed by the icy shafts of fear. It lies midway between stags and fierce lions. Likewise the human race. Even though education may produce individuals equally well turned out, it still leaves those original traces of each mind’s nature. And we must not suppose that faults can be completely eradicated, so that one man will not plunge too hastily into bitter anger, another not be assailed too readily by fear, or the third type not be over-indulgent in tolerating certain things. There are many further respects in which men’s various natures and characteristic behaviours must differ, but I cannot now set out their hidden causes, nor can I find enough names for all the shapes of primary particles from which this variety springs. But there is one thing which I see I can state in this matter: so slight are the traces of our natures which reason cannot expel from us, that nothing stands in the way of our leading a life worthy of the gods. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:417-462

Come now, so that you may be able to recognize that animals’ minds and flimsy spirits are subject to birth and death, I shall continue to set down verses worthy of your standing in life, the product of long searching and agreeable toil. See that you couple both under a single name: when, for example, I proceed to speak of spirit, proving that it is mortal, assume that I mean mind as well, inasmuch as they constitute between them a unity and an interlinked entity. First, since I have proved that it is a delicate construction of minute bodies, and made of much smaller primary particles than the flowing liquid of water or cloud or smoke — for it is far more mobile, and moves under the impact of a more delicate cause, seeing that it is moved by images of smoke and cloud, as when subdued in sleep we see altars breathe out their heat skywards and emit smoke: for these are undoubtedly images which travel to us — now then, given that when vessels are smashed you see the liquid flow away on all sides and disperse, and that cloud and smoke disperse into the air, you should believe that the spirit too is scattered, perishes much faster, and is quicker to disintegrate into its primary particles, once it has been separated from a man’s limbs and taken its leave. After all, seeing that the body, which serves as its vessel, if it is shattered by something or made porous by loss of blood from the veins, cannot hold it together, how could you suppose that the spirit can be held together by any air, which is more rarefied than our body and less capable of holding it together? Furthermore, we perceive that the mind is born jointly with the body, grows up jointly with it, and ages jointly with it. For just as infants walk unsteadily with a frail and tender body, so too their accompanying power of mental judgment is tenuous. Then when they have matured to an age of robust strength, their judgment is greater and their mental strength increased. Later, when their body has been battered by time’s mighty strength and their frame has collapsed, its strength blunted, then their intelligence hobbles, their tongue rambles, their mind totters. Everything fails and deserts them at the same time. Therefore it is consistent also that the whole substance of the spirit should disintegrate like smoke into the lofty air, since we see that they are born jointly, jointly grow up, and, as I have shown, simultaneously weary with age crack up. Also, we see that just as the body itself undergoes dreadful diseases and harsh pain, so too the mind undergoes bitter cares, grief and fear. Hence it is consistent that it should also share in death. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:624-633

Besides, if the nature of the spirit is immortal and it can have sensation when separated from our body, we must presumably equip it with the five senses. There is no other way in which we can imagine souls wandering below in Acheron. That is why painters and earlier generations of writers have presented souls as equipped with senses in this way. But neither eyes nor nose nor even hand can exist for the spirit in separation. Nor can tongue or ears. Therefore spirits cannot by themselves have sensation or exist. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3.806-29

Besides, all things that endure for ever must either, through having a solid body, repel impacts and allow nothing to penetrate them which might separate their tight-fitting parts from within, for example the particles of matter whose nature we proved earlier; or be able to endure through all time because they are free from blows, like void, which remains untouched and is quite unaffected by impact; or again because there is n o place available around them such that the things might be able to disperse into it and disintegrate, in the way that the totality of totalities is everlasting and has no place outside it into which things might escape nor bodies which might burst into it and disintegrate it with the strength of their impact. But if the reason for holding it immortal should rather be that it is permanently protected from things which affect life — either because things hostile to its survival do not reach it at all, or because those which reach it are somehow repulsed before we can feel their ill effects - < that is contrary to the evidence. > For quite apart from the fact that it suffers in tandem with bodily disease, things often arrive to torment it about the future, to keep it sick with fear, and to exhaust it with cares. And even when its misdeeds are past it suffers remorse for its sins. Think too of the mind’s own peculiar affliction of madness, and its forgetfulness; think of its submergence in the black waters of lethargy. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4:877-891

Now I shall tell you - and you mark what I say - how it comes about that we can take steps forward when we want to, how we have the power to move our limbs, and what it is that habitually thrusts forward this great bulk that is our body, First, let me say, images of walking impinge on our mind and strike it, as I explained earlier. It is after that that volition occurs. For no one ever embarks up on any action before the mind first previews what it wishes to do, and whatever it is that it previews there exists an image of that thing. So when the mind suits itself to want to go forwards, it immediately strikes all the power of the spirit distributed all over the body throughout the limbs and frame; it is easily done, because the spirit is firmly interlinked with it. Then the spirit in turn strikes the body, and thus gradually the whole bulk is pushed forward and moved. (L&S-THP)

A-13 Images, Sensations, and Memory

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 46—53

Moreover, there are delineations which represent the shapes of solid bodies and which in their fineness of texture are far different from things evident. For it is not impossible that such emanations should arise in the space around us, or appropriate conditions for the production of their concavity and fineness of texture, or effluences preserving the same sequential arrangement and the same pattern of motion as they had in the solid bodies. These delineations we call images. Next, that the images are of unsurpassed fineness is uncontested by anything evident. Hence they also have unsurpassed speed, having every passage commensurate with themselves, in addition to the fact that infinitely many of them suffer no collision or few collisions, whereas many, indeed infinitely many, atoms suffer immediate collision. Also that the creation of the images happens as fast as thought. For there is a continuous flow from the surface of bodies - not revealed by diminution in their size, thanks to reciprocal replenishment - which preserves for a long time the positioning and arrangement which the atoms had in the solid body, even if it is also sometimes distorted; and formations of them in the space around us, swift because they do not need to be filled out in depth; and other ways too in which things of this kind are produced. For none of this is contested by our sensations, if one is considering how to bring back self-evident impressions from external objects to us in such a way as to bring back co-affections too. And we must indeed suppose that it is on the impingement of something from outside that we see and think of shapes. For external objects would not imprint their own nature, of both color and shape, by means of the air between us and them, or by means of rays or of any effluences passing from us to them, as effectively as they can through certain delineations penetrating us from objects, sharing their color and shape, of a size to fit into our vision or thought, and traveling at high speed, with the result that their unity and continuity then results in the impression, and preserves their co-affection all the way from the object because of their uniform bombardment from it, resulting from the vibration of the atoms deep in the solid body. And whatever impression we get by focusing our thought or senses, whether of shape or of properties, that is the shape of the solid body, produced through the image’s concentrated succession or after-effect. But falsehood and error are always located in the opinion which we add. For the portrait-like resemblance of the impressions which we gain either in sleep or through certain other focusings of thought or of the other discriminatory faculties, to the things we call existent and true, would not exist if the things with which we come into contact were not themselves something. And error would not exist if we did not also get a certain other process within ourselves, one which, although causally connected, possesses differentiation. It is through this that, if it is unattested or contested, falsehood arises, and if attested or uncontested, truth. This doctrine too, then, is a very necessary one to grasp, so that the criteria based on self-evident impressions should not be done away with, and so that falsehood should not be treated as equally established and confound everything. Hearing too results from a sort of wind traveling from the object which speaks, rings, bangs, or produces an auditory sensation in whatever way it may be. This current is dispersed into similarly-constituted particles. These at the same time preserve certain co-affection in relation to each other, and a distinctive unity which extends right to the source, and which usually causes the sensory recognition appropriate to that source, or, failing that. just reveals what is external to us. For without a certain co-affection brought back from the source to us such sensory recognition could not occur. We should not, then, hold that the air is shaped by the projected voice, or likewise by the other things classed with voice. For the air will be much less adequate if this is an effect imposed on it by the voice. Rather we should hold that the impact which occurs inside us when we emit our voice immediately squeezes out certain particles constitutive of a wind current in a way which produces the auditory feeling in us. W e must suppose that smell too, just like hearing, would never cause any feeling if there were not certain particles traveling away from the object and with the right dimensions to stimulate this sense, some kinds being disharmonious and unwelcome, others harmonious and welcome. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4.26-28 (check this cite)

(1) I say then that likenesses of things and thin shapes are emitted from things off their surfaces; these can be called films or even bark, because each image bears an appearance and form resembling the body from whatever object it flows and wanders forth. … (2) For certainly we perceive even in plain sight that many things throw off bodies, some dispersed loosely like smoke from burning logs and heat from fires, others more closely woven and dense, like the slender tissue which cicadas sometimes doff in summer, and the caul which calves cast off from their surface at birth, and likewise the garment which the slippery snake sheds among thorns - for often we see brambles enriched with these wind-blown spoils of snakes. (3) Since such things occur, thin images too must likewise be emitted from things off their outermost surface. … (4) These simulacra are borne along with the highest speed and mobility; first because a minute cause deep inside is enough to push and start them, since they are so fine and thin; next, because being of such loose-woven texture they easily pass through anything and as it were filter through the intervening air. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4:230-238

Besides, since a given shape handled in the dark is recognized to be the same on e as it is seen to be in clear daylight, touch and sight must be moved by a similar cause. Thus if in the dark we probe and are moved by what is square, what will the square thing be which in the light can impinge on vision, if not its image? Hence it can be seen that the cause of vision lies in the images, and that without these nothing can be seen. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4.256-268

One thing in this matter which should not be thought puzzling is why, although the images which strike the eyes cannot be seen individually, the objects themselves are perceived. For also when wind beats on us little by little, and when bitter cold creeps on us, we do not normally feel every separate particle of that wind and that cold, but rather the combination of them, and we see on those occasions an effect in our body just as if some object were bearing us and imparting to us a sensation of its bodily mass from outside. Furthermore, when we knock a stone with our finger we are touching its external outermost color, but what we are sensing with our touch is not that but rather the actual hardness deep down within the stone. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4.722-817

(1) Now I will explain what it is that rouses the mind, and whence come the things which enter the understanding - and that in few words. (2) First I say this, that many simulacra of things wander about in many ways in all directions, fine films which easily unite with one another when they meet in the air, like spider’s web and gold-leaf. (3) For indeed these films are far finer in texture than those which occupy the eyes and provoke vision, since these penetrate through the body’s pores and wake the mind’s fine nature within and provoke sensation there. (4) And so we see Centaurs and the limbs of Scyllas and the dog-faces of Cerberus and images of those who are dead and whose bones are held in earth’s embrace - since simulacra of every kind are being borne everywhere, some produced spontaneously in the air itself, some departing from various things, and others formed and made up from combinations of these. (5) For certainly the image of a Centaur does not come from a living creature, since no such nature of living creature ever existed, but when images of a man and a horse have chanced to come together, they easily stick at once on meeting, as we said before, because of their fine nature and delicate fabric. Others of this type are created in the same way. Because, as I showed earlier, their extreme lightness makes their travel so mobile, it is easy for any one fine image to arouse our mind with a single impact. For the mind is itself delicate and extraordinarily mobile. That this happens as I say it does you can easily tell as follows. In so far as what we see with the mind is similar to what we see with the eyes, it must come about in a similar way. Well, since I have proved that it is by means of whatever images stimulate my eyes that I see, say, a lion, you can now tell that the mind is moved in a similar way through images of lions and equally through the others it sees, no less than the eyes except in that what it discerns is more delicate. And when sleep has relaxed the limbs the mind stays awake in just the same way, except that these same images which stimulate our minds while we are awake do so to such an extent that we seem to see beyond all doubt someone who has departed this life and is dead and buried. The reason why nature compels this to happen is that all the bodily senses are suppressed and at rest throughout the limbs and cannot convict falsehood with the true facts. Moreover, the memory lies in slumber and does not protest that the man whom the mind thinks that it sees alive is long dead. This matter raises many questions, and there is much that we must clarify if we want to expound the facts clearly. The first question is why each person’s mind immediately thinks of the very thing that he has formed a desire to think of. Do the images observe our will, so that as soon as we form the wish the images impinge on us, whether our desire be to think of sea, land or sky? Are assemblies, parades, parties and battles all created and supplied by nature on demand, and in spite of the fact that everything which the minds of other people in the same place are thinking of is quite different? A further question is, what about our seeing in our dreams the images rhythmically going forward and moving their supple limbs, when they fluently swing their supple arms in alternation and before our very eyes replicate the gesture with matching foot movements? No doubt the images are steeped in technique, and have taken lessons in wandering to enable them to have fun at nighttime! Or will this be nearer the truth? Because within a single period of time detectable by our senses - the time it takes to utter a single sound - there lie hidden many periods of time whose existence is discovered by reason, it follows that everywhere at every time every image is ready on the spot: so great is the speed and availability of things. And because they are delicate the mind can only see sharply those of them which it strains to see. Hence the remainder all perish, beyond those tor which the mind has prepared itself. The mind further prepares itself by hoping to see the sequel to each thing, with the result that this comes about. Don’ t you see how the eyes too, when they begin to see things which are delicate, strain and prepare themselves, and that there is no other way of seeing sharply? As a matter of fact, even with things plain to see you can discover that the result of failing to pay attention is that it becomes like something separated from you by the whole of time and far away. Why then is it surprising if the mind loses everything else beyond the matters to which it is devoting itself? As for the other point, it is not surprising that the images move and rhythmically swing their arms and other limbs. The image seems to do this in dreams because when the first image perishes and a second then arises in a different stance it looks as if the first had changed its pose. You can take it that this happens fast, so great is the speed and availability of things. And so great is the availability of particles within a single period of time detectable by the senses that it is capable of keeping up the supply. We then on the basis of slender evidence add weighty opinions and plunge ourselves into the trickery of deception. Occasionally, too, an image of the same kind is not supplied, but what was previously a woman seems to have turned into a man in our arms, or one face or age is followed by another. The fact that this does not surprise us is the doing of sleep and oblivion. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda, Fragment 5.3.3-14

What is viewed by the eyesight is inherited by the soul, and after the impingements of the original images passages are opened up in us in such a way that, even when the objects which we originally saw are no longer present, our mind admits likenesses of the original objects. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.32

Also, all notions arise from the senses by means of confrontation, analogy, similarity and combination, with some contribution from reasoning too. (L&S-THP)

B. CANONICS

B-1 Knowledge Is Possible - He Who Says “Nothing Can Be Known” Knows Nothing

Lucretius 4:469-521

Now, if someone thinks that nothing is known, one thing he doesn’t know is whether that can be known, since he admits to knowing nothing. I shall therefore not bother to argue my case against this man who has himself stood with his own head in his footprints, And anyway, even allowing that he knows this, I’ll still ask him: Given that he has never before seen anything true in the world, from where does he get his knowledge of what knowing and not knowing are? What created his preconception of true and false? And what proved to him that doubtful differs from certain? You will find that the preconception of true has its origin in the senses, and that the senses cannot be refuted. For something of greater reliability must be found, something possessing the intrinsic power to convict falsehoods with truths. Well, what should be considered to have greater reliability than the senses? Will reason have the power to contradict them, if it is itself the product of false sensation? For reason is in its entirety the product of the senses, so that if the senses are not true all reason becomes false as well. Or will the ears have the power to confute the eyes, and touch to confute the ears? Or again, will this sense of touch be denounced by the mouth’s taste, confuted by the nose, or convicted by the eyes? That is not, in my view, the way things are. For each has its own separate capacity and its own power, thus making it necessary that sensing what is soft, cold or hot be a separate operation from sensing the various colors of things and seeing whatever properties regularly accompany colors. Likewise the mouth’s taste has a separate power, the recognition of smells is separate, and separate again that of sounds. It necessarily follows that the senses cannot convict each other. Nor again will they be able to confute themselves, since all will always have to be considered of equal reliability. Hence whatever impression the senses get at any time is true. Even if reason fails to explain why things which proved square when close up seem round at a distance, it is nevertheless better, when one’s reason proves inadequate, to give wrong explanations of the respective shapes, than to let the self-evident slip from one’s grasp and thus to violate the primary guarantee and shake the entire foundations on which life and survival rest. For not only would all reason cave in, but life itself would instantly collapse, if you lost the confidence to trust your senses, and to avoid precipices and other such hazards while aiming towards things of the opposite kind. Hence you will find that the entire battalion of words which has been marshaled and armed against the senses is futile. Lastly, just as in a building, if the yardstick is defective at the outset, if the set square is misleading for lack of straight edges, and if the level has the slightest wobble anywhere in it, the inevitable result is that the whole house is made wrongly — crooked, distorted, bulging backwards and forwards, misproportioned — so much so that some parts seem already determined to cave in, and do cave in, all betrayed by false initial criteria. So too you will find that any account of the world must be distorted and false if it is based upon the falsity of the senses. (L&S-THP)

B-2 - “All Sensations Are True”

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 23

If you fight against all sensations, you will not have a standard against which to judge even those of them you say are mistaken. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 50-1

(1) Moreover, one must suppose that it is when something from external objects enters into us that we not only see but also think of their shapes. (2) For external objects would not imprint in us the nature of their colour and shape through the air which is between them and us, nor through rays or any kind of flow going from us to them, as well as by means of certain outlines coming from the objects to us, in colour and shape of sizes commensurate with our vision and our thought, moving swiftly; then, by the presentation of a single continuous outline, they produce an impression and the attendant sensation in virtue of their constant repetition from the object. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 51

And every presentation and sensation that we get, whether of shape or of properties, will be the actual shape of the solid object, produced by the repeated impact or residue of the image. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1: 329-45

Lucretius 4.379—86

Nor in this [shadow illusions] do we admit that the eyes are in any way deceived. For their function is to see where light and shade are. But whether or not it is the same light, and whether the shadow that was here is the same one as is passing over there, or whether rather it happens in the way we said a moment ago, this falls to the mind’s reason to discern. The eyes cannot discover the nature of things. So do not trump up this charge against the eyes for a fault which belongs to the mind. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4:353

When we see from far off the square towers of a city, the reason why they often seem round is that any corner is seen as blunted from a distance, or rather is not seen at all, its impact fading away and failing to complete the passage to our eyes, because during the images’ travel through a large expanse of air the corner is forced to become blunt by the air’s repeated buffetings. Thus, when all the corners simultaneously escape our sensation, it becomes as if the stone structures are being smoothed on a lathe. They are not, however, like things genuinely round seen close-to, but seem to resemble them a little in a shadowy sort of way. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4.478-521

(1) Now for what reason that image is seen beyond the mirror, I will tell. Certainly it appears thrust far back inside. Just so we see things which are in fact outside a doorway through doors when the door affords an unobstructed view through it out to the open and displays many outside things. (2) For that vision too is brought about by two separate airs. First the air on this side of the door-posts is seen, then follow the door-leaves themselves to right and left, next the light outside filters through the eyes and a second air, and then the things which are in fact seen out there. (3) So when the mirror’s image first projects itself, while it is coming to our eyes it pushes and drives before it all the air which is between it and our eyes, and makes us able to perceive all this before the mirror. (4) But when we have also perceived the mirror itself, immediately the image that travels from us reaches the mirror and being reflected returns to our eyes and drives another air onwards before itself and makes us see it before itself and for that reason appears to stand so far away from the mirror. (5) Wherefore again and again there is no reason at all why we should wonder, both about those things which send back a view from the surface of mirrors, and about those beyond double doors, since in both cases the result is brought about by two separate airs. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10:31-32

All sensation, he [Epicurus] says, is irrational and does not accommodate memory. For neither is it moved by itself, nor when moved by something else is it able to add or subtract anything. Nor does there exist that which can refute sensations: neither can like sense refute like, because of their equal validity; nor unlike unlike, since they are not discriminatory of the same things; nor can reason, since all reason depends on the senses; nor can one individual sensation refute another, since they all command our attention. And also the fact of sensory recognitions confirms the truth of sensations. And our seeing and hearing are facts, just as having a pain is. Hence sign-inferences about the non-evident should be made from things evident. (L&S-THP)

Anonymous Epicurean treatise on the senses (Herculaneum Papyrus 19/698, cols. 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, fr. 21)

We hold that vision perceives visibles and touch tangibles, that the one is of color, the other of body, and that the one never interferes in the other’s sphere of discrimination. For if it were the case that vision perceived the size and shape of body, it would much sooner perceive body itself… <To see shape is only to perceive the color’s> outline, and often not even that. If, then, visible shape is nothing but the external positioning of the colors, and visible size nothing but the positioning of the majority of the colors in relation to what lies outside, it is perhaps possible for that whose function is to register colors themselves to perceive the external positioning of the colors… So it is by recourse to analogy that shape and size are spheres of discrimination common to these senses: as the shape and size of the color are to the color, so the shape and size of the body are to the body: and as the color is to visual perception, so the body is to perception by touch… Apart from the very broad and general respects discussed above we do not hold that there is, in the direct way, a common sphere of discrimination. In the indirect way, the one which exhibits such generality that it could easily be called analogy, we could say that shape is their common sphere of discrimination… Let us then add a reminder of what peculiar characteristic each of the senses exhibits, apart from the sensory recognition of their objects of discrimination. Well, the most peculiar characteristic of vision as compared to the other senses, apart from the discrimination of colors and the things related to them, is the perception of shape at a distance, together with sensory recognition of the interval between itself and them… Touch, as far as its peculiar function is concerned, has [as its most peculiar characteristic] that of registering no quality at all. As far as concerns its common function of registering the qualitative states of the flesh - a concomitant property of the other senses too — it has as its most peculiar characteristic that of registering different kinds of qualities: for as well as discriminating hard and soft, it perceives both hot and cold, both within itself and adjacent to itself… Although vision does not discriminate solidity, some people deceive themselves through thinking that it does. For they suppose that when we see rocks vision through its simple application conveys their solidity. (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus, Against The Professors 7.206-10 (Usener 247, part)

[Summarizing Epicurus] Some people are deceived by the difference among impressions seeming to reach us from the same sense-object, for example a visible object, such that the object appears to be of a different color or shape, or altered in some other way. For they have supposed that, when impressions differ and conflict in this way, one of them must be true and the opposing one false. This is simple-minded, and characteristic of those who are blind to the real nature of things. For it is not the whole solid body that is seen — to take the example of visible things - but the color of the solid body. And of color, some is right on the solid body, as in the case of things seen from close up or from a moderate distance, but some is outside the solid body and is objectively located in the space adjacent to it, as in the case of things seen from a great distance. This color is altered in the intervening space, and takes on a peculiar shape. But the impression which it imparts corresponds to what is its own true objective state. Thus just as what we actually hear is not the sound inside the beaten gong, or inside the mouth of the man shouting, but the sound which is reaching our sense, and just as no one says that the man who hears a faint sound from a distance is mis-hearing just because on approaching he registers it as louder, so too I would not say that the vision is deceived just because from a great distance it sees the tower as small and round but from near-to as larger and square. Rather I would say that it is telling the truth. Because when the sense-object appears to it small and of that shape it really is small and of that shape, the edges of the images getting eroded as a result of their travel through the air. And when it appears big and of another shape instead, it likewise is big and of another shape instead. But the two are already different from each other: for it is left for distorted opinion to suppose that the object of impression seen from near and the one seen from far off are one and the same. The peculiar function of sensation is to apprehend only that which is present to it and moves it, such as color, not to make the distinction that the object here is a different one from the object there. Hence for this reason all impressions are true. Opinions, on the other hand, are not all true but admit of some difference. Some of them are true, some false, since they are judgments which we make on the basis of our impressions, and we judge some things correctly, but some incorrectly, either by adding and appending something to our impressions or by subtracting something from them, and in general falsifying irrational sensation. (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus. Against the Professors 8.63 (Usener 253, part)

Epicurus used to say that all sensibles are true, and that every impression is the product of something existent and like the thing which moves the sense; and that those who say that some impressions are true but others false are wrong, because they cannot distinguish opinion from self-evidence. At any rate, in the case of Orestes, when he seemed to see the Furies, his sensation, being moved by the images, was true, in that the images objectively existed; but his mind, in thinking that the Furies were solid bodies, held a false opinion. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Colotes 1109C-E (Usener 250, part)

As for the famous ‘matching-sizes’ and ‘consonances’ of the passages belonging to the sense organs, and ‘multiple-mixtures’ of the seeds which they [the Epicureans] say are distributed through all flavors, smells and colors and move different sensations of quality in different people, do these not drive things together right into the ‘no more this than that’ class, on their view? For to reassure those who think that sensation is deceived because they see its users affected in opposite ways by the same things, they teach the doctrine that since all things are jumbled and mixed up together, and some things are of a nature to fit into some things, others into others, it is not the same quality that is being brought into contact; and apprehended, nor does the object move everyone in the same way with all its parts; rather, all individuals encounter only the things of a size to match their own sense, and therefore are wrong to dispute about whether the thing is good or bad or white or non-white in the belief that by confuting each other’s sensations they are confirming their own. One should not resist a single sensation, for they all make contact with something, each of them taking from the multiple mixture, as from a well, whatever is fitting and appropriate to itself. And when we are making contact with parts we should make no assertions about the whole. Nor should we think that everyone is affected in the same way, since some are affected by one quality and power, some by another. (L&S-THP)

B-3 The Criteria of Truth

Epicurus. Principal Doctrine 24

If you are going to reject any sensation absolutely, and not distinguish opinions reliant on evidence yet awaited from what is already present through sensation, through feelings, and through every focusing of thought into an impression, you will confound all your other sensations with empty opinion and consequently reject the criterion in its entirety. And if you are going to treat as established both all the evidence yet awaited in your conjectural conceptions, and that which has failed to attestation, you will not exclude falsehood, so that you will have removed all debate and all discrimination between correct and incorrect. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 37-8

First, that the words we use should have been first seen what each denotes, so that by referring to this we can judge what is awaited by opinions, or questions or problems, so that they are not left undecided for us as we go on proving things ad infinitum, or so that we do not have empty words. For the first conception corresponding to each word must be observed and need no further demonstration, if we are going to have something to which we can refer questions, problems, and opinions. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 50-1

Moreover, one must suppose that it is when something from external objects enters into us that we not only see but also think of their shapes. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 82

So we should pay heed to those feelings which are present in us, and to our sensations - universal sensations for universal matters, particular ones for particular matters - and to all self-evidence which is present by virtue of each of the discriminatory faculties. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4.469-77

Diogenes Laertius 10.31

Thus Epicurus, in the Canon (‘Yardstick’), says that sensations, preconceptions and feelings are the criteria of truth. The Epicureans add the ‘focusings of thought into an impression.’ (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.33

Preconception, they [the Epicureans] say, is as it were a perception, or correct opinion, or conception, or universal ‘stored notion’ (i.e. memory), of that which has frequently become evident externally: e.g. ‘Such and such a kind of thing is a man.’ For as soon as the word ‘man’ is uttered, immediately its delineation also comes to mind by means of preconception, since the senses give the lead. Thus what primarily underlies each name is something self-evident. And what we inquire about we would not have inquired about if we had not had prior knowledge of it. For example: ‘Is what’s standing over there a horse or a cow?’ For one must at some time have come to know the form of a horse and that of a cow by means of preconception. Nor would we have named something if we had not previously learned its delineation by means of preconception. Thus preconceptions are self-evident. And opinion depends on something prior and self-evident, which is our point of reference when we say, e.g., ‘How do we know if this is a man?’ (L&S-THP)

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.41—42 (Usener 67, 69)

[Epicurus On The End] ‘For my part I cannot conceive of anything as the good if I remove the pleasures perceived by means of taste and sex and listening to music, and the pleasant motions felt by the eyes through beautiful sights, or any other pleasures which some sensation generates in a man as a whole. Certainly it is impossible to say that mental delight is the only good. For a delighted mind, as I understand it, consists in the expectation of all the things I just mentioned - to be of a nature able to acquire them without pain… ’ A little later he adds: ‘I have often asked men who were called wise what they could retain as the content of goods if they removed those things, unless they wanted to pour out empty words. I could learn nothing from them; and if they want to babble on about virtues and wisdoms, they will be speaking of nothing except the way in which those pleasures I mentioned are produced.’ (L&S-THP)

B-4 Scientific Methodology - Deductive Reasoning

Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 85 - 88

First, we should not think that any other end is served by knowledge of celestial events, whether they be discussed in a context or in isolation, than freedom from disturbance and firm confidence, just as in the other areas of discourse. And neither should we force through what is impossible, nor should we in all areas keep our study similar either to discourses on the conduct of life or to those belonging to the solution of the other problems of physics, for example that the totality of things is body and intangible substance, or that there are atomic elements, and all the theses of this kind which are uniquely consistent with things evident. In the case of celestial events this is not the case: both the causes of their coming to be and the accounts of their essence are multiple. For physics should not be studied by means of empty judgments and arbitrary fiat, but in the way that things evident require. What our life needs is not private theorizing and empty opinion, but an untroubled existence. Now in respect of all things which have a multiplicity of explanations consistent with things evident, complete freedom from trepidation results when someone in the proper way lets stand whatever is plausibly suggested about them. But when someone allows one explanation while rejecting another equally consistent with what is evident, he is clearly abandoning natural philosophy altogether and descending into myth. Signs relating to events in the celestial region are provided by certain of the things familiar and evident — things whose mode of existence is open to view — and not by things evident in the celestial region. For these latter are capable of coming to be in multiple ways. We must, nevertheless, observe our impression of each one; and we must distinguish the events which are connected with it, events whose happening in multiple ways is uncontested by familiar events. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.509-533

Let us now sing what are the causes of the heavenly bodies’ motions. First, if the great sphere of the sky rotates, we must say that the air exerts pressure on its pole at each end, and holds it imprisoned from both sides; and that then other air flows above and travels in the direction in which the shining stars of the fixed heavens rotate; or else other air flows below, and pushes the sphere up in the opposite direction, just as we see rivers turn water-wheels and their scoops. Another possibility that the sky as a whole is stationary while the bright heavenly bodies move: whether because fast aether currents, trapped within the world, go round seeking an outlet and spin fires all through the nocturnal zone of the sky; or because air flowing from somewhere else, outside the world, drives the fires to rotate; or because they themselves have the power to edge forward in the direction in which their food entices them as they travel, pasturing their fiery bodies all through the sky. For it is hard to state with certainty which of these is the case in our world. But what I am expounding is what is possible, and happens in the various worlds variously formed throughout the universe, and my procedure to set out a plurality of causes which are able to be those of the motions of the heavenly bodies throughout the universe. Of them, one must also be the cause which gives the heavenly bodies their power of motion in our world. But it is not the job of one who proceeds with caution to lay down which of them it is. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 6.703-711

There are also a number of things of which it is not enough to name one cause, but rather many causes, one of which will however be the actual one — just as, if you were yourself to see at a distance the dead body of a man, it would be appropriate to list all the causes of death, so as to include the specific cause of his death. For you would not be able to establish that he had died by the sword, from cold, from disease, or by poison; yet we know that it was something of this kind that happened to him. And likewise in many other matters we are in a position to say the same. (L&S-THP)

Philodemus, On Signs 11.32 - 12.31

For granted that ‘If the first, then the second’ is true whenever ‘If not the second, not the first either’ is true, it does not therefore follow that only the Elimination Method is cogent. For ‘If not the second, not the first either’ comes out true sometimes in as much as, when the second is hypothetically eliminated, by its very elimination the first is eliminated too — as in ‘If there is motion, there is void’, since, when void is hypothetically eliminated, by its mere elimination motion will be eliminated too, so that such a case fits the elimination type — but sometimes not in this way but because of the very inconceivability of the first being, or being of this kind, but the second not being, or not being of this kind. For instance, ‘If Plato is a man, Socrates is a man too.’ For given that this is true, ‘If Socrates is not a man, Plato is not a man either’ comes out true as well, not because by the elimination of Socrates Plato is co-eliminated, but because it is impossible to conceive of Socrates not being a man but Plato being a man. And that belongs to the Similarity Method. (L&S-THP)

Philodemus, On Signs 34.29 - 36.17

Those who attack sign-inference by similarity do not notice the difference between the aforementioned [senses of ‘in so far as’], and how we establish the ‘in so far as’ premise, such as, for instance, that man in so far as he is man is mortal… For we establish the necessary connection of this with that from the very fact that it has been an observed concomitant of all the instances which we have encountered, especially as we have met a variety of animals belonging to the same type which while differing from each other in all respects share such-and-such common characteristics. Thus we say that man, in so far as and in that he is man, is mortal, because we have encountered a wide variety of men without ever finding any variation in this kind of accidental attribute, or anything that draws us towards the opposite view. So this is the method on which the establishment of the premise rests, both for this issue and for the others in which we apply the ‘in so far as’ and ‘in that’ construction— the peculiar connection being indicated by the fact that the one thing is the inseparable and necessary concomitant of the other. The same is not true in the case of what is established merely by the elimination of a sign. But even in these cases, it is the fact that all the instances which we have encountered have this as their concomitant that does the job of confirmation. For it is from the fact that all familiar moving objects, while having other differences, have it in common that their motion is through empty spaces, that w e conclude the same to be without exception true also in things non-evident. And our reason for contending that if there is not, or has not been, fire, smoke should be eliminated, is that smoke has been seen in all cases without exception to be a secretion from fire. (6) Another error which they make is in not noticing our procedure of establishing that no obstacle arises through things evident. For the existence of chance and of that which depends on us is not sufficient ground for accepting the minimal swerves of atoms: it is necessary to show in addition that nothing else self-evident conflicts with the thesis. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.34

Opinion they also call ‘supposition’, and they say that it is true and false. If it is attested or uncontested, it is true; if it is unattested or contested, it comes out false. Hence their introduction of that which awaited - for example, waiting and getting near the tower and learning how it appears from near by. (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 211-216 (Usener 247)

Of opinions, then, according to Epicurus, some are true, some false. True are those attested and those uncontested by self-evidence; false are those contested and those unattested by self-evidence. Attestation is perception through a self-evident impression of the fact that the object of opinion is such as it was believed to be. For example, if Plato is approaching from far off, I form the conjectural opinion, owing to the distance, that it is Plato. But when he has come close, there is further testimony that he is Plato, now that the gap is reduced, and it is attested by the self-evidence itself. Non-contestation is for that which is evident to follow from the non-evident thing posited and believed. For example, Epicurus, in saying that there is void, which is non-evident, confirms this through the self-evident fact of motion. For if void does not exist, there ought not to be motion either, since the moving body would lack a place to pass into as a result of everything’s being full and solid. Therefore the non-evident thing believed is uncontested by that which is evident, since there is motion. Contestation, on the other hand, is something which conflicts with non-contestation. For it is the elimination of that which is evident by the positing of the non-evident thing. For example, the Stoic says that void does not exist, judging something non-evident; but once this is posited about it, that which is evident, namely motion, ought to be co-eliminated with it. For if void does not exist, necessarily motion does not occur either, according to the method already demonstrated. Likewise, too, non-attestation is opposed to attestation, being confrontation through self-evidence of the fact that the object of opinion is not such as it was believed to be. For example, if someone is approaching from far off, we conjecture, owing to the distance, that he is Plato. But when the gap is reduced, we recognize through self-evidence that it is not Plato. That is what non-attestation is like: the thing believed was not attested by the evident. Hence attestation and non-contestation are the criterion of something’s being true, while non-attestation and contestation are the criterion of its being false. And self-evidence is the foundation and basis of everything. (L&S-THP)

B-5 Language

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 75-76

We must take it that even nature was educated and constrained in many different ways by actual states of affairs, and that its lessons were later made more accurate, and augmented with new discoveries by reason — faster among some people, slower among others, and in some ages and eras, owing to <individual needs, by greater leaps>, in others by smaller leaps. Thus names too did not originally come into being by coining, but men’s own natures underwent feelings and received impressions which varied peculiarly from tribe to tribe, and each of the individual feelings and impressions caused them to exhale breath peculiarly, according also to the racial differences from place to place. Later, particular coinings were made by consensus within the individual races, so as to make the designations less ambiguous and more concisely expressed. Also, the men who shared knowledge introduced certain unseen entities, and brought words for them into usage. men gave utterance under compulsion, and others chose words rationally, and it is thus, as far as the principal cause is concerned, that they achieved self-expression. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, On Nature XXVIII, 31.10.2—12

Supposing that in those days we thought and said something equivalent, in the terminology which we then employed, to saying that all human error is exclusively of the form that arises in relation to preconceptions and appearances because of the multifarious conventions of language… [text breaks off] (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, On Nature XXVIII,31.13.23—14.12

But perhaps this is not the moment to prolong the discussion by citing these cases? Quite so, Metrodorus. For I expect you could cite many cases, from your own past observations, of certain people taking words in various ridiculous senses, and indeed in any sense rather than their actual linguistic meanings. Whereas our own usage does not flout linguistic convention, nor do we alter names with regard to things evident. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.1028-90

It was nature that compelled the utterance of the various noises of the tongue, and usefulness that forged them into the names of things. It was rather in the way that children’s inarticulacy itself seems to impel them to use gestures, when it causes them to point out with a finger what things are present. For everyone can feel the extent to which he can use his powers. The calf angrily butts and charges with his incipient horns before they have even protruded from his forehead. Panther and lion cubs already fight with claws, paws and biting at an age when their teeth and claws have barely appeared. Also, we see all birds putting trust in their wings and seeking the fluttering aid of their feathers. So to think that someone in those days assigned names to things, and that that is how men iearned their first words, is crazy. Why should he have been able to indicate all things with sounds, and to utter the various noises of the tongue, yet others be supposed not to have had that ability at the same time? Besides, if others had not already used sounds to each other, how did he get the preconception of their usefulness implanted in him? How did he get the initial capacity to know and see with his mind what he wanted to do? Again, one person could not subdue many and compel them to want to learn the names of things. Nor is it easy to find a way of teaching and persuading a deaf audience of what needs to be done: they would utterly refuse to tolerate any further his drumming into their ears the unfamiliar sounds of his voice. Lastly, why is it so surprising that the human race, with its powers of voice and tongue, should have indicated each thing with a different sound to correspond to a different sensation? After all, dumb animals, tame and wild alike, regularly emit different sounds when afraid, when in pain, and when happiness comes over them. You can appreciate this from plain facts. When the great flabby jaws of Molossian hounds start to snarl in anger, baring their hard teeth, their threatening noise when drawn back in rage is far different from when they fill the place with their barking. When, on the other hand, they try coaxingly to lick their pups with their tongue, or when they toss them with their paws and, powerful biters though they are, hold back their teeth and make play of nibbling them gently, they fondle them with a yelping noise quite different from when they whimper, cowering from a blow. If, then, different sensations compel animals, dumb though they are, to emit different sounds, how much more likely it is that mortal men at that time were able to indicate different things with different sounds. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda 10.2.11-5.15

As for the words, I mean the nouns and verbs, of which the men who sprang from the earth made the first utterance, let us not adopt Hermes as our teacher, as some say he was: that is manifest nonsense. Nor should we believe those philosophers who say that it was by coining and teaching that names were assigned to things, in order that men might have signs to facilitate their communication with each other. For it is absurd, indeed absurder than any absurdity, not to mention impossible, that someone should all on his own have assembled all those multitudes. There were no rulers at that time, and certainly no letters, seeing that there were no words, since it was about these <that they were meeting, so that it was not> by edict that their assembly was brought about - and having assembled them, instructed them like a schoolteacher, holding a rod, and touching each thing have said ‘Let this be called “stone”, this “stick”, this ” man”, or “dog.” (L&S-THP)

Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus, 22.39 - 47

Epicurus says that names are clearer than definitions, and that indeed it would be absurd if instead of saying ‘Hello Socrates’ one were to say ‘hello rational mortal animal’. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.31 (Usener 257)

They [the Epicureans] reject dialectic as superfluous, saying that it is sufficient that natural philosophers should proceed in accordance with the word s belonging to things. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.34 (Usener 265)

[The Epicureans say that] of inquiries, some are about things, others about mere utterance. (L&S-THP)

Erotianus 34, 10-20 (Usener 258)

For if we are going to explain the words known to everybody, we would have to expound either all or some. But to expound all is impossible, whereas to expound some is pointless. For we will explain them either through familiar locutions or through unfamiliar. But unfamiliar words seem unsuited to the task, the accepted principle being to explain less known things by means of better known things; and familiar words, by being on a par with them, will be uninformative for illuminating language, as Epicurus says. For the informativeness of language is characteristically ruined when it is bewitched by an account, as if by a homoeopathic drug. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Ends 22 (Usener 243, part)

In the other branch of philosophy, logic, which concerns inquiry and argument, your master [Epicurus] seems to me unarmed and naked. He abolishes definitions. He teaches nothing about division and partition. He gives no advice on framing a deductive argument. He does not show how to solve sophisms or to distinguish ambiguous terms. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Colotes 1119F (Usener 259)

Who is more in error than you [the Epicureans] about language? You completely abolish the class of sayables, to which discourse owes its existence, leaving only word s and name-bearers, and denying the very existence of the intermediate states of affairs signified, by means of which learning, teaching, preconceptions, thoughts, impulses and assents come about. (L&S-THP)

C. ETHICS

C-1 Free Will - There Is No Necessity To Live Under The Control Of Necessity

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 133-4

Whom, after all, do you consider superior to the man who … would deride the which some introduce as overlord of everything, <but sees that some things are necessitated,> others are due to fortune, and others depend on us, since necessity is accountable to no one, and fortune is an unstable thing to watch, while that which depends on us, with which culpability and its opposite are naturally associated, is free of any overlord? For it would be better to follow the mythology about gods than be a slave to the ‘fate’ of the natural philosophers: the former at least hints at the hope of begging the gods off by means of worship, whereas the latter involves an inexorable necessity. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 40

The man who says that all events are necessitated has no ground for criticizing the man who says that not all events are necessitated. For according to him this is itself a necessitated event. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, On Nature 34.21—2

But many naturally capable of achieving these and those results fail to achieve them, because of themselves, not because of one and the same responsibility of the atoms and of themselves. And with these we especially do battle, and rebuke them, hating them for a disposition which follows their disordered congenital nature as we do with the whole range of animals. For the nature of their atoms has contributed nothing to some of their behaviour, and degrees of behaviour and character, but it is their developments which themselves possess all or most of the responsibility for certain things. It is as a result of that nature that some of their atoms move with disordered motions, but it is not on the atoms that all Thus when a development occurs which takes on some distinctness from the atoms in a differential way — not in the way which is like viewing from a different distance — he acquires responsibility which proceeds from himself; then he straightaway transmits this to his primary substances and makes the whole of it into a yardstick. That is why those who cannot correctly make such distinctions confuse themselves about the adjudication of responsibilities. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, On Nature 34.26-30

From the very outset we always have seeds directing us some toward these, some towards those, some towards these and those, actions and thoughts and characters, in greater and smaller numbers. Consequently that which we develop - characteristics of this or that kind - is at first absolutely up to us; and the things which of necessity flow in through our passages from that which surrounds us are at one stage up to us and dependent on beliefs of our own making… <And we can invoke, against the argument that our eventual choice between these alternatives must be physically caused either by our initial make-up or by those environmental influences> by which we never cease to be affected, the fact that we rebuke, oppose and reform each other as if the responsibility lay also in ourselves, and not just in our congenital make-up and in the accidental necessity of that which surrounds and penetrates us. For if someone were to attribute to the very processes of rebuking and being rebuked the accidental necessity of whatever happens to be present to oneself at the time, I’m afraid he can never in this way understand < He may simply choose to maintain his thesis while in practice continuing to> blame or praise. But if he were to act in this way he would be leaving intact the very same behavior which as far as our own selves are concerned creates the preconception of our responsibility. And in that he would at one point be altering his theory, at another … For this sort of account is self-refuting, and can never prove that everything is of the kind called ‘necessitated’; but he debates this very question on the assumption that his opponent is himself responsible for talking nonsense. And even if he goes on to infinity saying that this action of his is in turn necessitated, always appealing to arguments, he is not reasoning it empirically so long as he goes on imputing to himself the responsibility for having reasoned correctly and to his opponent that for having reasoned incorrectly. But unless he were to stop attributing his action to himself and to pin it on necessity instead, he would not even < On the other hand, > if in using the word ‘necessity’ of that which we call our own agency he is merely changing a name, and won’t prove that we have a preconception of a kind which has faulty delineations when we call our own agency responsible, neither his own < behaviour nor that of others will be affected… > <… > but even to call necessitation empty as a result of your claim. If someone won’t explain this, and has no auxiliary element or impulse in us which he might dissuade from those actions which we perform calling the responsibility for them ‘our own agency’, but is giving the name of foolish necessity to all the things which we claim to do calling the responsibility for them ‘our own agency’, he will be merely changing a name; (so) he will not be modifying any of our actions in the way in which in some cases the man who sees what sort of actions are necessitated regularly dissuades those who desire to do something in the face of compulsion. And the mind will be inquisitive to learn what sort of action it should then consider that one to be which we perform in some way through our own agency but without desiring to. For he has no alternative but to say what sort of action is necessitated <and what is not . . > But unless someone perversely maintains this, or makes it clear what fact he is rebutting or introducing, it is merely a word that is being changed, as I keep repeating. The first men to give a satisfactory account of causes, men not only much greater than their predecessors but also, many times over, than their successors, turned a blind eye to themselves - although in many matters they had alleviated great ills - in order to hold necessity and accident responsible for everything. Indeed, the actual account promoting this view came to grief when it left the great man blind to the fact that in his actions he was clashing with his doctrine; and that if it were not that a certain blindness to the doctrine took hold of him while acting he would be constantly perplexing himself; and that wherever the doctrine prevailed he would be falling into desperate calamities, while wherever it did not he would be filled with conflict because of the contradiction between his actions and his doctrine. It is because this is so that the need also arises to explain the matter which I was discussing when I first embarked on this digression, lest some similar evil (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2:251 -293

Moreover, if all motion is always linked, and new motion arises out of old in a fixed order, and atoms do not by swerving make some beginning motion to break the decrees of fate, so that cause should not follow cause from infinity, from where does this free volition exist for animals throughout the world? From where, I ask, comes this volition wrested away from the fates, through which we proceed wherever each of us is led by his pleasure, and likewise swerve off our motions at no fixed time or fixed region of space, but wherever the mind itself carries us? For without doubt it is volition that gives these things their beginning for each of us, and it is from volition that motions are spread through the limbs. Don’t you see how also when at an instant the starting gates are opened the eager strength of horses can nevertheless not surge forward as suddenly as the mind itself wishes? For all the mass of matter has to be stirred up throughout the body, so that stirred up through ail the limbs it may in a concerted effort follow the mind’s desire. Thus you may see that the beginning of motion is created from the heart and proceeds initially from the mind’s volition, and from there is spread further through the entire body and limbs. Nor is it the same when we move forward impelled by a blow, through another person’s great strength and great coercion. For then it is plain that all the matter of the whole body moves and is driven against our wish, until volition has reined it back throughout the limbs. So do you now see that, although external force propels many along and often obliges them to proceed against their wishes and to be driven headlong, nevertheless there is something in our chest capable of fighting and resisting, at whose decision the mass of matter is also forced at times to be turned throughout the limbs and frame, and, when hurled forward, is reined back and settles down? Therefore in the seeds too you must admit the same thing, that there is another cause of motion besides impacts and weight, from which this power is born in us, since we see that nothing can come into being out of nothing. For weight prevents all things from coming about by impacts, by a sort of external force. But that the mind should not itself possess an internal necessity in all its behaviour, and be overcome and, as it were, forced to suffer and to be acted upon - that is brought about by a tiny swerve of atoms at no fixed region of space or fixed time. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda 32.1.14 - 3.14

Once prophecy is eliminated, how can there be any other evidence for fate? For if someone uses Democritus’ account, saying that because of their collisions with each other atoms have no free movement, and that as a result it appears that all motions are necessitated, we will reply to him: ‘Don’t you know, whoever you are, that there is also a free movement in atoms, which Democritus failed to discover but Epicurus brought to light, a swerving movement, as he demonstrates from evident facts?’ But the chief point is this: if fate is believed in, that is the end of all censure and admonition, and even the wicked (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Fate 21-25

At this initial stage, if I were disposed to agree with Epicurus and to deny that every proposition is either true or false, I would rather accept that blow than allow that all things happen through fate. For the former view is at least arguable, whereas the latter is truly intolerable. Chrysippus, then, strains every nerve to persuade us that every axioma (proposition) is either true or false. For just as Epicurus is afraid that if he admits this he will have to admit that all events happen through fate — for if one of the two has been true from all eternity it is certain, and if certain then necessary too, which he considers enough to prove both necessity and fate - so too Chrysippus fears that if he fails to secure the result that every proposition is either true or false he cannot maintain that everything happens through fate and from eternal causes of future events. But Epicurus thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of atoms. Thus a third type of motion arises in addition to weight and impact, when the atom swerves by a minimal interval, or elachiston as he terms it. That this swerve occurs without a cause he is forced to admit in practice, even if not in so many words. For it is not through the impact of another atom that an atom swerves. How, after all, can one be struck by another if atomic bodies travel perpendicularly in straight lines through their own weight, as Epicurus holds? For it follows that one is never driven from its course by another, if one is not even touched by another. The consequence is that, even supposing that the atom does exist and that it swerves, it swerves without a cause. Epicurus’ reason for introducing this theory was his fear that, if the atom’s motion was always the result of natural and necessary weight, we would have no freedom, since the mind would be moved in whatever way it was compelled by the motion of atoms. Democritus, the originator of atoms, preferred to accept this consequence that everything happens through necessity than to rob the atomic bodies of their natural motions. A more penetrating line was taken by Carneades, who showed that the Epicureans could defend their case without this fictitious swerve. For since they taught that a certain voluntary motion of the mind was possible, a defence of that doctrine was preferable to introducing the swerve, especially as they could not discover its cause. And by defending it they could easily stand up to Chrysippus, for by conceding that there is no motion without cause they would not be conceding that all events were the result of antecedent causes. For our volition has no external antecedent causes. Hence when we say that someone wants or does not want something without a cause, we are taking advantage of a common linguistic convention: by ‘without a cause’ we mean without an external antecedent cause, not without some kind of cause, just as, when we call a jar ‘empty’, we are not speaking like natural philosophers who hold the empty (void) to be absolute nothing, but in such a way as to say that the jar is, for example, without water, without wine or without oil, so too when we say that the mind moves ‘without a cause’ we mean without an external antecedent cause, not entirely without a cause. Of the atom itself it can be said that, when it moves through the void as a result of its heaviness and weight, it moves without a cause, in as much as there is no additional cause from outside. But here too, if we don’t all want to incur the scorn of the natural philosophers for saying that something happens without a cause, we must make a distinction and say as follows: that it is the atom’s own nature to move as a result of weight and heaviness, and that that nature is itself the cause of its moving in that way. Similarly for voluntary motions of the mind there is no need to seek an external cause. For a voluntary motion itself has it as its own intrinsic nature that it should be in our power to obey us. And this fact is not without a cause: for the cause is that thing’s own nature. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, Academic Questions 2.97 (Usener 376)

For although Epicurus, who despises and ridicules the w hole of dialectic, cannot be got to admit that a proposition of the form ‘Either Hermarchus will be alive tomorrow, or he will not be alive’ is true despite the dialecticians’ rule that all disjunctions of the form ’ Either p or not - p ’ are not only true but also necessary, notice how circumspect is this man whom your Stoics consider dull-witted. ’ For if he says, ‘I admit that one or the other is necessary,’ it will be necessary either for Hermarchus to be alive tomorrow, or for him not to be alive. But there is no such necessity in the nature of things. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Fate 37

Of any two contradictories — by contradictories here I mean a pair one of which asserts something while the other denies it — it is necessary, following Epicurus, that one be true, the other false: for example, ‘Philoctetes will be wounded’ was true in all previous ages, and ‘Philoctetes will not be wounded’ false. Unless perhaps we are inclined to follow the opinion of the Epicureans, who say that such propositions are neither true nor false, or, when that shames them, say something still more shameless, namely that disjunctions of contradictories are true, but that of the original propositions contained in them neither is true. (L&S-THP)

C-2 Pleasure - General

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 127-32

We must reckon that some desires are natural and others empty, and of the natural some are necessary, others natural only; and of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the body’s freedom from stress, and others for life itself. For the steady observation of these things makes it possible to refer every choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the soul’s freedom from disturbance, since this is the end belonging to the blessed life. For this is what we aim at in all our actions - to be free from pain and anxiety. Once we have got this, all the soul’s tumult is released, since the creature cannot go as if in pursuit of something it needs and search for any second thing as the means of maximizing the good of the soul and the body. For the time when we need pleasure is when we are in pain from the absence of pleasure. < But when we are not in pain > we no longer need pleasure. This is why we say that pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the good which is primary and congenital; from it we begin every choice and avoidance, and we come back to it, using the feeling as the yardstick for judging every good thing. Since pleasure is the good which is primary and congenital, for this reason we do not choose every pleasure either, but we sometimes pass over many pleasures in cases when their out come for us is a greater quantity of discomfort; and we regard many pains as better than pleasures in cases when our endurance of pains is followed by a greater and long-lasting pleasure. Every pleasure, then, because of its natural affinity, is something good, yet not every pleasure is choiceworthy. Correspondingly, every pain is something bad, but not every pain is by nature to be avoided. However, we have to make our judgment on all these points by a calculation and survey of advantages and disadvantages. For at certain times we treat the good as bad and conversely the bad as good. W e also regard self-sufficiency as a great good, not with the aim of always living off little, but to enable us to live off little if we do not have much, in the genuine conviction that they derive the greatest pleasure from luxury w h o need it least, and that everything natural is easy to procure, but what is empty is hard to procure. Plain flavors produce pleasure equal to an expensive diet whenever all the pain of need has been removed; and bread and water generate the highest pleasure whenever they are taken by one who needs them. Therefore the habit of simple and inexpensive diet maximizes health and makes a man energetic in facing the necessary business of daily life; it also strengthens our character when we encounter luxuries from time to time, and emboldens us in the face of fortune. So when we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of the dissipated and those that consist in having a good time, as some out of ignorance and disagreement or refusal to understand suppose we do, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul. For what produces the pleasant life is not continuous drinking and parties or pederasty or womanizing or the enjoyment of fish and the other dishes of an expensive table, but sober reasoning which tracks down the causes of every choice and avoidance, and which banishes the opinions that beset souls with the greatest confusion. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is prudence. Therefore prudence is even more precious than philosophy, and it is the natural source of all the remaining virtues; it teaches the impossibility of living pleasurably without living prudently, honourably and justly, <and the impossibility of living prudently, honourably and justly> without living pleasurably. For the virtues are naturally linked with living pleasurably, and living pleasurably is inseparable from them. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 3

The removal of all pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures. Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, pain or distress or their combination is absent. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 4

Pain does not last continuously in the flesh: when acute it is there for a very short time, while the pain which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not persist for many days; and chronic illnesses contain an excess of pleasure in the flesh over pain. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Sayings 21

One should not force nature but persuade it. And we will persuade it by fulfilling the necessary desires, and the natural ones too if they do not harm us, but sharply rejecting the harmful ones. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 8

No pleasure is something bad per se: but the causes of some pleasures produce stresses many times greater than the pleasures. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 9

If every pleasure were condensed in < location > and duration and distributed all over the structure or the dominant parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 10

If the causes of the pleasures of the dissipated released mental fears concerning celestial phenomena and death and distress, and in addition taught the limit of desires, we should never have any reason to reproach them [i. e. the dissipated], since they would be satisfying themselves with pleasures from all directions and would never have pain or distress, which constitutes the bad. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 18

The pleasure in the flesh does not increase when once the pain of need has been removed, but it is only varied. And the limit of pleasure in the mind is produced by rationalizing those very things and their congeners which used to present the mind with its greatest fears. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 25

If you fail to refer each of your actions on every occasion to nature’s end, and stop short at something else in choosing or avoiding, your actions will not be consequential upon your theories. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 30

Whenever intense passion is present in natural desires which do not lead to pain if they are unfulfilled, these have their origin in empty opinion; and the reason for their persistence is not their own nature but the empty opinion of the person. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 17

Blessed is not the young man but the old one who has lived honourably. For the young man keeps changing his mind and veers about under the influence of fortune. But the old one has lowered his anchor in old age as though in harbor, and with secure gratitude has clamped the good things he hardly hoped for previously. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 21

We must not compel nature but persuade her; and we shall persuade her by pursuing the necessary desires, and the natural ones if they do no harm, but harshly rebuking the harmful ones. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 25

Poverty, when measured by nature’s end, is great wealth, but unlimited wealth is great poverty. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 33

The flesh’s cry is not to be hungry or thirsty or cold. For one who is in these states and expects to remain so could rival even Zeus in happiness. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 42

It takes just the same time for the greatest good to be created and for it to be enjoyed. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 51

[Letter from Metrodorus to Pythocles] You tell me that the movement of your flesh is too inclined towards sexual intercourse. So long as you do not break the laws or disturb proper and established conventions or distress any of your neighbors or ravage your body or squander the necessities of life, act upon your inclination in anyway you like. Yet it is impossible not to be constrained by at least one of these. For sex is never advantageous, and one should be content if it does no harm. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 59

What is insatiable is not the stomach, as people say, but the false opinion concerning its unlimited filling. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 63

There can be refinement even on slender means, and one who fails to take account of it is in a similar position to someone who goes astray through ignoring limits. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 71

This question should be applied to all desires; what will happen to me if the object of my desire is achieved and what if it is not? (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 73

The occurrence of certain bodily pains is a help to protecting oneself against similar ones. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 81

What releases the soul’s disturbance and produces worthwhile joy is neither possessing the greatest wealth, nor public recognition and respect, nor anything else which is dependent on indeterminate causes. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.1-61

When winds are troubling the waters on a great sea, it is a pleasure to view from the land another man’s great struggles; not because it is a joy or delight that anyone should be storm-tossed, but because it is a pleasure to observe from what troubles you yourself are free. It is a pleasure too to gaze on great contests of war deployed over the plains when you yourself have no part in the danger. But most pleasant of all is to be master of those tranquil regions well fortified on high by the teaching of the wise. From there you can look down on others and see them wandering this way and that and straying in their quest for a way of life — competing in talent, fighting over social class, striving night and day with utmost effort to rise to the heights of wealth and become owners of substance. O miserable minds of men, O unseeing hearts! How great the darkness of life, how great the dangers too in which this portion of rime, whatsoever it be, is spent. Do you not see that nature screams out for nothing but the removal of pain from the body and the mind’s enjoyment of the joyous sensation when anxiety and fear have been taken away? So we see that our bodily nature needs only the few things which remove pain, in such a way that they can also furnish many delights rather pleasurably from time to time. Nor does nature itself require it, if there are no golden statues of youths in the entrance halls grasping fiery torches in their right hands to provide evening banquets with light, or if the house does not gleam with silver and shine with gold and a carved and gilded ceiling does not resound to the lute, when, in spite of this, men lie together on the soft grass near a stream of water beneath the branches of a lofty tree refreshing their bodies with joy and at no great cost, especially when the weather smiles and the season of the year spreads flowers all over the green grass. Nor do hot fevers leave the body more swiftly if you toss on embroidered tapestries and shimmering purple than if you have to he on common drapery, Therefore, since riches are of no benefit in our body, nor social class nor a kingdom’s glory, we should further suppose that they are of no benefit to the mind as well — unless it should happen, when you see your legions swarming over the area of the plain and stirring up mock war, that religion frightened by these things flees from your mind in terror, and the fears of death vacate your heart and leave it free from anxiety. But if we see that this is absurd and ludicrous, and if in truth the fears of men and the anxieties that follow them are not afraid of the sound of arms and fierce weapons, but boldly consort with kings and owners of substance and show no respect for the glitter of gold nor the brilliant gleam of a purple robe, why do you doubt that all this power belongs to reason, especially when all life is straggling in darkness? For just as children are terrified and afraid of everything m blind darkness, so we in the fight are at times afraid of things no more fearful than what children shudder at in darkness and imagine will happen. This terror and darkness of the mind, then, must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by nature’s appearance and rationale. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 4: 622 - 632

When the bodies of the diffusing flavor are smooth, they give pleasure by touching and stimulating all the moist and oozing regions in the tongue’s vicinity. But by contrast, the more each of the bodies is furnished with roughness, they prick the sense and tear it in their encounter. Next comes pleasure from the flavor at the boundary of the palate. But when it has plunged right down through the throat, there is no pleasure while it is all spreading into the limbs. And it makes no difference at all what diet nourishes the body, provided that you can digest what you take and spread it out in the limbs and keep a moist tenor in the stomach. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 6.1-28

It was Athens of glorious name that first long ago bestowed on feeble mortals the produce of corn, and refurbished life, and established laws. It was Athens too that first bestowed soothing pleasures on life, when she gave birth to a man endowed with such insight, who long ago gave utterance to everything with truthful voice. Dead though he is, his godlike discoveries spread his fame of old and now it reaches to heaven. When he saw that mortals were already supplied with almost everything that need demands for their livelihood, and that their life as far as possible was firm and secure, that men had abundance of power through wealth and social status and fame and took pride in the good name of their sons, yet that at home no one’s heart was any less troubled, and that they were constantly wrecking their life, despite their intentions, under a compulsion to rage with aggressive complaints, he recognized that the flaw was there, caused by the utensil itself, and that by its flaw everything within was being befouled, whatever came in assembled from outside including beneficial things. He saw that the cause was partly the leaks and holes, which made it impossible for the utensil ever to be filled up, and partly its virtually polluting everything it had taken in with a foul taste. And so he purged people’s hearts with his truthful words, and established the limit of desire and fear, and laid out the nature of the highest good to which we all strive, and indicated the way by whose narrow path we may press on towards it on a straight course. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda 26.1.2—3.8

Shortly I will speak about imprudence, but for the present about the virtues and pleasure. Now if, fellow men, the question at issue between these people [the Stoics] and ourselves involved examining ‘what is the means of happiness?’, and they wanted to say the virtues, as is in fact true, there would be no need to do anything except to agree with them and abandon the matter. But since, as I was saying, the issue is not ‘what is the means of happiness?’, but what being happy is and what our nature ultimately desires, I affirm now and always, with a great shout to all Greeks and foreigners, pleasure is the end of the best lifestyle, while the virtues which are now being inappropriately fussed about by them (being transferred from the position of means to that of end) are in no way the end, but the means to the end. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda 38.1.8—3.14

It is difficult for people in general to calculate the superiority of these mental feelings [over bodily ones]. For it is impossible to suffer the extremes of both on a single occasion by way of a comparison … on account of the rarity of this occurrence and of the destruction of life when it does occur. Therefore no criterion has been found for measuring the superiority of these over the others. Rather, when someone has bodily pains he says they are greater than mental ones, but when < he has mental pains he says they are the greater >. For < present things > are always more convincing than absent ones, and each person evidently either through necessity or through pleasure assigns the superioriry to the feeling which has hold of him. But by means of many other considerations a wise man reasons out this point that the majority find hard to calculate. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.121

Happiness is a twofold notion: the highest, such as god enjoys, which is incapable of increase; and the happiness which is capable of addition and subtraction of pleasures. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.136-137

Epicurus disagrees with the Cyrenaics on pleasure: they do not admit static pleasure but only the kinetic type, whereas he accepts both types, for soul and for body, as he says in his book On Choice and Avoidance and in On The End and in Book 1 of On Lives. In On Choices he speaks as follows: ‘Freedom from disturbance and absence of pain are static pleasures; but joy and delight are regarded as kinetic activities.’ He has a further disagreement with the Cyrenaics: they take bodily pains to be worse than mental ones, but he takes the mental ones to be worse, since the flesh is storm-tossed only in the present, but the soul in past, present and future. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.41—42 (Usener 67, 69)

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.95 (Usener 439)

[Speaking of Epicureanism] The body rejoices just so long as it perceives a present pleasure; but the mind perceives both the present pleasure, along with the body, and foresees the one that is coming without allowing the past one to flow away. Hence the wise man will always have a constant supply of tightly-knit pleasures, since the anticipation of pleasures hoped for is united with the recollection of those already experienced. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Ends 1.29-32, 37—9

[Torquatus] We are investigating what is the final and ultimate good, which as all philosophers agree must be of such a kind that it is the end to which everything is the means, but it is not itself the means to anything. Epicurus situates this in pleasure, which he wants to be the greatest good with pain as the greatest bad. His doctrine begins in this way: as soon as every animal is born, it seeks after pleasure and rejoices in it as the greatest good, while it rejects pain as the greatest bad and, as far as possible, avoids it; and it does this when it is not yet corrupted, on the innocent and sound judgment of nature itself. Hence he says there is no need to prove or discuss why pleasure should be pursued and pain avoided. He thinks these matters are sensed just like the heat of fire, the whiteness of snow and the sweetness of honey, none of which needs confirmation by elaborate arguments; it is enough to point them out. Since man has nothing left if sensations are removed from him, it must be the case that nature itself judges what is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does it perceive or what does it judge except pleasure and pain as a basis for its pursuit or avoidance of anything? Some of our school, however, want to transmit these doctrines in a subtler way: they deny the sufficiency of judging what is good or bad by sensation, saying that the intrinsic desirability of pleasure and the intrinsic undesirabiiity of pain can be understood by the mind too and by reason. So they say that our sense that the one is desirable and the other undesirable is virtually a natural and innate preconception in our minds. To enable you to view the origin of the entire mistake of those who criticize pleasure and praise pain, I will disclose the whole matter and expound the actual words of the famous discoverer of the truth, the architect, as it were, of the happy life. No one rejects or dislikes or avoids pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains result for those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally. Nor again is there anyone who loves, goes after or wants to get pain itself because it is pain, but because circumstances sometimes occur which enable him to gain some great pleasure by toil and pain. The pleasure we pursue is not just that which moves our actual nature with some gratification and is perceived by the senses in company with a certain delight; we hold that to be the greatest pleasure which is perceived once all pain has been removed. For when we are freed from pain, we rejoice in the actual freedom and absence of all distress; but everything in which we rejoice is pleasure, just as everything that distresses us is pain; therefore the complete removal of pain has rightly been called pleasure. Thus when hunger and thirst have been removed by food and drink, the mere withdrawal of distress brings pleasure forth as its consequence. So quite generally the removal of pain causes pleasure to take its place. Hence Epicurus did not accept the existence of anything in between pleasure and pain. What some people regarded as in between - the complete absence of pain - was not only pleasure but also the greatest pleasure. For anyone aware of his own condition must either have pleasure or pain. Epicurus, moreover, supposes that complete absence of pain marks the limit of the greatest pleasure, so that thereafter pleasure can be varied and differentiated but not increased and expanded. But at Athens there is a statue in the Ceramicus of Chrysippus seated with outstretched hand, which indicated his delight in the following little syllogism: ‘Is there anything that your hand, in its present condition, wants?’ ‘Certainly not.’ ‘But if pleasure were the good, it would have a want.’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Therefore pleasure is not the good.’ The argument is entirely valid against the Cyrenaics, but does not touch Epicurus. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Ends 1.55

[The Epicurean spokesman, Torquatus] No error arises in respect of the ultimate good and bad themselves, i.e. pleasure or pain, but people do make mistakes in these matters owing to their ignorance of the sources of pleasure and pain. Furthermore, we admit that mental pleasures and pains have their source in bodily ones, but we do not suppose that this precludes mental pleasures and pains from being much greater than those of the body. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Ends 2.69

You [Torquatus, the Epicurean) will be embarrassed, I say, by that picture which Cleanthes made a habit of depicting in very apt words. He used to call his listeners to imagine a painting of Pleasure most beautifully clad and seated on a throne with the trappings of a queen, and the virtues at her side as her handmaids: they made it their sole task and function to minister to Pleasure, and merely whispered in her ear the warning (if the picture could make this clear) to be careful not to do anything imprudently that might offend people’s thoughts or from which any pain might arise. ‘As for us virtues, we were born to be your slaves; we have no other business.” (L&S-THP)

Scholion on Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 29

Natural and necessary [desires], according to Epicurus, are ones which bring relief from pain, such as drinking when thirsty; natural but non-necessary are ones which merely vary pleasure but do not remove pain, such as expensive foods; neither natural nor necessary are ones for things like crowns and erection of statues. (L&S-THP)

Athenaeus 546F (Usener 400, 70)

Epicurus says: ‘The pleasure of the stomach is the beginning and root of all good, and it is to this that wisdom and over-refinement actually refer.’ And in On The End he again says: ‘We should honor rectitude and the virtues and such like things if they bring pleasure; but if not, we should say goodbye to them.’ (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1089D (Usener 68)

[According to the Epicureans] The comfortable state of the flesh, and the confident expectation of this, contain the highest and most secure joy for those who are capable of reasoning. (L&S-THP)

C-3 Pleasure - As Including All Mental And Bodily Experience That Is Not Painful

Diogenes Laertius 10:34

The internal sensations they say are two, pleasure and pain, which occur to every living creature, and the one is akin to nature and the other alien: by means of these two choice and avoidance are determined. (Bailey)

Torquatus In Cicero’s On Ends 1:38

Therefore Epicurus refused to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure; what was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain, was not only itself pleasure, but the highest pleasure possible. Surely any one who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain. Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension. (L&S-THP)

Torquatus In Cicero’s On Ends 1:39

For if that were the only pleasure which tickled the senses, as it were, if I may say so, and which overflowed and penetrated them with a certain agreeable feeling, then even a hand could not be content with freedom from pain without some pleasing motion of pleasure. But if the highest pleasure is, as Epicurus asserts, to be free from pain, then, O Chrysippus, the first admission was correctly made to you, that the hand, when it was in that condition, was in want of nothing; but the second admission was not equally correct, that if pleasure were a good it would wish for it. For it would not wish for it for this reason, inasmuch as whatever is free from pain is in pleasure. (L&S-THP)

C-4 Pleasure - As The Guide Of Life

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 129

And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. (Bailey: [129] )

Lucretius - On The Nature of Things 2:167

But some in opposition to this, ignorant of matter, believe that nature cannot without the providence of the gods, in such nice conformity to the ways of men, vary the seasons of the year and bring forth crops, aye and all the other things, which divine pleasure, the guide of life, prompts men to approach, escorting them in person and enticing them by her fondlings to continue their races through the arts of Venus, that mankind may not come to an end.” (Munro)

C-5 Life - Life Is Desirable

Lucretius 5:170

Did our life lie in darkness and misery until the world’s beginning dawned? Although anyone who has been born must wish to remain in life so long as the caresses of pleasure hold him there, if someone has really never tasted the passion for life and has never been an individual, what harm does it do him not to have been created? (L&S-THP)

C-6 Life - Unlimited Time Contains No Greater Pleasure Than Limited Time

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 18

The pleasure in the flesh is not increased when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied: and the limit as regards pleasure in the mind is begotten by the reasoned understanding of these very pleasures, and of the emotions akin to them, which used to cause the greatest fear to the mind. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 19

PD19. Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures, by reason, the limits of pleasure. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 20

The flesh perceives the limits of pleasure as unlimited, and unlimited time is required to supply it. But the mind, having attained a reasoned understanding of the ultimate good of the flesh and its limits, and having dissipated the fears concerning the time to come, supplies us with the complete life, and we have no further need of infinite time; but neither does the mind shun pleasure, nor, when circumstances begin to bring about the departure from life, does it approach its end as though it fell short, in any way, of the best life. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 21

He who has learned the limits of life knows that that which removes the pain due to want, and makes the whole of life complete, is easy to obtain, so that there is no need of actions which involve competition. (L&S-THP)

C-7 Virtue Is Not Absolute Or An End In Itself - All Good And Evil Consists In Sensation

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 124

Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.” (L&S-THP)

C-8 Friendship, Society, and Justice

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 7

Certain people wanted to become famous and admired, thinking that they would thus acquire security from other men. Consequently, if such people’s life was secure, they did obtain nature’s good; but if it was not secure, they are not in possession of the objective which they originally sought after on the basis of nature’s affinity. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 17

The just < life > is most free from disturbance, but the unjust life is full of the greatest disturbance. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 27

Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of life as a whole, far the greatest is the possession of friendship. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 28

Confidence that nothing terrible lasts for ever or even for a long time is produced by the same judgment that also achieves the insight that friendship’s security within those very limitations is perfectly complete. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 31

Nature’s justice is a guarantee of utility with a view to not harming one another and not being harmed. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 32

Nothing is just or unjust in relation to those creatures which were unable to make contracts over not harming one another and not being harmed: so too with all peoples which were unable or unwilling to make contracts over not harming and not being harmed. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 33

Justice was never anything per se, but a contract, regularly arising at some place or other in people’s dealings with one another, over not harming or being harmed. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 34

Injustice is something bad not per se but in the fear that arises from the suspicion that one will not escape the notice of those who have the authority to punish such things. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 35

No one who secretly infringes any of the terms of a mutual contract made with a view to not harming and not being harmed can be confident that he will escape detection even if he does so countless times. For right up to his death it is unclear whether he will actually escape. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 36

Taken generally, justice is the same for all, since it is something useful in people’s social relationships. But in the light of what is peculiar to a region and to the whole range of determinants, the same thing does not turn out to be just for all. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 37

What is legally deemed to be just has its existence in the domain of justice when ever it is attested to be useful in the requirements of social relationships, whether or not it turns out to be the same for all. But if someone makes a law and it does not happen to accord with the utility of social relationships, it no longer has the nature of justice. And even if what is useful in the sphere of justice changes but fits the preconception for some time, it was no less just throughout that time for those who do not confuse themselves with empty utterances but simply look at the facts. (L&S-THP)

(38) When, without any change in circumstances, things held to be just are shown in practice not to be consistent with the concept, then those things were not just. And when circumstances change and the same things which were just are no longer beneficial, then those things were just so long as they were beneficial for the mutual relationships of fellow-citizens; but later when they were not beneficial they were no longer just. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 40

40] Those who had the power to eliminate all fear of their neighbors lived together accordingly in the most pleasurable way, through having the firmest pledge of security, and after enjoying the fullest intimacy, they did not grieve over someone’s untimely death as if it called for commiseration. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 23

All friendship is an intrinsic virtue, but it originates from benefiting. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 28

Neither those who are over-eager for friendship nor those who are hesitant should be approved, but it is also necessary to take risks for the sake of friendship. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 34

It is not our friends’ help that we need so much as the confidence of their help. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 39

One who is always looking for help is not a friend, nor is one who never associates help with friendship. For the former trades sentiment for recompense, while the latter cuts off confident expectation in regard to the future. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 52

Friendship dances round the world announcing to us all that we should wake up and felicitate one another. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 58

We must liberate ourselves from the prison of routine business and politics. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 66

Let us feel for our friends not by mourning but by thinking of them. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 70

Let nothing be done in your life which will bring you fear if it should be known to your neighbor. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 78

The man of noble character is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship. Of these the former is a mortal good, but the latter is immortal. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 79

The undisturbed man causes no stress to himself or to anyone else. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.925-38, 953 - 961

But the human race at that time was much hardier on the land, as was fitting for creatures engendered by the hard earth. Supported from within on larger and more solid bones, they were fitted all over their flesh with powerful sinews, and were not easily capable of being harmed by heat or cold or unusual food or any damage to the body. And for many of the sun’s cycles through the sky they dragged out their life in the roving manner of wild beasts. There was no sturdy director of the rounded plough, no one who knew how to work the land with iron or to dig young shoots into the soil or to cut down the old branches of tall trees with pruning knives. What sun and rain had given, what earth had created of its own accord, was gift sufficient to satisfy their hearts. As yet they did not know how to manipulate things with fire, nor how to use skins and clothe their bodies in the spoils of wild beasts. They dwelt in woods and mountain caves and forests, and used to hide their rough limbs amid shrubs when forced to take shelter from the lash of winds and rains. Nor could they have the common good in view, nor did they know how to make mutual use of any customs or laws. Whatever prize fortune had provided to each man, he carried off, taught to apply his strength and live on his own account just for himself. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.1011—27

Then after they obtained huts and skins and fire, and woman united with man with drew into a single marriage, and they saw offspring engendered from themselves, then the human race first began to soften. For fire saw to it that their chilly bodies could not now bear cold so well under the covering of the sky; sex sapped their strength, and children by their charm easily broke their parents’ stern demeanor. Then too neighbors began to form friendships, eager not to harm one another and not to be harmed; and they gained protection for children and for the female sex, when with babyish noises and gestures they indicated that it is right for everyone to pity the weak. Yet harmony could not entirely be created; but a good and substantial number preserved their contracts honorably. Otherwise the human race would even then have been totally destroyed, and reproduction could not have maintained the generations down to the present day. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5:1105 - 57

Day by day those of outstanding intellect and strength of mind would give increasing demonstrations of how to change the earlier mode of life by innovations and by fire. Kings began to found cities and to establish citadels for their own protection and refuge. They distributed cattle and lands, giving them to each man on the basis of his looks and strength and intellect; for good looks counted for much and strength was at a premium. Later came the invention of private property and the discovery of gold, which easily robbed the strong and handsome of their status; for in general people follow the wealthier man’s party, however vigorous and handsome they may be by birth. But if someone should govern his life by true reasoning, a man’s great wealth is to live sparingly with a tranquil mind; for there is never a shortage of little. But men wished to be famous and powerful, to secure a stable foundation for their fortune and the means of living out a peaceful life with wealth. To no purpose - in struggling to climb up to the pinnacle of status, they made their journey perilous. Even from the summit, resentment in a while, like a thunderbolt, strikes and hurls them down with ignominy into a foul abyss. For resentment, like a thunderbolt, generally scorches the heights and everything that is much higher than the rest. It is far better, then, to be obedient and quiet than to want imperial rule and the occupation of kingdoms. Let them accordingly toil in vain and sweat out their blood, as they fight along the narrow road of ambition. For the wisdom they savor is from another’s mouth and they seek things from hearsay rather than from their own sensations. This was as much the case in the past as it is now and will be. And so the kings were killed; the ancient majesty of thrones and proud sceptres lay overturned, and the illustrious badge of the sovereign head was stained with blood, mourning its great rank under the feet of the mob. For things are avidly stamped upon when they have previously roused extreme terror. Thus affairs were returning to the dregs of disorder, with each man seeking supreme power for himself. Then some people taught how to institute magistrates and constitutional rights, with a view to the voluntary employment of laws. For the human race, worn out by its violent way of life, was enfeebled by feuds; all the more, then, of its own volition it submitted to laws and constraining rights. Each man had been ready out of passion to avenge himself more fiercely than is now permitted by equitable laws, and therefore people were nauseated by their violent way of life. Since then, fear of punishment spoils the prizes of life, violence and wrongdoing entrap each person and generally recoil on their originator. It is not easy for one who infringes the common contracts of peace by his deeds to lead a calm and tranquil life. For even if he escapes notice by the race of gods and men, he must lack confidence that it will stay hidden forever. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda, Fragment 21.1.4—14, 2.10—14

Then truly the life of the gods will pass to men. For everything will be full of justice and mutual friendship, and there will come to be no need of city walls or laws and all the things we manufacture on account of one another. As for the necessities derived from agriculture, such activities will, to the extent that need requires, interrupt the continuity of philosophizing; for the farming operations with what our nature desires. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes of Oenoanda 25.2.3—II

In relation to each segment of the earth different people have different native lands. But in relation to the whole circuit of this world the entire earth is a single native land for everyone, and the world a single home. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10:117-20

The motives for one man harming another are enmity, resentment and disparagement, which the wise man masters by reason. Once he has become wise, he no longer adopts the opposite character and does not intentionally feign it either; rather, he will be affected by feelings but without having his wisdom impeded. However, not every bodily condition nor every people makes the occurrence of a wise man possible. Even if he is put on the rack, the wise man is happy, but when he is on the rack, he shrieks and groans. He will have no sexual intercourse with a woman whom the laws forbid. Nor wiII he punish his slaves, but will rather pity them and forgive any who are of good character. The Epicureans do not think that the wise man will fall in love, nor will he care about his funeral… or make fine public speeches… He will marry and have children … but he will not engage in politics … or rule as a tyrant or live as a Cynic… or a beggar. Even if he is robbed of his eyes, he will keep his share in life… He will feel grief… and bring lawsuits, and leave writings when he dies. But he will not make ceremonial speeches. He will be concerned about his property and the future, enjoy the countryside, be equipped against fortune, and never give up a friend. He will be concerned about his reputation, up to the point of ensuring that he will not be disparaged. He will take more delight than other men in theatrical events. He will set up statues but be indifferent about having one. Only he could discourse correctly about music and poetry, but he would not actually write poems. One wise man is not wiser than another. He will make money, but only by his wisdom, if he is hard up. He will on occasion pay court to a king. He will take pleasure in someone’s being put straight. He will set up a school, but not one which results in courting the mob. He will give public lectures, but not at his own wish. He will hold firm doctrines and not be a skeptic. In sleep he will be just the same. And he will on occasion die for a friend. (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On Ends 1.66—70

[Torquatus] I notice that friendship has been discussed by our school in three ways. Some have said that the pleasures which belong to friends are not as desirable per se as those we desire as our own. This position is thought by certain people to make friendship unstable, though in my opinion its proponents are successful and easily defend themselves. They say that friendship is no more separable from pleasure than are the virtues we discussed previously. A lonely life without friends is packed with risks and anxieties. Therefore reason itself advises the formation of friendships; their acquisition strengthens the mind and gives it the absolutely secure expectation of generating pleasures. Moreover, just as enmities, resentments and disparagements are opposed to pleasures, so friendships are creators of pleasures, as well as being their most reliable protectors, for friends and for ourselves alike. The pleasures they enjoy are not only of the present, but they are also elated by the hope of the near and distant future. Without friendship we are quite unable to secure a joy in life which is steady and lasting, nor can we preserve friendship itself unless we love our friends as much as ourselves. Therefore friendship involves both this latter and the link with pleasure. For we rejoice in our friends’ joy as much as in our own and are equally pained by their distress. The wise man, therefore, will have just the same feelings towards his friend that he has for himself, and he will work as much for his friend’s pleasure as he would for his own. Some Epicureans, however, though intelligent enough, are a little more timid in facing the criticisms from you [Academics]; they are afraid that if we regard friendship as desirable just for our own pleasure, it will seem to be completely crippled, as it were. In their view, then, the first associations and unions and wishes to form relationships occur for the sake of pleasure; but when advancing familiarity has produced intimacy, affection blossoms to such an extent that friends come to be loved just for their own sake even if no advantage accrues from the friendship. If, at any rate, familiarity with places, temples, cities, gymnasia, playing-fields, dogs, horses, hunting and other sports, gets us in the habit of loving them, how much more easily and rightly could this happen in human relationships! There are also some w h o say that wise men have a sort of contract to love their friends no less than themselves. We understand the possibility of this, and often observe it too. It is self-evident that no better means of living joyously can be found than such a relationship. All of these points serve to settle not just the absence of any problem in accounting for friendship, if the highest good is located in pleasure, but the impossibility without this thesis of finding any basis at all for friendship. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1097A (Usener 544

They themselves [Epicureans] in fact say that it is more pleasurable to confer a benefit than to receive one. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Colotes 1111B (Usener 546)

Though choosing friendship for the sake of pleasure, he [Epicurus} says he takes on the greatest pains on behalf of his friends. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Colotes 1124D

Right at the end of the book he [Colotes] says that ‘those who drew up laws and customs and established monarchical and other forms of government brought life into a state of much security and tranquility and banished turmoil; and if anyone should remove these things, we would live a life of beasts, and one man on meeting another will all but devour him. (L&S-THP)

Seneca, Letters 19.10 (Usener 542)

He [Epicurus] says you should be more concerned at inspecting whom you eat and drink with, than what you eat and drink. For feeding without a friend is the life of a lion and a wolf. (L&S-THP)

Porphyry, On Abstinence 1.7.1-9.4

[Reporting the Epicurean Hermarchus] The Epicureans … say that the ancient legislators, after studying men’s social life and their dealings with one another, pronounced murder a sacrilege and attached special penalties to it. Another factor may have been the existence of a certain natural affinity between man and man, deriving from their likeness in body and soul, which inhibited the destruction of this kind of creature as readily as that of others whom it is permitted to kill. But the principal reason for their refusal to tolerate murder and for pronouncing it sacrilegious was the belief that it is not useful to the general structure of human life. Thereafter, those who understood the utility of the law had no need of any further reason to restrain them from this act; the others, who were unable to take sufficient cognizance of this, refrained from readily killing one another through fear of the magnitude of the punishment. It is evident that each of these inhibitions is still operative today… Originally no law, whether written or unwritten, among those that persist today and are naturally transmitted, was established by force, but only by agreement of the users themselves. For what distinguished the men w h o popularized such practices from the masses was not their physical strength and totalitarian power but their prudence. They established a rational calculation of utility in those whose previous perception of this was irrational and often forgetful, while terrifying others by the magnitude of the penalties. For the only remedy against the ignorance of utility was fear of the punishment fixed by the law. Today too this Is the only check and deterrent on ordinary people from acting against public or private interest. But if everyone were equally able to observe and be mindful of utility, they would have n o need of laws in addition; of their own volition, they would steer clear of what is forbidden and do what is prescribed. For the observation of what is useful and harmful is sufficient to secure avoidance of some things and choice of others. The threat of punishment is addressed to those who fail to take note of utility. For hanging over them, it compels them to master impulses which lead to inexpedient actions that are contrary to utility, and forcibly helps to constrain them to do what they should. This explains too why the legislators did not exempt unintentional killing from all punishment; they wanted to avoid giving any pretext to people who might intentionally choose to imitate acts done unintentionally, and also to ensure that such matters should not be approached with a carelessness or casualness which would have many genuinely unintentional consequences. For unintentional killing was also incompatible with utility, and for the same reasons as people’s intentional destruction of one another. Consequently, since some unintentional acts arise from causes that are indeterminable and beyond man’s nature to forestall, while others are due to our own negligence and inattention to what matters, they wished to restrain the carelessness which does harm to a man’s neighbors. Hence they did not exempt unintentional action from all penalty, but through holding out the fear of punishments succeeded in removing most of this kind of offence. In my own opinion, moreover, the reason why murders excused by the law are subject to the practice of expiation through purifications, as intended by those who initiated this excellent custom, was to deter people as far as possible from the intentional action. For ordinary people everywhere needed a check on their readiness to act contrary to utility. Therefore those who were first aware of this not only drew up punishments but also held out the threat of a different and irrational fear, with the pronouncement that those guilty of any kind of homicide were impure until they had experienced purification. For the irrational part of the soul, by various forms of education, has arrived at the present condition of civility as a result of the civilizing devices applied to the irrational motion of desire by those who originally set the masses in order; and these include the prohibition of indiscriminately killing one another. (L&S-THP)

Porphyry, On Abstinence 1.10.1—12.7

[Reporting on Hermarchus] In determining what we should and should not do, the first legislators had good reason for not setting any ban on the destruction of other creatures. For in regard to these utility results from the opposite action: man would not have been able to survive without taking steps to defend himself against animals by living a social life. Some of the most talented men of the time remembered that they themselves abstained from murder because that was useful for their preservation; and they reminded the rest of what they gained from their social life, that by keeping their hands off their own kind they might safeguard the community which contributed to the individual preservation of each person. Existing as a separate community and doing no harm to their fellow residents were useful for expelling creatures of other species; and also as a protection against men intent on doing harm. This is the reason why for a while people kept their hands off their own kind, in as much as the latter were entering into the same community of needs. But as time passed, the population expanded; creatures of other kinds were expelled, and some people acquired a rational calculation of what was useful in their social life, not just an irrational memory. Accordingly they attempted to impose stronger restraints on those who were ready to kill one another and were weakening internal security by their forgetfulness of the past. In their efforts to do this, they introduced the legislation which still exists today among cities and peoples. The masses complied with their legislators voluntarily, as a result of now having a better grasp of what was useful in their social grouping. For their absence of fear was promoted equally by the merciless killing of everything harmful and the preservation of every means to its destruction. Hence, with good reason, one of the above mentioned [killings] was forbidden, the other permitted. It is irrelevant to point out that the law permits us to kill certain animals that are not destructive to man or harmful to our lives in any other way. For practically none of the animals we are permitted by law to kill would fail to be harmful to us if they were allowed to proliferate to excess. Yet by being preserved in their present numbers they satisfy certain of our life’s needs… Hence we completely destroy some animals [lions, wolves, etc.], but in the case of other animals [sheep, cattle etc.] we only get rid of the excess. We must suppose that reasons similar to what has been mentioned influenced those who originally made laws concerning the regulation of eating living beings. In the case of the inedible, the reason was utility and its opposite. Hence it is a mark of gross stupidity for some people to say that everything excellent and just in the sphere of legislation is determined by individual judgments. This is not the case; rather it is just like other matters of utility, such as health and thousands of others. In many cases, however, they miss what is universal as well as what is individual. For it is the case both that some people fail to see those laws which fit everyone alike, either ignoring them in the belief that they are indifferent or taking the opposite view about them, and that some people think things which are not universally useful to be useful everywhere. Accordingly, they attach themselves to measures which do not fit, even if in some cases they do discover what is profitable to themselves and what is universally beneficial. Such laws include ones concerned with the eating and destruction of living things. Among most peoples these laws are formulated on account of the particular nature of the country, and we do not have to observe them since we do not live in the same place. If, then, it were possible to make a kind of contract with the other animals, or with men, over their nor killing us or being killed by us indiscriminately, it would have been good to push justice up to this point; for it would have extended our security. But since it was impossible to associate creatures that lack reason with law, it was not possible to use such an instrument as the means of providing for utility in our security from other living beings any more than from lifeless things. All that can assure our security is the option that we now have of killing them. (L&S-THP)

C-9 Divinity - Gods Are Blessed And Incorruptible But Entirely Natural

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 1

That which is blessed and indestructible has no troubles itself, nor does it give trouble to anyone else, so that it is not affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. For all such things imply weakness. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 123-4

First, think of god as an imperishable and blessed creature, as the common idea of god is in outline, and attach to him nothing alien to imperishability or inappropriate to blessedness, but believe about him everything that can preserve his combination of blessedness and imperishability. For there are gods - the knowledge of them is self-evident. But they are not such as the many believe them to be. For by their beliefs as to their nature the many do not preserve them. The impious man is not he who denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to gods the beliefs of the many about them. For they are not preconceptions but false suppositions, the assertions of the many about gods. It is through these that the greatest harms, the ones affecting bad men, stem from gods, and the greatest benefits too. For having a total affinity for their own virtues, they are receptive to those who are like them, and consider alien all that is not of that kind. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 135

Practise these things [Epicurus’ ethical teachings] and all that belongs with them, in relation to yourself by day, and by night in relation to your likeness, and you will never be disquieted, awake or in your dreams, but will live like a god among men. For quite unlike a mortal animal is a man who lives among immortal goods. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 76

Among celestial phenomena movement, turning, eclipse, rising, setting and the like should not be thought to come about through the ministry and present or future arrangements of some individual who at the same time possesses the combination of total blessedness and imperishability. For trouble, concern, anger and favor are incompatible with blessedness, but have their origin in weakness, fear and dependence on neighbors. Nor should we think that beings which are at the same time conglomerations of fire possess blessedness and voluntarily take on these movements. But we must observe all the majesty associated with all the names which we apply to such conceptions, if they give rise to no belief conflicting with majesty. Otherwise the conflict itself will give rise to the greatest mental disquiet. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.646-60

(1) Again, we must believe that the nature of the gods necessarily enjoys immortal life in deepest peace, far removed and separated from our affairs. (2) Free from all pain, free from all dangers, powerful in its own resources, needing nothing from us, it is neither won by good services nor touched by anger. … (3) For if you think that the gods care for human affairs, you will already be involving yourself in all kinds of difficulties. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5.146—55

You cannot, likewise, believe that the holy abodes of the gods are in any region of our world. For the gods’ nature is so tenuous and far-removed from our senses that it is scarcely viewed by the mind. Since it escapes the touch and impact of our hands, it cannot have contact with anything which we can touch. For what cannot itself be touched, cannot touch. Hence their abodes too must be unlike ours, in keeping with their tenuous bodies. This I will prove to you at length later on. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 5:1161 - 1225

An easier task now is to explain what cause spread the authority of the gods through the wide world, filled the cities with altars, and led to the institution of the holy rituals which now flourish in great states and places. These even now are the source of the awe which sits in mortal men’s hearts, which raises new shrines to the gods all over the world, and which compels them to join the rites on holy days. The reason is that already in those days the races of mortal men used to see with waking mind, and even more so in their dreams, figures of gods, of marvelous appearance and prodigious size. They attributed sensation to them, because they seemed to move their limbs, and to give utterance with voices of a dignity to match their splendid appearance and great strength. They endowed them with everlasting life, because their appearance was in perpetual supply and the form remained unchanged, and more generally because they supposed that beings with such strength could not easily be overcome by any force. And hence they supposed them to be supremely blessed, because none of them seemed oppressed by fear of death, and also because in their dreams they saw them perform many marvelous acts with no trouble to themselves. Also, they saw how the patterns of heavenly motion and the various seasons of the year came round in a fixed order, and were unequal to discovering the causes which brought this about. They therefore took refuge in the practice of attributing it all to the gods and making everything be controlled by their authority. And they located the gods’ abodes and precincts in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that night and moon are seen to rotate — moon, day, night and her stern beacons, the sky’s night-wandering torches and flying flames, clouds, sun, rain, snow, winds, lightning, hail, sudden noises, and mighty menacing rumbles. Unhappy human race, to attribute such behaviour, and bitter wrath too, to the gods! What lamentations did they lay up for themselves in those days, what wounds for us, what tears for our descendants! It is no piety to be seen with covered head bowing again and again to a stone and visiting every altar, nor to grovel on the ground and raise your hands before the shrines of the gods, nor to drench altars in the blood of animals, nor to utter strings of prayers; but rather, to be able to contemplate all things with a tranquil mind. For when we gaze upwards at the heavenly precincts of the great cosmos and at the aether studded with its shimmering stars, and when we turn our thought to the paths of sun and moon, then in our hearts, already beset with other troubles, a further anxiety is awakened and begins to raise its head, that what confronts us may be some unbounded power, belonging to the gods, which turns the gleaming stars on their various courses. For the lack of an explanation drives the mind to wonder whether the world had any beginning, and likewise whether there is any limit to the period for which its walls can bear the strain of this restless motion, or whether they are divinely endowed with everlasting immunity and can glide down the unending track of measureless time, defying its might. Besides, whose mind does not shrink with fear of the gods, whose limbs do not crawl with terror, whenever the ground is scorched and shaken by the quivering impact of a thunderbolt and rumblings sweep across the great heavens? Do not whole nations tremble, and proud kings shrink, transfixed with fear of the gods, lest the grim hour of reckoning should have arrived for some wicked act or proud word? (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 6:68-79

Unless you expel these ideas from your mind and drive far away beliefs unworthy of the gods and alien to their tranquility, the holy divinity of the gods, damaged by you, will frequently do you harm: not because of the possibility of violating the gods’ supreme power, and of their consequent angry thirst for bitter vengeance, but because you yourself will imagine that those tranquil and peaceful beings are rolling mighty billows of wrath against you. You will be unable to visit the shrines of the gods with a calm heart, and incapable of receiving with tranquility and peace the images from their holy bodies which travel into men’s minds to reveal the gods’ appearance. The direct effect on your life is obvious. (L&S-THP)

Philodemus, On Piety 112.5-12 (Usener 87)

Likewise in book XII [of Epicurus’ On nature] he criticizes Prodicus, Diagoras, Critias and others, calling them crazy, and compares them to people in a Bacchic frenzy. [Note: The listed names were apparently atheists??] (L&S-THP)

Cicero, On The Nature of the Gods 1:43 -49

[Velleius] Anyone who reflects how ungrounded and rash these [non-Epicurean theological] doctrines are ought to revere Epicurus and place him among the very beings whom this investigation concerns. For he alone saw, first, that the gods existed, because nature herself had imprinted the conception of them in all men’s minds. For what human nation or race does not have, without instruction, some preconception of the gods? Epicurus’ word for this is prolepsis, that is what we may call a delineation of a thing, preconceived by the mind, without which understanding, inquiry and discussion are impossible. The power and value of this reasoning we have learned from Epicurus’ heaven-sent book on the yardstick and criterion. Thus you see the foundation of this inquiry admirably laid. For since the belief has not been established by any convention, custom or law, and retains unanimous consent, it must necessarily be understood that there are gods, given that we have ingrained, or rather innate, knowledge of them. But that on which all men’s nature agrees must necessarily be true. Therefore it must be conceded that there are gods. Since this is agreed among virtually all - the uneducated, as well as philosophers - let us also allow the following to be agreed: that what I called our preconception, or prenotion, of the gods (for new things require new names, just as Epicurus himself gave prolepsis its name, a name which no one had previously applied to it) is such that we think the gods blessed and immortal. For as well as giving us a delineation of the gods themselves, nature has also engraved on our minds the view of them as everlasting and blessed. Therefore Epicurus’ well-known maxim puts it rightly: ‘That which is blessed and imperishable neither suffers nor inflicts trouble, and therefore is affected neither by anger nor by favor. For all such things are marks of weakness.’ If our sole purpose were to worship the gods in piety and to be freed from superstition, what I have said would suffice. For the sublime nature of the gods would earn men’s pious worship, since what ever ranks supreme deserves reverence. And all fear of the gods’ power and anger would have been expelled. For it is understood that anger and favor are not part of a blessed and immortal nature, and that once these are removed no fears of those above menace us. But in order to confirm this belief the mind requires to know god’s shape, way of life and mode of thought. As regards their shape, we have the advice of nature, plus the proof of reasoning. For nature supplies us all, whatever our race, with no other view of the gods than as human in form: what other form does anyone ever think of, whether awake or in sleep? But lest we appeal exclusively to primary conceptions, we have the same conclusion on the authority of reason itself. For given that it seems fitting for that nature which is most sublime, whether because blessed or because everlasting, to be also the most beautiful, what configuration of limbs or features, what shape, what appearance can be more beautiful than the human kind? At any rate, your people [the Stoics], Lucilius, make it their habit (unlike my friend Cotta [the Academic], whose stance varies) when illustrating god’s artistic creativity, to describe how all the features of the human figure are well-fashioned not only for utility but also for beauty. But if the human figure is superior to all other shapes of animate beings, and god is animate, he certainly possesses that figure which is most beautiful of all. And since the gods are agreed to be supremely blessed, and since no one can be blessed without virtue, and virtue is impossible without reason, and reason can exist only in the human form, it must be admitted that the gods are of human appearance. However, that appearance is not body but quasi-body, and it does not have blood but quasi-blood. (Although these discoveries of Epicurus’ are too acute, and his words too subtle, to be appreciated by just anyone, I am relying on your powers of understanding and expounding them more briefly than my case requires.) Epicurus, who not only sees hidden and profoundly obscure things with his mind but even handles them as if they were at his fingertips, teaches that the force and nature of the gods is of such a kind that it is, primarily, viewed not by sensation but by the m in d, possessing neither the kind of solidity n or the numerical distinctness of those things which because of their concreteness he calls steremnia; but that we apprehend images by their similarity and by a process of transition, since an endless series of extremely similar images arises from the countless atom s and flows to the gods, and that our mind, by focusing intently on those images with the greatest feelings of pleasure, gains an understanding of what a blessed and everlasting nature is. (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 9.43—7

The same reply can be made to Epicurus’ belief that the idea of gods arose from dream impressions of human-shaped images. For why should these have given rise to the idea of gods, rather than of outsized men? And in general it will be possible to reply to all the doctrines we have listed that men’s idea of god is not based on mere largeness in a human-shaped animal, but includes his being blessed and imperishable and wielding the greatest power in the world. But from what origin, or how, these thoughts occurred among the first men to draw a conception of god, is not explained by those who attribute the cause to dream impressions and to the orderly motion of the heavenly bodies. To this they reply that the idea of god’s existence originated from appearances in dreams, or from the world’s phenomena, but that the idea of god’s being everlasting and imperishable and perfect in happiness arose through a process of transition from men. For just as we acquired the idea of a Cyclops by enlarging the common man in our impression of him, so too we have started with the idea of a happy man, blessed with his full complement of goods, then intensified these features into the idea of god, their supreme fulfillment. And again, having formed an impression of a long-lived man, the men of old increased the time-span to infinity by combining the past and future with the present; and then, having thus arrived at the conception of the everlasting, they said that god was everlasting too. Those who say this are championing a plausible doctrine. But they easily slip into that most puzzling trap, circularity. For in order first to get the idea of a happy man, and then that of god by transition, we must have an idea of what happiness is, since the idea of the happy man is of one who shares in happiness. But according to them happiness (eudaimonia) was a divine (daimonia) and godly nature, and the word ‘happy’ (eudaimon) was applied to someone who had his deity (daimon) disposed well (eu). Hence in order to grasp human happiness we must first have the idea of god and deity, but in order to have the idea of god we must first have a conception of a happy man. Therefore each, by presupposing the idea of the other, is unthinkable for us. (L&S-THP)

Scholion on Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 1

In other works he [Epicurus] says that the gods are seen by reason, some numerically distinct, others with formal unity, resulting from a continuous influx of similar images to the same place, and human in form. (L&S-THP)

Anonymous Epicurean treatise on theology (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 215) 1.4-24

… nor, by Zeus, when someone or other speaks instead like this: ‘I fear all the gods whom I revere, and wish to make all the burnt offerings and dedications to them.’ For although such a person may sometimes be more sophisticated than other individuals, there is not yet, along these lines either, a firm basis for piety. My friend, consider it a matter of supreme blessedness to have discriminated properly the most excellent thing that we can think of among existing things. Marvel at your discrimination of it, and revere it without fear. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1091 B - C (Usener 419)

What great pleasure these men [the Epicureans] have, what blessedness they enjoy, when they delight in suffering no evil, grief or pain! Does this not warrant their thinking and saying what they do say, in labelling themselves ‘imperishable’ and ‘equal to gods’, and in frenziedly bellowing under the influence of pleasure, because of their superabundance and maximization of goods, that they scorn all else, having alone discovered that great and divine good, the absence of evil! (L&S-THP)

C-10 Death Is Nothing To Us - Aspects Of Death And Dying

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 124—7

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil lie in sensation, whereas death is the absence of sensation. Hence a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding infinite time, bur by ridding us of the desire for immortality. For there is nothing fearful in living for one who genuinely grasps that there is nothing fearful in not living. Therefore he speaks idly who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when present but because it is painful in anticipation. For if something causes no distress when present, it is fruitless to be pained by the expectation of it. Therefore that most frightful of evils, death, is nothing to us, seeing that when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we do not exist. Thus it is nothing to either the living or the dead, seeing that the former do not have it and the latter no longer exist. The many sometimes shun death as the greatest of evils, but at other times choose it as a release from life’s evils. But the wise man neither deprecates living nor fears not living. For he neither finds living irksome nor thinks not living an evil. But just as he chooses the pleasantest food, not simply the greater quantity, so too he enjoys the pleasantest time, not the longest. He who advises the young man to live well but the old man to die well is naive, not only because life is something to be welcomeda, but also because to practise living well and to practise dying well are one and the same. Much worse, however, is he who says ‘It’s a fine thing never to be born. Or, once born, to pass through the gates of Hades with the utmost speed. If he believes what he says, why does he not take his departure from life? He has every opportunity to do so, supposing that his resolve were serious. If he is joking, his words are idle and will be greeted with incredulity. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 2

Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 19

Infinite time and finite time contain equal pleasure, if one measures the limits of pleasure by reasoning. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 20

The flesh places the limits of pleasure at infinity, and needs an infinite time to bring it about. But the intellect, by making a rational calculation of the end and the limit which govern the flesh, and by dispelling the fears about eternity, brings about the complete life, so that we no longer need the infinite time. But neither does it shun pleasure, nor even when circumstances bring about our departure from life does it suppose, as it perishes, that it has in any way fallen short of the best life. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 21

He who knows the limits of life knows how easy it is to obtain that which removes pain caused by want and that which makes the whole of life complete. He therefore has no need for competitive involvements. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 31

Against other things it is possible to obtain security. But when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3: 830—911

Therefore death is nothing to us, of no concern whatsoever, once it is appreciated that the mind has a mortal nature. Just as in the past we had no sensation of discomfort when the Carthaginians were converging to attack, so too, when we will no longer exist following the severing of the soul and body, from whose conjunction we are constituted, you can take it that nothing at all will be able to affect us and to stir our sensation — not if the earth collapses into sea, and sea into sky. Even if the nature of our mind and the power of our spirit do have sensation after they are torn from our bodies, that is still nothing to us, who are constituted by the conjunction of body and spirit. Or supposing that after our death the passage of time will bring our matter back together and reconstitute it in its present arrangement, and the light of life will be restored to us, even that eventuality would be of no concern to us, once our self-recollection was interrupted. Nor do ourselves which existed in the past concern us now: we feel no anguish about them. For when you look back at the entire past span of measureless time, and then reflect how various are the motions of matter, you could easily believe that the same primary particles of which we now consist have often in the past been arranged in the same order as now. Yet our minds cannot remember it. For in between there has been an interruption of life, and all the motions have been at random, without sensation. For if there is going to be unhappiness and suffering, the person must also himself exist at that same time, for the evil to be able to befall him. Since death robs him of this, preventing the existence of the person for the evils to be heaped upon, you can tell that there is nothing for us to fear in death, that he who does not exist cannot be unhappy, and that when immortal death snatches away a mortal life it is no different from never having been born. So when you see a man resent the prospect of his body’s being buried and rotting after death, or being destroyed by fire or by the jaws of wild beasts, you m a y be sure that his words do not ring true, and that there lurks in his heart some hidden sting, however much he may deny the belief that he will have any sensation in death. For he does not, I think, grant either the substance or the ground of what he professes. Instead of completely stripping himself of life, he is unconsciously making some bit of himself survive. For when anybody in life imagines that in death the birds and beasts will rip up his body, he pities himself. For he does not distinguish himself from it or adequately detach himself from the abandoned corpse: he identifies himself with it, and by remaining present he infects it with his own sensation. He thus comes to resent the fact that he was born mortal, and does not see that in the reality of death be will have no other self left alive, able to mour n his passing, and to stand by, suffering the agony of his fallen body being ripped or burned. ‘No more for you the welcome of a joyful home and a good wife. No more will your children run to snatch the first kiss, and move your heart with unspoken delight. No more will you be able to protect the success of your affairs and your dependants. Unhappy man’, they say, ‘unhappily robbed by a single hateful day of all those rewards of life.’ What they fail to add is: ’ Nor does any yearning for those things remain in you, ’ If they properly saw this with their mind, and followed it up in their words, they would unshackle themselves of great mental anguish and fear. ‘You, at least, in death’s sleep, will be ever more free of all pain and suffering. But we have stood viewing your ashes before us on the grim pyre, weeping inconsolably. Our grief will be everlasting. No day will come to purge our hearts of it.’ Of the person who says this, we should ask what is so sad about a return to sleep and rest, that someone should be able to pine in everlasting grief. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3.894-911

(1) Why not rather, mortal, make an end of life and labor in tranquility? For all things that you could want have been devised and discovered to please you, yet the same things always recur. If your body is not yet withered with age nor your limbs worn and decayed, yet all things remain the same, even if you should go on to outlast all generations, or even more, if you should never die. (2) What answer can we make except that nature brings a true case against us and sets out in her pleading a true indictment? (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:966-1023

No one is sent down to the black pit of Tartarus. Their matter is needed so that future generations can grow. But these will all follow you too once their life is played out. No less than you, they have fallen and will fall. So ceaselessly does one thing arise from another. All have a lease on life, but none has the freehold. Undoubtedly it is in our life that all those things exist which are fabled to be in the depths of hell. No unhappy Tantalus quakes at the huge rock hanging over him in mid-air, numbed by an empty terror. Rather, it is in life that an empty fear of the gods hounds mortals: each is afraid of the fall which his lot may bring him. Nor is it true that Tityos lies in hell with birds tunnelling into him, or that they can really find an everlasting food supply to forage beneath his great chest. However huge were the spread of his body, even were his sprawling limbs to cover not just nine acres but the whole earth, he would still not be able to endure everlasting pain nor to go on forever providing food from his own body. But we have our own Tityos here— the man who lies lovesick, torn apart by winged creatures and gnawed at by nervous agony, or rent by cares through some other passion. Sisyphus too exists before our eyes in real life. He is the man who thirsts to run for the rods and cruel axes of public office, and who always returns beaten and dejected. For to pursue the empty and unattainable goal of power, and in its pursuit to endure unremittingly hard toil, that is the struggle of pushing uphill a stone which, in spite of all, at the very peak rolls back and hurtles downward to the level ground below, Then again, to be always indulging an ungrateful mind, and never to satisfy it with its fill of good things, as the seasons of the year do for us when they come round bringing their fruits and a variety of delights, despite which we are never satisfied with our fill of life’s benefits - that, I believe, is the fable of the girls in the bloom of youth gathering water into a pitcher full of holes which it is impossible to fill. As for Cerberus, the Furies, and the pitch black of Tartarus belching dreadful heat from its jaws, they do not, and indeed cannot, exist anywhere. Wh at there is in real life is the fear of punishment for crimes - as prominent a fear as the crimes are prominent. And there is atonement for wrongdoing: prison, the dreadful hurling down from the rock, lashes, executioners, the rack, tar, metal plates, firebrands. Even when these are absent, still the mind, in the anxiety brought on by awareness of its deeds, goads itself and scorches itself with whips. And all the time it is failing to see what limit to evils there can be, and what the end to punishment is. It shudders at these things all the more for fear that in death they may get worse. Here on earth the life of the foolish becomes hell. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 3:1087-94

Nor do we, or can we, by prolonging life subtract anything from the time of death, so as perhaps to shorten our period of extinction! Hence you may live to see out as many centuries as you like: no less will that everlasting death await you. No shorter will be the period of nonexistence for one who has ended his life from today than for one who perished many months or years ago. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.22 (Usener 138)

Here is the letter to Idomeneus which he [Epicurus] wrote on his deathbed: ‘I wrote this to you on that blessed day of my life which was also the last. Strangury and dysentery had set in, with all the extreme intensity of which they are capable. But the joy in my soul at the memory of our past discussions was enough to counterbalance all this. I ask you, as befits your lifelong companionship with me and with philosophy: take care of the children of Metrodorus. ’ (L&S-THP)

C-11 The Role of Philosophy

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 122

Let no one either delay philosophizing when young, or weary of philosophizing when old. For no one is under-age or over-age for health of the soul. To say either that the time is not yet ripe for philosophizing, or that the time for philosophizing has gone by, is like saying that the time for happiness either has not arrived or is no more. So both young and old must philosophize — the young man so that as he ages he can be made young by his goods, through his thankfulness for things past, the old man so that he can be at once young and aged, through his fearlessness towards things future, Therefore we must rehearse the things which produce happiness, seeing that when happiness is present we have everything, while when it is absent the one aim of our actions is to have it. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 11

Were we not upset by the worries that celestial phenomena and death might matter to us, and also by failure to appreciate the limits of pains and desires, we would have no need for natural philosophy. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 12

There is no way to dispel the fear about matters of supreme importance, for someone who does not know what the nature of the universe is but retains some of the fears based on mythology. Hence without natural philosophy there is no way of securing the purity of our pleasures. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 13

There is no benefit in creating security with respect to men while retaining worries about things up above, things beneath the earth, and generally things in the infinite. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 27

In other pursuits the reward comes at the end and is hard won. But in philosophy enjoyment keeps pace with knowledge. It is not learning followed by entertainment, but learning and entertainment at the same time. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 29

I would rather speak with the frankness of a natural philosopher, and reveal the things which are expedient to all mankind, even if no one is going to understand me, than assent to the received opinions and reap the adulation lavishly bestowed by the multitude. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 41

We should laugh, philosophize, and handle our household affairs and other personal matters, all at the same time, and never cease making the utterances which stem from correct philosophy. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 45

Natural philosophy does not make people boastful and loud-mouthed, nor flaunters of culture, the thing so hotly competed for among the multitude, but modest and self-sufficient, and proud at their own goods, not at those of their circumstances. (L&S-THP)

Epicurus, Vatican Saying 54

One should not pretend to philosophize, but actually philosophize. For what we need is not the semblance of health, but real health. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 1.62-79

(1) When human life lay foul to see and groveling upon the ground, crushed by the weight of Religion, who displayed her head from the regions of heaven, lowering over mortals with horrible aspect, (2) a man of Greece dared first to raise his mortal eyes against her, first to make a stand against her; for neither fables of the gods could quell him, nor thunderbolts, nor heaven with menacing roar, but all the more they goaded the eager courage of his soul to long to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts of nature’s gates. (3) Therefore his vigorous mind won through, and he passed on far beyond the fiery walls of the world, and in mind and spirit traversed the boundless universe; (4) whence returning victorious he reports to us what can arise, what cannot, and by what principle each thing has its powers limited and its deep-set boundary stone. (5) Therefore Religion is now in turn cast down and trampled underfoot, while we by the victory are exalted high as heaven. (L&S-THP)

Lucretius 2.7-13

But nothing is more welcome than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering all abroad and going astray in their search for the path of life, competing in talent, contending in rank, striving night and day by extraordinary effort to rise to the height of power and gain possession of the world. (L&S-THP)

Diogenes Laertius 10.6

In his letter to Pythocles Epicurus writes: ‘My fortunate friend, hoist your sail and steer clear of ail culture.’ (L&S-THP)

Porphyry, To Marcella 31 (Usener 221)

[Quoting Epicurus] ‘Empty are the words of that philosopher who offers therapy for no human suffering. For just as there is no use in medical expertise if it does not give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in philosophy if it does not expel the suffering of the soul.’ (L&S-THP)

Athenaeus 588A (Usener 117)

[Quoting Epicurus] ‘I congratulate you, Apelles, for embarking on philosophy while still untainted by any culture.’ (L&S-THP)

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors n. 169 (Usener 219)

Epicurus used to say that philosophy is an activity which by arguments and discussions brings about the happy life. (L&S-THP)

Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1095c (Usener 20)

Epicurus in his Problems declares that the wise man is a theatre-lover, who gets more joy than anyone else from festival concerts and shows. Yet he allows no place, even at table, for issues of musical theory or for literary-critical questions. (L&S-THP)

This collection is organized for study and reference. Citations from Diogenes Laertius Book X and additional Lucretius references to be added.