Survey of Texts

Epicurus was born in Samos, Greece in 341 BC, and died in Athens in 270 BC. This places the formation of the school shortly after the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and at about the same time as the founding of the Stoic school. All of this occurred more than 200 years before the development of Christianity.

No original documents from the time of Epicurus himself survive to us, but in the works of other writers which were preserved we have a great deal of information. Versions of these documents will be available here soon.

• Diogenes Laertius wrote a biography which includes the full text of several of Epicurus' key letters, as well as a list of his Principal Doctrines.
• Lucretius wrote "On The Nature of Things," a poetic summary of the heart of Epicurean philosophy.
• Cicero wrote several commentaries from an anti-Epicurean perspective, but in doing so he preserved several excellent summaries of key Epicurean views of Ethics and the Nature of the Gods.
• Diogenes of Oinoanda erected a stone wall on which was inscribed many key elements of the philosophy of Epicurus.
• Fragment Collections The primary reference collection of Epicurean Fragments was compiled in Greek and Latin by Hermann Usener. A collection in English was prepared by Cyril Bailey. Translations of the Usener collection have been made and versions of both the Usener and Bailey versions are available here. The Vatican List of Sayings is contained in the Bailey collection.

Other texts, such as those of Philodemus, survive and can be very useful, but they are frequently either written by opponents of Epicurus, or so fragmentary that their meaning is unclear. Read such works critically and compare them closely to the most well preserved texts of Diogenes Laertius, Lucretius, and Diogenes of Oinoanda. Over time as public domain versions of those works become available we will add them here.