Work · Hellenistic, Roman & Late Antique
Letter to Menoeceus
A short guide to the happy life: death is nothing to us.
Introduction
One of three letters of Epicurus that survive complete, because Diogenes Laertius copied them into his “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers” (3rd century CE). In a few pages it sums up Epicurean ethics for a general reader. The gods are blessed and immortal and are not to be feared. Desires are sorted into natural and necessary, merely natural, and empty ones; only the first must be satisfied for a happy life. Pleasure is the beginning and goal of a blessed life, yet Epicurus rejects the charge of indulgence: what he means is freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the soul. Prudence (phronēsis) is the greatest good.
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Connections
Taken up in
- De rerum naturac. 55 BCE · Lucretius
- Letters to Luciliusc. 65 · Seneca
- Syntagma philosophicum1658 · Pierre Gassendi
Criticized in
- On Ends (De finibus)c. 45 BCE · Cicero
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