Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher, born on the island of Samos in 341 BC and active in Athens until his death in 270 BC. He founded the school known as the Garden, where friends lived simply and discussed a wide range of philosophical questions, and he gave his name to Epicureanism, which holds that managing desire, losing needless fear and valuing friendship lead to a pleasant and tranquil life. He drew on the atomism of Democritus while adding the idea of the atomic swerve, and he taught that the gods exist but take no part in human affairs. He is said to have written more than three hundred works, of which most are lost; a few letters, the Principal Doctrines and fragments of his major work On Nature survive, so much of what is known about his thought comes through later writers such as Lucretius and Diogenes of Oenoanda. His writings matter to literature chiefly as the source of the Epicurean tradition that later Latin poetry took up.