Epicurus was
born on February 4th, 341 B.C. he had four siblings to which he was
the second oldest. Epicurus’s parents were cleruchs and they were considered to
be some of the poorest of the Athenian people. Many of the other residents of
Athens thought them to be foreign invaders and looked down at them in disgust.
In 322 B.C Epicurus’s family was forced to evacuate the city and this was not
long after he was drafted into the Athenian army. Epicurus received a basic
education and was exposed to Plato and Pamphilus’s teachings of philosophy.
However, he also came in contact with teachings from the Lyceum. When he
finally made it back to his family he began to study more teachings of
philosophy. He moved to the Island of Rhodes and began to study under
Praxiphanes. He then later went on to study the atomic system of Democritus
after he started to disagree with the teachings of the Lyceum. In 311 B.C
Epicurus ventured out and started to teach his own form of Democritean physics.
Epicurus later moved to Mytilene where he developed a circle of friends who
would later become the founders of his new school. Once he gathered all of his
friends together they traveled to back to Athens where Epicurus bought a house
with a garden and this later became the center of his school known as “The
Garden”. With his new school started he began to focus on pulling individuals
in to teach his new philosophy. This is how Epicureanism was started.
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