Epicurus (341 - 270 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher of the Hellenistic period.

He
was the founder of ancient Greek philosophical school of Epicureanism, whose
main goal was to attain a happy, tranquil life, characterized by the absence of pain
and fear, through the cultivation of friendship, freedom and an analyzed life. His
metaphysics was generally materialistic, his Epistemology was empiricist, and his
Ethics was hedonistic. Elements of his philosophy have resonated and resurfaced
in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual
history, including John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson and
the American founding fathers, and even Friedrich Nietzsche.

Life
Epicurus was born in February 341 B.C. on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea
(off the Ionian coast of Turkey). His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate were both
citizens of Athens, but had emigrated to the Athenian settlement of Samos some ten
years earlier.

As a boy, he studied philosophy under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus for about four
years. At the age of 18, he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service.
In the meantime, his parents were forced to relocate from Samos to Colophon in Ionia
after the death of Alexander the Great, and Epicurus joined his family there after the
completion of his military service.

He studied for a time under Nausiphanes, himself a pupil of the Skeptic Pyrrho, but
by then a keen follower of the Atomism of Democritus. However, he found
Nausiphanes an unsatisfactory teacher and later abused him in his writings, and
claimed to be self-taught. He taught for a couple of years (in 311 - 310 B.C.) in
Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, but apparently caused unrest and was forced to
leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus (on the Hellespont, modern-day
Turkey) before returning to Athens in 306 B.C.
In Athens, Epicurus founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned
that served as the meeting place of his Epicurean school. During his lifetime, his
school had a small but devoted following, including Hermarchus, Idomeneus,
Leonteus, Themista, Colotes, Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus of
Lampsacus. It was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit
women (as a rule rather than an exception). With its emphasis on friendship and
freedom as important ingredients of happiness, the school resembled in many ways a
commune or community of friends living together, although, Epicurus also instituted
a hierarchical system of levels among his followers, and had them swear an oath on
his core tenets.

Epicurus never married and had no known children. He suffered from kidney stones
for some time, and eventually died, in 270 B.C. at the age of 72. After his death,
communities of Epicureans sprang up throughout the Hellenistic world, and
represented the main competition to Stoicism until its eventual decline with the rise
of Christianity.