Reading room

Letter to Menoeceus

Epicurus

Epicurus' most widely read text: a short moral treatise in the form of a letter. It opens by urging philosophy at any age, since it is never too early or too late for the health of the soul; recalls that the gods are immortal and blessed and do not concern themselves with men; shows that death is nothing to us; classifies desires as natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, and empty; defines pleasure as the absence of pain in the body and of disturbance in the soul, not the enjoyment of the profligate; places prudence above philosophy; and closes with the portrait of the sage, who lives "like a god among men".