

I. Prologues to Philosophy

On Wisdom and the Sage

[ U219 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists, (Against the Dogmatists, V) 169: For they {the Dogmatists} promise to present us with an "art of life," and because of this Epicurus declared that "philosophy is an activity secures the happy life by arguments and discussions."

[ U220 ]

Sacred and Profane Parallels, A 14, 156 [p. 761 Gaisf.]: From Epicurus: "It is not the pretended but the real pursuit of philosophy that is needed; for we do not need the appearance of good health but to enjoy it in truth." {= Vatican Sayings 54}

[ U221 ]

Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31, [p. 209, 23 Nauck]: Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

[ U222 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 19, p. 1117F: It is one of Epicurus tenets that none but the Sage is unalterably convinced of anything.

[ U222a ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.117: Moreover {Epicurus says}, he who has become wise never resumes the opposite habit, nor even pretends to, if he can help it.

[ U223 ]

Cicero, Academica, II.14.45 (Lucullus): What we have termed "perspicuity" {clarity of reasoning} is cogent enough to identify things as they are. But nevertheless, so that we may abide by things that are perspicuous more firmly and consistently, we require some further exercise of method or of attention to save ourselves from being thrown off  by trickery and ill-conceived arguments  from positions that are clear in themselves. For Epicurus who desired to come to the relief of the errors that appear to upset our power of knowing the truth, and who said that the separation of opinion from perspicuous truth was the function of the wise man, carried matters no further, for he entirely failed to do away with the error connected with mere opinion.

[ U224 ]

Monastic Florilegium, 195: Epicurus also deemed opinion the "hallowed epidemic."

[ U225 ]

Aetius, Doxography, IV.9.19 [p. 398.11 Diels] (Parallel A.27.39 p.767 [Gaisf.]): Epicurus says that a Sage can only be recognized by another Sage.

[ U226 ]

Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, I.15 [p. 130.37 Sylb]: Epicurus, however, supposes that only the Greeks are qualified to practice philosophy.

On the Arts

[ U227 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, I.1: The case against the Mathematici  professors of Arts and Sciences  has been set forth in a general way, it would seem, both by Epicurus and by the School of Pyrrho Epicurus took the ground that the subjects taught are of no help in perfecting wisdom; and he did this, as some speculate, because he saw in it a way of covering up his own lack of culture (for in many matters Epicurus stands convicted of ignorance, and even in ordinary conversation, his speech was not correct). Another reason may have been his hostility towards Plato and Aristotle and their like who were men of wide learning.

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.4.12: Your school {Epicureanism} argues decisively that there is no need for the aspirant to philosophy to study literature at all.

Cf., Ibid., I.21, 71-72 (Torquatus to Cicero): You are disposed to think him uneducated. The reason is that he refused to consider any education worth the name that did not help to school us in happiness. Was he to spend his time, as you encourage Triarius and me to do, in perusing poets, who give us nothing solid and useful, but merely childish amusement? Was he to occupy himself like Plato with music and geometry, arithmetic and astrology, which starting from false premises cannot be true, and which moreover if they were true would contribute nothing to make our lives pleasanter and therefore better? Was he, I say, to study arts like these, and neglect the master art, so difficult and correspond so fruitful, the art of living? No! Epicurus was not uneducated: the real philistines are those who ask us to go on studying till old age the subjects that we are supposed to be ashamed of not learning in childhood.

[ U227a ]

Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.25.4: For what else is it to deny wisdom to men than to take away from their minds the true and divine light? But if the nature of man is capable of wisdom, it is necessary that workmen and rustics and women and all who have human form be taught, that they might be wise, and that a people of sages be raised up from every tongue and condition and sex and age. 25.7: So the Stoics realized this, for they said that slaves and women ought to engage in philosophy; Epicurus, also, who summoned even the illiterate to philosophy. 25.8: Indeed, they tried to do what truth exacted, but it was not possible to get beyond the words, first, because there is need of many arts to be able to arrive at philosophy. 25.12: For this reason, Tullius {i.e., Cicero} says that philosophy "shrinks from the crowd." {Tusculan Disputations, II.2.4} Still, Epicurus will accept the untutored. How, therefore, will they understand those things which are said about the beginnings of things, perplexing and involved things which even educated men scarcely grasp? In matters involved with obscurity, then, and spread over by the variety of abilities and colored with the exquisite oratory of eloquent men, what place is there for the inexperienced and unlearned? Finally, they never taught any women to be philosophers except one, from all memory: Themista.

[ U227b ]

Scholiast on Dionysius Thrax {"Dionysius the Thracian"}, p 649, 26: This is how the Epicureans define craft: a craft is a method which effects what is advantageous for human life. "Effects" is used in the sense of "produces."

[ U228 ]

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 2, p. 1086F-: Heraclides then, a student of literature, is repaying his debt to Epicurus for such favors of theirs "as rabble of poets" and "Homers idiocies" and the verity of abuse that Metrodorus has in so many writings heaped upon the poet.

Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, V.14, p. 257.52: Homer, while representing the gods as subject to human passions, appears to know the Divine Being, whom Epicurus does not so revere.

[ U229 ]

Heraclitus Ponticus, Allegories of Homer, 4:

Ibid. 75:

Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on Platos "Republic," [p. 382 Bas.]:

[ U229a ]

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 11, p. 1093C: They even banish the pleasures that come from mathematics!

Saint Augustine, On the Utility of Faith, c. 6, 13, t. VIII [p. 53F Venice edition, 1719]:

Cicero Academica II.33.106 (Lucullus): Polyaenus is said to have been a great mathematician; after he had accepted the view of Epicurus and come to believe that all geometry is false, {surely he did not forget even the knowledge that he possessed?}

Proclus Lycaeus, Commentary on Euclid, [p. 55 Bas.; 199.9 Friedl.]: There are those, however, who are only predisposed to knock down the principles of geometry, like the Epicureans.

[ U229b ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Musicians (Against the Professors, VI) 27: Moreover, if Plato welcomed music, we should not therefore assert that music contributes to happiness, since others who are not inferior to him in trustworthiness  such as Epicurus  have denied this contention, and declared on the contrary that music is unbeneficial  "Wine-loving, idle, having no regard for wealth." {Euripides, fr. 184 Nauck}.

[ U230 ]

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Composition of Words, 24, p. 188: The dictum that "writing presents no difficulties to those who do not aim at a constantly changing standard," which Epicurus himself propounded, was intended as a talisman to ward off the charge of extreme sloth and stupidity. {c.f. above}

On Philosophers

[ U231 ]

Cicero, Brutus, 85.292 (Atticus speaking): I grant that that irony, which they say was found in Socrates is a fine and clever way of speaking Thus Socrates in the pages of Plato praises to the skies Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Gorgias, and the rest, while representing himself as without knowledge of anything and a mere ignoramus. This somehow fits his character, and I cannot agree with Epicurus who censures it.

[ U232 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.13: Both Epicurus and Hermarchus deny the very existence of Leucippus the philosopher, though some say, including Apollodorus the Epicurean, that he was the teacher of Democritus.

[ U233 ]

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.26.72 (Cotta speaking): The fact is that you people merely repeat by rote the idle fancies that Epicurus uttered when half asleep; for, as we read in his writings, he boasted that he had never had a master. ... He could have studied under Xenocrates and there are some who think he did. But he himself denied it, and he should know! He does say that he heard the lectures of a certain Pamphilus, a student of Plato, when he was living in Sámos. He lived there as a young man with his father and brothers, his father Neocles having settled there as an immigrant farmer. But when he could not make a decent living from his small-holding, I believe he kept a school. Epicurus however had a supreme contempt for Pamphilus as a follower of Plato, and in this he showed his usual anxiety never to learn anything from anyone. Look how he behaved towards Nausiphanes, a disciple of Democritus. He does not deny that he heard him lecture, but heaps all manner of abuse upon him. What, after all, is there in his own philosophy which does not come form Democritus? Even if he introduced some variations  such as the swerve in the motion of the atoms which I mentioned just now  still for the most part his theory is identical  atoms, void, images, the infinity of space, the numberless universes, their birth and death, and so on through practically the whole field of natural philosophy.

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 18, p. 1100A: Was not Epicurus himself in such a fury of tense and palpitating passion for renown that he ... disowned his teachers?

[ U234 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.17: Here {regarding physics}, in the first place, he is entirely second-hand. His doctrines are those of Democritus, with a very few modifications. And as for the latter, where he attempts to improve upon his original, in my opinion he only succeeds in making things worse. ... 21: Thus where Epicurus alters the doctrines of Democritus, he alters them for the worse; while for those ideas which he adopts, the credit belongs entirely to Democritus. ... For my own part I reject these doctrines altogether; but still I could wish that Democritus, whom every one else applauds, had not been vilified by Epicurus who took him as his sole guide.

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 3, p. 1108E: He begins with Democritus, who thus receives for his teaching a handsome and appropriate fee. And this although Epicurus long proclaimed himself a Democritean, as is attested among others by Leonteus, one of Epicurus most devoted pupils, who writes to Lycophron that Democritus was honored by Epicurus for having reached the correct approach to knowledge before him, and that indeed his whole system was called Democritean because Democritus had first his upon the first principles of natural philosophy.

[ U235 ]

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.33.93 (Cotta speaking): Was it on the basis of dreams that Epicurus and Metrodorus and Hermarchus attacked Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, and that little harlot Leontium dared to write criticisms of Theophrastus? You Epicureans are touchy yourselves. But Epicurus himself made the most libelous attacks on Aristotle and violently abused Phaedo, the disciple of Socrates. He heaped whole volumes of invective on Timocrates, the brother of his own colleague Metrodorus, because of some petty disagreement on a philosophical point. He even showed no gratitude to Democritus, his own forerunner, and had no use for his own teacher Nausiphanes, from whom he had learnt nothing in any case.

[ U236 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.8: Epicurus used to call Nausiphanes a pleumonon {="jellyfish," imputing obtuseness and insensibility}, an illiterate, a fraud, and a whore.

[ U237 ]

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 2, p. 1086E: Zeuxippus said: "Heraclides has gone off charging us with undue vehemence in our attack on the unoffending Epicurus and Metrodorus." Here, Theon declared: "And you didnt reply that by their standard Colotes looks like a paragon of measured speech? For they made a collection of the most disgraceful terms to be found anywhere: charlatanism {bomolochi á s}, buffoonery {lekythismo ú s}, bragging {alazone í as} prostitution {hetaires é is} assassin {androphon í as}, loudmouth {barystono ú s} , hero of many of a misadventure {polyphth ó rous}, nincompoop {baryegkeph á lous}  and showered it on Aristotle { U71 }, Socrates { U231 }, Pythagoras, Protagoras { U172 - U173 }, Theophrastus, Heraclides { U16 }, Hipparchia  indeed, what eminent name have they spared?

Cf. Plutarch, Against Colotes, 29, p. 1124C: The sophists and braggarts then, are those those who in their disputes with eminent men write with such shameless arrogance.

[ U238 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.8: Platos school he called the "flatterers of Dionysius." Plato himself he called "golden." ... Heraclitus a "muddler," Democritus he called "Lerocritus" {the gossip-monger}, Antidorus "Sannidorus" {a fawning gift-bearer}, the Cynics "enemies of Greece," the Dialecticians "despoilers," and he called Pyrrho "ignorant" and a "bore."

[ U239 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 26, p. 1121E: The fame of Arcesilaus, the best loved among the philosophers of the time, would appear to have annoyed Epicurus mightily. Thus he {Colotes} says although this philosopher said nothing new, he gave the illiterate the impression and belief that he did. Our critic of course is widely read himself and writes with a beguiling charm.

[ U240 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.12: Among the early philosophers, says Diocles, his favorite was Anaxagoras, although he occasionally disagreed with him, and Archelaus, the teacher of Socrates.

[ U241 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.23: The goodness of Metrodorus was proved in all ways, as Epicurus testifies in his prefaces {of some of his books}.



II. Canonics

[ U242 ]

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 89.11: The Epicureans held that there are two pats of philosophy: physics and ethics  they got rid of logic. Then, since they were forced by the very facts to distinguish what was ambiguous and to refute falsities lying hidden under the appearance of truth, they themselves also introduced that topic which they call "on judgment and the criterion" {i.e., canonics}; it is logic by another name, but they think that it is an accessory part of physics.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.30: The usual arrangement, however, is to join canonics with physics; the former they call the science which deals with the standard and first principles, or the elementary part of philosophy...

Saint Augustine, Against Cresconius, I.13.16 t. IX [p. 397E Venice edition, 1719]:

[ U243 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.19.63 (Torquatus to Cicero): Logic, on which your {Platonic} school lays such stress, he held to be of no effect either as a guide to conduct or as an aid to thought. Natural Philosophy he deemed all-important. This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions; lastly, to learn what natures real requirements are improves the moral character also. Besides, it is only by firmly grasping a well-established scientific system, observing the Rule or Canon that has fallen as it were from heaven so that all men may know itonly by making that Canon the test of all our judgments, that we can hope always to stand fast in our belief unshaken by the eloquence of any man. On the other hand, without a full understanding of the world of nature it is impossible to maintain the truth of our sense-perceptions. Further, every mental presentations has its origin in sensation: so that no certain knowledge will be possible, unless all sensations are true, as the theory of Epicurus teaches that they are. Those who deny the validity of sensation and say that nothing can be perceived, having excluded the evidence of the senses, are unable even to expound their own argument. Besides, by abolishing knowledge and science they abolish all possibility of rational life and action. Thus Natural Philosophy supplies courage to face the fear of death; resolution to resist the terrors of religion; peace of mind, for it removes all ignorance of the mysteries of nature; self-control, for it explains the nature of the desires and distinguishes their different kinds; and, as I showed just now, the Canon or Criterion of Knowledge, which Epicurus also established, gives a method of discerning truth from falsehood.

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.7.22: Turn next to the second division of philosophy, the department of Method and of Dialectic, which its termed Logikē. Of the whole armor of Logic your founder, as it seems to me, is absolutely destitute. He does away with Definition; he has no doctrine of Division or Partition; he gives no rules for Deduction or Syllogistic Inference, and imparts no method for resolving Dilemmas or for detecting Fallacies of Equivocation. The Criteria of reality he places in sensation; once let the senses accept as true something that is false, and every possible criterion of truth and falsehood seems to him to be immediately destroyed. {lacuna} He lays the very greatest stress upon that which, as he declares, Nature herself decrees and sanctions, that is: the feelings of pleasure and pain. These he maintains lie at the root of every act of choice and of avoidance.

[ U244 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians II (Against the Dogmatists, II).9: Epicurus said that all sensibles were true and real. For there is no difference between saying that something is true and that it is real. And that is why, in giving a formalization of the true and the false, he says, "that which is such as it is said to be, is true" and "that which is not such as it is said to be, is false."

On the Standards of Judgment

[ U245 ]

Cicero Academica II.46.142 (Lucullus): Epicurus places the standard of judgment entirely in the senses and in notions of objects and in pleasure.

1. On Sensation

[ U246 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, IX.106 (Pyrrho): An apparent fact serves as the Skeptics criterion, as indeed Aenesidemus says, and so does Epicurus.

[ U247 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I (Against the Dogmatists, I) 203: Epicurus says that there are two things which are linked to each other, presentation and opinion, and that of these presentation (which he also calls clear fact) is always true. For just as the primary feelings, i.e., pleasure and pain, come to be from certain productive factors and in accordance with productive factors themselves (for example, pleasure comes to be from pleasant things and pain from painful things, and what causes pleasure can never fail to be pleasant, nor can what produces pain not be painful; but rather, it is necessary that what gives pleasure should be pleasant and that what gives pain should, in its nature, be painful), likewise, in the case of presentations, which are feelings within us, what causes each of them is presented in every respect and unqualifiedly, and since it is presented it cannot help but exist in truth just as it is presented [ lacuna ] that it is productive of presentation. And one must reason similarly for the individual senses. For what is visible not only is presented as visible but also is such as it is presented; and what is audible is not only presented as audible, but also is like that in truth; and similarly for the rest. Therefore, it turns out that all presentations are true. And reasonably so. For if, the Epicureans say, a presentation is true if it comes from an existing object and in accordance with the existing object, and if every presentation arises from the object presented and in accordance with the presented object itself, then necessarily every presentation is true.

Some people are deceived by the difference among impressions seeming to reach us from the same sense-object, for example a visible object, such that the object appears to be of a different color or shape, or altered in some other way. For they have supposed that, when impressions differ and conflict in this way, one of them must be true and the opposing one false. This is simple-minded, and characteristic of those who are blind to the real nature of things. Let us make our case for visible things. For it is not the whole solid body that is seen  to take the example of visible things  but the color of the solid body. And of color, some is right on the solid body, as in the case of things seen from close up or from a moderate distance, but some is outside the solid body and is objectively located in the space adjacent to it, as in the case of things seen from a great distance. This color is altered in the intervening space, and takes on a peculiar shape. But the impression which it imparts corresponds to what is its own true objective state. Thus just as what we actually hear is not the sound inside the beaten gong, or inside the mouth of the man shouting, but the sound which is reaching our senses, and just as no one says that the man who hears a faint sound from a distance hears is falsely just because on approaching he registers it as louder, so too I would not say that the vision is deceived just because from a great distance it sees the tower as small and round but from near-to as larger and square. Rather I would say that it is telling the truth. Because when the sense-object appears to it small and of that shape it really is small and of that shape, the edges of the images getting eroded as a result of their travel through the air. And when it appears big and of another shape instead, it likewise is big and of another shape instead. But the two are already different from each other: for it is left for distorted opinion to suppose that the object of impression seen from near and the one seen from far off are one and the same. The peculiar function for sensation is to apprehend only that which is present to it and moves it, such as color, not to make the distinction that the object here is a different one from the object there. Hence for this reason all impressions are true. Opinions, on the other hand, are not all true but admit of some difference. Some of them are true, some false, since they are judgments which we make on the basis of our impressions, and we judge some things correctly, but some incorrectly, either by adding and appending something to our impressions or by subtracting something from them, and in general falsifying irrational sensation.

According to Epicurus, some opinions are true, some false. True opinions are those which are attested by and not contested by clear facts, while false opinions are those which are contested and not attested by clear facts. Attestation is perception through a self-evident impression, that the object of opinion is such as it once was thought to befor example, if Plato is approaching from far off, I form the conjectural opinion, owing to the distance, that it is Plato. But then he has come close, there is further testimony that he is Plato, now that the distance is reduced, and it is attested by the self-evidence itself. Non-contestation is the conformity between a non-evident thing which is the object of speculation, and the opinion about what is apparentfor example, Epicurus, in saying that void exists, which is non-evident, confirms this through the self-evident fact of motion. For if void does not exist, there ought not be motion either, since the moving body would lack a place to pass into as a consequence of everything being full and solid. Therefore, the non-evident thing believed is not contradicted by that which is evident, since there is motion. Contestation, on the other hand, is opposed to non-contestation, for it is the elimination of that which is apparent by the positing of the non-evident thingfor example, the Stoic says that void does not exist, something non-evident; but once this denial is put forward, then that which is evident, namely motion, ought to be co-eliminated with it. For if void does not exist, then motion does not occur either, according to the method already demonstrated. Non-attestation, likewise, is opposed to attestation, for it is confirmation through self-evidence of the fact that the object of opinion is not such as it was believed to befor example, if someone is approaching from far off, we conjecture, owing to the distance, that he is Plato. But when the distance is reduced, we recognize through self-evidence that it is not Plato. This sort of thing turns out to be non-attestation.

So attestation and non-contestation are the criterion of somethings being true, while non-attestation and contestation are the criterion of its being false. And self-evidence is the foundation and basis of all [four] of these.

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians II (Against the Dogmatists, II) 9: Epicurus said that all sensibles were true and real. For there is no difference between saying that something is true and that it is real. And that is why, in giving a formalization of the true and the false, he says, "that which is such as it is said to be, is true" and "that which is not such as it is said to be, is false." {= U244 } ... And he says that sensation, being perceptive of the objects presented to it and neither subtracting nor adding nor transposing (being devoid of reason), constantly reports truly and grasps the existent object as it really is by nature. And whereas all the sensibles are true, the opinables differ: some of them are true, others false  as we showed before.

Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I (Against the Dogmatists, I).369: Some of the natural philosophers, like Democritus, have abolished all phenomena, and others, like Epicurus and Protagoras, have established all, {while still others, like the Stoics and Peripatetics, have abolished some and established others.}

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II).185: Epicurus declared that all sensibles really exist such as they appear and present themselves in sensation, as sense never lies, {though we think that it lies}.

Ibid., 355: Epicurus declared that every sensible thing has stable existence.

Alexander of Aphrodisia, Commentary on Aristotles "Metaphysics," [p. 428.20 Bon.]: Some tend to call sense perceptions essences, and maintain that nothing else exists but sense-perceptions themselves, as for example and even the Epicureans.

Olympiodorus the Younger, Commentary on Platos "Phaedo," [p. 80.1 Finckh.]: Those who maintain that the sensations precisely relate the truth ... Protagoras, Epicurus.

Cicero Academica II.26.82 (Lucullus): Enough of this simpleton, who thinks that the senses never lie.

Tertullian, On the Soul, 17: The Epicureans, again, show still greater consistency by maintaining that all the senses are equally true in their testimony, and always so  only in a different way. It is not our organs of sensation that are at fault, but our opinion. The senses only experience sensation, they do not exercise opinion; it is the soul that opines. They separated opinion from the senses, and sensation from the soul. Well, but whence comes opinion, if not from the senses? Indeed, unless the eye had descried a round shape in that tower, it could have had no idea that it possessed roundness. Again, from where does sensation arise if not from the soul?

Saint Augustine, City of God, VIII.7: {Regarding the Platonists teachings on Logic} ... far be it from me to think of comparing with them those who have placed the criterion of truth in the bodily senses and decreed that all learning should be measured by such unreliable and deceptive standards. I mean the Epicureans and others like them...

Saint Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus, 118.29 t. II [p. 336E Venice Edition 1719]: Therefore, when the Epicureans said that the bodily senses were never deceived, while the Stoics granted that they were sometimes deceived, although, both placed the test of acquiring truth in the senses, would anyone listen to the Platonists over the opposition of these two?

Ioannes Siculus, Commentary on Hermogenes "Rhetoric," VI [p. 88.24 Walz.]: The teachings of many that consider sensation an infallible criterion of knowledge or of some knowledge, impose the same errors: for example, even Epicurus...

[ U248 ]

Aetius, Doxography, IV.9.5 [p. 396 Diels] (Parallel A.27.27): Epicurus says that every sense-perception and every presentation is true, but of opinions, some are true and some are false.

[ U249 ]

Aetius, Doxography, IV.8.2 [p. 394 Diels] (Plutarch IV.8, Parallel A.27.9) (Epicurus): Perception is to some degree integrating, being a faculty, while to perceive is an act. So that, on your part, perception is spoken of in two senses: perception as a faculty on the one hand, and to perceive as an act on the other hand.

[ U250 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 4-, p. 1109A: But whatever we think of that {how Colotes interprets Democritus}, whoever held that nothing is any more of one description than of another {no more this than that} is following an Epicurean doctrine, that all the impressions reaching us through the senses are true. For if one of two persons says that the wine is dry and the other that it is sweet, and neither errs in his sensation, how is the wine any more dry than sweet? Again, you may observe that in one and the same bath some consider the water as too hot, others as too cold, the first asking for the addition of cold water, the others of hot. There is a story that a Spartan lady came to visit Beronice, wife of Deiotarus. No sooner did they come near each other than each turned away, the one (we are told) sickened by the perfume, the other by the butter. So if one sense-perception is no more true than another, we must suppose that the water is no more cold than hot, and that perfume or butter is no more sweet-smelling than ill-smelling; for he who asserts that the object itself is what appears one thing to one person and another to another has unwittingly said that it is both things at once.

As for the old story of the "right size" and "perfect fit" of the passages in the sense organs, and on the other hand the multiple mixture of the "seeds" that they say are found dispersed in all tastes, odors, and colors, so as to give rise in different persons to different perceptions of quality, do not these theories actually compel objects in their view to be "no more this than that?" For when people take sensation to be deceptive because they see that the same objects have opposite effects on those resorting to it, these thinkers offer the reassuring explanation that since just about everything is mixed and compounded with everything else, and since different substances are naturally adapted to fit different passages, the consequence is that everyone does not come into contact with and apprehend the same quality, and again the object perceived does not affect everyone in the same way with every part. What happens instead is that different sets of persons encounter only those components to which their sense organs are perfectly adjusted, and they are therefore wrong when they fall to disputing whether the object is good or bad or white or not white, imagining that they are confirming their own perceptions by denying one anothers. The truth of the matter is that no sense-perception should be challenged, as all involve a contact with something real, each of them taking from the multiple mixture as from a fountain what agrees with and suits itself; and we should make no assertions about the whole when our contact is with parts, nor fancy that all persons should be affected in the same way, when different persons are affected by different qualities and properties in the object.

It is time to consider the question: who are more chargeable with imposing on objects the doctrine that "nothing is more this than that," than those who assert that every perceivable object is a blend of qualities of every description, "mixed like the must entangled in the filter" {fragment of a lost tragedy}, and who confess that their standards would go glimmering and the criterion of truth quite disappear if they permitted any sense-object whatsoever to be purely one thing and did not leave every one of them a plurality?

[ U251 ]

Cicero Academica II.25.79 (Lucullus): His own senses, he says {in contrast with the Stoics}, are truthful! If so, you always have an authority, and one to risk his all in defense of the cause! For Epicurus brings the issue to this point, that if one sense has told a lie once in a mans life, no sense must ever be believed.

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.25.70 (Cotta speaking): Epicurus was afraid that if any of our sense-perceptions were false, then none of them could be true: and so he asserted that all our senses were always "the messengers of truth."

Cicero Academica II.32.101 (Lucullus): A single first principle of Epicurus combined with another belonging to your school results in the abolition of perception and comprehension, without our uttering a word. What is the principle of Epicurus? "If any sense-presentation is false, nothing can be perceived." What is yours? "There are false sense-presentations." What follows? Without any word of mine, logical inference itself declares that "nothing can be perceived."

Cicero Academica II.26.83 (Lucullus): There are four points of argument intended to prove that there is nothing that can be known, perceived or comprehended. The first of these arguments is that there is such a thing as a false presentation; the first is not granted by Epicurus.

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 428, p. 1124B: If it is possible to withhold judgment about these sensations, it is not impossible to withhold it about others as well, as least on the principles of your school, who set one act or image of sensation on exactly the same footing as another.

Ibid., 1123D: By putting all in the the same boat, their theory does more to estrange us from established beliefs than to convince us that the grotesques {fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms} are real.

[ U252 ]

Cicero Academica II.7.19 (Lucullus): Nor is it necessary to delay at this point while I answer about the case of the bent oar {c.f. Lucretius, IV.436-}or the pigeons neck {c.f. Lucretius, II.801-}, for I am not one to assert that every object seen is really such as it appears to be. Let Epicurus see to that, and a number of other matters.

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 25, p. 1121A: So it is with Colotes: the reasoning that he accepts with satisfaction when he finds it in the writings of Epicurus he neither understands nor recognizes when it is used by others. For the school that asserts that when a round image impinges on us, or in another case a bent one, the important is truly received by the sense, but refuses to allow us to go further and affirm that the tower is round or that the oar is bent, maintains the truth of its experiences and sense impressions, but will not admit that external objects correspond; and as surely as that other school must speak of "being horsed" and "walled," but not of a horse or wall, so this school of theirs is under the necessity of saying that the eye is rounded or be-angled, and not that the oar is bent or the tower round, for it is the image producing the effect in the eye that is bent, whereas the oar is not bent from which the image proceeded. Thus, since the effect produced on the senses differs from the external object, belief must stick to the effect or be exposed as false if it proceeds to add "it is" to "it appears." That vociferous and indignant protest of theirs in defense of sensation, that it does not assert the external object to be warm, the truth being merely that the effect produced in sensation has been of this kind  is it not the same as the statement about taste? Why does it not assert, if the external object is sweet, that there has merely occurred in the taste an effect and movement of this kind? A man says "I receive an impression of humanity, but I do not perceive whether a man is there." Who put him in the way of such a notion? Was it not the school who asserts that they receive an impression of curvature, but that their sight does not go beyond to pronounce that the thing is curved or yet that it is round there has merely occurred in it an appearance and impression of rotundity?

"Exactly," someone will say, "but for my part I shall go up to the tower and I shall feel the oar, and thereupon I shall pronounce the oar straight and the tower angular; but this other fellow even at close quarters will only grant he has this view and that there is this appearance, but will grant nothing more." Exactly, my good friend, since he is a better hand than you at noticing and holding to the consequences of his doctrine  that every sensation is equally trustworthy when it testifies on its own behalf, but none when it testifies on behalf of anything else, but all are on the same footing. And here is an end to your tenet that all sensations are true and none untrustworthy or false  if you think it proper for one set of them to proceed to make assertions about external objects, whereas you refused to truth the others in anything beyond the experience itself. For if they are on the same footing of trustworthiness whether they come close or are at a distance, it is only fair to confer on all the power of adding the judgment "it is" or else to deny it to the former as well. Whereas if there is a difference in the effect produced on the observer when he stands at a distance and when he is close at hand, it is false to say that no impression and no sensation has in its stamp of reality a better warrant of truth than another. So too the "testimony in confirmation" and "testimony in rebuttal" of which they speak has no bearing on the sensation but only on our opinion of it; so if they tell us to be guided by this testimony when we make statements about external objects, they appoint opinion to pass the verdict "it is" and sense to undergo the experience "it seems," and thus transfer the decision from what is unfailingly true to what is often wrong.

[ U253 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II) 63-: Epicurus said that all sensibles are true, and that every impression is the product of something existing and like the thing which moves the sense. He also said that those who contend that some impressions are true but others false are wrong, because they cannot distinguish opinion from self-evidence. At least in the case of Orestes, when he seemed to see the Furies, his sensation, being moved by the images, was true, in that the images objectively existed; but his mind, in thinking that the Furies were solid bodies, held a false opinion. "And besides," he says, "the persons mentioned above when introducing a difference in the presentations, are not capable of confirming the view that some of them are true, others false. For neither by means of an apparent thing will they prove such a statement, since it is apparent things that are in question, nor yet by something non-evident, since something non-evident must be proven by means of something apparent."

[ U254 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 28, p. 1123B: These {images from the furies} and many of another artificial variety, resembling the Empedoclean monsters that they deride, "with lurching ox-feet, random arms" and "Ox-creatures, fronted like a man"  what phantom or prodigy do they omit? All of these they assemble from dreams and delirium and say that none is an optical illusion or false or unsubstantial, but all are true impressions, bodies and shapes that reach us from the surrounding air. That being the case, is there anything in the world about which it is impossible to suspend judgment, when such things as these can be accepted as real? Things that no artful joiner, puppet-maker, or painter ever ventured to combine of our entertainment into a likeness to deceive the eye, these they seriously suppose to exist, or rather they assert that, if these did not exist, there would be an end of all assurance and certainty and judgment about truth.

2. On Representations and Words

[ U255 ]

Clement of Alexandria, Miscellenies, II.4 [p. 157.44 Sylb.; p. 121 St ä hlin]: Indeed, Epicurus, who more than anyone prefers pleasure to truth, supposes that a preconception {prolepsis} is the basis of the intellects conviction; he defines a preconception as an application of the intellect to something clear and to the clear conception of the thing, and holds that no one can either investigate or puzzle over, nor even hold an opinion or even refute someone, without a preconception.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.33: By preconception they mean a sort of "apprehension" or a "right opinion" or "notion," or universal idea stored in the mind  that is, a recollection of an external object often presented. For example: "this thing is human"  and no sooner than the word "human" is uttered that we imagine a human shape by an act of preconception, in which the senses take the lead. Thus the object primarily denoted by the very term is then plain and clear. And we should never have started an investigation, unless we had known what it was that we were in search of. For example: "The object standing way over there is a horse or a cow." Before making this judgment we must at some time or another have known by preconception the shape of a horse or a cow. We should not have given anything a name, if we had not first learnt its form by way of preconception.

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.16.43 (Velleius speaking): What race of men or nation is there which does not have some untaught apprehension of the gods? Such an innate idea Epicurus calls prolepsis, that is to say, a certain form of knowledge which is inborn in the mind and without which there can be no other knowledge, not rational thought or argument. The force and value of this doctrine we can see from his own inspired work on The Canon. {= Cicero @ U34 }

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I.17.44 (Velleius speaking): We must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a "preconception," as I called it, or "prior notion," of the gods. For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense which no one had ever used before.

Plutarch, by way of Olympiodorus the Younger, Commentary on Platos "Phaedo," [p. 125.10 Finckh.]: The Epicureans, then, accuse us of seeking and rediscovering the prolepses. If these, as they say, correspond to real objects, then to seek them is useless; if, on the other hand, they dont correspond, how can we seek an explanation regarding preconceptions that we havent we been able to think of already?

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors, I.57: According to the wise Epicurus, it is not possible to investigate or even to be puzzled without preconceptions.

[ U256 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.9.30 (Torquatus to Cicero): Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, he thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature.

[ U257 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.2.6: {Epicurus} is always harping on the necessity of carefully sifting out the meaning underlying the terms we employ...

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.31: They reject dialectic as superfluous; holding that in their inquiries, physicists should be content to employ ordinary terms for things.

[ U258 ]

Erotianus, Glossary of Hippocrates, Preface, [p. 34, 10 Klein]: For if we are going to explain the words known to everybody, we would have to expound either all or some. But to expound all is impossible, whereas to expound some is pointless. For we will explain them either through familiar locutions or through unfamiliar. But unfamiliar words seem unsuited to the task, the accepted principle being to explain less known things by means of better known things; and familiar words, by being on a par with them, will be unfamiliar for illuminating language, as Epicurus says. For the informativeness of language is characteristically ruined when it is bewitched by an account, as if by a homeopathic drug.

[ U259 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II).258: We see that there are some who have denied the real existence of "expressions," and these not only men of other schools, such as the Epicureans, {but even Stoics like Basilides }

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 22, p. 1119F: What school is more at fault in its views about language than yours {Epicureanism}, which makes a clean sweep of the whole category of meanings, which impart to discourse its substantial reality, and leave us with nothing but vocables and facts, when you say that the intermediate objects of discourse, the things signified, which are the means of learning, teaching, preconceptions, conceptions, desires, and assent, do not exist all?

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II).13: The disciples of Epicurus and Strato the physicist, who admit only two things  the thing signifying and the thing existing  appear to ascribe truth or falsity to the mere word.

3. On the Passions

[ U260 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.34: They assert that there are two kinds of feelings, pleasure and pain, which arise in every living thing. The one is appealing and the other vexing to ones nature; in consideration of these, choices and avoidances are made.

Aristocles, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 21 p. 768D: Some say that as the principle and criterion of choosing and avoiding we have pleasure and pain: at least the Epicureans now still say something of this kind ... For my part then I am so far from saying that feeling is the principle and canon of things good and evil, that I think a criterion is needed for feeling itself.

[ U261 ]

Aetius, Doxography, IV.9.11, [p. 397 Diels] (Parallel A.27.52): For Epicurus, pleasure and pain are a part of sensations.

On Signs

[ U262 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II).177: Epicurus and the leaders of his school have stated that the sign is sensible, while the Stoics state that it is intelligible.

[ U263 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 29, p. 1124B: ...these people are deluded who regard what is seen as evidence of things unseen although they observe that appearances are so untrustworthy and ambiguous.

On Disputation

[ U264 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, II.1.3: In philosophical investigation, a methodical and systematic discourse must always begin by formulating a preamble ... so that the parties to the debate may be agreed as to what the subject is about which they are debating. This rule is laid down by Plato in Phaedrus, and it was approved by Epicurus, who realized that it ought to be followed in every discussion.

[ U265 ]

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.34: They assert that there are two kinds of inquiry: one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words.

III. Physics

[ U266 ]

Pseudo-Plutarch, Miscellanies, Fragment 8 from Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, I.8.24B, Greek Doxography, [p. 581, 19 Diels.]: Epicurus asserts that nothing new happens in the universe when compared to the infinite time already passed.

On the Atoms

[ U267 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.3.18, pp. 285-86D ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, 10, 14; Plutarch I.3.25): Epicurus, the son of Neocles and an Athenian, philosophized in the manner of Democritus and said that the principles {i.e., elementary constituents} of existing things are bodies inferable by reason, which do not participate in the void and are uncreated and indestructible  since they can neither be broken nor be compounded out of parts, nor be altered in their qualities. They can be inferred by reason ... {lacuna here} They move in the void and through the void. And the void itself is infinite, and so are the bodies. Bodies have these three properties: shape, size, weight. Democritus said that there were two  size and shape  but Epicurus added weight to these as a third. For, he says, it is necessary that the bodies move by the blow of [an object with] weight, otherwise they will not move. The shapes of the atoms are innumerable, but not infinite. For there are none which are hooked or trident-shaped or ring-shaped; for these shapes are easily broken and the atoms are impervious. They have their own shapes which can be contemplated by reason. The atom {a-tomos} is so-called not because it is smallest, but because it cannot be divided, since it is impervious and does not participate in void.

Achilles, Introduction, 3, [p.125A Pet.]: Epicurus of Athens maintained that the principles {i.e., elementary constituents} of all things are comprised in extremely tiny bodies, knowable by the intellect, and he named them "atoms" or other words, minimums, because of their smallness, or because they are indestructible and cannot be divided.

Hippolytus, "Philosophical Questions," (Refutation of all Heresies, I) 22, [p. 572.3 Diels.]: Epicurus says that the atoms are the most minute bodies; it is not possible to ascribe them a center nor a point nor any subdivision: and because of this he called them atoms.

[ U268 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Zeta-1," preface, fr. 216r [925.12 Konstan]: Others, who had given up on [the idea of] cutting to infinity on the grounds that we cannot [in fact] cut to infinity and thereby confirm the endlessness of cutting, used to say that bodies consist of indivisibles and are divided into indivisibles. Leucippus and Democritus, however, believed not only in imperviousness as the reason why primary bodies are not divided, but also in smallness and partlessness, while Epicurus later did not hold that they were partless, but said that they were atomic {i.e., uncuttable} by virtue of imperviousness alone. Aristotle refuted the view of Leucippus and Democritus in many places, and it is because of these refutations in objection to partlessness, no doubt, that Epicurus, coming afterwards but sympathetic to the view of Leucippus and Democritus concerning primary bodies, kept them impervious but took away their partlessness, since it was on this account that they were challenged by Aristotle.

[ U269 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 13, p. 1114A: For Epicurus, the number of bodies is infinite and every single object is the world of sense is generated from them. Observe right here the sort of first principles you people {Epicureans} adopt to account for generation: infinity and the void  the void incapable of action, incapable of acted upon, bodiless; the infinite disordered, irrational, incapable of formulations, disrupting and confounding itself because of a multiplicity that defies control or limitation.

[ U270 ]

Pseudo-Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, I.3, 27, [p. 286A 4 Diels] [preceding fragment 275]: The forms of the atoms are certainly incalculable, but not infinite. Indeed, none are hook-shaped, trident-shaped, or ring-shaped: these shapes break easily, but the atoms are in fact impenetrable and have, instead, their own shapes, intuitable by reason.

On the Void

[ U271 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.20.2, p. 318, 1D ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 18, 2): Epicurus says that void, place, and space differ only in name.

Addendum

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicisists, II (Against the Dogmatists, IV).2: Therefore we must understand that, according to Epicurus, one part of that nature which is termed intangible is called the void, one part place, and another part space  the names varying according to the different ways of looking at it since the same substance when empty of all body is called void, when occupied by a body is named place, and when bodies roam through it becomes space. But generically it is called "intangible substance" in Epicurus school, since it lacks resistance.

[ U272 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, II (Against the Dogmatists, II).329: Epicurus, for instance, opines that he has put forward a very strong argument for the existence of void, namely this: "If motion exists, void exists; but in fact motion exists; therefore void exists." But if the premises of this proof had been agreed to by all, it would necessarily have had a conclusion also following from them and admitted by all. Instead, some have objected to it (i.e., the deduction of the conclusions from the premises) not because it does not follow form them, but because they are false and not admitted.

Ibid., 314: Hence also they {the Dogmatists} describe it thus: "A proof is an argument which by means of agreed premises reveals by way of deduction a non-evident conclusion." For example: "If motion exists, void exists; but in fact motion exists; therefore void exists." For the existence of void is non-evident, and also it appears to be revealed by way of deduction by means of the true premises: "If motion exists, void exists" and "but motion exists."

[ U273 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Delta-5 (to the end)," (p. 213A 10) [fr. 140u Ald.; p. 379B Brand.]:

Cf. [fr. 144u]:

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Delta-4," (p. 211B 7) [fr. 133r]:

Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotles "Physics, Delta-4," (p. 211B 14), [fr. 38u Ald.; p. 268.23 Speng.]: It remains for us to demonstrate also that place is not extension. An extension is what is conceived of as between the limits of the container, e.g., what is within the hollow surface of the pot. Now this belief is traditional, and associated with those who posit the void, yet later both Chrysippus crowd and Epicurus were nonetheless adherents. Some imposed the doctrine on Plato too. It relies on a plausible explanation, yet one that is quite false: namely, since we reach a conception of place in general from the mutual replacement of bodies (i.e., from different bodies continually coming to be in the same place at different times), they took place to be the intervening extension, which they believed remained the same when it received the bodies that were replacing one another, while being separated from each of these incoming bodies. Vessels above all egged them on to this inference. For since water and air enter the vessel at different times while the hollow surface within the clay remains the same (i.e. circumscribed by unique limits), they inferred the existence of the extension within the hollow surface, which resembled the surface of the vessel in remaining the same (i.e., separated from the bodies) as it received the bodies in succession. But this is invalid. If the vessel could at any time be devoid of body, then perhaps this so-called "extension" would be detected per se. But, as it is, fluid flows out and air simultaneously enters to replace it, and that leads them astray. For since every body is accompanied by an extension, they transfer the extension belonging to bodies to place, without reasoning that an extension is always in place just because a body always is too, as completely covered bronze vessels reveal: for [in their case] there would be no efflux of fluid unless the air acquired a space for its influx. What dupes them is that the vessels hollow surface also always remains rigid; but if there were an implosion when the fluid was extracted, as there is in the case of wine-skins, they would not be similarly deluded.

[ U274 ]

Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotles "Physics, Delta-6," (p. 213A 32), [fr. 40u Ald.; p. 284.2 Speng.]: The void can be posited in two ways: either as disseminated in bodies, as Democritus and Leucippus claim, and many others, including Epicurus later (they all make the interlacing of the void the cause of bodily division, since according to them what is truly continuous is undivided); or else as separate (i.e., gross), per se, surrounding the cosmos, as some early thinkers were the first to believe, and later Zeno of Citium and his followers. We, then, must examine what those involved with the void claim.

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Delta-6," (p. 213A 32), [fr. 151u-]:

On Bodies and their Attributes

[ U275 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.12.5, p. 311D ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 14, 1; Plutarch I.12.3): Epicurus maintains that the primary and simple bodies are imperceptible, and also that compounds formed by them all have weight.

Pseudo-Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, I.3.26, p. 285, 11D: Bodies have these three attributes: shape, size, and weight. Democritus guessed two of them, size and shape. Epicurus, for his part, added weight to these; it is necessary, he argues, that bodies be moved by the blow of their weights, for otherwise they would not move

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II (Against the Dogmatists, IV) 240: When Epicurus asserts that we conceive body by means of a combination of size and shape and resistance and weight, he is forcing us to form a conception of existent body out of non-existents.

Ibid., 257: this too Epicurus acknowledged, when he said that "body is conceived by means of a combination of form and magnitude and resistance and weight."

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists (Against the Dogmatists, V) 226: For whether body is, as Epicurus asserts, a combination of size and form and solidity

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 8, p. 1110F: I can affirm that this view {that denying the reality of emergent properties contradict the senses} is as inseparable from Epicurus as shape and weight are by their own assertion inseparable from the atom.

On Motion

[ U276 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotles "De Caelo" (On the Heavens), Gamma-1 (p. 299A 25); [254B 27 Karst.; 510A 30 Brand.]: The followers of Democritus, and, later, Epicurus, say that all atoms of the same nature have weight. However, because some are heavier, they sink down and in doing so they push the lighter ones up. Hence, they say, some are light and others are heavy.

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotles "De Caelo" (On the Heavens), Alpha-8 (p. 277B 1); [121A 18E 31 Karst.; 486A 4 Brand.]: Elementary bodies move either as a result of their own nature, or are moved by something else, or are squeezed out by one another. And he [Aristotle] shows that they do not move under the force of mutual extrusion either as follows. This opinion was held after him by both Strato of Lampsacus, and Epicurus, who thought that every object possessed weight and moved towards the middle, and that lighter ones settled out above the heavier ones by being forcibly squeezed out upwards by them, so that if the earth were removed, water would move to the center, and if the water [were removed] the air, and if the air [were removed] the fire.

Cf. [p. 111B 25 Karst.; 486A 12 Brand.]: Those who treat as an indication that everything moves naturally towards the middle the fact that when earth is removed water moves downwards, and when water [is removed] the air [does so too], do not know that the reciprocal motion is the cause of this. For when the denser things are transferred into the place of the rare, the rarer take the place of the denser, propelled downwards because there can be no void, and because body cannot pass through body. But one must realize that it was not just Strato and Epicurus who held that all bodies were heavy and moved naturally downwards, unnaturally upwards, but Plato too knows that this opinion is held, and disputes it, thinking that downwards and upwards are not properly applied to the world, and refusing to accept that things are called heavy in virtue of their downward motion.

[ U277 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Zeta-2," (p. 232A 23-), fr. 219r,v [938.18 Konstan]: Unless every magnitude were divisible, it would not always be possible for a slower object to move a lesser distance in equal time than a quicker one. For slower and quicker objects cover the atomic and indivisible distance in the same time, since if one took more time, it would cover in the equal time a distance less than the indivisible distance. And that is why the Epicureans too think all bodies move at equal speed through indivisible distances, so that they can avoid having their atomic quantities be divided  and thus no longer atomic.

[ U278 ]

Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotles "Physics, Zeta-1," (p. 232A 1-17), [fr. 52u Ald.; p. 370.4 Speng.]:

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Zeta-1," fr. 218,u 3 [934.18 Konstan]: He {Aristotle} adds yet another absurdity that follows upon this hypothesis, [namely] that something has moved that was not previously moving, for example, that something has walked that did not previously walk. For it is posited that O moves [with] the motion DEF over the magnitude ABC, but it moves neither over A (for it has moved over it), nor over B, nor likewise, over C. It will consequently, have moved [with] the whole motion without previously moving [with] it.

That this obstacle which he {Aristotle} has formulated is itself not entirely beyond belief is shown by the fact that despite his having formulated it and produced his solution, the Epicureans, who came along later, said that this is precisely how motion does occur. For they say that motion, magnitude and time have part-less constituents, and that over the whole magnitude composed of part-less constituents the moving object moves, but at each of the part-less magnitudes contained in it, it does not move but has moved; for if it were laid down that the object moving over the whole magnitude moves over these too, they would turn out to be divisible.

[ U279 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Delta-8," (p. 216A 17) fr. 159u:

[ U280 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.12.5, [p. 311A 10 Diels] ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 14, 1; Plutarch I.12.3): Atoms sometimes move straight down, sometimes swerve, and those which move upwards do so by collision and rebound.

Aetius, Doxography, I.23.4, [p. 319 Diels] ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 19, 1; Plutarch I.23.1): Epicurus said there are two types of the motion: the straight and the swerve.

On the Atomic Swerve

[ U281 ]

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.18: Epicurus for his part, where he follows Democritus, does not generally blunder. ... I now come to the lapses peculiar to Epicurus. He believes that these same indivisible solid bodies are borne by their own weight perpendicularly downward, which he holds is the natural motion of all bodies; but thereupon this clever fellow, being met with the difficulty that if they all traveled downwards in a straight line, and, as I said, perpendicularly, no one atom would ever be able to overtake any other atom, accordingly introduced an idea of his own invention: he said that the atom makes a very tiny swervethe smallest divergence possible; and thus produces entanglements and combinations and cohesion of atoms with atoms, which result in the creation of the world, and all its parts, and of all that in them is. Now not only is this whole affair a piece of childish fancy, but it does not even achieve the result that its author desires. The swerving is itself an arbitrary fiction; for Epicurus says the atoms swerve without causeyet this is the capital offense in a natural philosopher, to speak of something taking place uncaused. Then also he gratuitously deprives the atoms of what he himself declared to be the natural motion of all heavy bodies, namely, movement in a straight line downwards, and yet he does not attain the object for the sake of which this fiction was devised. For, if all the atoms swerve, none will ever come to cohere together; or if some swerve while others travel in a straight line, but their own natural tendency, in the first place this will be tantamount to assigning to the atoms their different spheres of action, some to travel straight and some sideways; while secondly (and this is a weak point with Democritus also) this riotous hurly-burly of atoms could not possibly result in the ordered beauty of the world we know.

Cicero, On Fate, 10.22: Epicurus, however, thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of the atom; and so a certain third movement arises, part from weight and collision, when the atom swerves by a very small distance  this he calls a "minimum." That this swerve comes about without a cause he is compelled to admit, if not by his words, by the facts themselves. For it is not the case that an atom swerves when struck by another; for how can one be struck by another if individual bodies are carried downwards by their weight in straight lines, as Epicurus supposes? For if one is never struck from its course by another, it follows that none even touches another; and from this it results that, even if there is an atom and it swerves, it does so without cause. Epicurus introduce this theory because he was afraid that, if the atom was always carried along by its weight in a natural and way, we would have no freedom, since our mind would be moved in the way in which it was constrained by the movement of the atoms. Democritus, the inventor of the atoms, preferred to accept this, that all things come about through fate, rather than to remove the natural movements of individual bodies from them.

Ibid. 20.46: This is how the case ought to be argued; one ought not to seek help from atoms that swerve and deviate from their path. "The atom swerves," he says. First why? For the atoms will have one force to move them from Democritus, the force of an impulse which he calls a blow, and from you, Epicurus, the force of weight and heaviness. So what new cause is there in nature to make the atom serve? Or do they draw lots among themselves which will swerve and which not? Or why do they swerve by a minimum interval and not by a larger one, or why do they swerve by one minimum and not by two or three? This is wishful thinking, not argument. For you do not say that the atom is moved from its position and swerves through an impulse from outside, nor that in that void through which the atom travels there was any cause for its not traveling in a straight line; nor has there been any change in the atom itself as a result of which it might no preserve the motion natural to its weight. So, although [Epicurus] has not brought forward any cause which might cause that serve of his, nevertheless he thinks he has a point to make when he says the sort of thing which the minds of all reject and repudiate.

Ibid. 9.18: There is no reason for Epicurus to tremble before fate, seek help from the atoms and turn them aside from their path, and for him to commit himself at one and the same time to two things that cannot be proved: first that something should happen without a cause, from which it will follow that something comes from nothing, which neither he himself nor any natural philosopher accepts; and second that, when two indivisible bodies travel through the void, one moves in a straight line and the other swerves aside.

Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.25.69 (Cotta speaking): Epicurus saw that if those atoms of his were always falling downwards by their own weight, their motion would be fixed and predetermined, and there would be no room for free will in the world. So casting about for a way to avoid this determinism, which Democritus had apparently overlooked, he said that the atoms, as they fell, just swerved a little!

Plutarch, On The Birth? of the Soul in Platos "Timaeus," 6, p. 1015C: The fact is that they [the Stoics] do not concede to Epicurus that the atom can swerve the tiniest bit, on the grounds that he introduces a causeless motion coming from nonexistence...

Saint Augustine, Against the Academicians, III.10.23 t. I [p. 284E Venice Edition, 1719]: How shall we decide the controversy between Democritus and earlier physicists about whether there is one world or innumerable worlds, when Democritus and his heir Epicurus were unable to remain in agreement? Once that voluptuary Epicurus allows atoms, as though they were his little handmaids  that is, the little bodies he gladly embraces in the dark  not to stay on their courses but to swerve freely here and there into the paths of others, he has also dissipated his entire patrimony through such quarrels.

On Aggregation and Dissolution

Varro, On Latin Language, VI.39, p. 219: Democritus, Epicurus, and still others who have deemed the original elements to be unlimited in number, though they do not tell us where the elements came from but only of what sort they are, still perform a great service: they show us the things of the world which consist of these elements.

[ U282 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 16, p. 1116C: But I should like to ask the very man {Colotes} who brings this indictment {against Plato} if his school does not see this distinction in their own system, whereby some objects are enduring and unchanging in their being, just as atoms too in their doctrine are forever the same because they are too hard to be affected, while all aggregates of atoms are subject to flux and change and come into being and pass of of it, as innumerable images leave them in a constant stream, and innumerable others, it is inferred, flow in from the surroundings and replenish the mass, which is varied by this interaction and altered in its composition, since in fact even the atoms in the interior of the aggregate can never cease moving or vibrating against one another, as the Epicureans say themselves.

[ U283 ]

Ibid., 10, p. 1112A: {The Epicureans} assume that there is neither generation of the non-existent nor destruction of the existent, but that generation is a name given to the conjunction of certain existents with one another and death a name given to their separation.

[ U284 ]

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotles "De Caelo, Alpha-7" (On the Heavens) [p. 275B 29 Karst.; 484A 23 Brand.]: Aristotle then demonstrated that the number of types of elementary bodies were not infinite, as Leucippus and Democritus and their followers (who lived before him) supposed and Epicurus (who lived after him). These men indeed maintained that the principles {i.e., elements} were unlimited in number, and they also thought that they were atomic and indivisible and impervious, because they were dense and did not enclose any empty space; for they said that division takes place where there is some void within bodies, and also that these atoms, being separated from each other in the unlimited void and differing in shape and size and position and ordering, move in the void and that they catch up with each other and collide and that some rebound to any chance place while others get entangled with each other, in accordance with the symmetry of their shapes and sizes and positions and orderings; and in this way it comes about that the origin of compounds is produced.

[ U285 ]

Galen, On the Preparation of Simple Medicines, I.14 t. XI [p. 405 K.]: always remembering how space is said to be empty by those who maintain that its essence is unique. But space is not empty in the sense in which it seems to Epicurus and to Asclepiades, but rather it is full of air, sparsely populated with bodies everywhere.

Galen, Comment on the 6th book of "Epidemics" by Hippocrates, IV 10 t. XVII 2 [p 162 K.]: The statement that there might empty spaces, in water or in the air, corresponds to the opinion of Epicurus and of Asclepiades in regards to the elements.

[ U286 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 10, p. 1112B: {The Epicureans}, who herd together unyielding and unresponsive atoms, produce nothing out of them  only an uninterrupted series of collisions among the atoms themselves. For the entanglement that prevents dissolution produces rather an intensification of the collisions, so that generation is by their account neither mixture nor cohesion, but confusion and conflict. On the other hand, if the atoms after an instant of collision rebound for while from the impact, and for a while draw near when the blow is spent, the time that they are separated from one another, without contact or proximity, is more than twice as long, so that nothing, not even an inanimate body, is produced out of them; while perception, mind, intelligence and thought cannot so much as be conceived, even with the best of will, as arising among void and atoms, things which taken separately have no quality and which on meeting are not thereby affected or changed.

Ibid., 9, p. 1111E: Whereas an atom, taken alone, is destitute and bare of any generative power, and when it collides with another it is so hard and resistant that a shock ensues, but it neither suffers nor causes any further effect. Rather the atoms receive and inflict blows for all time, and so far are they from being that they cannot even produce out of themselves a collective plurality or the unity of a heap in their constant shaking and scattering.

[ U287 ]

Lactantius, Divine Institutes, III.17.22: {Regarding atoms:} Why then, do we not feel nor perceive them? Because, he says, they have neither color, nor heat, nor odor. They are free of taste also, and moisture, and they are so minute that they cannot be cut and divided. Thus, the necessity of consequent things led him to wild ravings because he had undertaken falsehood in the beginning. For where or whence are those little bodies? Why did nobody save that one Leucippus dream them up, by whom Democritus was instructed, he who left the inheritance of foolishness to Epicurus? If these little bodies are indeed solid, as they say, certainly they can come under the eyes. If the nature of all of them is the same, how do they effect various things? They come together, he tells us, in varied order and position just as letters do: although they are few, yet variously arranged, they bring about innumerable words. But letters have various forms. So do these have commencements themselves, he says, for there are rough ones, there are hooked ones, there are smooth ones. Therefore, they can be cut and divided if there is in them something which projects. But if they are smooth and in need of hooks or projections, they cannot cohere. They must be hooked bodies, then, for a concatenation of them to take place. But since they are said to be so minute, that they are able to be severed by no sharp blade, how do they have hooks or corners? It is necessary for them, since they exist, to be torn apart. Then, by what pact, by what agreement do they come together among themselves, that something may be formed of them? If they lack sense, they are not able to come together with such order, for it is not possible for anything but reason to bring about anything rational. With how many proofs is this vanity able to be refuted!

On Qualities

[ U288 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 10, p. 1111A: Democritus is not to be censured not for admitting the consequences that flow from his principles, but for setting up principles that lead to these consequences. For he should not have posited immutable first elements; having posited them, he should have looked further and see that the generation of any quality becomes impossible. But to see the absurdity and deny it is the purest effrontery. Epicurus {as reported by Colotes} acts with the purest effrontery when he claims to lay down the same first principles, but nevertheless does not say that "color is by convention" and thus the qualities sweet, bitter, etc. If "does not say" means "does not admit" it is so, he is following his familiar practice 1111C: There was no necessity to assume, or rather filch from Democritus, the premise that the primary elements of all things are atoms. But once you have laid down the doctrine and made a fine showing with its initial plausibility, you must drain the disagreeable conclusions along with it, or else show how bodies without quality have given rise to qualities of every kind by the mere fact of coming together. Take for the example the quality called hot. How do you account for it? From where has it come and how has it been imposed on the atoms, which neither brought heat with them nor became hot by their conjunction? For the former implies the possession of quality, the latter the natural capacity to be affected, neither of which, say you, can rightly belong to atoms by reason of their indestructibility.

Galen, On the Art of Medicine, [7, t. I p. 246 K.]: {Galen, Selected Works, P.N. Singer ca. page 325}

Cf. Galen, On the Elements According to Hippocrates, [I.2, t. I p. 416 K.; 2.6 De Lacy]: It could be said that all things are one in form and power, as Epicurus and Democritus and their followers say about atoms.

Ibid., [p. 418 K.; 2.16 De Lacy]: All the atoms, then, being small bodies, are without qualities, and the void is a kind of place in which these bodies, being carried downward, all of them for all time, somehow become entwined with each other or strike each other and rebound; and in such assemblages they cause separations and recombinations with each other; and from this (interaction) they produce, besides all other compounds, our bodies, their affections, and their sensations. But (these philosophers) postulate that the first bodies are unaffected, some of them, like Epicurus, holding that they are unbreakable because of hardness, some, like Diodorus and Leucippus, that they are indivisible because of their small size; and [they hold that] these bodies cannot undergo any of those alterations in whose existence all men, taught by their senses confidently believe; for example, they say that none of the primary bodies grows warm or cold, and similarly none becomes dry or wet, and much less would they become black or white or admit to any other change whatsoever in any quality.

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary of Aristotles "Categories" 8, p. 8B 25, quat. Kappa, [fr. 8u Venice Edition; fr. 56u 10 Bas.; 216.31 Fleet]: In objection to Democritus and Epicurus, the question can be put: why on earth do they grant certain differentiae to atoms such as shape, weight, solidity, corporeality, edges, size, and motion, while asserting that they possess neither color nor sweetness nor life, and that the logoi of other such things do not pre-exist? For it is absurd, since there is a common account {logos} of the havables, not to classy like with like; it is even more absurd to make the most primary powers secondary, such as life, intellect, nature, reason {logos} and the like. It is equally impossible for these to be produced out of the conjunction [of atoms]; for according to Democritus, color and suchlike are by convention, and only atoms and void exist in truth. But once a person has done away with realities, he will have nothing to put in their place, and he who admits the causeless will have no ground to stand on. For why should the person starting from no definite cause prefer these to the contraries? So it is better to have recourse to the hypothesis which produces the havables from being had, in the way that the Academics defined havable by representing it as that which can be had {hektón}, not accepting the definition on the basis of its etymology.

Ibid. 14, p. 15A 30, quat. Phi, [fr. 8u Venice Edition; fr. 56u 10 Bas.]: The followers of Democritus, and subsequently those of Epicurus, in hypothesizing atoms to be unaffected and unqualified by other qualities apart from the shapes [of the atoms] and the way they are composed {tên poian autôn sunthesin}, say that other qualities  whether simple, such as temperatures {thermotêtes} and textures {leioêtes}, or those in respect of colors and tastes  supervene. And if these latter things [consist] in the way atoms are composed, alteration too will consist in change in respect of them {i.e., the atoms}. But the way they {i.e., the atoms} are composed, and their transposition and order, derive from nowhere else than from their motion and spatial movement, so that alteration is the same thing as their motion, or at least is a concomitant of this and is something belonging to this.

[ U289 ]

Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, I.13 [p. 52 Spengl.]: {R.W. Sharples}

On Mixture

[ U290 ]

Alexander of Aphrodisia, On Mixture, fr. 140u (214.28-215.8): Epicurus wanted to avoid what Democritus supposed happened for those who say that blending occurs by means of a juxtaposition of the components of the blend. He himself said that blending occurs by means of the juxtaposition of certain bodies  not of bodies which were themselves preserved as compounds, but rather of bodies that were broken down into elementary atoms which formed particular compounds, e.g., wine, water, honey, etc. He then says that the mixture is created by a certain kind of reciprocal compounding by component elements. It is these which produce the new mixture  not water and the wine, but the atoms which made up the water, as one might designate them, are combined together with those which made up the wine by a destruction and generation of the compound bodies. For the breakdown of each into its elements is a form of destruction, and the compounding produced from the elements themselves is <a sort of genesis>.

On Change

[ U291 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II (Against the Dogmatists, IV) 42: Some of the natural philosophers, amongst them Epicurus, have declared that the motion of change is a particular form of transitional motion; for the composite object which changes in quality changes owing to the local and transitional motion of the rationally perceived bodies which compose it. Thus, in order that a thing may become bitter from sweet, or black from white, the particles which must be arranged in a new order and take up different positions; that this could not be brought about in any other way than by the transitional motion of the molecules. And again, in order that a thing may become soft from hard or hard from soft, the parts whereof it is composed must move in place; for it is made soft by their expansion, but made hard by their coalescence and condensation. And owing to this the motion of change is, generically, nothing else than transitional motion.

[ U292 ]

Galen, On the Elements According to Hippocrates, [I.9, t. I p. 483 K.]: the {qualitative} change of bodies, as it happens, isnt aggregation and dispersal, as the disciples of Epicurus and Democritus think.

On Magnetism

[ U293 ]

Galen, On Natural Faculties, I.14, t. II [p. 45 K.]: Now Epicurus, despite the fact that he employs in his Physics elements similar to those of Ascelpiades, still allows that iron is attracted by the lodestone, and chaff by amber. He even tries to give the cause of the phenomenon. His view is that the atoms which flow from the stone are related in shape to those flowing from the iron, and so they become easily interlocked with one another; thus it is that, after colliding with each of the two compact masses (the stone and the iron) they then rebound into the middle and so become entangled with each other, and draw the iron after them. So far, then, as his hypotheses regarding causation go, he is perfectly unconvincing; nevertheless, he does grant that there is an attraction. Further, he says that it is on similar principles that there occur in the bodies of animals the dispersal of nutrient and the discharge of waste matter, as also the actions of cathartic drugs.

Asclepiades, however, who viewed with suspicion the incredible character of the cause mentioned, and who saw no other credible cause on the basis of his supposed elements, shamelessly found his way out by stating that nothing is in any way attracted by anything else. Now, if he was dissatisfied with what Epicurus said, and had nothing better to say himself, he ought to have refrained from making hypotheses, and should have said that Nature is a constructive artist and that the substance of things is always tending towards unity and also towards alteration because its own parts act upon and are acted upon by one another. For, if he had assumed this, it would not have been difficult to allow that this constructive nature has powers which attract appropriate and expel alien matter. For in no other way could she be constructive, preservative of the animal, and eliminative of its diseases, unless it be allowed that she conserves what his appropriate and discharges what is foreign.

But in this matter, too, Ascelpiades realized the logical sequence of the principles he had assumed; he showed no scruples, however, in opposing plain fact; he joins issue in this matter also, not merely with all physicians, by with everyone else, and maintains that there is no such thing as a crisis, or a critical day, and that nature does absolutely nothing for the preservation of the animal. For his constant aim is to follow out logical consequences and to upset obvious fact, in this respect being opposed to Epicurus; for the latter always affirmed the observed fact, although he gives an ineffective explanation of it, saying that these small corpuscles belonging to the lodestone rebound, and become entangled with other similar particles of the iron, and that then, by means of this entanglement (which cannot be seen anywhere) such a heavy substance as iron is attracted. I fail to understand how anybody could believe this. Even if we admit this, the same principle will not explain the fact that, when the iron has another piece brought in contact with it, this becomes attached to it.

For what are we to say? That, indeed, some of the particles that flow from the lodestone collide with the iron and then rebound back, and that it is by these that the iron becomes suspended? That others penetrate into it, and rapidly pass through it by way of its empty channels? That these then collide with the second piece of iron and are not able to penetrate it although they penetrated the first piece? And that they then course back to the first piece and produce entanglements like the former ones?

The hypothesis here becomes clearly refuted by its absurdity. As a matter of fact, I have seen five writing-stylets of iron attached to one another in a line, only the first one being in contact with the lodestone, and the power being transmitted through it to the others. Moreover, it cannot be said that if you bring a second stylet into contact with the lower end of the first, it becomes held, attached, and suspended, whereas, if you apply it to any other part of the side it does not become attached. For the power of the lodestone is distributed in all directions; it merely needs to be in contact with the first stylet at any point; from this stylet again the power flows, as quick as thought, all through the second, and from that again to the third. Now, if you imagine a small lodestone hanging in a house, and in contact with it all round a large number of pieces of iron, form them again others, from these others, and so on, all these pieces of iron must surely become filled with the corpuscles which emanate from the stone; therefore, this first little stone is likely to become dissipated by disintegrating into these emanations. Further, even if there be no iron in contact with it, it still disperses into the air, particularly if this be also warm.

"Yes," says Epicurus, "but these corpuscles must be looked on as exceedingly small, so that some of them are a ten-thousandth part of the size of the very small particles carried in the air." Then do you venture to say that so great a weight of iron can be suspended by such small bodies? If each of them is a ten-thousandth part as large as the dust particles which are borne in the atmosphere, how big must we suppose the hook-like extremities by which they interlock with each other to be? For of course this is quite the smallest portion of the whole particle.

Then, again, when a small body becomes entangled with another small body, or when a body in motion becomes entangled with another also in motion, they do not rebound at once. For, further, there will of course be others which break in upon them from above, from below, from front and rear, from right to left, and which shake and agitate them and never let them rest. Moreover, we would be forced to suppose that each of these small bodies has a large number of these hook-like extremities. For by one it attaches itself to its neighbors, by another  the topmost one  to the lodestone, and by the bottom one to the iron. For if it were attached to the stone above and not interlocked with the iron below, this would be of no use. Thus, the upper part of the superior extremity must hang from the lodestone and the iron must be attached to the lower end of the inferior extremity; and, since they interlock with each other by their sides as well, they must, of course, have hooks there too. Keep in mind also, above everything, what small bodies these are which possess all these different kids of outgrowths. Moreover, remember how, in order that the second piece of iron may become attached to the first, the third to the second, and to that the fourth, these absurd little particle must both penetrate the passages in the first piece of iron and at the same time rebound from the piece coming next in the series, although this second peeve is naturally in every way similar to the first.

Such a hypothesis, once again, is certainly not lacking in audacity; in fact, to tell the truth, it is far more shameless than the previous ones; according to it, when five similar pieces of iron are arranged in a line, the particles of the lodestone which easily traverse the first piece of iron rebound from the second, and do not pass readily through it in the same way. Indeed, it is nonsense, whichever alternative is adopted. For, if they do rebound, how then do they pass through into the third piece? And if they do not rebound, how does the second piece become suspended to the first? For Epicurus himself regarded the rebound as the active agent in the attraction.

But, as I have said, one is driven to talk nonsense whenever one gests into discussion with such men. Having, therefore, given a concise and summary statement of the matter, I wish to be done with it. For if one diligently familiarizes oneself with the writings of Ascelpiades, one will see clearly their logical dependence on his first principles, but also their disagreement with observed facts. Thus, Epicurus, in his desire to adhere to the facts, cuts an awkward figure by aspiring to show that these agree with his principles.

15.59: How, then, do they {kidneys} exert this attraction {pulling waste from the blood}. If, as Epicurus thinks, all attraction takes place by virtue of the rebounds and entanglements of the atoms, it would be certainly better to maintain that the kidneys have no attractive action at all; for his theory, when examined, would be found as it stands to be much more ridiculous even than the theory of the lodestone, mentioned a little while ago.

[ U294 ]

Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, II (Against the Dogmatists, IV).219: According to the account of Demetrius of Laconia, Epicurus says that time is a concurrence of concurrences, one which accompanies days, nights, hours, the presence and absence of feelings, motions and rests. For all of these are incidental properties of certain things, and since time accompanies them all it would be reasonable to call it a concurrence of concurrences.

[Ibid., 238-247, = Outlines of Pyrrhonism , III.137, Cf. U79 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.22.5, p. 318, 19 [Diels] ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 8, 45): In regards to the essence of time, Epicurus defines it a concurrence <of concurrences>, that being what accompanies motion.

On the Universe and its World-Systems

[ U295 ]

Aetius, Doxography, I.18.3, p. 316 4 [Diels] ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 18, 1; Plutarch I.18.1): Lucretius, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus  they consider the atoms to be infinite in number, while the void is infinite in size.

[ U296 ]

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 13, p. 1114A: Epicurus, who says that "the universe" is infinite, uncreated and imperishable, and subject neither to increase nor diminution, speaks of the universe as if it were a unity.

[ U297 ]

Cicero, On Divination, II.50.103: You see how Epicurus proceeds from admitted premises to the proposition to be established. But this you Stoic logicians do not do; for you not only do not assume premises which everybody concedes, but you even assume premises which, if granted, do not tend in the least to establish what you wish to prove. For you start with this assumption: "If there are gods, they are kindly disposed towards men." Now, who will grant you that? Not Epicurus! He says that the gods are concerned at all  for themselves or for anybody else.

Simplicius of Cilicia, Commentary on Aristotles "Physics, Gamma-4," (p. 203B 20), fr. 197u: There is fourth point which is hard to deal with: the fact that everything which is limited seems to be limited by something. For if everything which is limited is limited by something which is external to itself, then that external thing by which it is limited is itself either unlimited or limited. And if it is unlimited, then we immediately have the result that the unlimited exists. And if it is limited, like the earth for example, then this too is limited by something else, and so on without limit. And if it goes on without limit, the unlimited exists. For one will never get ones hands on the final limit, if indeed this too is limited by something else. The Epicureans, according to Alexander, relied on this argument above all else when they said that the universe was infinite, because everything which is limited by something has outside it something which is limited {and so on and so on}. Aristotle mentions that this argument is quite old.

Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, III.12, [p. 200.20 Spengl.; 10.104,20-23 Sharples]: If the being limited of what is limited consisted in being considered [as] up against something else, then our opponents would have a point when they claim that outside every limited thing there has to be something up against which it is seen to be limited  if it is in this that being {einai}, for what is limited, consists.

[ U298 ]

Themistius, Paraphrases of Aristotles "Physics, Gamma-8," (p. 208A 11), [fr. 36r Ald.], [p. 251.1 Speng.]:

[ U299 ]

Plutarch, On the Obsolescence of Oracles, 28, p. 425D: For, if we take the expressions below and above as referring, not to the world, but outside of it, we shall become involved in the same difficulties as Epicurus, who would have all his atoms move to places under our feet, as if either the void had feet, or infinity granted us to conceive of below and above within itself.

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 8, p. 1111B: {Epicurus} says that while he posits an infinite universe, he does not eliminate "up" and "down."

Plutarch, Stoic Self-Contradictions, 44, p. 1054B: It is frequently asserted by Chrysippus that outside the world there is infinite void and that what is infinite has no beginning, middle, or end; and this the Stoics use especially to annihilate the downward motion which Epicurus says the atom has of itself, their contention being that in an infinite void, there is no difference by which to distinguish one part as being up and the other as down.

[ U300 ]

Scholion on Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, by way of Laertius, Lives, X.88: "A world-system is a circumscribed portion of the universe, which contains stars and earth and all other visible things, cut off from the infinite, and terminating..." and terminating in a boundary which may be either thick or thin, the dissolution of which will bring about the ruin of everything within...

[ U301 ]

Galen, On the Diagnosis and Cure of Souls Errors, 7, t. V [p. 102 K., Singer]: The Stoic says that there is no void in the world, but that there is empty space outside it. The Epicurean grants both these types of void, but differs from the [Stoics] in another respect. He does not admit that there is only one world, as does the Stoic, who in this respect agrees perfectly with the Peripatetics. But just as he maintains that the void is infinite in size, so also does he way that there are in it an infinite number of world-systems.

Aetius, Doxography, II.1.3, [p. 327 Diels] ( Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, physics, 22, 3; Plutarch II.1.1): Democritus and Epicurus maintain that there are infinite worlds in the infinite <universe>, in every direction.

Achilles, Introduction, 8, [p.131 E Pet.]: Some assert that there exists something externally, as indeed Epicurus, who supposes that there are infinite world-systems in the infinite void. 5 p. 130B: Epicurus and his master [sic] Metrodorus believe in the existence of many world-systems.

Servius, Commentary on Virgils " Aenids, " I.330 at "Under which skies:" ... according to the Epicureans, who would have it that there exist more skies, as Cicero does in his Hortensius.

Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, I.24.67 (Cotta to Velleius): Where is this "truth" of yours to be found? Among the innumerable world-systems, born and dying through every instant of time?

Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, I.6.21: The very conception of infinite space, apeiria as they term it, is entirely derived from Democritus; and again the countless numbers of world-systems that come into existence and pass out of existence every day.

Dionysius the Episcopalian, by way of Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV 23, 2 p. 773A: The atoms comprise an infinity of world-systems. [Cf. 26.14 p. 781A]

Hermias, Derision of the Pagan Philosophers, 18, [p. 656, 7 Diels]: Epicurus jumps up and tells me "You actually have counted only one world-system, my friend. But there are many world-systems  in fact, they are infinite." [Cf. Commentary on Lucan, Civil War, VI.696]

Alexander of Aphrodisia, Questions, III.12, [p. 199, 20 Spengl.; 10.104,4-8 Sharples]: That there is a plurality o