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1795–1852. Born in Scotland, active mainly in the United States. Wrote in English. Social reformer, abolitionist, and writer whose novel A Few Days in Athens (1822) dramatizes and defends Epicurean philosophy against the stock ancient criticisms leveled at it, presenting Epicurus's own school in a sympathetic, humanizing light for a 19th-century readership.

1743–1826, Virginia. Wrote in English. U.S. Founding Father and third President who explicitly declared, in an 1819 letter to William Short, "I too am an Epicurean," and assembled his own private syllabus/compilation of Epicurus's doctrines for personal use.

1709–1751. Born in France, later worked in the Netherlands and Prussia (Berlin). Wrote in French. An Enlightenment physician and materialist philosopher whose works defend pleasure as the standard of the good and deny the soul's immortality in an explicitly Epicurean-Lucretian vein; repeatedly censored and forced into exile for it.

2nd century AD; precise identity and dates disputed. Wrote in Greek. Author of the lost anti-Christian polemic The True Word ("Alethes Logos"), known today only through Origen's point-by-point rebuttal, Against Celsus. Ancient and modern scholars disagree on whether this Celsus should be identified with an Epicurean philosopher of the same name mentioned elsewhere by Lucian -- a live, unresolved q

c. early-to-mid 15th century (precise dates uncertain), from Cremona. Wrote in Latin. A Renaissance humanist who wrote a direct, unapologetic defense of Epicurus's philosophy against Stoic critics, reconciling apparent tensions in the ancient biographical tradition (Diogenes Laertius) rather than simply repeating the standard hostile caricature.

1407–1457. Active in Rome and Naples. Wrote in Latin and Italian. A Renaissance humanist whose dialogue De Voluptate ("On Pleasure") is an early and daring attempt to rehabilitate Epicurean ethics within a nominally Christian intellectual world, arguing pleasure's case against Stoic virtue-ethics with real philosophical seriousness.

c. 70–c. 121/123 AD, Rome. Wrote in Latin. Wife of the emperor Trajan; used her position as empress to help secure the headship of the Epicurean school at Athens for a chosen successor regardless of Roman citizenship, and is honored in a surviving imperial rescript for this act of patronage -- a rare, direct instance of imperial-level support for the school's institutional continuity.

c. 140–70 BC, head of the school at Athens (also taught at Rome). Wrote in Greek. Scholarch of the Epicurean school before Patro; taught the young Cicero and Atticus directly, both in Rome and Athens. Cicero speaks of him afterward with genuine personal warmth even while rejecting Epicurean doctrine philosophically.

65–8 BC. Born at Venusia, active mainly at Rome. Wrote in Latin. A major poet who playfully describes himself as "a hog from Epicurus's herd" (Epicuri de grege porcum, Epistles I.4.16) and whose odes and satires repeatedly draw on Epicurean ethical themes -- seizing the day, the natural limits of desire, and freedom from the anxieties of ambition and wealth.

100–44 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Not a declared member of the school, but Sallust records Caesar arguing in the Senate debate over the Catiline conspirators, against the death penalty, that death is "a release from misery, not a torment" and brings no further suffering -- an argument that closely tracks the distinctively Epicurean doctrine that death is the end of sensation and therefore

c. 87–42 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Senator and general, the leading organizer of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar; an open, self-identified Epicurean, confirmed in his own surviving letters to Cicero (Ad Familiares XV.16, 19). His life stands as the clearest ancient refutation of the caricature that Epicureans withdraw from politics and public danger: he raised and led armed r

1st century BC, taught in Naples/Campania. Wrote in Greek and/or Latin (uncertain which he taught in). An Epicurean teacher whose students in Campania included the young Virgil, giving Epicureanism a direct, documented line into one of the central figures of Latin literature, even though Virgil's own mature poetry moves in a more eclectic direction.

c. 110–c. 40/35 BC (exact death date uncertain). Born in Gadara (Syria), studied under Zeno of Sidon at Athens, spent his later career in Italy (Rome/Herculaneum). Wrote in Greek. A prolific Epicurean philosopher and poet whose numerous treatises -- on anger, frank criticism, household management, poetry, rhetoric, and more -- survive today only because they were carbonized (not destroyed) by the

Consul 58 BC. Rome; his family villa was at Herculaneum. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Julius Caesar's father-in-law and a patron of Philodemus of Gadara; his villa at Herculaneum (identified with the "Villa of the Papyri") is generally thought to have housed Philodemus's working library, the carbonized remains of which are the source of nearly all surviving Epicurean papyri.

110–32 BC. Born and died in Rome; spent much of his life in Athens (hence "Atticus"). Wrote and spoke in Latin and Greek. Cicero's lifelong friend, correspondent, financier, and publisher; widely understood by ancient and modern readers to have real Epicurean sympathies, though the precise degree of his personal commitment is debated. Joined Patro in persuading Cicero to intervene on behalf of the

Praetor 49 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Voices and defends the Epicurean position on the highest good in Book I of Cicero's De Finibus. A member of a patrician family renowned for battlefield courage (his ancestor won the cognomen "Torquatus" in single combat against a Gallic champion), which Cicero exploits dramatically: an Epicurean spokesman from a lineage defined by martial valor underc

Fl. mid-1st century BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. A Roman senator who voices and defends the Epicurean position on the nature of the gods in Book I of Cicero's De Natura Deorum, arguing for Epicurus's theology against the Stoic and Academic positions represented by the dialogue's other speakers.

Died c. 45 BC. From Cisalpine Gaul ("Insuber," i.e. of the Insubres), active in Rome. Wrote in Latin. Author of a treatise on physics and "the nature of things"; Cicero mentions him with personal warmth in his letters even while disagreeing with the philosophy, and Horace refers to him as an authority on Epicurean dietetics.

Fl. early 1st century BC, Rome. Wrote in Latin. An early Latin Epicurean writer regularly paired with and criticized alongside Amafinius by Cicero for similar reasons -- accessible content delivered in what Cicero considered an unsophisticated style.

c. 99–c. 55 BC (dates disputed). Italy (city of birth unknown). Wrote in Latin. Author of De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"), the longest and fullest surviving exposition of Epicurean physics, written as a didactic poem addressed to Gaius Memmius.

c. 125–after 180 AD. Born in Samosata (Syria/Commagene), traveled widely across the Greek-speaking world. Wrote in Greek. A satirist rather than a card-carrying Epicurean, but a valuable sympathetic outside witness: his Alexander the False Prophet singles out Epicurus's Kyriai Doxai (Principal Doctrines) by name as "a great bulwark" against superstition and religious fraud.

Fl. early-to-mid 2nd century AD. From Oinoanda, in Lycia (modern southwestern Turkey). Wrote in Greek. A wealthy, elderly Epicurean who had a summary of Epicurean physics, ethics, and canonics carved onto a massive public inscription in his home city's marketplace, explicitly so that people not yet born could benefit from the doctrine -- the largest surviving inscribed philosophical text from anti

Dates uncertain (Hellenistic period), associated with Rhodes. Wrote in Greek. A minor figure known almost entirely from a single ancient citation recording that he disputed part of the school's standard account of visual perception -- evidence that individual Epicureans could and did disagree with details of school doctrine without leaving the school.

c. 215–164 BC. Seleucid king of Syria, reigning from Antioch. Greek-speaking court. Not himself a practicing Epicurean philosopher, but as the close friend and patron of Philonides of Laodicea he made Epicureanism the effective court philosophy at Antioch during his reign -- a rare case of the school gaining direct royal favor rather than merely private adherents.

c. 200–after 129 BC. Born in Laodicea-on-Sea (Syria), active at the Seleucid court in Antioch. Wrote in Greek. A mathematician as well as an Epicurean, he became the friend and philosophical advisor of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and is the figure principally responsible for Epicureanism's establishment as the effective court philosophy at Antioch.

2nd–1st century BC (exact dates uncertain). From Miletus, active partly in Athens/Italy. Wrote in Greek. A scholarly Epicurean known for detailed polemical and technical works; substantial papyrus fragments of his writing were recovered from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.

c. 150–c. 75 BC. Born in Sidon (Phoenicia), head of the school in Athens. Wrote in Greek. Teacher of Philodemus of Gadara and, by some ancient testimony, heard as a lecturer by the young Cicero in Athens; represents the school's continued vitality in the generation just before the great wave of Roman engagement with Epicureanism.

2nd century BC (exact dates uncertain), Athens. Wrote in Greek. A later scholarch reputed to have written over 400 books; Diogenes Laertius relied heavily on Apollodorus's own chronological work for the dates he gives of Epicurus's birth, death, and career, making him an important (if now largely lost) source behind the biographical tradition.