Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

I don't know that we've previously discussed this article by Maria Bitsori:

Epicurus' death

The aim is to present how an eminent philosopher perceived, reported and faced his progressing and ultimately fatal uropathy, 23 centuries ago. All available…

www.academia.edu

It gets close to the issue but as I read through it doesn't really address the argument at length. I see that it does include a reference I've never seen before. The way it's written it sure sounds like it's referencing Epicurus, but the footnote refers to Marcus Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius (1930) Meditations: 9. 41. Edited and translated by Haines CR. The Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp 254–257) Perhaps Aurelius is referring to Epicurus, or perhaps I'm just not reading it properly.

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Epicurus obviously followed these palliative measures in his final-stage disease. Surgery could have been a more appropriate management. Surgical interventions in urinary tract diseases were not unknown at the time [7], but most probably they couldn’t help in this specific case. On the other hand, the philosopher himself did not seem eager to accept any extraordinary medical intervention: ‘‘nor did I let the physicians ride the high horse as if they were doing grand things’’ [15]

This is an interesting question. We're in the realm of speculation and most likely we will never know for sure but I always found the beginning of the letter to Idomeneus quite peculiar: "On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. [...]"

How could Epicurus know that it was the last day and why he called it blissful? To me, it sounds a bit like: "There's nothing much to be done, so I feel relief as I made a decision to pull the plug today and end the suffering".

Maybe it would be worthwhile to closely inspect original Greek to shed more light on this sentence?

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How could Epicurus know that it was the last day and why he called it blissful? To me, it sounds a bit like: "There's nothing much to be done, so I feel relief as I made a decision to pull the plug today and end the suffering".

It's difficult to separate the fact from the wish-thinking. I knew three different people to whom this kind of foreknowledge has been ascribed. A husband who sent flowers to his wife at work on the morning of his death. A woman who worked tirelessly to repeal a law she believed was immoral, and died in her bed with her hands clasped over her abdomen the day that law was repealed. A man who requested blackberry brandy and died after draining the glass.

I do not accept these uncritically, and would not suggest a cause outside of nature even if I did, but I don't think it's impossible for a person to know that the moment of their death is at hand. Maybe they feel that death is coming on in the same way that we feel a sneeze is coming on. Maybe they can even choose a time to stop struggling for life and let go. Fifty years after signing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 4th of July, the last living members of the committee that had produced that document.

Jefferson's Last Words

What did Jefferson say shortly before he died on July 4, 1826.

www.monticello.org

Quote from Don

Why does he use ἐγράφομεν "we write"? 1st person plural?

I've been considering if this choice was a reflection of those texts being expressions of the collective thought held by the leaders of the Garden, or else, if it evident (as I think might be the case with the Last Will) that someone was transcribing on behalf of Epicurus, or else, copying material.

I see we have discussed some of these questions at length in a thread from 2022;

Thread

Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

[…]

I know you bring this up on occasion, but I can never remember the textual reference. Where is that?

Don

December 7, 2022 at 7:14 AM

edit; see @Martin's comment  #61 in that thread.

We discussed this issue briefly in tonight's Wednesday Zoom and I thought I remembered that there was another Epicurean thought to have committed suicide. As is often the case i can sometimes remember the first letter of a name but often mess up the main part. In this case the name I could not remember did start with a D, but it appears to be one Diodorus as referenced by Seneca (see below).

And I see in that earlier thread that there is some issue that maybe Democritus went out in similar way.

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RE: Did Epicurus Commit Suicide Due To His Disease? (Merger of Two Threads On When Voluntary Death Makes Sense)

More from James Warren (same source):

it is the result of a calculation that the alternative would be a continued life of pain. Provided life has pleasure left in it,we will continue to live. And the Epicurean sage will be sufficiently schooled to continue to find pleasure in life under conditions which others would find unbearable—Epicurus' own example of composure in the face of terminal illness demonstrates this. 345 Seneca reports the suicide of an Epicurean named Diodorus. On this…

Cassius

December 8, 2022 at 10:14 PM

I merged our recent discussion of the effect of unmixed wine with the previous thread on voluntary death since the topic is essentially the same. As discussion on this has progressed one aspect that seem particularly interesting is Bryan's latest post as to the Gaul who was reported to have committed suicide by unmixed wine. Further, there seem to be reasonable conjecture that drinking unmixed wine might have been an accepted euphemism for suicide, or that drinking of unmixed wine was at times accompanied by poison. All of this would need citations to texts for them to become more viable suggestions, so we can pursue all of this discussion here with all the background in one place.

I'm asking this in complete ignorance on the subject, but is it possible that ancient Greek wine was made through a different process than today's French and California wines? Some type of extremely strong retsina? Something that needed water mixed in just to be palatable as well as safe to drink?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_G…fore%20pressing.

https://www.badancient.com/claims/ancient…oman%20cultures.

https://greekreporter.com/2022/05/09/why-ancient-greeks-mixed-wine-with-seawater/

Very interesting!

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So then, what of Pliny’s reference to Roman Falernian wine lighting with a flame (Natural History 14.8)? Or Plutarch’s description of Alexander the Great’s wine drinking contest where more than 40 men died from excessive consumption (Life of Alexander 70.1)?

The facts of that article are very interesting, but its argument in conclusion that it is false to suppose that ancient wine was stronger than modern wine seems very poorly argued to me. I suppose it's saying "as a general rule" and maybe that's fair, but the conclusion itself seems overbroad to me.

I think this is the most instructive clue I have found, (Laertius 4.44):

"[Arcesilaus] died in a fit of madness, as Hermippus says, after drinking a good deal of unmixed wine, he had by then reached the age of seventy-five, and no man was more highly regarded by the Athenians."

That alone is only suggestive (just like the example with Epicurus), however the very next line, Diogenes says:

"My own verses about him run as follows: Why, Arcesilaus, did you draw unmixed wine so unsparingly as to take leave of your sense? I pity you not so much for your death..."

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As a side note about Arcesilaus being "highly regarded," Plutarch says "The reputation of Arcesilaus seems to immoderately distress Epicurus -- given that [Arcesilaus] was especially admired among the philosophers in those times" _{Plutarch (fl. 80 CE), Against Colotes, 26, 1121 E fin.}

Arcesilaus was a pupil of both Theophrastus and Pyrrho, yet he ended up leading the Academy a few years after Epicurus died.

So you're reading that to mean that unmixed wine can kill(?), but Bryan I find Laertius' poem hard to decipher too. What is he saying - that he died unintentionally?

I take from the poem, and the whole passage, that in Laertius' writings "drinking unmixed wine" certainly stands for "intentional death."

This was already rather clear, but I think 4.44 makes it undeniable.

Lots of interesting stuff there including the rage against the dying light which might need its own thread to analyze.

But I think we are establishing that drinking unmixed wine was known to be very dangerous and thus Epicurus would have known at the least that it might be fatal.

I personally would go further than Don in my conclusions at this point but that might mean diving into what the "rage against the dying light" really means.

At present I am mainly willing to say that there can come a time (mostly cases of clinically certain terminal highly painful disease combined with advanced age) when it can be a rational assessment to conclude that future pleasure is not worth the cost in pain.

Let's do a separate thread on the Dylan Thomas poem:

Thread

Epicurus And The Dylan Thomas Poem - "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

Don referenced this poem so maybe we should discuss it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go…that_good_night

Cassius

July 6, 2025 at 8:55 AM