Texts & Translations

This introduction to Epicurus was written In 1947 by Norman DeWitt, prior to his release of "Epicurus And His Philosophy."

Introduction To Our Fragment Collection

This collection is work in progress. It first includes a portion Cyril Bailey's 1926 work "Epicurus - The Extant Remains" prepared from a PDF of the original which can be found at Archive.org here. The original PDF contains the full Greek, footnotes, and commentary.

Following the Bailey material is a part of the Usener Collection as translated by Erik Anderson at Epicurism.info. These citations require additional organization, but they are included here in…

This will be a collection of objections gathered from our Lucretius Today Podcast review of Cicero's "On Ends," annotated with comments as to proper responses.Initially this will be in sequential order as the argument appears in the book. As the argument gets repetitive we can re-order.

M. TVLLI CICERONIS DE FINIBVS BONORVM ET MALORVM

LIBRI QVINQVE.

THE TEXT REVISED AND EXPLAINE BY JAMES S. REID, M.L,

FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; CLASSICAL EXAMINER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III Containing the Translation.

Cambridge : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFATORY NOTE.

My rendering of Cicero’s De Finibus is primarily designed as an appendage to my forthcoming annotated edition of the text. The translation will enable me to…

Backup of Attalus.org

Transcribed by Cassius Amicus and Ilkka Vouristo. This transcription was very difficult for a variety of reasons, and the reader is advised to check the PDF for the greatest accuracy.

This text comes from http://thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius.html)Other Editions:The 1743 Translation Published By Daniel Brown
The translator of this edition is unknown, but it was published in England by Daniel Brown in 1743. This translation has the advantage that despite being older, it can sometimes be easier to read than later versions.The 1893 Translation of HAJ Munro
This is one of the most memorable and literal translations available.The 1920's Loeb translation by William RouseThe 1936 Translation Of Cyril Bailey
This is the most recent edition in the public domain.The Latin Edition
This text comes from LatinLibrary.com.

Editions at EpicureanFriends.comThe 1743 Translation Published By Daniel Brown
The translator of this edition is unknown, but it was published in England by Daniel Brown in 1743. This translation has the advantage that despite being older, it can sometimes be easier to read than later versions.The 1893 Translation of HAJ Munro
This is one of the most memorable and literal translations available.The 1920's Loeb translation by William RouseThe 1936 Translation Of Cyril Bailey
This is the most recent edition in the public domain.The Latin Edition
This text comes from LatinLibrary.com.

For the likelihood that the translator of this edition is Samuel Dunster, see:

Editions at EpicureanFriends.comThe 1743 Translation Published By Daniel BrownThe translator of this edition is unknown, but it was published in England by Daniel Brown in 1743. This translation has the advantage that despite being older, it can sometimes be easier to read than later versions.The 1893 Translation of HAJ MunroThis is one of the most memorable and literal translations available.The 1920's Loeb translation by William RouseThe 1936 Translation Of Cyril BaileyThis is the most recent edition in the public domain.The Latin EditionThis text comes from LatinLibrary.com.

Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by Several Hands. Corrected and Revised by William W. Goodwin, with an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 5 Volumes. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1878).This version comes from here: http://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:that_it_is_not_possible_to_live_pleasurably_according_to_the_doctrine_of_epicurusFirst posted at EpicureanFriends 07/09/23 - this version needs cleaning up.

Diogenes Laertius' Book Ten - his biography of Epicurus - is the primary source of information about Epicurus remaining to us from the ancient world. The version on this page is that of Cyril Bailey as prepared forhis 1926 work "Epicurus - The Extant Remains." The text here was prepared from a PDF of the original which can be found at Archive.org here. The original PDF contains the full Greek, footnotes, and commentary. Approximate line numbers matching the Bailey edition are placed in brackets such as [20]. Placement of these numbers should not be considered to be exact, and should be used primarily as an aid in looking up the same section in other translations. Headings are not a part of the original text. The Perseus Greek edition, from which individual words can be looked up for English definitions, is here.NOTE:A PDF prepared by Tau Phi with three parallel public domain translations of this and the other letters of Epicurus is here. As of this writing 4/7/25, a work-in-progress of a side-by-side page is here, but the text and especially the line numbers are not yet reliable.

This book has a lot of good information about Epicurean ethics, because it is an exchange in which Cicero dispute's Torquatus' statement of Epicurean ethics. Unfortunately we don't talk about it nearly as much as we talk about Book One. Part of the reason it is less referenced is that rather than being a straightforward narrative by Torquatus, this section is a question / answer dialog as in Plato's works. Unfortunately, the standard texts do not break the exchanges down by speaker, so the text is hard to follow in the standard editions. This page has been set up to prepare a version that is broken down into dialog presentation form and is therefore easier to read.If anyone would like to help edit this text, or knows of a printed version where we can more easily pull out the changes in speakers, please let Cassius know.This is a work in process. The place where editing stops is marked with a horizontal line divider, but it's easy to tell also because the names of the speakers stop appearing.

Tyndall - Address at Belfast

Boris Nikolsky is the author of the article "Epicurus on Pleasure"which explains that the kinetic / katastematic distinction was not of significance to Epicurus and was a much later non-Epicurean accretion.