Part of the Other Perspectives section of the outline of Epicurean philosophy. Updated October 24, 2026.
1. Epicurus
341–270 BC. Born on Samos, active mainly in Athens. Wrote in Greek. Founder of the school; developed the physics (atomism), canonics (the senses, preconceptions, and feelings as the criteria of truth), and ethics (pleasure as the goal, pain and pleasure as the only guides) that all later Epicureans transmitted and defended.
2. Metrodorus of Lampsacus
c. 331–278 BC. Born in Lampsacus, active in Athens. Wrote in Greek. Epicurus's closest companion and, in Epicurus's own words, second only to himself in importance to the school; predeceased Epicurus, who provided for Metrodorus's children in his will.
3. Hermarchus of Mytilene
c. 340–c. 260 BC. Born on Lesbos, active in Athens. Wrote in Greek. Epicurus's chosen successor as head (scholarch) of the school in Athens; little of his own writing survives, but ancient sources credit him with defending and consolidating the school after Epicurus's death.
4. Polyaenus of Lampsacus
Died c. 278 BC. From Lampsacus, active in Athens. Wrote in Greek. A trained mathematician before joining Epicurus; ranked by ancient sources among the school's founding inner circle alongside Metrodorus and Hermarchus, though little of his own work survives directly.
5. Colotes of Lampsacus
c. 320s BC–after 268 BC (exact dates uncertain). From Lampsacus, active in Athens. Wrote in Greek. A direct pupil of Epicurus who wrote a polemical treatise arguing that the doctrines of rival philosophers made it "impossible even to live" if followed consistently; known today mainly because Plutarch wrote a hostile point-by-point rebuttal, *Against Colotes*, which incidentally preserves a great deal of what Colotes actually argued.
6. Leontion
Active in the early 3rd century BC (exact dates unknown), Athens. Wrote in Greek. A female member of the Garden, formerly a hetaira, who became a respected philosopher in her own right; Epicurus wrote to her with evident affection, and she is credited with a treatise criticizing the Peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus, a striking case of a woman writing philosophical polemic in this period.
7. Polystratus
Died c. 219 BC, Athens. Wrote in Greek. Third head of the school, succeeding Hermarchus; his treatise *On Irrational Contempt*, defending objective value against a fashionable relativism, survives on papyrus from Herculaneum and is one of the few substantial post-founder Epicurean texts to survive at any length.
8. Dionysius of Lamptrai
3rd century BC (exact dates uncertain), Athens. Wrote in Greek. Fourth head of the school, succeeding Polystratus; almost nothing of his own teaching survives independently, and he is known chiefly from the bare succession-list preserved by Diogenes Laertius.
9. Apollodorus of Athens ("the Garden-Tyrant")
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.
10. Zeno of Sidon
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.
11. Demetrius Lacon ("the Laconian")
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.
12. Philonides of Laodicea
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.
13. Antiochus IV Epiphanes
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.
14. Timasagoras of Rhodes
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.
15. Diogenes of Oinoanda
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 antiquity, with fragments still being discovered and published today.
16. Lucian of Samosata
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.
17. Titus Lucretius Carus
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.
18. Gaius Amafinius
Fl. late 2nd–early 1st century BC, Rome. Wrote in Latin. The earliest known Roman popularizer of Epicureanism in Latin prose; Cicero criticizes his style as inelegant but credits him (along with Rabirius) with reaching a wide non-elite Roman readership that more polished philosophical writing never touched.
19. Rabirius
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.
20. Catius Insuber ("the Epicurean")
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.
21. Titus Albucius
Fl. c. 105 BC. From Rome; studied at Athens; served as praetor and governor of Sardinia. Wrote and spoke in both Latin and Greek. Completed his philosophical education at Athens as an Epicurean, celebrated a minor triumph over bandits during his Sardinian command, and was later convicted of provincial extortion; the satirist Lucilius mocked him for affecting Greek manners and speech, and Cicero cites the episode in *De Finibus* I.9.
22. Patro
Fl. c. 70–51 BC, Athens. Wrote in Greek. Scholarch (head) of the Epicurean school at Athens, successor to Phaedrus; when Gaius Memmius sought permission to demolish part of the property that included Epicurus's old house, Patro appealed to Atticus and Cicero, who successfully interceded on the school's behalf.
23. Gaius Velleius
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.
24. Lucius Manlius Torquatus
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 undercuts any easy assumption that pleasure-ethics implies cowardice or passivity.
25. Titus Pomponius Atticus
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 Epicurean school's property in Athens.
26. Gaius Memmius
Praetor 58 BC; governor of Bithynia 57 BC; later exiled to Athens after an electoral scandal. Rome/Bithynia/Athens. Wrote and spoke in Latin. The dedicatee of Lucretius's *De Rerum Natura*, addressed there as if a receptive audience for Epicurean philosophy -- yet while in exile at Athens he sought permission to redevelop the site of Epicurus's old house, provoking the school's scholarch Patro to seek (and win) Cicero's and Atticus's intervention against him, a real complication in his reputation as an Epicurean sympathizer.
27. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus
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.
28. Philodemus of Gadara
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 eruption that buried Herculaneum, and are still being recovered and published from the papyrus fragments.
29. Siro
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.
30. Lucius Papirius Paetus
Fl. mid-1st century BC, based at Naples. Wrote and spoke in Latin. A wealthy, hospitable friend of Cicero whom Cicero explicitly calls "a learned man" and "an Epicurean" in their surviving correspondence -- one of the clearest cases of Cicero directly labeling a private acquaintance by philosophical school rather than merely alluding to it.
31. Gaius Trebatius Testa
c. 84 BC–after 4 AD. From Velia; served on Julius Caesar's staff in Gaul; later prominent at Rome. Wrote in Latin. A jurist recommended to Caesar by Cicero, who teased him in letters about converting to Epicureanism around 53 BC; went on to become one of the most authoritative Roman jurists of the Augustan age, cited centuries later in Justinian's *Institutes*.
32. Gaius Cassius Longinus
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 resistance against what he regarded as Caesar's one-man tyranny.
33. Gaius Julius Caesar
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 nothing to be feared. This single recorded speech has led some modern scholars to suspect genuine Epicurean sympathy or influence, though the question remains debated rather than settled.
34. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
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.
35. Phaedrus
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.
36. Pompeia Plotina
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.
37. Lorenzo Valla
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.
38. Cosma Raimondi
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.
39. Celsus
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 question rather than a settled fact, worth flagging honestly rather than assuming the identification.
40. Julien Offray de la Mettrie
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.
41. Thomas Jefferson
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.
42. Frances Wright
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.