LIFE OF EPICURUS.
I. Epicurus was an Athenian, and the son of Neocles and Chærestrate, of the burgh of Gargettus, and of the family of the Philaidæ, as Metrodorus tells us in his treatise on Nobility of Birth. Some writers, and among them Heraclides, in his Abridgment of Sotion, say, that as the Athenians had colonised Samos, he was brought up there, and came to Athens in his eighteenth year, while Xenocrates was president of the Academy, and Aristotle at Chalcis. But after the death of Alexander, the Macedonian, when the Athenians were driven out of Samos by Perdiccas, Epicurus went to Colophon to his father.
II. And when he had spent some time there, and collected some disciples, he again returned to Athens, in the time of Anaxicrates, and for some time studied philosophy, mingling with the rest of the philosophers; but subsequently, he some how or other established the school which was called after his name; and he used to say, that he began to study philosophy, when he was fourteen