years of age; but Apollodorus, the Epicurean, in the first book of his account of the life of Epicurus, says, that he came to the study of philosophy, having conceived a great contempt for the grammarians, because they could not explain to him the statements in Hesiod respecting Chaos.
But Hermippus tells us, that he himself was a teacher of grammar, and that afterwards, having met with the books of Democritus, he applied himself with zeal to philosophy, on which account Timon says of him:—
And he had for his companions in his philosophical studies, his three brothers, Neocles, Chæredemus, and Aristobulus, who were excited by his exhortations, as Philodemus, the Epicurean, relates in the tenth book of the Classification of Philosophers. He had also a slave, whose name was Mus, as Myronianus tells us in his Similar Historical Chapters.
III. But Diotimus, the Stoic, was very hostile to him, and calumniated him in a most bitter manner, publishing fifty obscene letters, and attributing them to Epicurus, and also giving him