Epicurus

Epicurus founds his school, the Garden, at Athens about 306 BCE; his birth year, 341 BCE, is the date the table carries. His physics leaves the gods blessedly indifferent to human affairs and his ethics frees his followers from the fear of death and divine punishment, the classical root of the freethought stream.

Tagged: Freethought Secular and Non-Theistic

The Event

Date

c. 341 BCE (exact)

Era

Classical Roots; Standard periodization of secular and non-religious history

Location

Athens; today Greece

Traditions

Secular

Streams

Freethought

Key figures

Epicurus

Primary Sources

• Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus.

Secondary Sources

• Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. New York: Liveright, 2016.
• Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
• Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Zuckerman, Phil, ed. Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.

Provenance: HIST-1301; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.

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