Theater of Fate

While all these men sought to demonstrate the necessity of Fates with great intellectual exertion and arguments that they believed were insoluble, there arose

Epicurus.

E P I C U R U S

the Athenian, who, kicking back against the remaining philosophers like an untamed colt, abandoned the beaten path. He selected and published unique opinions on the form of the Gods, Demons, and Divination, on the equality of sins, on the density of elements, on the division of the continuous, and on the magnitude of the stars: as the founder of a new sect, and a diligent follower of his own praise.

Since he was first instructed by Pamphilus the Platonist and Nausiphanes, the Pythagorean philosopher, he professed to be a Democritean. Soon, however, he departed into the gardens and, nauseated, rejected the name of any master, providing everything for himself. He was a master of leisure, a desire for which he burned with so much intensity that he imagined the Gods themselves to be idle and mere guests in the world, living a life without movement, without disturbances, and most happy. But since by that argument he impiously rejected the provident care of the Divine, and dared to defend it in his Work on Fate Laërtius in his Life., he is castigated by many, and not without cause. Nevertheless, he found Petrus Gassendus