El'ICUREANS
EP18TLE
'29
aftem'ards bequeatlieU to tlie sect or 'thiasus.' He UieU in B.C. 270 of stoue, the pain of which he bore with philosophic ciilmuess.
The moral or ethical theory of Epicurus was eugt;e.steJ by that of his predecessor Aristippus of Cyrene, who formulated the human good or end of life as consisting in the pleasure of each moment. E. adopted pleasure as tiie end ; but insisted that it is the pleasure of an entire life at which we must aim, and taught that this can he secured, not by in- dulging whims and instincts as they momentarily arise in us and solicit us, but only by reconciling them into a systematic whole, in which each will receive the amount of satisfaction which belongs to each. Before indulging any instinct, bodily or mental, we are to consider, said Epicurus, what will be the consequences to ourselves and those whose happiness or pleasure is bound up with our own. Tlius the general upshot of his teaching is not unlike that of liishop Butler ; and the charge made against him by the ancient Stoics, that he encouraged sloth and sensuality, was unjust. Conybeare and Howson are right when they speak {Life and Letters of St. Paul, ch. x. ) 'of the quiet garden, where E. lived a life of philosophic con- tentment, and taujjht his disciples tluit the enjoy- ment of tranquil pleasure was the highest end of human existence.
The Stoics also stigmatized E. as an atheist, because he held that the gods live a sublime life of divine calm, as far removed from the passions and hatreds which make men unhappy as from the tnrmoil of the elements. The contemporaries of E., like the Greek or Italian peasantry of today, believed that every clap of thunder, every flash of lightning, every earthquake, was a direct act of a god, who, except in abnormal paroxj-sms, never acted at all. U a man was blind from birth, the gods were angry with him or his forefathers. If there was a drought, the gods meant to signify their displeasure with someone or other. The goifs were perpetually meddling with nature and man, and oitener in a malign tlian in a loving manner. An instinctive dislike for such peddling views of Providence inclined E. to the philosophy of second- ary causes, which Anaxagoras and Democritus had already broached in an earlier generation ; and he elalwrated a philosophy of nature according to which all phenomena, especially tlie thunder and lightning, in which Zeus was popularly supposed to vent liis ire, were referred to the play of atoms moving about in a void space. To this regular action and interaction of atoms were to be ascribed the stars and their movements. Here, again, Epi- cureanism struck at the widespread superstition of astrology, and rendere<l a great service to humanity. For if a man's whole life and destiny depended on the position of the stars at his birth, he was not free to mould his own character, but was the slave of alien forces. In opposition to such a degrading and paralyzing fatalism, E. taught that man has a free will, and can make the best of himself.
A modem writer (Mr. Pater, in his work Mnrius the Epicurean) has shown how naturally Epicur- eanism, the most humane of ancient creeds, could in the 2nd cent, pass into Christianity. And indeed the two had much in common. Both were opposed to the vulgar mythology of antiquity ; both ascribed to the Deity a lofty immunity and repose from every lower passion and feeling ; both taught the doctrine of free will in opposition to the astrologers ; both inculcated kimlncss and gentleness to man and beast ; both frugality and contentment with moderate circunislances. And as Epicureanism, l>eing the oM'spriiig of an aire when the intense but narrowing patriotism of tne ancient city-state was gone by, was capable of being practised under any form of political institu-
tions, so the moral sj-stem of Christianity was formed in detachment from any special set of institutions, and even in deliance of many which, both before and since, have been held essential.
LiTERATi-RB. — The best short account of Kpicureanlam u Wal lace's A'^iicurca/iiifin in 'Chief Ancient l'hilosophiei)'(.S.P.C.K.)k See alao his article in Encuc Brit.^. For a fuller treatinenl of the subject, and for a knowledge of the Greek sources, consult Uitter and I*reller'» Iliatoria Philoxophice Orceca, or Zeller's Ui»t. of iir. rftHnjtopfii/ ; also H. Usener's Epicurea, Anioii^' older works, Gassendi's i>f I'ita, Slorilnuet Voctrirta Epieuri ; 't'lw LijeoJ E., by l>iogeneH Laerliufl ; the poem of Lucretius in L-itin, or as tr. by Munro. I-ate in the last cent, on entire library o( Epicurear writings was found at Herculaneum. .Many of thest' rolls have been deciphered and printed since 179;i.wlien the ta&k of unroll- ing them was first essayed. But many of them are too much charred by the hot lava which overwlK^ltued the city in a.d. 79 to be of much use. Still many writiiiu's of E. and of the leading membera of his school, which would have been lost except for this famoua catacl>'sm of nature, have been thus preserved W us. y. C. CONVBEAKK.
EPIPHANES See Antiochus iv.
EPIPHI CEi.flK, 3 Mac 6»8).— See Time.
EPISTLE.— 1. In OT.— The epistle is so spontan- eous a form of literature that it may be regarded as one of the earlier applications of the art of writing (see Writi.vo). Letter-wTiting must, however, have been coiilined at tirst to the few ; and official rather than private correspondence would be the prevailing tj'pe. In OT verbal messages alone appear prior to the Kingdom in Israel, the letter of David to Joab toucliin'' Uriah (2 S ll'''-"') being the first recorded example. Here the message was one which could not have been sent verbally through Uriah ; and a similar need for secrecy explains the use of sealed letters by Jezebel in the matter of Naboth (1 K 21»-», cf. 2 K lOi', Jehu and the sons of Ahab ; also 2 Ch 21'*). The answer in each case was verbal ; hence we infer that writing was still the rare exception even in high ollicial matters. Other rea.sons for resorting to written messages were the desire to be emjiliatic or peremptory, as in the cases of Benhadad's letter sent with Naaman to Jehoram of Israel (2 K 5°"'), and of Sennacherib's open letter to Hezekiah (2 K 19'*, Is ZV*, 2 Ch 32") ; or the wish to be specially courteous, as with the letters and present sent by Merodachlialadan on hearing of Ilezekiah's re- covery from sickness (2 K 20'- = Is S'j'). So far letters have been chiefly those of kings. Akin to these, in formal or authoritative character, is the letter sent by Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon (Jer29'), whichalso alludes to similar letters sent by a certain Sheniaiah, a false prophet, to Jerusalem in order to undermine .leremiah's own position (vv^'"). Krom this it would seem fair to infer that the conditions of the Captivity gave a marked stimulus to the use of letters by the Hebrews as a medium for import- ant messages. Certain it is that hereafter we find not only more frequent reference to such corre- spondence, but also a new and more precise ter- minology used to express the notion 'epistle' as a specilic form of writing. Hitherto the term employed, as in 2 S, K, ( = I8), and even Jer, has been quite vague and general. A letter is simply 'a book' (TJB, Si^\iov, /3//3Xos), its precise nature being learnt only from the context. But hence- forth there emerge, in Ch, Ezr, Neb, Est, certain specialized terms, the most distinctive coining from foreign tongues. Besides words for a 'writin-;' (30?> 2 Ch 2" 3095 . . . iriii, Est S"' " H'"- '* with 0-159 hard by in either case ; or ai;;.?, 2 Ch 21'" =7,»^i), as in Dt 10*), we find the strange n-;3K of Aiwyr. (fgirtu, so VxA. Delitzsch) or at least I'ers. origin (2 Ch 30'- », Ezr , ->'"'•, Neh 2'-'' 6*- "• ", Est 9»-^. Cf. d-rropiiw, Herod, viii. 98; Xen. Cyrop. viii. 6. 9), and |in;f'}, a Pers. form [Err 4'"'-, where fif^i^ 30? (v.') = irjiK (w.»-") = K;!n;'} (v.'^i