Epicurus and His Influence on History

How should we live?

In ancient Greece one man came up with a pleasingly simple answer to this question. The philosopher Epicurus taught his followers that pleasure and contentment were the aims of the good life. For hundreds of years Epicureanism was one of the dominant schools of philosophy.

But by the 6th century it had all but disappeared. Discovering how and why Epicureanism was driven from philosophy and public discourse reveals much about how Western thought developed. Despite attempts ...