In the first century B.C. the Roman poet Lucretius offered the world an enthusiastic exposition of Epicurus's philosophy in his De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things); Cicero, the great Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher, although essentially opposed to Epicurus's teachings, nevertheless took them seriously enough to argue against them on many occasions in his own philosophical works. It was also during this period that the influential Philodemus of Gadara, some of whose works have now been discovered on papyrus, spread the message of Epicureanism to his students at Herculaneum and Naples. In the following century the avowedly Stoic philosopher Seneca frequently quotes Epicurus with approval, especially in the Moral Epistles (circa A.D. 60) that he composed near the end of his life. Later still, the lengthy inscription commissioned by Diogenes of Oenoanda and the highly sympathetic account by the second-century A.D. biographer Diogenes Laertius, who refers to Epicurus's detractors as "madmen" in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, both demonstrate that Epicurus continued to enjoy a favorable readership at least into the second century A.D.
Epicurus was a prolific writer whose output, according to Diogenes Laertius in his Lives and Opinions, amounted to three hundred rolls of papyrus -- an output greater, Diogenes maintains, than that of any previous philosophical writer.
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