The Athenian-born parents of the philosopher Epicurus, Neocles and Chaerestrate, his father a citizen, had emigrated to the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos about ten years before Epicurus's birth in February 341 BCE.
As a boy, he had studied philosophy for four years under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus.
He had gone to Athens at the age of eighteen for his two-year term of military service.
The playwright Menander had served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.
After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas had expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey.
Epicurus had joined his family there after the completion of his military service.
He had studied under Nausiphanes, who follows the teachings of Democritus.
Epicurus taught in Mytilene in 311/310 but caused strife and was forced to leave.
He then founded a school in Lampsacus in 308 before returning in 306 to Athens, where he founds The Garden, a school named for the garden he owns about halfway between the Stoa and the Academy that serves as the school's meeting place.
His followers will come to be known as philosophers of the garden.
The school accepts women and enslaved people.
