Epicurus, son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, was as citizen of Athens of the deme Gargettus, and, as Metrodorus says in his book , of the family of the Philaidae. He is said by Heraclides Heraclides Lembos ( iii. p. 70). in his of Sotion, as well as by other authorities, to have been brought up at Samos after the Athenians had sent settlers there and to have come to Athens at the age of eighteen, at the time when Xenocrates was lecturing at the Academy and Aristotle in Chalcis. Upon the death of Alexander of Macedon and the expulsion of the Athenian settlers from Samos by Perdiccas,Diod. Sic. xviii. 18. 9. Epicurus left Athens to join his father in Colophon.