Vitae philosophorum

And when near his end he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus:

On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could augment them; but over against them all I set gladness of mind at the remembrance of our past conversations. But I would have you, as becomes your life-long attitude to me and to philosophy, watch over the children of Metrodorus.

Such were the terms of his will.

Among his disciples, of whom there were many, the following were eminent: Metrodorus,[*](Metrodorus (330-277 b.c.) was the master’s beloved disciple; but the encomium preserved by Seneca (Ep. 52. 3) is certainly discriminating: Epicurus says: quosdam indigere ope aliena, non ituros si nemo praecesserit, sed bene secuturos: ex his Metrodorum ait esse.) the son of Athenaeus (or of Timocrates) and of Sande, a citizen of Lampsacus, who from his first acquaintance with Epicurus never left him except once for six months spent on a visit to his native place, from which he returned to him again.