EPICURUS ADDRESS

It is known that the "Principal Doctrines" of Epicurus served as a handbook for the students of his teachings in the Garden. However, it seems that there were other collections of Epicurean sayings circulating, such as the one discovered by the researcher Karl Bötticher in 1888 in the Vatican library, included in the manuscript "Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1950" from the 14th century.
This collection was subsequently established with the academic title "Gnomologium Vaticanum Epicureum" but is better known as "Epicurus Address".

The text of the "Gnomologium Vaticanum Epicureum" includes eighty Epicurean "doctrines", although initially, due to a mistaken estimation, they were numbered eighty-one and the error remains to this day, with the double numbering of the 56th doctrine.

The word "doxa" in ancient Greek means "idea, reputation, expectation, philosophical proposition". In the case of Epicurean sayings, the last interpretation applies.

The seventy-six doctrines of the collection are attributed to Epicurus, three to Metrodorus, and one to Hermarchus. Thirteen of these can be found among the forty Principal Doctrines bequeathed to us by Diogenes Laërtius. All the others are original and enrich our knowledge of Epicurean thought, while indirect references to the era and life of the Master of the Garden are not lacking.