Epicureanism in the Roman Empire

The most sensational find among these herculaneum papyri was a collection of books on epicureanism. It seems to have been assembled by an epicurean philosopher named philodemus. The texts, fragmentary though they may be after their ordeal, are a rich source of information about epicurean thought. Their mere presence in an aristocratic library of a roman town is itself ling. We have already seen that as late as the second century a d, the epicurean enthusiast, diogenes of ononda, had letters of epicurus and other teachings of the school inscribed in stone.