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Epicureanism · Letter
Letter to Pythocles
by Epicurus and the Epicurean school
Featuring Epicurus
An Epicurean account of celestial and weather phenomena that Bailey regarded as probably abridged by the school rather than an uncomplicated autograph.
- Advanced
- 3 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Why several causes can remain possible guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The sky was a source of wonder and dread for Epicurus’s world. Eclipses, thunder, comets, and changing weather invited stories about divine anger. Epicurus’s school sought a different kind of security in natural causes, keeping several explanations open where observation could not decide among them. This letter to Pythocles applies that method to events too distant or intermittent for a direct test.
Epicurus had founded a community in Athens after teaching around the eastern Aegean. Letters helped carry its teaching to friends elsewhere. The opening of this one presents itself as a short aid to memory, following the broader Letter to Herodotus. It surveys the motions of the heavens, the sun and moon, weather, lightning, earthquakes, and other phenomena. Its aim is not a modern forecast. It is to remove the assumption that frightening events must be messages from gods.
Cyril Bailey judged the surviving Pythocles text likely to be an abridgment made within the Epicurean school, even while treating its teaching as Epicurean. Again and again, the letter offers several possible natural causes for a single event. A rainbow, a comet, or the timing of an animal’s movements can stir unease, but several possible natural causes leave no need for a divine threat. At the close, the answer returns to the principles of matter, infinity, sensation and feeling on which this steadier judgment rests.
The opening pages
Why several causes can remain possible
CLEON brought me a letter from you in which you continue to express a kindly feeling towards me, which is a just return for my interest in you, and you attempt with some success to recall the arguments which lead to a life of blessedness. You ask me to send you a brief argument about the phenomena of the sky in a short sketch, that you may easily recall it to mind. For you say that what I have written in my other works is hard to remember, even though, as you state, you constantly have them in your hands. I was glad to receive your request and felt constrained to answer it by pleasant expectations for the future.
Therefore, as I have finished all my other writings I now intend to accomplish your request, feeling that these arguments will be of value to many other persons as well, and especially to those who have but recently tasted the genuine inquiry into nature, and also to those who are involved too deeply in the business of some regular occupation. Therefore lay good hold on it, keep it in mind, and go through it all keenly, together with the rest which I sent in the small epitome to Herodotus.
First of all then we must not suppose that any other object is to be gained from the knowledge of the phenomena of the sky, whether they are dealt with in connexion with other doctrines or independently, than peace of mind and a sure confidence, just as in all other branches of study.
We must not try to force an impossible explanation, nor employ a method of inquiry like our reasoning either about the modes of life or with respect to the solution of other physical problems: witness such propositions as that ‘the universe consists of bodies and the intangible,’ or that ‘the elements are indivisible,’ and all such statements in circumstances where there is only one explanation which harmonizes with phenomena. For this is not so with the things above us: they admit of more than one cause of coming into being and more than one account of their nature which harmonizes with our sensations.
For we must not conduct scientific investigation by means of empty assumptions and arbitrary principles, but follow the lead of phenomena: for our life has not now any place for irrational belief and groundless imaginings, but we must live free from trouble.
Chapter guides · 3
Why several causes can remain possible
The Rule for Distant Things
Pythocles asks for an account of phenomena that cannot be inspected like nearby objects.
What the letter permits
Epicurus allows more than one natural cause when several fit what can be observed. He rejects the demand for a single explanation chosen merely because it sounds decisive. The argument moves through the formation of worlds, the origins and apparent sizes of heavenly bodies, and possible causes of their motions and the moon’s phases.
What is at stake
For this school, uncertainty is not a license for divine terror. The disciplined answer is to keep possible causes within nature while admitting where evidence does not settle the matter.
Where it ends
After considering the moon’s light and the appearance of a face on it, the passage returns to its governing rule. Explanations of the heavens must remain consistent with observed phenomena if inquiry is to bring peace of mind.
The sun, moon, stars, and weather
Reading the Heavens
The letter applies its method to the sun, moon, stars, and changing sky.
What happens
The letter offers possible causes of eclipses, changing day length, clouds and rain, then of thunder, lightning, waterspouts and earthquakes. The explanations draw on familiar earthly processes. It also considers wind and the freezing and rounding of hail.
Why it matters
Several causes can remain possible when each fits what is observed. The argument resists both an unsupported insistence on one cause and a divine nature burdened with managing celestial events. Its aim is confidence proportioned to the available evidence.
Where it ends
After earthquakes, a row of stars marks a gap in the surviving text; the passage then turns to winds and the formation of hail. It ends with two possible accounts of a hailstone’s roundness: its corners may melt, or particles may gather evenly from every side.
Snow, comets, and the limits of inference
Weather, Stars, and Superstition
Snow, rainbows, comets and animal signs lead back to the principles that keep natural inquiry free from superstition.
Questions readers ask
- How difficult is Letter to Pythocles?
- Advanced.
- Which translation is this?
- The Cyril Bailey translation from the Ancient Greek. The text follows Epicurus: The Extant Remains (1926).
- Can I read Letter to Pythocles for free?
- Letter to Pythocles is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 3 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Epicurus
Epicurus founded his school, the Garden, at Athens in the late fourth century BC. His teaching joined an account of atoms and nature to a practical ethics of friendship, modest wants, and freedom from needless fear. Most of his books are lost; letters, maxims, fragments, and reports preserved by later writers carry the surviving record.
“What would remain of our fears if we understood nature and examined what we truly need?”
Epicurus gave philosophy a daily task: use inquiry into the world to make a human life less frightened and more self-sufficient. His letters and sayings survived through complicated ancient transmission and still challenge easy caricatures of pleasure.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Letter to Pythocles is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.