Epicurus returns to the quintessential place of philosophy, Athens, when the Hellenistic times begin. He deliberately ignores Plato and Aristotle and takes up again the thread of the Ionian and Democritean tradition. He opens his own school, the Garden, where he does not teach philosophy as a body of knowledge but exercises it as a therapeutic way of life within the community of friends.

With deliberately simple language and without moralizing, Epicurus raises and answers fundamental questions: what am I? how do I face the gods and death? how can I be happy? am I free? why should I care about others?