Epicureanism did inspire libertine culture in isolated sects, but Epicurus himself rejected an ethics of sensory indulgence, and he would have disowned latter-day 'Epicureanism' as a fussy, expensive, unphilosophical approach to eating and drinking.

There are people who organise the contest, winners, losers, and people who benefit from the contest taking place.

Atomism had no absolute 'above' and 'below' and no such rulers, so favoured the undersranding of justice as an agreement amongst equals.

If you live in an acquisitive society you are likely to be acquisitive, but it isn't deeply rooted in human nature, except in the sense that it's deeply rooted to be psychologically receptive to your peers and to advertising.

For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

Some critics thought the ontology and theory of qualities absurd. No one had ever seen these little atoms, and furthermore, how could their mere arrangement produce a noisy, colourful, world in which day followed night and animals generated their own kind? Instead of a world created, cared, for and supervised by supernatural persons, the Epicureans appeared to the theologians to be assigning everything to chance. The latter were appalled by Lucretius's view of religion as cruel and oppressive and by the Epicurean insistence that death is the end of all experience.

Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.