# Loeb Diogenes Laertius prints Epicurus’ will founding monthly founder-rites

Date: 1925

## The fact

In 1925 R. D. Hicks’s Loeb Diogenes Laertius volume II printed Book 10, including the will that endows meals on the twentieth and images of the founder. The will as transmitted organises a memorial cult around a named teacher.

## Context

Hellenistic schools often mixed teaching with household cult. Printing the will makes that mix public in English. A memorial meal is not a modern party machine, but it is a founder-centred ritual economy later critics called a cult.

[Epicurus](/people/epicurus) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, archive, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Loeb / Hicks vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/livesofeminentph02dioguoft; Internet Archive / Loeb Classical Library scan).

## Significance

A printed founder-will is a governance-opacity path: authority sits in a name and a calendar, not in a public office.

A printed founder-will is a governance-opacity path: authority sits in a name and a calendar, not in a public office.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Epicurus: https://factrail.ai/people/epicurus

## Drivers

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/
- https://archive.org/details/livesofeminentph02dioguoft

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ep-dl-will-monthly-cult