# Loeb Principal Doctrines print the counsel to withdraw from the political crowd

Date: 1925

## The fact

Hicks’s 1925 Loeb prints the Principal Doctrines and Letter to Menoeceus in which security is sought by withdrawal from the many rather than by holding office. The dated public English instrument is the Loeb. Civic quietism is stored as a received teaching, not as a vote [Epicurus](/people/epicurus) cast in an assembly.

## Context

Athenian democracy already existed as a contested office-holding system. A school that treats office as a trap reduces the pool of people willing to staff public boards. That is a resilience cost even when the school never issues a statute.

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

Quietism can protect a household and starve a civic roster.

Quietism can protect a household and starve a civic roster.

## 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

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

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

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ep-lathe-biosas-withdrawal