The Inscription

The inscription forms an important source of Epicurean philosophy. The inscription sets out Epicurus' teachings on physics, epistemology, and ethics.

Diogenes utilised a stoa (either of his own construction or already in place) as the means to display his various treatises and opinions on Epicurean thought and some of the personal details of his life and travails. This inscription was 2.37 meters high, and extended about 80 meters. It was originally about 25,000 words long and filled about 260 square meters of wall space. 

It was discovered in 1884, and the first 64 fragments were published in 1892. Since then, more fragments have been discovered, notably in a series of excavations led by Martin Ferguson Smith. Perhaps a quarter of the inscription has been recovered. New parts are being discovered in the excavations of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; among the parts discovered in 2008 was a statement on Plato's theory of cosmogony.

The inscription contains three treatises written by Diogenes as well as various letters and maxims:

• A Treatise on Ethics, which describes how pleasure is the end of life; how virtue is a means to achieve it; and explains how to achieve the happy life.

• A Treatise on Physics, which has many parallels with Lucretius, and includes discussions on dreams, the gods, and contains an account of the origin of humans and the invention of clothing, speech and writing.

• A Treatise on Old Age, which appears to have defended old age against the jibes of the young, although little of this treatise survives.

• Letters from Diogenes to his friends, which includes a letter addressed to a certain Antipater concerning the Epicurean doctrine of innumerable worlds.

• Epicurean maxims, a collection of the sayings of Epicurus and other eminent Epicureans, which was appended to the end of the treatise on ethics.

• Letters of Epicurus, which includes a letter to Epicurus' mother on the subject of dreams.

The Life of Diogenes

Diogenes of Oenoanda (or Oinoanda) was an Epicurean Greek from the 2nd century AD. The main scholar of the inscription, Martin Ferguson Smith posits that he was born around 60-80 AD into a wealthy and influential Oinoandan family. As a young

man, he studied rhetoric, perhaps in Rhodes. At some stage of his life he becomes

an Epicurean and develops links with Epicurean circles in Athens, Chalcis, and Thebes as well as in Rhodes, where he sometimes resides.

Little more is known about the life of Diogenes apart from the limited information he reveals to us. The inscription itself has now been assigned on epigraphic grounds to the Hadrianic period.

Around 120-140 (ca.) when Diogenes is «at the sunset of life» and in poor health, he is moved, in a spirit of philanthropy, to share the Epicurean recipe for happiness with Oinoanda’s people and foreign visitors. As a man who had found peace by practicing the doctrines of Epicurus, relates that he was motivated "to help also those who come after us" and "to place therefore the remedies of salvation by means of this porch."

He was wealthy enough to pay for the materials and manpower of stonemasons and carvers to create and display his inscription. For this purpose he either paid the city (or persuaded them) to allow him to repurpose one of the stoas on the so-called Upper Agora to display the inscription. 

This seemingly quixotic endeavour has left us what is the largest inscription from ancient times and a swathe of detail of Epicurean thinking that would otherwise have been lost. 

My Goal

The purpose of this blog is to gather together the disparate representations on the great inscription at Oinoanda so it will be accessible to the general public.

A longer term goal would be to have a visual representation of the pieces in some sort of order on the internet. Such a display would ideally be panoramic.

  

An even more quixotic aspiration would be to have a structure, near or on-site, where the pieces of the inscription could be preserved and organised into some semblance of their original placement.