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Epicurus  341-270 B.C. - Samos, Asia Minor to Athens

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From IEP: Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE (and of Aristotle in 322 BCE). Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of matter, flying through empty space, and he tried to explain all natural phenomena in atomic terms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives. Epicurus also thought skepticism was untenable, and that we could gain knowledge of the world relying upon the senses. He taught that the point of all one's actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one's desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death. Epicurus' gospel of freedom from fear proved to be quite popular, and communities of Epicureans flourished for centuries after his death.

From Wikipedia: 

Epicurus, Hellenistic Greek philosopher (born Samos, 341 BC; died Athens, 270 BC). Epicurus was born into an Athenian émigré family — his parents, both Athenian citizens, had moved to an Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos. He returned to Athens to serve as an ephebe (http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Ephebe) — a young citizen in military training. The playwright Menander served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.

After pursuing philosophical education in several Greek cities he taught in two cities in Asia Minor, and formed one of the most important Philosophy schools of the period in Athens, named The Garden.

Epicurus' teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before. He admitted women and slaves into his school, emphasized the senses in his epistemology, and was one of the first Greeks to break from the god-fearing and god-worshipping tradition common at the time.

Elements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history. Epicurus discussed a human being's natural right to "life, liberty, and safety." This was later picked-up by the democratic thinkers of the French revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property." This triad was carried forward into the present tense, and into the American freedom movement and Constitution, by the great American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness."

From Columbia Encyclopedia: 341–270 B.C., Greek philosopher, b. Samos; son of an Athenian colonist. He claimed to be self-taught, although tradition states that he was schooled in the systems of Plato and Democritus by his father and various philosophers. He taught in several towns in Asia Minor before going to Athens c.306 B.C. There Epicurus purchased the famous garden that has become linked in the annals of philosophy with the Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle. He was a generous and genial man who lived on the warmest terms with his followers. Although his writings were voluminous, only fragments remain. Epicurus defined philosophy as the art of making life happy and strictly subordinated metaphysics to ethics, naming pleasure as the highest and only good. However, for Epicurus pleasure was not heedless indulgence but the opposite, ataraxia [serenity], manifesting itself in the avoidance of pain. His hedonism differed from the cruder variety of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics in the emphasis that it placed on ataraxia and on the superiority of intellectual pleasures over bodily pleasures. He also prescribed a code of social conduct, which advocated honesty, prudence, and justice in dealing with others, not because these virtues were good in themselves, but because they saved the individual from society’s retribution. While Epicurus appropriated much of the mechanics of Democritus’ metaphysics, he deviated from its deterministic implications by the introduction of an element of spontaneity, which allowed atoms to form the objects of the world by chance. The element of freedom in his metaphysics supported and paralleled his notion of the freedom of the will. He held blind destiny to be more dangerous to one’s ataraxia than belief in fables about the gods; people could hope to propitiate the gods, but mechanical determinism was inexorable. He denied that the gods had supernatural powers that allowed them to interfere with humanity or nature. The system of Epicurus deemphasized the traditional power of religious and physical forces on human life and emphasized our freedom of action. The work of the Roman poet Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), contains the finest exposition of Epicurus’ ideas

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