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Modern Description: Seneca writes (Letter 21): Go to his Garden and read the motto carved there: 'Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.' The care-taker of that abode, a kindly host, will be ready for you; he will welcome you with barley-meal and serve you water also in abundance, with these words: "Have you not been well entertained?" "This garden," he says, "does not whet your appetite; it quenches it. Nor does it make you more thirsty with every drink; it slakes the thirst by a natural cure, a cure that demands no fee. This is the 'pleasure' in which I have grown old."
Four seated statues of philosophers, all headless but two of a recognizably Epicurean type, were found, three built into a Late Roman wall at Marathonos 61, the fourth nearby at Achilleos St. Thus a potential site for the Garden of Epicurus.
[Judith Binder: Epicurus: Garden between the Dipylon Gate and the Academy: Cic. Fin. 5.1.3; G. S. Dontas, «Εικονιστικά Β',» Deltion 26 (1971) A, 18-33, 319; [although all of the diagnostic finds turned up at or near 61 Marathonos St. along an ancient street (Part II no. 608) connecting the two roads to the Academy, the excavator did not accept the site as Epicurusʼ Garden];]
Wikidata ID: Q3162455
Trismegistos Geo: 364

Info: ToposText editors

(JBK)

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