First, to understand what Epicurus said, I strongly recommend "On the Nature of things" by Lucretius. It's a beautiful (and poetic) work on the core ideas of E

First, to understand what Epicurus said, I strongly recommend "On the Nature of things" by Lucretius. It's a beautiful (and poetic) work on the core ideas of Epicurus. Second, a small nit-pick on the subtitle of the article: while Epicurus was a "rival" to the Stoics in a broad sense, Seneca (the Stoic writer) incessantly quotes Epicurus in his first 20 letters. Seneca even explicitly says he's "lifting from another's garden", where the "garden" is the reference to Epicurus (his school in Athens used to be located in a garden). Lastly, there's the big caricature that the "Epicurean life" == unalloyed pleasure (which often implies "base pleasures"). However, as the introduction to On the Nature of Things says, "nobody was less of an epicure than Epicurus himself". Epicurus valued friendship and contemplative virtues a lot more.