Hermarchus of Mytilene

Life and Historical Context

Hermarchus of Mytilene (Greek: Hermarchos; active early 3rd century BCE) was a prominent early Epicurean and the immediate successor of Epicurus as head of the school known as the Garden in Athens. Ancient biographical information is sparse and largely dependent on later doxographical sources, especially Diogenes Laertius.

Hermarchus was born in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, probably around 325 BCE. Ancient reports suggest he first trained in rhetoric, a common preliminary education that emphasized persuasive speech and argument. At some point, likely as a young man, he became a devoted pupil of Epicurus, joining the Garden and eventually moving to Athens, where Epicurus had established his community.

Epicurus is said to have held Hermarchus in very high esteem. According to the surviving will of Epicurus, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, Hermarchus was named as Epicurus’ successor to lead the Garden, an indication of both intellectual trust and personal loyalty. Upon Epicurus’ death, commonly dated to 270 BCE, Hermarchus assumed control of the school.

Virtually nothing is known about the details of Hermarchus’ later life, travels, or personal circumstances. He likely remained in Athens, leading the community of Epicureans and continuing to write and teach. His death date is unknown, but he must have survived Epicurus by at least some years, as later Epicureans treated him as an authoritative interpreter of the founder’s doctrines.

Works and Sources

No complete works of Hermarchus survive. Knowledge of his writings comes from titles, fragments, and testimonia (reports about his ideas) scattered in later authors.

Ancient sources attribute several major works to him:

• On Empedocles (Pros Empedoklea): A multi-book critical study of the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles, likely combining historical reconstruction with philosophical critique.
• Against Plato (Pros Plátōna): Possibly a polemical work responding to Platonic metaphysics and ethics, in line with Epicurus’ broader rejection of transcendent Forms and immortal souls.
• Against Aristotle (Pros Aristotélea): A counterpart critique of Aristotelian doctrine, perhaps targeting teleology, the unmoved mover, or Aristotelian theology.
• Other works of ethical and theological content, now lost and known only by brief mentions.

The most substantial surviving evidence for Hermarchus’ thought is preserved by:

• Cicero, especially in On the Nature of the Gods and On Laws, where Hermarchus is cited as a representative Epicurean voice on theology and the origins of law.
• Porphyry, in On Abstinence from Animal Food, who quotes a sizeable passage attributed to Hermarchus. This fragment discusses the origin of justice and law, offering rare insight into Hermarchus’ ethical and anthropological views.

These scattered materials are heavily mediated by the interests and polemical aims of later authors, making reconstruction of Hermarchus’ original positions a matter of scholarly interpretation. Nonetheless, they suggest that he was an active systematizer and defender of Epicurean doctrine rather than an innovator who substantially revised the core Epicurean framework.

Philosophical Views

Ethics and the Origin of Justice

Hermarchus’ most discussed contribution concerns the natural and historical emergence of justice. In line with Epicurus, he appears to treat justice not as an objective moral property or as grounded in divine command, but as a human convention established for mutual benefit.

In the extended fragment preserved by Porphyry, Hermarchus offers a quasi-anthropological narrative. Early humans, living without stable institutions, gradually recognized that certain forms of behavior—especially killing and wanton aggression—were destructive to communal life. Legal norms and punishments were therefore introduced to deter harmful actions and secure a minimal level of safety and cooperation. Under this view:

• Justice is defined by treaties or agreements not to harm one another.
• Laws are evaluated by how effectively they promote security and thus enable a tranquil life.
• As circumstances change, laws can be revised; there is no eternal, unchanging standard of justice.

This account reinforces the broader Epicurean conception of ethics, which grounds the good in pleasure understood as freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance (ataraxia). Justice and law are useful instruments for achieving such stable pleasure, not intrinsic moral ends in themselves.

Hermarchus’ elaboration is notable for its emphasis on historical development: rather than simply stating that justice is a convention, he attempts to describe how and why such conventions would arise in human communities. This places him among early thinkers giving a proto-social-contract style explanation of morality and law.

Theology and the Gods

As an Epicurean, Hermarchus endorses the doctrine that gods exist but live a life of perfect bliss and detachment, entirely unconcerned with human affairs. Epicureans denied divine providence, reward and punishment in an afterlife, and the idea that the cosmos is designed by a divine mind.

Cicero attributes to Hermarchus arguments aimed at reinforcing this view:

• The divine, being perfectly blessed and indestructible, would not engage in world-creating labor or in the management of human events, since such activities would compromise its tranquility.
• Popular beliefs in divine anger, intervention, and oracles are explained psychologically and culturally, not as revelations of genuine divine action.

By defending the non-intervention of the gods, Hermarchus contributes to the Epicurean project of liberating individuals from fear of divine punishment, a fear Epicureans held to be a major source of human anxiety and social manipulation.

Natural Philosophy and Critique of Predecessors

Hermarchus’ works against Empedocles, Plato, and Aristotle indicate a sustained engagement with earlier philosophical traditions.

• Against Empedocles, he likely defended Epicurus’ atomism against the theory of four roots (earth, air, fire, water) and cosmic cycles, criticizing Empedoclean explanations of natural phenomena as either insufficiently mechanistic or overly mythologized.
• Against Plato, he would have opposed the existence of separate Forms, the immortality of the soul, and the teleological moral order of the cosmos:
  • For Epicureans, the soul is a subtle material compound that dissolves at death.
  • Moral value does not depend on alignment with a transcendent realm but on the qualitative state of sentient beings.
• Against Aristotle, Hermarchus likely contested final causes in nature and the conception of a supreme unmoved mover as the object of cosmic desire, defending instead an eternal, non-teleological universe of atoms and void.

While specific argumentation is largely lost, these polemical works suggest that Hermarchus contributed to the Epicurean strategy of defining their school by contrast with rival metaphysical and ethical systems, clarifying their position through systematic critique.

Reception and Significance

Hermarchus occupies a transitional place in the history of Epicureanism. As Epicurus’ immediate successor, he helped to preserve and institutionalize the doctrines of the Garden in the generation after its founder, ensuring continuity and stability.

Later Epicureans, such as Philodemus in the 1st century BCE, occasionally refer to Hermarchus with respect, treating him as part of the canonical early Epicurean tradition. Roman authors like Cicero cite him as an authoritative source on Epicurean theology and legal theory, though usually in order to criticize or scrutinize his positions.

In modern scholarship, Hermarchus is valued more for what his fragments reveal about the development and internal articulation of Epicurean thought than for any distinct, radical innovation. His narrative of the origins of justice has attracted attention in studies of ancient social-contract theories and the history of ideas about law and morality. His role in defending Epicurean theology contributes to contemporary reconstructions of the school’s stance on religion, superstition, and fear.

Because nearly all his works are lost, assessments of Hermarchus remain tentative. Nonetheless, the surviving evidence portrays him as a systematic, historically minded, and polemical thinker, whose efforts helped transform Epicureanism from the creation of a single founder into a durable philosophical school with an articulated doctrinal legacy.