Epicureanism stands for charity, friendship, foregiveness, and suspicion of ambition and politics. What Epicurus offered was not help in dying, but help in living. Liberated from superstition, he taught, you are free to pursue a pleasant life.

Here are some further thoughts:

“It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably snd justly, and also without living courageously, temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic”.(Philodemus)

And this is the explanation of the universe espoused by Epicurus, to be found on page 63 of “The Swerve” by Stephen Greenblatt (highly recommended and very readable).

“In constant motion, atoms collide with each other, and, in certain circumstances, they form larger and larger bodies….the sun and the moon are made of atoms, as are human beings , water, flies and grains of sand. There are no super-categories of matter, no hierarchy of elements. Heavenly bodies are not divine beings who shape our destiny for good or ill. ……they are part of the natural order….subject to the same principle of creation and destruction, they govern everything that exists”.