Epicurus

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Epicurus is mentioned by Dante in Canto X of the Inferno, where the poet places him among the deniers of the immortality of the soul, recalling him together with all his followers. The notes to the canto specify that the Greek philosopher was known to Dante through Cicero's De finibus. In the Middle Ages his figure was identified as the progenitor of the deniers of the immortality of the soul and of a materialistic and hedonistic conception of life, a heresy that spread in the Christian era bearing his name, although Epicurus lived before Christ. Such a doctrine was also present in Florence in Dante's time. In the Convivio Dante does not present Epicurus as a heretic, but as the founder of one of the three most important philosophical schools of antiquity, alongside the Stoics and the Academics.