EPICURUS AND HIS SCHOOL Epicurus, though the apostle of hedonism, and heir of the Cyrenaics, taught a doctrine of wealth somewhat similar to that of the Stoics.[903] His “happiness” consisted in living a simple and prudent life. He taught that spiritual wealth is unlimited, and that the wise are contented with things easy to acquire (εὐπόριστα);[904] that external wealth, on the other hand, is limited,[905] and that it is not increase of possessions but limitation of desires that makes truly rich.[906] He believed the simplest food to be best,[907] both for pleasure and for health, that many wealthy find no escape from ills,[908] that he who is not satisfied with little will not be satisfied with all,[909] and that contented poverty is the greatest wealth.[910] In accord with his teaching, he seems to have lived very simply.[911] However, he did not go to the extreme of the Cynics and Stoics, but taught that the wise will have a care to gain property, and not live as beggars.[912] He exhibits no tendency toward communism, but rather toward the extreme individualism of the Sophists, and was in sympathy with their social contract theory.[913] Later Epicureanism degenerated by taking the hedonistic principle of its founder too literally. Like the Sophists, the school has influenced modern economic thought through its conception of justice, as a mere convention for mutual advantage.[914] CYNICS The Cynics developed the negative attitude of the Socratics toward wealth to its extreme in asceticism. Their doctrine was subversive of all economic interest. Antisthenes, the founder of the school, was a contemporary of Plato, a Sophist in his youth, but later associated with the Socratic circle. He appears prominently in the _Symposium_ of Xenophon.[915] He urged a return to nature in the literal sense.[916] His book on the nature of animals (περὶ ζώων φύσεως) probably presented examples from the animal world as models for natural human living. Like many writers of his time and later, he idealized the life of primitive and barbarous peoples.[917] In utter antithesis to Aristotle,[918] he declared city life and civilization to be the source of all injustice, luxury, and corruption. In his opinion, Zeus punished Prometheus, not because he envied men any good, but because the discovery of fire was the source (ἀφορμή) of all effeminacy and luxury for men.[919] Material wealth was, to him, if not an absolute evil, something about which men should be entirely indifferent, for in essence, good and evil could have only a moral reference.[920] The craving for wealth or power was a vain illusion. Nothing was good for a man except what was actually his own,[921] and this was to be found only in the soul.[922] Wealth without virtue was not only worthless, but a fruitful source of evil,[923] and no lover of money could be either virtuous or free.[924] He thus