Theodore the Atheist

Theodore, the Atheist (in Greek original Θεόδωρος, "ο άθεος", (Cyrene, ca. 340 - id., 250 BC), philosopher of the Cyrenaic School, disciple of Aniceris. p>

He was born in Cyrene and was a disciple of the hedonist Aristyle the Younger. He lived in the second half of the fourth century BC. and it is known that he was banished from Cyrene, although the causes of that expulsion do not appear.With Plutarch we know that he then moved to Athens, where he narrowly escaped being tried for impiety as another new Socrates before the Areopagus thanks to the intercession of Demetrius of Falero, was there presumably between 317 and 307 a. C.).

Expelled at the end of Athens, he marched to Egypt, perhaps 307 BC. C., to the fall of Demetrio. Ptolemy I used him as ambassador to Lysimachus of Thrace, to which he nevertheless offended by the freedom of his sentences. Maybe later he went to Corinth. Finally he returned to Cyrene, where he lived his last years with a certain Mario, a Roman, according to Diogenes Laercio, although it could be Magas, the king of that city. Ateneo says he was killed, but that could be a mistake.

He founded his own branch within the Cyrenaic or Hedonist School. According to the founder of the same, Arístipo, the maximum objective of the human life is to obtain the happiness and to avoid the misfortune, a fruit of the prudence and the other one of the idiocy; prudence and justice were good and everything was painfully opposed. He was a Cosmopolitan, like all Hellenists: he denied nationalism and claimed that the whole world was his homeland, and that there was no harm in stealing or practicing adultery or sacrilege, but that condemnation of public opinion had previously formed a restriction of freedom. He wrote a work entitled On the gods where according to Diogenes Laercio extended the incipient atheism of Epicuro denying the existence of the Greek gods, although the opinion of Laercio is that rather did not believe in the same as the common people believed. His disciple Evémero will explain that the gods are actually deified illustrious men (see Evemerismo). The philosopher Hipparchus of Thrace, criticized by Theodore, who believed that philosophy was not appropriate for women, wrote against it a book entitled Questions on Theodore the Atheist. Bibliography

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