The Ancient Four-Part Cure for Unhappiness
By: Steven Gambardella
Tags: Self Improvement, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Culture

Unhappiness comes at us from two directions. We’re stalked by the fear of being ill or dying, and knawed at by the feeling we’re not getting the best that life has to offer.

It’s like we’re procrastinating from life itself, while our mortal deadline looms closer. Why aren’t I rich enough? We ask ourselves. Or popular enough? Powerful enough? And why do we have to get ill and die? And so soon?

If you haven’t guessed already, these are the wrong questions to ask. Enough is never enough unless you find happiness in the simple things in life and not fear the pain. We all know this truth, but we need philosophy to help guide us along its path.

Thankfully, in 1750 some farmers digging a well in Campania, southern Italy, unwittingly helped unearth an encapsulation of ancient philosophy that can help us find happiness.

Under their shovels was one of the most luxurious villas in the Roman world, buried for centuries under the volcanic ash spewed from Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Excavations began in earnest. Exquisite riches were found: marble busts of famous Romans, ivory furniture and statues of dancers and gods. But it was the charred “sticks” that diggers initially used as torches in the underground tunnels that were the real treasure for mankind.

It was soon discovered that the villa housed the only preserved Roman library, containing hundreds of papyri — ancient rolled books. As decades of excavations wore on, archaeologists pieced together fragments of the writings of a philosopher named Philodemus, a follower of the infamous Epicurus.

The Fourfold Cure

Among the fragments of papyri, scholars discovered a summary of Epicurean philosophy that Philodemus labelled the “fourfold cure” — “tetrapharmakos” in Greek. It’s a summary of the first four of the forty “principle doctrines” of Epicurus.

The Tetrapharmakos was an actual “fourfold drug” used in ancient Greece and Rome, a compound of wax, pine resin, pitch and fat. The word was used by Philodemus metaphorically as if the four chief doctrines of Epicurus were a prescription to cure our spiritual ills.

Philodemus (literally: “lover of people”) was born in Coele Syria — now modern-day Jordan — in c. 110 BCE and settled in Rome where he established himself as a philosopher and poet.

Historians guess that he later moved to Herculaneum, the small coastal town near Pompeii, where he seemed (according to evidence archaeologists have unearthed) to establish this library under the patronage of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.

The “Villa of the Papyri” — given the name by archaeologists because of the library of papyrus scrolls that were unearthed — was a lavish villa occupying a 250-meter stretch of coastline along the Gulf of Naples. So impressive was the architecture, it served as inspiration for the John Paul Getty’s hilltop villa in Los Angeles, California.

It is likely that Philodemus lived and worked there, as ancient philosophers were often taken into the households of rich sponsors to build and maintain libraries and serve as teachers.

In 79 CE, long after Philodemus’s death, the pyroclastic blast of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption buried Herculaneum in ash and preserved the library to be discovered in the modern era.

We now have more than 1800 papyri from the library. The is irony that the heat of molten debris preserved papyri that would have otherwise rotted away over time in the open air.

However, the majority of the scrolls are still largely indecipherable because of the charring. It is hoped that modern x-ray scanning techniques will reveal the secrets of what could be undiscovered ancient masterpieces.

Of the fragments that have been deciphered many are Philodemus’s own work, including the Tetrapharmakos fragment, and extensive writings on the philosophy of Epicurus.

The Tetrapharmakos, Part of Herculaneum Papyrus 1005 (P.Herc.1005)

What is Epicureanism?

Epicurus was born into a humble background in 341 BCE in the Athenian colony of Samos. Despite the modest means of his family, Epicurus was schooled in philosophy. He originally studied Platonic philosophy but rejected much of it, choosing instead to follow a more materialist understanding of the world.

In Epicurus’s lifetime, the Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) world had become part of a huge empire under Alexander the Great. When the Emperor died at the age of just 32, chaos ensued as he had no clear heir to take the throne.

The empire was split up among warring generals. Like other Hellenistic philosophies that emerged at this time, including Stoicism and Skepticism, Epicureanism was most concerned with helping people find peace of mind in a chaotic and brutal world.

Epicurus founded a school known as “The Garden” outside the city walls of Athens and taught a practical doctrine of ethics, tasked to make you happy. The philosopher had many radical ideas, including allowing women and slaves to learn philosophy — a scandalous notion to the deeply conservative Athenian culture.

Epicurean philosophy is literally hedonistic. It’s a philosophy that is only concerned with finding pleasure. The question the philosophy hopes to answer is “what makes us happy?” since happiness is the greatest good as far as Epicurus was concerned. The conclusion the philosopher came to was surprising.

Happiness is not found in chasing sex, fame, food, and money — all those things we traditionally associate with “hedonism”. In fact, Epicurus reasoned, our unquenchable craving for those things makes us even more anxious. Instead, the philosopher looked at the goal of happiness from the opposite end of the telescope. His conclusion can be summarised very easily: to be happy you need to change your desires.

Happiness, according to Epicurus, is actually the default condition of living. Unfortunately, we consume ourselves with unnecessary desires. We crave ever richer and expensive food and drink. But the person who takes enjoyment from a bowl of lentils and a cup of water is the person that is truly happy.

Epicurus wrote: “The wealth required by nature is limited and easy to procure, but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.”

Our fears and desires are an affliction that needs to be cured, and that’s where the Tetrapharmakos comes in. It’s neat and easy to remember, a four-point summary of how Epicurean philosophy can cure fears and quench pointless desires:

Don’t fear god (Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός)

(Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός) Don’t worry about death (ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος)

(ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος) What is good is easy to get (καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον)

(καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον) What is terrible is easy to endure (τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον)

Here’s a breakdown of what it means:

Don’t fear God

The ancient Greco-Roman world was steeped in religion. There were literally dozens of deities that had temples, shrines, festivals and state holidays devoted to them. The gods of the ancient texts are capricious, fickle and often spiteful. Like superheroes, they are subject to the same passions and flaws as human beings, yet have immense supernatural power to change the world to their whims.

The result is that people were terrified of the gods. Sacrifices and regular prayers to “appease” the gods did little to calm people’s terror of how the deities could intervene in their lives. It was like a protection racket, except the gangsters were silent and invisible.

Epicurus wasn’t an atheist (or not at least publically, since atheists were often put to death for their beliefs in the ancient world). The philosopher instead used reason to quell people’s fear of the gods.

An eternal being, happy and perfect, according to Epicureanism, would not bring any trouble on any other being. To be so capricious implies weakness. If God is perfect, why would God get angry? Anger is a flaw, not a feature, of humanity. A perfect being wouldn’t deign to harm us.

The wrath of God is no longer a matter of grave concern to most people. The world has become increasingly secularised. Most of those of us who do believe in God, believe in the merciful and benevolent deity that does not intervene in worldly life (similarly to Epicureanism).

Since this first step of the fourfold cure is less relevant to today's problems, I propose a slight modification for our secular world: don’t fear judgement.

People fear judgement as much as ever. We feel we need to present our perfect selves on social media. Our family, neighbours, friends and colleagues are ever-present “gods” in our minds that we imagine are judging us in our actions and even our thoughts.

We try to “keep up with the Joneses” in buying the latest cars and gadgets. We feel the pang of paranoia as we part with friends — did I say something stupid? Our hearts beat faster when we overhear what we think is a slight against us. Are we cool enough? Are we good looking enough? Are we rich enough? Are we popular enough?

What we call the “hedonic treadmill” is less about pleasure in itself and more about “keeping up”, trying to attain approval. We have the constant anxiety that we’re not getting enough pleasure or happiness compared to other people.

Screw what people think. The only judgement that ultimately matters is the judgement you have on yourself. People’s opinions cannot harm you.