Theoxenia: a Practice of Epicurean Hospitality
The very first word that one found written at the Gate of the Epicurean Garden is: “Xenos”, which means foreigner, or sometimes it’s translated as stranger.
Epicurus had been an Athenian citizen but had been raised in the island of Samos due to the political events that happened during and after the life of Alexander the Great. To this day, our Hegemon is known as Epicurus of Samos. But he was actually exiled from his island of birth as a result of the politics of his day, and he traveled to Taos, to Lampsacus, to other places, and only later did he settle in Athens. He was a citizen of the city but had not lived there for the first part of his life.
One of Metrodorus’ books was titled On noble birth. I wonder if he was, in part, attempting to defend Epicurus from accusations that he was no true Athenian. His enemies mocked his low status, since his mother was a sorceress or faith healer, and his father was a schoolteacher.
Epicurus himself had always been a “xenos” (a foreigner, a stranger). He was a Samosite who was not native to Samos, and he was also an Athenian who had not grown up in Athens–and this had a huge effect in his choice of associates and students, and in his cosmopolitanism. He had been a stranger in a strange land, and suffered as a result of his exile–not only in terms of his reputation (which was not as important), but also by nearly losing his life. He was briefly in Lesbos, where–after preaching atomism–he faced the fanaticism of the Platonists who exiled him from the city of Mitilene, as a result of which he shipwrecked in what is now Turkey and nearly lost his life.
This event changed him forever. After his recovery, he vowed to never again preach in public, and to this day the Epicurean communities have rules concerning passive recruitment. He also surrounded himself with loyal friends, and (if we are to judge from his Principal Doctrine 39), he always had a clear understanding of the difference between his true friends and everyone else. I believe this also made him especially compassionate towards foreigners and strangers, or people who might be picked on, abused or mistreated by some powerful majority. This may have also influenced the wording on Principal Doctrine 14.
Hence the importance of the Gate of the Garden of Epicurus. The Gate marks the boundary between the public sphere (where it is forbidden to preach Epicurean philosophy) and the private sphere (where it is appropriate). When you visited his Kepos (Garden), at the Gate, there was a sign saying: “Stranger (Xenos)! Here you do well to stay; here our highest good is pleasure”. This is the social contract that you had to accept prior to passing the threshold of the Kepos.
Go to his Garden and read the motto carved there: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."
The care-taker of that abode, a kindly host, will be ready for you; he will welcome you with barley-meal and serve you water also in abundance, with these words: "Have you not been well entertained?"
"This garden," he says, "does not whet your appetite; it quenches it. Nor does it make you more thirsty with every drink; it slakes the thirst by a natural cure, a cure that demands no fee. This is the 'pleasure' in which I have grown old."
- Seneca, Epistle 21 to Lucilius
“Xenos” implies that we all begin as strangers to each other.
“Xenos” reminds us that Epicurus himself had been a stranger in a strange land, and that this informed his compassionate treatment of others. It helps to explain why he welcomed barbarians, slaves, women, people of all ranks and social classes, and treated them with dignity, even raising some of them to high status within his school. Leontion (a hetaira) was one of the women who taught at the Kepos and wrote philosophical books of her own. Mus (his slave) was later described as “eminent” among the Epicureans by the biographer Diogenes Laertius.
Theoxenia
“Xenos” also ties to xenia (the concept of Greek hospitality to strangers). This practice originated in the belief that a god might visit you, and if you did not treat him well or offer him water or bread, he might curse you. The cults to Zeus Xenios and Athena Xenia were attempts to appease these deities by people who might have served as case studies of Principal Doctrine 35, who may have felt guilty for having treated a stranger badly and wanted to atone or purge their guilt in some way.
Myths about gods roaming the Earth and visiting mortals are older than the Greeks, and in fact similar beliefs existed about Odin among the northern peoples, and the beginning stanzas of the Havamal (“Words of the High One”, referring here to Odin) mention rules on hospitality towards strangers.
This tradition of treating a guest as if he were a god was known as theoxenia. Among the Epicureans, the practice obviously continued (if we are to judge from Seneca’s account) but was divorced from the legends, and we have to imagine that instead this idea of treating the guest as a god was justified based on the meleta portion of the Letter to Menoeceus (which calls on us to practice with like-minded people and promises that our quality of life will be god-like if we practice correctly).
The offering of sacrificial food to the belly of a friend is the Epicurean alternative to sacrificial offerings to the gods of the city. The act of receiving a guest and offering water and bread (as per the words at the entrance of the Garden), is a form of ritualized friendship which recognizes the sacred dignity of the guest. Theoxenia and its related ideas and practices may also be in evidence in the mutual prostration between Epicurus and Colotes (which I covered in my last essay).
That Epicureans took seriously the idea of treating their friends as if they were gods is attested in multiple sources. We touched on it when we discussed the book review of How one can be a god. In his Epistle to his mother Chaerestrate (which is part of the Oenoanda Wall Inscription), Epicurus mentions the cultivation of a disposition similar to that of the gods as a way of explaining what progress towards pleasure actually entails. Epicureans were practicing living like gods and recognized a certain godly dignity in each other, as per the Letter to Menoeceus. Later enemies of the Epicureans criticized how Epicurean friends, when they got together, were always “flattering each other”.
Living like an Immortal
The meleta portion of the Letter to Menoeceus says that we will “live like gods among mortals” if we surround ourselves with immortal goods—and friendships are the only recognized category of immortal goods in the Vatican Sayings, so being surrounded by certain friends should elevate our state of life in some godly way.
QUARE RELIGIO PEDIBUS
SUBJECTA VICISSIM OPTERITUR
NOS EXAEQUAT VICTORIA CAELO
“Having trampled religion under our feet, this victory makes us heaven’s equals”, says Lucretius in Liber Primus. Epicurean theoxenia was a ritualized celebration of friendship that took seriously these insights.
Conclusion
I believe the theoxenia practice that is announced at the Gate of the Garden helped to set the tone for how friends should treat each other and established noble expectations from the guest who is treated with godlike dignity—since the friend must then uphold said dignity. Theoxenia therefore connected theory and praxis.
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