Diogenes of Oenoanda, an enthusiastic pupil of Epicureanism who flourishes around 200, helps to further develop the philosophy.
Diogenes has constructed a rectangular piazza surrounded by a portico, and furnished with statues.
On one of the smaller sides he has placed a portal, with perhaps his mausoleum on the opposite side.
On the two larger sides he has inscribed a lengthy account of Epicurean doctrines.
The inscription is two point thirty-seven meters high, and extends about eighty meters.
Originally about twenty-five thousand words long and filling about two hundred and sixty square meters of wall space, it was discovered in 1884, and the first sixty-four fragments were published in 1892.
Since then, more fragments have been discovered, notably in a series of excavations led by Martin Ferguson Smith.
Perhaps a quarter of the inscription has been recovered.
New parts are being discovered in the excavations of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; among the parts discovered in 2008 was a statement on Plato's theory of cosmogony.
Nothing is known about the life of Diogenes apart from the limited information he reveals to us.
The inscription itself, which had been dated to the late second century, has now been assigned on epigraphic grounds to the Hadrianic period.
Diogenes was wealthy enough to acquire a large tract of land in the city of Oenoanda to construct (or possibly buy) a piazza to display his inscription.
As a man who had found peace by practicing the doctrines of Epicurus, he tells us that in his old age he was motivated "to help also those who come after us" and "to place therefore the remedies of salvation by means of this porch.”
