Tetrapharmakos

The Tetrapharmakos (τετραφάρμακος) "four-part remedy" is a summary of the first four of the Κύριαι Δόξαι (Kuriai Doxai, the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines given by Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Epicurus) in Epicureanism, a recipe for leading the happiest possible life. They are recommendations to avoid anxiety or existential dread.

The "tetrapharmakos" was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Roman-era Epicureans. to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul.

As expressed by Philodemos, and preserved in a Herculaneum Papyrus (1005, 4.9–14), the tetrapharmakos reads:

Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure

ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος
καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον,
τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον

This is a summary of the first four of the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines (Sovran Maxims) given by Diogenes Laertius, which in the by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) read as follows:

In Hellenistic religion, the gods were conceived as hypothetical beings in a perpetual state of bliss, indestructible entities that are completely invulnerable. Gods in this view are mere role models for human beings, who are to "emulate the happiness of the gods, within the limits imposed by human nature."

As D. S. Hutchinson wrote concerning this line, "While you are alive, you don't have to deal with being dead, but when you are dead you don't have to deal with it either, because you aren't there to deal with it." In Epicurus' own words, "Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist," for there is no afterlife. Death, says Epicurus, is the greatest anxiety of all, in length and intensity. This anxiety about death impedes the quality and happiness of one's life by the theory of afterlife: the worrying about whether or not one's deeds and actions in life will translate well into the region of the gods, the wondering whether one will be assigned to an eternity of pain or to an eternity of pleasure.

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