You may also find it profitable to study the Epicureans as well, they are often misunderstood and misrepresented as by a member below. But it is incorrect to think that the Epicureans were mere hedonists saying. "Do as you please and everything will work out fine." Quite the contrary, the Epicureans said that success and happiness comes from learning to curb and regulate the pleasure impulse. Since they saw misfortune as coming from uncontrolled desire. As in. If I drink too much I will get a hangover, if I have too much sex, I will get more children than I can support, whereas if I drink very moderately, I will make social bonds more easily, and moderate sex will get you a supportable family, of well provided for children, who will then support you in old age. The big difference with the Stoics came about, because the Stoics believed that misfortune alone was the main cause of suffering, and that morale behaviour had little effect on that, so that a degree of nihilism was needful to face the inevitable unhappiness.

The misassociation of the Epicureans with hedonism, comes from early Christian propaganda, and was at least philosophically quite untrue, though of course any large scale movement is bound to have some corruption. And is ironic in at least one way, because the early Christian monastic tradition probably got a lot of its inspiration from the Epicurean communities, where the followers of Epicurus lived lives of austerity and simplicity following the teachings of the philosopher. It is little doubted by historians that most of the portrayal of Epicureanism as mere hedonism is an invention of the propagandists. Perhaps in part, because, as well as being a rival cult, the Epicureans also treated men and women as equals, which made it easy in the misogynistic mindset of many people then , to portray the Epicureans as sexually immoral.

It is sad that such misunderstandings and strawmanings of the movement still persist to this day, when there is no good reason not to understand the truth, but the Christian sub-culture still passes on its own version of history untouched by mainstream history, and it is very pervasive.