  In his treatment of the life of Epicureans and their communities, Philodemus also addresses claims by disciplines in competition with philosophy for the attention of students and the conduct of adult life. Epicurus and his followers were well known in antiquity for their rejection of the Greek cultural or musical education (paideia)—generally thought to consist in the ‘liberal arts’, especially grammar (the study of language, poetry, and prose), rhetoric, music—as an institution which at best distracted one from philosophy, the only route to happiness, and at worst instilled in the young false notions, such as those of the gods of poetry, and bad patterns of thought or dispositions. Epicurus addressed a young man who had just come to study philosophy with him accordingly: “I call you blessed, Apelles, because you have set out for philosophy undefiled by any paideia” (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.588A = fr. 117 Usener 1887).