  The middle of the 1450s saw Ficino begin a practice that continued throughout his life: writing philosophical letters to friends. A noteworthy letter from 1458 shows him interested in four “sects” of philosophers: Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, and Epicureans (Ficino, “De sectis philosophorum,” in Kristeller 1938, 2: 7–11). There is little surprising in Ficino’s account, drawn primarily from Latin sources, apart from the minor fact that he devoted more space to Epicureanism than to the other schools, indicative of a possible early “Lucretian” period alluded to in certain sources (Brown; Hankins, Plato). Ficino notes that some Peripatetics have held that Aristotle believed the human soul would die along with the body, though significantly he avoids attributing this position to Aristotle himself.