Note 355 — CANTO X.

Epicurus: The unbelief in a future life, or rather the indifference to everything but the calls of ambition and worldly pleasure, common among the nobles of Dante’s age and that preceding it, went by the name of Epicureanism. It is the most radical of heresies, because adverse to the first principles of all religions. Dante, in his treatment of heresy, dwells more on what affects conduct as does the denial of the Divine government—than on intellectual divergence from orthodox belief.