It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

This saying is attributed to Epicurus (341–270 BCE), whose philosophy urged freeing oneself from anxiety—especially fear of the gods and fear of death—through clear reasoning about nature. In the Hellenistic world, “security” (asphaleia) was a prized ideal amid political instability, disease, and war. Epicurus taught that many troubles can be mitigated by prudence, friendship, and modest living, yet death remains unavoidable and unpredictable. The metaphor of a “city without walls” evokes an ancient polis lacking fortifications: no matter what protections we build, mortality can enter at any time. The remark fits Epicurean therapeutic aims: to redirect attention from futile attempts at absolute safety toward tranquility (ataraxia).

Epicurus contrasts manageable risks with the one certainty that defeats every human precaution: death. The “city without walls” image underscores our radical vulnerability—mortality is not a remote enemy but an ever-present possibility. Read in an Epicurean key, the point is not despair but liberation: since death cannot be fenced out, the rational response is to stop treating it as a looming catastrophe. Epicurus famously argues that death is “nothing to us,” because when we exist death is absent, and when death is present we no longer exist. Recognizing the limits of security can therefore quiet obsessive fear and encourage a life oriented toward simple pleasures, friendship, and mental peace rather than anxious self-fortification.