The Greater Reward

Why did Epicurus want to convince his disciples that the gods did not care about them and therefore were irrelevant to human life? Perhaps he believed it himself, and perhaps the belief gave him a tranquility that he wanted to share. But the Greek gods, right down to Hades, were abstractions of a multiform reality that Epicurus was asking others to relinquish. From there he was only a short step away from unifying their perspective and making himself their one and only god.