review of Yona and Davis, ed. Epicurus in Rome

 Epicurus in Rome, Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age, ed. Sergio Yona and Gregson Davis, Cambridge University Press 2022

review by James Jope ©

Contributors to this volume are distinguished Epicurean scholars and their papers are well written and enlightening, as should be expected. However, Sergio Yona’s introduction attempts to contextualize them in relation to the paradox of the popularity of an apparently very un-Roman philosophy in the late Republic. Now, a book investigating why and how that popularity arose would be more innovative than a simple gathering of diverse papers on Epicureanism in Rome, however well written; but if that is the purpose of this book, not all of these papers address it.

I shall discuss the papers in the order of their appearance in the book.

Sint Ista Graecorum: How to be an Epicurean in Late Republican Rome – Evidence from Cicero’s On Ends

Geert Roskam

Cicero’s Rhetoric of Anti-Epicureanism: Anonymity as Critique

Daniel P. Hanchey

The first two essays study Cicero’s hostile treatment of the Epicureans in order to weigh the possibility of a Roman choosing that school.

Geert Roscam opens the book with a satiric caricature of Epicurus; the caricature is right on target, but I fear it might encourage some readers to lay the book aside without further ado. After an intriguing discussion of why all the speakers in Cicero’s dialogues are Roman, and never Greek professional philosophers (because Cicero thought that the Roman aristocrats actually improved on what the professionals had to say), he examines Cicero’s arguments and rightly concludes that it was especially difficult for a senator to be Epicurean. (Incidentally, I should like to point out that the word ‘patronizing’ applies neatly in both its ancient and modern uses to Cicero’s view of Greek professionals.)

Daniel P. Hanchey skilfully penetrates Cicero’s rhetorical devices such as his disdainful references to Epicureans by citing their supposed principles rather than naming the school itself. Among the basic Epicurean ‘principles’ which Cicero rejects is an “animal-like failure to employ ratio (reason, logic) and oratio,” where the latter signifies the rhetorical activity which, according to Cicero, is the basis of community; hence their “failure to observe the natural social bonds that undergird the Republic”.

Both authors acknowledge that Cicero is a hostile witness, and both see clearly through his tactics. However, they remain sympathetic to him-- perhaps too sympathetic to draw out a fair picture of the Epicureans. Thus Hanchey: “Cicero spent the last decade or more of his life arguing for the value of a rational and virtuous society... in the belief that the Republic represented something abstractly good.” A more critical attitude towards Cicero’s own position might cast more light on the Epicureans. After all, here was a man who, because the Epicureans could not fully support a ‘community’ founded on imperialism and competitive internal rivalries which were already tearing it apart, degrades them to solitary animalistic individuals, when they were actually constructing healthy alternative communities to shelter one another from the storm. Surely this communal lifestyle-- open, as it was, to all classes-- attracted many in the turmoil of the civil wars.

Was Atticus an Epicurean?

Nathan Gilbert

Nathan Gilbert counters an earlier view that Atticus was not a serious Epicurean by offering a penetrating analysis of the context, rhetorical tactics, and nuances of Cicero’s correspondence with Atticus. The result, and Atticus’ own advice to Cicero are consistent with serious Epicureanism. However, as Gilbert understands, it was easier to follow that philosophy as an equestrian than as a senator.

Caesar the Epicurean? A Matter of Life and Death

Katharina Volk

Katharina Volk considers the hypothesis that Caesar’s gutsy indifference to death may indicate that he was an Epicurean. She asks what criterion we should use to qualify someone as an Epicurean, and answers, with a delightful flare of common sense, that we should ask them. Noting that neither Caesar himself nor anybody else ever described him as an Epicurean, she suggests that Epicurean ideas were current in the popular culture and Caesar, like others, adapted them to his own needs.

Otium and Voluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism

Monica R. Gale

It seems obvious that Catullus’ personal disaffection with politics, his passionate concept of friendship, and especially his defiant, incorrigible indulgence in illicit romantic love are quite unlike the Epicurean version of the corresponding values. But it is no disservice to scholarship to demonstrate the obvious. Monica Gale does so through an intertextual study of Catullus, Lucretius and Philodemus.

“Love It or Leave It”: Nature’s Ultimatum in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things

Elizabeth Asmis

Kitsch, Death and the Epicurean

Pamela Gordon

Lucretius’ thanatology must have deeply affected Roman readers at that time, and so it is the subject of two papers.

Elizabeth Asmis offers a very knowledgeable correlation of Lucretius with Epicurus and Philodemus.

Using novelist Milan Kundera’s peculiar concept of ‘kitsch’ as denial of filth and decay as her point of departure, Pamela Gordon interprets Epicurean sources (Lucretius, Philodemus) as lampooning conventional shallow ideas about death and philosophy. While the imposition of Kundera’s specific concept is not very convincing, much of what Gordon says about Lucretius is. Her discussion of the Epicureans’ own kitsch (rings, portraits of The Master) could be especially relevant for the issue of the school’s popularity in the Republic, if indeed serious Epicureans disdained such kitsch. But too often (e.g. as regards Philodemus and Horace), Gordon has to simply postulate that a text which others have taken seriously is intended as satire. This line of inquiry should certainly be pursued further.

Page, Stage, Image: Confronting Ennius with Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things

Mathias Hanses

I’ve always wondered why Lucretius calls Epicurus a graius homo. Mathias Hanses’ explanation is striking proof of the relevance of Ennius for understanding Lucretius, as is the rest of his research on this subject. But the most interesting part of his paper for the issue of Epicurean popularity in Rome is “multi-medial intertextuality”: The correspondence of Lucretius’ narrative with Roman theatrical performances and wall paintings must have been intended to reach a broader audience, and probably succeeded.

We can readily intuit the importance of indifference to death and the support of an alternative community for Romans during the civil wars. But although Hanses’ argument has some difficulties (e.g., chronological), such cross-media research seems promising for future work on the question of the popularity of Epicureanism in Rome, especially given the hostility of some major literary sources. Studies relating literature to material art have already been very fruitful regarding Hellenistic Greek poetry (e.g., by Graham Zanker and Évelyne Prioux).

Lucretius on the Size of the Sun

T. H. M. Gellar-Goad

The Epicurean position that the sun is only as large as it appears has been a thorny issue for ancient and modern critics. T. H. M. Gellar-Goad’s essay makes a plausible case in defense of the Epicureans’ position, claiming that they did reserve judgement (epokhe tes dianoias). It has nothing to do with the issue of their popularity in Rome.

Comment on Phillip Mitsis on Hellenistic philosophical schools

Phillip Mitsis, “The Institutions of Hellenistic Philosophy”, Chapter 27 in A Companion to the Hellenistic World, ed. Andrew Erskine (Blackwell 2005)

Phillip Mitsis attempts to improve our understanding of Hellenistic philosophical ‘schools’ with a critical review of certain speculative descriptions of them, particularly Martha Nussbaum’s apt, but overdrawn, comparison of the Epicureans, whose teaching was strictly therapeutic, with the authentic research of the Aristoteleans. Mitsis repeatedly reminds us of important differences between modern universities and ancient ‘schools’, which lacked any permanent infrastructure or financial support, and of the sparsity of our evidence on these questions. He prefers to regard the Hellenistic sects as simply “schools of thought”, whose success relied on the personal relationships between students and teachers, their mutual admiration, differences, shared intellectual convictions and rivalries.

The criticism of speculative characterizations of the schools is timely and effective; and the suggestion that intellectual inquiry was a paramount feature of Hellenistic ‘schools’ (as it should be of any school of philosophy) is cogent. However, Mitsis’ analysis does not consider an important factor: Given the absence of institutional support, what indeed was the source of the schools’ income, and what effect did it have on their doctrines and practices?

Mitsis asks his reader to imagine the different circumstances of Hellenistic compared to modern philosophical environments, and what those differences entail. Well, then, let the tenured professsor imagine an environment in which financial resources come only from the master’s own personal wealth, from private patrons, and students’ fees, without even a concept of academic freedom. Actually he need not look very far. The current academic situation in many North American universities, where teaching is done by underpaid instructors on contract, where a position which ‘offends’ any group can endanger their career, and where universities may be governed by churches which do not hesitate to censor what is taught, indicates an incipient shift towards such an environment.

As always, our evidence is sparse. Apparently Roman patronage was especially hazardous. In a paper posted on Academia.edu, Marietta Horster (Small-minded, Envious and Chauvinistic: The Self-shaping of Roman Intellectuals), drawing on the satires of Lucian and Juvenal, concludes that there was “not enough money and not enough patrons for the many... philosophers”: It was “a highly competitive situation” (p. 201). And further, that “most... were not worth the money invested in them”. Juvenal, and especially Lucian, were targeting mediocre post-Hellenistic epigones. But as early as the second century b.c.e. the Stoic Panaetius sanitized early Stoic ethics for his Scipionic patron. Although Epicureans were supposed to stay out of politics altogether, Philodemus skilfully composed the best advice he could, given the school’s constraints, for his politically active Roman patron. Musonius Rufus adapted Stoic living to suit his wealthy Roman students. There is even epigraphic evidence of Epicureans who sought financial security by becoming priests. (For references to these instances see my paper on “Platonic and Roman Influence on Stoic and Epicurean Sexual Ethics”, Chapter 25 in A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, ed. Thomas K. Hubbard, Wiley Blackwell 2014.)

Mitsis’s wholesome intellectual environment and Horster’s circus of charlatans are probably both true aspects of the ancient reality.

Catharina Vogt on philosophy at Rome

On reading Katharina Vogt, “Philosophy” (Online at Academia.edu), forthcoming in R. Gibson and C. Whitton (eds.), The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Studies (Cambridge University Press)...

Vogt’s essay casts an interesting look at philosophy from a Roman point of view. While philosophers have generally regarded Roman thinkers as mediocre epigones best used as sources for missing Greek thought, Vogt quite rightly points out that original philosophical theory was not the Romans’ aim. Instead-- even more so than the Hellenistic schools-- they sought philosophy only as a guide to practical living. Vogt elaborates a lucid and compelling picture of this ‘practical’ strain throughout the history of philosophy in ancient Rome, and her chapter opens a new understanding of the social role of philosophy in Rome.

What disturbs me is the inclusion of this essay in a “critical guide”. Philosophically, Vogt’s chapter is anything but critical. Rather, her aim is to reveal the values of the Romans themselves. One might describe it as a contribution to the sociology of philosophy. But their ‘practical’ bent is precisely a major fault in Roman philosophy. Panaetius had already purged Stoicism of anything that might be uncomfortable for Roman aristocrats like his patron. Musonius Rufus carefully tailored his teaching for paying followers with Roman values. Even Cicero makes it clear that he will not accept views which infringe upon conventional Roman values. The mos maiorum (and later, Christian dogma) always trumped free thinking. 

 

I certainly recommend her chapter, but I suggest that it be read in conjunction with Lucian’s contributions to the sociology of philosophy, especially On Salaried Posts in Great Houses.