Phillip Mitsis - Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f
E PIC U RUS A N D
E PIC U R E A N ISM
The Oxford Handbook of
EPICURUS AND
EPICUREANISM
Edited by
PHILLIP MITSIS
1
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Contents
List of Contributors xi
Introductory remarks 1
Phillip Mitsis
PA RT I E P IC U RU S
1. Epicurus and the Epicurean School 13
Tiziano Dorandi
2. Epistemology 43
Gisela Striker
3. Atomism 59
David Konstan
4. Cosmology and Meteorology 81
Daryn Lehoux
5. Theology 94
Emidio Spinelli and Francesco Verde
6. Death 118
Stephen E. Rosenbaum
7. Hedonism 141
Voula Tsouna
8. Psychology 189
Elizabeth Asmis
9. Voluntary Action and Responsibility 221
Walter Englert
viii contents
10. Friendship 250

Phillip Mitsis
11. Politics and Society 284
Geert Roskam
12. Language 308
Enrico Piergiacomi
13. Rhetoric 333
Clive Chandler
14. Poetics 347
Michael McOsker
PA RT I I A N C I E N T E P IC U R E A N I SM
A N D I T S C R I T IC S
15. Philodemus and the Herculaneum Papyri 379
Mario Capasso
16. Lucretius 430
Monica R. Gale
17. Horace and Vergil 456
Gregson Davis
18. Cicero 476
Carlos Lévy
19. Seneca and Epicurus 487
Margaret Graver
20. Plutarch 507
Michael Erler
21. Diogenes of Oenoanda 531
Pamela Gordon
22. Epicurus and Epicureanism in Rabbinic Literature, Maimonides,
and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov 549
Gabriel Danzig
23. Early Christianity 582
Ilaria Ramelli
contents ix
PA RT I I I E A R LY M ODE R N A N D
L AT E R R E C E P T ION
24. Humanist Dissemination of Epicureanism 615
Ada Palmer
25. Materialism and the Early Modern “Natural History of Man” 641
Ann Thomson
26. Early Modern Epicureanism: Gassendi and Hobbes in Dialogue
on Psychology, Ethics, and Politics 671
Gianni Paganini
27. Epicurus in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French
Thought: A “Freedom of Pleasures”? 711
Thomas M. Kavanagh
28. Thomas Jefferson 729
Carl J. Richard
29. Epicureanism and Utilitarianism 742
A. A. Long
30. Epicurus in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Hegel, Marx,
and Nietzsche 761
James I. Porter
31. Postmodernism 791
Eva Marie Noller and W. H. Shearin
Index809
List of Contributors
Elizabeth Asmis Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill., USA,
and author of Epicurus’ Scientific Method (1984). Recent articles include Lucretius'
Reception of Epicurus: De Rerum Natura as a Conversion Narrative, The Stoics on the Craft
of Poetry, and A Tribute to a Hero: Marx's interpretation of Epicureanism in his Dissertation.
Asmis is currently working on Epicurean social philosophy and Roman political thought.
Mario Capasso Full Professor of Papyrology and Director of the Centro di Studi
Papirologici at the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, where he founded and directs the
Museo Papirologico. He is co-Director of the Archaeological Mission of the Centro,
which has been working in Fayyum (Egypt) since 1993. He is President of the Associazione
Italiana di Cultura Classica and has published about 450 papyrological scientific works,
including two handbooks on papyrology and one on Herculanean papyrology.
Clive Chandler Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Literatures at the
University of Cape Town, South Africa. His research interests include Philodemus,
rhetoric, and the intellectual history of the Ancient World. He is the author of a book
on Philodemus On Rhetoric Books 1 and 2 (first edition 2006). He is currently working
on madness in Ancient Greek literature.
Gabriel Danzig Associate Professor in the department of classical studies at Bar Ilan
University, Ramat Gan, Israel. His primary area of research is philosophical literature
of the classical period. His publications include articles and a book on Socrates, Plato,
Xenophon, and Aristotle. He has also published articles on Greek and Roman themes
in Jewish literature, including on Socrates, the concept of friendship, and debates
between Rabbis and Greek and Roman figures.
Gregson Davis Andrew W. Mellon Research Professor in the Humanities at Duke
University, Durham, N.C., USA. His primary research specialty is in the interpretation
of poetic texts in the Greco-Roman as well as Caribbean traditions. In the domain of
Late Republican and Augustan poetry, he has published monographs on Horace’s Odes
(Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (The
Death of Procris: “Amor” and the Hunt in Ovid’s Metamorphoses). His most recent book
on Augustan poetry is Parthenope: The Interplay of Ideas in Vergilian Bucolic (2012).
Tiziano Dorandi Director of Research in the French National Center of Scientific
Research (CNRS) UMR 8230, Centre J. Pépin, Paris, France. His interests include
papyrology, textual criticism, and ancient philosophy. He is the author of Filodemo. Storia
dei filosofi. Platone e l’Academia (1991), Ricerche sulla cronologia dei filosofi ellenistici
(1991), Filodemo. Storia dei filosofi. La Stoà da Zenone a Panezio (1994), Antigone de
Caryste. Fragments (1999), and Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers (2013).
xii list of contributors
Walter Englert Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of Classics and Humanities,
Emeritus, at Reed College, Portland, Ore., USA. He received his Ph.D. in Classics from
Stanford University, and his research focuses on ancient philosophy, especially on
Epicurus, the Stoics, and the reception of Greek philosophy in Rome. He has published
on Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Cicero, and is the author of a translation of Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things.
Michael Erler Senior Professor and chair of the board of directors of the Siebald
Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies (SCIAS) of the University of Würzburg,
Würzburg, Germany. He is the author of Epikur-Die Schule Epikurs-Lukrez (1994),
Römische Philosophie (1997), Plato (2007); editor of Epikureismus in der späten Republik
und der Kaiserzeit (2000); co-editor of Philosophie der Lust. Studien zum Hedonismus
(2012); and has published various articles on Plato, Platonism, Epicurus, Epicureanism,
the relation between literature and Greek philosophy, and Greek drama.
Monica R. Gale Professor in Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Her publications
include Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (1994), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics,
Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition (2000), Lucretius and the Didactic Epic (2001), and
other books and articles on Lucretius, and on the poetry of the Late Republican and
Augustan periods.
Pamela Gordon Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department of Women, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans., USA. She is the
author of Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-Century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda (1996),
and The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus (2012). Her research specialties include
Greek and Roman poetry, and she is the author of the introduction to The Complete
Works of Sappho, translated by Stanley Lombardo (2016).
Margaret Graver Aaron Lawrence Professor in Classics at Dartmouth College, Hanover,
N.H., USA, where she specializes in Hellenistic and Roman moral psychology. Her major
publications include Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (2002);
Stoicism and Emotion (2007); and, in collaboration with A. A. Long, a complete annotated
translation of Seneca’s Letters on Ethics (2015).
Thomas M. Kavanagh Professor Emeritus of French at Yale University, New Haven,
Conn., USA. His research centers on eighteenth-century literature, culture, and the
visual arts. His publications include Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance (1993),
Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture (2005), and Enlightened
Pleasures: Eighteenth-Century France and the New Epicureanism (2010). He is currently
working on a book-length study of post-Revolutionary pleasures.
David Konstan Professor of Classics at New York University, New York, N.Y., USA. He
is the author of The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006), “A Life Worthy of the Gods”:
The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (2008), Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral
Idea (2010), and Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea (2014). He is a past
President of the American Philological Association, and a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
list of contributors xiii
Daryn Lehoux Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Queen’s University, Kingston,

Ontario, Canada. He is the author of Creatures Born of Mud and Slime (2017), What Did
the Romans Know? (2012), Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World
(2007), and co-editor of Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (2013).
Carlos Lévy Professor of Latin, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France. He has
written extensively on ancient philosophy, especially Cicero and Philo of Alexandria, as
well as on Latin prose and poetry. For many years, he was co-director of the scientific
team “Rome et ses renaissances.” His many publications include Cicero Academicus.
Recherches sur les Académiques et sur la philosophie cicéronienne (1992), Les philosophies
hellénistiques (1997), and Les scepticismes (2008).
A. A. Long Emeritus Professor of Classics and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at the
University of California, Berkeley, Calif., USA. He is the author and editor of many
works on ancient philosophy including, with D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers
(1987), and From Epicurus to Epictetus. Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy
(2006). His most recent books are Greek Models of Mind and Self (2015), and, with
Margaret Graver, Seneca Letters on Ethics (2015).
Michael McOsker Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral at the Universität zu Köln.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 2015. He is the author of On the
Good Poem According to Philodemus and, with David Armstrong, the editor and
translated of Philodemus’ On Anger. He was a fellow at the Centro internazionale per
lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi “Marcello Gigante” and taught at Ohio Wesleyan
University.
Phillip Mitsis Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization at
New York University, New York, N.Y., USA, and Academic Director of the American
Institute for Verdi Studies. Recent publications include La libertà, il piacere, la morte
(2019) and Natura Aut Voluntas? Recherches sur la pensée politique et éthique hellénistique
et romaine et son influence (2020).
Eva Marie Noller teaches at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, where
she received her doctorate in Classics (Latin Literature) in 2016. Her dissertation (Die
Ordnung der Welt. Dynamik, Statik und Ermergenz in Lukrez’ De Rerum Natura) was
published in 2019. She is co-editor, with Christian C. Haß, of Was ordnet Bedeutung—
was bedeutet Ordnung? Zu bedeutungskonstituierenden Ordnungsleistungen in
Geschriebenem (2015).
Gianni Paganini Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Eastern
Piedmont, Vercelli, Italy and fellow of the Research Centre of the Accademia dei Lincei,
Rome. He is the author of Les philosophies clandestines à l’age classique (2005), Skepsis
(2008, awarded by the Académie Française), and the Italian edition of Hobbes, De motu
loco et tempore (2010), awarded by the Accademia dei Lincei.
Ada Palmer Associate Professor of Early Modern European History and the College,
the University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill., USA, and is a cultural and intellectual historian
xiv list of contributors
focusing on radical thought and the recovery of the classics in the Italian Renaissance.
She works on the history of science, religion, heresy, freethought, atheism, censorship,
books, printing, and on patronage and the networks of power and money that enabled
cultural creation in early modern Europe. Her first book is Reading Lucretius in the
Renaissance (2014).
Enrico Piergiacomi Visiting Researcher at the Center for Religious Studies of the
Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Philosophy with
a thesis on the theologies of the ancient atomists and their ethical consequences, which
has been recently published (Storia delle antiche teologie atomiste, 2017).
James I. Porter Professor of Rhetoric and Classics at the University of California,
Berkeley, Calif., USA, where he holds the Irving Stone Chair in Literature. He is the
author of Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (2000), The Invention of Dionysus: An
Essay on Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (2000), The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient
Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience (2010), The Sublime in Antiquity (2016), and
Homer: The Very Idea (forthcoming). He is also the editor of several collected volumes
in classics and the reception of classics, and of the book series “Classical Presences.”
Ilaria Ramelli Full Professor of Theology and Britt Chair (Angelicum), Visiting Fellow
and Fowler Hamilton Fellow (Oxford), and Senior Fellow (Princeton CHS; Catholic
University, 2003–present). She earned two MAs, a Ph.D., postdoc, and two Habilitations
to Full/Ordinary Professor, and has been Professor of Roman History, Senior Visiting
Professor of Greek Thought (Harvard), and Senior Fellow (Durham; Erfurt). She
specializes in ancient and patristic philosophy and has published many academic books
and articles, incl. Epicurea (2002) and Social Justice (OUP 2017).
Carl J. Richard Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, La.,
USA. He received his Ph.D. in history from Vanderbilt University in 1988. His books
include The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment
(1994), Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding
Fathers (2008), and The Founders and the Bible (2016).
Stephen E. Rosenbaum Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev., USA. Having written articles about Epicurean
thanatology and ethics, he continues to explore and write about the implications of
Epicurus’s views about death.
Geert Roskam Professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. He has
published several monographs on Hellenistic and later Platonic philosophy and on
Plutarch, including Live Unnoticed (lathe biosas). On the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean
Doctrine (2007) and A Commentary of Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo (2007).
W. H. Shearin Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Miami, Miami, Fla.,
USA. He is author of The Language of Atoms (2015) and co-editor, with Brooke Holmes,
of Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism (2012). Currently, he is
editing the Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy and completing Thick-Witted
Minerva: Stupidity in Roman Philosophy.
list of contributors xv
Emidio Spinelli Full Professor of History of Ancient Philosophy in the Department of

Philosophy/Sapienza-Università di Roma, Rome, Italy. He has published many articles
on different topics (Presocratics, Atomists, Socrates/minor Socratics, Plato, Stoics,
Epicureans, philosophical papyri); among his main works are Sesto Empirico: Contro gli
etici (1995), Sesto Empirico: Contro gli astrologi (2000), Questioni scettiche: Letture
introduttive al pirronismo antico (2005), Electronic Edition of Sextus Empiricus’s Works
(2012, in DAPHNET, see the Section ‘Ancient Philosophy’: http://www.daphnet.org).
Gisela Striker Walter C. Klein Professor of Philosophy and of the Classics, Emerita, at
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., USA. Her research has focused mainly on
Aristotle’s logic, Hellenistic epistemology, and Stoic and Epicurean ethics. Her publications
include Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (1996) and Aristotle: Prior Analytics
book I (translation and commentary, 2009).
Ann Thomson Professor of Intellectual History at the European University Institute,
Florence, Italy. She works on the intellectual history of the long eighteenth century, in
particular the “natural history of man,” the circulation of ideas and cultural transfers,
and European thinking on the Islamic world, on all of which she has published
extensively. Her most recent monographs are Bodies of Thought (2008), and L’âme des
Lumières (2013).
Voula Tsouna Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
Calif., USA. She is co-author of Philodemus: On Choices and Avoidances (1995), which
received the Theodor Mommsen Award, and the author of The Epistemology of the
Cyrenaic School (1998), which has been translated into modern Greek (2018), The Ethics
of Philodemus (2007), Philodemus on Property Management (2012), and her most recent
monograph is Plato’s Charmides. An Interpretative Commentary (2020).
Francesco Verde Tenure-track Assistant Professor of the History of Ancient Philosophy
at the Department of Philosophy of “Sapienza” – University of Rome, Italy. His interests
are ancient atomism, ancient physics, Hellenistic philosophy, and Herculaneum
papyrology. He published a translation with commentary of Epicurus’s “Letter to
Herodotus” (2010), a volume devoted to the Epicurean doctrine of minimal parts (2013),
and an up-to-date presentation of Epicurus’s philosophy (2013).
I n troductory
r em a r ks
Phillip Mitsis
Fifty years ago, when the recent resurgence of Epicurean scholarship was in its infancy,
it was fairly typical for scholars to begin with a few plangent observations about the
neglect of Epicurus along, perhaps, with a dark glance at the baleful influence on histo-
ries of ancient philosophy exerted by Hegel, who had been brutally dismissive of
Epicureanism (Chapter 30). A few would give the occasional brave nod in the direction
of Epicurean arguments that seemed to speak to current developments in philosophy at
the time, but overall it was hard to miss an underlying subtext of occasional defensive-
ness mixed with some slightly sheepish boosterism. Today, the situation is markedly dif-
ferent both within and outside the Academy. Introductory ancient philosophy courses,
which invariably used to conclude with Aristotle, now regularly make plenty of room
for Hellenistic philosophers, and graduate programs are awash in seminars devoted not
only to Epicureans, but also to their rivals, the Stoics and Sceptics. Meanwhile, contem-
porary philosophers continue to churn out article after article of increasing sophistication
defending or (mostly) attempting to refute Epicurus’s arguments about the harmlessness
of death (Chapter 7). Indeed, it is hard to think of another set of ancient philosophical
arguments that has created such an argumentative frenzy.1
Apart from the sheer bulk of scholarly production, however, the number of clubs,
blogs, and self-help groups devoted to Epicureanism continues to explode. Indeed, I
imagine many professional scholars may sometimes feel that their contributions some-
how lack the immediate visceral appeal of those flashier productions of true believers
touting Epicureanism as a cure for everything from one’s romantic troubles to climate
change. Yet, though it is doubtful that many of the scholars in this volume write as
believers, nonetheless they have come together with a strong conviction, no longer
needing much defense, about the intrinsic interest of Epicurus’s philosophy and the his-
torical significance of its subsequent widespread influence. In short, it has been a very
good half-century for Epicurus and Epicureanism.
1 For an overview, see for instance, Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johannson, The Oxford
Handbook of the Philosophy of Death (Oxford, 2013).
2 Phillip Mitsis
This recognition of Epicurus’s importance is not so distant, however, that the volume
has not been able to include many of the scholars who were among the first solitary pio-
neers to publish important work on Epicureanism, and it is a special pleasure to note
that not only have they retained their interest over the decades, but they also are now in
the position to reflect first hand on the various trajectories of scholarship that many of
them helped to inaugurate. At the same time, however, the volume has attempted to give
voice to approaches and issues that are newly coming to the fore, especially in the recep-
tion of Epicureanism. It is here that scholarship has most recently taken flight in so many
areas and disciplines that the volume has at best been able to try to outline only some of
the major developments and connections that a new generation of scholars is exploring
in greater depth. Even as this volume goes to press, new studies are appearing about
Epicurus’s influence on figures as diverse as Omar Khayyam, Shakespeare, Shelley,
Foucault, etc., and this appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.
In many ways, Epicureanism presents a distinct case among the ancient philosophical
schools. One reason is because our knowledge of it is continually being enriched by new
evidence in a way that distinguishes it from the rest of its ancient competitors. Whereas
most ancient philosophical texts have come down to us from medieval manuscripts that
have been copied from generation to generation, with all the problems attendant on that
process, in the 1750s a treasure-trove of some eight hundred papyrus rolls was excavated
in Herculaneum, many of which offer direct and often unprecedented kinds of evidence
about ancient Epicureanism and its practices and arguments. These had been buried in
the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 ce and were the first full papyrus books to come to light
in Europe. Unfortunately they also had been carbonized and, accordingly, nearly impos-
sible to unroll initially without inflicting grave damage upon them. One recent source of
considerable excitement in the world of ancient philosophy, however, has been the
development of new techniques that are giving us much better glimpses into a large
number of these works by Philodemus, an Epicurean of the first century bce.
Philodemus (Chapter 15) cannot claim to be an especially original philosopher, but his
works show us a later Epicurean, no doubt partially under the influence of his own
teachers, trying to work out and adapt the doctrines of Epicurus and the earlier founders
of the school to the demands of his own intellectual and cultural milieu hundreds of
years later. By the same token, his approach to the liberal arts generally and especially to
rhetoric (Chapter 13) and to poetry (Chapter 14) appears to develop lines of argument
that were either missing among earlier Epicureans or perhaps treated by them in more
deflationary ways. In any case, the variety and amount of this new material coming to
light from Herculaneum gives Epicureanism a special kind of purchase on our scholarly
attention.
A second distinctive source of evidence is perhaps among the strangest and most
impressive productions of the ancient philosophical world (Chapter 21). In the city of
Oenoanda in ancient Lycia, a Greek Epicurean in the second century ce had a summary
of Epicureanism of approximately 25,000 words carved onto the limestone walls of a
public portico. This is the most massive inscription surviving from Greco-Roman antiq-
uity and thus far hardly a third of it has been uncovered. Diogenes of Oenoanda, as he
has come to be called, set up this philosophical porch in order to make available the
saving message of Epicurus for “people from the entire earth,” regardless of country.
Many of these texts have no exact parallel elsewhere and again, as they slowly come to be
published and studied, they offer refinements, developments, and intriguing philosophical
divergences from our other sources of textual evidence. They also help to illuminate the
public face of Epicureanism in this period and to begin clarifying the nature of Diogenes’s
audacious and enterprising attempt to present Epicurus’s message to a cosmopolitan
audience as a kind of monumental public performance. Readers will quickly notice how
many of the volume’s chapters show the growing influence of Philodemus’s and Diogenes’s
texts on the overall interpretation and understanding both of Epicurus’s thought and of
the kinds of tensions and possibilities for development that later thinkers were able to
divine in his original doctrines.
It is perhaps worth briefly mentioning here a related feature of Epicureanism that may
not be immediately obvious as one turns to individual chapters, but is often lurking
somewhere in the background. Epicureanism was alone among the ancient philosophi-
cal schools in being able to maintain, along with a coherent philosophical identity, a sta-
ble, continuing physical presence in Athens during its first few centuries of existence. In
the past, this has sometimes led to extreme views in the scholarship about the doctrinal
conservatism of Epicureans in this initial period and also about the clubby tone of both
their thought and communal life in Athens and elsewhere. The volume begins with a
detailed exploration of not only the evidence for Epicurus’s life, but also for the relations
of leading figures in the school down to the first century bce. It has become fairly clear
that scattered among periods of intellectual harmony and cohesion were individual out-
breaks of apostasy and dissidence that sometimes prefigure later divergent manifesta-
tions of Epicureanism. This is an important corrective to some outmoded views about
the doctrinal rigidity of Epicureans2 and it seems that Epicureanism quickly was able to
take on forms with sufficient plasticity to put one in mind, for example, of the many vari-
eties that Christianity has taken through the ages. Indeed, one of these later manifesta-
tions arising from their intersection—“Christian Epicureanism”—would seem to
illustrate well the surprising flexibility of both (Chapters 25, 26, 28). Such a view of the
malleability of Epicureanism also helps prepare us to see how it was possible not just for
generations of philosophers, but also for great poets like Lucretius (Chapter 16), Vergil
and Horace (Chapter 17), and even a statesman like Thomas Jefferson (Chapter 28) to
find in their own diverse times, places, and intellectual contexts helpful models in
Epicureanism for addressing their own and their publics’ most pressing questions. The
notion of the blinkered doctrinal fundamentalism of Epicureans had been entrenched
for so long in the scholarship, however, that it is worth bearing in mind that, while many
scholars have moved on, others have still felt the need, given the nature of the volume, to
spend some time acknowledging and then exorcising its phantoms.
2 See M. Erler, Epicurus. An Introduction to his Practical Ethics and Politics (Schwabe, 2020) for a
helpful discussion of the many ways that Epicureanism did not preclude innovation, individual
emphasis, and flexibility among its adherents.
4 Phillip Mitsis
Turning to questions of Epicurus’s philosophy itself, one of the most striking features
of Hellenistic philosophy, which is shared by Epicureanism, is a drive for a systematic
understanding of all aspects of the world and a confidence that not only can one come to
understand its basic principles, but that such understanding will lead one to individual
happiness (Chapter 16). Unlike much of contemporary philosophy which has been
carved up into various specialisms and whose practitioners are increasingly reluctant to
wander into the domains of their departmental neighbors down the hall, Epicurus, with a
kind of enviably insouciant innocence, claims to be able show how his views of theology, the
physical world, epistemology, psychology, ethics, and so on form a coherent, intelligible
whole. Not all scholars have agreed that the joins he sees between his various arguments in
these disciplines are as tightly fitted as he hopes, but nonetheless one of the abiding interests
of his philosophy is his attempt to see the forest for the trees—which apart from its own
intrinsic interest, serves, perhaps, as a potent reminder of some of the original larger goals
of philosophy over and above an aloof pride in its own professional dexterity.
The volume is divided into roughly three sections. After an introduction to Epicurus’s
life and the history of the school in antiquity, it turns to Epicurus’s philosophy per se and
offers a comprehensive analysis of all of its major areas. The next nine chapters, begin-
ning with Philodemus, look at the expanding role of Epicureanism in the Roman era
and has chapters devoted not only to more straightforward advocates and critics, but
also shows various transformations of Epicureanism in poetry and cultural life gener-
ally. The story picks up again with the Renaissance, and the last third of the volume
sketches more broadly the many forms of Epicurean influence on European thought
ever since. Contributors have carefully balanced, it is hoped, strongly held individual
views with a wider survey of the overall scholarly terrain. Occasionally some topics that
might have formed unified contributions have been shared across different sections of
the volume, though this has been signposted in the notes. Mostly this had to be done to
avoid repetition, but also a decision was made that aspects of some topics might be more
judiciously handled in different argumentative contexts. So, for instance, Epicurus’s
notion of justice as being a contract not to harm or be harmed became one of his most
lasting and influential contributions to Western legal and philosophy. At the same time,
though, Epicureans have important discussions of justice in relation to friendship, as an
individual virtue of character instrumental to personal happiness and tranquility, and
also as an initial step grounding the origins of social and political life. To treat all of these
different aspects of Epicurus’s account together in a single contribution devoted to
Epicurean justice would have meant going through a lot of the same material in a vol-
ume that is not particularly distinguished by its slenderness. Thus, justice as a contract is
treated in detail in Chapter 26 in the context of Gassendi’s and Hobbes’s detailed discus-
sions of contractual justice and the nature of law. There one can arguably see Epicurus’s
original theory to better effect alongside its subsequent transformations by two of its key
early modern philosophical proponents. The relation of justice and friendship and the
conception of justice as an individual virtue of character is treated in Chapter 10, which
takes up questions of the nature and scope of relations of friendship and, thus, the extent
to which Epicurus’s conceptions of friendship and justice overlap. Finally, justice in the
context of the Epicurean psychological and anthropological account of the origins of

social groups finds a natural place in a fuller account of Epicurean social and political
theory in Chapter 11. It is hoped that these kinds of division of labor do not prove too
unwieldy, but at the same time, they in some sense reflect the systematic nature and
range of Epicurean discussions and the extent to which they often spill over what
Epicurus would take to be artificial boundaries. At the same time, in this particular case
for instance, one might be left wondering, say, how justice as a contract is compatible
with justice being a personal virtue. In general, contributors have been urged to note
such questions in their individual contributions where relevant, but also to point
readers to more detailed and unified discussions of such individual problems in the
scholarly literature.
In turning to the presentation of Epicurus’s philosophy, he is reported to have said
that the best entry into his system of thought was through his theology (Chapter 5),
though Epicureans were not particularly dogmatic about a best starting point. In retro-
spect, this claim seems slightly incongruous, given how many misunderstandings, many
of them willful, his theological views have been subject to through the ages, especially
by Judaism (Chapter 22) and Christianity (Chapter 23). Given the Epicureans’ flexibility
on the question of starting points, the volume has followed a different order, however,
and begins the discussion of Epicurus’s philosophy proper with his epistemological
arguments (Chapter 2). This is not entirely arbitrary since as he was writing, philoso-
phers were becoming more and more self-conscious about providing an epistemologi-
cal grounding or criterion of truth for their claims about natural philosophy and the rest
of their systems, and there is some evidence that Epicurus was sympathetic to such a
methodological procedure or, perhaps, even responsible for inaugurating it. This
attempt to establish how it is that philosophers or natural scientists can demonstrate the
truth of their theories arose partly in response to sceptical arguments about the unreli-
ability of the senses that had been part and parcel of earlier Greek atomism. Epicurus
argued that the senses provide the basis for truth by passively receiving information
without altering it and thus providing us with reliable content. We can fall into error,
however, by making false judgments about this content. My senses may be reliably
reporting, for instance, that the oar looks bent in water and it does. But I make a mistake
by inferring from this that the oar itself is bent, since by collecting more evidence from
my senses I would be able to come to the correct judgment that the oar is not bent, but
only appears so in the water because of the way it is refracting light. Without relying on
my senses, however, I could never accumulate the evidence needed to make the correct
judgment. Our mental preconceptions (prolepseis), which arise empirically through
experience, give us a basis for making such correct judgments. Epicureans further bol-
stered this claim with an extensionalist theory of language (Chapter 12) grounded in its
empirical acquisition. Epicureans’ strongly empirical claims about the acquisition and
justification of knowledge were to strongly resonate with later empiricist philosophers,
especially those who linked their claims to a particular scientific materialist view of
the world (Chapters 25, 30). By the same token, the Epicureans developed a scientific
methodology based on inferences from preconceptions and “what underlies words” to
6 Phillip Mitsis
justify their theories about entities that are not directly open to observation, such as
atoms and certain cosmological phenomena.
In turning to Epicurus’s atomism (Chapter 3) we are confronted with an interesting
historical irony. On the one hand, the importance of his theory for the development of
early modern atomism seems beyond question and he is often, rightly, taken to be an
influential figure in the formation of classical atomic theory (Chapter 25). Yet, at the
same time many of his views, such as the indeterminate swerve of atoms, were thought
to be aberrations, even by such early advocates of his atomism as Gassendi. Thus,
although often seen as a champion of modern atomism, Epicurus in some sense can also
be viewed as a champion of what might be characterized as post-modern atomism (and
logic) to the extent that he grapples with philosophical issues that parallel contemporary
worries in quantum theory (Chapter 31).
Epicurus argues that both space and time are quantized and that the universe consists
of material atoms that travel at a uniform velocity of one minimum of space per mini-
mum of time. He bolstered his theory with a series of sophisticated and remarkably pre-
scient claims about the quantity of different kinds of atoms and underlying mathematics
of their movements. Moreover, his views about the systematic nature of philosophy led
him directly to worry about the relation of indeterminate atomic events to voluntary
human action and responsibility (Chapter 9), in a way different from the majority of
contemporary philosophers who attempt to analyze the nature of free will while brack-
eting questions about the causal connections between atomic events and human action.
One intriguing issue hanging over contemporary accounts of free will is Epicurus’s
question of how free, seemingly rational human decisions can arise out of a material
world structured by random quantum events.
Atoms, of course, are not directly perceptible, so Epicureans needed to develop a
series of methodological procedures for justifying their claims about them. They faced a
series of corresponding problems explaining cosmological, astronomical, and meteoro-
logical phenomena that were likewise beyond immediate perception (Chapter 4).
Again, with respect to their cosmological views the Epicureans were outliers, since
unlike most of their philosophical rivals, they denied that the cosmos was both finite
and spherical and they also held that there were multiple worlds. They sometimes used
the latter claim to bolster their argument for the existence of multiple explanations for
certain phenomena for which there is inadequate empirical confirmation. Even if we
can eliminate a competing explanation in our world, there may be equi-probable expla-
nations in other worlds, thus multiple explanations may exist across multiple possible
worlds. Interestingly, the Epicureans linked this notion of multiple explanations, which
has sometimes been used by modern scientists as a working method for aiding in the
formulation of strong inference, for ethical purposes and to eliminate the fear of certain
phenomena. The verdict seems to be out at the moment about the potential benefits of
multiple workable hypotheses in scientific discovery, so opinions differ about whether
Epicurus’s move to such instrumental ethical benefits may have been too quick and
hence a lost opportunity. But again, he reminds us of the potential ethical dimensions of
our scientific methodologies and their ethical and social costs.
Clearly, one place where someone might push the Epicureans’ theory is on the
question of why they are so confident that some of their views, for instance in atomism
and in theology, are not similarly susceptible of multiple explanations. The threat to
their atomist theology seems especially strong, as Seneca (Chapter 19) was to insist in
defending the providential and teleological views of Stoicism. But Epicureans were ada-
mant in maintaining their view of anthropomorphic gods that are physically incorrupt-
ible, live in a state of psychic blessedness, and have absolutely no concern for human
beings. This latter claim opened them to the charge of atheism from early on, and along
with their denial of the immortality of the soul (Chapter 6), was a key reason why, unlike
Aristotle and Plato, Epicureanism seems to have completely disappeared from the
Islamic and Byzantine philosophical traditions. Interestingly, Epicurus held up the life
of the gods as an ethical model in many areas of his philosophy (e.g. friendship,
Chapter 10) and insisted that mortals can aspire to similar states of untroubled blessed-
ness (Chapter 8), all the while emphasizing our mortality and the fact that after our
deaths we will be nothing. Chapter 7 takes up Epicurus’s central ethical claim that “death
is nothing to us” and examines both the importance of this argument for his overall ethi-
cal theory, but also its intrinsic philosophical power, however counterintuitive at first
glance. Unlike Aristotle, who thinks his views take on plausibility the more they align
with the best available beliefs, the Epicureans are keen to revise and purify what they
take to be the mass of our mistaken ordinary beliefs. None is as harmful to us and to
society at large as the belief that death is something terrible and to be feared.
Interestingly, at various times, even philosophers greatly influenced by Epicureans in
other areas of philosophy took this particular claim to be untenable, either because they
were convinced of their own immortality or because they thought that such a claim was
impossible for a hedonist to maintain coherently; but it is noteworthy how Epicurus’s
claims here have again sprung to the center of philosophical attention.
Chapter 8 focuses on the central and difficult question of Epicurus’s hedonism, which
forms the backbone of his ethical theory. At the same time, trying to fashion the great
variety of remaining evidence into a coherent theory is not only a formidable conceptual
task, but also a Herculean doxographical one as well, especially since in addition to what
remains from Epicurus himself and later Epicureans such as Philodemus, Diogenes of
Oenoanda, and Lucretius, one must contend with the detailed and typically unfriendly
criticism of Cicero (Chapter 18) and Plutarch (Chapter 20). The theory itself is complex
and Epicurus developed it within a rich context of hedonist theorizing that included the
Cyrenaics from whose views he was especially concerned to differentiate his own. The
Cyrenaics held a radically presentist view of pleasure in which pleasure can be experienced
only in the moment. Epicureans were keen to show that our pleasures, especially the
kinds of mental pleasure discounted by the Cyrenaics—such as pleasures of memory
and anticipation—were more valuable than the bodily pleasures recommended by
Cyrenaics. These mental pleasures extend beyond the present, but somehow, for
Epicureans, still retain their immunity to being diminished by death. Many have argued
that various details of Epicurus’s overall project are untenable, but the influence of a more
generalized notion of Epicurean hedonism has been palpable from the Renaissance
8 Phillip Mitsis
(Chapter 24), and then on through to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French

(Chapter 27) and British thought (Chapter 29).
Many of Epicurus’s central doctrines have provoked intense reactions from the very
beginning. His materialism, hedonism, denial of divine providence and the immortality
of the soul, his mechanistic views of the origins of our mental faculties and social behav-
ior, his claims about the harmlessness of death—all historically have engendered bitter
opposition as well as advocates who have adopted individual facets of his philosophy.
The contributors in this volume offer a representative cross-section of both sides of these
debates from antiquity to the present. It seems clear that not only are these debates con-
tinuing, but often in ways that uncover ever new aspects of their ultimate Epicurean ori-
gins. What often makes Epicureanism so compelling to (post-)modern readers is that
Epicurus’s problems seem to be closer to our problems in a way that distinguishes him
from his ancient rivals—at least for those who no longer believe in a teleological uni-
verse governed by divine providence, the immortality of our souls, that we are naturally
inclined to pursue virtue and happiness in a polis together, etc. Interestingly, although
most contemporary philosophers who have engaged with Epicureanism, because of the
nature of the discipline these days, have engaged only with some parts of Epicurus’s
thought in isolation (Chapter 7), one important and perhaps even crucial challenge that
Epicureanism raises is the demand for more systematic examinations of, say, how our
views of politics are connected to our views of the nature of death, or how our concep-
tions of free will stand up in the light of our most up-to-date knowledge of physics—and
then, even more philosophically taxing—how all four of these elements in our thinking
are mutually related. Epicureanism thus offers a systematic challenge to philosophers to
rise above their specialisms. By the same token, as professional philosophy continues its
drift into increasing isolation and public irrelevance, Epicureanism perhaps offers mod-
els here as well, since it has found voices, including those of great poets, writers, and
statesmen, to address pressing problems in a public discourse that allows for mutual
intelligibility and, hence, criticism.
I am grateful to David Konstan and Tony Long for first suggesting that I edit the vol-
ume and I would like to thank the contributors, all of whom have made this a much
more pleasant task than I could have reasonably expected. Phoebe Garrett did the lion’s
share of putting the volume together, correcting it, and seeing it through to the end,
all the while writing her own important study of Suetonius. I wish to especially thank
the following for their translations: David Konstan (Chapter 5); Leonardo Karrer
and Carlo Da Via (Chapter 15); Matthias Hanses ( Chapter 20); and David Armstrong
(Chapter 26).
My heartfelt gratitude goes to Stefan Vranka for being a wise and patient editor and
I have continually relied on and benefited from his advice. Tim Beck is to be thanked
for corrections that were always to the point and that made for a much cleaner final
manuscript.
Finally, at least to the extent that one porcus de grege Epicuri is allowed to piggyback
on the labor of others, I would like to dedicate this volume to two eminent Epicurean
scholars, David Konstan and David Sider, both long-time friends and colleagues. The
two of them met more than sixty years ago and seem to have taken to heart Epicurus’s
strictures about laughing while doing philosophy. I thank them both for including the
new kid on the block into their waggish company. No doubt Epicurus would have rec-
ommended a higher proportion of philosophy to laughter, but nonetheless I would have
experienced much less of both without them.
pa rt I
E PIC U RUS
chapter 1
Epicu rus a n d th e
Epicu r ea n School
Tiziano Dorandi
Sources
The school founded by Epicurus in Athens in 307/6 or 305/4 survived as an institution

until the first century bce. Between the fourth and first centuries bce the school main-
tained its strength and vitality, developing and renewing itself in some aspects of
thought. An uninterrupted series of scholars from Epicurus to Patro withstood the odds
and ensured continuity. After a period obscure to us, in the second century ce, we again
have information about certain Epicurean philosophers and about the continuity of the
teaching of Epicureanism in Athens and Asia Minor.1
Very little of the literary and philosophical production of the Epicureans has come
down to us, although sources indicate that it had been considerable. Even the most basic
biographical information is rare and at times questionable.
Several ancient documents help us reconstruct Epicurus’s life and work. Some of
them are of primary importance. Diogenes Laertius wrote a Life of Epicurus (10.1–28),
which includes the will of Epicurus (10.16–21), said to have been written on his deathbed
(10.22), and a selection of titles of his works. Interspersed within it are also short biogra-
phies of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, Polyaenus, and lists of their writings. The final part
1 In writing this chapter I take up (with modifications, cuts, updates, and reconsiderations) some of
the results that I was able to present in previous research, in particular Dorandi, “Lucrèce et les
Épicuriens de Campanie,” “Organization and Structure of the Philosophical Schools,” “Le corpus
épicurien,” and “Philodemus’ Allegiance to Zeno of Sidon.” The themes treated here are also discussed,
with different interpretations, by Clay, “L’épicurisme: école et tradition,” and “The Athenian Garden”;
Sedley, “Epicureanism in the Roman Republic”; Erler, “Epicureanism in the Roman Empire”; and
Verde, Epicuro, 213–24. A useful repertory of actual and presumed Epicureans was edited by Clay,
“A Partial Census of Known and Suspected Epicureans,” after Castner, Prosopography of Roman
Epicureans, which is limited to Roman Epicureans. Verde, Epicureanism provides a useful updated list
of Epicurean bibliography.
14 TIZIANO DORANDI
of the book transmits three doctrinal epistles of Epicurus and a collection of forty
Key Doctrines. Remains of some books of the masterwork of Epicurus, On Nature, are
preserved in the library found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.
Certain works of Philodemus of Gadara, whose philosophical treatises are also found
among the papyri of Herculaneum, are another serendipitous source for reconstructing
not only the biographies of various Epicurean individuals, but also aspects of commu-
nity life within the school and its organization. Philodemus wrote a biography, On
Epicurus, in at least two books.2 In another work by the same author, Memoirs (P.Herc.
1418/310), we find several letters of Epicurus and other members of the School.3 The
meager fragments of Philodemus’s Collection of Philosophers dedicated to the Garden
preserve the remains of the wills of Polystratus and Dionysius of Lamptre.4 Fragments of
letters of Epicurus and testimony about his life are transmitted in other works of
Philodemus (On Piety, On Wealth).5 For reconstructing some aspects of the unsettling
phenomenon of “dissidence” within the Garden, a book by Philodemus with an uncer-
tain title, preserved in two copies (P.Herc. 1005 and P.Herc. 1485),6 is indispensable. On
Frank Criticism is essential for getting an idea of the internal organization of the School.7
The anonymous author of the anepigraphic text of P.Herc. 176 gives abundant epistolary
testimony relating to Epicurus and his students, in particular, members of the Epicurean
School of Lampsacus (Polyaenus, Leonteus, Idomeneus and Batis, Metrodorus’s sister and
Idomeneus’s wife).8 Another papyrus, also anonymous and anepigraphic, but perhaps to be
attributed to Philodemus, transmits the rather poor remains of the Life of Philonides, an
Epicurean of the second century bce from Laodicea in Syria.9 Finally, there were other
authors who dedicated works to the exegesis of Epicurus and his successors, but they are
now lost or reduced to a few citations, and so to list them here would be tedious.10
The Protagonists
Epicurus
Epicurus (342/1–271/0) was born at Samos to a family of Athenian colonists.11 We know
little about his early years or his training before his arrival in Athens in 307/6.
2 Tepedino Guerra, “L’opera filodemea Su Epicuro.” 3 Militello, Memorie epicuree.

4 Tepedino Guerra, “Il κῆπος epicureo nel PHerc. 1780.”
5 See Goulet, “Épicure de Samos,” 3.158.
6 Del Mastro, “Per la ricostruzione del I libro del trattato di Filodemo.”
7 Konstan et al., Philodemus On Frank Criticism provides an English translation and notes. A new
edition is in preparation by W. B. Henry.
8 Angeli, “La scuola epicurea di Lampsaco,” 27–51.
9 P.Herc. 1044 + 1746 + 1715. See Gallo, Frammenti biografici da papiri, 23–166 and Goulet,
“Philonidès de Laodicée.”
10 A useful list is found in Goulet, “Épicure de Samos,” 3.158–60.
11 For a detailed reconstruction of the life and works of Epicurus, see Goulet, Dictionnaire des
Philosophes Antiques, 3.154–81. The fragments of Epicurus are collected in Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere.
The Epicurean School 15
Diogenes Laertius says that he was a school teacher. According to tradition, Epicurus
dedicated himself to philosophy when his teachers were unable to explain Hesiod’s
Chaos (Theog. 116).12 Among his direct or indirect teachers of philosophy are recorded
Democritus and Nausiphanes of Teos. Leaving Samos, Epicurus went to Mytilene on
Lesbos, and then to Lampsacus on the coast of present-day Turkey, where he taught
philosophy. At Mytilene he had Hermarchus as a student; at Lampsacus, he had,
among others, Idomeneus, Metrodorus, Pythocles, and Polyaenus. One letter of the
young Epicurus, addressed to his mother, preserved by Diogenes of Oenoanda (Smith
frr. 125–26), contains important information about his philosophical formation.13
After teaching five years at Mytilene and Lampsacus, Epicurus came to Athens where
he founded a school which, from its location, became known as the Garden (Kēpos).
The Garden, bought for 80 minas, was located outside the walls of Athens, beyond the
Dipylon, along the road which led to the Academy. The personal residence of Epicurus,
located in the deme Melite, was to be distinct from the Garden. Epicurus was based in
Athens for the rest of his life, engaged in common philosophical inquiry (syzētēsis)
with his closest students. Among the members of the first inner circle of friends and
students who frequented the Garden, besides Hermarchus and Metrodorus, four
stand out: Pythocles, Polyaenus, Colotes, and Idomeneus. Epicurus had met all four at
Lampsacus and they followed him to Athens or joined him there. At the encourage-
ment of Epicurus, his three brothers, Neocles, Cheredemus, and Aristobulus, also
devoted themselves to philosophy. Noteworthy is the presence in the school of some
female students: Batis, Boidion, Demetria, Hedeia, Leontion, Mammarion, Nikidion,
and Themista.14
The school in Lampsacus remained active even after Epicurus departed for Athens.
Epicurus maintained close relations with the disciples whom he left behind at Lampsacus
with a frequent exchange of letters, part of which has come down to us. He made one or
more trips himself to Lampsacus in subsequent years.15 In a fragment of a letter to a girl,
Epicurus speaks of a trip in the company of Hermarchus and Ctesippus.16
The years 293–291 mark a period of crisis in the community of Lampsacus.17 Closely
linked to the events of the school of Lampsacus is also the schism of Metrodorus’s
brother, Timocrates, who left Epicurus’s school and began a smear campaign against the
Master and other members of the Garden.18
12 Cf. Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals,” 135.

13 The discovery of a new fragment (NF 174) of the inscription of Oenoanda precludes Smith fr. 127
from preserving the remains of a second letter of Epicurus to Hermarchus in which the teacher tried to
dissuade the disciple from the studies of rhetoric. See Hammerstaedt-Smith, The Epicurean Inscription
of Diogenes of Oinoanda, 95–99.
14 Erler, “Epikur, Die Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 287–88.
15 The victim of a shipwreck in a letter by Diogenes of Oinoanda (fr. 72 Smith) is not Epicurus as
Clay, “Sailing to Lampsacus,” 49–59 suggests, but a lesser know Niceratus.
16 Hermarch. Longo Auricchio fr. 2 = Epic. Arrighetti2 fr. 261. Cf. DL 10.10.
17 Sedley, “Epicurus and the Mathematicians of Cyzicus,” 23–56. We do not know whether this crisis
is to be linked with the nearby school of Cyzicus, founded by Eudoxus of Cnidus. Podolak, “Questioni
pitoclee,” 45–55 denies the existence of a school of Eudoxus in Cyzicus.
18 See Angeli, “Timocratès de Lampsaque.”
16 TIZIANO DORANDI
Epicurus was a prolific author. Diogenes Laertius (10.27–28) credits him with hav-
ing written three hundred books, and mentions a variety of titles: 1. On Nature (in
thirty-seven books); 2. On Atoms and Void; 3. On Love; 4. Epitome of Objections to the
Physicists; 5. Against the Megarians; 6. Problems; 7. Key Doctrines; 8. On Choice and
Avoidance; 9. On the End; 10. On the Criterion, or The Canon; 11. Chaeredemos; 12. On
the Gods; 13. On Religion; 14. Hegesianax; 15. On Lives (in four books); 16. On Just
Action; 17. Neocles, addressed to Themista; 18. Symposium; 19. Eurylochus, addressed to
Metrodorus; 20. On Vision; 21. On the Angle in the Atom; 22. On Touch; 23. On Fate;
24. Opinions on the Internal Sensations, addressed to Timocrates; 25. Prognostic;
26. The Protreptic; 27. On Images; 28. On Perception; 29. Aristobulus; 30. On Music; 31. On
Justice and the Other Virtues; 32. On Gifts and Gratitude; 33. Polymedes; 34. Timocrates
(in three books); 35. Metrodorus (in five books); 36. Antidorus (in two books); 37. Opinions
on Diseases, addressed to Mithres; 38. Callistolas; 39. On Kingship; 40. Anaximenes;
41. Letters.
Nearly all these writings are lost; others are only partially preserved, among them a
book of the treatise On Nature. Others not included in the catalog are transmitted in an
unexpected way—by Diogenes Laertius himself. The three letters addressed respectively
to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus, fall into this last category.
The Letter to Herodotus (10.35–83) is offered by Epicurus as an epitome aimed at three
categories of readers: (1) those who have already mastered even the more difficult
aspects of natural science, (2) those less advanced but nonetheless familiar already with
the philosophical and scientific atmosphere of Epicureanism, and (3) those who still
remain at the level of an initial or superficial contact with philosophy. The letter is divided
into three well-constructed and organized parts. In the first part (37–45), Epicurus dis-
cusses the principles of physics (physiologia). In the second (45–76), he deals with the
structure and properties of the compounds, formed of atoms moving in a void. In the
third (76–82), he discusses the function and purpose of the study of nature.19
The Letter to Pythocles (10.83–116), of which the authenticity is sometimes called into
question,20 contains an analysis of meteorological phenomena. Epicurus presents the
letter as a concise exposition, the aim of which was to aid the reader in the memoriza-
tion of his thoughts on the subject. He undertakes to persuade Pythocles that the knowl-
edge of celestial phenomena has no other purpose than the attainment of ataraxia and
blessed life. After a few paragraphs on methodology (85–88), Epicurus discusses cos-
mology in general (88–91) and then moves on to deal with the stars (92–98), their move-
ments and mutations (especially the moon and sun). The third part (98–111) is restricted
to a description of meteorological phenomena (clouds, rain, wind, thunder, lightning,
etc.). The fourth part (111–16) is to do with astronomical subjects.
The Letter to Menoeceus (10.121–35) is offered by Epicurus as a summary of his ethical
thought, with a focus upon modes of life and upon choosing some things and rejecting
19 See Spinelli and Verde, Epicuro. Epistola a Erodoto.

20 Cf. Bollack and Laks, Épicure à Pythoclès, 45–55.
others. Epicurus undertakes first to fight the troubles that we bring upon ourselves by
false assumptions that we have about the gods and death (123–27). With a view to our
caring for both body and soul together, he then sets forth his classification of desires
(127–28) and offers a theory of pleasure and self-sufficiency (128–32). The letter con-
cludes with a discussion of phronēsis (practical wisdom) and reaffirmation of the superi-
ority of the sage (133–34) in a form that summarizes the four components of the so-called
tetrapharmakon, the fourfold remedy for the attainment of happiness: (1) the sage does
not fear the gods and (2) does not care about death; (3) the limit of good things is easy to
achieve and easy to provide, and (4) the limit of bad things is either short-lived or causes
little trouble.21
Diogenes Laertius transcribes also a selection of forty Epicurean maxims (139–54),
the Key Doctrines (138). The maxims are organized roughly into three sections: ethics
(1–21 and 26–30), epistemology (22–25), and justice and social relations (31–40).
We have another collection of eighty maxims of ethical content, entitled Epicurus’s
Exhortation, transmitted in a codex of the Vatican Library (Vat. gr. 1950). That collection
is best known by the title Vatican Sayings (SV). Thirteen of these maxims correspond to
Key Doctrines (SV 1 = KD 1; 2 = 2; 3 = 4; 5 = 5; 6 = 25; 8 = 15; 12 = 17; 13 = 27; 20 = 29; 22 = 19;
49 = 12; 50 = 8; 72 = 13).22
In the two collections of Key Doctrines and Vatican Sayings, the maxims are attributed
in their entirety only to Epicurus, although some of them should be attributed to other
Epicureans of the first generation, among whom is certainly Metrodorus.23
A selection of maxims is also preserved by the large inscription which the Epicurean
Diogenes of Oenoanda had engraved on the wall of the porch of his home city in
Anatolia. Some are totally unknown to the tradition; others correspond to some of the
Key Doctrines (1–6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 25–26, 29, 32, and 37) or some of the Vatican Sayings.24
Finally, several maxims are attributed to Epicurus and Epicureans of the first
generation by Seneca, Plutarch, Porphyry, and Stobaeus in the Gnomologia and other
collections of proverbs. Some are known through the testimony of papyri, inscriptions,
and a mosaic.25
The principal work of Epicurus, On Nature, which occupied thirty-seven books, has
not come down to us intact. A few books of the work, some in two or more copies, have
come to light among the rolls of the library of Herculaneum, typically in a rather poor
21 See Heßler, Epikur Brief an Menoikeus.

22 The most recent editions are those of Marcovich, Diogenes Laertius. Vitae Philosophorum, 802–13:
Key Doctrines, and 815–26: Vatican Sayings; and Dorandi, Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent
Philosophers, 814–24: Key Doctrines.
23 To be assigned to Metrodorus are at least SV 10, 30–31, 47, and 51. SV 51 is taken from a letter of
Metrodorus addressed to Pythocles on the damages and pleasures of sexual intercourse. Cf. Dorandi,
“Aspetti della tradizione ‘gnomologica’ di Epicuro e degli epicurei,” 273–74.
24 In addition to cases in which Key Doctrines overlap with the Vatican Sayings, Diogenes also
quoted SV 33.
25 Dorandi, “Aspetti della tradizione ‘gnomologica’ di Epicuro e degli epicurei,” 271–88.
18 TIZIANO DORANDI
state of preservation. The following is a list of the books which are preserved, accompanied
by a summary of their contents.26
Book 2, preserved in two exemplars (P.Herc. 1149 + 993; 1783 + 1691 + 1010): Epicurus
discusses simulacra, their existence, formation, and the speed of their movement. If we
are to believe the scholium to Ep. Hdt. 73, the book also contained a discussion of time.27
Book 11, preserved in two exemplars (P.Herc. 1042; 154): this book deals with cosmology,
the shape of the earth, and its position in the universe. It also contains an argument against
the use of astronomical instruments, and a discussion on the stability of the earth.28
Book 14 (P.Herc. 1148): Epicurus criticizes the theory of the elements in Plato’s
Timaeus in the broader context of polemic against the doctrines of so-called pluralists.
In the final section of the book, Epicurus defends himself against charges of plagiarizing
his doctrines from his predecessors.29
Book 15 (P.Herc. 1151): this book, quite fragmentary, was dedicated to a discussion of
atoms and compounds. It also contained a critique of Anaxagoras’s doctrine of homoio-
mereia (“having the same parts”).30
Book 25 (P.Herc. 419 + 1634 + 697, 454 + 1420 + 1056, 1191): in this book, preserved in
three exemplars, Epicurus, starting from the affirmation of human perfectibility and
moral responsibility within a physicalist conception of reality, attempts to “demonstrate
and explain the existence of a human capacity for self-determination.”31
Book 28 (P.Herc. 1479/1417): this book reports the content of Epicurus’s discussions
with his student Metrodorus in the company of other members of the Garden. The
discussion focuses on two key issues: (1) the use of means of expression in philosoph-
ical inquiry as a guarantee of the accuracy of the concepts, and (2) whether—and to
what extent and by what means of verification—it is possible for the philosopher
to make use of ordinary language without compromising such accuracy and falling
into ambiguity.32
Book 34 (P.Herc. 1431): in this book at least two issues were discussed: fear produced
by superstition and the problem of sensory and mental perception.33
Liber incertus (P.Herc. 1416 + 1413): the theme of this book was the doctrine of time.34
26 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 94–133; Leone, “Epicuro fondatore del
Giardino,” 21–33; and Dorandi, Modi e modelli di trasmissione.
27 See Leone, Epicuro: Sulla natura, Libro II; and Maso and Masi, Epicurus on eidola.
28 For the text we still rely upon the edition of Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere [25]. New fragments are
added in Arrighetti and Gigante, “Frammenti del libro undicesimo Della natura di Epicuro.” Sedley,
“Epicurus and the Mathematicians of Cyzicus,” 31–42 proposes a revised edition of some columns.
29 Leone, “Epicuro, Della natura, libro XIV” and “La chiusa del XIV libro Della natura di Epicuro.”
30 Millot, “Épicure, De la nature, livre XV.” See Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek
Wisdom, 123–27.
31 Laursen, “The Early Parts of Epicurus, On Nature, 25th Book” and “The Later Parts of Epicurus, On
Nature, 25th Book.” Cf. Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, from whom the quotation is taken (61).
32 Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature, Book XXVIII.”
33 Leone, “Epicuro, Della natura, libro XXXIV (PHerc. 1431).”
34 Cantarella and Arrighetti, “Il libro Sul tempo”; and Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere [37]. See Del
Mastro, “PHerc. 1416, cr. 5,” 27–32.
The First Generation: “The Guides” (hoi kathēgemones) or

“The Men” (hoi andres)
Philodemus indicates with the name “the guides” (hoi kathēgemones) or “the men” (hoi
andres) of the Garden a group of four Epicureans of the first generation who directed the
school and established its fundamental philosophical principles in discussion with one
another. They were Epicurus, Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.
Metrodorus was born in 331/0; he met Epicurus in Lampsacus. He died seven or eight
years before the Master in 378/7. His brother Timocrates was famous for his fierce
polemic against Epicurus and the Garden. His sister Batis married Idomeneus.
Diogenes Laertius (10.24–25) transmits a list of titles of works by Metrodorus, none of
which has survived intact: Against the Physicians (in three books); On Sensations;
Against Timocrates; On Magnanimity; On Epicurus’s Ill Health; Against the Dialecticians;
Against the Sophists (in nine books); The Way to Wisdom; On Change; On Wealth; Against
Democritus; and On Noble Birth. Other sources give the following titles as well: Against
Plato’s “Gorgias” (in two books), Against Plato’s “Euthyphro”, and Against Those Who
Claim That Good Orators Are the Product of Natural Philosophy.35
We can reconstruct some aspects of the thought of Metrodorus and therefore the con-
tent of his writings. Metrodorus discussed with Epicurus problems related to language;
at the end of On Nature Book 28, Epicurus refers to the discussions.36 In Against Those
Who Claim That Good Orators Are the Product of Natural Philosophy, Metrodorus dis-
cusses the definition and role of rhetoric, sustaining arguments contrary to those of
Nausiphanes.37 According to Metrodorus true rhetoric is distinct from natural science.
Only sophistic (or epideictic) rhetoric can be considered an art (technē), a status which
cannot be assigned to forensic or political rhetoric.
In the work On Wealth, Metrodorus shows how the sage is to obtain wealth and
administer his household. In accordance with Epicurus, he defends the idea of natural
wealth. In the treatises Against the Dialecticians, Against the Sophists, Against Democritus,
Against Plato’s “Gorgias”, and Against Plato’s “Euthyphro”, Metrodorus attacked the
doctrines of adversaries of Epicureanism. The library of Herculaneum preserves the
fragmentary remains of one book of Metrodorus, either Against the Dialecticians38 or
Against the Sophists.39
Körte also attributed to Metrodorus the text preserved in P.Herc. 831, now more
plausibly assigned to Demetrius Laco.40
35 One must still rely on Körte, Metrodori Epicurei fragmenta for the text of the fragments, although
a new edition is in preparation, on which see Tepedino Guerra, “La Scuola di Epicuro,” 40–44.
36 Tepedino Guerra, “Il contributo di Metrodoro di Lampsaco.”
37 Porter, “ΦΥΣΙΟΛΟΓΕΙΝ. Nausiphanes of Teos and the Physics of Rhetoric,” and Blank,
“Atomistic Rhetoric in Philodemus.”
38 Spinelli, “Metrodoro Contro i Dialettici?”
39 Tepedino Guerra, “Metrodoro Contro i Dialettici?” Cf. Dorandi, Epicureanism and Socraticism,
174–76, and Fleischer, “Die ältesten Papyri Herkulaneums.”
40 Sanders, “Toward a New Edition of PHerc. 831.”
20 TIZIANO DORANDI
An untimely death prevented Metrodorus from succeeding Epicurus as director of

the Garden. Thus the first successor of Epicurus (in 270) was his former student and
contemporary from Mytilene, Hermarchus (died c. 250).41 Hermarchus may have stud-
ied rhetoric in his youth. He met Epicurus in Mytilene around 310 bce. His conversion
to philosophy was not immediate. He was reunited with his teacher in Athens only after
the founding of the Garden. Between 290 and 270, he went to Lampsacus to visit the
local Epicurean school. At his death, Epicurus entrusted the direction of the Garden to
Hermarchus, although he was not an Athenian citizen but rather a metic. The first stage
in the history of Epicureanism, which was characterized by a group of students who had
heard the Master directly, comes to a close with the death of Hermarchus.
Diogenes Laertius (fr. 25) provides a few titles of Hermarchus’s works: Essays in the
Form of Letters (Epistolika); Against Empedocles (in twenty-two books); On Sciences;
Against Plato; Against Aristotle. In addition, we know at least two sayings attributed to
him (frr. 23–24), letters (frr. 40–42), and some testimony of Philodemus or later writers
on ethical subjects (frr. 43–48). Essays in the Form of Letters and Against Empedocles are
two distinct works.42 An epistolikon, addressed to an unknown Theopheides, dated
precisely to 267/6, is preserved in Philodemus’s Rhetoric (frr. 35–36; cf. 37–39).43 It con-
tains an argument of Hermarchus against the Megarian philosopher Alexinus of Elis.
Hermarchus, like Epicurus and Metrodorus, argues that sophistic rhetoric alone has the
status of an art (technē). The chronology of Against Empedocles (frr. 27–34) is uncertain,
and it is also uncertain whether the work was directed against Empedocles’s Purifications.
The larger fragment (fr. 34) is preserved in Porphyry’s On Abstinence. It discusses the
origin of law in primitive society. In the other fragments, Hermarchus addresses theo-
logical issues (frr. 27, 29–32). The hypothesis that Epicurus KD 31–40 was derived from
this work is unfounded.44 The fragment of Against Plato (fr. 48) comes from a pas-
sage of Proclus in which Hermarchus discusses the opportuneness of prayer. No frag-
ments of the other titles are preserved. Ancient sources, however, preserve testimony
of Hermarchus’s thought on anger (fr. 43), flattery (fr. 44), friendship (fr. 45), and
the necessity of a frugal life (fr. 47). Correspondence of Hermarchus is also attested
(frr. 40–42).
Polyaenus was born at Lampsacus, the precise year being unknown. He met Epicurus
during his stay in Lampsacus (311/0–307/6) and was converted to philosophy. He had
already distinguished himself as a mathematician. He died in 278/7. The remains of an
anonymous biography of Polyaenus are preserved in P.Herc. 176. We have information
about some of his works: On Definitions, On Philosophy, Against Ariston, Difficulties,
On the Moon, and Against the Orators. The Difficulties were defended by Demetrius Laco
in his (unfortunately very fragmentary) treatise Additions to Polyaenus’s “Difficulties.”45
41 The fragments are collected in Longo Auricchio, Ermarco. Frammenti.

42 Rispoli, “Empedocle nelle testimonianze ermarchee.”
43 Cf. Blank and Longo Auricchio, “Ermarco contro Alessino.”
44 Cf. Longo Auricchio, Ermarco. Frammenti, 137–45.
45 The fragments are collected in Tepedino Guerra, Polieno. Frammenti. See Tepedino Guerra, “La
Scuola di Epicuro.” On Demetrius’s title, see Dorandi, “Due titoli di papiri ercolanesi,” 29–30.
Among the immediate disciples of Epicurus of whom we have some concrete

information, we may also make mention of Colotes and Carneiscus.
Colotes was a native of Lampsacus, where he followed Epicurus’s teaching during his
stay in that city.46 His most important work was entitled On the Point That Conformity to
the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers Actually Makes it Impossible to Live. The work
did not survive as a whole, but may be partly reconstructed thanks to the allegations
directed against it by Plutarch in his Reply to Colotes in Defence of the Other Philosophers
(1107d–1127e). Colotes composed his treatise to combat the sceptical Academy of
Arcesilaus by reviewing, in addition to the opinions of the Cyrenaics and Arcesilaus,
those of Democritus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, Melissus, Plato, and Stilpo.
Particularly interesting are the criticisms directed against Plato and Democritus.
Arcesilaus is criticized for his doctrine of epochē against which Colotes put forth that of
enargeia. From other sources we also know that Colotes wrote a work against Plato’s
myths in Republic Book 10. Colotes reproaches Plato for dispensing with paideia in his
myths, i.e. using non-scientific and irrational means. The fragments of his books Against
Plato’s “Lysis” and Against Plato’s “Euthydemus” are preserved in P.Herc. 208 and P.Herc.
1032. In these two works, Colotes rejects the concepts of doxazomenon or doxa (“opin-
ion”) on the basis of that which is clear (enarges). He also discusses the interpretation
of poets and rejects poetry as devoid of any utility. Philodemus may also have known of
a work entitled On Law and Popular Reputation.47
Carneiscus was a direct disciple of Epicurus. The final part of Book 2 of his work on
friendship, Philista, is preserved in a fragmentary state in P.Herc. 1027. This book, dedi-
cated to a certain Zopyrus, was directed against the Peripatetic Praxiphanes, author of a
treatise on friendship which proposed a model for behavior inadequate for relations
between friends.48
Polystratus to Apollodorus
At the death of Hermarchus, the year of which is unknown to us, Polystratus became
scholarch of the Garden, who himself died sometime before 220/19. We know little
about him. It appears that he had never been a personal student of Epicurus himself. The
date of his birth is placed in the first decades of the third century bce. The Herculaneum
papyri preserve the remains of two works of his. The first is entitled On Irrational
Contempt for Popular Opinions (P.Herc. 336/1150), in which Polystratus argues against
philosophers (probably the Sceptics and Cynics in particular) who denied any importance
46 Indelli, “Colote di Lampsaco,” 45–48; Kechagia, Plutarch against Colotes; and Corti, L’Adversus
Colotem di Plutarco. A collection of his fragments does not exist.
47 It was Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos, 130 who discerned this title in Philodemus De adul.
(P. Herc. 1457) Bassi col. 10.16–17, but both the title and the attribution have been disputed. See
Kechagia, Plutarch against Colotes, 53 n. 23; Erler, “Epikur, Die Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 239–40.
48 Capasso, Carneisco. Il secondo libro del Filista.
22 TIZIANO DORANDI
whatever to public opinion. The second was a protreptic treatise called On Philosophy,
the scant remains of which are preserved in P.Herc. 1520.49
Dionysius of Lamptre (died 201/0) and Basilides of Tyrus (died c. 175) were the third
and fourth scholarchs of the Garden. The little information we have about Dionysius is
found in Diogenes Laertius (10.25) and (probably) from the fragments of P.Herc. 1780,
by Philodemus.
Basilides was the teacher of Philonides of Laodicea in Syria. He studied mathematics
and was in contact with the father of the astronomer Hypsicles, with whom he dis-
coursed in Alexandria on a treatise by Apollonius of Perga. With Thespis, another
Epicurean, he played a role in an argument concerning the subject of anger, both of
them taking a position against Nicasicrates and Timasagoras. It has been supposed that
Basilides belonged to an Epicurean community in Syria.50
There is a gap of enough time between Basilides and Apollodorus, known as the
Tyrant of the Garden, to lead one to suggest the existence of at least another intermedi-
ate scholarch. There may be indication of this in Thespis.51 The chronology and develop-
ment of events of these years, however, remain obscure.
The mother school of Athens continued on with Apollodorus, born in the early
second century and scholarch from the middle of the century up to c. 110 and remem-
bered as a prolific writer by Diogenes Laertius (10.25), who attributes more than four
hundred books to him. We have testimony of the following works: the Life of Epicurus,
On Philosophical Sects, and On Legislators. The authorship of all but the first is dis-
puted. No fragments are preserved of Apollodorus’s writings, and we know nothing
of his thought.
Philonides of Laodicea and Protarchus of Bargylia also belong in this same period,
two prominent Epicureans who lived in remote areas. Their activity is indicative of a
spread of Epicureanism in countries far from Athens, especially in regions of Asia
Minor.
Philonides was a member of a politically engaged family. He studied philosophy
at Athens with Basilides and Thespis, geometry with Eudemus, Dionysiodorus, and
Artemon. A prolific writer, he composed, among other things, a commentary on Book 8
of Epicurus’s On Nature and a work entitled On Artemon’s Commentary (on Books 1–33 of
Epicurus’s On Nature). He produced epitomes of the letters of Epicurus, Metrodorus,
and Hermarchus, deemed “useful for lazy young people,” and also organized letters
by genre.52
Protarchus was the teacher of Demetrius Laco, perhaps at Miletus.53
49 The two works are published, respectively, by Indelli, Polistrato, and Capasso, “L’opera polistratea
Sulla filosofia.” Cf. Indelli, “Colote di Lampsaco,” 48–52.
50 See De Sanctis, “Il filosofo e il re”, Netz, “Were There Epicurean Mathematicians?,” and Verde,
“Ancora sulla matematica epicurea.”
51 Haake, Der Philosoph in der Stadt, 300.
52 The biography preserved by a Herculaneum papyrus (see above, n. 9), though quite fragmentary,
grants us some information about his life and works. For the epistles, see P.Herc. 1044 fr. 14.3–10.
53 Strabo 14.2.20 (658 C).
For the islands of Cos and Rhodes, we have news of the existence of Epicurean circles
autonomous from the parent school in Athens. Their representatives (if we are to believe
Philodemus) argued philosophical positions that differed from those of the Masters
(andres, kathēgemones) of the Garden. Among the philosophers who probably belonged
to the school in Rhodes, we know of Nicasicrates and Timasagoras.
Demetrius Laco, Zeno of Sidon, and Phaedrus

The important figure of Demetrius Laco also belongs primarily in the second century
(c. 150–75), a celebrated Epicurean who never attained the scholarchate, perhaps because
he taught at Miletus.
Below is an attempt at presenting his work thematically.54
Cosmology. The text transmitted by P.Herc. 1013 concerns the size of the sun, which,
according to Epicurus, is the same size as it appears to our eyes. Demetrius defends the
Epicurean position against Stoic rivals, Dionysius of Cyrene, and perhaps Posidonius.
Theology. (1) The existence of a lost commentary (hypomnema) on the gods can be
deduced from col. 24 of P.Herc. 1055. The same papyrus transmitted the remains of a
polemic directed against the Stoics and Peripatetics about divine anthropomorphism.
Ethics. (1) P.Herc. 1006: in the meager fragments of this text can be made out refer-
ences to hēdonē and the fear of the gods. (2) P.Herc. 831: a treatise on ethics perhaps enti-
tled On Vain Imagining, should be attributed to Demetrius. It was once erroneously
attributed to Metrodorus. Demetrius directs his argument towards young people and
presents philosophy and physics (physiologia) as the only effective means of combating
emotional turmoil. (3) Handbook: the title is quoted by Demetrius himself (P.Herc. 1013,
col. 17.6–10). The book probably discussed issues of ethics in addition to physics.
Writings of “philology.” The “philological” activities of Demetrius can be illustrated
by P.Herc. 1012. In this work, Demetrius discusses some problematic passages of the
works of Epicurus and gives an interpretation of them based on a philological examina-
tion of the text, first critically examining the value of the transmitted readings and the
more plausible corrections.
Works on literature. The treatise On Poems took up at least two books. From the first
(P.Herc. 188) there survive a few fragments that deal especially with the presuppositions
necessary for forming a critical judgment on poetic texts. In the second (P.Herc. 1014)
Demetrius sets himself the task of defining the methods of Epicurean inquiry so that he
can apply them also in literary criticism against his Peripatetic opponents.
Mathematical works. The treatise On Geometry (P.Herc. 1061) was intended to refute
certain theorems of the first book of Euclid’s Elements, using as a starting point the
Epicurean doctrine of atomic minima (elachista). Topically similar was the book enti-
tled Additions to Polyaenus’s “Difficulties” (P.Herc. 1083, 1258, 1429, 1642, 1647, 1822).
54 Editions of individual texts are listed in Dorandi, “Démétrios Lacon,” 637–41; and Erler, “Epikur, Die
Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 256–65. See also Clay, “The Philosophical Writings of Demetrius of Laconia.”
24 TIZIANO DORANDI
Demetrius wrote this work to integrate Polyaenus’s Difficulties, a treatise which had
been written against certain aspects of Euclidean geometry and which had been criti-
cized by the Stoic Dionysius of Cyrene.
Finally, the subscriptio of P.Herc. 1786 contains Demetrius’s name, but the work is
illegible.
In Athens, at the demise of Apollodorus, known as the Tyrant of the Garden, the
direction of the school went to Zeno of Sidon (c. 150–75).
Of this philosopher, who was to play an important role in the history of Epicureanism
between the second and first centuries bce, there survives only scattered testimony and
a list of titles of his works (fr. 12).55 He showed an interest in rhetoric (frr. 17–20), poetics
(fr. 21), logic (frr. 15–16), and geometry (fr. 27), but nevertheless did not eschew the
study of ethics (fr. 23), theology (frr. 22, 24), and physics. We can reconstruct some
aspects of his views on logic through the testimony of Philodemus’s On Methods of
Inference (P.Herc. 1065). We have an idea of his mathematical thought thanks to the
Neoplatonist Proclus’s commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements. Proclus tells
of a bitter controversy between Zeno the Epicurean and the Stoic Posidonius over
geometric principles (archai) and their validity.56
Sources also speak of a certain Aristion, an Epicurean who organized the anti-Roman
resistance in Athens during the siege of Sulla in 87 bce.
Zeno and Demetrius’s interest in disciplines such as poetry, rhetoric, and mathemat-
ics can be seen as an attempt on the part of these philosophers to bring Epicureanism
up to the level of other Hellenistic philosophies by re-evaluating the role of disci-
plines neglected by Epicureans of the first generations on the grounds that they do
not contribute to the achievement of the highest good. In these pursuits, Demetrius
and Zeno maintained the validity of an empirically based epistemology, even for
these technai.
The dedications of some of the writings of Demetrius Laco to Roman personages
(Irenaeus and Quintus) may also correspond to a particular need on the part of Demetrius
to keep the dedicatees up to date on the latest in Epicurean thought. The same approach is
even more pronounced in Philodemus, whose patron was L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus,
and also for Lucretius, whose patron was C. Memmius.57
In the years which range from the Mithridatic domination of Athens (88–March 1, 86)
until the death of Zeno of Sidon (c. 75) and the succession to the scholarchate of
Phaedrus, the Garden underwent a very difficult period. It is evident from a series
of indications that within the Garden we are witnessing a crisis similar to that
which simultaneously involved the other philosophical schools of Athens. The most
55 The fragments are collected in Angeli and Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio.” See also
Angeli, “Zénon de Sidon.”
56 Verde, Elachista, 299–306.
57 For this perspective on Philodemus, cf. Erler, “Orthodoxie und Anpassung.”
ell-known episode of this crisis is, without doubt, Philodemus’s decision to leave
w
Athens and go to Italy.58
The Epicurean school in Athens continued to exist after Zeno of Sidon, despite the
crisis and political events, at least until the middle of the first century with Phaedrus
(c. 138–70 bce) and Patro (still scholarch in 51).
Phaedrus belonged to a distinguished Athenian family. He was born around 138 bce.
He was at Athens in 94, but not in 88 during the tyranny of Athenion. In this period, he
lived in Rome where he met Cicero, Atticus, and Lucius and Appius Saufeius. He
returned to Athens after the reconquest of Sulla. In his later years he obtained the schol-
archate of the Garden after Zeno. He died in 70. Despite the fact that Phaedrus and Zeno
were nearly contemporary and active in Athens, there is no doubt that both held the
scholarchate of the Garden.59
Patro succeeded Phaedrus as director of the Garden in 70 bce. Before that date, he
had stayed in Rome, where he associated with Cicero and Atticus, among others. Thanks
to the intervention of Cicero, he was able to prevent Memmius from constructing a new
building as a replacement for Epicurus’s house in the deme of Melite.60
Philodemus, Lucretius, and the Spread

of Epicureanism in Italy
While in Athens the Garden (as the other philosophical schools) headed towards a slow
but inexorable decline, in Italy, after the first unsuccessful attempt by Alcius and Filiscus
in 155 bce, and the crude propagandistic activity of popularizers such as C. Amafinius,
Catius, and Rabirius, we witness a new historical phase of Epicureanism in the first cen-
tury bce, namely a large number of followers. The credit for this revival is attributed to
the work, in Greek, of Epicurean circles in Campania represented by Philodemus,
58 The case of Philodemus is not unique. From the second century bce there had been examples of
philosophers, Epicurean or otherwise, who had left Athens, which was already in decline, and opened
schools or taught in outlying areas. The Stoic philosophy was flourishing on the island of Rhodes in
particular with Panaetius and Posidonius. Also at Rhodes we perhaps find the two Epicurean
“dissidents,” Nicasicrates and Timasagoras. The Epicurean Demetrius Laco was active in Miletus, where
he probably opened a school parallel to that of Athens. See Dorandi, “Philodemus’ Allegiance to Zeno
of Sidon.” According to Sedley, “Philodemus and the Decentralisation of Philosophy,” 31–41: “The
diaspora . . . had certainly started before the crucial years 88–86 bc, which constitute the climax of the
decentralisation process” (34). The continuity of the Epicurean school at Rhodes is probably also
attested by Diogenes of Oenoanda (Smith frr. 62 and 122) as well as perhaps the bilingual inscription of
the Epicurean philosopher Eucratidas of Rhodes (ILS 7780 = Syll.3 1227 = CIL IX 48 = IGR I 466 = IG
XIV 674, only with the Greek text) discovered at Brindisi.
59 The scholarchate of Phaedrus is confirmed by the testimony of Phlegon of Tralles (FGrHist 257 F
12 § 8). See Dorandi, “Phèdre d’Athènes.”
60 I discuss the history of the Garden at this time and Philodemus’s decision to leave Athens for Italy
in Dorandi, “Philodemus’ Allegiance to Zeno of Sidon.”
26 TIZIANO DORANDI
and perhaps also Siro, and the contribution, in Latin, of Lucretius’s De rerum natura.
The lively anti-Epicurean campaign conducted by Cicero during the same period is indica-
tive of the growing importance of the teachings of the Garden in the Roman world at the
end of the first century bce.61
Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110–40) left Athens (probably after Zeno’s death, c. 75) and
went to Italy, where he was active first at Rome and then perhaps at Herculaneum in the
Villa of his patron, L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Philodemus founded a school which
he intended to be an ideal continuation of the Garden of Athens, of which the memory
was in danger of vanishing. Once in Italy, Philodemus began his work of spreading, on a
scientific basis, the Epicurean doctrine. He had brought with him a wealth of books,
perhaps the books of Zeno he had inherited from the Master himself.
Before the discovery of the library at Herculaneum, Philodemus was known as a
poet, author of epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthology.62 The papyri have given
us numerous prose philosophical works. Their content is quite varied, from philo-
sophical biography to an appreciation of the principles of the enkyklia mathēmata
(rhetoric, poetry, and music); works of a polemical character and treatises devoted to
ethical issues (the virtues and their opposed vices, the choice of lifestyles, the pas-
sions); writings on theology and logic; finally, books which reflect upon fundamental
aspects of Epicurean doctrine, such as the fear of death and the means at our disposal
to overcome it.63
The book On the Good King According to Homer (P.Herc. 1507), dedicated to Piso,
appears to be a speculum principis (mirror for princes) with protreptic purposes.
With the work entitled Collection of Philosophers, which occupied at least ten books,
Philodemus proposed to write a “history” of philosophy which was objective and non-
polemical, organized by school. The remains of several books are preserved: a “history”
of the Academy (P.Herc. 1021 and 164), of the Stoa (P.Herc. 1018), and of the Garden
(P. Herc. 1780). Philodemus also sketched the “history” of the Eleatic and Abderite
schools (P.Herc. 327), that of Pythagoras (P.Herc. 1508), and of Socrates (P.Herc. 495 and
558). Philodemus also dedicated a particular work to the biography of Epicurus (P.Herc.
1289 and 1232) and dealt with biographical aspects of Epicureans of the first generations
in the book entitled Epicurean Memoirs (P.Herc. 1418 and 310).
The great trilogy on rhetoric, poetry, and music, addresses in a systematic and inno-
vative manner some issues that were overlooked or rejected by Epicurus and the earliest
Epicureans.
On Rhetoric, composed of at least eight books, intends to answer the question whether
rhetoric can be considered an art (technē). According to Philodemus, sophistic and
61 Vesperini, La Philosophia et ses pratiques d’Ennius à Cicéron provides an intelligent reading, but is
not always convincing of the issue of the spread of Epicureanism in Rome. See Dorandi, “ ‘Pratiche’
della philosophia nella Roma repubblicana.”
62 Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemos. Cf. Gigante, Il libro degli Epigrammi di Filodemo.
63 For a presentation of the life and works of Philodemus and the library at Herculaneum, see
Capasso’s chapter in this volume, and Blank, “Philodemus.” Henry, Herculaneum Papyri provides a
useful list of bibliography on the Herculaneum Papyri.
epideictic rhetoric is an art, but not political rhetoric. Rhetoric, however, does not
confer moral qualities, as philosophy does. Only by following philosophy can one be
happy. In the first two books (1: P.Herc. 1427; 2: P.Herc. 1672 and 1674) Philodemus dis-
cusses the status of rhetoric as an art, and in the third (P.Herc. 1426 and 1506) he tries to
prove that political rhetoric is not able to form statesmen. In the fourth (P.Herc. 1423 and
1007/1673) he criticizes sophistic orators and their ideas. In the sixth (P.Herc. 1669), the
debate on the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is resumed. The seventh
book (P. Herc. 1004) is directed against the Stoic Diogenes of Seleucias and an unknown
Aristo. The eighth book (P.Herc. 1015/832) contains a polemic against Nausiphanes of
Teos and Aristotle.
In the five books of On Poems, Philodemus analyzes, from the point of view of a phi-
losopher and not a literary critic, the qualities requisite for good poetry. We can con-
sider a poem good, not when it pleases the ear with its rhythm and melody, nor in
consideration of the proper arrangement of words, but only if it exhibits a perfect com-
bination of thought and content. The purpose of poetry is not to instruct and cause pleasure
for the hearing and mind. The first three books of the work preserve the traces of a
controversy on the vexed question of the relationship between form and content. They
are directed against Crates of Mallos and some unknown “critics” (kritikoi). In the fourth
book (P.Herc. 207), Philodemus attacks Aristotle, while in the fifth (P.Herc. 1425 and 1538)
he criticizes the Peripatics and the Stoics, and proposes a definition of a good poet and
determines the value of good poetry.
The books on music are intended to show that this discipline has no moral effect and
does not lead to virtue. We should attribute to music only the pleasure that it brings to
the listener, a pleasure that gives rise to a disposition in the soul for the beautiful and the
good, but that does not have any moral end in itself.
A large part of the literary production of Philodemus is characterized by a deeply
polemical content and emphasis. In On the Stoics (P.Herc. 339 and 155), the Politeiai of
Zeno of Citium and Diogenes of Sinope, which resemble each other in their indecen-
cies, are attacked with irony. Philodemus (in the book of which the title is uncertain:
P.Herc. 1005, 1485) vehemently attacks a group of Epicurean “dissidents” (sophistai) who
proposed an interpretation of the teaching of Epicurus opposed to that considered
“orthodox” by the Masters of the Garden.
The work On Vices and Their Corresponding Virtues was composed of at least ten
books. Each book was dedicated to the analysis of a vice or the virtue opposed to it. The
ninth book (P.Herc. 1424) discussed household administration (oikonomia) and some of
the ways a philosopher could make a living. Philodemus returns to related matters in the
work On Wealth (P.Herc. 163). Arrogance is the subject of the tenth book (P.Herc. 1008).
Philodemus paid lively attention to the vice of flattery in several places (for example, in
P.Herc. 1457 and in P.Herc. 1675).
The treatise On Frank Criticism (P.Herc. 1471) was part of a larger work entitled
On Characters and Lives. Philodemus considered frankness of speech an art which, like
medicine, brought help and relief to people. Probably belonging to the same work were
the treatises On Gratitude (P.Herc. 1414) and On Conversation (P.Herc. 873).
28 TIZIANO DORANDI
Philodemus may have written a work on the passions, in which the book that analyzes
anger (P.Herc. 182) found its place. In this work Philodemus makes a subtle distinction
between natural anger (physikē orgē) and rage (thumos). The sage can be prone to out-
bursts of anger, but never rage.
Our philosopher also took an interest in theological problems. The first book of
On the Gods (P.Herc. 26) highlighted the harmful effects that a false conception of the
divine and death can have on people, preventing them from living happily. Another
book (P.Herc. 152/157) contains a discussion of the life of the blessed gods, who have no
interest in the affairs of mortals. In his work, entitled On Piety, Philodemus sets forth the
ideas of Epicurus on the gods and their worship, in two books. The gods exist and must
be honored in accordance with the laws of the state without the expectation of benefits
or punishments from them. The gods live happily, free from all anxiety and without con-
cern for human affairs. In the second book, we read an attack on the ways poets and
intellectuals had represented the gods, a polemic against popular religious beliefs, and
finally a critique of the theology of the philosophers, in particular the Stoics. The work
On Providence (P.Herc. 1670) was directed against Chrysippus.
Philodemus, like his teacher Zeno, did not disdain the study of logic. In the work
On Methods of Inference (P.Herc. 1065), he presents the method of inference through
analogy based upon signs.
Finally, in two texts which are customarily dated to the final years of the philosopher,
On Choices and Avoidance (P.Herc. 1251) and the fourth book of On Death (P.Herc. 1050),
Philodemus focuses on two issues of great moral force: the way the sage conducts his life
and his attitude in the face of death, which is nothing to us.
It remains to ask at this point what role Philodemus played in the history of
Epicureanism. There are aspects of Philodemus’s life and influence that are still mysteri-
ous. Philodemus has been presented as a not particularly original thinker, a teacher of
Epicureanism who proclaimed the message of his school at the intersection of the Greek
and Roman worlds. Faithfully admiring Zeno while he lived, and tirelessly praising him
after his death,64 Philodemus would perpetuate his memory and teaching, and would
disseminate his thought with a rich harvest of works that, sometimes at least, appear to
be mere updates of notes taken in lessons during his years in Athens.65 In support of this
interpretation, the title of Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism receives mention. The
work is presented as An Epitome of Characters and Lives from Zeno’s Lectures,66 and the
treatise On Methods of Inference, where one can identify a collection of notes that
Philodemus had taken from Zeno’s lectures on logic, and from writings of Demetrius
Laco and the “dissident” Bromius. Sedley compares the work of Philodemus to that of
64 In P.Herc. Angeli 1005 col. 14.6–9, Philodemus defines himself thus: “While Zeno was alive I was
his faithful admirer and, after death, his indefatigable praiser, especially of all his virtues based on
possession of the doctrine of Epicurus, inspired by the gods.” See Del Mastro, “Filodemo e la lode di
Zenone Sidonio.”
65 Sedley, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 103–105.
66 Zeno of Sidon, Angeli-Colaizzo fr. 23 (see also fr. 16, the subscription of an uncertain work of the
same Philodemus, transmitted by P.Herc. 1389).
Arrian, popularizer of the teaching of Epictetus, though one is also reminded of the titles
of some Neoplatonic Aristotelian Commentaries, works of a grammatical or medical
character which are presented under the label apo phōnēs, that designates precisely
the written expression of lecture courses of Ammonius, Olympiodorus, Georgius
Choeroboscus, Stephanus of Alexandria—to name just a few—drawn up and edited by
students who were present at their lessons and took notes or had shorthand notes taken.67
Philodemus has also been described as a new Panaetius of the Garden, who intro-
duced into Epicurean philosophy nuances that, without damage to its fundamental
principles, modified and adapted it to the changed needs of his times and to the Roman
world.68 He supposedly achieved this end by a reassessment of enkyklia mathēmata and
a new and personal version of enkyklios paideia. In On Rhetoric he gave “sophistic” or
“epideictic” rhetoric a place among the technai; in On the Good King According to Homer
he offered a moralizing interpretation of the Homeric epics; he nuanced the position of
Epicurus about dealing with anger (On Anger), and he found space for the concept of
good reputation (doxa) among ethical values (On Flattery).
The two positions do not seem to me at odds, but are rather complementary. As a mat-
ter of fact, the thesis of adaptation is not incompatible with that which claims a lack of
speculative depth and originality on Philodemus’s part and sees him as a simple repeater
in the history of the school. If anything, if there was really innovation and adaptation
(which seems to me undeniable, at least in some respects), it remains to be determined
to whom this should be traced back, whether to Philodemus himself or even to his
teacher Zeno of Sidon and, possibly, Demetrius Laco, whose complete works, we must
not forget, Philodemus possessed.
So I would see Philodemus as a spokesman and diffuser of the thought of his master
Zeno. On the death of his teacher, and perhaps also because of the lack of succession in
the scholarchate,69 he had to consider himself invested with the mission of spreading the
Epicurean doctrine in Italy in a systematic and definitive way. The deep devotion he felt
towards his teacher probably made it appear to Philodemus an urgent duty to make
known to a wider audience, and beyond Athens, the philosophical ideas of Zeno, whom
he considered an authentic interpreter of the kathēgemones of the Garden. Being a faith-
ful disciple and the sole repository of the doctrine of his teacher, Philodemus could not
avoid this commitment and could not dilute the content of Zeno’s thought (except pos-
sibly on individual details) without running the risk of misinterpreting or, at the same
time, betraying the very teaching of the Founders. Thus Philodemus’s own philosophi-
cal originality had to take second place to Zeno, the content of whose work he presented
again and disseminated, sometimes under his own name. The greater part of the works
of Philodemus were probably nothing more than handouts of private lessons with a
limited distribution, probably restricted to members of the Epicurean circle of
67 On the formula ἀπὸ φωνῆς, see Richard, “ἀπὸ φωνῆς,” and the further bibliography in Dorandi,
Nell’officina dei classici, 62 n. 79.
68 Erler, “Orthodoxie und Anpassung” and “Epikur, Die Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 339–43.
69 On the likely reason preventing the succession of Philodemus to Zeno, see Dorandi, “Philodemus’
Allegiance to Zeno of Sidon.”
30 TIZIANO DORANDI
Herculaneum or other learned individuals who frequented the library. This explains
why we do not find the tangible and persistent traces of the writings of Philodemus in
later authors (the possibility of finding his influence in Sextus Empiricus or Diogenes
Laertius is more a matter of conjecture than proof). Philodemus was known to the cul-
tured public of his day primarily as a poet, an author of elegant love epigrams.
Philodemus had taken up residence in the villa of L. Calpurnius Piso in Herculaneum.
At the other end of the Gulf of Naples, on the hill of Posillipo overlooking Herculaneum,
there was the small country villa (villula) of another Epicurean, Siro.70 We know very
little about him. He was an instructor of Vergil in Epicureanism, and with Quintus
Varus, Quintilius Varus, Plotius Tucca, and Vergil, he frequented Philodemus’s library.
Cicero (Fin. 2.119) displays admiration for Philodemus and Siro.
Lucretius, the author of a poem in six books, De rerum natura, also contributed sig-
nificantly to the spread of Epicureanism in Italy.71
As a philosopher, Lucretius drew on canonical texts of Epicurus without taking fur-
ther developments of the doctrine into account.72 In particular, in the composition of
his poem, Lucretius seems to have reworked in a precise and well-organized scheme
what is found in a thorough analysis of the Letter to Herodotus and the Letter to Pythocles,
and the content and structure of the first fifteen books of Epicurus’s On Nature. In De
rerum natura there is no trace of the later controversy that witnessed Stoics opposing
Epicureans and vice versa. Despite having lived in Italy at the time of Philodemus, he
does not appear to have taken account of his work. This has led to talk of Lucretius’s
Epicureanism as “fundamentalist,” almost fossilized.73
From Italy to Athens Again, in Alexandria,

and in Asia Minor
Through the Imperial Age up to late antiquity, whether in the east or the west,
Epicureanism continued to spread and show the effects of its vitality.
The letter that Trajan’s widow, Pompeia Plotina (IG2 1099), addressed in 121 ce to
Hadrian, which requested and obtained from the emperor that the head of the Epicurean
school in Athens could choose as his successor a man who was not a Roman citizen and
could express his last wishes about his succession in Greek, proves the existence in
Athens in the second century ce of an apparently institutionalized Epicurean school
and the survival of the philosophy.74 It is difficult to maintain, however, that this school
70 Cf. Erler, “Epikur, Die Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 274–75. The fragments were collected by Gigante,
“I frammenti di Sirone.”
71 On Lucretius see Gale’s chapter in this volume.
72 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom.
73 This thesis has been criticized, especially by Montarese, Lucretius and His Sources, but with
arguments that do not seem decisive. See Dorandi, “Review of Montarese, Lucretius and His Sources.”
74 See also the successive letters of Hadrian to the Epicureans at Athens: SEG III 226 + IG2 1097.
is directly descended from the institution founded by Epicurus, which had lapsed in the
middle of the first century bce.75
The persistence of Epicureanism is also demonstrated in Alexandria as evidenced by
the fragments of the book Peri Physeos of the Christian bishop of that city Dionysius the
Great (third century ce), which presuppose a direct reading of the works of Epicurus.76
An example of the spread of Epicureanism securely placed within the Imperial period
is the work of Diogenianus, an Epicurean whose precise dates are uncertain (perhaps
second century ce). Eusebius (P.E. 4.3 e 6.8), who preserves extended passages from a
work of his against Chrysippus’s doctrine of fate, wrongly defines him as a Peripatetic.77
Diogenianus accepts the truthfulness and admissibility of divination and insists upon
the existence of fortune (tyche) and fate, which does not exclude our freedom of will.78
Lucian’s Alexander the False Prophet (25) mentions a certain Tiberius Claudius
Lepidus, head of the Epicureans of Amastri, and constitutes an interesting document of
the presence of groups of Epicureans reunited in a school or community in Asia Minor
and in Syria in the second century ce.79
An inscription, perhaps of Hadrian’s era, found at Apamea is dedicated to Aurelius
Belius Phillippus, hiereus kai diadochos of the Epicureans of Apamea,80 a formula which
probably means “priest and head of the Epicurean school of Apamea.”
Much more important is the testimony of the philosophical inscription of Diogenes
of Oenoanda in Lycia. The inscription guarantees the presence of the Epicurean doc-
trine in areas far from the most populous centers of cultural diffusion.81
The fragments belong to a unique inscription that preserves several texts about
Epicureanism. Smith has suggested the existence of at least seven writings, or groups of
writings, arranged in seven layers. At least three of these texts were written by Diogenes
himself: a treatise on physics (frr. 1–27), a treatise on ethics (frr. 28–61), and one about
old age (frr. 137–79). In addition to these, numerous letters merit mention, some written
by Epicurus (frr. 125–28). The other letters (frr. 62–75, 120–22) are mostly in the hand of
Diogenes, such as the Letter to Antipater (frr. 62–67), the Letter to Menneas (fr. 122), and
Directions to Family and Friends (frr. 117–18). For several other fragments, the authorship
75 See Dorandi, “Plotina, Adriano e gli Epicurei di Atene”; and Van Bremen, “ ‘Plotina to All Her
Friends.’ ” On this last contribution, I agree with the remarks of Follet, “Bulletin Épigraphique 2007,”
nr. 231. See Dorandi, “The School and Texts of Epicurus in the Early Centuries of the Roman Empire.”
76 See Fleisher, Dionysios von Alexandria, De natura (περὶ φύσεως).
77 Gercke, “Chrysippea,” 701–702 proved that Diogenianus was an Epicurean.
78 Isnardi Parente, “Diogeniano, gli Epicurei et la τύχη”; and Hammerstaedt, “Das Kriterium der
Prolepsis beim Epikureer Diogenian.”
79 The story of Epicureanism in Syria is traced by Smith, “An Epicurean Priest from Apamea in
Syria,” 122–25.
80 Smith, “An Epicurean Priest from Apamea in Syria.” The dating of the Hadrianic era, proposed by
Smith, is called into question by Gatier, “Bulletin Épigraphique 1997,” nr. 639: the nomen Aurelius goes
back to a date “at the least after 163.”
81 On Diogenes of Oenoanda, see Hammerstaedt’s chapter in this volume. The standard edition is
that of Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription with supplements in Smith, Supplement
to Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription. New fragments have been published by
Hammerstaedt and Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda.
32 TIZIANO DORANDI
of the text (frr. 129–36) or its placement (frr. 180–81) remain uncertain. A selection of
maxims of Epicurus, inscribed under the treatise on ethics, along with other maxims
of which Diogenes may be the author (frr. 97–116), completed the text of the inscription.
All these texts and others, now lost, formed an immense inscription, which, like an
opened roll of papyrus, offered itself to readers column after column on the walls of a
porch of the city of Oenoanda. In this device one can see the effort Diogenes exerted to
make the philanthropic message of Epicurus’s philosophy accessible not only to citizens
of Oenoanda, but also to any foreigners passing by.
Genuine (gnēsioi) Epicureans and

Dissident (sophistai) Epicureans
The life of the school during its long existence was not always peaceful. Inside the school
there were severe incidents of division early on. While Epicurus was still living,
Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, left the Garden and also began a smear cam-
paign against Epicurus. Philodemus informs us also of a whole series of Epicureans,
“dissidents” (sophistai), who lived between the second and the first century bce and
were apparently active in Cos and Rhodes. In their works we read the names of some of
these Epicureans and find suggestions of their doctrines. A distinction between the two
categories of Epicureans appears in a passage in the Life of Epicurus of Diogenes Laertius
(10.26), which speaks of a group of members of the Garden that “the genuine Epicureans
call sophists (sophistai).”82
To explain these events, we must refer to that element of cohesion and identity
particular to the philosophies of the Hellenistic period, which has been appropriately
identified as a “religious” commitment to the auctoritas of the founding figure of the
school.83 At the origin of concepts such as auctor and auctoritas in the philosophical
institutions in this period, the texts of the founders occupied a particular position as
the bearers of continuity of the Master’s thought and the guarantors of its genuineness.
Early on they were gathered together to be a “canon.” All further discussions, which
provided the schools their intrinsic reason for being and survival, found their origin in
these “canonized” collections.
This dynamic is evident in the Garden of Epicurus, where the founder and his early
followers had already provided a detailed and systematic exposition of their thought.
Under these conditions, little freedom was left to successors to move very far from the
doctrinal tenets—the works of the kathēgemones Epicurus, Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and
Hermarchus. These works were therefore soon considered as representing the “canonical”
82 The different interpretations of the passage are analyzed by Angeli, Filodemo. Agli amici di
scuola, 82–92.
83 Sedley, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 97–103, and Dorandi,
“Philodemus’ Allegiance to Zeno of Sidon.”
status for the doctrine of the Garden. Some of their writings, however, once they were
inherited by later generations, gave rise to exegetical discussions aimed at clarifying
obscure points and refining details. This sometimes took the form of a series of different
interpretations that were the source of internal controversies for the School.
The Epicureans of younger generations turned their attention in particular to three
crucial issues: (1) defining the authenticity of certain books of the kathēgemones, (2) dis-
cussing the textual criticism of specific passages deemed corrupt or contradictory in
Epicurus, and (3) debating the difficulties which the early works of Epicurus presented,
as they were sometimes not free of errors.84
A concrete example of this practice is the book of Demetrius Laco preserved in P.Herc.
1012. In writing this work, Demetrius proposed an operation of philologia medicans par-
allel to the philosophia medicans pursued by Epicurus himself: Demetrius’s objective was
to identify the correct reading of the Master’s writings in order that his philosophical
message might be transposed into its purest form and could thus have its full effect on
those practicing it. To this end, Demetrius employed the methods and tools of
Alexandrian philology.85
Before reintroducing, albeit only in general terms, the problem of “dissidence,” that is,
the contrast between genuine Epicureans (gnēsioi) and Epicurean “dissidents” (sophistai)
and the debate related to the need for a defense of “orthodoxy” of “canonical” thought
against certain interpretations considered “heterodox,” a premise is necessary.86 I
maintain that we should rule out the idea that a monolithic form of rigid uniformity and
cultural and philosophical immobility dominated in the Garden from Epicurus to
Diogenes of Oenoanda, in which the School was identified with only Epicurus, whose
pupils and whose other successors were nothing more than mere epigoni and empty
repeaters. This is not to say that over the course of centuries of Epicureanism there were
dramatic innovations or reversals in the basic principles of “canonical” thought. Inside
the school—especially from the second century bce—one can speak of the work of
adapting or updating certain aspects of the doctrine under the pressure, for example, of
attacks from the Stoics, and also as a result of changed historical, social, and geographi-
cal circumstances.
The traditional interpretation of the static and rigid unity of Epicurean thought is
based on the reading of the testimony of Seneca and Numenius.
Seneca writes (Epist. 33.4):
We (sc. Stoics) are not subjects of a despot; each is master of himself. With them
(sc. Epicureans), on the other hand, what Hermarchus or Metrodorus has said is
84 Sedley, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 103–107.

85 Erler, “Philologia medicans.” Cf. Ferrario, “La nascita della filologia epicurea”; and Del Mastro,
“Demetrio Lacone e la correzione.”
86 The best treatment of the problem remains that of Angeli, Filodemo. Agli amici di scuola, 82–102.
I repropose her conclusions. Useful thoughts for a reassessment of the idea and history of “dissidence”
are found in Verde, “Ancora su Timasagora epicureo.”
34 TIZIANO DORANDI
referred to one alone (sc. Epicurus); all that was said by all the members of this com-
munity (contubernium) is attributed to the thought of one.
From this passage we can conclude that the Epicureans of the first generations lived in
community (contubernium), where each of the members undertook to contribute to the
formation of the doctrinal principles of the school and where they were mutually dedi-
cated to the imitation of each other. “It is not the school of Epicurus which made
Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus great men,” Seneca continues to Lucilius in
Epist. 6.6, “but living with him (non schola, sed contubernium).” According to this line of
thought, over time the memory of the followers of Epicurus faded and Epicurus, now
credited with the entire philosophical heritage of the school, was presented as the only
model to be imitated. In reality, the life of the first generation of members of the Garden
passed in this symbiotic unity of powers, which had seen Epicurus, Hermarchus,
Metrodorus, and Polyaenus engaged in unison: the “great men (andres) who set forth
the principles of Epicurean teaching,” as Philodemus defines them.87
Much harder to eradicate is the presupposition of doctrinal immobility or standing
doctrine, apparently endorsed by Numenius:
They never let themselves be seen as being against Epicurus in any case, but, agree-
ing that they had been instructed by the sage, they also ostensibly enjoyed the appel-
lation (sc. of wise men) in return for this. From this it arose as a rule for the later
Epicureans never to express opposition either to one another or to Epicurus on any
matter worth mentioning. On the contrary, they even condemned innovation as
indecent, or rather impious. And so no one dares to innovate, but with great peace
for them, the dogmas remain fixed under the harmonious agreement that had
always there between them. And the school of Epicurus looks like a genuine repub-
lic, completely free from divisions, having one common mind and judgment, of
which they were and are and seemingly will be faithful followers.88
One can speak of ideological uniformity only for early Epicureanism and not for the
later stages.89 The Epicureans, although they considered it an impiety to introduce
novelties into their system, nonetheless made modifications in some specific cases,
believing that they were offering a correct interpretation of the system. Both “genuine”
or “dissident” Epicureans had as their sole goal reading Epicurus through the eyes of
Epicurus, but in practice they gave a reading of the Master’s thought with varying
degrees of sensitivity, according to the needs and demands of their times.
The reasons for the birth of “dissidence” are to be found in the difficult moments that
the school experienced after the death of the kathēgemones, when free debate was
replaced by a culture of book learning that, as such, required exegesis that varied with
the changing times and the needs of individual interpreters. Decisive for the definition
87 Philodemus On Rhetoric 2 (P.Herc. 1674) Longo col. 27.14–16.

88 Numenius, Des Places fr. 24.22–36 (in Eus. P.E. 14.5.3). 89 Angeli, Filodemo, 85.
of this phenomenon is the demarcation that came to be created, with the death of
Hermarchus, between the first generation of the Epicureans, the direct students of
Epicurus90 who were considered custodians of the genuine tradition of his teaching
and later generations (from Polystratus onwards), engaged with the interpretation of
what was now considered the “canon” of the teaching. It would be incorrect to speak
of “dissidence” with regard to the generations of Epicureans contemporary with the
Masters giving the terms “dissidence” or “heterodoxy” the meaning of denial of specific
principles of thought of the kathēgemones which were held in common. At the founda-
tion of both interpretations of the Epicureans whether “genuine” or “dissident” lies
instead the need for an “orthodoxy” which, when examined from the perspective of
“dissidents,” is explained by the search for continuity with respect to the founder which
was deemed broken in the school. The “dissident” does not direct his criticisms towards
Epicurus and his immediate disciples, but towards the tradition which:
In the school, from teacher to teacher, had codified an image of the thought of
Epicurus in which the “dissidents” did not see the original meaning of the doctrine
reflected.91
The concept of “orthodoxy” was therefore perceived by both classes of Epicureans in the
same way, but with the difference that while “genuine” Epicureans accepted the develop-
ment of doctrine as a fact, “dissidents” criticized precisely this codified tradition which, they
claimed, did not reflect the original meaning of the doctrine of Epicurus and his immediate
disciples. In other words, we should not interpret the opposition “orthodoxy”/“heterodoxy”
as historiographical categories and designate as “heterodox” the person who intends to
modify dogmas, a perspective contrary to the spirit of the debate carried out by those
dissenting against the scholastic tradition.92
Belief in the authenticity of their interpretation of the “canon” allowed Epicureanism
to innovate and survive precisely because it led to a progressive and constant develop-
ment in accordance with the changing times. The mother school of Athens was able to
maintain a firm attitude against the dissidents and thus prevented any interference
from them in the Garden. In this way, the school kept the doctrinal tenets intact and
at the same time also evolved, adapting to the changed times and new historical
circumstances.
Philodemus is the principal source from which we know the names and the thought
of the Epicurean “dissidents.” Between the second and first century bce a group of
philosophers which is presented under the label of “dissidents” (sophistai) lived and
90 Philodemus P.Herc. 1005, Angeli fr. 90.7–8 “and compare the opinions of those who had heard
Epicurus (τῶν ἀκηκοότων Ἐπικούρου)—to such an extent in meaning, and if not [that], in purpose and
readiness, they become one and the same with the thought of Epicurus” and fr. 107.9–16 “we compare
the way of speaking (τρόπους) of those who have published systematic treatises after the death of
Hermarchus, or, if one wishes, even after the departure of all the Epicureans who had heard Epicurus
(τῶν Ἐπικούρου διακηκοότων ἁπάντων).” See Angeli, Filodemo, 97–98.
91 Angeli, Filodemo, 93. 92 Angeli, Filodemo, 84.
36 TIZIANO DORANDI
was active in the islands of Cos and Rhodes.93 Nicasicrates and Timasagoras were probably
active at Rhodes,94 but we know nothing of the origins of Antiphanes and Bromius.95
We know from the first two books of Philodemus’s Rhetoric that Epicureans of Cos
and Rhodes (their names are unknown to us) were engaged in the debate on the
technicity of rhetoric. Against those Epicureans who maintained that no kind of rhetoric
may be considered an art (technē), Philodemus claims as authentic doctrine of the
kathēgemones the position of his master Zeno of Sidon, namely that, unlike forensic and
political rhetoric, sophistic rhetoric rises to the status of a technē. Philodemus proposes,
therefore, to refute the view that the definition of sophistic rhetoric as technē did not
date back to the founders of the Garden, but was an innovation introduced by Zeno.96
Nicasicrates was involved in the debate on anger and flattery. Against the interpreta-
tion of anger revived by Philodemus which distinguishes between thumos (rage) and
physikē orgē (natural anger) and admits that even the wise can be subject to moments of
natural anger but never rage, Nicasicrates denied that the wise are subject to any type of
passion, not even physikē orgē. As for flattery, Epicurus, though not having taken flatter-
ers into consideration, admitted that the wise would endeavor to make themselves
acceptable to their peers. Nicasicrates criticized this position, but without giving dis-
tinct definitions of the various types of flattery, and thus harking back, according to
Philodemus, to positions close to those of Democritus.
Timasagoras, who is to be identified with the Timagoras mentioned by Cicero (Acad.
2.80) and Aetius (4.13.6; Diels p. 403.22),97 expressed views about anger similar to those
of Nicasicrates, although for different reasons.98 He was also interested in issues related
to the inner workings of perceptual theory.99
Antiphanes modified marginal aspects related to the way of life (diagōgē) of the gods,
aligning himself with positions that seem close to those of the Stoics concerning the
problem of the sleep of the gods (at least to what is obtained from a book of Philodemus
On Gods).
Finally, Bromius, in the debate on the technicity of rhetoric, seems to have privileged
political rhetoric over sophistic rhetoric.
93 Philodemus Rh. 2 (P.Herc. 1674) Longo Auricchio cols. 52.11–53.33. See Sedley, “Philodemus and
the Decentralisation of Philosophy,” 33.
94 On the basis of fr. IIb 3–4 of P.Herc. 1746, published by Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos, 92, it is
probable that Nicasicrates was the head of a school, perhaps that of Rhodes, but this is the only
testimonium to that effect. Furthermore, if one accepts the conjecture of Gallo, Frammenti biografici da
papiri, 89 and 161–62 in a fragment of the Life of Philonides (P.Herc. 1044 fr. 34.5–6) Timasagoras too
may have been the head of a school, perhaps at Athens. See Procopé, “Epicureans on Anger,” 379.
95 Erler, “Epikur, Die Schule Epikurs, Lukrez,” 285–86.
96 See Erbì, “La retorica nell’Epicureismo.”
97 He was rather an Epicurean who incurred the dislike of Epicurean contemporaries, who have
probably influenced the accounts that have come down to us.
98 Indelli, Filodemo. L’ira, 154 and 224; Procopé, “Epicureans on Anger,” 377–86; Tsouna, The Ethics
of Philodemus, 202–209.
99 Verde, “Ancora su Timasagora epicureo” maintains that one cannot assert that Timasagoras was
truly an Epicurean “dissident.” See also Verde, “Timasagoras de Rhodes.”
Organization and Common Life

in the Garden at Athens
I conclude with a few words on the organization and common life of the Garden of
Athens.100
The organization of the Garden, at least in the first generations, was founded more
than any other philosophical school on principles of emulation, commemoration, and
imitation.101 One of the main objectives taught by Epicureanism was the imitation of the
gods by being blessed and imperturbable amid the evils of the world, which entailed, for
the members of the school, a constant effort to emulate those who had reached the high-
est perfection in their imitation of the blessedness of the gods, the four kathēgemones:
Epicurus, Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.
The school was organized by the kathēgemones on an ideal model of contubernium, in
which individuals appeared as many members of a single body. In the Epicurean com-
munity everyone, without losing their personal identity, maintained his or her own
individuality and undertook to cooperate with others to achieve their single purpose,
happiness. A meticulous hierarchical structure was never developed in which class dis-
tinctions were made between philosophoi, philologoi, kathēgētai, and sunētheis; there
prevailed instead the ideal of frank speech (parrhēsia) between teachers and students,
which is fundamental in common life, inspired by the educational purposes of philia,
charis, and eunoia.102 Also significant is the openness to women, some of whom
(Themista in particular) were actively engaged in philosophical discussion.
The community life of the members of the school, who lived in dwellings built within
the Garden, was based on the practice of celebrating together, with festivals and ban-
quets, anniversary rites of Epicurus as well as other friends and family who had died
prematurely: the brothers of Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Polyaenus. Already in his will,
preserved in Diogenes Laertius (10.16–20), Epicurus had made arrangements for
funeral sacrifices for his father, his mother, and brothers, for the celebration of his birth-
day, and for the monthly meeting that would bring together all the members of the
school. Other witnesses supplement the information we have on rites. There are reports
of five such rites that were practiced in the Garden.103 There was the annual funeral rite
Epicurus established in memory of his parents and brothers. There were two rites
for Epicurus: one annual, the twentieth of Gamelion, his birthday,104 and one on the
100 The numerous testimonia are collected and discussed by Clay, “Individual and
Community,” 264–70.
101 On the organization and structure of the Garden and other schools, see Dorandi, “Organization
and Structure of the Philosophical Schools,” 55–62.
102 We learn as much, in particular, from Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism, according to the
interpretation of Gigante, Ricerche Filodemee, 110–13; and Clay, “Individual and Community,” 269–70.
103 Clay, “The Cults of Epicurus.”
104 We find traces of this rite in Italy in the first century bce in an epigram of Philodemus dedicated
to his patron, L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemos, 27).
38 TIZIANO DORANDI
twentieth of each month in honor of Epicurus and Metrodorus. Then there was the day
dedicated to the memory of the birthday of the brothers of Epicurus, in the month of
Poseidon, and finally one for Polyaenus, which fell in the month of Metageitneon.
For the support of members of the Garden, the assets of friends (philoi) were held in
common. They were constituted by the personal fortunes of individual members, the
monetary contributions that came from Lampsacus, and the system of syntaxeis—
free gifts that had devolved from powerful people (in particular from Mihres, the
finance minister of King Lysimachus, a friend of Epicurus) for the benefit of the Garden,
sometimes at the behest of Epicurus himself.
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chapter 2
Epistemol ogy
Gisela Striker
Epicurus was perhaps the first Greek philosopher who found it useful or necessary to
begin the exposition of his natural philosophy with a chapter on epistemology. He had
set aside the part labeled logic or dialectic, the theory of reasoning and argument, along
with its technical terminology, as a superfluous distraction (DL 10.31) and replaced it by
a treatise on how to find and establish the truth.
By the end of the fourth century bce, the question whether philosophers or scientists
could establish the truth of their theories had become more pressing than ever. The
senses, which offer apparently conflicting evidence, had been rejected as a source of
reliable information by earlier cosmologists. But the theories of the philosophers, alleg-
edly based on reason, had also been challenged by Pyrrho, an older contemporary of
Epicurus, because they contradicted one another just as much as evidence provided by
the various senses. Even Epicurus’s predecessor in atomism, Democritus, had expressed
deep pessimism about the possibility of attaining knowledge. He had accepted the
impossibility of deciding which among the conflicting sense impressions might be true,
but at the same time acknowledged the senses as our basic source of information about
the world, expressing the dilemma in the vivid image of a dialogue between the mind
and the senses, in which the senses address the mind by saying:
Wretched mind! Do you take your evidence from us and then overthrow us? Our
overthrow is your downfall.1
Epicurus had to show a way out of this dilemma, and he did so in a treatise (now lost)
entitled Canon or About the Criterion that served as introduction to his natural philosophy.
His work was obviously influential, and for several centuries after Epicurus’s epistemology
was discussed by the Hellenistic philosophical schools alongside logic—for those who
did not reject it—in terms of the question of the criterion or criteria of truth.
1 Democritus fr. B125; trans. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers.

44 Gisela Striker
The Criteria
The word “criterion”—literally, instrument of judgment—had been used occasionally

by Plato and Aristotle to refer to a cognitive faculty, either reason or the senses. This
usage continued throughout the Hellenistic period, including in Epicurus’s own writings,
and did not belong to any particular school.2 Thus Epicurus speaks of criteria in this
sense when he urges repeatedly that the student of nature must consider the available
evidence from all the criteria, both the mind and the senses (Ep. Hdt. 38; 82). Epicurus’s
innovation consisted in speaking of criteria of truth as a means of determining or decid-
ing about the truth of beliefs or scientific theses. He had probably taken over the title
Canon from Democritus, who wrote a work entitled Canons, but Epicurus may have
been the first to take literally the metaphor implied by the word. A canon (ὁ κανών) was a
mason’s rule or straightedge, an instrument used to determine the straightness of walls
or beams, etc. This instrument had to be straight itself to serve as the standard of
straightness for other things. Following this model, Epicurus designated as criteria of
truth the kinds of basic or irrefutable truths that could serve to assess the truth of beliefs.
Diogenes Laertius introduces the three letters of Epicurus he transcribed in the last
book of his work by a brief summary of the Canon. Not surprisingly, it suggests that the
treatise was mainly concerned to argue for the truth of Epicurus’s criteria (DL 10.31–32):
In the Canon, Epicurus says that the criteria of truth are sensations, preconceptions,
and feelings (the Epicureans also include the applications of the mind to an
impression) . . . .3 For, he says, all sense perception is irrational and does not accom-
modate memory. For neither is it moved by itself, nor when moved by something
else is it able to add or subtract anything. Nor is there anything that can refute the
senses: neither can like sense refute like, because of their equal validity, nor unlike
unlike, since they are not judges of the same things; nor can reason, since all reason
depends on the senses; nor can an individual sensation refute another, since we pay
attention to all of them.4
The first argument emphasizes the passivity of the senses: they can only receive or
register what moves them, but neither add nor omit anything. This in itself would not be
enough to show that the information they receive must be correct, but the mention of
memory indicates what Epicurus had in mind: memory is a function of thought, not
2 For the notion of a criterion in Hellenistic philosophy, see Striker, “κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας” and
“The Problem of the Criterion,” both repr. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics.
3 A note on translation: I follow most recent Epicurus scholars in translating the word αἴσθησις by
“sensation” where it is not used to refer to one of the sense faculties. I use “impression” or “sense
impressions” to render φαντασία and adjectives derived from it, as in the phrase φανταστικὴ ἐπιβολὴ
τῆς διανοίας (“application of the mind to an impression”). Note that the interpretation of this phrase is
controversial; for different interpretations see, e.g., Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.90;
and Asmis, “Epicurean Empiricism,” 94.
4 Trans. Long and Sedley with modifications.
Epistemology 45
of perception, and it may be used to modify the incoming information. By separating

the contributions of sensation to perceptual judgments from those of memory, Epicurus
could explain what others would describe as perceptual errors. Instead of rejecting a
sense impression as false, one should distinguish between what is already given and the
modifications one has inadvertently made, leading to a false belief. As Epicurus puts it
succinctly in Key Doctrine 24 (DL 10.147):
If you reject any single sense impression absolutely and do not distinguish in an
opinion between what is still awaited and what is already present according to sen-
sation and feelings and any application of the mind to an impression, you will throw
into confusion even your other sensations by your foolish opinion, so that you will
be rejecting the criterion altogether.5
The distinction between the actual content of a sensation and a perceptual judgment
based on it allowed Epicurus to deny the claim that the senses offer conflicting evidence.
According to him, individual sensations provide only partial information about exter-
nal objects; this information is correct, but it may not be sufficient to justify a judgment
about the object. So, for example, a tower looks small and round when seen from afar,
though one may find out that it is actually square and large when one comes closer. An
oar seen through water does look crooked even though one knows that it is straight. The
sound of a trumpet is not as loud coming from far away as it would be if one were standing
next to the trumpeter, and so on. These are familiar facts about sense perception—and
indeed the argument from conflicting appearances would not have been so successful if
people had not been familiar with them. But people quickly learn to adjust their judg-
ments to the circumstances, taking into account their distance from the tower, or the
fact that the oar is seen through water, and suspending judgment when they realize that
they do not have enough information. The alleged contradictions arise only on the level
of perceptual judgment, because we are prone to forming such beliefs based on very
little information. Again, this is not surprising, since things observed nearby under nor-
mal conditions tend to be just as they are perceived to be. One might therefore be
inclined to go in the direction the Stoics took by trying to distinguish true from false
sense impressions. But as Democritus and others had already argued, this will not work,
since there is no standard of judgment above the senses.
The next argument in Diogenes’s summary of the Canon repeats this point and also
emphasizes the limitations of sensation. The claim that the senses cannot refute one
another because they do not judge the same things can only hold with respect to the
proper sensibles—color, shape, and motion for sight, sound for hearing, hardness and
softness for touch, and so on (see Lucr. DRN 4.486–99). If something looks like honey,
but then turns out to taste and smell like soap, one might argue that the senses of taste
and smell have refuted sight; but it is still true that the thing has the color of honey, and
that is all that the eyes could tell one.

46 Gisela Striker
Here Epicurus seems to endorse the most restrictive conception of sense perception
advocated by Plato in the Theaetetus (184B–186E). A passage in Lucretius’s long discus-
sion of optical illusions confirms this. Lucretius has just explained that the shadow may
appear to be an object that follows the body around, but that it seems to move only
because the moving body is blocking light in different places. Yet this does not show that
the eyes deceive us—it is up to the mind, not the eyes, to determine whether the shadow is
a single moving thing or just the result of the body blocking the light (DRN 4.379–87). But
unlike Plato in the Theaetetus, who goes on to argue that there is no truth to be found in
the senses, Epicurus insists that reason cannot refute the senses, since it is entirely
dependent on them. For, as Diogenes explains a few lines further down (DL 10.32):
All our notions also derive from the senses, by encounter or analogy or similarity or
composition, with some contribution from the mind as well.
A true perceptual judgment such as “this is honey” will then be the result of an “applica-
tion of the mind”—an act of attention to the content of many sensations that leads to a
complex impression.
Epicurus’s second criterion, the preconceptions (προλήψεις), is described by
Diogenes in a rambling paragraph that uses terminology from various schools
(DL 10.33):
Preconception, they say, is as it were a cognition (κατάληψις), or a correct opinion,

or conception, or universal notion stored inside, that is, a memory of what has fre-
quently appeared from outside, e.g., “Such and such a thing is a man.” For as soon as
the word “man” is uttered, immediately its outline also comes to mind by means of
preconception, the senses leading the way. Thus what primarily underlies each
name is something evident. And we would not inquire about the things we investi-
gate if we had not had prior knowledge of them. For example, “Is what’s standing
over there a horse or a cow?” For one must at some time have come to know the
form of a horse and of a cow by means of preconception. Nor would we have named
something if we had not previously learnt its outline by means of preconception.6
Diogenes’s attempt to capture the sense of the word “preconception” with many different
terms no doubt reflects the fact that Epicurus did not like to give definitions; but it also
incidentally shows that by the time of Diogenes Laertius, a rich vocabulary was available
to describe what he had in mind. General concepts played a role in the theories of all the
Hellenistic schools, though their origin and epistemological status was seen in different
ways. According to Cicero (ND 1.44), the term prolepsis was introduced by Epicurus
himself. The prefix “pro-” indicates that these concepts must be grasped prior to some-
thing else, and this in two different ways.
First, general concepts are associated with words and must be known before one
can understand or use the corresponding word. In this role, the preconceptions do not
6 Trans. Long and Sedley.

Epistemology 47
function as criteria of truth, since general terms are used in true and false statements alike.
In fact, these concepts presumably furnish the mind with the memories it sometimes uses
to modify the content of a sensation to arrive at an erroneous perceptual judgment.
The role of preconceptions in investigations, illustrated by Diogenes with the rather
trivial example of a horse or cow, is explained by Epicurus himself at the beginning of
the Letter to Herodotus (Ep. Hdt. 37–38):
First, then, Herodotus, we must grasp the things which underlie words, so that we
may have a reference point against which to judge matters of opinion, inquiry and
puzzlement, and not have everything undiscriminated for ourselves as we attempt
infinite chains of proofs, or have words which are empty. For the primary concept
corresponding to each word must be seen and need no additional proof, if we are
going to have a reference point for matters of inquiry, puzzlement and opinion.7
The preconceptions represent Epicurus’s solution to the notorious puzzle raised in

Plato’s Meno (80D): how can you investigate something if you do not know at all what it
is? The answer consists in a distinction: we must indeed know what it is that we are
investigating in the sense of understanding the corresponding word, but this is not the
same as having an expert’s knowledge of its nature. This understanding must be given at
the start of an investigation and not require any proof, since such a requirement would
involve us in an infinite regress, or else we would be left with meaningless words. The
suggestion that one must understand the terms one uses probably also comes from the
Meno (see 75B–76A). But Epicurus adds that this pre-existing knowledge must also
serve as a reference point for the results of an investigation. Here he is introducing a
label for a practice that was (and is) common among philosophers: our conception of a
thing sets adequacy conditions for possible accounts of its nature. A theory of the soul,
for example, must explain how it enables animals to move and to perceive, and will be
rejected if it implies consequences incompatible with our initial assumptions. In this
sense, then, the preconceptions function as criteria.
Aristotle counts such presuppositions among what he calls phainomena or endoxa—
generally accepted beliefs, including facts of observation. Epicurus reserved the term
phenomena (φαινόμενα) for perceptual observations. This is a useful clarification in
contrast to Aristotle, whose wide class of phenomena included common opinions,
empirical observations, and even the views of philosophers. But the comparison with
Aristotle may also cast some doubt on Epicurus’s claim that the preconceptions must
not only be accepted without further proof, but also themselves be evident truths. The
argument here seems to be the same as in the case of sense impression: we have no
higher standard to which we could appeal to establish the truth of our preconceptions,
and therefore we must accept them all as true. Now it is surely correct to insist that some
of the assumptions that underlie our use of general terms must be kept constant—it will
not do, for instance, to claim that cows are made by sculptors, or that numbers can walk.
7 Trans. Long and Sedley.

48 Gisela Striker
However, this does not rule out the possibility that a scientific investigation might end
up modifying our initial conception. A trivial example of this would be that whales,
according to the zoologists, are mammals, not fish. Here one might say that the com-
mon conception of fish is wider and less precise than the scientific one. But it is probably
no surprise that Epicurus’s most famous theological thesis, according to which anger
and concern about human affairs are incompatible with the preconception of the gods
as blessed and immortal beings, did not find many adherents outside the Epicurean
school, even though his physical explanations of phenomena like thunder and lightning
might have had some effect on superstitious beliefs in supernatural powers.
In the case of the sensations, Epicurus could eventually try to vindicate his claim
that they are all true by offering explanations of optical illusions or different sensations
of taste in terms of atomism. In cases of concepts like those of the gods or of justice—
concepts that obviously involve some contributions of the mind, not just perceptual
observation—this kind of explanation was not available. The evidence provided by pre-
conceptions, even if they are formed on the basis of true perceptions, is more limited
than Epicurus seems to have assumed.
The third kind of criterion consists in the feelings of pleasure or pain, described by
Diogenes as criteria of choice and avoidance rather than of truth. This is indeed their role
in Epicurean ethics, but several passages in the Letter to Herodotus show that they also
functioned as criteria of truth. They are usually mentioned alongside the sensations and
presumably have the same role, except that they are impressions of bodily states rather
than of external objects. “Pleasure” and “pain” are used as generic terms not only for
physical affections, but also for positive or negative emotions such as joy, fear, or anger.
Diogenes’s error is understandable, since pleasure and pain are primarily mentioned as
showing what is good or bad for a person, though Epicurus emphasizes that this does not
mean that everything pleasant is to be pursued or everything painful to be avoided. Like
the sensations, they do not reveal the nature of the states that cause them. What brings
about the pleasant life is not the enjoyment of luxuries, but “sober reasoning that seeks
out the causes of all choice and avoidance” (Ep. Men. 132). The greatest pleasure, accord-
ing to Epicurus, consists in the absence of all pain and distress, but it takes philosophy to
find this out. In the context of Epicurus’s philosophy of nature, the feelings can be sub-
sumed under perception, as indeed they seem to be in some later sources.8
Epicurus’s account of the criteria and their truth offers a sophisticated theory of the
relations between the two cognitive faculties, reason or thought (διάνοια) and the
senses. Sense perception is the foundation of all knowledge because it is the only way
we can come in contact with the world around us. But the information furnished by the
senses may seem confusing and even self-contradictory. This led philosophers to the
argument from conflicting appearances, and to the contempt expressed by many of
Epicurus’s predecessors for perceptual beliefs. Democritus had insisted on the funda-
mental role of the senses, but he had also apparently accepted the conclusion that they
offer conflicting information, and hence cannot reveal the truth. Epicurus’s response
8 See, e.g., Cic. Fin. 1.30–31.

Epistemology 49
was different: though he agreed that we have no higher faculty that could distinguish
between true and false sense impressions, he distinguished, like Plato, between sensa-
tions and perceptual judgments and argued that we should recognize the limitations of
the senses. We need to use reason to organize the information we receive through the
senses, and also to understand the way the sense organs are functioning. Memory is
needed for the formation of general concepts and the development of language to com-
municate what we experience. Concepts are formed by the mind from a multitude of
sense impressions, usually from several senses. Even a simple concept like that of a cow
or horse includes not only the visual appearance of those animals, but also the facts that
they move, eat grass, make characteristic noises, and so on. These concepts are not sepa-
rately existing abstract objects like Platonic Forms, accessible only to thought. Reason
therefore remains dependent on the senses both for the formation of its concepts and for
observations of the natural world. But, as Lucretius puts it, “the eyes cannot take cogni-
zance of the real nature of things” (DRN 4.385). The discovery of the causes and explana-
tions of natural phenomena—in particular, of course, the concepts of atoms and
void—is the domain of the mind.
This theory itself is independent of atomism—as should be expected if it was to serve
as the epistemological foundation of Epicurus’s philosophy of nature. However, at this
point we must take a look at a rival interpretation of Epicurus’s thesis about the truth of
sense impressions that came up in antiquity. In Sextus Empiricus’s report on Epicurus’s
epistemology (M. 7.203–16) we find the following (S.E. M. 7.206–209):
But some are deceived by the difference between the impressions which seem to be
derived from the same object of sense—for instance a visible object—because of
which the object appears of another color or of another shape, or altered in some
other way. For they have supposed that of the impressions thus differing and con-
flicting, one of them must be true and the opposing one false. This is silly, character-
istic of people who do not understand the nature of things. For it is not the whole
solid body that is seen—to base our argument on objects of sight—but the color of
the solid body. And of the color, some is on the solid body itself, as when one sees
things from close up or from a moderate distance, and some is outside the solid
body and exists in the adjacent spaces, as in the case of things seen from a great
distance. And this is altered in the intervening space and takes on its own shape,
which produces an impression corresponding to what it really is like.
And just as neither the sound in the brass instrument that is struck, nor the sound
in the mouth of the man who shouts, is what we hear, but the sound that reaches our
sense; and just as no one says that the person who hears a faint sound from a dis-
tance is mishearing because, on coming close, the same sound is perceived as
louder—so I would not say that vision is deceived because it sees the tower as small
and round from a great distance, but from close at hand as larger and square. Rather,
I would say that it is telling the truth because when the object of sense appears to it
small and of that shape, it really is small and of that shape, since the edges of the
images are rubbed away as they travel through the air; and again when it appears
large and of a different shape, it is correspondingly large and of a different shape,
since it is no longer the same object that is both at once. For it is left to the distorted
50 Gisela Striker
opinion to believe that the object of vision seen from close at hand is the same as
that seen from a distance.9
This argument is obviously based on Epicurus’s theory of perception. He held that the
perceptions of the distance senses—vision, hearing, and smell—are caused by atomic
films or emanations constantly streaming from the surfaces of things. In the case of
vision, these “images” (εἴδωλα) may be damaged or distorted when coming from a
longer distance, and hence produce impressions different from those received close at
hand. In the last lines of this passage, it turns out that the objects of vision are taken to be
those images themselves rather than the objects from which they come, and the truth of
sense impressions is thus guaranteed by their correspondence to the images. This might
look like a short cut to truth, but of course it means that what we perceive is not the
external object we normally take it to be.
Contrast this with Lucretius’s explicit statement at DRN 4.256–58:
In this connection, you should not consider it strange that, although the images that
impinge on our eyes are not visible, the objects themselves are seen.
In other words, the images are the means of perception, not its objects. Lucretius, the
faithful Epicurean, is more likely than Sextus to report Epicurus’s doctrine accurately,
and a passage in Plutarch’s treatise Against Colotes (1121B–D) may actually show how the
rival interpretation arose.
Plutarch claims that Colotes was unwilling to accept the consequences of the view
that all sense impressions are true—namely the doctrine of the Cyrenaics, according to
which we can only perceive our own affections (πάθη):
For those who say that when we encounter a round image, or another one that is
bent, the sense receives a true impression, but will not let it declare as well that the
tower is round or the oar is bent, insist on their own affections and appearances, but
will not agree that the external objects are like that . . . .
Imagining a dialogue, Plutarch then has an Epicurean say:
By Zeus, but when I come closer to the tower or touch the oar, I will declare that the
oar is straight, the tower angular, whereas this man [sc. the Cyrenaic] will only agree
that it seems and appears so, even when he gets close.
Plutarch replies:
By Zeus indeed—for he is better at seeing and preserving the consequences of the

claim that every sense impression alike is trustworthy in itself, and none more than
any other, but to an equal degree.
9 Trans. Bury with modifications.

Epistemology 51
Plutarch obviously thinks that the Epicurean is taking the impression received near the
tower to be more reliable than the one received from a distance, and hence goes against
his own principle. But this is to misunderstand the Epicurean view about the limitations
of sense perception. The impression one receives from afar is vague: as Lucretius puts it,
“they [the towers] do not look like objects close at hand that are really round, but resem-
ble them in a shadowy fashion” (DRN 4.362–63), and so an Epicurean would refrain
from making a judgment about the exact shape of the tower while he can only see it from
a distance. That is the point of the distinction between what is already present and what
is still awaited. One might perhaps say that one sees a tower in the distance, but that one
cannot yet discern its shape. Lucretius admits that it may be difficult to observe the dis-
tinction, and so people will sometimes make mistakes, but the error lies in the judgment
of the mind, not in the sense impression (DRN 4.466–67):
Nothing is more difficult than to separate patent facts from the dubious opinions
that our mind at once adds of its own accord.
It is understandable that superficial or hostile readers of Epicurus would take his theory
of perception as evidence for the truth of sense impressions, but this reverses the order
of the argument. Epicurus argues for the existence of the images that reach the eye in
order to explain the functioning of the sense organs (see, e.g., Ep. Hdt. 46–48), and he
assumes that those images may be damaged or distorted in order to explain why things
look different when observed from different distances. These differences between
impressions are among the phenomena a scientific theory must seek to explain—as sci-
ence does to this day, though not in Epicurean terms.
It is better, then, to side with the faithful Epicurean, Lucretius. Epicurus’s theory can
be best understood as a response to the problems raised by his predecessors who seemed
to despair of the senses as a source of knowledge. And Epicurus in fact agrees with one
of the less pessimistic statements ascribed to Democritus. Here is Sextus quoting from
Democritus’s Canons:
These are his words: “Of knowledge (γνώμη) there are two forms, the one legitimate,
the other bastard; and to the bastard belong all these: sight, hearing, smell, taste,
touch. And the other is legitimate, and separated from that.” Then preferring the
legitimate to the bastard, he continues: “When the bastard can no longer see any-
thing smaller, or hear, or smell, or taste, or perceive by touch . . . (*but more fine*).”
Thus according to him too, reason, which he calls legitimate knowledge, is a cri-
terion (S.E. M. 7.139).10
The text is corrupt at the end of the second quotation, but it seems clear that Democritus
went on to say that reason, the legitimate form of knowledge, must take over, for example,
to discover that the world is made up of atoms and void.
10 Democr. fr. B11; trans. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers.

52 Gisela Striker
We do not know whether Democritus had found a way to answer his own reproach
of the senses I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, but Epicurus, as I have tried to
show, did so.
Epicurus’s Canon was intended as an introduction to the science of nature, and he was
surely right to insist that perceptual observation is indispensable. Even though it might
be difficult to avoid perceptual errors in individual cases, the “manifest facts”
(φαινόμενα) to which he appealed in his physics were not individual sense impressions.
One does not need to look for a special type of sense impression that is infallibly correct,
as the Stoics did; it is enough, as Epicurus says many times, to pay attention to all the
available evidence.
Scientific Method
At the beginning of the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus reminds Herodotus of the rules to
keep in mind for a scientific inquiry: first, it must be clear “what underlies words,” that
is, one must have grasped the preconceptions that belong to the subject under inquiry;
this was discussed above. The next rule indicates how the evidence furnished by the cog-
nitive faculties must be used to construct opinions or theories about things not accessi-
ble to direct observation:
Second, we should observe everything in accordance with the sense impressions

and in general the present applications of the mind or of any of the discriminatory
faculties, and likewise also in accordance with the feelings which exist in us, in
order to have a basis for sign-inferences about what is still awaited and about the
non-evident.11
It is characteristic of passages like this one that Epicurus speaks of the evidence coming
from all the available sources of evident truths. Here we also find the “applications of the
mind” that the later Epicureans counted among the criteria (DL 10.31). We do not have a
definition of the phrase, but the contexts in which it appears suggest that what is meant
is an attempt of the mind or the senses to arrive at accurate information—in other
words, careful observation as opposed to casual looking or listening that might lead to
errors. So Epicurus explains at Ep. Hdt. 51 that “error would not exist if we did not have
in ourselves another movement connected with the application to an impression, but
distinct from it.” Since the evidence obtained by an application of the mind still comes
through the senses, Epicurus himself probably did not treat it as an additional criterion.
The ways of testing the truth or falsity of opinions are briefly described in the next
sentence of Ep. Hdt.: “by this movement, falsehood arises if it is not attested or contested,
11 DL 10.38, following the passage about preconceptions quoted above; emphasis added.
Epistemology 53
but when it is attested or not contested, the truth.” A more detailed exposition appears in
Sextus Empiricus:
Of opinions, then, according to Epicurus, some are true, some false. True are those
attested and those uncontested by what is evident. Attestation is perception through
an evident impression of the fact that the object of opinion is such as it was believed
to be. For example, if Plato is approaching from far off, I form the conjectural opin-
ion, owing to the distance, that he is Plato. But when he has come close, there is
further testimony that he is Plato, now that the gap is reduced, and it is attested by
the evident itself.
Non-contestation is for the non-evident thing posited and believed to follow from
the evident appearance. For example, Epicurus, in saying that there is void, which
is non-evident, confirms this through the evident fact of motion. For if void does
not exist, there ought not to be motion either, since the moving body would lack
a place to pass into as a result of everything’s being full and solid. Therefore the
non-evident thing believed is uncontested by the evident appearance, since there
is motion.
Contestation, on the other hand, is something which conflicts with non-contestation.
For it is the elimination of the evident appearance by the positing of the non-evident
thing. For example, the Stoics say that void does not exist, judging something
non-evident; but once this is posited about it, the evident appearance, namely
motion, ought to be co-eliminated with it. For if void does not exist, necessarily
motion does not occur either, according to the method already demonstrated.
Likewise, too, non-attestation is opposed to attestation, being confrontation through
what is evident of the fact that the object of opinion is not such as it was believed to
be. For example, if someone is approaching from far off, we conjecture, owing to the
distance, that he is Plato. But when the gap is reduced, we recognize through that
which is evident that it is not Plato. That is what non-attestation is like: the thing
believed was not attested by the evident appearance.
Hence attestation and non-contestation are the criterion of something’s being
true, while non-attestation and contestation are the criterion of its being false.
And that which is evident is the foundation and basis of everything
(S.E. M. 7.211–16).12
Sextus is clearly not quoting from Epicurus directly, and his report is influenced by later
discussions,13 but it offers at least some examples to illustrate the method. For purposes
of discussion, it is easier to organize the text by types of opinion rather than by truth or
falsehood.
Judgments or opinions about observable objects can be accepted as true if they are
“attested” by perception, false if they are “not attested.” This sounds odd, for why should
a belief for which one does not have confirmatory evidence count as false? After all,
there will inevitably be many things or events that cannot be revisited to obtain additional

13 For a more detailed discussion of the anachronisms in this passage see Sedley, “On Signs.”
54 Gisela Striker
evidence—for instance, the end of a horse race, or a bird flying past. But Sextus’s
example shows what appears to be intended: opinions about observable objects must be
rejected as false if subsequent perception shows that things are not as they were believed
to be. Epicurus’s method serves to verify or falsify perceptual judgments, and so beliefs
about things or events that cannot be so verified fall outside the scope of the method.
This is understandable, since the inquirer into nature is not primarily interested in par-
ticular facts or events, but in types of things or events that occur regularly and can be
perceived by many observers, such as the waxing and waning of the moon, or indeed the
appearance of oars in and out of water. These are what Epicurus calls the phenomena or
“common perceptions” (Ep. Hdt. 82)—observable facts that are confirmed by every-
body’s repeated experience. It is these that form the evidential basis for his theory: for
example, the indisputable fact that there are bodies, “attested by the senses everywhere”
(Ep. Hdt. 39), and the equally public fact that there is movement are the phenomena to
which Epicurus appeals for the fundamentals of atomism, atoms and void.
For hypotheses about unobservable objects—things that are either too small to be
perceived, like atoms, or too distant to be carefully observed, such as the stars or the
phenomena of meteorology—direct confirmation or disconfirmation is impossible, and
so they must be tested through their relation to observable facts, that is, contestation or
non-contestation by the phenomena. An opinion about the unobservable is false if it has
an observable consequence that conflicts with an observable phenomenon. The stand
ard example here, also used by Sextus, is Epicurus’s argument for the existence of void
(Ep. Hdt. 40):
If there were not what we call void or place or the untouchable, the bodies would not
have anything through which to move, as they are plainly seen to move.
The movement of bodies, therefore, is a sign of the existence of void.

A hypothesis can be accepted as true if it is not contested by the phenomena. As in the
case of false beliefs about perceptible objects, this condition might seem too generous:
lots of hypotheses, for example, about events in the distant past are consistent with the
phenomena, but that is no reason to accept them all as true. However, once again, the
scope of the method is narrower than the general term “opinion” suggests. The method
is intended to test hypotheses about the unobservable causes of phenomena, and as
Epicurus’s practice in the letters shows, those will count as conflicting with the phenom-
ena if they either fail to explain what they are supposed to explain or, in the case of celes-
tial events and objects, if they are inconsistent with the ways in which similar events or
things that can be closely observed are produced. The evidence gained through the
senses thus shows us what kinds of hypotheses are possible, and in this sense the phe-
nomena form the basis of sign inferences for what we cannot directly observe. In some
cases, such as the existence of void, Epicurus maintains that there is only one possible
explanation, and hence only one way of agreeing with the phenomena. In the case of
celestial motions or meteorological phenomena such as thunder or lightning, however,
the phenomena around us indicate that there are several ways in which events like lunar
Epistemology 55
eclipses, the waxing and waning of the moon, or the noise in the clouds that we hear as
thunder can come about, since similar effects can be produced in more than one way. In
such cases, each of the several hypotheses consistent with the phenomena represents at
least a possible explanation. Since we cannot verify or falsify the hypotheses by direct
observation, scientific method, according to Epicurus, requires that we list them all and
accept them as possible—or perhaps even as true, if not in our world then in others.
Lucretius illustrates this with an example (DRN 6.703–11):
There are some phenomena for which it is not sufficient to state one cause: you must
mention several causes, though only one of these will be the true cause. Let me
illustrate this point. If you saw a lifeless human body lying at some distance, you
would naturally enumerate all the possible causes of death, to ensure that you men-
tioned the one true cause. For you could not be certain that the victim had perished
by the sword, or by cold, or by disease, or maybe by poison. But we do know that it
is something of this kind that has occasioned the death. And the same applies to
numerous phenomena.
By listing all the possible causes of death, we can be sure to have captured the actual
cause, though we cannot determine which one it was. In the case of meteorological or
celestial phenomena, Epicurus often admits that the list of possible causes might be
longer, but he insists that it is unscientific to name only one cause, because the observ-
able phenomena call for several possible ones. Astronomers who try to settle on a par-
ticular cause are wasting their time—and they also open the door to the possibility of
divine intervention, which makes them lapse into mythology (Ep. Pyth. 113). The gods,
of course, are excluded by Epicurus’s theological doctrine—but also, I think, because
Epicurus assumed that there must be an observable model or analogue for any accept-
able explanation, and divine intervention has never been observed. This is not a trivial
claim, since it sets further limits on possible theories, as can be seen in Epicurus’s
polemic against other theories that do not involve supernatural agents. For example,
here is Epicurus’s argument against the claim that the soul is incorporeal (Ep. Hdt. 67):
There is the further point to be considered, that according to the most common
usage we apply the term “incorporeal” to that which can be conceived as existing
by itself. But it is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal except the
void; and the void cannot act or be acted upon, but merely allows bodies to move
through it. Hence those who call the soul incorporeal are silly, for if it were so, it
could neither act nor be acted upon. But as it is, both these properties evidently
belong to the soul.
Aristotle, for one, certainly thought that his theory of the soul agreed with the observ-
able phenomena—this was after all a requirement of his own philosophical method. But
for Epicurus, the only conceivable incorporeal entity was the void. Anything that could
affect or move a body had to be a body itself, and so he concluded that the soul must be a
body consisting of extremely fine particles that made it too fine to be directly perceived.
56 Gisela Striker
Here it is the metaphysics of atomism, not the phenomena, that rules out an alternative
theory. Epicurus was confident that the concepts we acquire through perceptual experi-
ence and observation of the world around us must in principle be sufficient for under-
standing everything that goes on in the universe: what is inconceivable cannot exist.
Epistemology and Ethics
What we have considered so far is a general outline of epistemology and a method for
natural science that is narrower in scope. Those of Epicurus’s arguments for atomism
that involve only a single way of agreement with the phenomena could well be regarded
as proofs, although Epicurus seems to avoid the term for his own arguments. But they
were treated as proofs in later discussions of inferences from signs between Epicureans
and Stoics.14 They are not demonstrations in the Aristotelian sense, where the premises
of a proof not only imply, but also explain, the conclusion. Epicurus’s arguments are
what now would be called inferences to the best explanation—a label that may be mis-
leading, because those inferences are not logically valid. This does not mean that the
arguments are bad or faulty. The claim that there must be empty space if there is to be
motion may well be true or at least well supported by the evidence, but it does not follow
from the existence of motion that there must be empty space.
But sign inferences are not the only kind of argument used in philosophy or else-
where, and Epicurus’s general account of the relations between reason and perception
need not be taken to be merely a preface to the methodology of atomist physics.
Inferences from signs occur in arguments from perceptual evidence and so belong to,
e.g., the natural sciences or to trial cases. But what, for instance, about arguments in eth-
ics? Here we have very little information in the remaining fragments of Epicurus’s work,
and it seems likely that there was no explicit discussion of the subject in the Canon. The
only apparently technical term that seems to refer to some kind of philosophical reason-
ing is epilogismos (ἐπιλογισμός), a word that tends to be translated differently in differ-
ent contexts. In a study of its use, Schofield15 has suggested “appraisal or assessment” as a
general translation, and this seems plausible, since it does not imply any particular
method. Epicurus speaks of epilogismos once in a side remark about the study of time in
the letter to Herodotus (72–73). The argument seems to be that we do not have a precon-
ception of time as an independently existing object, and that we should therefore con-
sider the observable events in relation to which we speak of much or little time. We
would then realize that we think of time as a property of days and nights and their parts,
periods of motion and rest, and so on. This insight, he says, does not require proof, but
epilogismos, by which he means perhaps a reflection on what we think of when we use
14 For those later discussions about sign inferences, some of them preserved in a papyrus fragment
of Philodemus’s treatise On Signs, see Sedley, “On Signs”; Barnes, “Epicurean Signs”; and Allen,
Inference from Signs, study IV.
15 Schofield, “Epilogismos: An Appraisal.”
Epistemology 57
phrases like “a long time.” One might call the reasoning involved consideration, reflec-
tion, or assessment, but one would hardly call it a method.
A more revealing passage is, I think, in the letter to Menoeceus (133). This passage is
close to the end of the letter, after an exposition of the best life according to Epicurean
hedonism that concludes with a praise of practical wisdom (φρόνησις). Then comes the
triumphant rhetorical finale (Ep. Men. 133):
For who, do you think, is superior to the man who holds only pious beliefs about the
gods, who is forever free from the fear of death, and who has found out by reasoning
(ἐπιλελογισμένου) the end established by nature? He discerns that the highest limit
of goods is easy to fulfill and easy to acquire, that bad things have their limit in being
either short in duration or easy to bear . . . .
It seems clear that this person has not just thought about the goal of life, but arrived at
the correct (Epicurean) conception, and he has reached this insight by epilogismos.
I would suggest that the reasoning is sketched out in the preceding pages—a summary
of what was no doubt set out in more detail in Epicurus’s lost treatise about the goal of
life (Περὶ τέλους, mentioned at DL 10.28). It leads from the basic premise that goodness
and badness consist in pleasure and pain via a consideration of necessary and natural,
natural, and unnatural desires respectively to the conclusion that once all the natural
and necessary desires are fulfilled, all pain and distress are gone and one has reached a
state where no good is lacking—that is, happiness. This philosophical argument is one
that owes something to Plato (regarding the desires) and to Aristotle (regarding happi-
ness as the state where no good is lacking). One could also describe it as an assessment of
the facts of psychology and biology, though I suspect that epilogismos was simply the
term Epicurus used for any kind of philosophical reasoning that is not a form of deduc-
tion or inference from signs. But one should note that the argument’s first and most
important claim—that the good is pleasure—comes from Epicurean epistemology:
pleasure is the first thing we naturally recognize as good by perception, and our notions
of good and bad are derived from the feelings of pleasure and pain. It is for this reason
that they must serve as our guides in choice and avoidance. The criterion of the feelings
thus guarantees that hedonism in some version must be true; but we still need reason to
understand the nature of pleasure and desire, and what this means for the happy life.
As in natural philosophy so in ethics: the basic facts and concepts derive from the
senses, but philosophical argument and reflection must be used to arrive at the true con-
ception of happiness.
Epicurus has often been described as an empiricist—no doubt by contrast to Plato, for
whom the Forms were the true objects of scientific understanding. This is plausible to
the extent that Epicurus, like Democritus, clearly saw in sense perception the necessary
foundation for scientific knowledge of the world. But the labels “empiricism” and
“rationalism” did not yet exist in Epicurus’s time.16 In fact, they first appeared in the
16 See Allen, “Experience as a Source”; and Asmis, “Epicurean Empiricism.”

58 Gisela Striker
methodological debates of the Hellenistic doctors—and neither Democritus nor Epicurus

seem to have thought that all knowledge must in the end go back to sense perception.
Humans have two faculties for attaining knowledge, and Epicurus, reasonably enough,
followed Democritus in arguing that they needed to use both.
References
Allen, J. Inference from Signs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
————. “Experience as a Source and Ground of Theory in Epicureanism.” Apeiron 37 (2004):
89–106.
Asmis, E. “Epicurean Empiricism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, edited by
Barnes, J. The Presocratic Philosophers. London: Routledge and Paul, 1979.
————. “Epicurean Signs.” OSAPh suppl. Vol. 6 (1988): 91–134.
Long, A. A. and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge
Schofield, M. “Epilogismos: An Appraisal.” In Rationality in Greek Thought, edited by M. Frede
and G. Striker, 221–37. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Sedley, D. N. “On Signs.” In Science and Speculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice,
edited by J. Barnes et al., 239–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Striker, G. “The Problem of the Criterion.” In Epistemology, edited by S. Everson, 143–60.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. (Repr. in Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology
and Ethics, 150–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.)
Striker, G. “κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας.” In Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, 22–76.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Orig. publ. in German, 1973).
chapter 3
Atomism
David Konstan
Epicurus found in Democritus’s atomic theory, when suitably modified, the physical
grounds for his vision of psychological tranquility and bodily ease as the goal of life.1
That it served this purpose (to the extent that it did) was doubtless its chief virtue in
Epicurus’s mind; he was not concerned, for example, to develop new technologies on
the basis of this science, or, so far as we know, to advance theoretical physics for its own
sake (cf. KD 11, where Epicurus affirms that we would have no need of physical science
if we were free of distress).2 But once he had committed himself to the theory, he was
obliged to defend it against attacks from other quarters, above all those derived from
Aristotle, and to secure its coherence and explanatory power as a system. How
Epicurus’s version of atomism worked, and to what extent it was successful as a theory,
is the subject of this chapter.
Although a good deal more is known about Epicurean atomism than about
Democritus’s theory, the evidence is nevertheless sketchy in many respects, and some
gaps have to be filled in by conjecture. But conjecture must be consistent with the infor-
mation we have, and also find some support in the surviving testimonies, however
obscure or fragmentary they may be. I believe that Epicurus’s atomic theory was more
sophisticated and consistent than is sometimes supposed, and my efforts at reconstruc-
tion are guided by this hypothesis. But I shall indicate clearly what is reasonably certain
and what is mere surmise, and report the views of other scholars when they conflict with
or supplement my own interpretation.
1 I am deeply grateful to Francesco Verde, Jeffrey Fish, and Kirk Sanders for helpful comments on
an earlier draft of this chapter.
2 For the differences between Epicurean “naturalism” and modern scientific aims and methods, see
Milton, “The Limitations of Ancient Atomism,” 178–83; also Manolidis, Die Rolle der Physiologie.
60 DAVID KONSTAN
Atoms and Void
According to atomism, the fundamental constituents or principles of the world are

matter and void.3 Matter comes in the form of discrete particles of microscopic size;
they are bounded by void (when they do not abut one another), which is continuous in
the sense that one can draw a line from any point in space to any other without having to
cross a stretch of matter (this latter description is not Epicurus’s, so far as I know, but it
captures the distribution of void as he understood it).4 Atoms have several elementary
properties: these include shape, size, and weight,5 and, finally, resistance, that is, the
impenetrability of one atom or bit of matter by another (resistance is perhaps better
described as an attribute of matter as such). Void, on the other hand, is marked by extension
and, in contrast to atoms, by non-resistance: material objects such as atoms can pass
through it without the least hindrance.6 Since atoms and void, with their scarce attributes,
are the only elementary constituents of things, all perceived qualities are understood to
be effects of the shape, size, orientation, and position (relative to other particles) of the
atoms, and any changes in these qualities are the result of movements of the atoms in
space, and of these only.
The task of accounting for the variety and complexity of phenomena on the basis of so
simple a set of functions was daunting, and it challenged the considerable ingenuity of
Epicurus and his followers. To some degree the task was made easier, however, insofar as
the Epicureans did not seek to confirm their assumptions by direct observation and
experiment, which was in practice impossible, but were content to demonstrate that
their explanations were not contradicted by observable phenomena (what they dubbed
3 Francesco Verde suggests to me that the apparent absence, in Epicureanism, of a general term for
“matter” (hyle) is itself an indication of the Epicureans’ thoroughgoing materialism. I should point out
here that my analytic account of Epicurus’s theory does not reproduce Epicurus’s own order of
exposition in his Letter to Herodotus (which perhaps follows more or less the arrangement of topics in
his magnum opus, the Physics), nor again the analogous exposition in Lucretius’s De rerum natura; for a
survey that does follow Epicurus’s exposition, see Sedley, “Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics,”
362–82.
4 My geometrical description of void (or to kenon, “what is empty,” in Epicurus’s terminology) is not
entirely uncontroversial. One might, for example, understand “void” in the sense of “space,” which
would include not just the interstices between atoms but also the space that atoms themselves are
presumed to occupy. One might infer such a view from Lucr. DRN 1.421: “for there exist bodies and
void [inane], in which bodies are located and where they move in various directions [haec in quo sita
sunt et qua diversa moventur]” (cf. 1.426–28; Ep. Hdt. 40). For this and other conundrums concerning
the Epicurean conception of void (e.g., the idea of “place”), see Sedley, “Two Conceptions of Vacuum”;
brief account in Sedley, “Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics,” 367–69; for “space” as the complement
of atoms (that is, just where atoms are not), see Inwood, “The Origin of Epicurus’ Concept of Void”;
Konstan, “Epicurus on the Void”; cf. also Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 93–98.
5 Weight is a feature that Epicurus evidently added to Democritus’s account; see below.
6 Epicurus emphasizes its lack of tactility (anaphēs physis, Ep. Hdt. 39–40), in contrast to atoms,
which can touch and be touched. In a derivative way, the void also has shape, insofar as it is conceived
of as the space not occupied by atoms.
Atomism 61
antimartyrēsis or “counter-witnessing”) and were more plausible or intuitively self-evident

than those of rival physical theories.
Neither atoms nor void are directly visible, and the Epicureans were obliged to deduce
their existence from the properties of perceptible things (for the place of inference from
observables in Epicurean epistemology, see Chapter 2). That some things in the world
offer resistance to penetration was clear; so too was the fact that even the hardest of
these is subject to fracture and erosion: metal and stone are worn away, and can be burnt,
bent, or smashed. Their relative impermeability, accordingly, must be due to the solidity
of their component parts, which in turn must be very small, since any perceptible bit of
these materials is still frangible. Indeed, the same holds for less tough materials, includ-
ing air, to the extent that they offer any resistance at all: the difference in hardness is due
simply to the relative compactness of their constituent corpuscles. Now, there are other
ways to explain, in theory, why things break or are worn down: the elementary material
of which they are made, for example, may not be absolutely rigid or unyielding, and so
it can be snapped or ground down; differences in resistance may be due, in turn, to the
relative density of the prime material, which is assumed, on this theory, to be elastic
(something like this may have been the view of Anaximenes). The Epicurean objection
to this idea was that, if the elementary material was friable or destructible, then noth-
ing prevented it from being worn down to nothing, and over sufficient time all the mat-
ter in the universe would have crumbled out of existence. That it has not done so till
now—and the Epicureans assumed that time was infinite in both directions, past and
future—is proof that there must be some limit to obliteration, even if it is below the
threshold of the senses (cf. Lucr. DRN 1.215–24). Of course, one could argue in return
that the bits and pieces into which things dissolve can recombine into larger units. The
Epicureans doubted, however, that particles scattered throughout the universe and
continually subject to further dissolution could unite with the same facility with which
they are dissipated, and so conserve the sum total of matter. In this, they would seem to
have been guided by a reasonable intuition of entropy. A similar reply could be made to
the objection that matter, even if partable, does not disintegrate into nothing, but is infi-
nitely divisible into forever diminishing bits that never reach zero (the view maintained
by the Stoics): the tendency to disorder always exceeds that to order, unless one assumes
some kind of constructive principle, such as ideal forms (in the manner of Plato and
Aristotle), that shapes matter into complex entities. But this was precisely the thesis that
the Epicureans radically rejected, in limiting the basic cosmogonic principles to matter
and void: void was the only immaterial element that they recognized.7
The basic material components of the universe, then, are tiny indivisible particles, or
atoms (from the Greek for “unsplittable”). These atoms are located in the void, the evi-
dence for the existence of which is that the atoms can move. If atoms were not in motion,
the world would be permanently frozen and unchanging; but the evidence of the senses
testifies that this is not the case. Hence, the atoms are subject to displacement, and this is
possible only if they are located in a non-resisting medium, which is what void is, by
7 The Stoics too allowed for immaterial entities, for example “meanings” (lekta) and time.
62 DAVID KONSTAN
definition. Of course, there are certain kinds of motion that do not require void: the
rotation of a sphere is one example. But any perceptible sphere must be composed, as we
have seen, of atomic particles, which would have to move in orbits around the center of
the sphere. A single atom, if it were spherical, could rotate in place, but the difference
between one orientation and another would be indiscernible. For an atom to change
place, there must be space for it to move. Now, one could argue that the medium in
which atoms move is mushy, and atoms can slide through it, even though it is not empty
of matter; but we have already seen the Epicurean objection to the notion of soft matter.
Alternatively, one might imagine that the universe is a plenum, that is, full of inelastic
matter, but that composite objects can slide past each other, the way a fish passes through
water: the fish advances and the water runs round it simultaneously, without leaving any
gap (such was Aristotle’s view: Physics 214a26–214b11). If we think of atoms as little cubes
with slick surfaces, they could conceivably slip by each other this way in rows and files.
But somewhere there must be void, according to the Epicureans, for the first atom in line
to move; and once the notion of void is granted, there is no need to resort to the counter-
intuitive idea of synchronized displacement.
The idea of empty space is familiar enough to us that we may wonder why anyone
objected to it in antiquity. Some Greek thinkers (Parmenides and Plato among them)
maintained that the existence of a void was a contradiction in terms: matter is what is,
and void is what is not; if it is not, it cannot be. The conundrum, so expressed, seems
merely verbal, and we may be inclined to dismiss it as a sophism, but it is not entirely
silly; indeed, there are physical theories today that hold that space is full.8 One way to
answer the puzzle is to assume that void is not in fact just nothing: after all, it has certain
properties, for example non-resistance to matter. It also contributes to the qualities of
compound objects: cotton is lighter than lead because it is less dense, that is, has a larger
proportion of void per cubic unit. If space were truly nothing, or a pure absence, it could
not act as a cause.9 It is also possible, as I hinted above, to define matter and void in a
purely geometrical fashion: matter is what comes in discrete bounded units (these hap-
pen to be very small), and space is what surrounds these units: color the one black, the
other white, if you like. Particles of matter do not alter their shape, but the surrounding
area does as atoms move through it.10 It is doubtful, however, that Epicurus would have
described his two basic principles in so abstract or reductive a way, and, as we shall see
below, there were good reasons for him not to.11
8 For a highly speculative statement of the cosmos as plenum, see Van Flandern, Dark Matter,
Missing Planets and New Comets. A related view is that empty space, understood strictly as “nothing,”
nevertheless is permeated by energy and can generate matter. See Krauss, A Universe from Nothing, e.g.
p. 103 on “allowing for empty space to have energy.”
9 The Epicureans do not seem to speak of quantity of space relative to number and size of atoms as
a factor in density, but this conception of space as an agent has been raised by others.
10 Betegh, “Epicurus’ Argument for Atomism” argues that Epicurus’s thesis in Ep. Hdt. 40–41 is not
so much that atoms are hard (and hence uncuttable) as that they are inalterable in shape; hardness, of
course, simply guarantees inalterability, but perhaps it is an unnecessary premise.
11 Among other things, what would happen when atoms touch? This problem is addressed below.
Verde, “TRIGŌNA ATOMA” argues that the Epicurean theory was in fact a response to the
mathematical conception of Plato and Xenocrates.
Atomism 63
Minima
So far, Epicurus’s atomic system, while open to objections, is fairly straightforward. But
there is a wrinkle in it that raises more subtle questions. For Epicurus introduced, to all
appearances, an innovation in the theory of Democritus in maintaining that atoms,
while they are physically unsplittable, are in fact made up of smaller parts, to which he
gave the name of elakhista or, in Latin, minima or “least” bits. Now one motive for giving
atoms an internal structure of this sort is obvious: if atoms come in different shapes (and
we shall see that they do), then they cannot themselves be of the smallest conceivable
size; one cannot cut them up, to be sure, but one can identify parts and extremities and
the like, such as the hooks that some atoms have, which allow them to interlock with
others and form stable compounds. Very well: but is there a smallest bit, of a size that is
theoretically minimal, and which cannot be reduced even in thought? That is, is the finest
texture of things somehow granular or quantized, so that an atom must contain such
and such a quantity of minimal parts, and no more? The Epicureans held that this was
so, and it substantially enriched their theory.
Why should Epicurus have adopted such a view? It is commonly supposed that he did
so in response to Zeno’s paradoxes, which exposed ostensible contradictions in the
assumption of infinite divisibility.12 Thus, if swift-footed Achilles is to catch a tortoise
that has a lead on him, he will have first to reach the place where the tortoise started, by
which time the tortoise will have crawled ahead a bit; and so Achilles will have to cover
that distance, by which time . . . and so on to infinity. But since it is impossible to make an
infinite number of moves in a finite time, Achilles can never catch the tortoise. Modern
versions of the paradox are equally puzzling. For instance, if you turn a light switch on at
one second, off half a second later, on again after a quarter of a second, and keep going by
halves, after two seconds will the switch be on or off? The answer is: either.13 In any case,
Epicurus is assumed to have been inspired by this kind of argument to put a limit to
divisibility, and so he arrived at the doctrine of minimal parts of atoms. There is some
truth to this account, but it is not the whole story. We shall return in a moment to the
question of motion, but at issue here is the structure, as it were, of the atom, and Zeno’s
riddles need not have led Epicurus to assume that there were smallest bits of matter.
Concerning Democritus’s theory, ancient testimonies report two different explana-
tions for why atoms could not be split: that they are too hard, and that they are too small
(Simplicius 231a21–29 = Diels-Kranz 67A13). The latter would seem to imply that atoms
were of a theoretically minimal size, unless Democritus was making the crudely practical
12 See Sedley, “Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics,” 357 on the idea of minima propounded by
Diodorus Cronus (slightly earlier than Epicurus): “there can be little doubt that the paradoxes of
divisibility propounded in the fifth century bc by Zeno of Elea are their ultimate inspiration”; cf. also
Giannantoni, “Aristotele, Diodoro Crono e il moto degli atomi.”
13 The paradox is sometimes referred to as Thomson’s Lamp; it was first propounded in Thomson,
“Tasks and Super-Tasks.”
64 DAVID KONSTAN
point that they are just too tiny to slice, like cutting poppy seeds with a knife. In any case,
not all atoms can have been of minimal dimensions, since Democritus, like Epicurus,
held that atoms come in various sizes (one rather dubious report tells us that, according
to Democritus, there could be atoms the size of a cosmos).14 Perhaps Democritus held
that some atoms were minima in the theoretical sense, and these were uncuttable
because of their smallness rather than their hardness (might they have been soul
atoms?).15 If so, then this is precisely the idea that Epicurus rejected, since he maintained
that minima could never be freestanding, but existed only as parts of composite matter.
This feature too needs explication, and to understand the reasons for it, we must turn
to Aristotle.
Suppose an atom were partless in the theoretical sense, that is, that it could no more
be divided than a mathematical point can be. What happens when two such entities are
placed side by side? If they are truly point-like, they will have no edges: that is, for some-
thing to have an edge, one must be able to distinguish between the edge and what it is the
edge of, and so it cannot be theoretically indivisible. This is why two points that are
adjacent must simply overlap, as Aristotle observed (Physics 6.1, 231a20–231b10): put
together as many points as you like, the result will be a single point. Hence, even though
there are infinite points in a line, a line cannot be composed of points, in the sense that
one could assemble freestanding points to produce it. Points exist, but only as parts of
lines or of two- or three-dimensional items.16
Now, whereas a point is a mathematical abstraction, with no mass and hence not a
material entity, Epicurus’s minima have dimensions, albeit of infinitesimal extension; if
you add up enough of them, they will produce a finite length (I will consider in a
moment just how many minima it takes to do so, and what the relevant sense of “infini-
tesimal” is in this connection). Nevertheless, they share with points the absence of any
internal differentiation whatsoever, including that needed for there to be an edge.
Hence, they too cannot be assembled into larger units by being placed edge to edge, but
exist only as parts of an extended substance, that is, of atoms. Atoms, in turn, can have
edges, since they are not minima and an edge can be distinguished from the body of the
particle. The edge is, presumably, one minimum thick: it is just the outermost layer of
minimal parts. That atoms have edges explains why they do not simply fuse when they
meet; rather, they touch edge to edge, like macroscopic entities. Just why the edges of two
atoms do not themselves fuse remains something of a mystery; I suppose that they are
inseparably attached to the atoms of which they form a part, and this degree of structure
14 Diels-Kranz 68A43, from Aëtius; cf. Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 105–107.

15 Drozdek, “The Atomists on the Soul” argues that for Democritus soul atoms, and only soul atoms,
are self-moving: “The reason is that spherical atoms are always in motion since this is their nature
(A104); the source of motion of the soul atoms is their round shape and small size (A10)” (p. 32). Soul
atoms were doubtless more mobile than others, but I doubt that Democritus considered them to
constitute a distinct class of self-moving particles.
16 Francesco Verde reminds me that Aristotle employs in this context the term “limit” (peras) rather
than “part” (meros); cf. O’Brien, “Démocrite à l’Académie?”. Verde suggests that this may explain why
Epicurus speaks of the minima of the atom as perata (Ep. Hdt. 59); cf. Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 166–68.
Atomism 65
is sufficient to keep the bits of matter distinct. If Epicurus had simply conceived of atoms
and space geometrically, as noted above, it would have been difficult to discriminate
between two cubical figures side by side and one single oblong figure; the line dividing
the two atoms would be purely theoretical, with no physical significance. With solid
matter, we must imagine the line as composed of two distinct minimal edges or surfaces.
This is simply a fact of nature: were it not so, atoms would indeed fuse upon collision. One
way of escaping this conclusion is to posit that atoms never in fact meet, but that there
always remains an infinitesimal space between them; such a view would import other
problems, not necessarily insoluble, but there does not seem to be any evidence that
Epicurus adopted it, though it may well have occurred to him or to later Epicureans.17
Aristotle’s discussion of points and lines was part of an attack on the notion of indi-
visibles, and he took the argument further: if, he maintained, one affirmed that space
was not infinitely divisible, but that one necessarily arrived at minima that were not
dimensionless but nevertheless could not be further reduced, then one had to accept in
addition the idea that motion over such spatial minima was discontinuous.18 That is, a
moving object would have to cross such a minimum unit in a single bound, since it
could not pass through it gradually: to do that, it would have at some moment to be
located partway through the minimum, but a minimum has no parts. Since motion,
moreover, is a factor of time as well as space, Aristotle further concluded that, for any
theory of minima, time too must be quantized, and hence motion takes place in a salta-
tory fashion, over one quantum of space per quantum of time. In proposing this radical
conception of time and space, Aristotle was responding directly to Zeno’s paradoxes,
which he describes in detail, and so his argument addresses not just the composition of
matter and the problem of edgeless points, but the question of continuous motion as
well. The remarkable fact is that Epicurus adopted Aristotle’s hypothetical thesis whole-
sale, and affirmed that atoms in fact cannot be said to move over minimal distances, in
17 The view finds some support in later commentaries: Luria, “Die Infinitesimaltheorie der antiken
Atomisten,” frr. 236–37: e.g., Philoponus on De generatione et corruptione 1.8, p. 158: “Democritus did
not speak precisely of contact when he said that the atoms are in contact with one another . . . but
rather what he called contact was the atoms being near one another and not standing very far apart”;
but the interpretation of these passages is insecure. Luria, “Die Infinitesimaltheorie der antiken
Atomisten,” 154–56, followed by Taylor, concluded that Democritus in fact invoked such a principle,
and justified it (according to Taylor) by appealing to a force of repulsion (The Atomists, 187: “Hence
what appears to be impact [between atoms] is in fact action at an extremely short distance; rather than
actually banging into one another, atoms have to be conceived as repelling one another by some sort of
force transmitted through the void”); for a critique of the notion of forces in ancient atomism, see
Konstan, “Democritus the Physicist.” Bodnár, “Atomic Independence and Indivisibility” appeals to the
inalterability or “formal coherence” of atoms as the reason why they do not fuse upon contact, but this
ignores what I take to be the crucial role of minima; Bodnár surveys and rejects alternative
explanations such as “remote touch” of atoms and “unextended contact,” that is, contact at a point (an
explanation that might work if atoms were all curved in the right way, but there is no evidence for such
an idea in Epicurus). Hasper, “The Foundations of Presocratic Atomism” proposes (at least for
Democritus) the principle that unity cannot arise out of plurality and vice versa to explain why two
atoms cannot merge into one.
18 See Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists, 128–29.
66 DAVID KONSTAN
the sense of advancing in a continuous fashion, but rather can only be said “to have
moved”; they are at one instant of time located in one position, and in the next discrete
instant at another position, one minimum unit further on (this aspect of the theory
seems to have been adopted as orthodox Islamic doctrine several centuries later).19
Atoms moving in this way, moreover, would all proceed at the same speed. This conclu-
sion was perhaps not forced on Epicurus, since he might have allowed that an atom can
rest at one place for two or more temporal instants, and then jump forward; but this
would have imported a greater complication, since it would have been necessary to
explain why this should be the case in some situations but not others: what would make
an atom pause sometimes and not at other times? Indeed, what would prevent an atom
from being wholly at rest, staying in the same place forever? Precisely to avoid this
potential kind of entropy, Epicurus was wise to predicate the permanent and uniform
motion of all atoms, without allowing them ever to slow down: this was the doctrine of
“equal speed” (isotakheia).20 Atoms keep on moving because that is how they function
in space and time.21
A fully quantized description of space, time, and motion had substantial consequences
for Epicurean atomism, and led to paradoxes of its own. One of the most interesting is
that reported by the sceptical philosopher, Sextus Empiricus (M. 10.144–47), as a way of
confuting Epicurus. Sextus (or his source) proposed the following thought experiment.
Imagine that two atoms are nine minimum units apart; add that they are approaching
19 Epicurus’s Ep. Hdt. 62, which discusses atomic motions in compound bodies, is exceptionally
dense, but I think it is clear that atoms continue to move at one minimum of space per minimum of
time even as they rebound from frequent collisions. Their overall velocity in any given direction over a
perceptible interval of time is of course variable (for a different view, see Verde, “Minimi temporali”
and Epistola a Erodoto, 182–87, who argues that the idea of temporal minima arose somewhat later,
though it perhaps goes back to Epicurus himself; Verde has now elaborated on this question, and on all
aspects of minima in Epicureanism, in Verde, Elachista, which is the authoritative study of the sources).
On Islamic doctrine and its possible debt to Epicureanism, see Konstan, “Ancient Atomism and Its
Heritage.”
20 Laks, “Minima und noematische Geeschwindigkeit” observes that, despite the testimony of
Simplicius (Ad Phys. Diels 925.13–22 = Usener 268; Diels 938.17–22 = Usener 277) and Themistius (Ad
Phys. Schenkl 184.11–13 = Usener 278a, where the idea that atoms do not move over minimal units of
space but rather “have moved” is ascribed to Epicurus), Epicurus argued (Ep. Hdt. 46–47) for the equal
speed of atoms not so much with reference to Aristotle’s puzzles in Physics Book 6 concerning the
necessary correlation between minima of space, time, and motion, but rather with reference to
Aristotle’s argument in Book 4 to the effect that motion in an absolute void must be infinitely rapid;
Epicurus chose rather to describe atoms as covering every “comprehensible interval” (perilēpton mēkos)
in an unthinkable time (aperinoētōi khronōi), that is, a very small temporal interval: their motion is
inconceivably fast, but not infinite. Epicurus explains the high atomic velocity as due to the absence of
collisions in the void, which does not necessarily constitute a response to Aristotle, though he may well
have had Aristotle’s claims in mind; the two lines of argument mesh nicely, as Laks points out, and
might well go back to Epicurus himself rather than to the doxographical tradition, as Laks believes
likely. For Epicurus’s notion of incomprehensibly large magnitudes, see below.
21 Epicurus’s notion of weight, which he ascribed to atoms, perhaps served as a reason why atoms
should always be on the move, with a motion that would necessarily be of uniform velocity for the
reasons given (cf. Simplicius Ad Phys. 9.697.32–35, citing Alexander of Aphrodisias); but I believe that
weight in fact had another function, as will be made clear below.
Atomism 67
each other in a direct line, and doing so, as per the doctrine of uniform velocity, at one
minimum of space per minimum of time. After one instant, they will be seven minima
apart; after two, five; after three, three, and after four instants, just one minimum unit
will separate them. What now? They cannot meet halfway in the remaining minimum of
space, because there is no halfway point in a minimum. Nor can one atom cross the
minimum in a leap, while the other remains stationary, since this would violate the prin-
ciple of uniform speed. Hence, the atoms can never meet. But then what? Do they
rebound? But they have not collided. Do they just sit there? But that cannot be either.
That is Sextus’s puzzle.
I believe that this dilemma must have rested on genuine Epicurean suppositions, for if
it did not, it would have convinced no one; after all, Epicureanism was a live doctrine at
the time the puzzle was propounded, and if Epicureans did not in fact maintain, for
example, that atoms move at a uniform speed, they would have said so and that would be
that. I also believe that the Epicureans must have had some answer to the paradox, or at
least that they did not simply let it stand and concede that their doctrine was incoherent.
I argue that the answer involved a sophisticated conception of the nature of minima, and
one that was capable, among other things, of responding to objections to the theory that
were raised on purely mathematical grounds, such as the problem of incommensurables:
that is, what to make of the incommensurability between the side and the diagonal of a
square or cube, if all dimensions are finite multiples of the minimum unit. The solution
to these difficulties must lie in the nature of the minimum itself: it has to have been a
strange entity, quite different from anything encountered in the perceptible world, and
imagining it as a small cube or figure of any other shape is inevitably to have a distorted
image of it. That is, a minimum is not just a minuscule version of ordinary matter;
although it has extension, its properties are in other respects as distinct from strictly
finite entities as a point is from a solid mass.22
“The Not Strictly Infinite”
The clue to Epicurus’s conception of the minimum resides, I believe, in the distinction
he draws between three orders of magnitude on the macroscopic scale: the finite, the
infinite, and a third, intermediate magnitude which he calls “not strictly (or simply:
22 Just what a minimalistic geometry might look like, and whether Epicurus or his colleagues
developed such a theory, is debated; for an overview, see Angeli and Dorandi, “Gli epicurei e la
geometria,” who remark (p. 3) that the Epicurean theory was not merely negative but “aveva compreso
anche una fase costruttiva attraverso la proposta di un tipo di geometria ‘atomistica’ coerente con
l’ontologia proposta dal fondatore del Giardino.” For a more detailed treatment, see Angeli and
Dorandi, “Il pensiero matematico di Demetrio Lacone”; further discussion of Epicureanism and
geometry in Bénatouil, “Les critiques épicuriennes de la géométrie,” who observes (p. 157): “Il est certes
difficile d’admettre qu’une véritable ‘géometrie’ (au sens des mathématiciens antiques) atomiste ou
finitiste ait été développée par les épicuriens, et ce d’autant plus qu’on n’en conserve aucune trace”; also
Giovvachini, “L’angle et l’atome dans la physique Epicurienne.”
68 DAVID KONSTAN
haplōs) infinite,” also described as “inconceivably” large (oukh haplōs apeiroi alla monon
aperilēptoi).23 This last quantity is applied to a small number of features in the universe,
including the number of shapes in which atoms come and certain vast distances men-
tioned in the discussion of the speed at which atoms travel.24 By contrast, the extent of
space and time is infinite, according to Epicurus (we shall discuss the reasons why
below), as is the number of atoms, and indeed the number of atoms of any given shape,
though the variety of shapes is not. Now, one may imagine that by “inconceivable” or
“ungraspable” (aperilēpton) Epicurus meant to signify nothing more than an extremely
large number, of a magnitude that one cannot in practice count (e.g., the grains of sand
on a beach), but which is nevertheless finite in principle, like any ordinary quantity. But
Epicurus does not subsume other, actually incalculable quantities under the category of
the “not strictly infinite,” and extending it to embrace any huge number threatens to
trivialize the idea. Modern mathematics has distinguished between denumerable and
non-denumerable infinities (the set of integers is an example of the former, the set of real
numbers an example of the latter), but these classes are of no help in approaching
Epicurus’s conception, since he is clear that, though inconceivably large, the quantity in
question is not infinite (or not strictly so). As it happens, such finite but theoretically
(and not just practically) incalculable quantities have been identified, or constructed, by
modern mathematicians; an example is the value called omega: “omega is perfectly well
defined and it is a specific number, but it is impossible to compute in its entirety.”25 I do
not for a moment imagine that Epicurus had defined such a quantity in a rigorous way
(though I would not put it beyond the ability of Archimedes to have done so, if he had
wished); but his intuition concerning such a possibility should be taken seriously. We may
note in passing that the Stoics too seem to have entertained such a quantity, if we can
trust Plutarch’s account (De comm. not. 1079B–C): “ ‘When we are asked,’ says Chrysippus,
‘whether we contain any parts and how many and of what parts they are composed and
how many, we shall employ a distinction, on the one hand positing on a large scale that
we are composed of head and torso and limbs, for this was all there was to the question
and the paradox; but if they extend this questioning to ultimate parts,’ he says, ‘we must
not answer any such thing, but rather we must say neither out of what things we consist
nor, similarly, out of how many, whether of an infinite or a finite number.’ ” Plutarch
treats this response as an evasion: “For if, just as there is the indifferent between good
and bad, there is some middle term between finite and infinite, he should have resolved
the puzzle by saying what this is” (De comm. not. 1079B–C). Epicurus, at all events, was
explicit on the matter.
The primary example of an incomprehensible quantity in Epicureanism is, as we
have seen, the variety of shapes of atoms, and between them Epicurus and Lucretius
23 Ep. Hdt. 42; for Epicurus’s conception of conceivability and inconceivability, see Konstan,
“Περíληψις in Epicurean Epistemology.”
24 Ep. Hdt. 42, 46–47; cf. Lucr. 4.141–217; the nature and movement of eidôla, the simulacra or films
emitted by visible objects, was discussed in the second book of Epicurus’s On Nature; see Leone,
Epicuro Sulla natura libro II, esp. 116–31.
25 See Chaitin, “The Limits of Reason,” 79.
Atomism 69
indicate the reason why. On the one hand, a strictly finite variety could not generate the
extraordinary complexity and diversity of perceptible things; on the other hand, an
infinite variety of atomic shapes would lead to two unacceptable results. First, Epicurus
reasons, it would allow for the existence of every imaginable entity, since there would
be no limit to possible atomic combinations; but in fact, despite the great diversity of
phenomena, the number of natural kinds is far from infinite (species do not occur in con-
tinuous gradations, for example, but are discrete), and some are self-evidently excluded,
for instance monstrous hybrids such as centaurs or other mythological creatures.26
Second, if atoms came in infinite varieties, then some would have to reach visible pro-
portions, but this is seen not to be the case, “nor is it possible to think (epinoēsai) how an
atom might become visible” (Ep. Hdt. 56).
Lucretius fills in the explanation of why an infinite number of atomic kinds must
result in atoms of indefinitely great size: it has to do with the minuscule but nevertheless
non-zero magnitude of the minimum parts. For any given number of minima, there is
only a finite number of ways to arrange them. As Lucretius puts it: “take particles made
of two or three minima, or increase them by a few more” (2.485–86), and locate the parts
top and bottom, left and right, in any way you please; at a certain point, you will not be
able to produce any further variations without adding more minima, and eventually you
will have to add so many that the atom will become immense. Now, one might under-
stand Lucretius to be suggesting that, although individual minima cannot be freestanding,
an atom may consist of as few as two, or a little more. This, I think, would be to mistake a
thought experiment, simplified for the sake of clarity, for a rigorous statement about the
composition of atoms in Epicurean theory. After all, atoms come in an incomprehensi-
bly large variety of shapes, and still do not reach a visible size: the number of minima
that make up some of these types, at least, must be of a comparable order of magnitude.
If so, then a number of minima that is not strictly infinite is not sufficient to produce a
magnitude of perceptible proportions; and this leads us to infer, in turn, that the dimen-
sions of the minimum may be related to the order of magnitude called “incomprehensi-
ble” precisely as its inverse. To put it differently, if minima were of some finite size, then
multiplying them by an incomprehensibly large figure would generate an immense and
presumably visible atom; thus, they must be small enough for this not to be the case.
The minimum, then, while not zero, is infinitesimal in the sense just specified. This is, I
believe, a reasonably safe deduction. Less certain, but highly plausible in my view, is the
proposition that even the smallest atom contains an incomprehensibly large number of
minima. Minima are such that to accumulate to any measurable extension, they must be
multiplied, if not infinitely—for this would result in an infinite length—at all events by
more than any finite quantity one can name.
The above argument, though to a degree speculative, provides an account of minima
that goes part way to answering the ingenious puzzle propounded by Sextus Empiricus.
For one could claim that his hypothetical diagram of two approaching atoms presupposes
26 For limited variation as a way of accounting for the discreteness of species, see De Lacy, “Limit
and Variation in the Epicurean Philosophy.”
70 DAVID KONSTAN
a mental image of minima as ordinary intervals, with the intervening space imagined as
measurable by finite multiples of them, a little like Lucretius’s picture of atoms consisting
of two or three minima. But suppose that minima, despite the fact that incomprehensibly
large amounts of them add up to perceptible spans, do not obey all the laws that govern
finite numbers. For example, if any imaginable set of minima is already almost, if not
strictly, infinite, it may not be possible to determine whether their number is odd or
even, any more than it is in the case of infinite sets (compare the conundrum of the light
switch, above). That even and odd might be indiscernible in the case of very large
numbers was a commonplace of Stoic epistemology, recorded in many sources, and it
was also ascribed, though less frequently, to Epicureanism. Put more technically, in the
case of certain numerically large groups of things, such as the stars, it is not that we do
not know, or yet know, whether the predicate F or not-F applies to them, but rather it is
true that neither F nor not-F applies. In particular, although oddness or evenness is
predicable of ordinary quantities, neither can be predicated of such indeterminately
large groups as stars (Sextus Empiricus P. 2.97; M. 8.147, 318) or (another common example)
the hairs on one’s head.27 If this is so, then we may perhaps say that, from an Epicurean
viewpoint, Sextus’s challenge fails because it is badly formulated. One may still object,
of course, that at some moment the atoms must be just one minimum apart, whatever
the case with imagined intervals. But if a minimum is indeed of infinitesimal size, then
separation by a single minimum is like being separated by the width of an edge, and this
may be as good as contact.
Infinity
Putting aside the tantalizing problems associated with infinitesimal minima, which may
never be satisfactorily resolved, we may consider now the reasons why the Epicureans
held that the universe was infinite in extent, and some of the difficulties that this suppo-
sition entailed. In principle, their answer was easy. Imagine that the universe has a limit:
stand at the limit, and stick out your arm (or cast a spear); if it meets resistance, then
there is something massive beyond the limit; if it does not, then there is space. Either
way, the universe extends beyond the limit, and this thought experiment works for any
limit you set; hence, the universe extends infinitely. This is not an absurd argument, but
it depends on certain intuitions about the nature of space that were not shared by all
ancient thinkers, and in particular not by Aristotle.28 Epicurus conceived of space geo-
metrically, and Aristotle agreed that, in mathematics, a line can be extended indefinitely.
But in the real world, Aristotle held, paradoxes result from the hypothesis of infinite
27 Sextus Empiricus M. 11.59 = SV 3.122; so too for the number of grains of sand on a beach: M. 8.147,
cf. Catullus 7.
28 The mathematician Archytas of Tarentum (Diels-Kranz 47A24) made much the same argument
as Epicurus; cf. Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 101.
Atomism 71
extension, since distances have real effects, for example on the force of attraction: since
heavy objects like stones require, on Aristotle’s view, ever-greater force to lift them away
from the place to which they tend by nature, namely the center of the world, any object
an infinite distance from the center would have infinite weight, and require infinite force
to keep it there. Since this is inconceivable, the real world is bounded; outside it, there is
nothing—that is, not empty space, but literally nothing.
The Epicureans were not impressed by the argument from weight, since they intro-
duced another explanation for why things rise and fall, independent of natural places
(we shall turn to this in a moment). From the belief that space was infinitely extended, it
followed that the number of atoms must also be infinite. A finite number of atoms in
infinite space would be scattered so widely that they could never combine to create a
world such as the one we live in, or other such worlds which must, of necessity, have
come and continue to come into being elsewhere, in infinite numbers. Given that the
variety in kinds of atoms is only inconceivably large, moreover, an infinite number of
atoms also entails that there must be an infinite quantity of each kind of atom. All these
atoms move unimpeded in space, at the uniform (and very great) velocity of one minimum
of space per minimum of time, unless and until they collide with another atom. When
this occurs, they rebound and so move off in a different direction, though always at the
same speed. Should they become entangled in a cluster of atoms, they will bounce back
and forth among themselves, never losing their individual velocity, although the cluster
itself may move slowly or not at all, if the internal vibrations of its atoms cancel each
other out. When enough atoms congregate in the appropriate way, they may form the
integument of a local world, inside of which atoms will become enmeshed in various
combinations and generate the multifarious entities, from air and water up to living
species and human beings, that their elementary shapes make possible. Given that
atomic shapes are not infinite, as we have seen, only certain compounds will prove to be
stable, with the result that other worlds, though they may differ substantially from our
own, will nevertheless exhibit more or less the same features, and in particular are not
likely to be home to creatures that are unsustainable in our world.29
Weight
Atoms are always on the move; but in what direction? Epicurus introduced into
Democritus’s theory the atomic attribute of weight, which he understood as the cause of
downward motion, and it is natural to assume that, barring interference, atoms tend to
29 The principle of isonomia or “distributive equality,” mentioned by Cicero (ND 50, 109), indicates
that scarcities in one local region are complemented by abundance in another; as a result, the
distribution of items over large regions is uniform. For discussion, see Sedley, Creationism and Its
Critics in Antiquity, 155–57.
72 DAVID KONSTAN
fall.30 If all atoms fall vertically at a uniform rate, however, they will never meet, and
universes will never form.
The Epicureans had an answer to this puzzle, in the form of the so-called atomic
swerve, to which we shall come shortly. More abstractly, we may ask what the difference
is, in an infinite universe, between atoms moving in the same direction at an identical
speed, and those same atoms standing perfectly still. If there is nothing outside the uni-
verse, relative to which they are in motion, and there is no internal variation in their
movement, it makes no difference whether they are moving quickly, slowly, or not at
all.31 I believe that the Epicureans were aware of this, despite the sometimes misleading
language they employ to make their point. But let us suppose a world in which atoms are
busy colliding with each other, most often confined in compounds and with a vibratory
motion. These atoms are no longer all moving in the same direction, but every which
way. So some are not “falling,” or at least not at the same speed as others. Are they actually
moving upwards or sideways? And, if so, what does it matter that they have weight?
I believe that the property of weight, whether or not it was invoked to account for
atomic inertia, that is, the necessity that atoms be always in motion (in whatever direction),
was intended principally to explain the fact of gravity in the observable world. The rea-
soning was not simplistic, of the sort that atoms fall, hence so do we. To see how the
Epicureans argued, let us begin by considering an object, such as a ball, that has been
tossed up in the air. It will be seen to slow down as it rises, come momentarily to a stop,
and then begin to descend, ever more rapidly, until it hits the ground. What has hap-
pened on the atomic level? At the initial toss, atoms at the lower surface of the ball collide
with those in the rising hand of the thrower (we may leave aside the mechanism by
which the hand was lifted); those atoms will rebound in some direction other than
down, and bang in turn against atoms deeper in the ball’s core, until all the atoms in the
ball (which are of course vibrating all the while) are moving upward (relative to the
earth) at some average velocity. Now, the average velocity is what we would today call a
vector: that is, it is the resultant speed and direction when all the individual motions
have been factored and those that cancel each other out are removed from the equation.
Thus, inside the ball, there are atoms moving left and right, forward and backward, as
well as up and down, and all at an enormous speed; but because they are moving left and
right, etc., in equal degree, the sum total of lateral motion is zero. The atoms have an
overall average motion upward, however, because the hand that threw the ball blocked
some of the downward-moving atoms and caused them to alter their direction, and this
effect was transmitted in turn to all the other atoms in the ball. Thus, the ball as a whole
30 For a more detailed discussion of atomic weight, see Konstan, “Problems in Epicurean Physics,”
408–17; for very full discussion of Democritus’s conception of weight, see O’Brien, Theories of Weight in
the Ancient World, who takes weight to be a function of atomic size, and hence not an independent
atomic property.
31 The idea of an absolute frame of reference, with respect to which things may be said to move or
be at rest, is intuitively plausible but mathematically otiose, and incompatible with modern relativity
theory; see Feigl, “The Origin and Spirit of Logical Positivism”; Koslow, “Ontological and Ideological
Issues.”
Atomism 73
has an upward vector, though much shorter (if we take the length of the vector to measure
velocity) than the vector of any given atom inside. Well and good: but why does the ball
begin to slow down? The answer, I presume, is that the atoms at the ball’s upper surface
are colliding with those in the surrounding air, which has the same effect, in reverse
direction, as the toss of the hand. This will explain the decrease in velocity, until the ball
reaches its apogee; but what then causes it to drop again? After all, the ball is in mid-air,
with air atoms cushioning it below as well as covering it from above. One answer might
be that, on average, the air atoms have a downward vector (comparable to the upward
vector of the thrower’s hand), and so exert a downward pressure on the ball: those below
the ball too are in some sense falling. But why should this be the case? The answer I pro-
pose is that when atoms collide, whether in the ball or any other medium, they do not
simply rebound in an equal but opposite sense; rather, they have a slight tendency, at
least sometimes, to favor one particular direction, with the result that, if a compound
body is left undisturbed even in empty space, it will have a vector, however small, result-
ing from the internal impacts of its constituent particles. This vector is an elementary
fact of nature; it may be considered an attribute of atoms themselves, and given the name
of weight. Barring outer interference, the vector will always point in the same direction,
and that direction is, by definition, down. And that is all there is to atomic weight.32
The above analysis assumes that the downward motion of atoms results from collisions,
and does not in some fashion assert itself in the course of a single atom’s trajectory. There
is some textual evidence in support of this interpretation. One of these is in Epicurus’s
Letter to Herodotus (61), where he writes: “an atom will move as quickly as thought until
there is a counterblow, either from something outside, or else from its own weight acting
against the force of the object which hit it.” Although the last clause wants much in clarity,
it looks as though weight is somehow related to collision. In the doxography ascribed to
Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, we read that Epicurus added weight to the
atomic properties recognized by Democritus: “for he said it is necessary that bodies
move by means of the blow of the weight, since they will not be moved [sc. by some
other force or agency].”33
An advantage of the vector theory of atomic weight described above is that it provides
an answer to a criticism of Epicurus’s theory that was common in antiquity, and repeated
32 For further discussion, see Konstan, “Epicurus on Up and Down”; see also Bredlow Wenda,
“Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus: Some Textual Notes,” 171–73 for the plausible emendation in the Letter
to Herodotus 60 of ἢ τὸ ὑποκάτω to ᾗ τὸ ὑποκάτω.
33 The word for “blow,” plēgēi, was emended out of the text by Usener, but it is confirmed by a
passage in Cicero’s On Fate: “The atom, says he [Epicurus], swerves. In the first place, why? For they
had another kind of power of motion from Democritus, which he calls ‘the blow of collision,’ and from
you, Epicurus, the blow of heaviness and weight” (declinat, inquit, atomus, primum cur? aliam enim
quandam vim motus habebant a Democrito impulsionis quam plagam ille appellat, a te, Epicure,
gravitatis et ponderis, 20.46). There is also another reason to prefer the connection between downward
motion and collisions to the idea that (relatively) upward-moving atoms change direction because of
weight alone: one would have expected, in the latter case, the kind of criticism that was heaped on
Epicurus’s theory of the swerve (see below). Bear in mind that rising atoms cannot gradually slow
down, reverse course, and begin to accelerate, for they must always travel at a uniform speed.
74 DAVID KONSTAN
even in modern times, namely what sense the concept of “down” might have in an infinite
and globally homogeneous universe. Are not all directions alike? In Aristotle’s spherical
world, heavy elements were attracted to the center, light ones to the periphery; but how
could there be a privileged orientation in Epicurus’s system?34 Epicurus could respond
that down simply is the innate tendency in atoms to emerge from collisions, on average,
in a favored direction; this is a fact of nature, like the fundamental constants in modern
physics. Still closer to Epicurus’s view, as I have reconstructed it, is the modern argument
against left-right parity in the universe. We are accustomed to thinking of right and left
as merely arbitrary spatial orientations: if I turn round 180 degrees, then left is where
right had been, and vice versa. But it was demonstrated some decades ago that, when
certain atoms decompose, the emission of particles to one side and the other is not
uniform; one can, accordingly, determine which direction is “left” and which is “right”
anywhere in the universe, by performing this experiment (in the sense that they will
match the original designation of these terms).35 In principle, the Epicurean account of
“down” (as I understand it) works in exactly the same way.
As an explanation of gravity, the above account is still deficient in one respect: for if all
bodies exhibit, as a result of internal collisions, a tendency to fall, why is this not true of
the earth as a whole, with the result that the ball would remain suspended at its apogee,
and we would all float lightly over the ground? Again, the Epicureans anticipated this
objection: for they argued that the earth was shaped like a flat disk, and that it was
located at or near the center of the cosmos, so that it was surrounded on all sides by the
thinner medium of air.36 As a relatively dense object, the earth will drop through the
circumambient air by virtue of ekthlipsis, that is, the extrusion of lighter things by
heavier ones.37 This is the reason why bubbles of air, for example, rise through water.
Extrusion is a function of mass rather than of weight in the technical Epicurean sense:
denser objects moving in any direction will drive out rarer ones. The reason, I imagine,
is that denser objects contain more atoms in proportion to the space they occupy, and
these overcome the smaller number of atoms as they beat against each other. But objects
with a broad surface will move more slowly through any medium than those that are
thin and streamlined, since the latter will encounter less resistance. The earth, as a saucer-
like disk or Frisbee, will sink less rapidly through the air than narrower or more tapered
items; as a result, these latter will adhere to its upper surface, the way a pin might sit on a
34 Apart from Aristotle, Epicurus may have been responding to Plato or to Strato of Lampsacus; see
Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 176–78.
35 For popular accounts of asymmetry in the universe, including at the atomic level, see Gardner,
The Ambidextrous Universe; McManus, Right Hand Left Hand, 137–40.
36 Lucretius affirms (DRN 5.534–49) that the earth is more or less stationary relative to its immediate
environment (that is, cosmos), since it is interconnected with the air atoms that surround it; thus, it
does not weigh upon the atmosphere beneath it any more than one feels one’s head to be a burden to
one’s body.
37 On ekthlipsis, cf. Ep. Hdt. 53, Ep. Pyth. 109; Simplicius on De caelo (= Democritus Diels-Kranz
A61) ascribes the doctrine of ekthlipsis to Democritus and Epicurus.
Atomism 75
leaf floating gently to the ground. Correspondingly, anything of this shape beneath the
earth would fall into the air below.38
A result of this account is that gravity will be oriented in the same direction—down—
in every local world, and not just ours. Indeed, the Epicureans made sport of the
Aristotelian view that heavy objects tend to the center of the world by observing that,
on this theory, “down” must suddenly change directions when one passes through the
midpoint of the earth (Ep. Hdt. 60).39
The Swerve
We have almost completed the account of atomic motion, but there remains to be dis-
cussed one feature that was the particular object of scorn on the part of non-Epicureans:
this is the so-called swerve, that is, an atom’s departure from linear motion (presumably
in any direction) at random times by a minimum amount. No motive or cause was
adduced to account for this motion, which has no counterpart in Democritus’s theory:
it is simply a property of atoms, like weight, that manifests itself independently of colli-
sions, and at no fixed or predictable moment. The swerve was put to use in at least two
ways. First, it was invoked to account for the manifest fact of voluntary action, in the
sense that human beings and animals can initiate their own acts, without these being the
consequence of purely external causation. How this might work in practice is highly
controversial, and is not within the purview of this chapter (see Chapter 9).
Second, the swerve explained, as indicated above, how free-falling atoms moving at a
uniform speed would begin to collide with each other. Since the Epicurean universe is
eternal, with no beginning or end to time (see Ep. Hdt. 44), there was no need to posit an
originary moment, when atoms had not yet gathered to form local worlds, and the
Epicureans could simply have affirmed that atoms had always interacted with each
other. If, however, the downward motion of atoms works in the way I have suggested,
then there would conceivably be the danger that atoms would line up more and more,
sloping a bit more after each collision; the swerve may then be seen as a counterweight
to this tendency.
Although modern quantum theory has accustomed us to the idea of indeterminacy at
the atomic level, Epicurus’s assumption of a random motion in atoms may still seem
bizarre in terms of ancient physical concepts. To justify it, I can do no more than remark
that atoms swerve by just one minimum, in the technical sense. It is debated whether
this means that the atoms simply shifted lanes, as it were, and continued to move lin-
early, one minimum over, or changed direction by a minimum degree. Without taking a
38 For the idea that objects on the underside of the earth would fall off it, cf. Lucr. DRN 1.1061–67;
the text is damaged, but the argument is evidently aimed at the Aristotelian or Stoic idea that the
antipodes of the earth are inhabited.
39 Full discussion in Konstan, “Epicurus on Up and Down.”
76 DAVID KONSTAN
position on this question, for which the evidence seems to me to be too scanty, we can
surmise that here again, as in the answer to the puzzle posed by Sextus Empiricus, the
minimum appears to have its own geometry, as it were: the laws of nature do not operate
at the infinitesimal level in the way they do over finite intervals. The swerve may thus
function as another indication of the peculiar point-like character of the minimum,
despite its extension. A move of one minimum is, practically speaking, no move at all.
Primary and Secondary Qualities
Individual atoms have no characteristics apart from size, shape, weight (in the sense
specified), and resistance; every other perceptible quality, such as color, odor, sound,
hardness, roughness, and so forth, pertains to the supra-atomic level (this is true of weight
or heaviness in the ordinary sense as well). These qualities are not a direct function of
analogous properties in the atoms, but rather of the atomic combinations that constitute
perceptible objects. These objects emit streams of particles that impinge upon the senses
(and in certain cases directly on the mind), and give rise to perception. Insofar as
perceptions are simply the interaction between the very fine particles that emanate from
objects and the particular structure of sense organs, they are always veridical (cf. Chapter 2).
Of course, it is true that under certain conditions things may appear differently to me
than they do to others, or than they do to me at another time (e.g., if my taste buds are
jaded, or if I have poor hearing, or again if the lighting changes); but what I sense is just
as I sense it, and if I mistakenly conclude that the food I am eating really lacks taste,
rather than that I cannot taste it, the fault lies with the inference, not the sense data
themselves.
The reason the Epicureans offer for the absence of secondary qualities in atoms is that
such qualities are subject to change, whereas the atoms themselves are inalterable. If the
redness of a rose were due to the red color of the atoms out of which it is made, when the
rose withers we would have to suppose that its atomic constituents also lose their bright
hue. But to be subject to change is to lack durability, and so reintroduces the danger that
the building blocks of nature might crumble into nothing. On the surface, this is not a
very good argument. One could imagine, for example, that the oxidation of the rose pet-
als was due to the absorption of atoms in the air that naturally have a more faded hue,
and hence avoid the conclusion that the rose’s original atoms changed color (this is
something like the view of Anaxagoras). One could also posit that atoms have colors,
but that these are not directly responsible for the hues of macroscopic objects; the latter
arise as a result of combinations of atoms, just as they do on the Epicurean hypothesis.
Hence, there would be no need for atoms to alter color or other properties just because
the objects they compose do so. This latter view, however, seems otiose: atomic colors
would be different in kind from perceptible colors, and since they serve no explanatory
purpose, their existence cannot be inferred from the phenomena. The former account is
harder to dismiss. Even if we assume, with the Epicureans, that objects give off endless
Atomism 77
series of lamina or simulacra (so fine as not to produce a noticeable loss of substance),
and that these are the direct cause of sensation, the atoms of which the simulacra are
composed could perfectly well have individually the qualities that are perceived. One
would not need to posit atoms of every conceivable hue, taste, or odor; the more subtle
of these could be amalgams of primary colors, etc. Still, the theory seems redundant. For
we could just as well think of a sharp atom as producing a bitter taste, as Lucretius
affirms, without thereby ascribing the quality of bitterness to the atom; and similarly for
colors and other perceptibles. Atoms of a certain shape, say, tend to generate the sensa-
tion of red, or of a low pitch of sound, when they are suitably combined in compounds
that contain other kinds of atoms as well, in sufficient quantities to emit simulacra. The
Epicurean view has economy to recommend it.
Concluding remarks
The simplicity of Epicurean atomism was at the same time its flaw; for to explain all
phenomena on the basis of the purely mechanical movement of atoms, without even a
concept of force (for example, attraction and repulsion) or energy, must tax the cleverest
of minds. How are living creatures formed from the smallest seeds? The acorn must
contain the appropriate atoms, so arranged as to ensure its development into a mature
oak, stage by stage. There was no way to examine the disposition of the atoms directly;
by hypothesis they were below the threshold of perception (instruments of magnifica-
tion were not even contemplated). One could only assume that there were stable atomic
patterns that would do the trick, and that they came in discrete types, so that one yielded
an oak, another a maple, without generating intermediate or mixed species.
This is how the world appears, and if you accept the Epicurean theory, then atoms in
their all-but-infinite variety must be able to cohere in molecular formations that produce
it. At least the system makes do without positing immaterial entities that govern the
growth of organic things by imaging their endpoint or telos (as with Platonic ideas or
Aristotelian types), not to mention gods. This was the crucial issue for the Epicureans: if
they could demonstrate that the order of the world did not depend either on spiritual
entities or on divine intervention, then the way was open to eliminating a conception of
the soul as a ghostly thing that can survive the dissolution of the body, and hence be sub-
ject to punishment in the afterlife.
Epicurean atomism, with its strictly materialist premises, had its work cut out for it. It
had to account not only for the physical world, including cosmogony and biological
nature in all its richness, but also for perception and for mental events such as thinking,
dreams, will, and imagination. Rather than attempt to provide detailed analyses of every
phenomenon, the Epicureans concentrated on a few striking problems, such as the
causes of lightning and thunder, and the attraction between magnets and iron. Their
arguments were ingenious, and served to engage the reader or disciple in the effort to
discover solutions on their own; once you rose to the challenge, you were well on the
78 DAVID KONSTAN
way to being hooked. For what mattered was not providing all the answers, but instilling
the confidence that atomism could provide a plausible explanation, if called upon, for
any phenomenon of nature, one that would rival those advanced by other schools with-
out relying on metaphysical suppositions that could not be empirically verified and had
more the character of superstition. Thus, Lucretius often summons Memmius, the dedi-
catee of his book, to think up an explanation for a given case, now that he has mastered
the basic elements of atomic theory (e.g., DRN 5.1281–82). To make the attempt is implic-
itly to have acknowledged that the system does work, and that what remains is filling in
the fine points. If any readers of this chapter are moved to improve on my account of
Epicurean atomism, and begin to work out better versions of the atomic hypothesis that
are consistent with Epicurus’s fundamental principles (that all of nature is reducible to
matter and void), they will have taken a step toward accepting the doctrine that human
fulfillment lies in this world rather than the next, and the shade of Epicurus—if shades
existed—would be pleased.
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chapter 4
Cosmol ogy a n d
M eteorol ogy
Daryn Lehoux
After framing his literary preliminaries, Lucretius begins his great De rerum natura
with a promise to explain the workings of the heavens:
For I shall begin to explain to you the highest ratio of heaven and the gods, and
I shall lay open the first-beginnings of things (1.54–55).1
It is striking that he promises an explanation of the caeli ratio, the reason or system of the
heavens, even before he has made any actual mention of atoms, the main subject and
central explanatory cause of his entire philosophy. The reason, though, is perhaps straight-
forward, and rests in the overarching emphasis in Epicurean philosophy on physics as a
means to ethics. Fear, after all, is the primary ethical problem that Epicureanism prom-
ises to overcome, and fear of the gods (paired later in the poem with the fear of death) is
the greatest of the fears faced by humans. Thus a physical explanation of the phenomena
that are—on his telling at any rate—most closely associated with people’s greatest fears
(in this instance the heavens as signs of calamity) should bring us the most happiness.
As Epicurus puts it in Key Doctrine 11:
If apprehensions did not trouble us about things in the heavens, or about death (as
though that were something to us), or yet the misunderstanding of the limits to
suffering and hope, we should have been in no need of natural science.
Fear, then is the driving force behind any investigation into nature, and fear of “the
things in the heavens” is one of the primary problems singled out. Accordingly, the
de-divinization of the sky becomes a keystone of Epicurean philosophy.
1 Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.

82 DARYN LEHOUX
There are two things to note here before we proceed. One is the way in which the
framing of the problem around “signs people fear from the gods” brings together astron-
omy, astrology, cosmology, and meteorology, as well as their associated omens, so
neatly—these subjects are not so thematically or indeed physically united in all ancient
philosophies. The second is that we as modern readers of Epicurus should flag this
emphasis on people’s superstitious fears (to use Epicurus’s own category) and handle it
with care, for it is a key piece of Epicurean propaganda to say that everyone but them is
running around trembling in terror at the signs and potential punishments of the gods.
Stoics, Academics, and Peripatetics would all likely fail to see reflections of themselves
in this simplistic account, but it is a common enough ancient characterization of the
fears of what we might call the masses, and one that Stoics and Academics likewise
employed as a ready exhortation to (their) philosophy.
The Shape(s) of the World
The Epicurean cosmos itself stands in stark contrast to most other ancient cosmologies.
By the third century bce, a consensus had emerged among most philosophers who dis-
cussed such matters that the cosmos was both finite and spherical. This was based on a
combination of observational evidence and philosophical argument. For example, the
stars are seen to rotate around the earth daily in a pattern that is entirely consistent with
their placement on a sphere. If the cosmos were infinite, however, then this observed
rotation of the stars around the earth in twenty-four hours would have to be the comple-
tion of an infinitely long orbital motion in a finite time. For Aristotle (and, with slight
variants, for Stoics and others as well) the sphericity of the cosmos was what allowed it to
rotate at all. In sharp contrast, the Epicureans argued that the whole must be infinite,
and contain an infinite number of worlds (κόσμοι), of which ours is but one.
Epicurus supports the infinity of the whole on the grounds that a finite body must
have an extremity, and the very idea of an extremity presupposes something beyond
itself (Ep. Hdt. 41). Lucretius expands this idea (1.968) with an elegant thought experi-
ment: what if someone were to stand just inside the extremity of a finite cosmos and
throw a spear directly at its outer edge? Would the spear be hindered from passing
beyond the cosmos (implying that there is something outside resisting the spear’s prog-
ress), or would it carry on through the outer limit (implying that there is something
beyond that “limit” for it to move through)? Beyond this thought experiment, both
Epicurus and Lucretius proceed to offer other arguments for the infinity of the cosmos.
One is an argument for the existence of infinite matter, which infinity would imply an
infinite cosmos in which to house it all (Ep. Hdt. 57). Epicurus proves that both matter
and void are infinite by assuming in turn that each is in fact finite while the other is infi-
nite, and drawing a contradiction in both cases (Ep. Hdt. 42, cf. Lucr. 1.1008f.). The fact
that he never contemplates the case where both may be finite without contradiction
Cosmology and Meteorology 83
depends on his prior acceptance of the proof of the infinity of the whole universe
(emerging from the impossibility of its having a limit, as we have seen).
Within the infinite whole, we live in one of an infinite number of actual worlds
(cosmoi), which need not be the same shape as our own. Whether Epicurus thinks our
own cosmos to be spherical or not is unstated in his extant writings, although Cicero
(ND 2.48) tells us that it is a favorite saying of the Epicureans that it is uncertain that our
mundum is a sphere, and that it could be some other shape. (Mundum here likely refers
to the cosmos as a whole rather than just the earth—cf. the scholiast to DL 10.74.)
Moreover, Cicero continues, the many worlds could also be many shapes.2 Epicurus also
adds (Ep. Pyth. 89) that new worlds can come into existence, presumably at any time, if
there is an introduction of suitable “seeds” to allow their growth. This can happen in the
interstices between existing worlds (μετακόσμιοι), or even within an existing world
itself. He tells us, in a string of agricultural metaphors, that these seeds must be “watered”
and then must mature and “keep” (using a Greek word that is often associated with
grain) in the presence of a suitable foundation if a world is to be produced.
The shape of the earth itself is described nowhere in the extant fragments of Epicurus
or in Lucretius, although Rist cites evidence from Diogenes of Oenoanda and from a
scholiast to Diogenes Laertius to argue that it may be a flat disc resting on air in the center
of our cosmos.3 Diogenes of Oenoanda does in fact mention a “ceremonial drum” in
connection with what appears to be a cosmogony, though the implication is opaque to
me. Lucretius at one point (1.1058–67) pokes fun at the idea that there could be creatures
walking around on the other side of the earth from us, with their “down” equal to our
“up,” and many commentators have taken this to be an assertion of a flat earth, although
it only really entails that nothing could live opposite us, which would be consistent with
a spherical (or almost-any-other-shaped) earth that is only habitable on top.4 That the
earth, whatever its shape, could rest on the air below it is explained in Lucretius (5.534–63)
by analogy to the way parts of the human body have no noticeable weight when carried
around by the whole. We notice even the slightest additional weight in a pack or a
satchel, but because the body itself is a unity, the head and the limbs are no burden to it
normally. Similarly, Lucretius tells us, because the earth and the air beneath it are a unity,
the earth is no burden to that air, and so has no compulsion to fall downwards.5 As a
second analogy, Lucretius points to the way our soul, light and insubstantial though it
2 This last point may be rooted in the Epicurean doctrine of multiple explanation (more on this
presently).
3 Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction, 47 n. 4. The fragment of Diogenes of Oenoanda is in Smith, “New
Fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda,” new fragment 7, col. ii.12–13.
4 This last point is a necessity given the Epicurean account of falling bodies (more on which in a
moment). On the shape of the earth, see, e.g., Taub, “Cosmology and Meteorology”; Furley,
“Cosmology.”
5 Contrast Konstan, “Epicurus,” who argues that the earth simply falls more slowly than other
objects in the cosmos.
84 DARYN LEHOUX
may be, is capable of lifting up our entire body and even of causing that body to jump
into the air contrary to its natural inclination downwards.
“Downwards” as the direction to which things fall is a concept with considerable, if
sometimes puzzling, force in Epicurean cosmology and physics. For Aristotle, the
Stoics, and often for Academics, downwards is defined as “toward the center of the cos-
mos,” which coincides with the center of the earth. Since the Epicureans live in an infinite
universe, there can be no center towards which things would tend, and so “down” for
them seems to be one single, parallel direction in all cosmoi as opposed to the relative
direction it is in other philosophical systems (where my “down” is in a certain sense the
“up” of my antipodes). Nowhere do we get an explicit statement of how or why bodies
fall downwards in Epicureanism beyond the simple statement that bodies have weight.
This fact, however, is sufficient to privilege down as the direction toward which all atoms
would fall if it were not for atomic collisions directing them elsewhere. There is no sense
that atoms are attracted downwards in any way (and indeed no mechanism for such an
attraction), just the statement that, ceteris paribus, all atoms move in that direction.
Indeed, the downward motion of atoms in the infinite universe is, at least in part, what
seems to have necessitated the introduction of the Epicurean “swerve” in the first place.6
For, as Lucretius says (2.216–24), if there were no swerve, all atoms would simply be falling
downward in a completely parallel and necessarily unending shower, which, because
speed of motion is inversely proportional to resistance, is also infinitely fast. The
swerve—even just the slightest random inclination away from direct falling—enables
atoms to collide in what turns out to be the endless chain-reaction of interacting atoms
whose effects we in fact see. One presumes that somewhere in the flotsam of all of this
discussion of downward atomic motion lies the explanation for falling macrocosmic
bodies (things like rocks tend to move preferentially downward rather than in any other
direction because this is the direction heavy bodies naturally move), although the idea is
never fully elaborated.
Multiple Causes
When it comes to discussing the actual causes of both motion in the heavens and of
meteorological phenomena, Epicurus appeals to the same method: since we cannot
have direct access to the heavenly realms we must reason by analogy from things in our
experience to those farther off (Ep. Pyth. 87). But as soon as he outlines this method in
the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus adjoins analogy to multiplicity: “thus we must investi-
gate heavenly phenomena (τῶν μετεώρων) and any other unclear things by comparison
to the different ways in which what-is-similar happens near to us” (Ep. Hdt. 80). Because
of, one presumes, the slippage in what counts as what-is-similar down here (or perhaps in
6 If Cicero, De fato, is to be believed, there may also be an element of antideterminism involved.

See also the contributions of Konstan and Englert in this volume.
which features of it are most relevant) we inevitably end up with a plurality of mechanisms
as models for heavenly phenomena.7 No matter, says Epicurus, for we do not need to
know which exact cause is responsible for heavenly phenomena, so long as we are satis-
fied that one of the available causes must be the right one—to avoid fear, the heavens do
not need to be explained so much as to be demonstrably explainable.8 Epicurus even
makes the point that, in the absence of certain knowledge of the available atomic causes,
an expert knowledge of astronomy (“of stellar risings and settings and of solstices and
eclipses and so on”) is so far from allaying fear as to actually worsen it, since the expert
will be all the more alarmed that he cannot physically account for the phenomena that
he predicts mathematically (Ep. Hdt. 79).
This explainability of distant phenomena in more than one way, along with the
epistemologico-ethical dictate that such explanation should be satisfactory to eliminate
fear, forms the core of what is called Epicurean multiple explanation, and it is the heavens
that become the most natural and most fully elaborated home for multiple explanation
in Epicurean sources. “Cosmology and meteorology,” the topic of the present chapter, is
not a natural pairing in the modern sciences. But for Epicureans, they are quite easily
brought together in that they share identical methods of and limitations to obtaining
knowledge, as well as their shared emphasis on the acceptability, and indeed the neces-
sity, of multiple explanation.
Multiple explanation of heavenly phenomena comes with an explicit parity clause in
the Letter to Pythocles: so long as any competing explanations are “similarly in agreement
with the phenomena” (Ep. Pyth. 87), we cannot prefer one over the other. To do so would
be to “collapse into myth.” This condition forces assertions of equal plausibility for some
cosmological claims that look prima facie to be extraordinarily unlikely (and must have
appeared so to the Epicureans’ contemporaries as well). For example, both Epicurus and
Lucretius tell us that it is equally possible that day and night are caused by (a) the sun
going around the earth, or (b) the sun being extinguished each night and rekindled each
morning (Ep. Pyth. 92; Lucr. DRN 5.650–55).9 The latter claim is taken as the Epicurean
theory by the Stoic astronomer Cleomedes (perhaps late second century ce), who
proceeds to attack it mercilessly on empirical grounds (Caelestia 2.1.426–37). We can,
however, infer from the wording in the earlier Epicurean sources that such counterevi-
dence was either unavailable or simply dismissed (“no phenomenon testifies against
[extinguishing and rekindling],” says Epicurus).
Indeed, when he does offer explicit explanations for far-off phenomena, one often
gets the impression that the very listing of multiple causes is in itself more important
than actual attempts at explanation. That is to say, where there was considerable contem-
porary agreement on phenomena such as the causes of eclipses or of lunar phases,
Epicurus seems to take a special delight in confounding these explanations with some of
their wilder counterparts and claiming what appears to be equal likelihood. One would
7 See also Ep. Pyth. 87.

8 See Hankinson, “Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Logic of Multiple Explanations.”
9 Theory (b) is possibly a reference back to Heraclitus B6.
86 DARYN LEHOUX
be hard-pressed to find contemporaries of Epicurus who thought that lunar phases

were caused by the moon’s rotation between a light side and a dark side, or that they
were caused by “configurations of the air,” or by other objects blocking our view of part
of the moon on a regular (indeed predictable) basis (Ep. Pyth. 94). Nevertheless,
Epicurus parades each one in turn as a plausible explanation consistent with the phe-
nomena, with, apparently, no real effort to eliminate or de-emphasize any explanation
that may seem on the face of it to be possible. The epistemological point about the
importance or necessity of multiple explanation thus appears often to outweigh attempts
to decide between explanations even when it must have seemed possible to do so to the
Epicureans’ contemporaries and competitors.
An important Epicurean concern here is that even if we could eliminate one or more
of the competing hypotheses by observation, we would only be doing so in our own cos-
mos, which is, after all, only one of an infinite number of cosmoi. Multiple explanations,
it seems, are not just multiple possibilities for what is true of our own particular world-
environment, but are also rooted in the Epicurean commitment to multiple worlds
across which multiple causes may account for identical or at least similar phenomena, as
Lucretius tells us explicitly at 5.526–30:
For which of these causes holds in our world it is difficult to say for certain; but what
may be done and is done though the whole universe in the various worlds made in
various ways, that is what I teach, proceeding to set forth several causes which may
account for the movements of the stars throughout the whole universe.
It is worth noting that not every phenomenon is up for grabs. Mundane, earthly phe-
nomena often seem secure enough throughout the Epicurean corpus: the motion of
dust motes, for example, or the phenomena of compressibility or of sound propagation
are never accounted for in terms of multiple explanation.10 Nevertheless there are a few
earthly phenomena that allow of multiple explanation in Epicurean sources. Lucretius,
for example, discusses the possible causes of the flooding of the Nile in just this way (see
6.712–37)—and the flooding of the Nile was a common source of speculation and uncer-
tainty in antiquity—but it is very much the exception to the confidence he shows in
explaining virtually all other earthly phenomena. By contrast, nearly all heavenly phe-
nomena were treated as multiply explainable. The one exception seems to be the
Epicurean insistence, ridiculed mercilessly by contemporaries, that the sun and moon
were just the sizes they appeared to be and no more.11
Finally, we are not always offered a full list of the specific (equi-probable?) multiple
explanations of heavenly phenomena. In the Letter to Herodotus, for example, Epicurus
assures us that multiple explanations will be sufficient to overcome fear of astronomical
phenomena, but he does not there tell us what those multiple explanations might be,
only that there are some and they are satisfactory. So, too, in the Letter to Pythocles, we
10 See, e.g., Lucr. DRN 1.354–69, 2.112–28.

11 See Epicurus Ep. Pyth. 91; Lucr. DRN 5.564 f.; Cleomedes Cael. 2.1, 3.1.
see him often cut short a (sometimes quite vague) list of possible causes with a blanket
caveat that any cause not inconsistent with the phenomena will do. Thus in his discussion
of the face in the moon, he offers us two possible but very general causes, “it may be due
to variation in [the moon’s] parts, or to an interposition,” before emphasizing the more
wide-open “or in as many other ways as may be seen to have agreement with the phe-
nomena” (Ep. Pyth. 94). Occasionally, he specifically cites avoidance of myth as the
primary desideratum (see, e.g., Ep. Pyth. 104, 116)—anything else, it seems, will do so
long as it is not counter-evidenced.
This ethical and epistemological turn in Epicureanism has the curious effect that what
has appeared to many modern commentators to be the most materialistic and least tele-
ological of ancient philosophies (in short, the most scientific) represents at the same
time a deliberate turning away from examination, experiment, and the elimination of
competing hypotheses for astronomical, cosmological, and meteorological phenomena.
This stands as a sharp reminder that ancient philosophies often have very foreign priori-
ties to our own.
Meteorology
Thunder, like astronomical phenomena, is presented by Lucretius as one of the great

causes of human fear and dread of the gods. The cure for this is right understanding,
which can only be gleaned from comparison to analogous phenomena closer to home.
He offers us early on in Book 6 a host of causes for the different kinds of thunder, and in
almost every instance a familiar analogy. Sometimes clouds crash together or scrape
past each other with a rasping sound. Sometimes they crack in the wind like sheets on a
clothesline. Whirlwinds can form a hollow of air within an outer shell of cloud, and this,
when burst, behaves like an air-filled bladder does when popped (the same analogy is used
also by Pliny and Seneca, though with quite different import in Seneca).12 Depending
on the shape of a cloud, winds may cause sounds as they blow through it, in the same
way as winds can rustle leaves. Alternatively, the wind may simply crash into and tear
open a cloud, presumably with some kind of cracking sound (Lucr. 6.140–41 makes the
comparison to an uprooted tree in this instance). Clouds sometimes roll and break like
waves. Sometimes lightning from a higher cloud becomes extinguished in a watery
lower cloud, emitting a sound in the same way as iron does in tempering. Or lightning
from above can ignite a dryer cloud, emitting a sound like the sudden conflagration of a
dry stand of laurel.
If Lucretius here may be seen to be offering us multiple causes for multiple kinds of
thunder, which is to say one cause for each kind, Epicurus’s treatment in the Letter to
Pythocles makes it clearer that multiple explanation is to be understood here too in its
12 See Pliny NH 2.113; Seneca NQ 2.27.3; for commentary on Seneca’s use, see Lehoux, What Did the
Romans Know?, ch. 4.
88 DARYN LEHOUX
broader, epistemological, sense. He first offers us several possible mechanisms for the
formation of clouds (compression by winds, simple atomic entanglement, “streams”
rising from the earth) and then adds that there are more ways for it to happen that are
“not impossible” (Ep. Pyth. 99–100). The causes of rain are then parasitic on the causes
of clouds, and are treated fairly cursorily. Rain is simply said to be caused by compres-
sion, by “changes,” by “streams from suitable places,” or by “certain aggregations.” When
Epicurus turns to causes of thunder we find a little more detail, and he offers us a set that
bears a family resemblance to what we have seen in Lucretius, but differs considerably in
detail. So Epicurus tells us that winds can roll in the “hollows” of clouds, or can stoke
fires within clouds. Clouds can, when hardened like ice, split and crack with a great
sound. None of these mechanisms are paralleled in Lucretius, even if the use of analogy
by both authors points to an identity of method. Finally, and perhaps predictably,
Epicurus closes with a nod to multiple explanation: “for this part as for the whole, the
phenomena elicit multiple explanations” (Ep. Pyth. 100).
Lightning is said by Epicurus to be caused by friction between clouds, or else—
mirroring some of the vagueness from his theory of rain—by the wind sending out from
clouds bodies that are merely said to be “provided with brightness” (Ep. Pyth. 101).
Lightning can be squeezed out of clouds by condensation (he offers us no analogy here),
or else light from the stars may be collected in the clouds only to be released by winds or
the cloud’s motions later. He gives an alternate version of this theory, possibly textually
corrupted,13 in which the “smallest-particled” light seems to be coming through the
clouds from above in real time, and somehow turning into lightning within the cloud.
Or winds could simply cause combustion in clouds. Finally, the rending of clouds by
wind may allow “fire-generating atoms” to escape. Epicurus closes the discussion with
another broad-church nod to multiple explanation.
Both Lucretius and Epicurus liken the delay between the sight of lightning and the
sound of thunder to what happens when we see and hear someone striking blows in the
distance (for Lucretius, with an ax), where we see the blow before we hear the sound.
Curiously, though, Epicurus also offers an alternative version where the lightning is
actually caused first and the thunder physically delayed for a moment by being “rolled
up” (ἀνειλούμενον: Ep. Pyth. 102)—a verb used in Ps.-Aristotle’s De audibilibus (804a20)
to describe how the human voice sometimes catches in the throat, and in the Hippocratic
Prognosticon (11.30) to refer to pent-up flatulence.
At the end of the discussion, Epicurus offers us his now-familiar refrain: καὶ κατ᾿
ἄλλους δὲ τρόπους πλείονας ἐνδέχεται κεραυνοὺς ἀποτελλεῖσθαι, “and thunderbolts can
be produced in other ways too,” a formula that (in reference to different subjects) recurs
verbatim six times in the Letter to Pythocles with only minor variations in wording
(πλείους for πλείονας, and one minor shift in word order).14
13 The sentence as it stands in the MSS clearly requires emendation, and several fixes have been
proposed by different editors. For details, see the apparatus in Marcovitch, Diogenis Laertii Vitae
philosophorum, 1.775–76.
14 At Ep. Pyth. 99, 102, 104, 106, 108, 112.
Epicurus further offers us multiple explanations for seasonal weather changes,

whirlwinds, snow, dew, ice, halos, shooting stars, and wind. He gives one of the common
and standard ancient explanations for earthquakes (subterranean winds—which is how
earthquakes end up in the province of ancient meteorology), but adds that they may also
be caused by a collapse of structures underground, or “in other ways as well” (again with
the formulaic καὶ κατ᾿ ἄλλους δὲ πλείους τρόπους, Ep. Pyth. 106). Lucretius mirrors
these two causes, adding two more that are unparalleled in the surviving works of
Epicurus, and importantly adding that earthquakes are a primary cause of fear among
people (5.1236–40). The additional causes adduced by Lucretius depend on large rocks
being moved by, or moved into, subterranean waters (6.535–56).15 Like the rumblings of
even small carts on the street shaking our houses, he says, these motions can have larger
effects than may at first be obvious. Lucretius also adds, repeating the point several
times, that the existence of earthquakes proves that the earth cannot last forever, a lesson
he thinks it important for the right-reasoning philosopher to remember.
Finally, the rainbow, a difficult subject that gets extended treatment in other ancient
sources, is given very cursory explanation by Epicurus and Lucretius both (perhaps
because there is no problem of fear associated with it). Epicurus says, apparently with
explanatory intent, that rainbows happen when the sun shines onto “water-like” air—
but note that this cannot be properly seen as a mechanism, only as a description of
conditions. Alternatively, rainbows happen by a “particular blending of light and air”
that then shines back on the air and brings about color. Lucretius gives even shorter
treatment to the question of how the rainbow is formed, simply saying that it occurs
when the sun shines against showers opposite to it (6.524–26), once again substituting a
simple description of its conditions for a genuine causal account. If we compare these
approaches to the great lengths that Aristotle or Seneca goes to in exploring minute
details of the rainbow and its possible mechanisms, we see how very different the focus
of Epicurean physics could be relative to its contemporaries.
Finally, Epicurus accounts for the shape of the rainbow, again both multiply and
brusquely, as the result either of our “see[ing] the whole thing with our eyes as equidistant”
(Ep. Pyth. 110) or of the physical aggregation in the clouds and the sun occurring in “a
kind of circle.”
Place of the Gods
When Epicurus introduces cosmology in the Letter to Herodotus, he does so in

the context of a rejection of the divinity of the stars, and even of their guidance by divine
hands. Such beliefs were very widespread in antiquity and so this constitutes one
of Epicureanism’s more radical breaks with contemporary philosophical opinion.
15 In the latter case, the text is unclear whether the waters need be necessarily underground or could
be lakes or oceans up above.
90 DARYN LEHOUX
The belief in the divinity of the stars, says Epicurus, leads to the “greatest disturbance”
(τάραχος ὁ κυριώτατος: Ep. Hdt. 81) of the human soul.
Not only are the stars non-divine, but for the Epicureans the gods themselves are
famously uninterested in the governance of the universe.16 Since they are perfect beings,
the argument goes, they must be untroubled by the chaos of the universe as a whole. This
raises the question of whether they can or should be seen to exist at all, but for Epicurus
their importance as models of tranquility makes them central—if in a way that contem-
poraries often found bizarre or unacceptable—to Epicurean ethics. Since the only exis-
tents for Epicureans had to be made up of atoms and void, though, the existence of the
gods necessitated that they, too, consisted of atoms and void, and this raises the question
of where, then, they could be in the universe such that they could remain untroubled (if
not, perhaps, completely unaffected) by the never-ending chaos of atomic interactions.
Epicurus’s answer seems to have been to place them in the interstices between the actual
cosmoi (Cic. ND 1.18, De div. 2.40) or in some other sense “far off ” (Lucr. 2.646, 5.146).17
They exist physically in the universe, that is, but in some way or in some place that
separates them out from atomic interaction or decay (or perhaps from much atomic
interaction or decay).
Cosmic Motions
What is perhaps most surprising is that of all the causes adduced for astronomical and
meteorological phenomena, very few of them are given with specific reference to atoms
and the void. We are offered analogies to familiar macrocosmic and earthly phenomena
and references to familiar processes such as blending, obscuring, diluting, and freezing,
but only rarely are atoms mentioned specifically as the causes of heavenly phenomena.
In many cases, were it not for the insistence on multiple explanation, we would be hard
pressed to identify the meteorological causes as specifically Epicurean. When it comes
to accounts of how a cosmos comes to be, however, we see more clearly the presence of
key atomist conjectures as foundations.
In the first instance, cosmoi form by the chance (τυχαίαν: Ps.-Plut. Plac. 878c) aggre-
gation of atoms into sensible bodies. Atoms come together, Lucretius tells us (5.437–48),
by the mechanism of “like attracting like,” a law of nature invoked in a wide variety of
ancient explanatory contexts.18 As the process gets elaborated in Lucretius, we see the
tenacity of many Aristotelian and earlier ideas in the references to the four traditional
elements of earth, water, fire, and air, and an account of how they find their respective
places in the cosmos, the earth and water at the bottom, and fire and air at the top.
Nevertheless, there is no commitment here to the four elements as explanatorily basic,
16 See the chapter in this volume by Spinelli and Verde.

17 See Konstan, “Epicurus on the Gods.”
18 See Lehoux, What Did the Romans Know?, chs. 3 and 5.
but instead a sense that Lucretius is explaining these familiar entities only to subsume
them under the more fundamental atoms. Where for Aristotle earth moved to the bot-
tom with water above it due to their relative weights, and these in turn were surrounded
by air and fire according to their relative lightness, Lucretius offers us something a little
more complex. Earth still comes to settle at the bottom of the system, but instead of
invoking weight as the only cause, Lucretius also invokes atomic shape. Because of the
large, “interwoven” nature of the atoms in earth as compared to the smaller, rounder
atoms of water, the water came to be squeezed out of the original chaotic mixture of ran-
dom atoms as the like atoms of earth came to entangle with each other. The atoms of
ether, fire, and air, being smaller still, rise even farther up, and we see a curious echo of
the Aristotelian layered cosmology (earth at the bottom and ether on top) emerge in the
end but from a rather different physical mechanism. Lucretius even goes so far as to say
that the outermost ether encircled the rest all around (4.468 circumdatus undique flexit),
a phrase that is difficult to read as implying anything other than a spherical cosmos—so
deep, perhaps, did established cosmological imagery run.
As he outlines this process of atomic separation of earth and the other traditional ele-
ments, Lucretius adds a second mechanism for further refinement (4.471–503): the
upper elements press on the lower ones causing more water, air, and fire to squeeze out
of the earthy mixture at the bottom. In the midst of all this, the sun and moon form in
the upper regions at a place appropriate to them (neither too high nor too low). The
heavens move because of currents of air, just as water-wheels are moved in rivers,
although Lucretius hedges on whether the whole heavens turn, or whether there is an
unmoved outer shell and only the constellations underneath are turned in this way. The
currents that move the heavens may be from outside the cosmos proper, or may be a
rushing tide running entirely within. This water-wheel-like whirling, as a cause of
motion, is also seen to be weakening as it progresses from the outermost parts of the
cosmos to the inner. This is then invoked to account for the slower motion of the sun
than of the constellations: the weakened force causes the sun to fall back slightly, day by
day, eventually traversing the entire zodiac in a year, a mechanism Lucretius explicitly
traces to Democritus (Lucr. 5.621–36). Lucretius also cites currents of air to account for
the sun’s motion to the north and south of the equator, this time with the currents run-
ning perpendicular to those that cause it to orbit in its daily motion. Curiously, rather
than looking to the standard geometrical explanations of why days are longer in sum-
mer than winter (i.e., by tracing the daily arcs of various points on the inclined great
circle of the ecliptic above the horizon), Lucretius quite unusually tries to find another
air-based explanation, offering as an apparently serious possibility that the air through
which the sun moves at night in the winter is “thicker,” causing a delay to sunrise in that
season (5.696–700).
In a similar vein, we see heavenly airs that are unsuitable for combustion invoked as
one possible cause of both lunar and solar eclipses. This idea that the air through which
the sun and moon travel is crucial to their combustion seems reinforced by an account
earlier in Book 5 (235–305) where Lucretius places the light shed by the sun and moon in
the larger context of a cyclical system of evaporation, absorption, combustion, and
92 DARYN LEHOUX
reseeding. The sun and moon send down light, which replenishes the matter on earth
that has evaporated, which evaporation seems also to be a source of the combustion by
which the sun and moon send down their light in the first place. That the stars are nour-
ished by earthly vapors is a commonplace of several ancient cosmologies, and seems to
have solved the problem of how the heavenly fires could continue burning unless they
had access to some kind of fuel. The larger Epicurean moral from this, though, is that all
things are born, and all things die. As the various parts change and are destroyed
(though their atoms survive to play new roles elsewhere in the system), so too the whole
cosmos will be subject to eventual destruction. What this reinforces so effectively for
Lucretius is the idea that the dissolution of the atoms in our souls at death is mirrored in
the complete dissolution of whole cosmoi—atomic compounds are never immortal
however large and interconnected, or firm and grand, they now may seem. It is this very
idea of complete dissolution that, when applied to the human soul, gives us the famous
insight that “death is nothing to us.”19 How much more clearly can we see this in the con-
text of the ultimate and inevitable destruction of all macrocosmic entities? Fear, then,
even fear of death, is pointless.
Conclusion
Cosmology and meteorology are united as traditional sources of superstitious fear: fear
of the gods, fear of thunder and lightning, fear of portents, fear of death. Like other
ancient philosophies, Epicurus claimed he alone could teach us not to fear these things,
but his method for doing so diverges sharply from those of other ancient philosophical
systems. Where the Stoics appealed to divine providence and rationality, Epicurus
appeals to the absolute absence of divinity in the workings of the heavens and earth.
Where the Stoics believed in signs of the future through the interconnectedness of all
things, Epicurus instead appeals to (at least occasional) random causes and ultimately
purposeless atomic motion. On the other hand, the Epicurean insistence on multiple
explanation (acknowledged with respect to, and possibly even rooted in, the epistemo-
logical problems associated with reasoning by analogy), meant that otherwise com-
monly accepted mechanisms for heavenly phenomena, were (almost mischievously)
intertwined with other explanations as apparently equally possible. So eclipses may be
caused by bad air, the moon may be extinguished and then born anew at each rising—at
the correct phase, and at predictable times no less. Some of these more implausible
claims (at least by the standards of their contemporaries) saw Epicureans handled with
incredulity in competing sources, but nevertheless they are rooted in the epistemologi-
cal insistence that we would need counter-evidence to dismiss them—and perhaps they
insisted in practice on very strong counter-evidence—as well as the ethical insistence
that it didn’t really matter how any of these phenomena happened, so long as there was
19 See Rosenbaum’s chapter in this volume.

some explanation that did not invoke the superstition-generating and fear-mongering
gods. Perhaps the sometimes cheeky-looking implausibility of the mechanisms and
analogies on offer was a way of hammering this last point home.
References
Furley, D. “Cosmology.” In The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by K. Algra
et al., 412–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Hankinson, R. J. “Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Logic of Multiple Explanations.” In Lucretius:
Poetry, Philosophy, Science, edited by D. Lehoux, A. D. Morrison, and A. Sharrock, 69–97.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Konstan, D. “Epicurus.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.plato.stanford.edu,
2009.
————. “Epicurus on the Gods.” In Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition, edited by J. Fish and
K. R. Sanders, 57–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Lehoux, D. What Did the Romans Know? Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Marcovitch, M. Diogenis Laertii Vitae philosophorum. Leipzig: Teubner, 1999–2002.
Rist, J. M. Epicurus: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Smith, M. F. “New Fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda.” AJA 75 (1971): 357–89.
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by J. Warren, 105–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
chapter 5
Theol ogy
Emidio Spinelli and Francesco Verde
Epicurus “Coryphaeus of Atheism”?
From the historical point of view,* there is no doubt that Epicureanism has been the
victim of a substantial series of misunderstandings, which have led to its exclusion from
all those ancient philosophical systems that, on the contrary, have been regarded as
worthy of surviving, not only in Christian circles (where it is surprising that, in spite of
everything, some theologians, for example at least in part Clement of Alexandria, actu-
ally respected Epicurean doctrine)1 but already in pagan antiquity, beginning at least
with the “bad publicity” inaugurated by Timocrates,2 from right within the Kepos. If one
wished to summarize the points that in every period served to malign the integrity of
Epicurus’s philosophy, they could be reduced to four: (1) the doctrine of pleasure; (2) a
non-scientific physical theory that, on the one hand, was like a “rough draft” of
Democritean atomism, and, on the other hand, did not take account of Aristotle’s phys-
ics, which was surely an incomparable model from which to draw inspiration; (3) the
mortality of the soul; (4) a (scandalous) theology that turned the gods into essentially
useless beings. As Christianity took root in the popular culture, Epicureanism was
* In regard to the translations employed, when not otherwise indicated, the English translations of
ancient texts are based on the Italian versions. For the works of Epicurus they are based on the Italian
translation of Arrighetti, Epicuro: Opere except for the Epistle to Herodotus, for which the translation
adopted is that of Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto. The translation of Lucretius is based on that of
Giancotti, Tito Lucrezio Caro: La natura. The authors thank David Konstan wholeheartedly for the
impeccable translation of this essay from Italian into English; they are very grateful to David
Armstrong too for his significant remarks.
1 Cf. Schmid, Epicuro e l’epicureismo cristiano, 179–97 (Schmid, “Epikur,” 803–16), and the
interesting evidence of Augustine (Conf. 6.16 = Usener 407). This section was written by
Francesco Verde.
2 Cf. Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals,” 127–32.
Theology 95
attacked and discredited above all for the last two points concerning the soul and the
gods. One could offer many examples of this, but as far as the mortality of the soul is
concerned, it suffices to mention that so highly cultivated and humanistic a pope as
Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pius II) began the preface to his learned Commentarii (com-
posed between 1462 and 1463) precisely by attacking Epicurus: if the soul perishes at
death, as Epicurus wrongly believed (ut falso censuit Epicurus), then fame cannot be of
any benefit. As for the gods, another man of refined cultivation, Martin Luther, in one of
his Tischreden (summer-autumn 1542),3 asserted that in regard to theology Aristotle is
no different from Epicurus (Aristoteles est prorsus Epicurus), given that both philoso-
phers maintained that the divine was inactive in respect to human affairs. As a result,
any sort of providence was utterly abolished.
The negation of providence (pronoia) and, accordingly, of fate (heimarmenē) entailed
that Epicurus even came to be regarded as an atheist, above all by the Stoics. Toward the
end of his tightly reasoned reply to the speech of the Epicurean Velleius, which con-
cludes the first book of Cicero’s De natura deorum (1.44.123 = Edelstein & Kidd 22a;
see also the parallel testimony in Lactantius’s De ira dei 4.7 = Edelstein & Kidd 22b),
Cotta summarizes what Posidonius (significantly called familiaris omnium nostrum)
expounded in a section of his treatise On the Gods (Peri theōn), the existence of which
is confirmed by Diogenes Laertius as well (7.138; 148 = Edelstein & Kidd 20–21).
According to Posidonius, Epicurus was an atheist because at bottom he did not believe
in the existence of the gods; if Epicurus allowed that the gods existed, he did so solely for
the sake of convenience, that is, to deflect hostility and in particular the accusation of
atheism from himself. It is obvious that Posidonius’s testimony is polemical and mali-
cious in respect to Epicurus; but Posidonius expresses in nuce the basic features of
Epicurus’s bad reputation in matters of theology, which, as we have said, were to cast a
long shadow well beyond the chronological limits of the ancient world. It is obviously
impossible to determine whether Epicurus, the “coryphaeus of atheism,” as Clement of
Alexandria dubbed him (Strom. 1.1), was at heart an atheist; nevertheless, it is certain
that, basing ourselves on what his texts say, Epicurus believed firmly and with convic-
tion in the existence of the gods. In this connection, Cicero in the De natura deorum
(1.19.50) attributes to Epicurus, via his spokesman Velleius, the doctrine of isonomia
which has an “application” precisely in the theological sphere. After having repeated that
the infinite in Epicurus’s philosophical system is of huge importance, Velleius appeals to
isonomia, a Greek term that in Latin is rendered by aequabilis tributio. Isonomia pro-
vides that, even in a situation in which atoms and the void are infinite, everything has
some other thing that corresponds to it (omnia omnibus paribus paria respondeant);
from this it follows that if mortals are very numerous, the immortals will be no less
numerous, just as, if the causes of destruction are innumerable, so too the causes of pres-
ervation will be infinite. It is clear, then, that isonomia refers to a principle that essen-
tially distributes all things in the infinite universe; this means, in the last analysis, that
3 WA TR 5. Nr. 5440.
96 EMIDIO SPINELLI AND FRANCESCO VERDE
the infinite is not at all synonymous with chaos or disorder but rather, on the contrary, is
sustained by a “law” (which, however, has nothing divine, providential, or teleological
about it) which governs the whole in an orderly and distributive way.4
Therefore, if we suppose that there is a close connection between the ipsissima
verba Epicuri and what Epicurus himself actually believed, we should not and
cannot maintain that he was an atheist.5 Unfortunately, even recently, and in spite of
progress in the study of Epicurean philosophy, Epicurus has still been stubbornly
regarded as an atheist:6 yet anyone who believes this has not taken Epicurus’s texts
into consideration and refuses to recognize the decisive role that theology plays in
Epicurus’s system. Those who think Epicurus was an atheist would do well to meditate
carefully on a passage in Philodemus’s De pietate, where, making due allowance for
its apologetic purpose, the philosopher from Gadara furnishes an important piece of
information:
those who eliminate the divine from existing things (tōn ontōn) Epicurus
reproached for their complete madness, as in Book 12 (sc. of On Nature) he
reproaches Prodicus, Diagoras, and Critias among others, saying that they rave like
lunatics, and he likens them to Bacchant revellers, admonishing them not to trou-
ble or disturb us.7
In Book 12 of the Peri physeōs, which is unfortunately lost, Epicurus directly criticized
the most famous atheists in the Greek philosophical and literary tradition (Prodicus,
Diagoras, and Critias), and rebuked them because with these ideas they were causing
riots and disturbances. The passage in Philodemus constitutes a further argument
against the hypothesis that the Epicurean gods were projections or mental constructs: it
would be illogical and indeed inconsistent to treat the gods as thought constructs—a
hypothesis dating back at least as far as Friedrich Albert Lange’s Geschichte des
Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart—and at the same time
reproach atheists for their denial of the real existence of divinities.
4 On isonomia, cf. Giussani, Studi lucreziani, 227–65; Tescari, “ΑΝΤΑΝΑΠΛΗΡΩΣΙΣ Dei e

ΙΣΟΝΟΜΙΑ in Epicuro”; Isnardi Parente, “La isonomia epicurea”; Kleve, “The Epicurean Isonomia”;
and Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity, 155–66.
5 In this connection, cf. Giannantoni, “Epicuro e l’ateismo antico”.
6 A view not dissimilar to that of Clement of Alexandria has been embraced by Joseph Ratzinger
(Benedict XVI) who, in the essay that opens his Jesus von Nazareth makes Epicurus the father of
atheism (cf. Ratzinger, “Da Auschwitz alle baraccopoli”). Contra see now the overview offered by
T. Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods, part 3, ch. 12. On Epicurus’s atheism see too the interesting (and
rather malevolent) testimony of Aelian (Suda ε 2405 = fr. 39 Hercher = fr. 42a Domingo-Forasté = Usener
part. 218; for the controversial testimony on the plague caused by Philodemus’s alleged “atheism” at
Himera, see Suda τ 634 = fr. 40 Hercher = fr. 43b Domingo-Forasté = T8 Sider).
7 Col. XVIII 518–33 Obbink Philodemus: On Piety, Part I; trans. Obbink. For more on Epicurean
theology see the detailed monograph by Piergiacomi, Storia delle antiche teologie atomiste
(along with the review by Santoro) and Erler, Epicurus: An Introduction to His Practical Ethics and
Politics, ch. 4.
Theology 97
(Basic) Textual Evidence on

Epicurus’s Theology
Epicurus’s theory, then, is also a theological theory (not different, mutatis mutandis, at
least in part from Plato’s or Aristotle’s philosophy, or indeed from that of the Stoics),
within a large-scale philosophical system in which the gods have a function that is not at
all marginal. In this respect, the most important text is surely paragraphs 123–24 of the
Epistle to Menoeceus, where the first argument that Epicurus takes up concerns precisely
the existence of the gods:8
First of all, think of the divine as a living being (zōion), incorruptible and happy
(aphtharton kai makarion), in accord with what the common notion of the divine
(hē koinē tou theou noēsis) indicates, and do not attribute to it anything that is at
odds with incorruptibility or inconsistent with blessedness; in this regard, think
rather of all that is capable of preserving blessedness together with incorruptibility.
For the gods exist (theoi men gar eisin): our knowledge of them is evident (enargēs
gar autōn estin hē gnōsis); but they do not exist in the way in which the majority
think of them, because they do not hold onto them in a way that is consistent with
the notion we have of them. The impious person (asebēs), then, is not the one who
rejects the gods of the many but rather the one who ascribes to the gods the opin-
ions (doxas) of the many, since the judgments (apophaseis) of the many concerning
the gods are not prolepses (prolēpseis) but rather false hypolepses (hypolēpseis
pseudeis). From this derive both the greatest harms and the greatest benefits from
the gods; for since they are in fact continually committed to their own virtues, they
welcome those who are like them but regard as foreign everything that is not such.
In spite of its brevity, this passage is quite rich, in that it condenses the fundamental
features of Epicurean theology. Epicurus mentions right away the three essential and
ineliminable characteristics of the divine: that it is a zōion, and hence a living being; its
incorruptibility (aphtharsia); and, finally, its blessedness (makariotēs). Incorruptibility
must be understood entirely in materialist terms: the gods are atomic aggregates, albeit
very “special”: their atomic constitution is eternally harmonious and never admits of
any kind of perturbation or disturbance to its atomic structure. This particular quality,
which Cicero rightly calls the quasi corpus (cf. Cic. ND 1.25.71; also Philod. De diis
frr. 6–9 Diels 1916–17) of the gods, is due to the fact that the atoms that constitute the
gods are continually replenished, so that their individual bodies never suffer from a
diminution of matter of the sort that would cause them to die; thus, the gods will never
meet with corruption and hence the complete disintegration of their “body” (cf. RS 1
and Lucr. DRN 2.646–51). The gods are to all effects living beings which, in contrast to all
other atomic aggregates, will never experience dissolution, thanks to the continual
8 For a detailed commentary on the passage, cf. Heßler, Epikur: Brief an Menoikeus, 163–94. This
section was written by Emidio Spinelli.
replenishment of the atomic material of which they are constituted, that is, due to the
uninterrupted atomic “reparation” (antanaplērōsis)9 that renders the gods incorrupt-
ible, to be sure, and also blessed, as we read in the first Key Doctrine:
I. A blessed and incorruptible being (to makarion kai aphtharton) does not itself
experience trouble nor does it cause trouble (pragmata) to others; thus it is not sub-
ject either to anger or to benevolence (oute orgais oute charisi).10 For such things are
characteristic of a being that is weak (asthenei). [In other works he says that the gods
are knowable only by means of reason (logōi theōrētous); some subsist as material
individuals, whereas others do so by way of a likeness in shape, produced by the
continual flux of similar simulacra so organized as to construct the same object; and
they are anthropomorphic].
The gods appear to us without fluctuations or second thoughts as endowed with two
characteristics that communicate their ontological essence and moral advantage as effi-
ciently as possible: they are marked by an uninterrupted possession of aphtharsia and
makariotēs, as we have seen. In light of such advantages, Epicurus can legitimately claim
for his divinities a condition of inactivity or even “idleness,” a kind of scholē (or indeed
otium) that even seems, in some sources, to shade over into the theoretical exercise of
logismos (reasoning), going even further, perhaps, than what Aristotle attributed to his
immobile Prime Mover.11 The gods do not care at all about the affairs of the cosmos and
still less are they interested in keeping up with the events pertaining to our mortal lives.
For if they did so, they would inevitably be involved in an uninterrupted swarm of per-
turbations and disturbances and so would ipso facto lose that blessedness that, on the
contrary, distinguishes them.
Divine Activity in Epicurus’

Science of Nature?
The blessedness of the gods is intrinsically connected to their physical incorruptibility:12

the gods’ state of well-being is not “simply” eudaimonia but is rather makariotēs. In
short, the gods are more than happy, they are blessed. Their blessedness is the direct con-
sequence of their incorruptibility: since they possess an atomic structure that is contin-
ually regenerated and replenished by material present in the immense empty spaces
between worlds, where the gods reside, their state cannot be other than blessed. To take
just one example, for the gods the fear of death and corruptibility has no raison d’être:
the difference with human beings lies precisely in this. Those, indeed, who pursue
9 Cf. Epicurus Ep. Hdt. 48.

10 On this point see the concise but reliable summary by Lactantius De ira dei 4.1 = Usener 365.
11 Cf. Merlan, “Aristoteles’ und Epikurs müssige Götter.” More in general about the relationship
between Epicurus, the Epicureans, and Aristotle’s philosophy, cf. Verde, “Aristotle and the Garden.”
12 Cf. Verde, “Οὐδὲν διφυὲς αἰσθητόν”. This section was written by Emidio Spinelli.
Theology 99
Epicurean philosophy in a practical way, that is, in their daily bios, do not fear death not
because it does not exist (for human beings, as atomic aggregates, will be subject to
corruption as a result of atomic disintegration) but because for them death is nothing,
since death is a privation of sensation (cf. Epicur. RS 2 with SV 31 and Lucr. DRN 3.830 ff.).
For the gods, on the contrary, death is precisely “nothing,” in the strictly ontological sense:
it simply does not exist, given that they are never liable to corruption. Furthermore, Key
Doctrine 1 neatly condenses, in its brevity, the reasons why a divine living being experiences
neither anger nor benevolence and neither suffers nor causes trouble: its condition is
that of a blessed and incorruptible being to which neither anger nor charis (benevolence,
gratitude, sense of indebtedness) pertains or can pertain, and for this reason is under
no necessity to do anything (whether benevolent or malevolent) with respect to
human beings or any other entity (including the cosmos).13 As Cicero puts it, via his
Epicurean spokesman Velleius in the first book of the De natura deorum (19.51), god
does nothing (nihil enim agit) and is not involved in any activity (nullis occupationibus
est inplicatus) but basically enjoys his wisdom and virtue (sua sapientia et virtute gaudet),
that is, he lives in a state of maximum and eternal pleasure, experiencing neither pain
nor perturbation.
Epicurus himself was entirely clear about this in his Epistle to Herodotus 76–77:
And one must absolutely maintain, in respect to celestial bodies (en tois meteōrois),
that movement, rotation, eclipses, rising, setting, and other similar phenomena
occur, although there exists no one who is in charge, who arranges these events or
has arranged them in an organized fashion, and who possesses at the same time
total blessedness together with incorruptibility.
77. For activity and worries and rages and kindnesses are not suited to blessedness
(makariotēti) but rather are generated in weakness (en astheneiai) and in fear and the
need for neighbors—and not even (celestial bodies), which are at the same time a
dense fire, possess blessedness and make these motions voluntarily; rather, one must
preserve their full majesty (pan to semnona) in regard to all the terms that refer to such
notions, so that opinions contrary to their majesty do not arise; if not, this very con-
tradiction will cause the greatest perturbation (ton megiston tarachon) in one’s soul.
Celestial phenomena and the very constitution of the cosmos are not caused by divine
action and so are not in any way a manifestation of activity on the part of the gods with
respect to humanity.14 For it is not possible to conceive of a being that is blessed and
incorruptible and which, at the same time, concerns itself with arranging this or that
phenomenon or performing this or that activity. Epicurus is convinced that anger, kind-
ness, activity, and worries pertain to a being that is weak and which, precisely on account
of its weakness, is forever under necessity of doing something and communicating and
satisfying its own needs: Epicurus’s gods enjoy themselves, their state of maximum and
eternal pleasure which is equivalent to full and complete blessedness. This is why they
13 Cf. Warren, “Removing Fear,” 238–42. 14 Cf. Verde, “Alexis’ The Achaean Woman”.
have no need of supplications, prayers, or sacrifices, which make sense only in a human
kind of economic logic, which turns the relationship with the divine into something
“commercializable” so as to obtain benefits. The same idea is expressed in a highly sig-
nificant passage in the Epistle to Pythocles (97), the didactic letter dedicated to the study
of celestial and meteorological phenomena (ta meteōra):
And the divine nature (hē theia physis) must not be invoked as a cause of such
things, but must be kept absolutely apart from any sort of service (aleitourgētos) and
in complete blessedness (en tēi pasēi makariotēti). Otherwise, every investigation
into the causes (aitiologia) of celestial phenomena will be in vain, as has happened
to some who, in their ignorance of the method of possible explanations, have
descended into empty arguments, because they believed in a single method of
explanation and therefore refuted all the others that are based on the criterion of
possibility, and they turned to irrationality, since they did not know how even those
phenomena that must be understood as clues should be regarded.
The passage in the Epistle to Pythocles is crucial, given that Epicurus clearly denies that
celestial phenomena (and natural phenomena in general) are caused by theia physis, that
is, a divine nature which, since it has no occupation, does not bother to cause such
events, from earthquakes to lightning bolts to eclipses, contrary to traditional views
(see, e.g., Soph. Oed. Col. 1463–71). For phenomena of this type Epicurus introduces the
method of multiple explanations or pleonachos tropos,15 in accord with which, since
there are materially multiple causes by which ta meteōra are produced, the explanations
relative to any given phenomenon will be likewise multiple and the number of them will
be limited only by their compatibility with perceivable self-evidence (enargeia).16 In this
way, Epicurus, on the one hand, takes his place in the tradition (in part Aristotelian or
Peripatetic) that excludes the divine from nature and reduces everything that occurs in
nature to basic principles or rather to atoms and void, while, on the other hand, he sepa-
rates himself clearly from all those doctrines (going back certainly to Plato’s Timaeus
and to which old Stoa was, mutatis mutandis, to be heir) by which the real world and its
harmony are generated by divine activity.17
In Epicurus, then (basically as in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, but with certain cru-
cial differences associated above all with the wider “horizon of meaning” in which celes-
tial phenomena and their investigation are inscribed: cf. Sen. NQ Preface 13–17),
scientific explanation assumes an absolute primacy over mythic-religious discourse,
15 Cf. Bénatouïl, “La méthode épicurienne des explications multiples”; Bakker, Epicurean
Meteorology: Sources, Method, Scope and Organization, 8–75; Hankinson, “Lucretius, Epicurus, and
the Logic of Multiple Explanations”; Verde, “Cause epicuree”; Masi, “The Method of Multiple
Explanations”; Verde, “Posidonius against Epicurus’ Method of Multiple Explanations?”; Verde,
“L’empirismo di Teofrasto e la meteorologia epicurea”; and Verde, “Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius,
and the Aetna”.
16 Cf. Ierodiakonou, “The Notion of Enargeia in Hellenistic Philosophy.”
17 See Erler, “Epikur-Die Schule Epikurs-Lukrez,” 144–45 and 149–53; and Sedley, Creationism and
Its Critics in Antiquity, 139–55.
Theology 101
and it is only the scientific kind that allows for a practical answer to the (false) fears
deriving from the direct action of the gods, who are held responsible for earthquakes,
lightning bolts, and thunder and who are able to act on human beings, terrifying them
so as to communicate their wishes. None of this is to be found in the Epistle to Pythocles:
hence its “enlightened” modernity.
Epicurus against religio
One might think that a completely inactive god like the Epicurean would represent a
kind of impoverishment of the very notion of divinity; yet, in reality, as one may see also
in the few verses of the Aetna cited below (108), on careful consideration Epicurus
ascribes the greatest honor to the divine sphere, which is why, in the passage from the
Epistle to Herodotus discussed above (99), he hastens to preserve the full majesty (of
the gods: pan to semnona). Epicurus is perfectly aware that a being that is truly divine
cannot perform any activity and on the contrary is not the cause either of good or of evil:
in this way Epicurus is opposed not only to the idea (in some respects traditional) that
god is responsible only for good things and not for evil (cf. the paradigmatic statement
in Pl. R. 2.379c2–7), but also to the idea that it is just because they are not the source of
good things for human beings that the gods do not concern themselves with human
affairs (this is, for example, the position of Thrasymachus: Diels-Kranz 1956 85 B 8 =
Laks-Most 2016 VII 35 D17). If the divine did anything (whether benevolent or malevo-
lent), it would be a weak being and so needing to perform activities for its own subsist
ence. For Epicurus, to assign complete inactivity to gods means to grant them an honor
and majesty such as to make of divinity a being wholly “incommensurable” with any
other real thing: this supremely elevated condition of god is reducible to those traits of
blessedness and incorruptibility which make it a living ideal for human beings, a para-
digm of absolute well-being to which we may continually aspire. Already in antiquity
such a theology was thought to be an impoverishment of the very notion of the divine,
above all in comparison with the deus laboriosissimus of the Stoics (cf. Cic. ND 1.20.52).
Staying for a moment with De natura deorum (1.43.121), Cotta, in his reply to the
Epicurean Velleius, accuses Epicurus of having radically abolished religio (that is, com-
punction and “religious” fear, or in a word, “superstition,” which is not to be confused
with eusebeia, which corresponds to the Latin pietas)18 from human minds, insofar as he
deprived the gods of any possibility of aid or benevolence (opem et gratiam). Clearly,
Epicurus could not agree with the accusation lodged by Cotta, but on the contrary
would not only object that he had clearly written a work On the Gods (Peri theōn) and
another On Holiness (Peri hosiotētos: cf. DL 10.27, and also Cic. ND 1.41.115), but also
that, rather than impoverish the divine, he had so exalted it as to free it of any activity
18 Cf. Schmid, Epicuro e l’epicureismo cristiano, 121–22 (Schmid, “Epikur,” 761–62); and Olivetti,
“Filosofia della religione,” 143–45. This section was written by Emidio Spinelli.
that would have downgraded it to the level of a being so weak as not to have any truly
divine quality at all. Epicurus feared traditional religions, which he regarded as essen-
tially a kind of superstition that blocks the way toward the achievement of imperturb-
ability. This is clearest of all in Lucretius, who celebrates Epicurus as that Graius homo
(DRN 1.66), who for the first time dared to raise his eyes against that oppressive religio
which, as in the case of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, was the cause of wicked and impious
acts. According to Lucretius (this is in fact a veritable Leitmotiv in the De rerum natura),
Epicurus’s message overturned the foundations of religio so as to lay down the bases for a
true and authentic eusebeia or pietas, inherently grounded in a divinity that is deprived
of the common attributes of the divine but absolutely secure in its blessed condition.
Hence the accusations of asebeia against Epicurus, who deprived the divine being of
those traits that were no doubt fundamental and ineliminable for other, rival currents of
thought (as they were as well, of course, for the common people, the polloi), designed to
produce only, as Cicero’s Velleius emphatically underlines, portenta et miracula non dis-
serentium philosophorum sed somniantium (Cic. ND 1.8.8 = Usener 367) and so give rise
to beliefs about the gods that were certainly vain and to theological statements (apopha-
seis) that were dangerous or unacceptable precisely because they were not grounded in
the correct epistemological criterion of prolepsis.
Knowledge of the Gods
The passage in the Epistle to Menoeceus cited above constitutes a fundamental proof that
Epicurus recognized the material existence of the gods; he is particularly explicit on this
point: “for the gods exist.” There is no denying that the verb has an existential sense in
this case: the gods are real, material, existing beings. According to Epicurus, there are
gods and they exist and form part of the materially constituted locus of all things. We
can be conscious of them, not directly through the senses, but rather by means of
an organ (equally “physical”) like the mind or reason (dianoia, mens/logos, logismos).19
The mind is struck, physically struck, by simulacra—when awake, but above all when
asleep—that emanate, as Augustine makes clear, from solidis corporibus (Ad Diosc.
epist. 118.27 = Usener 352) or, still better, in the words of Lucretius (5.76), de
corpore . . . sancto of the gods. As Lucretius reaffirms, such a physical divine body is
certainly not to be assimilated to a “normal” aggregate (steremnion), of which we have
perceptual experience regularly through our senses; this particular divine bodylike
aggregate, such as the images that come from it, is however anthropomorphic in
appearance, and it is constituted of atoms that are altogether special, incredibly tiny
and fine, so as to have a form that is, in the words of Cicero’s Velleius, quasi corpus /
quasi sanguis (this could be a reference also to the divine ichor which according
19 On the manner in which the gods are known, cf. Kleve, Gnosis Theon; and Lemke, Die Theologie
Epikurs. This section was written by Emidio Spinelli.
Theology 103
to the Homeric tradition was the fluid corresponding to the immortal blood of the
gods; see e.g. Hom. Il. 5.339–40: ῥέε δ’ ἄμβροτον αἷμα θεοῖο / ἰχώρ, οἷός πέρ τε ῥέει
μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν· [emphasis our own]). This is not a matter of projections20 or, still
less, of thought constructs assembled and created by human beings, as some scholars
have maintained.21 The existence of the gods is not simply a postulate but a view—like
all those defended by Epicurus—that is supported and borne out by appeal to the self-
evidence of sensation (enargeia). Epicurus, indeed, having declared that the gods exist,
adds significantly that knowledge (gnōsis) of them is self-evident (enargēs). The adjec-
tive employed by Epicurus, that is, enargēs, must refer to enargeia, the self-evidence of
the senses that is the authentic “litmus test” required to discern the truth or falseness
of every judgment and belief. What is self-evident (enargēs) does not require any dem-
onstration, exactly as in the case of sensation (aisthēsis) and the other epistemological
yardsticks: the senses and the other criteria, indeed, are always clear and true and it is
not possible to adduce proofs or demonstrations of them.22 The evidence of each crite-
rion coincides perfectly with its own epistemic status: for each criterion is true because
it is (self-)evident and its “truth” cannot be confirmed by any other criterion; on the con-
trary, exactly those criteria are the yardsticks that assess the truth and falseness of beliefs.
Just as sensation is always true23 because it registers the fact that some external thing
exists which bumps against the sense organs of the perceiver by means of eidola or simu-
lacra, so too knowledge of the gods is evident and thus true and does need to be further
proved or demonstrated. Epicurus does not go more deeply into the question, explain-
ing in detail how the mechanism of knowledge of the gods occurs (this would most
likely have been out of place in the context of a brief compendium like the Epistle to
Menoeceus), but limits himself to associating the evidence or manifestness of our knowl-
edge of the gods with our prolepses of them. Briefly, prolepsis is the criterion that allows
one to grasp, that is, to understand, something even in the absence of direct sensation;
this is the reason why a prolepsis necessarily makes use of memory, for memory recalls
the many perceptions of a single body that have been repeatedly presented to us from
without. Sensation is not in a position to recall (for it is alogos: cf. DL 10.31), whereas a
prolepsis can do so, uniting all the features that are necessarily required to grasp or
understand a given object of which we have had repeated perceptions. The example
recorded by Diogenes (10.33) is clear: it is solely thanks to a prolepsis that we can say that
that thing, which is shaped in a determinate way, is a human being (toiouton estin
anthrōpos). Evidently, to do this, we have several times over had a perception of a human
20 See in this connection the sound objections advanced by Kany-Turpin, “Les dieux,” 162.
21 Cf. in support of this view Sedley, “Epicurus’ Theological Innatism.” (Cf., among others, also
Obbink, “ ‘All Gods are True’ in Epicurus”); for a different (and more convincing) position, we may cite
Konstan, “Epicurus on the Gods.” For further insights, cf. also Santoro, [Demetrio Lacone]: [La forma
del dio], 60–65; Purinton, “Epicurus on the Nature of the Gods”; Wifstrand Schiebe, “Sind die
epikureischen Götter ‘Thought-Constructs’?”; Babut, “Sur les dieux d’Épicure”; Essler, Glückselig und
unsterblich, 344–53; and Spinelli, “Senza teodicea,” 215–16 nn. 10 and 12.
22 Cf. Morel, “Esperienza e dimostrazione in Epicuro.”
23 Cf. most recently Hahmann, “Epikur über den Gegenstand der Wahrnehmung”, “Epicurus on
Truth and Phantasia,” and Verde, “Ancora sullo statuto veritativo della sensazione in Epicuro”.
being; these repeated perceptions (or rather the simulacra or eidola that continually
strike against our sense organs) form a typos, that is a stamp or impression (in a purely
physical sense),24 on the mind or dianoia. A prolepsis is not a memory of all the data
received by sensation but only of those that are actually relevant and necessary for (pre)
understanding and recognition (in the absence of direct and immediate sensation) of
the given object. For instance: we have had perceptions of many different human beings
but no perception which has ever communicated the existence of a feathered human
being or one with three arms. Diogenes adds to this statement that, in the very moment
in which the word “human being” (anthrōpos) is uttered (hama [. . .] rhethēnai), one
thinks at once, thanks to prolepsis, of its typos that has been acquired by virtue of
previously repeated perceptions. The crucial point, then, is that a prolepsis is closely con-
nected to language; the term that is uttered, in this case “human being,” immediately
recalls those ineliminable features thanks to which it is possible to recognize and under-
stand in advance that one is dealing with a human being. This is why a prolepsis is a
katalepsis (comprehension) or a concept (ennoia); every word or name (onoma) possesses
something that, according to the expression used by Diogenes Laertius (10.33), primarily
underlies it or, literally, is in the first instance “set beneath” it (to prōtōs hypotetagmenon;
see too Ep. Hdt. 37), and this something is self-evident (enargēs). This is valid also in the
case of the gods.
Impiety does not consist in denying the existence of the gods worshipped by the many
(that would be pure atheism!) or in doubting that they exist (the agnostic position of a
Protagoras: Diels-Kranz 1956 80 B 4 = Laks-Most 2016 VIII 31 D10), but in attributing to
them the qualities and beliefs (those of the many) that find nothing that corresponds to
them in the prolepsis (which is always true, since it is a criterion of truth) of the gods. The
prolepsis of a divine being contains those traits that are absolutely inseparable from the
divine (as Epicurus conceived it), that is, incorruptibility and blessedness; the prolepsis
is constituted empirically, that is, as the result of repeated perceptions of a specific object
that are received by the subject and then are worked up by acts of logismos. Basically, it is
the simulacra of the gods, which the mind (which is treated as a sense organ) receives
(and works up) while one is awake but above all during sleep, that transmit the traits
specific to divine beings; in this way a prolepsis of the gods is formed.25 As soon as one
does not take account of the prolepsis but attributes to a divine being activity, anger, wor-
ries, joys, and pains (as was the case with the gods in the Homeric tradition), one is com-
mitting an error in the first instance of an epistemological nature, the (frightening)
consequences of which (that is, the occurrence of perturbation and fear) are inevitably
ethical. The traits that are ascribed to the gods by the many are in fact false hypolepseis,
the falseness of which is deduced by comparison with the prolepsis, which contains the
24 Cf. Long, “Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus,” 120; on the connection between
sensation, memory, and typos see, (already) Pl. Theaet. 192a 4; 194b 5 and Aristot. De mem. 1.450a29–34,
along with Masi, “Gli atomi ricordano?”; and Spinelli, “Physiologia medicans: The Epicurean Road to
Happiness”.
25 Cf. Lucr. DRN 5.1171; see also Sext. Emp. M 9.25 = Usener 353 and, in particular, the very dense
summary by Cicero in ND 1.16.43–20.56 = Usener 352.
Theology 105
authentic characteristics of the divine nature. For a belief will be true if and only if its
content, once it is verified, corresponds properly to the phenomenon that the belief is
about. It is no accident that belief (doxa) is defined by the Epicureans also by way of the
term hypolepsis, whose meaning is, in some ways, the opposite of prolepsis; for a prolepsis
is always true (it is a criterion of truth), whereas a “hypolepsis” or “supposition” can be
either true or false (this is why Epicurus, in the passage in the Epistle to Menoeceus, has-
tens to add pseudeis to hypolepseis). To confirm that a hypolepsis is true or false requires
the self-evidence of perception (enargeia). Recourse to the phenomena, however, can be
either “direct” or “indirect” (cf. DL 10.34): a belief is true when it is directly confirmed
(epimartyrēsis) and not indirectly disconfirmed (ouk antimartyrēsis) on the basis of
the evidence of perception, whereas it is false when it is directly disconfirmed
(antimartyrēsis) and indirectly not confirmed (ouk epimartyrēsis), once more on the
basis of the evidence of perception. In the case of the gods, to ascribe work or passions to
the divine means to have a false belief concerning it, a hypolepsis that is disconfirmed
and not confirmed precisely by perceptible evidence, that is, in the last analysis, by those
simulacra that are continually detaching themselves from the quasi corpora of the gods
and communicating to the subject that perceives them that the gods are essentially
incorruptible and blessed: incorruptibility and blessedness are the essential characteris-
tics of divinity and, therefore, constitute the prolepsis of it. A god that does not have
those characteristics, in the eyes of Epicurus, is simply not a god.
Divine Anthropomorphism
Since there does not exist a form more beautiful than that of the human being, the gods
cannot be other than anthropomorphic;26 precisely the shape of the gods is discussed in
an important theological treatise, perhaps attributable to Demetrius Lacon and pre-
served in P.Herc. 105527 which, alongside the works De diis and De pietate by Philodemus
of Gadara, represents one of the most significant texts for the investigation of Epicurean
theology. This work confirms how relevant the questions were concerning the shape of
divine beings and the way in which we know them, above all by way of polemics against
other currents of thought. A non-negligible proof of the importance of the treatise con-
tained in P.Herc. 1055 is the fact that it preserves an innovative argument relating to the
anthropomorphism of the gods, which makes use of a typically Epicurean process of
inference, investigated by Philodemus in his De signis (P.Herc. 1065).28 Demetrius speci-
fies that the ascription to the gods of an anthropological form depends on epispasmoi or,
as it is usually translated, “inferential impulses” (coll. XIV 6; Santoro XVI 2). These
26 See the scholium to RS 1, cited above (on this scholium, cf. at least Isnardi Parente, “Gli dei di
Epicuro”) and also Cic. ND 1.18.46 and Aët. 1.7.34, Diels, Doxographi Graeci, 306 = Usener 355. This
section was written by Francesco Verde.
27 Ed. Santoro [Demetrio Lacone]: [La forma del dio].
28 Ed. De Lacy and De Lacy, Philodemus: On Methods of Inference.
impulses of inferential reasoning by analogy induce us to believe that, if a god is a living

being, we cannot help but endow it with reason; given that man is the only living being
that possesses a rational faculty, it is clear that god cannot but have a human form.29 Two
other important characteristics are connected to anthropomorphism: the gods breathe
and converse (in Greek or in a language not very different from Greek) among them-
selves. Philodemus in the third book of the De diis30 attributes this position to
Hermarchus, the first scholarch of the Kepos in Athens after the death of Epicurus
(271/270 bce). The fact that the gods inhale and exhale is directly connected to their
voice and, hence, to their ability to speak. Naturally, the mutual conversation that
Hermarchus attributes to the gods is not without problems: for why should the gods
have to talk among themselves if they are free of worries? To obviate this difficulty one
can plausibly suppose that divine conversations are not conducted with a view to com-
municating a need; as Philodemus writes, basing himself on Hermarchus, conversing
with those who are like oneself is a source of indescribable pleasure, all the more so if it
involves incorruptible and blessed creatures. Thus, if the gods were similar to living
beings who were completely mute, they would not be living a life that is truly blessed.
One may, therefore, suppose that their dialogues continually praise and affirm their
condition of uninterrupted blessedness, among other things in the only language of the
wise, that is, Greek (or a language quite similar to Greek).
Epicurus’s Rejection of Astral Theology
The sources, as we have observed, are pretty much in agreement in testifying that the
gods are known by the mind, or more precisely, by reason.31 The expression most com-
monly employed in these sources to indicate how the gods can be known is logoi
theōrētoi: the gods are observable or knowable by means of reason.32 The question con-
cerning the meaning of this expression has been much debated by scholars. Epicurus’s
use of the verb theōrein in no way points to an intelligible realm that has nothing to do
with the sensible, but refers essentially to the (perceptual) activity of observing, seeing,
or contemplating. The addition of the dative logōi specifies the activity involved in
theōrein: the gods are observable thanks to reason, but this does not mean that they are
29 On the meaning of epispasmos, see Santoro, [Demetrio Lacone]: [La forma del dio], 143–44, along
with Koch, Comment peut-on être dieu?, 113–15; and now Piergiacomi, “Mental Attraction to a
Magnet-Like God.”
30 P.Herc. 152/157, coll. XIII 20–XIV 13, Diels 1916–17 p. 36 f. = Longo Auricchio, Ermarco: Frammenti,
32; cf. also Cic. ND 1.33.92–93 = Longo Auricchio, Ermarco: Frammenti, 33.
31 Cf. Essler, Glückselig und unsterblich, chh. 1 and 3. This section was written by Francesco Verde.
32 Cf. again the scholium to RS I and Aët. I.7.34, Diels, Doxographi Graeci, 306 = Usener 355; see also
Cic. ND 1.18.49 and 37.105 (in the latter Cicero, via Cotta, argues that the species dei is perceived
cogitatione). Note too the occurrences of the expression in [Dem. Lac.] [De forma dei] coll. XXIII 11
and XXIV 1–2 Santoro and in Philod. De diis III Diels 1916–17 fr. 11.2. Cf. too Vegetti, “L’epistemologia
della medicina ellenistica,” 271, and Grimaudo, “Λόγῳ ϑεωρητόν”.
Theology 107
not really existing living beings and actually endowed with a (quasi) physical body made
up of atoms. Clearly, the fact that the (quasi) body of the gods cannot be perceived by the
senses is the reason why Epicurus explains in what way they are logoi theōrētoi: the sim-
ulacra that detach themselves from the gods and which must complete an extremely
long trajectory (given that the Olympus of the Epicurean gods is the intermundia or
metakosmia,33 that is, the wide spaces that are interposed between one cosmos and
the next, and where the deities can live undisturbed even by bumps and collisions; cf. Ep.
Pyth. 89, as well as ‘Hipp.’ Ref. 1.22.3 = Usener 359) are so fine as to be imperceptible to the
senses and exclusively perceptible to the mens or dianoia.34 The mind is a sensory organ
to all intents and purposes but of course endowed with specific activities of its own: for
the gods cannot be perceived with the sensory organs of the body (such as the eyes or
ears) but only by the mind, which, after it has received the divine simulacra, perceives
them and works on them. The perception of the eidola of the gods proves their existence,
while further work on this perceptual material leads directly to the formation of the pro-
lepsis of the gods that is able to disconfirm any false belief that would make of the gods
irascible or active beings (whether for good or evil) in regard to human beings and, more
generally, to nature. Here lies the principal reason, among other things, for Epicurus’s
fierce criticism of so-called astral theology:35 in paragraphs 73–74 of the Epistle to
Herodotus, Epicurus again takes up the theme of cosmology, specifying that worlds, like
all atomic aggregates, will dissolve in turn, some faster (no doubt insofar as their structure is
not tightly knit), others more slowly; this is directly tied to Epicurus’s denial that worlds
can be animate beings (zōia). This is a powerful move away from Plato’s Timaeus and all
those cosmologies (including traditionally religious ones) that not only regard celestial
bodies as divinities (precisely this is the basis of the astral theology specifically refuted
by the Epicureans),36 but hold that the cosmos is endowed with a world soul that per-
forms the task of animating it (see Pl. Tim. 34b–37c). Epicurus, on the one hand, denies
that, as in the case of the Timaeus, there is a divine artisan (for Epicurus, to return to an
important fragment of Diogenes of Oenoanda, the only artisan is nature itself),37 a
demiurge that fashions the world with a providential purpose at a specific point in time
and in the best possible way, in the image and similitude of an eternal, perfect, and living
33 On the meaning and characteristics of the intermundia, see the detailed study by Rescigno,
Pluraliter: Due studi di cosmologia antica, 57–96; as well as Manzoni, “Perché gli dei di Epicuro hanno il
loro Olimpo negli intermundia”; and the suggestion by Drozdek, “The Problem of the Immortality of
the Soul in Epicurus,” 46–50.
34 See the testimony of Augustine, Ad Diosc. epist. 118.27 = Usener 352.
35 Cf. Festugière, Epicurus and His Gods, 73–93 (= Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux, 102–31) and more
generally Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste: Le dieu cosmique.
36 Cf. Essler, “Cicero’s Use and Abuse of Epicurean Theology,” 246–52.
37 Diog. Oen. NF 155 = YF 200: “Although Plato was right to acknowledge that the world had an
origin, even if he was not right to introduce a divine craftsman of it, instead of employing nature as its
craftsman, he was wrong to say that it is imperishable” (transl. and comm. by Hammerstaedt-Smith,
“Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Discoveries of 2008,” 24–26 = Hammerstaedt-Smith, The Epicurean
Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda, 56–58). See also Verde, “Plato’s Demiurge”; and Sedley, Creationism
and Its Critics in Antiquity, 13–66.
paradigm, given the inherent inactivity of the Epicurean gods38 and the eternity of the
universe; and, on the other hand, Epicurus refutes the idea that worlds are animated
living beings. Besides, the gods cannot be identified with the planets because the per-
petual movement of celestial bodies, however harmonious it might be, does not con-
form to the perennial bliss in which the gods live in all its fullness.39 Those who maintain
that the stars (for example, the sun and moon) are divine beings are simply mistaken
(like the Stoics: see, for instance, Plutarch De Stoic. rep. 1051F = SVF 2.1049), given that
they do not take into account the fact that the gods are different from celestial bodies
because the images of the former, in their continual movement from their starting
point in the intermundia, are merely reflected by the latter. Human beings, who do not
understand that it is really only a matter of reflection, identify the gods with the stars,
since the reflection brings it about that the gods seem to be at exactly the same distance
as the planets (hence the mistake of identifying the two), just as an object (perhaps
bigger and further away) that is reflected in a mirror seems to be at the same distance as
the mirror.40 In short, worlds have nothing divine about them but are simply atomic
aggregates that are generated and destroyed for reasons strictly tied to the physics and
kinetics of atoms.
To understand the special character of the Epicurean position, and keeping to the
Hellenistic world, one need only think of the Phenomena of Aratus of Soli (translated
by Cicero himself in his Aratea),41 which begins with a true and proper hymn to Zeus
(vv. 1–25), who is present in every place and every thing and by his activity regulates
the life of mankind in an orderly way, thanks to the constellations that he placed in
the sky. The same position will be taken up in the Astronomica of Manilius, who
begins his work by declaring that the cosmos is wholly governed by an aeterna ratio
(64) that harmoniously manages the movements of all things. In Aratus and in
Manilius (by virtue of their more or less self-conscious attachment to the Stoic school
of thought) we may see exactly what Epicurus was criticizing. Leaving aside Lucretius,
there are clear echoes of this position in a text included in the Appendix Vergiliana,
the Aetna, which has been justly called a “scientific poem,”42 in which the anony-
mous author engages in a polemic against all of the typically mythic-poetic views
that treat phenomena associated with volcanic activity as resulting from some divin-
ity. But, as he says, the gods “do not have . . . such vulgar occupations, nor is it proper
to drag heavenly beings down to the most humble activities: these sublime beings
reign in a heaven that is hidden from us, and they are not concerned to undertake the
labor of artisans” (32–35).43
38 Cf. on this point Warren, “Ancient Atomists on the Plurality of Worlds,” 363–64.
39 Cf. in this connection Essler, “Cicero’s Use and Abuse of Epicurean Theology,” 132–33.
40 Cf. Philod. De diis III Diels 1916–17 coll. VIII 5–X 6; on the Philodemus passage, cf. Essler,
“Falsche Götter bei Philodem (Di III Kol. 8, 5–Kol. 10, 6)”; and Glückselig und unsterblich, 26–330. On
the question of the “astral gods,” see Woodward, “Star Gods in Philodemus, P.Herc. 152/157,” 29–47.
41 See now Pellacani, Cicerone: Aratea e Prognostica.
42 Iodice, “L’Aetna dello Pseudovirgilio,” and Verde, “Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius, and the Aetna.”
43 Translation based on the Italian version of Iodice, Appendix Vergiliana.
Theology 109
Epicurus’s Rebuttal of Providence
Now that we have analyzed the basic features of the Epicurean conception of the divine,
we must, finally, raise the question of the true inner meaning of theology in Epicurus’s
philosophical system. The crucial point, all in all, is to understand what sense there was
in venerating the gods—as Epicurus did, after all, and invited others to do as well44—if
the gods did not bestir themselves either for good or evil and, as a result, there could not
be any kind of providence (apronoēsia), which, if we go by the testimony of Origen (Cels.
1.13 = Usener 369),45 the Epicureans did not hesitate to deem a form of deisidaimonia,
that is, fear of the gods, or superstition.
The Epicurean critique of every kind of providence is attested in various sources, in
both their historical practice and their philosophical position. To understand its merit and
the form of the arguments, it may be useful to go over what Sextus Empiricus writes in PH
3.9–12. Here, he seems (tacitly, it is true, but almost certainly, as we can determine thanks
to a comparison with a parallel passage in Lactantius)46 to make use of Epicurus’s doctrine,
which, as we have seen, regards divinity not only as an incorruptible and immortal being
but above all one whose blessedness is directly proportional to its lack of interest in the
affairs of our world and thus is far removed from any kind of providential care or concern.
Thanks to a kind of disguised ad hominem exploitation of Epicurean polemics (probably
chiefly anti-Stoic), Sextus constructs a tight and at the same time ironic anti-theodicy, and
it is perhaps worth the effort to run through at least its basic features.47
Whoever accepts divine pronoia must face a harsh choice. A divinity exercises its
providential power—and with good intentions, we may add—either (I) over all things,
or (II) only over some.
(I) The first branch, however, is blocked by a very powerful factual counter-example
(P. 3.9): the existence of evil in the world, which is acknowledged, after all, by the
very same supporters of a providential order of the real world.
(II) The analysis of the second alternative (PH 3.10–11), which calls into question the
restricted range of providential action, gives rise to a quadrilemma,48 the horns
44 See DL 10.10, Philod. Piet. col. XXXI 879–89 Obbink Philodemus: On Piety, Part I = Arrighetti 114 =
Usener 387; and P.Oxy. 215, especially Coll. I and III Obbink. This section was written by Emidio Spinelli.
45 On the absence of providence in Epicureanism and in atomism tout-court, see the discussion in
Alexander of Aphrodisias in his work On Providence / Peri pronoias (which survives basically in Arabic
translation, with the exception of a few citations in Greek that have come down in the indirect Patristic
tradition), especially <1, 5>–<3, 15> (cited from Fazzo and Zonta Alessandro di Afrodisia).
46 Cf. Lact. De ira dei 13.19 = Usener 474, along with Spinelli, “Senza teodicea” and “ ‘Le dieu est la
cause la plus active.’ ” On the critique of “theodicy,” cf. also Lucr. DRN 5.195 ff.
47 For a full illustration of the schema, as recovered from the passage in Sextus, cf. Runia, “Atheists
in Aëtius,” 565.
48 In its logical structure as well, this objection seems to imitate in a polemical way the typical
structure of Stoic arguments, such as the well-known “pentalemmatic” ratio, explicitly traced to
Chrysippus, Diogenes of Babylon, and Antipater, and noted also by Cicero (Div. 1.38.82–84), to
demonstrate the existence of divination, starting from the existence of the gods.
of which and their respective refutations may for the sake of convenience be
represented schematically as follows:
the divine, in regard to reality
a. wishes to and can (act) wishes to but cannot can but doesn’t wish to neither wishes to nor can
b. no, because evil remains! then it is weak then it is invidious it is invidious and weak
All the conclusions indicated in section (b) of the diagram are incompatible with a truly
pious view of divinity, as is reaffirmed in PH 3.12, again thanks to the use of a verbal
expression (epilogizometha) that is plausibly of Epicurean ancestry.
We can take as established, then, both the intense critique of the providential order of
the universe and the exhortation to revere the traditional gods (but stripped of their
“Homeric attributes”).
Epicurean Priests
Given this picture, and in view of the latter position in particular, it will come as no sur-
prise that there are attested (especially through epigraphy) Epicureans in priestly offices.
We limit ourselves to noting: (1) Tiberius Claudius Lepidus (second century ce), an
important representative of the Epicurean community in Amastris, a coastal city in
Paphlagonia, who was priest and head of the College of Augustales in charge of the
imperial cult (see the testimony of Lucian of Samosata in his Alexander or the False
Prophet, 25); and (2) Aurelius Belius Philippus, who in an inscription (dated to the time
of Hadrian or a little later) appears as “priest (hiereus) and diadochus of the Epicureans
in Apamea.”49
As one may readily imagine, the question is as delicate as it is controversial, and
hence widely debated. One plausible answer—which takes account, on the one hand, of
the blessed and incorruptible life that is led by the gods and, on the other hand, of the
Epicurean rejection of any divine activity and, connected to this, their denial of provi-
dence and of prophecy—may be found in the idea that the gods are models or regula-
tive ideals to which all people (but especially the sophoi, the wise “friends of the gods”:
see the third passage of Philodemus, gathered under Usener 386) should (or at least try
to) conform.50 Maintaining that the gods are models does not at all mean diminishing the
role that they play, especially if we bear in mind that “conforming” in this world and to
the extent possible to the blessed and perfect life of the gods is not an “ideal” undertak-
ing, lacking any relation to reality. The conclusion to the Epistle to Menoeceus (135)
49 In this connection, cf. Koch, Comment peut-on être dieu?, 51–75. This section was written by
Francesco Verde.
50 On friendship of god and men, cf. Hessler 2013. On friendship among the Epicurean gods, cf.
Armstrong 2016 and Mitsis in this volume.
Theology 111
invites the addressee (who is simultaneously individual and general)51 to meditate on

the central ethical issues in the letter; in this way it will be possible to avoid perturba-
tion and to live like a god among men (hōs theos en anthrōpois),52 and thus to achieve in
practice the highest realization of happiness (eudaimonia). We find the same idea
expressed in the Epistle to Menoeceus also in Lucretius, where he affirms that it is not
impossible, here and now, to lead a life like that of the gods (Lucr. DRN 3.322: dignam
dis degere vitam). The expression employed by Epicurus in the letter is quite strong and,
if Epicurean theology has any meaning at all, it should be found just here in the conclu-
sion to the Epistle to Menoeceus: to live like a god among men means to envision divinity
not as something distant (although it is so, in fact, from a strictly physical and local
point of view) and so insignificant, but rather as representing a practical possibility of
realizing here and now the ideal of life proposed by Epicurus and of attaining happi-
ness in a lasting way, enjoying in this life (the only one we have) pleasure (understood
as the absence of pain: cf. Ep. Men. 131). Thus, the role played by the gods cannot be
other than ethical, and it is significant that Epicurus very likely again justified this
“function” in physical terms.
The Ethical Meaning of

Epicurean Theology
As has been observed, it is undeniable that eidola detach themselves from the gods; as
Cicero writes (ND 1.19.49), the mind turns to these cum maximis voluptatibus, with the
greatest pleasure (this Ciceronian passage, incidentally, can be read in connection with
what Polyaenus maintains in regard to the relationship between the divine nature and
pleasure, as we shall see in a moment). Moreover, at the beginning of the sixth book of
the De rerum natura, Lucretius writes that, if conceptions unworthy of the gods are not
refuted (6.75–78):
you will not approach the temples of the gods with a tranquil heart / nor will you be
able to receive with serene peace of mind / the simulacra that flow from their holy
bodies (de corpore . . . sancto simulacra feruntur) / to the minds of human beings, as
messengers of the divine form (in mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae).
51 Cf. De Sanctis, “Utile al singolo, utile a molti.”

52 There is no doubt that the differences are entirely substantial and substantive, and yet,
nevertheless, this kind of wholly terrestrial divinization of man is a feature that Epicureanism has in
common with Christianity, which, apart from the abyss that remains between the two, celebrates at all
events a god who becomes a man and who, in some sense, by “humanizing himself,” renders human
beings divine in accord with a strictly reciprocal logic (on this point see more in general Ernst Bloch’s
remarkable book Atheismus im Christentum). In ancient Christian thought we can clearly notice this
(already “Platonizing”) view; to take but one example, consider several passages of Origen’s De principiis
(Peri arkōn), where the emphasis is on our participation in the divine nature by following Jesus Christ’s
teaching (see e.g. De princ. 4.4.4, according to the Latin translation by Rufinus of Aquileia: ut si forte
per hoc in quantum fieri potest per imitationem eius [sc. Christus] participes efficiamur divinae naturae).
Alongside the passages from Cicero and Lucretius, we may add an important text of the
middle Platonic philosopher Atticus, recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea (des Places fr. 3
p. 48.63–65, ap. Eus. PE 15.5.7 = Usener 385), who deemed the absence of providence in
Aristotle more impious than the same doctrine in Epicurus. In this passage, Atticus
writes that, according to Epicurus, human beings derive a benefit (onēsis) from the gods:
their better emanations (beltionas aporrhoias) are accessory causes (or “co-causes”:
paraitias) of many good things for those who partake of them. Atticus is right not to
attribute to the Epicurean gods any “pure” or “absolute” causality—that would result
in a patent contradiction with Epicurus’s philosophy—but to speak more modestly of
“co-causes” or paraitiai,53 although in the Epicurean tradition itself there are not lacking
those who regarded the divine nature as a cause. This is the case with the Epicurean
Polyaenus (Tepedino Guerra fr. 29) who, in the first book of his On Philosophy (Peri phi-
losophias), maintained, according to what Philodemus reports in the De pietate, that the
divine nature (theia physis) is the perfect cause (autotelousan . . . aitian) for us (hēmin) of
the greatest pleasures (hēdonōn tōn megistōn). In any case, Atticus reports that the better
emanations of the gods (the reference is, of course, to the divine simulacra) are able to
provide a benefit, that is, a profit directly bound up with that imperturbability that the
gods enjoy eternally and which, for those who adopt the philosophy of Epicurus, is an
actual and real possibility that they are called upon to realize in practice, if they wish to
achieve a truly genuine and lasting happiness. On the basis of Atticus’s testimony and
the other parallel sources, the veneration of the gods acquires an ethical value of the
highest order, even as it coexists with the inactivity of the divine and the absence of
providence. The simulacra of the gods, then, bring benefits, and thus to participate in
prayers and in religious ceremonies (cf. Diog. Oen. fr. 19 II 6–11 Smith) means to “interi-
orize” in an effective way the (pleasurable) divine simulacra and to put into practice the
commitment to become like a god among men.54 In this sense, the gods are not only
ethical models and regulative ideals, introduced by Epicurus solely in order to render
his philosophical system consistent with his recognition of beings that are eternally and
genuinely imperturbable. Epicurus’s gods also become figures highly relevant to our
ethical life, playing a role that is at least indirectly active (although without any deliber-
ate intention on their part), in virtue of the benefits that their simulacra bring us in
practice on the not always easy road toward assimilation to god (homoiōsis theōi), which
has a Platonic pedigree (cf. Theaet. 176a–b) but is totally of this world and bounded by
the limits of this life.55 This is why, in Epicurus’s philolosophy, veneration (sebasmos) of
the gods is often confused with veneration of the Epicurean sages (at the head of the list
are the kathēgēmones or andres of the Kepos: Epicurus, Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and
Hermarchus), as happens, for example, in the anonymous treatise on ethical matters
53 The translation provided by des Places, Atticus: Fragments, 48 is, in fact, “causes partielles.” In
P.Herc. 346 the term used for “co-cause” is synaitia (Capasso, Trattato etico epicureo col. X 8). See too
Bonuglia, “Atticus on the Status of Platonic Ideas.” This section was written by Francesco Verde.
54 Cf. Piergiacomi, “A che serve venerarlo, se il dio non fa nulla?”
55 In this regard, see the reasonable conclusions reached by Drozdek, “Epicurean Gods,” 165–66;
cf. also Essler, Glückselig und unsterblich, 357–58; and especially Erler, “Epicurus as deus mortalis.”
Theology 113
contained in P.Herc. 346.56 It is no accident that in the De rerum natura Lucretius

ascribes to Epicurus divine attributes (cf., e.g., DRN 3.15: divina mente; 5.8: deus ille fuit,
deus; 5.50–51: nonne decebit / hunc hominem numero divum dignarier esse?) to convey
the idea that Epicurus (and more generally the Epicurean sage) should be an object of
veneration, rather than the false gods of religio. As we read in SV 32, “Veneration of a
sage is a great good for those who venerate him.” For the Epicurean sage is in all respects
a god among men, and the control of the passions and, more specifically, the elimination
of false opinions (kenodoxia) depends also on glorification of the sophos and, more
generally, on the imitation of Epicurus, as Lucretius himself, after all, confirms in the
opening to Book 2 of the De rerum natura (5–6), where he declares that he desires to
imitate Epicurus out of love (propter amorem / quod te imitari aveo), completely in line
with the most authentic and orthodox doctrine and tradition of the Kepos. The venera-
tion of the sage, like assimilation to a god, is a good for whoever practices this activity:
in the former case, sages are concrete models, living paradigms toward which we must
orient our existence, whereas in the case of the gods, their beneficent simulacra (which
one can “attract” by means of prayer) are an aid to us because they give us pleasure and
teach us that ataraxia is a possible and desirable condition, and choiceworthy beyond
anything else. This, obviously, does not mean that the gods are “active” or “principal
causes” of our happiness: for Epicurus, happiness can only derive from all57 human
beings themselves and not from outside; and yet, the achievement of happiness, the
privileged goal of philosophy, depends also on the veneration of living beings, incor-
ruptible and blessed, who do not act either for good or for ill in relation to those who do,
nevertheless, pray to them.
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chapter 6
Death
Stephen E. Rosenbaum
“Death is nothing to us,” Epicurus taught. He aimed with this ambiguous declaration
to undermine negative ideas about death, which lead to fear, anxiety, worry, and stress,
robbing people of happiness. He supported his idea by simple reasoning, thereby
endorsing the utility of rational argumentation in treating fears and anxieties (Ep. Men.;
KD 2). So little is now known to remain of Epicurus’s originally voluminous writing that
we have few of his texts to use in interpreting this unclear statement about death.1
However, what we have of his reasoning on the issue very much helps us understand
what he meant, and ancient literature also helps. No other Epicurean idea has generated
so much philosophical dispute in contemporary times, and recent discussion helps
illuminate Epicurus’s view. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify Epicurus’s thinking
about death and show that it is more philosophically agreeable and consequential than it
may first appear.2
Epicurus’s views about death are linked in his systematic thinking to other central
aspects of his philosophy. As already indicated, they are connected in the ethics to his
conception of happiness. They are related to his physicalist metaphysics, with which he
denies the possibility of an afterlife for the soul, so important in his thinking regarding
death. His ideas about death are connected further to his conception of the utility of
studying philosophy, to his uncommon hedonism, and to his notions of justice and
social organization. They are also related to his conception of the gods. These connections
will be noted in this essay, and developed in various articles in this volume.
Like other Hellenistic ethicists, Epicurus was fundamentally concerned about
eudaimonia—well-being, as the Greek has been often translated.3 He shaped his
1 Perhaps as Italians excavate and papyrologists and classicists record and translate more Epicurean
texts from Herculaneum’s Villa dei Papyri, we may have more to go on.
2 My chief concern is to understand the basic principles of Epicurus’s philosophical thinking about
death and its value for people, not to offer a complete account and analysis of the details of his
comments about death in those texts to which we have access. There are textual puzzles in remaining
Epicurean texts, but I focus on the basis for the thesis about death.
3 The word “happiness” is sometimes used, but in English now connotes mostly subjective
satisfaction or contentment. Eudaimonia in Greek meant much more, including certain objective
Death 119
hilosophy using ideas he believed would help people live the best lives. Among other
p
topics of human concern, he thought that human attitudes toward death contribute
importantly to whether people live well. He consequently directed a significant portion of
his ethical theory to ideas about death. Incorrect ideas about death, he thought, contribute
to unhappiness, while correct views support living well. His idea about death formed one
of four central theses concerning what he took to be basic human concerns related to
living the best life. These theses were parts of his philosophical tetrapharmakos, a four-part
“medicine” designed to engender human eudaimonia, by treating each of four chief
sources of unhappiness.4 Epicurus believed that philosophical thinking was important
because it can help people live well, including helping them surmount death anxieties.5
An important part of the philosophical background of Epicurus’s idea about death is
his conclusion that people do not survive their deaths personally. The idea that “death is
nothing to us” should be understood in this context. Following Democritus, Epicurus
as an early atomist was a complete physicalist, and believed that people are complex
collections of physical atoms. Epicurus thought human souls consist solely of atoms,
especially small and moveable atoms, which can move easily in the body and facilitate its
manifold operations.6 When people die, he believed, their atoms, including their soul
atoms, which escape the confines of the body at death, disperse sooner or later into the
environment.7 This eventual, complete dissolution of everything that constitutes the living
individual implies the impossibility of a personal human afterlife.8 Epicurus thought
that living, ensouled individuals are centers of consciousness, properly ordered aggrega-
tions of atoms, which at death dissipate and cease functioning. Nonexistence after death,
he thought, forms the basis for regarding death as “nothing.” If there is no personal
afterlife, Epicurus thought, then “death is nothing to us.”9
conditions of one’s life and being active in certain ways. “Happiness” is commonly regarded as an
inadequate translation, although I shall occasionally use it for the sake of suggesting the relationship
between Epicurean thinking and basic human concerns. See Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 15 where it is
translated as “human flourishing.”
4 Philodemus, Against the Sophists, 4.9–14. Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 116; Tsouna, The Ethics of
Philodemus, 19. The tetrapharmakos is summarized in KD 1–4.
5 Usener, Epicurea, 221: “Empty are those philosophical theories that treat no human suffering
[pathos].”
6 While most ancient Greek thinkers endorsed the idea of a human soul, that concept was in ancient
Greece used to account for life and did not connote as it does in the modern world a metaphysically
immaterial substance. Ancient philosophical accounts of souls differed largely with respect to the
nature of souls, not with respect to whether there are souls. While Epicurus and other atomists believed
souls are composite and destructible, made up of physical parts conjoined temporarily, thinkers such as
Plato argued that souls are non-composite and indestructible.
7 Plato refers in Phaedo to an atomistic view of the soul, according to which the soul dissipates at
death (70a–b), and jokes later about those having a childish fear of dying in a high wind (77d–e).
Lucretius in DRN 3.847–50 considers the possibility that one’s soul atoms might at some time in the
future be reassembled, but argues that the resulting assemblage would not matter to us.
8 See Epicurus’s Ep. Hdt. in DL 10.65–68.
9 Lucretius has numerous interesting arguments in DRN 3 as to why souls are physical and why
physical souls will not have an afterlife.
120 STEPHEN E. ROSENBAUM
Many have been inclined to dismiss Epicurus’s view without much thought, and most
contemporary philosophical thinkers (many of whom, like Epicurus, do not endorse an
afterlife) have found it disagreeable. Indeed, without interpretation and defense, it
seems mistaken, hardly in need of refutation. Death can be a very painful or uncomfort-
able thing. How could that be “nothing” to us? Many of us are terrified of death, or at
least occasionally somewhat anxious about it. How could any sensitive thinker avow in
this light that is it “nothing”? People recoil from the prospect of death and commonly
feel varying degrees of anxiety at the thought of having to die. How could death in the
face of that reaction be “nothing”?
Philosophers have recently accepted as a philosophical axiom the idea that death
is bad for us, from which they have constructed theories of why death is bad for us.
I shall come to those theories, and the “intuited” axiom on which they are grounded.
In opposition to initial negative reactions against the Epicurean view, and persistent
philosophical objections to it, it can be justified using a little clarification and circumspect
critical reflection. Additionally, it has implications for current socially important
philosophical issues.
Epicurean Reasoning about

the Value of Death
Epicurus’s own comments about death in the Letter to Menoeceus are key to understanding
his idea and his reasoning for it:
Accustom yourself to thinking that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad
depend on sentience (aisthēsēi), whereas death is the absence of sentience . . . there
is nothing fearful in living for one who grasps that there is nothing fearful in not
living. Therefore one speaks idly who says that he fears death not because it will be
painful when present but because it is painful in prospect. For if something causes
no distress when present, it yields groundless pain when merely expected. So the
most horrifying evil, death, is nothing to us, because when we exist death is not
present, but when death is present, we do not exist. Hence it is nothing to the living
or the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter no longer exist.10
However incompletely clear this central passage in Epicurean ethics, it is evident that
Epicurus was concerned both about the value of death for people and about death anxiety.
It is clear too that ideas about the value of death for a person are supposed to be the basis
for undermining death anxiety. With this passage as the background and with the
understanding that Epicurus believed that those who die cease to be as persons, that
there is no personal afterlife, it is possible to clarify Epicurus’s view.
10 Ep. Men. Further illuminating comments are in Epicurus’s Ep. Hdt. at DL 10.81.
Death 121
A first step in elucidating Epicurus’s idea is to realize that the term “death” (thanatos)
is ambiguous. “Death” can refer at least to the process of dying, to the moment separating
being alive from being dead (the time of death), and to the condition of being dead itself.
When a person’s death is painful and we feel badly for the person who dies painfully,
what is bad is the person’s process of dying. Of course, we describe the process using the
term “death,” but the term is used to express other concepts. The process of dying of
course occurs while a person lives, before the person dies. Epicurus should not be under-
stood in this argument to have reasoned that the process of dying is nothing to us.
Hence, rightly thinking that the dying process can be difficult or bad for people does not
negate his view.11
“Death” also occasionally refers to the moment of death, the time of a person’s death.
When we say of a person that her death occurred at 2:01, we are referring to the exact
time of the person’s death, to an event that takes a very short time, perhaps beginning
and ending at the time cited. We are here not talking about the dying process that
brought the person to that moment, nor are we talking about what happens after that
time. Epicurus displayed no concern about the moment of death, if indeed he thought
of that distinct concept. The moment of death may in any case be a time which people
do not fear, so much as they fear either the dying process or what happens after the time
of death.
The text itself makes clear the focus of Epicurus’s concern. When he says that “death is
the absence of sentience” and “when we exist death is not present, but when death is
present, we do not exist,” he is clearly using “death” to refer to the condition of being
dead, to the time after one dies.12 His text would otherwise be readily questionable, as it
has seemed to numerous recent philosophers who have not appreciated the ambiguity
of “death.” Moreover, what seems to bother people about death is not the moment of
death, but rather what happens after they die, or perhaps the physical and psychological
effects of the dying process.13 Epicurus primarily addressed fears associated with what
might happen to one after one dies, when one is dead. There can be, he thought, no suf-
fering and no tortures as described in the myths. When people die, they in some impor-
tant sense cease to be as persons: “when [our] death is present, we do not exist.” The time
after we die is what Epicurus thought is nothing to us. However, ambiguity remains.
When considering the idea that death is nothing to us, readers may object that when
our friends and family die, that is certainly not “nothing to us.” It means much, and can
alter our lives dramatically and negatively. How can it be “nothing”? Reflecting on this
11 This is not to say that Epicurus has nothing to say about the badness of the process of dying, since
he does express ideas that bear on the badness of dying. However, the argument from Menoeceus, cited
earlier, is not about the dying process.
12 KD 2 also makes this clear: “what has been dissolved lacks sentience and what lacks sentience is
nothing to us.”
13 The exact nature of the human fear of death is not clear, and there probably is no single anxiety
that answers to the phrase “the fear of death.” This is one of the most important issues still insufficiently
addressed in the literature about death, but Epicurus does address at least some attitudes which may
properly be described by the phrase.
example reveals yet another ambiguity. There is an important difference between my

death (my being dead) having value for me on the one hand and my death having value
for others. Epicurus’s presentation does not take this difference into account. Others can
be affected by our deaths, we by theirs. We can be affected by the timing and manner of
their deaths. We can grieve or even rejoice over others’ deaths. However, Epicurus was
thinking about the value of one’s death for oneself, not for others. He wanted primarily
to comfort us against anxieties about our own deaths.
Although we now have no evidence that Epicurus himself addressed directly the
matter of how death affects others, there are clues about how he would have regarded
grief and pain over the deaths of others. When Epicurus was dying painfully, he took
comfort in memories of experiences he had had with friends (DL 10.22). Moreover,
Epicureans believed generally that recollection of past goods contribute importantly
to living well (Plut. Non posse 1099D). Epicurus apparently would propose, opposed to
the pain or grief of friends’ deaths, recalling good experiences with them while they
were alive. He also thought that assimilating the principles of his thinking as early as
possible would help people avoid the most severe grief and would contribute to persistent
well-being (DL 10.81–82, 122). The tenets of his philosophy would convince one that the
dead are beyond suffering and can no longer have pain or bad experiences, which could
reduce the pain of losing a friend to death. Additionally, if the dead were happy while
alive, then their lives could not have been better, however long they lived, which should
also provide a measure of comfort (KD 19). So he seems to have believed that although
the deaths of others can be proper objects of grief, such grief should be ameliorated by
remembrance of past goods and use of the principles of his philosophy.
Epicurus was concerned to address the condition of humans after their deaths, about
the condition or state of their being dead, and about the value of that condition for those
who die. He used this idea to argue against death anxiety. This is basically the condition
he thought people should not fear. The argument he gave should be understood in this
light. This interpretation is the only one that can accommodate his simple reasoning.
In this sense of “death,” the state of being dead, death is not present when I am alive,
and it is not something I can experience when I am dead. It is “nothing to me,” alive or
dead. I can think about my prospective death in this sense, perhaps even about my own
nonexistence. Those thoughts can be psychologically debilitating for some people, and
hence bad for them. But thoughts about death, whatever their effects on people, are not
death itself. So if ideas about death cause people to have negative feelings, which may be
said to be bad for them, it does not in any way show that death itself is bad.
These simple clarifications make Epicurus’s declaration about death far less objec-
tionable than it might at first seem. Perhaps they are not sufficient to persuade people
that death is not bad for them, and is thus not to be feared, but they make his view less
easy to dismiss without further thought. Consideration of the extensive and growing
philosophical literature on the value of death, especially that literature which has apparently
argued against Epicurus, has helped develop Epicurus’s idea. It is important first to
understand the central elements of Epicurus’s reasoning and how the argument might
be vulnerable.
Death 123
The most fundamental support for Epicurus’s idea comes from his now controversial
thesis about value.14 He thought that something can have value for someone, can be
good or bad for someone, only if the person is able to experience it at some time (“all
good and bad depend on sentience” Ep. Men.). A person’s sentience ends at death, along
with the capacity to experience, if there is no afterlife. In general, sentience in this con-
text involves being affected by some event and being able to be aware of the effects of the
event at some time. So his idea was that unless an event can affect a person and unless
the person is capable of being aware of that event at some time, then the event or condi-
tion can have no value for the person.15
Since Epicurus believed that after they die people do not exist and they lose sentience,
he thought they were not capable of experiencing anything after they die. They cannot as
persons be affected by any events, and cannot be aware of any effects. Their bodies might
be affected, but the functioning persons once affiliated with those corpses cannot be
affected (having ceased to function), and they cannot be aware of being affected.
Therefore, Epicurus thought, nothing bad can happen to people after they die. Bad
things could happen to their bodies, but not to themselves as persons. Since only after
they die are they in a condition of being dead then the condition of being dead cannot be
bad for the dead. These are the central elements in Epicurus’s reasoning.16
Objections to Epicurean
Thinking about Death
One reaction many recent thinkers have had to Epicurus’s idea is that however cogent
his reasoning, he misidentified the basic human concern about death. What he argued is
not bad for people may be something people are not really concerned about, or not very
concerned about. People may not really be afraid of the condition of being dead, and
many may not be concerned about suffering in an afterlife. Nevertheless, they are anx-
ious about death. They may instead be concerned about losing what they have in life,
goods they have accumulated, opportunities to have more experiences, and in general
not being able to do the things they want to do (finish important projects; visit with and
follow the fortunes of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; see what happens
14 Most recent philosophers who have objected to Epicurus’s view of death have done so by
implicitly adopting a different principle of value. I discuss this concept later.
15 For a fuller discussion of the nature of the reasoning, see Rosenbaum, “How to Be Dead.”
16 Epicurus expresses in Menoeceus two reasons for thinking that death is not bad for us. One is that
we no longer are capable of sentience in death. The other is that in death we no longer exist as the
persons we were. Warren and Tsouna are certainly correct to point out that Epicurus had two
distinguishable arguments against the badness of death: Warren, Facing Death, 19; Tsouna, The Ethics of
Philodemus, 248 ff. I am not distinguishing those different arguments here, because either argument
suffices, mutatis mutandis, to combine with the principle of valuation to show that after death nothing
can be bad for the dead.
in the future; and many other things). They may be anxious about or at least strongly
averse to being deprived of life and all being alive involves. Accordingly, perhaps the
strongest contemporary objection to Epicurus’s view is that what is bad about death is
not that after we die we do not exist, but that our death deprives us of what we would
otherwise live to experience. It may be what dying makes us lose that makes death bad
for us, if what we lose is on balance good.17 Most recent philosophers have taken this
view, the “deprivation argument,” for the badness of human death. This general idea has
for years been realized in various versions. My comments will apply generally to the
different versions.18
One immediate reply to this concern is that even if death deprives people of various
goods they would otherwise have had, those dead cannot experience or suffer from los-
ing or being deprived of what they lose.19 If death brings losses or deprivations, those
losses cannot be experienced, and so cannot be bad for the dead. Using the principle
about value Epicurus illuminated in his reasoning, that “all good and bad depend on
sentience,” how could such deprivations be bad for people? People will not be affected by
them and cannot be aware of them, mind them, or suffer from them, having lost their
existence/sentience at the same time the losses began. Some even think that because of
not missing or being able to miss that of which death would deprive one, there are no
real deprivations in death.20 They believe that the concept of deprivation does not apply
to what happens to those who die. In any case one cannot miss or suffer from whatever
he or she loses in death. This essentially undermines the criticism.
Most contemporary philosophers, in the context of the idea that there is no afterlife,
have been immune to the fact that being deprived of goods by death cannot be experi-
enced by those who die. They have mostly ignored the point. They have at least implicitly,
and rarely explicitly, endorsed an alternative conception of value or an alternative
conception of deprivation. According to their notion, it does not matter that people who
die cannot experience the deprivations their deaths cause, because those critics adopt a
concept of value according to which something can be good or bad for someone without
17 Another version of this idea focuses on how death may change the quality of our lives. Nussbaum,
Therapy of Desire and Furley, “Nothing to Us?” claim that death can rob certain lives of meaning and
value, and can thus be bad for us, independently of what would have happened in the future. However,
this version is subject to the same concerns that the other has, with suitable adjustments.
18 For a very few of those who advocate the deprivation argument or the badness of death based on
what one loses, in one form or another, but a representative sample, see Nagel, “Death”; Williams, “The
Makropulos Case”; Furley, “Nothing to Us?”; Striker, “Commentary on Mitsis”; Feldman,
Confrontations; Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire; Kaufman, “Death and Deprivation”; Bradley, Well-being
and Death; Luper, Philosophy of Death.
19 Lucretius is convinced by this point, in DRN 3.894–903: Those who in death lose all the praemia
vitae “do not retain any desire for these things.” See also DRN 3.870–93; and Warren, Facing Death, 22.
Philodemus makes the same point early in On Death 1.2, when he notes that “deprivation of good
things [in death], being accompanied by unconsciousness [anas[thē]sian], is painless and not such as
in life.” Trans. W. Benjamin Henry.
20 Warren, Facing Death and Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus endorse Lucretius’s reply, and insist
that because of not being able to experience being deprived of goods by death one cannot really “suffer”
or undergo deprivations because of death.
Death 125
having any effects on that person. They endorse the idea that value for a person does not
depend on sentience or existence, contrary to Epicurus.
The recent debate among philosophers began with the realization that whether death
is bad for people depends on “assumptions about good and evil.”21 At least two different
notions of value, or principles about value, should be considered in this context. Only if
one gives up Epicurus’s principle that good and bad require sentience and adopts an
alternative could one rightly think that death is bad for people. The alternative principle
is that something may have value for someone, even if it has and can have no effects on
the person in question.22 This alternative has been used to argue not only that death is
bad for people, but also that people are subject to posthumous harm, that they can be
harmed by events after they die.23
Epicurus’s principle of value is clear enough, but the other notion needs explication.
The idea used by those who reject the Epicurean view is that not only can one think that
dying, the moment of death, or the condition of being dead can be bad for people, but
also the fact that people die when they do might be bad for people. What is or can be bad
about death, they think, is the fact that a person dies at a certain time in the course of life.
According to Epicurean critics, facts about people may be good or bad for them, even
when those facts do not involve causal effects on those about whom they are facts.
Without a link to sentience or feelings, or effects on people, facts might according to the
different principle of value be good or bad without having any effects or causing any
awareness or feelings. Facts thus might be good or bad even for those who are dead and
no longer exist. On the basis of this alternative principle, many current thinkers endorse
the badness of death for people.24
Some examples of this notion of value, which I call “abstract,” in contrast to Epicurus’s,
which I call “concrete,” would be useful. Facts are abstract, being propositions and not
being able to stand in causal relations, unlike events, occurrences, or happenings, which
are able to cause other events and be caused by other events. Historians and military
strategists have for example come to regard Alexander as one of history’s best military
strategists. This occurred after Alexander’s death, as historians and military practitio-
ners such as Julius Caesar and Napoleon came to appreciate his success in battle. That he
21 Nagel, “Death,” 64–67.

22 Fuller discussion of these different principles of value and their implications are in Rosenbaum,
“Appraising Death.”
23 Representative of the extensive literature on posthumous harm are Pitcher, “Misfortunes of the
Dead” (following Feinberg, Moral Limits of the Criminal Law); Levenbook, “Harming Someone,”
“Harming the Dead,” and “Welfare and Harm”; Marquis, “Harming the Dead”; Callahan, “On Harming
the Dead”; Rosenbaum, “The Harm of Killing”; Glannon, “Persons, Lives, and Posthumous Harms”;
Luper, “Posthumous Harm” and Philosophy of Death; Taylor, “The Myth of Posthumous Harm” and
“Harming the Dead”; Portmore, “Desire Fulfilment and Posthumous Harm”; Belshaw, Annihilation;
and Scarre, “The Vulnerability of the Dead.”
24 Silverstein, “The Evil of Death” advocates a somewhat different metaphysical view, which enables
him to maintain that while “values connect with feelings” (a principle of value closely associated with
Epicurus’s) those who are dead coexist with events occurring after their deaths. With this idea, he
argues that events occurring after death are not nothing to the one who dies. Also see Silverstein, “The
Evil of Death Revisited” and “The Evil of Death One More Time.”
has come to be so regarded is a fact about Alexander, even if he was never affected by the
fact and even if he never thought of it. According to some, this fact can be good for
Alexander, Alexander the person. We would commonly think that this fact is about
Alexander’s legacy, and we could evaluate his legacy having this feature, but we might
balk at thinking this fact to be good for Alexander the man, distinct from his legacy.25
Philosophers sympathetic to this abstract conception of value use it to explain the
badness of death for a person, when they think death is bad for someone. Their view is
that although death is not always bad for someone, when death is bad for a person it is
bad because of certain facts about the person, or about certain features of the person’s
history, narrative, or legacy. When, for example, a person dies before she is able to com-
plete an important piece of scientific research that she had aimed to complete, this fact
may be supposed to be bad for her, the person. It does not matter that the person may
never have known about the fact, that the person does not even exist, or does not mind
the fact. The fact is true of the person, even if she can never be affected by it. Using this
abstract conception or principle of value, some philosophers reason that death can at
least sometimes be bad for people, apparently contrary to what Epicurus thought.26
Those who adopt this alternative conception of value, and use it to argue against
Epicurus, have not considered the logical relationship of their objection to Epicurus’s
view about death. In light of how his basic view is rightly interpreted, that view is cen-
trally about one’s condition or state after one dies. It does not concern facts about one
which are not connected to any experiences. What is the logical relationship? Suppose
that facts about one, which are not related to any experiences one has, can have some
kind of value or can be good or bad for one. It does not follow from this that one’s being
dead can be bad for one, in the sense in which Epicurus denied that death is bad. In fact,
no one who has adopted such a view of the badness of death has to my knowledge con-
cluded that Epicurus’s view about death, rightly understood, is mistaken. There is no
logical relationship.27 Many critics speak about death’s being bad for people, but their
claim, along with its justification, does not negate Epicurus’s argument that death is not
bad for people. They are talking about an alternative, logically independent conception
of value, and using that conception differently. However useful in some respects, using it
to refute Epicurus’s view about death is unjustifiably to confuse a person with his or her
legacy, history, or narrative. Most recent critics have just ignored Epicurus’s idea of
value, perhaps as a relic from a poorly enlightened antiquity, and they have implicitly
25 Philodemus appreciated the point in his On Death 36.27–30: “for the man who lived badly, even if
all men of later times surmise that he has lived blessedly, it is impossible to conceive [how] he will have
obtained any relief from his wretched life.”
26 For fuller discussion of this idea and its implications, and for other objections, see Rosenbaum,
“Appraising Death.” Some of the arguments for abstract valuation, including Nagel’s, are discussed in
Rosenbaum, “Appraising Death,” 159–64. The abstract notion of value may be useful in some contexts,
but it is compatible with Epicurus’s concept of value and how he uses it in his overall ethics.
27 See Rosenbaum, “Appraising Death,” 152–54, for a discussion of the relationship between
Aristotle’s view of death, Nicomachean Ethics 3.6 (1115a), and Epicurus’s.
Death 127
adopted a different idea. It remains to be seen whether and how this different idea of
value is otherwise significant.
Another objection to Epicurus is based on simple question-begging acceptance of the
idea that “death is bad for people.” Some philosophers insist that it is just obvious that if
anything is bad for people, death is bad, maybe the worst thing. Philosophers designate
such an opinion an “intuition,” suggesting that it has privileged epistemic status. Many
accept as a fundamental axiom the badness of death for individuals who die, which
should not be questioned unless there is some overriding reason to challenge it. This
“intuition,” coupled with its philosophical development and wide acceptance, then is
supposed to place a burden of proof on those who would deny it. The theoretical
accounts of how death is bad for people then come to define the way in which death is
bad for people, and those accounts typically explain the badness of death in terms of loss
or deprivation, which is related to the so-called “deprivation argument.” The explana-
tion of death’s badness, however, if explained by deprivation, using the same abstract
conception of value, is not logically related to Epicurus’s view. It is consistent with
Epicurus’s thesis about death, and does not negate his idea.
The difficulty with relying on the “intuition” that death is bad for people is that the
“intuition” is not at all clear, and yields little useful guidance in the development of ideas
about death. Moreover, those with negative emotions and feelings associated with
thoughts about death are overly eager to endorse some description that seems as if it
might capture the content of those emotions. Strong feelings conjoined with unclear
language lay the basis for inappropriate, misleading philosophical ideas. The ambiguity
of the words by which the intuition is expressed is apparent from the earlier analysis of
Epicurus’s claim that “death is nothing to us.” The terms “bad,” “tragedy,” “misfortune,”
and others are commonly used to apply to death, and it is not clear whether we are apply-
ing those terms to the timing of a person’s death in relation to some narrative, to the
process of dying, to the moment of death, to the manner of death, or to the condition of
being dead. It is also not clear whether we are assessing the value of death for the indi-
vidual dead or for the person’s friends and family. In the absence of a full examination of
how exactly we assess death using all the expressions we use to do it, it is premature to
endorse the badness of death and the negation of Epicurus’s view, especially in the con-
text of very strong and misleading negative feelings about death. Critics begin with
implicit and obscure denial of Epicurus’s principle of value about death—that value
depends on sentience—and end up with a theoretical account of the badness of death
that is logically unrelated to Epicurus’s view. Our negative feelings about death can no
more easily be turned into a plausible denial of Epicurean ideas than can a mystical
experience be readily turned into a theology. Perhaps Epicurus’s and closely related
thinking about death can help undermine negative feelings and ideas, and help people
on the road to happiness, which is what Epicurus was trying to do.
Some would object to Epicurean thanatology on the ground that it seems incompati-
ble with a general prohibition against killing. If death is not bad for people, then what
could be wrong with killing them? I know of no scholarship that makes a case that
Epicurus’s view about death is incompatible with the wrongness of killing, but some
thinkers have in conversation suggested this point to me (without offering justification).28

However, if Epicurus’s idea could not be reconciled to, or were incompatible with, the
wrongness of killing, it would appear questionable. It is valuable to address the point
because it will shed light on Epicurean ideas of morality (justice) and show the flaw in
the objection.
We have no evidence that Epicurus himself thought about the relation between his
view of death and the morality of killing. He was a contractarian, however, thinking that
right and wrong, justice, come from principles in a social contract (synthēkē), justified and
explained by its usefulness for society.29 The prohibition against killing was in the compact.
Hermarchus, scholarch after the death of Epicurus, used principles of Epicurean morality
to explain the nature of justice and specifically to address the morality of killing.
Explaining why the compact included a prohibition against murder or killing, he said
that such behavior “is not useful to the general structure of human life.”30 The idea that a
moral principle forbidding murder comes from a contract, justified by its social utility, is
certainly compatible with the denial of the badness of death for people who die. The
objection assumes that murder can be contrary to a moral principle only if killing is bad
for those killed. But other types of reasons can be the basis for murder being wrong. The
Epicurean idea of justice shows the compatibility of thinking both that death is not bad
for people and that killing is wrong, contrary to principles of proper behavior.31
One of the more interesting recent objections to the Epicurean view of death regards
the possibility of making certain comparative evaluations about life and death.32 We
sometimes compare life and death axiologically, especially when we think about the
rationality of a person’s suicide, when we think about whether it would be proper for a
person to be euthanized, or when we generally assess the timing of someone’s death. For
example, when we judge that a person’s suicide was a tragedy, we may do so on the basis
of thinking that the person would have had a better and more productive life overall, if
she had continued living and not committed suicide. Her life might have been better
if she had continued living. Thinking this way may be tantamount to thinking that her
dying when she did (the timing of death in her life narrative) is worse for her than her
continuing to live, or bad in relation to continued living. Sometimes we may believe that
an act of euthanasia was merciful, or good for a person, on the ground that his death was
better for him than continuing to live would have been. In this case we are thinking that
dying when he did was good in comparison to continued life. If death can have value in
these ways, can be bad or good in relation to continued life, then it might appear that
28 McMahan, “Death and the Value of Life,” 235. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 95–98 briefly
expresses this concern as a conclusive objection, but neither explains nor justifies it.
29 See KD 31–38 and the general discussion of Epicurus’s view of justice in Rosenbaum, “Epicurean
Moral Theory.” Also see Armstrong, “Epicurean Justice.”
30 Porphyry On Abstinence 1.7.1–9.4 (quoting Hermarchus), Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers. See the further discussion of justice in On Abstinence, 1.10.1–12.7.
31 For a fuller discussion of this objection and ideas associated with it, see Rosenbaum, “Concepts of
Value,” 161–65.
32 See Silverstein, “The Evil of Death” for further description of such comparisons. McMahan,
“Death and the Value of Life,” 235 ff. takes this idea to challenge the Epicurean view.
Death 129
Epicurus was mistaken in believing that because the dead lack sentience death can have
no value for people.
The Epicurean view of death thus seems to undermine the basis for our thinking, for
example, that a person would be better off dead, or better off continuing to live. These
thoughts appear to imply that death can have positive or negative value for people. Such
comparative judgments, which people make regularly, might seem impossible on the
Epicurean view. Without such comparisons, how would it be conceivable to think about
and assess the justifiability of suicide or of euthanasia? How might it be better for a person
to continue living than to commit suicide? How might it be better for a person to die
rather than live in pain and psychological misery? Specifically, is Epicurus’s view
compatible with such thoughts and judgments?
Consider the question in light of the difference between the kind of value used in
Epicurus’s reasoning and the kind of value used by the deprivation argument/explanation,
discussed earlier. Recall that the difference between the two principles of value is that
according to Epicurus’s notion, events can have value for people only if people can expe-
rience them, can be affected by them, and be aware of them at some time. This concrete
idea of value is different from the abstract notion that propositions expressing facts
(possibly unrelated to events of which people could be aware) about people can have
value for them.
Returning to the earlier example about Alexander, the fact that Alexander has come to
be regarded as an exemplary military strategist, a fact of which he could never have been
aware, might be thought to be good for Alexander the person. People with this abstract
idea of value attach good and bad for people to facts, which they regard as positive or
negative. The difficulty with doing this, however, is that it obscures the difference between
two kinds of value, value for individuals themselves on the one hand and value for their
legacies or narratives. Without this distinction, a person’s legacy, developed and refined
hundreds of years after a person’s death, could be literally good or bad for the person who
lived and died long ago. Good or bad in the same way that some disadvantage or benefit
could have been good or bad for the person while alive. One need not deny the notion of
abstract value involved in assessing a person’s legacy while denying that the value of a
person’s legacy is a value for the person. The abstract conception of value is a tool in the
range of judgments people make, and has its place in making important judgments. Such
judgments include comparative judgments which some think challenge Epicurus’s
thanatology. However, the use of such conceptions is compatible with Epicurus’s idea.33
One can account for comparative value judgments in terms of the abstract conception
of value I used earlier in discussing the “deprivation argument.” If one thinks that propo-
sitions about a person may have value for the person, even without being associated
with effects on the person, one can explain the comparisons in terms of the value of facts
or propositions for people. We can think that these comparisons are judgments about
the relative value of different sets of propositions about a person’s life, actual and possible
narratives about a person’s life story or history. When we think, for example, that it would
33 Consider Philodemus’s remark in n. 25.

be better for a person to continue living than to die, we are judging that the narrative in
which the person continues to live is better than the narrative in which the person dies.34
Perhaps this belief is because we think that the person’s life would contain more satisfac-
tions than otherwise, whether we can know this or not. Similarly, when we believe that it
would be better for the person to die than to continue living, we are thinking that the
story in which the person dies rather than continues to live is better than the one in
which the person continues to live. This may be because we believe that the person
would have had an unacceptable level of pain or psychological suffering if she continued
to live. In order to think such things we need not endorse the idea that the time after a
person’s death could be bad for the person. Therefore, the making of such comparative
judgments as described does not refute the Epicurean idea.35
However varied in their particular conceptual complexity, the objections to Epicurus’s
thesis that death is not bad for people fall into categories of objection discussed. Most
objections involve the idea that death can deprive people of good and that death is for
that reason bad for them. Because this objection depends on a notion of value different
from that of Epicurus and because of its logical status, it does not refute his view. It
remains to be determined just how important this point is, because its importance
depends on what people care about when they reflect on death, and how important it is
to them. I shall address these questions in what follows, in discussing the fear of death
and the implications of Epicurus’s view.
Death Anxiety
The other main element of Epicurus’s thanatology concerned death anxiety. His goal in
arguing against the badness of death for people was to undermine death anxiety, since
that anxiety minifies or perhaps undermines well-being. How does the argument
oppose the fear of death? Although the expression “the fear of death” is quite common,
one should begin with the realization that death anxiety is diverse, and that there is no
single “fear of death.” There are different objects of death anxiety, because people fear
different things when they think about death. Additionally, the psychological intensity
of negative feelings about the various objects will also differ for different individuals,
even psychologically healthy individuals without “phobias.” The question of death anxiety
is more complicated than available Epicurean texts make it appear.36
In confronting death, people have negative feelings about the process of dying,
including the possible physical and psychological pain of dying. They have anxieties
34 The nature of the values we employ here is not as important as realizing that what we are valuing
are statements included in someone’s life narrative, propositions which might not entail concrete effects
on someone. The values could consist in esthetic preferences or customary social values.
35 See Rosenbaum, “Appraising Death.”
36 Epicurus’s early followers such as Lucretius and Philodemus expressed more expansive ideas
about the fear of death, and I shall come to some of their ideas in due course.
Death 131
about being dead, or perhaps the thought of being dead. They may simply fear the
unknown, perhaps implicitly associating death with some unknown kind of experience.
They may fear the fact that they will die sometime, and they may also fear the fact that
they may die before they want or before they accomplish certain goals. A complete treat-
ment of death anxiety is impossible in the course of this discussion, but it is possible to
address to some extent particular fears about death that were considered by Epicurus
or his followers, or addressed implicitly based on what we know about Epicurus and
his philosophy.
Epicurus was concerned centrally about fears associated with one’s continuing to be
conscious after death, including fears associated with the stories of punishments and
tortures after life. His view that nothing bad can happen to people after they die was the
basis for his thinking that such fears are groundless. Being dead is not bad for people, he
thought, and cannot cause them distress, since they do not exist to experience distress.
They lack sentience. Since it cannot harm people or cause them distress people should
not fear it. Again, he supposed that reasoning is capable of altering feelings and eliminat-
ing fear.37 The psychologically therapeutic nature of reasoning need not be such that the
reasoning is immediately effective, and capable of reducing improper feelings at the same
time one first understands an argument and fails quickly to discern objections to it. The
efficacy of the argumentation on the feeling might be psychologically more complex,
requiring extended meditation, further reading, and continual review of and reflection
on the reasoning. In any case, Epicurus accepted the power of cognitive therapy, and
thought that the therapy could undermine fears associated with being dead but having
negative experiences nonetheless. Although Epicurus opposed fear of being dead and the
prospect of tortures in an afterlife, his ideas also implicitly oppose other fears.38
Against the fear of tortures in an afterlife, Epicurus’s conception of the gods also sup-
ports his view that in death we have nothing to fear. He conceived of the nature of the
gods in such a way that the gods were by nature incapable of causing humans trouble.
Epicurus conceived the gods as blessed (makarion) and therefore naturally incapable of
troubling humans or feeling anger or gratitude towards anyone.39 He believed that it was
impious to think the gods capable of caring whether humans suffer or not, because that
implies the gods are weak and not blessed.40
Before considering other fears for which Epicurean ideas offer an antidote, it is impor-
tant to introduce a well-known idea from Lucretius, which has been widely discussed
among recent classicists and philosophers. It also has a legacy of engaging philosophical
minds through history since Lucretius wrote his poem.41 Lucretius as a good Epicurean
37 For a circumspect and extensive discussion of the therapeutic nature of philosophy in the
Hellenistic world, see Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, especially ch. 1, “Therapeutic Arguments.” See also
Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, especially ch. 4, “Therapeutic Tactics.”
38 See Warren, Facing Death, especially “Fears of Death.” 39 Ep. Men.; KD 1; Ep. Hdt.
40 See Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 244–48.
41 Pseudo-Plato Axiochus 365d; Sen. Ep. 77; Cic. Tusc. Disp. 1.37.90; Plut. Consolatio ad uxorem 610d
and Consolatio ad Apollonion 109f; Montaigne, “That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” 65;
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation 2.466 ff.; Hume, as reported in Boswell’s “An
Account of My Last Interview with David Hume, Esq.,” in Private Papers of James Boswell.
was concerned to undermine the fear of death, and used a creative idea to make the case.
At two places in Lucretius’s poem, where he discussed the value and fear of death in
Book 3, he described a symmetrical relationship between our past, pre-vital nonexistence,
and our future posthumous nonexistence:
Just as in the past we had no sensation of discomfort when the Carthaginians were
converging to attack, so too, when we will no longer exist . . . you can take it that
nothing at all will be able to affect us and to stir our sensations.42
And in the second occurrence:
Look back also and see how the ages of everlasting time past before we were born
have been to us nothing. This therefore is a mirror which nature holds up to us,
showing the time to come after we at length shall die. Is there anything horrible in
that? Is there anything gloomy?43
Lucretius’s comments have been interpreted in different ways, and the various interpre-
tations have been discussed extensively. However, he seems to have urged in one place
that one should fear one’s death, one’s future nonexistence, no more than one fears one’s
pre-vital nonexistence, since the two times are relevantly alike. Since people do not fear
their pre-vital nonexistence, they should not fear their posthumous nonexistence.
Although the point of the symmetry idea is arguably different in the two different places
in which it occurs in the poem, at least one of the occurrences seems to have been
directed against fearing death on the ground that one does not have fears or negative
attitudes about one’s previous nonexistence, before birth.
Reviewing fully the interpretation of Lucretius’s comments or elements of the philo-
sophical dialectic is not necessary here. The philosophical discussion regarding the
so-called symmetry argument against fearing death has centered on two main issues:
whether prenatal and posthumous nonexistence are the same or relevantly similar and
whether it might be reasonable to have different attitudes toward one’s prenatal nonexist
ence and one’s posthumous nonexistence. Whatever the outcome of a deep and thorough
philosophical examination of what seems a Lucretian symmetry argument against death
anxiety, the idea has been of some help to those feeling anxious about their deaths.44
People who fear death may for psychological or cognitive considerations be some-
what confused about what the object of their fear is. Not being able easily to subtract
themselves from their ideas of what being dead will be like, even when they consider the
42 Lucr. DRN 3.832–42 (trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers).
43 Lucr. DRN 3.972–77 (trans. Rouse and Smith).
44 Nagel, “Death”; Parfit, Reasons and Persons; Kamm, “Why Is Death Bad?”; Rosenbaum, “The
Symmetry Argument”; Segal, Lucretius on Death and Anxiety; Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire; Glannon,
“Temporal Asymmetry, Life, and Death”; Belshaw, “Asymmetry and Non-existence” and “Later Death/
Earlier Birth”; Kaufman, “Death and Deprivation” and “Pre-vital and Post-mortem Non-existence”;
Warren, “Lucretius, Symmetry Arguments, and Fearing Death” and Facing Death; see Tsouna, The
Ethics of Philodemus for a small selection of items on different interpretations, critical treatments and
additional bibliography.
Death 133
possibility of not being conscious of anything in death, they may associate being dead
with unpleasant experiences of being dead or perhaps with a dreadful experience of
nothingness itself. Epicureans dealt with such psychologically complex fears as well.
Philosophers have sometimes been sensitive to human psychology, and Lucretius was,
among others, aware of this possible psychological basis for death anxiety. Lucretius
wrote (Lucr. DRN 3.870–83, trans. Rouse and Smith):
When you see a man resent the prospect of his body’s being buried and rotting after
death, or being destroyed by fire or by the jaws of wild beasts, you may be sure that
his words do not ring true, and that there lurks in his heart some hidden sting, how-
ever much he may deny the belief that he will have any sensation in death. For he
does not, I think, grant either the substance or the ground of what he professes.
Instead of completely stripping himself of life, he unconsciously makes some bit of
himself survive . . . he does not distinguish himself from [his body] or adequately
detach himself from the abandoned corpse; he subconsciously identifies himself
with it, and by remaining present, contaminates it with his own consciousness.
People may psychologically have a difficult time separating their consciousnesses from
their imagining of what it could be like to be dead or to be corpses, and so “contaminate”
their prospective corpses with their own continuing consciousnesses. Lucretius’s
implicit advice is to be sure to subtract oneself fully from the picture one forms of one’s
being dead, and ensure that in one’s imagination, one’s consciousness is fully and per-
manently extinguished.45
A somewhat different death anxiety is fear about the process of dying, which can, as we
know, be more or less painful. People often fear a painful or psychologically troubling
process of dying. Of course, this fear is not about what happens in death, but what
happens at the end of one’s life. Epicurus directly addressed physical pain in general as
one element in the tetrapharmakos.46 He thought that acute pain does not last very long,
and that pleasure is available to compensate for bodily pain. This optimistic assessment of
physical pain and its negligibility would of course apply to any physical pain associated
with the dying process. Any pain in dying would, he thought, either be tolerable and even
able to be overcome by pleasure, or, if intolerable, accompanied by a rapid death. One
may well have doubts about the truth of this doctrine, especially when taking into account
different pain tolerances of different people. It seems that dying could be accompanied by
considerable pain, even in the contemporary world of advanced pain management.
Whether and to what extent it is to be feared is a different question. Epicurus’s thoughts
about various pains of dying may well not supply the relief he intended.
45 Adam Smith made in the eighteenth century the same psychological point, using a slightly
different example, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.i.1.13. It may in some sense be difficult or
impossible to use one’s imagination while trying to imagine that one’s imagination or consciousness is
gone and inactive.
46 KD 4: “Pain does not last continuously in the flesh: when acute it is there for a very short time,
while pain which just exceeds the pleasure in the flesh does not persist for many days; and chronic
illnesses contain an excess of pleasure in the flesh over pain.”
Epicurus’s comments about why pain is not so fearful seem to focus on physical pain.
Yet, we know he was concerned about mental or psychological pain, and regarded men-
tal pain as worse than physical.47 The discomforts of almost any dying process can be
aggravated by psychological factors, such as depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. Thus
might psychological factors make the pain of dying worse or less easily bearable than it
might be without those elements. Perhaps physical pain in dying is enhanced by these,
and other, psychological factors. This is associated with distress that might come from
realizing that one is about to die. The Epicurean antidote to this aspect of the dying proc
ess is in general his view that death is not bad for people, along with therapeutic methods
that aim to undermine death anxiety. So Epicurus appears to have thought that the pain
of the dying process is no worse than any other kind of physical pain, which is relatively
easily borne, and that the fact that the process leads to death is irrelevant to how intense
the pain is. Any fear of death may well be based on those beliefs which in general Epicurus
was trying to undermine by his thesis that death is not bad for us, and is thus subject to
basic Epicurean argumentation against the fear of death. The psychological discomfort of
anxiety about the dying process is arguably due largely to false beliefs about whether
death is bad for us, to be ameliorated by reasoning against the badness of death.
Some people are anxious about dying prematurely.48 The very old, enfeebled by age,
and past the most active, productive portions of their lives, seem in general less anxious
or uncomfortable when contemplating their deaths. The relatively young, however, who
would ordinarily have the most productive parts of their lives before them, may be more
anxious when considering their deaths. Does Epicurean thinking address this fear of
dying “too soon”? Epicurus’s idea, that life can be complete in a short time as well as a
long one and at virtually any age, does address the fear, although controversially. Epicurus
held that once one achieves the good end, the telos, that end cannot be enhanced by
temporal extension.49
A life of eudaimonia in Epicurean thinking is incompletely understood, especially
since it consists in pleasure of an unusual type.50 Interpreters are hindered by a paucity
of texts, and usually address issues that, however relevant to understanding Epicurus’s
hedonism, are not central. It was, however, thought to be complete once one achieved it.
A complete life of well-being, for Epicurus, can no more be enhanced than a state of
perfect health.51 It might become longer, but there is no criterion by which it could
47 Ep. Hdt.; Cicero Fin. 1.17.

48 The nature of prematurity is clearly problematic. Is dying prematurely dying before one wants;
dying before one is finished with certain usually time-extensive projects; dying before what is normal;
dying before one has achieved happiness? What is it? See comments about the Epicurean conception of
a complete life, following.
49 KD 19–21.
50 This is especially problematic in the context of modern notions of pleasure that follow Bentham
and Mill, and in the context of interpreting Epicurus’s proto-utilitarian concept of justice. Epicurus’s
hedonism is discussed in Tsouna’s Chapter in this volume. See Rosenbaum’s discussion of pleasure and
justice in “Epicurean Moral Theory.”
51 See Furley, “Nothing to Us?”; Mitsis, “Epicurus on Death and the Duration of Life”; Rosenbaum,
“Epicurus on Pleasure and the Complete Life”; Warren, Facing Death; Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus;
Lesses, “Happiness, Completeness, and Indifference.”
Death 135
become better. Therefore, if such a life lasts for a short time, it is just as good at being a
perfect human life as a flourishing life of eighty years. Emphasizing quality over quantity,
Epicurus thought that extending a perfect human life does not make that life better. If one
could come to accept this view of life, it could help undermine fear of dying too soon.52
Some thinkers explain the fear of premature death in terms of a rather different con-
ception of human life and happiness. According to their idea, a fully human life has a
natural structure and an associated notion of completeness, which takes time and cannot
be achieved in a limited period, as Epicurus appears to have thought. Humans make
plans and pursue goals, which are supposed to be meaningful only on the supposition
that those plans can be pursued over time and completed in a “normal” human lifespan.53
The fear of premature death might be the fear that such plans and aims will be uncom-
pleted or even meaningless. Death is supposed to be able to undermine the meaning of
human activities incorporated within an appropriate life plan because it can interrupt
the temporal course of those activities and make impossible their proper completion.
This idea depends on the principle that a plan within a human life is meaningful only
if it is completed. The Epicurean view of the role of goals, aims, or desires in a human life
seems to be that they lay the basis for lives which have the quality of (katastematic)
pleasure, by which people live in a state of ataraxia/aponia, without the wrong kinds of
desires.54 In order to supply meaning to a life, goals might not need to be accomplished,
but rather just to guide the life’s activities in a certain deeply engaging way. In any case
this is one of the controversies to be resolved by further discussion and analysis.55
Some people have anxiety about the simple fact that they are mortal, that they will one
day die. Do Epicurean texts address this fear? One comment Epicurus made seems pos-
sibly to have considered this object of death anxiety (Ep. Men.):
A correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality [thnēton]

of life enjoyable [apolauston], not by adding infinite time, but by ridding us of the
desire for immortality.
A proper understanding of this comment is no doubt complex and must take into
account various basic aspects of Epicurean ethics. It is nevertheless clear that if this com-
ment is about the fear of mortality, the treatment of this fear depends on the basic
Epicurean view that “death is nothing to us.” So the fear would be treated as a part of the
Epicurean doctrine that death has no value for the dead, as well as full explication of its
52 The view of life depends heavily on understanding and accepting Epicurus’s unusual hedonism,
which is poorly understood, largely because of scant evidence. It also depends on realizing, as Epicurus
thought, that varying episodes of kinetic pleasure might be enjoyable, but cannot make life happier.
See Ep. Hdt.
53 Nussbaum has an illuminating description of this view in her Therapy of Desire, especially 204–12.
She thinks that the fear of death (affiliated with death’s prematurity) “is a fear that, right now, our hopes
and projects are vain and empty” (207). See Furley, “Nothing to Us?,” esp. 89–90; and Striker,
“Commentary on Mitsis.”
54 Ep. Men. 55 See Rosenbaum, “Epicurus on Pleasure and the Complete Life,” 23–25.
implications. The proper understanding of the idea that mortality is “enjoyable” does
not yield the idea that we should enjoy the fact of our mortality, but rather be content
with the fact of our mortality. Epicurean ethics may not have considered every aspect of
death anxiety, the various different objects and the different intensities with which people
feel their death anxiety, but it was more extensive than one might initially think.56
Implications
Death is a concern for many people, and is also an element in some of the most pressing
moral issues in human life. Philosophers have recently considered philosophical issues
related to death and have consequently attended more to the rich supply of ideas about
death from the ancient world. Although Epicurus wrote for an earlier world, his view,
properly understood, suggests novel contributions to contemporary thinking. It promises
to engender rethinking numerous current issues related to death. It would be useful to
conclude this review of Epicurean thanatology by exploring briefly some of its possible
implications and at least some of the outstanding issues to be resolved in thinking about it.
Philosophers have recently addressed the question of whether people can be harmed
by events occurring after they are dead. There has been significant literature on whether
people can be harmed posthumously. As one might suspect from the previous discus-
sion, the Epicurean view of death implies that people cannot “suffer,” or, perhaps better
said, experience or “undergo,” literal, concrete posthumous harm. The opposing philo-
sophical view is that people can be harmed posthumously, because facts may well be
true of people after they die as a result of which they are harmed, even though they can-
not suffer from or experience the harms to which they are subject.57 The idea that people
can be harmed posthumously has been based on the idea that people have interests
before they die, interests which somehow persist and can thus be harmed by events
occurring after they are dead. Harm is then conceived as a violation of a person’s inter-
ests. In light of the violation of their interests the dead are supposed to be harmed, even
though they do not exist at the time they are said to be harmed and cannot experience
being harmed. Whether a person is harmed after death clearly depends on what concept
of harm one uses. The issue can be resolved only through a thorough consideration of
the nature of harm, and also a consideration of how important it is that interests one had
during life are contrary to events happening after one’s death.
Another issue raised by the Epicurean view of death concerns the death penalty. If
death is not bad for those who die, is the so-called “death penalty” a penalty?58 In the
56 For more extensive discussion of how Epicureans treated various fears associated with death, see
Philodemus On Death; Lucr. DRN 3; Warren, Facing Death; Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, Ch. 10.
57 See n. 23 for various sources on the issue.
58 Socrates argued to his jury that their sentence was insignificant, partly on the ground that if there
is no afterlife, then death is annihilation and the dead have no consciousness and cannot suffer. Plato
Apology 40d–e.
Death 137
Roman senatorial debate about how to punish the Catilinarian conspirators, Julius
Caesar argued from an Epicurean point of view that death was not a penalty for the con-
spirators on the ground that “death is the end of all suffering” and that the conspirators
deserved worse (Sall. Cat. 50.1.20–25). If one’s conception of a punishment includes
doing something bad to someone, assuming that the penalty of death is being dead (not
some form of dying process, or the fact about one that one dies at a certain time, or having
a legacy which includes being killed by the state), then how can death be a punishment?
It seems that death’s being a real punishment depends on punishment being conceived
differently, according to which punishments do not need to be literally and concretely
bad for those punished, unlike tortures, fines, and incarcerations.59 Is death a penalty
because it changes a person’s legacy, or makes facts true of the person, which the person
has an interest in not being true? Is it a penalty because it affects a person’s legacy in a
way in which he does not want it to be affected? What makes the death penalty a punish-
ment? Further philosophical reflection is needed to address this issue fully. The question
is indeed important partly because of the continuing controversial character of the
death penalty.
Regarding earlier consideration of the objection against Epicurus that his view of
death is incompatible with the general wrongness of killing, it is apparent that one impli-
cation of the Epicurean view is the possible need in the context of modern theories for a
reconsideration of why killing is wrong. Clearly, if death is not bad for people, then the
wrongness of killing could not be based on the badness of death for people.60 Of course,
Epicurus thought that killing is wrong, but based that view on the idea that justice
(morality—right and wrong) comes from a compact, which includes the principle that it
is wrong to kill people. The compact is warranted by its overall social utility. The wrong-
ness of killing can be accommodated in various types of contractarian views, which
need not depend on the principle that death is bad for people.61
Death anxiety is another issue that merits further reflection in light of Epicurus’s view.
Of course there are, as indicated, numerous feelings and levels of feeling that count as
fears of death. If Epicurus is correct about the most central such fear having as its object
what happens to one after one dies (and one is a particular center of consciousness), and
he is correct that events can have value for people only if they are sentient or existent,
then his view directly addresses the central object of fear. However, if one of the fears of
death is that one’s legacy or life narrative will be damaged by one’s dying prematurely,
then the object of death anxiety will be different from what Epicurus thought and for
59 For a fuller account of this issue see Rosenbaum, “Death as a Punishment.”

60 For one example of the attempt to base the wrongness of killing on the badness of death for
people, see McMahan’s refined 2002 account, The Ethics of Killing. He assumes without argument that
death is bad for people and uses that assumption as a partial basis for his explanation. If Epicurus is
correct about death, I do not see how McMahan’s view could be correct. Luper, Philosophy of Death
offers a somewhat different account, which would nevertheless also be incompatible with Epicurean
thinking.
61 For an expanded account of issues that might be involved in rethinking the wrongness of killing,
see Rosenbaum, “Concepts of Value.”
which he offered conceptual resources. Many recent philosophical thinkers have at least
implicitly thought that the fear of death is mostly a fear that one’s death will make certain
facts true of one, even if those facts do not entail that one is affected badly. Those facts
which one’s death would make true, if bad for one, would be facts about the narrative of
one’s life. Unless there was anxiety regarding how the timing of one’s death would affect
one’s legacy or narrative, how could the badness of deprivation in any way make the fear
of death seem reasonable?62
Epicurus’s view and opposition to it raise the question of whether fear of a bad life
narrative or legacy should be included among the many fears of death. No philosophical
methods or textual considerations can resolve the issue of what should be or is included
among fears of death, but it might be useful for people to reflect on what their greatest
anxieties about death are. On this matter, psychology could offer professional assistance.
In any case, depending on one’s anxieties about death, the Epicurean treatment of death
anxiety can be to some extent comforting. In light of what people think and feel, differ-
ent philosophical positions may be more or less valuable to them. Other issues relating
to death are subject to further thought and evaluation as well.
Although Epicurus’s ideas about death come from the very different world of ancient
culture and philosophy and reflect a philosophical outlook which may seem alien to
contemporary thought and philosophical inclination, they constitute a defensible view
that has important implications for contemporary moral ideas and methods as well as
for personal issues. For those with a commitment to contemporary philosophical tenets
and methods, Epicurean thanatology will be viewed with suspicion. Partly because of its
ancient historical status, its content contrary to received views, and a relative scarcity of
texts, it has not been thoroughly explored. Its implications have also not been fully
understood and appreciated. Yet, it has the potential to make a significant difference to
how thinkers regard a number of moral issues related to death. Aspects of Epicurean
philosophy have been considered more thoroughly in recent scholarship, and will con-
tinue to be considered. Epicurean thinking about death is one additional example of the
importance of classical thinking for contemporary life.
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————. “Harming the Dead, Once Again.” Ethics 96 (1985): 162–64.
————. “Welfare and Harm after Death.” In The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death: New Essays,
edited by J. S. Taylor, 188–209. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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————. “When Death Is There, We Are Not: Epicurus on Pleasure and Death.” In The Oxford
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chapter 7
Hedon ism
Voula Tsouna
In the spirit of the myth related by Prodicus,1 Greek and Roman philosophers often
assume that human beings are confronted with a fundamental moral choice, between
the narrow path of Virtue and the broad path of Pleasure, and they give reasons why one
should prefer the former alternative over the latter. And while many of them, including
Plato and Aristotle, ascribe some conditional value to pleasure, they decisively reject
hedonism, i.e., the view that pleasure is or ought to be the only intrinsic good and hence
the telos or ultimate goal for man. The arguments for and against hedonism rehearsed in
Plato’s dialogues2 and in Aristotle’s ethics and rhetoric,3 as well as the slim evidence con-
cerning the fanatical anti-hedonism of Antisthenes and of the earlier Cynics and the
more moderate attitudes of other Socratic schools, establish that pleasure was a major
topic of debate in the classical and post-classical eras and that hedonism was viewed as
an ethical theory to be seriously reckoned with. For, in addition to the fact that hedonism
could be taken to be implicit in common practices and in the kind of social and political
attitudes illustrated by the Platonic Callicles in the Gorgias, it also found philosophical
expression both within the Academy and near the core of the Socratic circle.
According to Aristotle, Eudoxus defended pleasure as the good on the grounds that
every animal desires, most of all, to obtain pleasure but avoid pain, seeks pleasure for its
own sake rather than for the sake of something else, and treats every other good as hav-
ing greater value when pleasure is added to it (NE 10.2). In corroboration of his hedon
ism, he also remarked that, although pleasure is a good, it is never praised as such; this
he took to be an indication of the fact that pleasure is superior to other praiseworthy
things, in the sense that it constitutes a point of reference for assessing their value
(NE 1.12). However, more intriguing and probably more influential was the hedonism of the
1 The sophist Prodicus relates an allegory, according to which Hercules was confronted with just
that choice and opted for Virtue, rejecting Pleasure.
2 Plat. Prot. 351b–358d, Gorg. 492d–507e, Rep. 9.581a–587e, and the Philebus. The citations are found
in that order also in Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.121.
3 See NE 7.11–17, 10.1–5, Rhet. 1.10–11, also cited by Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers,
1.121.
142 VOULA TSOUNA
Cyrenaics, a school founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, a regular member of Socrates’s

entourage whose lifestyle gave rise to the impression that he was a hedonist.4 His grand-
son and third head of the school, Aristippus the Younger (born around 380/370 bce),
developed a distinctive sort of hedonism commonly called presentist hedonism, which
was endorsed with modifications by most Cyrenaics of the Hellenistic period as well.
According to this doctrine, the body has greater importance than the soul; the pleasure
that is of supreme positive value is bodily pleasure;5 every bodily or mental pleasure is
related to a kinēsis, i.e., some sort of alteration or motion (DL 2.90). Moreover, pleasure
can be experienced only in the present: it is monochronos, unitemporal (Athenaeus
Deipn. 12.544a–b),6 and does not comprise either the memory of past enjoyments or the
expectation of future ones.7 Conversely, bodily pain is of supreme negative value and,
presumably, it too is confined in the present: neither the remembrance of past pains nor
the fear of future ones has genuine moral import. More than any other element of the
Cyrenaic doctrine, the primarily physical nature of the telos and its presentist character
are responsible for the bad reputation of Aristippus and his followers as profligates who
also provide theoretical justification for the pleasures of the many. By concentrating
their criticisms mainly on those two features, Epicurus and his followers aim to show
the conceptual and ethical advantage of Epicurean hedonism over its Cyrenaic counter-
part and to make clear the points of difference between the two doctrines.
Despite Epicurus’s professed rusticity (DL 10.5), and despite his notoriously critical
attitude towards Socrates and his heirs, his account of pleasure indicates that he took
seriously the challenges raised by the Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian traditions
and, moreover, that he formed his hedonism in deliberate contrast to the presentism
of Aristippus the Younger and in response to the Cyrenaic philosopher Anniceris.
Democritus’s ideal of cheerful tranquility and the suggestion that it can be explained in
physical terms by reference to the orderly arrangement and motion of atoms also appear
to have exercised an influence on Epicurus’s conception of the good. The same holds,
more generally, for Epicurus’s choice to reject the providentialist creationism associated
with the Socratic tradition and, notably, with Plato and the Stoics, and to develop instead
a modified version of atomic physics entailing a thoroughly mechanistic view of the uni-
verse and its contents. Not only do the extant fragments of Epicurus and his followers
offer detailed materialistic explanations of physical phenomena, but they also account for
4 It is debated whether or not Aristippus the Elder was really an ethical hedonist. See Tsouna,
“Aristippus of Cyrene.”
5 Aristippus the Younger defended the primacy of bodily pleasure over mental pleasure, possibly on
the analogical grounds that bodily pain is considered worse than its psychic counterpart (DL 2.87).
Later Cyrenaics modify this view in ways suitable to their own broader concerns. See Laks, “Annicéris
et les plaisirs psychiques”; and Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism.
6 This term is probably intended to indicate that pleasure lasts and has value only as long as we are
experiencing it: see Tsouna, The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School, 15–16; and Sedley, “Epicurean
versus Cyrenaic Happiness.”
7 They have no moral value, the former because it exists no more, the latter because it does not yet
exist and is not manifest (Athenaus Deipn. 12.544a–b). The thesis that pleasure is monochronos holds
for both physical and mental pleasure, and the same goes for pain.
Hedonism 143
the atomic constitution and functions of the human soul. Thus they convey a reasonably
clear idea of the far-ranging implications of atomism and of the extent to which it consti-
tutes the basis of the Epicurean doctrine of pleasure. Also crucially pertinent to the
development of this latter are some basic tenets of Epicurean epistemology and scientific
method: the self-evident character and veridicality of all aisthēseis, sense-perceptions;
the elevated status of sense-perceptions, preconceptions, and feelings as the funda-
mental criteria of truth; the school’s empiricist outlook;8 and the methods by which
theoretical claims, including ethical tenets, get confirmed or refuted.9
While the present study will not discuss this rich and complex background of
Epicurean hedonism systematically and in detail, nonetheless, it will refer to aspects of
Epicurus’s interactions with rival doctrines whenever this seems philosophically neces-
sary or relevant. Also, an effort will be made to use evidence from relatively unexplored
sources, in particular Philodemus (c. 110 bce–c. 40s or early 30s bce) and Diogenes of
Oenoanda (second–third century ce), as well as from Epicurus, his early associates and,
to a lesser extent, Lucretius.10 The expansion of the evidential basis of the discussion will
help, I hope, to emphasize more than usual the distinctive nature of Epicurean hedon
ism, its originality and sophistication, and its enduring core as well as its peripheral
developments over time.
The first section introduces Epicurus’s conception of the moral end and revisits a contro-
versial argument bearing on his theory of motivation. The second discusses a centrally
important feature of Epicurean hedonism, namely, a certain sort of hedonistic calculus,
and indicates how it is defended by different members of the school. The third turns to
Epicurus’s conceptual amplification and defense of his hedonism. It centers primarily on
the distinctions between bodily and mental pleasures and between kinetic and kataste-
matic pleasure. Also, this section addresses Epicurus’s concept of the limit of pleasure,
his notoriously controversial claim that the removal of pain is the highest pleasure,
the pleasures of memory and anticipation, and, more generally, the respective roles of
the body and the mind in the achievement of the supreme good. The fourth section
studies Epicurus’s classification of desires and its ethical implications, as well as the
elimination of virtue from the sphere of the supreme good but also its uniquely important
role in the rational pursuit of pleasure.11 To conclude, the final section briefly considers
some of the criticisms rehearsed by Cicero against Epicurean hedonism and discusses
whether the Epicureans have sufficient resources to respond to them.
At the outset, it is useful to entertain the following remarks concerning the nature of
the theory under examination, as well as the sources that will be used in this study. In the
first place, hedonism ancient and modern can assume many forms, which depend on
8 See Tsouna, “Diogenes and the Cyrenaics.” 9 See Asmis, “Epicurean Epistemology.”
10 Since Lucretius is the topic of a separate chapter, I shall not much engage with DRN.
11 To some degree I follow the order of Torquatus’s presentation in Cicero’s De finibus. As David
Sedley remarks (“Epicurean Anti-reductionism,” 134), although Torquatus’s exposé is not directly
drawn from Epicurus, since it also incorporates divergent views of later Epicurean groups, nonetheless
its structure constitutes evidence of Epicurus’s original methodology in the presentation and defense
of his hedonism.
144 VOULA TSOUNA
the particular notion of pleasure used by each philosopher or school, and also on the
corresponding interpretation of the central claim that pleasure is the good. Despite their
substantial differences, however, hedonistic systems have been commonly charged
with undermining many traditional values and advocating the maximal satisfaction of
one’s desires and the achievement of maximal pleasure, especially sensualist pleasure.
Epicurus and his followers were criticized along those lines by contemporary and later
authors, who willfully represent the hedonism of the school as one more theory recom-
mending physical indulgence and a sybaritic lifestyle. Thus, one task set before us is, on
the one hand, to examine how Epicurus qualifies the concept of pleasure precisely in
order to avoid this sort of accusation and, on the other hand, to explore whether there
might be some basis for it. Obviously, this is a crucial issue, for it bears on the philosoph-
ical attractiveness and viability of Epicurean hedonism.
Second, the ambiguities surrounding the practical implications of Epicurean hedon
ism and other ethical topics may be due to the fact that Epicurus left certain matters
under-determined, or, alternatively, they may be caused by the fragmentary state of
the evidence. Of Epicurus’s extant works concerning ethics, the only complete text is the
summary exposition in the Letter to Menoeceus, whereas the rest of the surviving
passages consist of maxims, aphorisms, and fragments detached from their context.
Also fragmentary is the evidence about the other early authorities of the school as well
as many of their successors including, notably, Zeno of Sidon. Lucretius’s poem On the
Nature of Things appears to follow Epicurus’s writings closely and also, I believe, reflects
later developments of the doctrine. However, since philosophical content and poetic
form are inextricably linked, the poem does not offer the sort of rigorous exposition and
defense of hedonism that may be found in a straightforward philosophical treatise.
Lucretius’s near contemporary, Philodemus, is a prolific author who composes his trea-
tises in fairly traditional form. But although the excavations at Herculaneum brought to
light several papyri containing works by him, nonetheless, the extant portions of these
are only a fraction of Philodemus’s work, and the carbonized papyri containing them
are often difficult to read and interpret. Comparable problems occur in respect of the
fragmentary exposition of Epicurean ethics found in the remnants of the monumental
inscription dedicated by Diogenes of Oenoanda to his native city for the salvation of
humanity. The account of Epicurean hedonism below makes selective use of all these
texts. But although it is based on a broad range of texts, we ought to remain aware of
its open-ended and tentative character. Some of the claims defended here may well
require revision in the future, if fresh evidence is discovered in sources inaccessible to us
at present.12
Third, a comment is in order regarding the presentation and criticism of Epicurean
ethics in Cicero’s De finibus. The rhetorical and dialectical structure of that work, as well
as its adversarial tone, should not cloud the fact that the exposition of Torquatus, the
12 In particular, fresh evidence is likely to emerge from the application of recently discovered
techniques to the study of the Herculaneum papyri, and also from the publication of new fragments
belonging to Diogenes’s inscription.
Hedonism 145
Epicurean spokesman, is careful and thorough, and Cicero’s philosophical rhetoric

(cf. 2.17) raises genuine philosophical problems for Epicurus’s hedonism.13 Although
caution is necessary in dealing with Cicero’s testimony, this testimony must not be put
aside.14 For in addition to the fact that it is consistent with the extant fragments of the
Founder and of other members of the school, it is probable that Cicero largely repro-
duces Epicurus’s own exposition of his ethical system.15 Moreover, he expands and clari-
fies various aspects of Epicurus’s doctrine on the basis of reliable contemporary sources,
which have endorsed, I believe, the interpretation of Epicurean hedonism advanced by
the school of Athens, and in particular by Zeno of Sidon.16 For all these reasons, I intend
to take seriously into account the discussion of Epicurean hedonism in both De finibus
Books 1 and 2 and other relevant Ciceronian texts.
Pleasure as the moral end
We may as well begin with Epicurus’s own words (Ep. Men. 129):
This is why we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we know
it to be a good which is primary and akin (prōton kai syngenikon). From it we derive
every choice and avoidance and to it we come back, judging every good thing by the
feeling (pathos) which we use as a yardstick.
According to Epicurus, then, pleasure has priority over every other good. This does not
only, or not necessarily, mean that it is the first thing that we encounter in our lives.
According to Torquatus, who says that he remains faithful to Epicurus’s way of teaching
13 On the philosophical value of Cicero’s rhetorically expressed criticisms against Epicurus, see
Inwood, “Rhetorica Disputatio: The Strategy of De Finibus II.” The admirable study by Schofield,
“Ciceronian Dialogue” sheds light on the nature of Ciceronian dialogue and includes discussion of
several excerpts from the first two books of the De finibus.
14 Gosling and Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure and Nikolsky, “Epicurus on Pleasure” construe
Epicurus’s conception of pleasure independently of Cicero’s testimony. Although I am sympathetic to
the idea, defended by Nikolsky, that Epicurus shaped his hedonism in response to debates within the
Academy, I do not think that these debates are Epicurus’s only reference point nor, as will become
evident, do I find persuasive the arguments on account of which the above authors saw fit to disregard
the evidence of the De finibus. Notably, there is no textual support for Gosling and Taylor’s contention
that sensory pleasures untainted by pain are katastematic; on the contrary, they are described in the
terms of “sweet motions.” Nor is it true, as Nikolsky claims, that Epicurus was not particularly
interested in the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasure. For we find this distinction in
his treatise On the Moral End and, philosophically, it is crucial in order to distinguish the goal
advocated by Epicurean hedonism from the pleasures of the profligates which, as Epicureans of all
periods suggest, coincide with those pursued by the Cyrenaics. On this last point, see Tsouna,
“Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the Good Life.”
15 On the foundational structure of Epicurus’s ethics and the parallel structure of his physics, see the
compelling argument by Sedley, “The Inferential Foundation for Epicurean Ethics.”
16 See Tsouna, “Cicéron et Philodème: quelques considérations sur l’éthique.”
146 VOULA TSOUNA
(Fin. 1.29), Epicurus designated pleasure as the telos, supreme or sovereign good, in the
sense in which all philosophers agree that something is a telos: namely, all other goods
must refer to it, whereas it does not refer to anything else. Epicurus’s further claim that
pleasure is akin (syngenikon) and connatural (symphyton) points to its special affinity to
our own nature. Because it has a nature congenial to us (cf. physin oikeian, Ep. Men. 129),
every pleasure is in itself a good. Moreover, by virtue of that affinity, pleasure is closely
related to physical and mental health (e.g. Ep. Men. 128). The opposite holds for pain: it is
most alien to our nature and, therefore, every pain in itself is an evil and tends to destroy
our constitution.
Epicurus’s assertion that the pathos of pleasure is used as the standard for all choice
and avoidance indicates that he has in mind, specifically, his own followers and not
mankind in general. For only the Epicureans recognize pleasure as the first and congeni-
tal good, and only they employ the corresponding pathos as their sole ethical criterion.
In fact, since feelings belong, together with sense-perceptions and preconceptions, to
the Epicurean criteria of truth (Epicurus, Ep. Hdt. 82, DL 10.31), the judgments derived
from the feeling of pleasure must be true judgments. And the corresponding decisions
regarding things to choose or avoid must be good decisions, i.e. conducive to pleasure.
Epicurus drives no sharp wedge between truth and value. Criterial beliefs about the
moral value of things have objective truth, just as criterial beliefs about the physical
nature of things do.17 And, in the former case, the feeling of pleasure serves as the ulti-
mate arbiter of moral truth, while it is not itself subject to any higher authority. Like
other criteria, it is self-evident (enargēs) and indemonstrable. These features character-
ize the feeling of pain as well.18
Epicurus’s doctrine that the greatest good is pleasure and the greatest evil pain is sup-
ported by an argument that came to be known as the Cradle Argument. While it is not
explicitly advanced in the Founder’s surviving texts, a version of it probably played a
part in his treatise On the Moral End,19 and different formulations are also found in
other secondary sources. To convey a sense of the issues at stake, let us look at Torquatus’s
use of that argument and examine the main interpretative options available to us.
According to the Epicurean spokesman in the De finibus, Epicurus sets about estab-
lishing his thesis that pleasure is the highest good but pain the greatest evil in the follow-
ing manner (Fin. 1.29–30):
Every living being, as soon as it is born, seeks pleasure and enjoys it as the sovereign
good, while it shuns pain as the sovereign evil and avoids it as far as possible. This it
does at a time when it is not yet corrupted, on the pure and impartial judgment of
nature itself. Hence he denies that there is any need to prove or dispute why pleasure
should be pursued and pain avoided. He thinks that these matters are felt as fire is
17 See Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.90.

18 It seems that, in Epicurus’s view, pleasure and pain are the primary feelings, while other feelings
can be classified under them.
19 See Usener, Epicurea, 119. A different view is taken by Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, 187–90.
Hedonism 147
felt to be hot, snow to be white, and honey sweet. None of these things needs to be
confirmed by elaborate arguments; it is enough simply to point them out.
Epicurus’s description of pleasure as the first and connatural good could be taken to
allude to a similar line of reasoning (Ep. Men. 129): the fact that the primary feelings
determining the behavior of all newborn creatures are pleasure and pain somehow sup-
ports the thesis that these ought to be the goals of our choices or avoidances.
However, the relation between the description of the psychological hedonism of
infants20 and the ethical hedonism proposed by Epicurus is far from clear. In fact,
attempts have been made to exonerate Epicurus and his followers of the charge of com-
mitting the naturalistic fallacy: inferring that we, mature adults, ought to pursue pleas
ure and avoid pain from the empirical observation that infants in the cradle do, in fact,
seek the former but shun the latter. On one view,21 the commonplace assertion that
infants are naturally and primarily attracted to pleasure22 is not intended to serve as a
basis for the identification of pleasure with the sovereign good, which is argued for by
Epicurus on independent grounds. Rather, it is contended, the appeal to cradles pro-
vides an argument for the purely “natural” character of pleasure, which can be ascer-
tained at a time when the child’s nature is not yet depraved by society and culture. In
other words, observation of small children in the cradle is not necessary to justify the
value of pleasure as the sole ethical criterion; but it is necessary in order to authenticate
the natural origins of the pathos of pleasure as felt by the adult.
On another view,23 the Cradle Argument plays no role in Epicurus’s theory of moral
motivation because, in fact, Epicurus does not espouse psychological hedonism, since
he allows for sources of motivation different from the pleasure or pain of an action or of
its consequences. In particular, Epicureans are motivated also by friendship, which they
take to be an intrinsic good, and this entails that one acts on occasion without being in
sole pursuit of one’s own pleasure. Also, as has been forcefully argued,24 every passage
deemed to be relevant to psychological hedonism concerns, in truth, the motivation
of “we” Epicureans, not “we” human beings in general. Assuming that this is the case,
the conclusion has been drawn that the Epicureans came to have the psychological
tendency to pursue pleasure as a result of their ethical hedonism.25
20 Although Torquatus refers to the psychological hedonism of omne animal, every living being,
I focus my discussion specifically on humans.
21 See Brunschwig, “The Cradle Argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism.”
22 As Brunschwig, “The Cradle Argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism,” 117 notes, Torquatus
makes no attempt to justify that assertion by appealing to observable evidence, nor does he show any
hesitation when he tells us what an infant feels and desires. The reason is that the psychological
hedonism of very small children and animals had been a topic of intense discussion in the Academy,
and its possibilities and implications had been fully explored. Notably, Eudoxus thought that the desire
that obviously attracts all living beings to itself is the sēmeion, sign, that it is the best for everybody
(NE 1172b9). On the other hand, Speusippus rejected hedonism on just those grounds.
23 This view has been defended on different grounds by Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 240–44;
and Cooper, “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus.”
24 See Cooper, “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus.”
25 Cooper, “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus.”
148 VOULA TSOUNA
However, critics of this latter view retort that the passages referring to psychological
hedonism cannot all be attributed to the Epicureans alone but, more frequently than
not, generally refer to the tendency towards pleasure that all living beings have as a
matter of psychological fact.26 Moreover, it has plausibly been objected that Epicurus’s
assumption that people learn to be motivated by considerations other than pleasure
or pain does not preclude psychological hedonism. For it may still be true that the con-
siderations motivating us, ultimately, can be traced back to these primary feelings.
Alternatively, if they cannot be traced back to these feelings, ethical hedonism must be
abandoned together with psychological hedonism.27 Evidence concerning the relation
between the descriptive claim of psychological hedonism and the normative thesis of
ethical hedonism casts doubt on the former line of interpretation, described above, as
well. For, on the one hand, Torquatus’s version of the Cradle Argument appears compat-
ible with the contention that the description of early animal behavior is not intended to
serve as the basis for ethical hedonism. According to his exposition, what follows from
the premise that all newborn creatures do seek pleasure and shun pain is not the norma-
tive conclusion that pleasure ought to be sought and pain avoided. Rather, Torquatus
infers that the normative thesis does not need to be demonstrated: since pleasure and
pain are experiences, it suffices merely to point them out.28 On the other hand, however,
several texts present the descriptive claim as the grounds from which ethical hedonism
is inferred. For instance, according to Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus uses that claim as
a proof (apodeixis) that pleasure is the goal (DL 10.137). Also, according to Sextus
Empiricus, the Epicureans suppose themselves to have proved (deiknynai) that pleasure
is naturally choiceworthy on the strength of the premise that newborn and unperverted
animals pursue it and move away from pain (P 3.194).29
In the light of such evidence, a different line of interpretation seems to me preferable.
Namely, the force of the normative inference that we ought to pursue pleasure and
avoid pain is intended to be derived, precisely, from the statement that all animals,
when still uncorrupted, do seek the one but avoid the other.30 One may readily object
that, if this is the structure of the argument, then Epicurus or his followers fall prey to
the naturalistic fallacy. The answer that can be provided has a long history stretching
back to Plato and his successors, including the hedonist Eudoxus: the idea is that nature
has normative meaning, so that what nature propels us to seek is also the good thing to
seek. If this is the case, the empirical generalization concerning living beings and, in
particular, human beings in the cradle can be considered adequate grounds for inferring
what sort of final goal we ought to set for ourselves as mature adults.
26 See, e.g., Woolf, “What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?”; and Dimas, “Epicurus on Pleasure,
Desire, and Friendship,” 165–68.
27 See Dimas, “Epicurus on Pleasure, Desire, and Friendship,” 165–66.
28 This point is argued by Brunschwig, “The Cradle Argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism,”
120–21.
29 These texts are discussed with a different purpose by Brunschwig, “The Cradle Argument in
Epicureanism and Stoicism,” 124–25.
30 Sedley, “The Inferential Foundation for Epicurean Ethics,” 136–37.
Hedonism 149
In sum, we cannot be certain as to the exact way in which Epicurus intended the
Cradle Argument to be understood, and he may well have left that matter undetermined.
But, judging from the available evidence, I am inclined to think that some of his later
followers if not Epicurus himself held that psychological hedonism actually entails
ethical hedonism.31 If it is psychologically impossible to pursue as the ultimate good
anything other than pleasure, then there is nothing other than pleasure that one actually
ought to pursue. Any other normative theory of choice and action would be bound to
have no real object; it would be empty in just that sense.
The so-called hedonistic calculus
According to Torquatus, while Epicurus relies on the self-evident character of the feeling
of pleasure and does not see any need to argue for the thesis that pleasure ought to be
pursued and pain avoided, some members of the school choose to support the self-
evident goodness of pleasure by pointing out that it constitutes a natural preconception
rooted in the mind and, therefore, can be infallibly grasped by both sensation and rea-
son. Yet another group of Epicureans, to which Torquatus also claims to belong, believes
that the fundamental contention of Epicurean ethics must be defended by argument
against rival ethical theories (Fin. 1.31). There is no doubt that each of these groups justi-
fied its stance by appealing to the writings of Epicurus.32 This is precisely what Torquatus
does, when he promises to explain the mistake of those who blame pleasure and praise
pain by quoting arguments from the Founder himself (Fin. 1.32):
No one rejects or dislikes or avoids pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because
greater pains ensue for those who are ignorant of how to pursue pleasure in a
rational manner. Nor again is there anyone who loves, seeks, or wants to have pain
itself because it is pain, but rather because there are conditions enabling one to
achieve some great pleasure by hardship and pain.
What is going on, then, in cases of painful actions which might appear to be chosen for
the sake of things other than pleasure is that, in fact, they are chosen for the sake of
greater pleasure resulting from them. The moral exemplars earlier extolled by the char-
acter Cicero are supposed to be explicable in that way.
While laymen reason in that way without being fully aware that they do so, Epicurus
and all his followers are fully conscious of the importance of the so-called hedonistic
31 I have briefly argued for this view in Tsouna, “Epicureanism and Hedonism.” The same position is
also held by Dimas, “Epicurus on Pleasure, Desire, and Friendship” on different grounds.
32 On this point, see Sedley, “The Inferential Foundation for Epicurean Ethics,” 137–38.
150 VOULA TSOUNA
calculus,33 which they view as the hallmark of their ethics. Speaking on behalf of himself
and his followers,34 Epicurus describes their way of making hedonistic choices as follows
(Ep. Men. 129–30):
Because pleasure is the primary and connatural good, for this reason we do not
choose every pleasure, but we sometimes pass over many pleasures when greater
difficulties for us would result from them. And we consider many pains preferable
to pleasures whenever greater pleasure follows for us after we have endured many
pains for quite some time. So, while every pleasure is a good because it is naturally
congenial (to us), not every pleasure is choiceworthy. And likewise, although every
pain is evil, not every pain is by nature to be avoided. But we have to judge all this
by relative calculation (symmetrēsei) and survey of advantages and disadvantages.
For, on some occasions, we treat the good as bad and, conversely, the bad as good.
In sum, while everybody makes decisions with the aim of getting greater pleasure in the
end, only the followers of Epicurus regularly and successfully assess the long-term
implications of their actions (KD 8, SV 73) under the guidance of “this famous discov-
erer of the truth and architect, as it were, of the happy life” (Fin. 1.32). Diogenes of
Oenoanda expresses this idea in more concrete and practical terms. In fr. 34 (Smith),35
he concludes his argument to the effect that pleasure is the supreme good by exhorting
us to reject the sophistical arguments (τοὺς σοφιστικοὺς λόγους: 2.7–8), which advocate
the thoughtless hedonism of the many ([οἱ πολ]λοί: 3.13–14),36 but apply instead the
rational calculation of pleasures and pains ([λογισμῷ χρῆσθ]αι: 3.14–4.1).37 Moreover,
Diogenes argues, the application of the calculus presupposes the acceptance that we
shall not always be immediately successful in our efforts. Contrary to what some “soph-
ists” suggest, however, we ought to persevere, enduring pains when this is needed in
order to achieve greater pleasure in the end (Smith fr. 34 2.4–5.1):
Thus, I say, where the danger is great, so also is the fruit. Here we must turn aside
these sophistical arguments, because they are insidious and offensive, and have been
contrived on the basis of terminological ambiguity to [lead astray] us miserable
33 It is important to register that what is commonly called the Epicurean hedonistic calculus greatly
differs from the hedonistic calculus as it occurs in Jeremy Bentham and, generally, the Empiricist
tradition. While this latter measures one’s pleasurable feelings against painful ones, the Epicureans
concern themselves with a broader and richer sort of calculus conducted through phronēsis and
oriented towards moral choice. Bentham’s calculus aims, precisely, to maximize one’s feelings of
pleasure, whereas the Epicurean calculus does not. See, notably, the perceptive discussion of Epicurean
pleasure by Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, 11–58.
34 Note the use of the first person plural in the passage that follows.
35 For the text of Diogenes’s inscription I use the editions by M. F. Smith and by J. Hammerstaedt
and M. F. Smith. The translations are my own unless I indicate otherwise, but I have heavily relied on
the translations provided by those two authors, as well as by Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, vol. 1.
36 I provisionally accept Smith’s restoration of 3.12–14.
37 This is a conjecture, but nonetheless it is clear from the context that here Diogenes talks about
the hedonistic calculus.
Hedonism 151
humans . . . . [Do let us] not [avoid every pain that is present nor choose every
pleasure as the many always do. For each person must employ reasoning], since he
[will not always achieve immediate success: just as] exertion [often] involves one
[gain at the beginning and] certain [others as time unfolds], so it is also with [the
experience of pleasure]. For sowing seeds does [not] bring [the same benefit] to the
sower, [but we observe] some of the seeds [very quickly] germinating and [bearing
fruit but others taking longer] . . .
It is worth noting, however, that some doubts appear to have been raised within the
Epicurean school regarding the degree and manner in which the calculus bears on ethi-
cal choice. According to the surviving part of Philodemus’s treatise On Choices and
Avoidances,38 certain “rustic” Epicureans contended that the right choices are not
effected through the calculus, but rather result directly from the application of the cardi-
nal principles of the system (kyriōtata). In sharp contrast, the “urbane” or “sophisti-
cated” followers of Epicurus, who presumably include Philodemus and his mentor Zeno
of Sidon, have a correct understanding of the teachings of the Founder, according to
whom the right choices and avoidances are dictated by the hedonistic calculus and only
indirectly depend on the cardinal principles. These last determine the values according
to which the calculus is performed, and the calculus in its turn determines the specific
choices that we, Epicureans, make (Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan De elect. 11.7–20).
Evidently, Epicurus and his followers regularly relied on the calculus in order to
address the aforementioned charge that they advocate excessive physical indulgence
and follow a profligate lifestyle.39 The same accusation was targeted at the Cyrenaics
as well. In fact, the enemies of ancient hedonism tend either to disregard the differ-
ences between the two schools or to play them against one another.40 Their willful
misunderstandings are especially blatant with regard to the presence or absence of the
hedonistic calculus.
As mentioned, the orthodox Cyrenaics headed by Aristippus the Younger espoused a
sort of hedonic presentism which entailed that one ought to aim at present pleasure and,
foremost, bodily pleasure, whereas the experiences of the past or the anticipated pleas
ures of the future have no moral relevance whatsoever. Happiness is nothing but the
aggregate of individual pleasures and, as many Cyrenaics including Hegesias point out,
there are far too many impediments to its attainment. To the heedless pursuit of pleasure
by the Cyrenaics, Epicurus and his followers oppose the rational calculation of long-
term pleasure recommended by their own school. On the one hand, immediate pleasure
can have an overwhelming power and can be considered choiceworthy merely because
of its compelling force (Fin. 1.33). On the other hand, people steeped in the doctrine of
38 On the author and the title of P.Herc. 1251, see Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan, [Philodemus]
[On Choices and Avoidances], 61–70.
39 Such criticisms are discussed by Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals”; and Erler and
Schofield, “Epicurean Ethics,” 643.
40 Such is the practice of Cicero and Plutarch. See my study of the polemics between the Cyrenaics
and the Epicureans and, especially, the role that the two Academic authors played in those polemics in
Tsouna, “Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the Good Life.”
152 VOULA TSOUNA
Epicurus have the intellectual and psychological equipment to resist the immediate
attractions of present pleasure, if the hedonistic calculus suggests to them that they
should do so. As a result of that attitude, they have a moderate and self-sufficient mode
of life, sharply different from the sybaritic lifestyle associated with the Cyrenaics, which
enables them both to enjoy pleasure freely and to react appropriately to external con-
straints (Ep. Men. 130–32). While we shall return later, we should now consider two
passages from late Epicurean authors, which draw a contrast between the Cyrenaics and
the Epicureans regarding, precisely, the performance of the calculus.
In his treatise On Choices and Avoidances, Philodemus sketches out various sceptical
views, all of which deny the possibility of rationally evaluating one’s actions and inte-
grating one’s experiences in a rational life-plan.41 In the first place, he uses as his premise
the Cyrenaic epistemological claim that we can apprehend only our own pathē, and
what he takes to be the corresponding ethical claim, i.e. that our moral decisions are
dictated by our pathē, in order to infer that the subjectivism and sensationalism of the
Cyrenaics have anti-rationalistic implications (De elect. 2.5–12). If the only things we can
know are our pathē, we have no grounds for preferring one of them over another as a
guide to action. Instead, we act impulsively, by attending to the pathē of the body or
the mind (2.11–12), without being in a position to provide a rational explanation for our
choices. Also, exploring further the links between Cyrenaic scepticism and a conception
of action according to which action is guided by pathē, not by rational considerations,
he argues as follows: since the Cyrenaics postulate the pathē as the moral ends42 and the
sole criteria of action, they feel entitled to use any means to pleasure and do not hold
themselves accountable for their own choices. To put it differently, Philodemus suggests
that, because the Cyrenaics are sceptics, they adopt a subjectivist and presentist criterion
of action; and because the latter is of that sort, it entails a crude hedonism according to
which the agent’s choices are deemed incorrigible and do not involve long-term assess-
ments of value (3.6–14).43 The context indicates that Philodemus brings the Cyrenaics
back to life for an important dialectical purpose: to show that, in virtue of the hedonistic
41 The relevant excerpt is the following: “[They claim that], in truth, no [judgment takes precedence
over any other], since they are persuaded that [the great affection] of the soul occurs as a result of pain
and that we [accomplish our choices] and avoidances in that manner, [by observing both] (sc. both
physical and mental pain). For it is not possible that [the] joys arise in us in the same way and [all
together], in accordance with [some] expectation . . .” (2.5–15) “Some people [denied] that it is possible
to know anything. And [they added] that if nothing is present on account of which one [should] make
an immediate choice, then one [should not choose] in an immediate manner. Others, having selected
the affections of the soul as the moral ends and as not in need of additional judgement based on further
things, granted to everybody unchallengeable authority to take pleasure in whatever they cared to
name and to do whatever contributed to it. Yet others held the doctrine that what we call grief or joy
are totally empty notions, because of the manifest indeterminacy of things . . .” (3.2–18 Indelli and
Tsouna McKirahan).
42 However, the Cyrenaics do not posit as the moral ends “the affections of the soul,” but the
affections of both the soul and the body. I think that the genitive tēs psychēs either qualifies telē or is
used in a generic sense indicating the entire living person.
43 Other aspects of Philodemus’s argument against the Cyrenaics are discussed in Tsouna,
“Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the Good Life.”
Hedonism 153
calculus, Epicurean ethics is far superior to the hedonistic presentism theorized by the
Cyrenaics and followed unreflectively by the many. Philodemus pursues this goal in a
manner both original and effective, pointing to the anti-rationalist implications of
Cyrenaic hedonism and contrasting this last with Epicurus’s highly rational approach
to action, whose principles are summarized in the surviving columns of Philodemus’s
treatise. Diogenes of Oenoanda also compares and contrasts the two schools on similar
grounds.44
Before moving on, we should pause to reflect on the defining features of Epicurean
hedonism sketched out above. We may call them naturalism and rationalism. The
former consists in the psychological tendency of all living beings, including humans, to
seek pleasure and avoid pain, and it constitutes the basis entailing the ethical hedonism
of the Epicurean school. The latter manifests itself above all in our rational capacity to
assess the value of present pleasure in respect of its long-term consequences and judge
correctly what to choose and what to avoid with a view to greater pleasure. If the natural
tendency towards pleasure has much to do with the body and its needs, our capacity to
perform the calculus is a matter of our mind. Body and mind, animality and rationality,
are both aspects of our constitution and jointly determine the pursuit of the moral goal.
How they do so will become clearer in the next section.
Epicurus’s elaboration
and defense of hedonism
Epicurus and his followers assess the contributions of the body and of the mind to the
achievement of pleasure by considering the different natures of bodily and mental expe-
riences as well as the relations holding between these two categories. On the one hand,
like the Cyrenaics and unlike Plato’s Socrates, Epicurus gives some sort of primacy to
bodily experiences and the concern with the well-being of the flesh ([e]usarkia:
Philodemus, De Epic., P.Herc. 1232 17.15). He states, controversially as we shall see, that
when life has been stripped of physical pleasures as well as of the hopes or memories of
them, we have no reason to wish to remain alive (P.Herc. 1232 18.10–17). Furthermore, he
is reported to have claimed that the root of all good lies in the pleasures of the stomach
(Athenaeus Deipn. 546 ff.), and that the satisfaction of “the cry of the flesh” so as not to
be hungry or thirsty or cold makes one as happy as Zeus (SV 33). In a similar direction,
Zeno of Sidon urges us to concentrate on physical pleasures or “on pleasures which, on
account of the body, find their place in memory or anticipation” (Angeli and Colaizzo fr. 8).
Weaker variants of the same view underlie also Philodemus’s suggestion that we
should endeavor to preserve our good health (De elect. 23.3–12) and his repudiation of
44 See Tsouna, “Diogenes and the Cyrenaics.”

154 VOULA TSOUNA
moral vices partly on the grounds that they cause a great deal of bodily suffering.45 The
fundamental character of bodily pleasure is also illustrated by the Epicurean use of the
pig as a positive symbol for human beings.46 For although that lowly animal cannot
experience happiness, which can only be experienced by humans, nonetheless it illus-
trates a sort of basic contentment related to plain physical pleasure, that animals as well
as humans are able to enjoy.
On the other hand, in apparently deliberate contrast47 to the orthodox Cyrenaics,
who privilege bodily pleasures over mental ones, Epicurus argues that mental pleasures
are far greater and more influential with regard to the overall quality of one’s life. For
bodily experiences are restricted to the present, whereas mental ones extend also over
the past and the future (Fin. 1.55, DL 10.137). Also, the intensity of our experiences can be
immensely increased by beliefs, especially future-directed ones, concerning the value of
their intentional objects. Pain becomes more acute if we believe that it will result in some
great evil for us and, correspondingly, pleasure is greater if we believe that there is no
reason for apprehension and fear (Fin. 1.55). In Torquatus’s words (1.56):
It is therefore clear that maximal pleasure or distress of the mind contributes more
to a happy or miserable life than a bodily pleasure or pain of equal duration.
Diogenes adds another argument to the same effect, drawing a sharp contrast between
the Epicurean and the Cyrenaic positions concerning the primacy of mental or psychic
pleasure (fr. 49 cols I.12-II.17):
Our nature [requires what] is better for [our] soul. And the soul has clearly more
[capacities] than the body. For it [has] control of the extreme and supremacy over
the other pathē, as indeed we also claimed it to have [above]. [Therefore if], paying
attention to the arguments of Aristippus, on the one hand, we take care of the body
[by choosing] all the pleasures deriving from drink, food, and sexual acts and,
in general, all things that no longer [give pleasure after they have been enjoyed
but, on the other hand, neglect the soul, we shall deprive ourselves of the greatest
pleasures].
Although, in this passage, Diogenes does not formally defend the contention that the
primacy of psychic pleasure has a naturalistic backing, nonetheless he lends support to
it by stressing the superior capabilities of the soul and its control over physical affects. In
doing so, he perfectly aligns himself with Epicurus, but also enriches the thesis of the
Founder by adding something new to the doctrine.
As we shall see in more detail in the final section, the Epicurean position described
above is not free of tensions. The primacy that Epicurus attributes to bodily pleasure
45 Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 23.

46 See Warren, Epicurus and Democritean Ethics, 129–49.
47 That the contrast in question is deliberate is suggested by both Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism; and
Tsouna, “Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the Good Life.”
Hedonism 155
may well appear incompatible with the dominance of psychic experiences over physical
ones. It is probably for that reason that several Epicureans ended up rejecting the bodily
origin of all mental pleasure and, therefore, were branded as heretical (cf. Fin. 1.55).
Furthermore, while mental experiences have greater scope and intensity than the corre-
sponding bodily ones, their effects are not invariably benign. For, on the one hand, the
mind does have the power to counterbalance even the most severe physical sufferings by
summoning memories of past pleasures. This is illustrated in a compelling manner by
Epicurus’s letter to Idomeneus, written “in the last and most blessed day” of his life, in
which he attests that the joy that he feels at the remembrance of their past conversations
offsets the excruciating physical pains that he suffers (DL 10.22). On the other hand,
however, the mind can also magnify bodily pain or overcome present pleasure by enter-
taining false beliefs about value. In this latter sense, the mind has a downside, whereas
the body has none.48
In any case, it is important to observe that Epicurus and his school both acknowledge
the fundamental character of physical experience and emphasize the moral dimensions
of human rationality. The successful performance of the hedonistic calculus presup-
poses that we take into account, precisely, the very different ways in which our physical
nature and our mental equipment each contribute to the achievement of pleasure. This
observation is particularly important for the effective application of Epicurean moral
therapy.49
Another distinction introduced by the Epicureans has a strikingly innovative charac-
ter and paramount ethical importance: pleasure can be either kinetic, in which case it is
associated with some sort of motion (kinēsis) causing an agreeable stirring, or, alterna-
tively, katastematic or static pleasure, which is characterized by the complete absence of
pain. These aspects of pleasure will be further examined below, but we should register
up front that the Epicureans are the first school known to maintain each and all of the
following: there is nothing intermediate between pleasure and pain; the absence of pain
is pleasure; this latter is a stable condition rather than some process or activity; and it is
the highest good.
Although the authenticity of the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleas
ure is disputed,50 there are good reasons to believe that the twofold concept of pleasure
was introduced into the system by the Founder himself. In his work On Choices, he states
his position as follows (DL 10.136):
48 However, bodily pleasures can adversely affect our happiness if we miscalculate their long-term
consequences.
49 A general overview of Epicurean therapeutic techniques is offered by Tsouna, “Epicurean
Therapeutic Strategies.”
50 See, notably, Gosling and Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure, 365–96; and Nikolsky, “Epicurus on
Pleasure.” Participants in the debate comprise Rist, Epicurus. An Introduction; Giannantoni, “Il piacere
cinetico nell’etica epicurea”; Striker, “Antipater, or the Art of Living”; Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory:
The Pleasures of Invulnerability, 45–52; Hossenfelder, “Epicurus—hedonist malgré lui”; Purinton,
“Epicurus on the telos”; and Konstan, “Epicurean Happiness: A Pig’s Life?”
156 VOULA TSOUNA
Freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) and freedom from physical pain (aponia) are
katastematic pleasures; but joy (chara) and delight (euphrosynē) are viewed as
kinetic activities.
Moreover, he is attested to have used the above distinction in his ethical treatise On the
End, the first book of On Ways of Life, and the letter to his friends in Mytilene. The Letter
to Menoeceus does not employ the terms “kinetic” or “katastematic” but, all the same,
I think that it clearly implies a distinction between, on the one hand, the pleasures deriv-
ing from the satisfaction of desires and, on the other hand, bodily painlessness and
psychic freedom from disturbance. For this latter “is the end belonging to the blessed
life” and the ultimate goal of our actions (Ep. Men. 128). Moreover, several Key Doctrines
appear to imply the distinction under discussion (KD 3, 10, 18–21), and the same holds
for certain Vatican Sayings as well (SV 33, 51, 59, 81).
Epicurus’s critics do not tire of repeating that his twofold notion of pleasure is both
psychologically counterintuitive and theoretically problematic. I shall return to this
point, but for the time being we should briefly consider the dialectical and philosophical
factors that may have motivated Epicurus to draw it. Not only is it likely that he reacts to
Plato, who appears to favor the view that pleasure is a restorative process associated
with some sort of kinēsis, and possibly to Aristotle, who determines pleasure in terms of
a certain type of activity. Also, according to both ancient and modern interpreters,
Epicurus shaped the keystone of his hedonism in such a manner as to set it in opposition
to the concept of pleasure on which Cyrenaic hedonism is based, i.e., in Epicurus’s
terms, kinetic pleasure (cf. SE, M 7.199). In particular, his radical move to call the absence
of pain pleasure, indeed the highest pleasure, and therefore preclude the existence of any
category of experiences other than pleasure and pain, appears intended to counter the
view of Aristippus the Younger. According to this latter, there are three conditions of the
human constitution, i.e., pleasure, pain, and an intermediate condition comparable to a
calm sea (Aristocles ap. Euseb. Prep. ev. 14.18.32). And, correspondingly, there are three
types of experiences: pathē of pleasure, pathē of pain, and intermediate pathē. Aristippus
the Younger and his followers believe that this intermediate group of affectively neutral
experiences have no moral value and that the only experiences that do have moral value
are those resulting from motions titillating the senses; the Cyrenaics have been depicted
as advocates of licentiousness on just that count (Athenaeus Deipn. 544e). On the con-
trary, by giving utmost ethical importance to the states of aponia and ataraxia, Epicurus
probably intended, among other things, to make his own brand of hedonism immune to
the charge of profligacy.
The fact that Metrodorus too states that pleasure can be conceived as both kinetic and
katastematic (On Timocrates: cf. DL 10.136) constitutes evidence that, already during the
first generation of Epicurus’s followers, the twofold concept of pleasure became part of
the orthodox Epicurean dogma. As such it is subsequently endorsed by every known
member of the school. For instance, it underlies Lucretius’s approach to the passions and
his therapeutic techniques. It is used by Philodemus in his analyses of emotions and
Hedonism 157
vices and in his portrayal of the Epicurean ideal.51 And it is asserted by Torquatus in the
core of his exposition of Epicurean ethics (Fin. 1.37):
We do not simply pursue the sort of pleasure which stirs our nature with its sweetness
and produces agreeable sensations in us. Rather, the pleasure we deem greatest is
that which is felt when all pain is removed. For when we are freed from pain, we take
delight in that very liberation and release from all that is distressing.
Diogenes too evokes the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasure on
numerous occasions, including the surviving part of his polemics against the presentist
hedonism of the Cyrenaics, whose sects, however, had disappeared from the philosoph-
ical stage long before Diogenes’s time (fr. 34.6.2–14):
Now we should investigate how our life will become pleasant in both the states
(ἐν τοῖς καταστήμασι) and the actions (ἐν ταῖς πράξεσιν). And let us first discuss the
states, keeping an eye on the point that, when the emotions which disturb the soul
are removed, those which produce pleasure enter into it to take their place.
If, as the context suggests, Diogenes intends to make an anti-Cyrenaic point, it is proba-
bly this: he contrasts the Epicurean agenda of investigating how to achieve lifelong
pleasure in both states and actions with the Cyrenaics’ indifference to lifelong pleasure
and, specifically, their exclusive interest in pleasurable actions but not in pleasurable
states. Assuming that his reference to καταστήματα (katastēmata) points to katastematic
pleasure,52 he probably invites his readers to compare the Cyrenaics’ single-minded
pursuit of actions aiming at immediate kinetic pleasures with the Epicureans’ concern
for both short-term kinetic pleasures and stable conditions equivalent to katastematic
pleasure.53
To acquire a better understanding of the distinction between katastematic and kinetic
pleasure and of the interpretative problems surrounding it, let us dwell a little longer on
some of the issues mentioned above. On what basis does Epicurus differentiate kataste-
matic from kinetic pleasures? How are these two sorts or aspects of pleasure related to
bodily and mental pleasures, the restoration of needs and, generally, the fulfillment
of desires? In what way are the kinetic pleasures related to the katastematic state and
what is their respective moral value? And, finally, what are the implications of Epicurus’s
view that painlessness of the body and the undisturbed state of the mind constitute the
highest good?
In my view, Epicurus’s main criterion for distinguishing between kinetic and kataste-
matic pleasures is that the former involve some sort of motion of which we are aware,

52 On Diogenes’s use of κατάστημα (katastema) to denote Epicurean pleasure, see also NF 192
3.10–4.1.
53 For further discussion of fr. 34, see Tsouna, “Diogenes and the Cyrenaics.”
158 VOULA TSOUNA
whereas the latter do not. The motions in question have to do with processes oriented
towards the satisfaction of all sorts of desires. To corroborate the accusation that Epicurus
and his followers were after kinetic pleasures, Athenaeus cites a much maligned excerpt
from On the Moral End, in which Epicurus is taken to extol the kinetic pleasures deriv-
ing from food, sex, hearing, and “the pleasant motions produced on the sense of sight
by a beautiful form” (Athenaus Deipn. 12.546e). Likewise, Torquatus describes kinetic
pleasure as a sort of pleasure “moving” our nature in a delightful manner (Fin. 1.37);
Cicero confirms that, in the treatise On the Moral End, Epicurus claims that kinetic
pleasures result from suaves motiones, sweet or pleasant motions, produced through the
eyes and through the other senses in the whole human being (Tusc. 3.41).
However, the evidence regarding the sorts of pleasures that qualify as kinetic or katas-
tematic is more ambiguous. Epicurus’s claim that he could not conceive of the good
without reference to bodily pleasures associated with motions (Deipn. 12.546e), and also
the fact that he usually illustrates kinetic pleasures by giving examples of sensory pleas
ures (including esthetic ones), could be taken to indicate that all kinetic pleasures are
physical. Nonetheless, in On Choices, Epicurus refers to kinetic pleasures that are not
physical but psychic: chara and euphrosynē, joy and delight (DL 10.136). Hence, kinetic
pleasures can be either of the soul or of the body. The same holds for katastematic pleas
ure: “aponia” typically refers to painlessness in the body, whereas “ataraxia” indicates
the absence of pain or disturbance in the mind (DL 10.136). To summarize, the distinc-
tion between katastematic and kinetic pleasure cuts across the one between pleasures of
the body or of the mind. What makes a pleasure kinetic or katastematic is not its physi-
cal or mental character, but rather the presence or absence of the relevant stirring and of
the sort of feeling that results from this latter.54
As indicated, contrary to the Cyrenaics, the Epicureans ascribe genuine value to the
pleasures of recollection and anticipation as well as to those experienced in the present.
Obviously, those pleasures belong to the mind, not the body, and they are kinetic in so far
as they involve the mind’s movement to bring to the fore experiences of the past or to
project itself towards the future. According to a widespread view, the pleasures remem-
bered or hoped for are always kinetic, because Epicurus maintains that the mind feels joy
when it has the expectation of tasteful food, sex, music, and other sensory experiences
(Tusc. 3.41). Also, on the same view, the pleasures that we anticipate are always kinetic as
well: we are looking forward to the processes or activities that will stir our senses or
mind in an agreeable manner. However, I submit that katastematic pleasure too can be
the object of anticipation and probably of memory as well (Plut. Non posse 1089d):
For the stable condition (katastēma) of the flesh and the reliable expectation con-
cerning it (sc. the katastēma) contain the highest and most secure joy for those who
are able to reach it by reasoning.
54 The extant fragments of the Epicureans do not settle the question whether, when we are in a
condition of katastematic pleasure, there may be some physical motion of which we are unaware or,
alternatively, there is no motion at all. The Cyrenaic philosopher Anniceris appears to assume the latter,
when he compares the condition of katastematic pleasure with the state of a corpse.
Hedonism 159
This excerpt from On the Moral End implies that, in fact, the confident anticipation
of the katastematic state is morally more important than the expectation of kinetic
pleasures arousing the senses. This is as it should be, since bodily painlessness and
psychic tranquility have supreme moral value.
Whether kinetic pleasures are restorative, i.e., derive from the satisfaction of desires
and the fulfillment of bodily needs, is under debate. According to one sort of approach,
the motions involved in kinetic pleasure are always associated with mental desire-
satisfaction or physical replenishment, e.g., quenching one’s thirst or satisfying one’s
hunger (Fin. 2.9; SV 33), whereas, according to another, kinetic pleasures are distinct
and different from replenishment processes.55 All things considered, it seems to me that,
although many kinetic pleasures result from replenishment processes, not all of them
do. In the first place, consider someone not entirely free of physical want, or mental
anxiety, or both. Even though one’s primary desire will be oriented towards removing
the pain and hence will probably be restorative, nonetheless that same person is likely
simultaneously to feel desires for other things as well, which are not related to the source
of one’s dominant need at that time. For instance, while the pleasure of eating will
address one’s hunger, the pleasure of admiring at the same time the arrangement of
flowers on the table does not replenish anything at all. In the second place, we should
consider the nature of the pleasures that one experiences when one is in a katastematic
state. As indicated, these experiences may be bodily or mental: a person in a state of
static pleasure can be both enjoying the sunshine by the beach and feeling joy or delight
(cf. DL 10.136). Insofar as such pleasures involve motions, they qualify as kinetic.56
Nonetheless, they are not restorative,57 for the condition of katastematic pleasure does
not lack anything that needs to be restored. In fact, Epicurus suggests that, while the
pleasures deriving from replenishment can be viewed as steps leading to painlessness,
the pleasures experienced when one is in this latter state are variations of it. ‘‘Pleasure
does not increase in the flesh, once the pain due to deprivation is removed; simply, it
varies (poikilletai)” (KD 18 part; also Fin. 2.10).58 Such variations determine the particular
texture, as it were, of one’s katastematic condition. Philosophically, there is nothing
problematic about the idea that kinetic pleasures can be of different sorts and fulfill
different functions. For assuming that they are related to desires, and given that the
nature and sources of desires vary, it is reasonable to suppose that kinetic pleasures will
also vary in corresponding ways.
55 Regarding this point, compare the contributions by Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures
of Invulnerability, 45–46; and Striker, “Antipater, or the Art of Living,” 15.
56 A different view is defended by Dimas, “Epicurus on Pleasure, Desire, and Friendship” who
argues that the pleasures experienced in the katastematic state are katastematic pleasures.
57 The same holds for other pleasures considered by Epicurus: looking at a painting, tasting
something savory, smelling a perfume, listening to music, and, generally, experiencing sensory or
esthetic pleasures (cf. Cic. Tusc. 3.41).
58 See Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.123. Also relevant are the remarks concerning
Epicurus’s concept of the limit of pleasure and the Epicureans’ classification of desires.
160 VOULA TSOUNA
In contrast to the transient character of kinetic pleasures, there is nothing precarious

about katastematic pleasure. As indicated, Epicurus and his followers conceive of it as
a katastēma, a stable physical or mental condition enduring as long as one remains
entirely unaffected by pain. As I said, the matter is controversial, but I am inclined to
think that, according to Epicurus, katastematic pleasure of the body results, at least in
part, from kinetic processes of replenishment (SV 33):
The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry or thirsty or cold. For whoever has these
things and hopes to preserve them could rival even Zeus in happiness.
Katastematic pleasure of the mind, however, principally depends on detecting the deep-
est sources of fear and anxiety and on treating them by Epicurean moral therapy. We
shall revisit this topic but, at present, it is important to note that painlessness of the body
and tranquility of the mind are interconnected and crucially depend upon each other.
On the one hand, the serenity of a mind free of disturbance is both intrinsically pleasur-
able and instrumentally essential to the successful management of physical suffering.
On the other hand, even though the mind can overcome the latter, nonetheless the static
condition of physical painlessness is far preferable to that of bodily suffering success-
fully offset by the operations of the mind. For aponia enables us to enjoy all sorts of plea-
sures and strengthens our confidence that we shall keep doing so in the future (cf. Tusc.
3.41). Comparably to Plato’s Socrates but for reasons radically different from his own,
the Epicureans recommend that one should take diligent care of one’s health and should
try to preserve one’s body in good condition (Philodemus De elect. 23.7–9).
Importantly, according to Epicurus and the other members of his school, the kataste-
matic condition, whether of the mind or of the body, constitutes the very limit of
pleasure (KD 3; cf. Diog. fr. 34 lower margin):
The limit of the magnitude of pleasures is the removal of all pain. Wherever pleasure
is present, for as long as it is present, there is no pain of the body or distress of the
mind or both of them together.
Epicurus justifies his claim concerning the limit of pleasure by pointing to our
physiological make-up: recall his claim that the flesh cannot experience pleasure greater
than the removal of pain (KD 18). However, only the mind is in a position to grasp that
fact, by reflecting on the nature of pleasure (KD 18) and by rationally assessing “the goal
and limit of the flesh” in the light of the correct conception of a complete life (KD 20).
The flesh, on the other hand, does not have the capacity to understand that the removal
of all suffering marks the quantitative limit of pleasure. Therefore, it treats this latter as if
it were infinite (KD 20).
Later Epicureans appeal to the limit of pleasure in order to explore the question
whether the temporal duration of one’s life has moral significance. Philodemus argues
that, contrary to the empty beliefs of the many, the good cannot be measured by time
nor is the structure and completeness of one’s life affected by the longer or shorter length
Hedonism 161
of one’s life (De mort. 12.1–15). Most people believe that a longer life is a more pleasant
life and that its greater pleasantness consists in a greater number of accumulated pleas
ures. Consequently they always aim for future pleasures in a self-defeating effort to
possess more goods.59 However, as Philodemus notes, the Epicureans realize that one
needs very little time to achieve pleasure (3.32–36) and that the pleasure quickly achieved
in a very short time is equal to the pleasure provided by infinite time (3.37–39).
Philosophical wisdom entails that we are able to grasp the limit of pleasure and under-
stand that the temporal duration of a life should not be the criterion of its completeness
and happiness.60 Arguably, this is compatible with the view that a longer life is likely to
contain a greater number of pleasures than a shorter life, and that we have some good
reasons to prefer the former to the latter (13.36–14.14).61 We shall revisit this latter issue
in the last section of the paper.
Epicurus and his adherents mostly take katastematic pleasure to be identical with
happiness and often speak of this latter as the overall goal of human life (e.g., Ep.
Men. 128; KD 33). However, it would be a mistake to think that kinetic pleasures lie
outside the scope of the moral end, or that they are merely means to the removal of
pain. On the contrary, they are integrated in the Epicurean telos in the ways defended
above, i.e., as variations of or steps towards katastematic pleasure. It is important to
stress that, even though the kinetic pleasures related to the restoration of physical
needs can plausibly be described in terms of steps aiming to the katastematic
condition, all kinetic pleasures are intrinsic goods. But they are not always choiceworthy,
whereas katastematic pleasure invariably is. And, moreover, kinetic pleasures are
dependent on the katastematic condition in ways in which this latter does not depend
on them.
One might object that the katastematic state takes on its pleasurable quality in virtue
of the kinetic pleasures related to it and, in that sense, its value derives from these latter,
but that, if considered on its own, it cannot plausibly be described as pleasure, let alone
as the highest pleasure. Anniceris, a Cyrenaic philosopher interacting with Epicurus,
put this point bluntly, by comparing katastematic pleasure to the condition of a corpse
(DL 2.89). Judging from the surviving texts, however, Epicurus and his followers do not
seem particularly disturbed by this sort of objection. We can only speculate why, but I
think their reasons partly bear on the analogy between painlessness and health. When
we are healthy, we have a feeling of well-being that accompanies everything we do; but
we still feel well even if we do nothing. Epicurus appears to view aponia and ataraxia as
conditions whose formal requirements coincide with the formal requirements of eudai-
monia, happiness, and whose positive character makes them apt to be used as rules of
ethical conduct.62 And he suggests that the absence of pain in the body and of disturbance
59 On this point, see Warren, Facing Death, 145 ff.

61 See Sedley, “Epicurean versus Cyrenaic Happiness.”
62 Different developments of this suggestion are found in Hossenfelder, “Epicurus—hedonist malgré
lui,” Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, 11–58; and Woolf, “What Kind of
Hedonist Was Epicurus?,” 172–75.
162 VOULA TSOUNA
in the mind has its own experiential quality, which is distinct from whatever feelings of
pleasure accompany the kinetic variations of the katastematic state. Despite what
Anniceris and other critics say, freedom from pain is not an affectively neutral state nor
a condition of which one remains unconscious. In truth, as Epicurus and his followers
appear to believe, it feels quite wonderful.63 An intriguing passage from Diogenes
Laertius deserves separate comment (DL 10.121):
We should think of happiness in two ways: as the highest, which god enjoys, and
which is incapable of increase; and <as the happiness which is capable of>64 addition
and subtraction of pleasures.
On one possible reading, certain late Epicureans explicitly included in their notion of
happiness kinetic pleasures as well, possibly in order to forestall the Academic criticism
that Epicurean pleasure has two facets, but only one of them is claimed to be the highest
good. On another possible interpretation, however, both ways of thinking about happi-
ness have to do with katastematic pleasure: in the former case, it is ideally perfect and
complete, whereas in the latter it admits of degrees reflecting the varied circumstances
of the human condition. Philodemus’s suggestion that Epicureans suffering an untimely
death may have gained happiness without, however, having reached its upper limit
(De mort. 19.1–2) points in the direction of this latter interpretation.
Epicurus’s treatment of katastematic pleasure as an equivalent of happiness, and his
contention that a life free of pain is equal to the life of the gods, place him squarely within
the tradition of ethical eudaemonism that most Greek moralists belong to, with the pos-
sible exception of the Cyrenaics.65 At the outset of his surviving epitomē on ethics, he
explicitly underscores that fact. Having urged everyone, young or old, to undertake the
study of Epicurean philosophy, he concludes (Ep. Men. 122):
It is therefore necessary that we rehearse the things that produce happiness (eudai-
monia), seeing that when happiness is present we have everything, whereas when it
is absent we do everything in order to acquire it.
Moreover, in the Letter to Mother, he describes himself as making progress towards the
achievement of happiness, acquiring something useful day by day and getting closer to a
state equal to that of the gods (Diogenes, fr. 112.23–40; cf. Ep. Men. 135; KD 33). Of course,
what he means is not that he expects to become immortal, but that the assimilation of
Epicurean philosophy renders one capable of “feeling joy as the gods do for as long as
63 A philosophical defense of that thesis, also in connection to the Cradle Argument, is provided by
Woolf, “What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?,” 173–75.
64 κατὰ τήν suppl. Usener. The supplementation is also accepted by Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers.
65 See Annas, The Morality of Happiness; Irwin, “Aristippus against Happiness”; and the response by
Tsouna-McKirahan in “Is there an exception to Greek eudaemonism?”
Hedonism 163
we live” (fr. 112.38–40). We should appreciate that the godlike character of Epicurean
happiness crucially has to do with the long-term stability and anti-maximalist orientation
of katastematic pleasure, and with the mind’s dominant role in the achievement of
this latter.
Once again, the contrast with Cyrenaic hedonism appears deliberate and, as ancient
authors observe, could not have been more marked.66 For Cyrenaic pleasure is inher-
ently unstable and locked into the present. Happiness depends on the accretion of
pleasurable episodes (Aristocles ap. Euseb. Prep. Ev. 14.18.31) and is precarious (DL
2.91).67 And the mind has no overall control of the day-to-day pursuit of pleasure and
no contribution to make by remembering or anticipating pleasures, because such plea-
sures are metaphysically non-existent68 and morally valueless. Moreover, although
Cyrenaic presentism does not preclude future planning69 and happiness is considered
in principle possible, nonetheless happiness cannot be pleasurably experienced as a
whole. If it has a value, it is derivative and reducible to the value of its pleasurable
constituents, while there are also several experiences in one’s lifespan that are
value-neutral.70
To summarize, Cyrenaic hedonism entails a fragmentary conception of happiness,
which does matter but only derivatively so, and also a deep anti-rationalism duly criti-
cized by the school’s rivals (Philodemus De elect. 2.5–3.18). In sharp contrast, the
Epicureans’ aspiration to godlike bliss relies, as it were, on a holistic conception of hap-
piness as a dynamic condition of painlessness and tranquility, sustained and enriched by
different sorts of kinetic pleasures, and firmly governed by the cognitive operations of
the mind. The significance of that contrast is not merely historical. Both Epicurean
authors, such as Philodemus and Diogenes, and their critics, especially the academics
Cicero and Plutarch, realize that the parallel between the ethics of the two schools has
major philosophical import, which we are invited to entertain and assess.71
66 On my own reconstruction of the story in Tsouna, “Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the
Good Life,” Anniceris’s “corrected” version of Cyrenaic hedonism (Strabo 17.3.22) is a response to
Epicurus’s newly minted hedonism (see also Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism, 22), not the other way
around, as many scholars have thought.
67 See Warren, The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists, 190–91.
68 According to Cyrenaic orthodoxy, the movement of the flesh or the soul associated with pleasure
disappears with time (DL 2.89).
69 Assuming that our identity remains stable over time (contra Irwin, “Aristippus against
Happiness”; and Zilioli, The Cyrenaics, 162–65), there is no reason why we should not try to secure
future pleasures or avoid future pains. On various aspects of Cyrenaic future planning, see Graver,
“Managing Mental Pain”; O’Keefe, “The Cyrenaics on Pleasure, Happiness, and Future-Concern”;
Sedley, “Epicurean versus Cyrenaic Happiness”; and Warren, “Epicurus and the Pleasures of the
Future.” O’Reilly’s M.Phil. thesis offers illuminating insights on the Cyrenaic technique of the pre-
rehearsal of future evils.
70 These occurrences are the so-called intermediate pathē.
71 I argue for this claim in Tsouna, “Cyrenaics and Epicureans on Pleasure and the Good Life.”
164 VOULA TSOUNA
The Epicurean classification of

desires and the status of the virtues
Given that the rational calculus lies at the heart of Epicurean eudemonism, it is especially
important to understand the nature of the desires and beliefs motivating one’s hedonis-
tic choices. In a broad sense, this enterprise falls under the study of nature (physiologia),
since this latter comprises not only the atomic structure of the world but also the nature
of humans. Epicurus classifies the desires into natural and necessary, natural and not
necessary, and neither natural nor necessary or empty (kenai), and he contends that,
of the necessary desires some are necessary for happiness (eudaimonia), others for the
removal of annoyance in the body (aochlēsia), and others for life itself (auto to zēn) (DL
10.127–28; see also KD 29).72 His idea, endorsed by all his known followers, is that the
evaluative beliefs related to our desires are necessarily or contingently true or, in the
case of empty desires, they are both false and harmful. And the corresponding pleasures
should be chosen or avoided depending on whether they derive from the satisfaction of
natural desires, which are the only ones we should seek to fulfill, or from empty ones,
which should never receive satisfaction.
Later Epicureans reinterpret Epicurus’s classification using current analytic tools.
They are motivated probably by a criticism of Academic origin, according to which
Epicurus’s taxonomy confuses species with genera and does not realize that there are two
categories of desire instead of three (Fin. 2.9.26). Probably in reaction to that criticism,
Philodemus divides desires into two genera, natural and non-natural or empty, and then
subdivides the former into two subcategories, necessary and not necessary (Philodemus
De elect. 6.7–21).73 He adds that the sources of our desires differ, as do the ways in which
we experience them: they spring from our individual nature or from external factors,
and they can have a strong or a weaker impact on us (6.5–20):
[We called] different causes those causes some of which, it seems, produce terrible
storms while others do not, some occur prematurely due to certain defects, others
happen because of the perceptions of joy, some are produced by habits whereas
others are produced independently from them, some occur having originated
from ourselves while others arise because of external factors, or because things
72 If the desires necessary for happiness are oriented towards ataraxia, and those necessary for
physical annoyance towards aponia, the desire for life itself can be taken to be more fundamental than
either of them and to be related to the natural tendency of all living beings to remain alive. Hence the
Epicureans’ recommendation to take care of one’s health has strong naturalistic backing, in so far as it
can be justified by reference to a necessary tendency of which the intentional object is, precisely,
self-preservation.
73 For instance, desires for food and clothing are both natural and necessary. The desire for sex is
only natural. And the desires for luxury, power, or fame are empty, probably in the sense that their
objects have no real value.
Hedonism 165
which become desirable by our lack of them inflicted [a sort of] wound by the
very thought of them.
Failure to understand such distinctions causes us to mistake alien desires for those con-
genial to our nature and to pursue ambition or luxury as we should not (De elect. 5.4–21).
In keeping with the rationalism of the Founder, Philodemus develops the authoritative
dogma of the school in new directions: he identifies the desires underlying vices or
passions such as flattery, arrogance, envy, and greed, explains their negative value, and
proposes ways in which they can be modified or uprooted. Also, both he and Lucretius
expand Epicurus’s doctrine by exploring in depth the sorts of desires related to our
deepest fears, and especially the fears addressed in the first two articles of the fourfold
medicine concerning the gods and death. Some of the most pertinent and attractive
elements of Epicureanism are found in their discussion of these topics.
The two following remarks bear on the background of the Epicurean classification of
desires and their use for polemical purposes. First, although Epicurus is widely believed
to be the first to propose a taxonomy of desires and pleasures, in fact, there are prece-
dents in Plato, which Epicurus probably knew and took into account. In the context of
his analysis of defective constitutions in Republic 8, Socrates distinguishes the desires
into necessary and not necessary, money-making (chrēmatistikai) and money-spending
(analōtikai), relatively better and relatively worse (Rep. 558d).74 Necessary desires are
those that are unavoidable or whose satisfaction is considered compelling and beneficial
to us (558e), whereas not necessary are the desires that can be avoided by discipline from
youth up or whose satisfaction does no good or actual harm (559a). An example of the
former is the appetite for basic nourishment such as bread, which is beneficial and, if it
fails, we die, whereas the excessive appetite for other kinds of foods can be avoided by
proper training and is mostly harmful to both the body and the soul (559b). While both
the oligarchic and the democratic man are governed by the appetitive part of the soul
which dominates the rational part, the former type of man satisfies only his necessary
desires because of his avarice and love of profit (554a), whereas the latter gives himself
away to the not necessary appetites, because of lack of education (cf. apaideusia),
idleness, and softness with regard to pleasure and pain (556c).
Moreover, while both types of citizen experience internal conflict, the necessary
desires governing the oligarchic man by force do still ensure a minimum of order,
whereas the not necessary, money-spending appetites seizing the citadel of the demo-
cratic man’s soul (560b) overthrow every order. They remove all correct beliefs and atti-
tudes, encourage a licentious life (561c) that the democratic man calls “the life of pleasure
and freedom and happiness” (561d), and, eventually, lead to the necessity of tyranny.
Interestingly for our purposes, Socrates describes the democratic citizen as “day-by-day
indulging the appetite of the moment, now getting drunk and abandoning himself to
the sounds of the flute, then again drinking only water and following a strict diet, at one
74 I am grateful to Paul Kalligas and Vassilis Karasmanis for discussion and to George Bebedelis for
written comments on this point.
166 VOULA TSOUNA
time taking physical exercise but at another idling and neglecting everything, and
sometimes pretending to occupy himself with philosophy” (561c–d). Although Epicurus’s
distinction between necessary and not necessary desires does not exactly coincide
with Plato’s, this latter may well have been a source of inspiration for the founder of
the Epicurean school. Like Plato’s Socrates, Epicurus determines necessary desires as
unavoidable, beneficial, and bearing on one’s physical sustenance, while his conception
of empty desires corresponds quite closely to the not necessary, money-spending desires
of the democratic man: they involve the wrong values, imply psychic disorder, and
dictate an erratic and profligate lifestyle dictated by presentist attitudes, i.e., the heedless
pursuit of day-to-day pleasure.
Second, it is not accidental, I think, that these very elements occur in the Epicureans’
criticisms of Cyrenaic hedonism as well. Not only does Epicurus appear to target this
latter by denouncing profligacy (DL 131–32),75 rejecting maximalism, and relating both
to empty beliefs; Philodemus too highlights the connections between vain desires,
empty beliefs, and the hedonic presentism associated with the Cyrenaics, and he criti-
cizes different Cyrenaic sects for advocating an anti-rationalist and amoral pursuit of
day-to-day pleasure (De elect. 2.5–3.18). Moreover, he remarks that such carpe diem atti-
tudes are typically caused by superstitious beliefs and fears. People whose rationality is
thus impeded seek only the things that provide immediate pleasure and refuse to endure
any pains (17.1–3), just as the Cyrenaics urge us to do. Diogenes raises similar points and
adds new elements as well. Like earlier members of his school, he treats the Cyrenaics as
the theoretical defenders of the crude day-to-day hedonism of the many (e.g., frr. 44 and
49) and he alludes to the empty desires and beliefs underlying their presentism. For
instance, having mentioned that it is the soul rather than the body that is responsible for
the pain caused by empty desires (1.1–2.4), Diogenes says that he feels sadness at the
conduct of those who waste their lives in the vain pursuit of theatres and baths and
perfumes and ointments, and he contrasts these empty pleasures to the genuine joy
generated from the study of Epicurean physics (fr. 2.3.7–14). Both the passage’s reference
to sensual pleasures typically restricted to the present and the explicit comparison
between these latter and the pleasures deriving from physiologia indicate that Diogenes
is thinking of the Cyrenaics: they reject the study of nature as useless but indulge desires
which are empty and harmful; the Epicureans, on the other hand, base their desires on a
thorough understanding of nature and therefore pursue only beneficial pleasures. He
makes a comparable point with regard to the desires related to the pleasures of memory
and anticipation: the Cyrenaics reject them, whereas the adherents to his own school
believe that the pleasures of anticipation can relieve present pain or increase present
pleasure in so far as they are connected to natural desires and not to empty ones. Elsewhere,
Diogenes refers to empty desires as “desires that [outrun] the limits fixed by nature” (fr.
34.7.5–7) and must be eradicated because they are “the roots of all evils” (fr. 34.7.10–12).
75 Epicurus talks about some people (tines) who ignore, disagree with, or misconstrue the Epicurean
doctrine of pleasure, saying that it posits licentious pleasures as the moral end. Philosophers who do
not agree with the Epicurean end of painlessness probably include the Cyrenaics.
Hedonism 167
On the other hand, natural desires “seek after as many things as [are necessary] for our
nature’s delight” (fr. 153.1.9–14).
It is difficult to overestimate how important it is to understand the nature of desire,
when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of the vices and the passions. For both
these kinds of traits entail empty desires as well as empty beliefs, and both make it
impossible to achieve painlessness and peace of mind. The Epicurean analysis and therapy
of the passions are among the most valuable contributions of the school to posterity,76
and they will be discussed in detail in other chapters of this volume. Here, suffice it to
recall that the Epicurean agenda of moral therapy is outlined in the so-called fourfold
medicine (tetrapharmakos), whose origins can be traced back to the Founder and whose
articles are the following (Philodemus, Ad [. . .] 4.9–14):
God gives no cause for fear, death no cause for alarm; it is easy to procure what is
good, and also to endure what is bad.
For present purposes, the last two items require brief comment.
The contention that pleasure is easily available draws support from Epicurus’s theses
concerning the limit of pleasure and the twofold nature of the highest good. Painlessness
is all that matters for happiness, whereas wealth, power, or other externals are not essen-
tial for that goal (KD 15; SV 33, 59). Also, the third article of the tetrapharmakos gains
plausibility in the light of Epicurus’s remark that natural wealth is both limited and easy
to get, whereas the wealth that is desirable because of empty opinions is unlimited
and hard to come by (KD 15). Metrodorus holds a similar view, and so does Philodemus.
In his treatise On Property Management, this latter largely remains faithful to the idea
that very little is needed in order to gain pleasure. However, he adds that, although
the Epicurean manager knows that nothing important depends on possession of great
wealth because nature makes readily available everything necessary for the satisfaction
of our natural desires, nonetheless “he feels more inclined by his will to a more affluent
way of living” (Oec. 16.4–6). Hence, it is rational to prefer greater wealth, provided that it
is administered according to the principles of Epicurean philosophy.
On the other hand, Diogenes appears to take a harder line with regard to the possession
of riches (fr. 153.2.5–14):
What [need to mention the] fabulous treasuries of Croesus and his gold ingots or
the rivers running with gold for his sake? What [benefit], father Zeus, [did he derive]
from these [riches]?
Croesus drew no benefit, either because wealth is deemed by Diogenes totally irrelevant
to pleasure or, alternatively, because Croesus did not have the proper attitude towards it.
A final comment concerns the last principle of the fourfold medicine, that the bad is
76 According to Lucretius, greed could be one of the many emotions that, in fact, mask the presence
of the fear of death—probably the deepest and most fundamental fear of humans.
168 VOULA TSOUNA
easy to endure. Epicurus defends that principle by contending that pain is either severe
but short or long but tolerable (KD 4). As mentioned, other texts appeal to the capacity of
the mind to control physical pain by recollecting or anticipating pleasurable experiences.
Yet others suggest that, even though pain is evil and it is natural to shun it, nonetheless
its intensity depends on the nature of our beliefs and desires: empty beliefs and desires
can greatly increase physical pain to the point of rendering it excruciating, whereas the
absence of such beliefs and desires allows pain to be psychologically manageable.
In sum, the last two principles of the fourfold medicine importantly bear on the dox-
astic and appetitive elements governing our pursuit of the highest good and avoidance
of the greatest evil. They involve naturalistic assumptions concerning the availability of
natural goods and our physical and psychological reactions to pain. And they reflect
Epicurus’s optimism as well as the sort of rationalism that pervades his ethics.
This latter marks also another aspect of Epicurean hedonism, namely, the Epicureans’
conception of the virtues and their relation to pleasure. Epicurus’s approach to the
virtues is moderately cognitivist: he views them as inner states importantly consisting of
beliefs, and explains them by reference to their cognitive components. In the Letter to
Menoeceus, immediately after he has emphasized that pleasure can be ensured only
through sober reasoning investigating the causes and removing false beliefs (131–32), he
states his view about the virtues as follows (Ep. Men. 132):
Phronēsis, prudence, is the source of all these and the greatest good. Therefore, pru-
dence, from which arise all the other virtues, is more precious even than philosophy,
for it teaches us that it is not possible to live pleasurably without living prudently
and honorably and justly, (nor is it possible to live prudently and honorably and
justly) without living pleasurably. For the virtues grow together with the pleasurable
life and the pleasurable life cannot be separated from them.
According to the above passage, then, the virtues have a unique and exclusive relation
to the life of pleasure. They mutually entail each other (KD 5),77 and they form some sort
of unity: they grow together with each other and with pleasure, and none of them can
be found in the soul without the others. Both the indispensability of the virtues and the
elevation of phronēsis into a value greater than philosophy itself might appear to sit
uneasily with Epicurean hedonism. For thus the virtues might appear to compete with
pleasure for the position of the supreme good. In particular, phronēsis might seem to
have value independently of pleasure, as it should not in a system that posits pleasure as
the only intrinsic good.78
Further reflection on the texts, however, renders it clear that Epicurus and his adher-
ents ultimately determine the value of the virtues in instrumental terms. According to
the passage cited above, prudence is the source and the greatest good pertaining to the
77 De elect. 14.1–14 states only a one-way entailment, and also adds to the four canonical virtues
several others.
78 On phronēsis as the source of all the other virtues, see the careful analysis in Mitsis, Epicurus’
Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, 75 ff.
Hedonism 169
rational pursuit of katastematic pleasure,79 precisely because it teaches us (didaskousa)

that the virtues are the sole unfailingly effective means to pleasure and, therefore, we have
every good reason to acquire and practise them (Ep. Men. 132). The instrumental status
of prudence is also compatible with Epicurus’s claim that “of all the goods provided by
prudence with an aim to the blessedness of life as a whole by far the greatest is friend-
ship” (KD 27). While prudence serves to secure important goods contributing to happi-
ness and the pleasurable life, there is no implication that it is valuable for its own sake.
The same holds for justice, whose concept is empirical and contractual and whose value
lies solely in the huge benefits that it brings to human societies (KD 32–40). Torquatus
makes the point in a straightforward manner: sapientia, practical wisdom, which is
identical with the art of living, is desirable merely because it is the artificer of pleasure
(Fin. 1.42): it roots out our errors, rids us of our fears and empty appetites, removes
distress, and guides us to live within the bounds of nature (1.43–46). Temperance and
courage also are valued as privileged means to pleasure, not in their own right (1.47–49).
Moreover, justice consists in an agreement between fellow-citizens neither to harm
others nor to be harmed (1.50–53). Its precise character is determined by social factors
and its enforcement is choiceworthy only so long as it proves beneficial. So, the virtues
are eliminated as candidates for the position of the supreme good, and pleasure remains
the only victor in the field. Torquatus duly concludes that only pleasure is attractive to us
in virtue of its own nature, and that a life of happiness is nothing other than a life of
pleasure (1.54). Philodemus does not face the same challenges that Cicero’s Epicurean
spokesman is presented as facing. Therefore, he does not feel the need to defend the
instrumental status of the virtues, but rather takes it for granted and shifts his attention
to both the advantages of virtue and the disadvantages of vice. And although he keeps
up with the times by introducing new virtues into the Epicurean canon, such as magna-
nimity, philanthropy, and the disposition to make friends (De elect. 14.1–14), nonethe-
less he follows the tradition of his school by exploring both the cognitive and the
extra-cognitive aspects of the virtues and by stressing the need to cultivate them.80
Diogenes adds to our understanding of Epicurean virtue by addressing the topic in a
polemical context in fr. 33 (including NF 128). Assuming that his unnamed opponents in
that fragment are the Cyrenaics,81 he indicates how the Cyrenaic position concerning
79 In my opinion, toutōn pantōn (Ep. Men. 132) refers back to the elements that constitute a
pleasurable life and are secured through “sober reasoning” about the causes of moral choice.
80 For further discussion, see Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 25–27.
81 The interpretation of this fragment is controversial. Namely, it has been debated for over a decade
whether Diogenes’s unnamed opponents in fr. 33 + NF 128 are the Stoics (Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda:
The Epicurean Inscription and Supplement to Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean Inscription, ad loc.)
or the Cyrenaics (Sedley, “Diogenes of Oinoanda on Cyrenaic Hedonism”), or both (see the
contribution of Francesca Masi in Güremen, Hammerstaedt, and Morel, Diogenes of Oinoanda:
Epicureanism and Philosophical Debates). On balance, I am inclined to believe that the opponents
under discussion are the Cyrenaics, for reasons that I develop elsewhere (see my article “Diogenes and
the Cyrenaics”). Below, I cite the crucial excerpts of the fragment, relying on Sedley’s emendation and
translation of the text.
170 VOULA TSOUNA
the instrumentality of virtue differs from the view of his own school and why the former
is mistaken:
Even if these people (sc. the Cyrenaics and whoever else shares their attitude towards
virtue) agree that, as a matter of fact, pleasure is inseparable from the virtues . . .
(1.11–14)82 . . . [Prospective pleasure], as these people lay it down for all human beings
like a snare, has the power to draw them like birds or fish open-mouthed to the
names of the virtues, and sometimes enters people’s minds and paints all kinds of
illusory pictures of itself, and the poor wretches are not ashamed [of bestowing
favors on] each other, [and charming people by their wit], [in pursuit of their own
eventual] pleasure, agreeing adroitly [also to face dangers] in order to avoid pain,
like those who endure marching out to war and those who endure crag-climbing
(3.7–14 + 4 = NF 128.1 + fr. 33.5 = NF 128.2.2).83 Therefore, I want to deflect also the
error that, along with the feeling of self-love, has you in its grip which, more than
any other, further inflates your doctrine as [ignorant]. It is this: [not] all causes in
things precede in time their effects, even if the majority do, but rather some of them
precede in time their effects, others [are simultaneous] with them, and other tempo-
rally follow them (5 = NF 128.2.2, fr. 33.6.3).
The rest of the fragment gives examples of each category of causes (6.4–8.6) and con-
cludes (8.7–15):
Therefore you, being unable to draw these distinctions and not realizing that the
virtues have their place among the causes that are simultaneous with their effects—
for [they] are borne along [with pleasure—go entirely astray].
To fill in the argument sketched above, on the one hand, the Cyrenaics endorse a sort of
consequentialist hedonism, which can plausibly be taken to entail that they view the
virtues as bothersome means of securing the satisfaction of bodily desires and needs.
Moreover, so far as psychic pleasures are concerned, they view virtuous activity but also
friendship as tiresome, though the wise man may choose them for the sake of their
pleasant consequences. On the other hand, Epicurus contends that virtue and pleasure
are interrelated and inseparable (Ep. Men. 132), so that the exercise of the virtues for the
sake of pleasure is itself a pleasant act.84 Besides, not only is virtue practiced at the same
time as the pleasure resulting from that practice, but also it clears the ground for future
pleasures which, we should recall, are integral aspects of the Epicurean telos. Virtue
makes such future pleasures possible.
82 fr. 33 1.10–12——πασῶν ἀρετῶν/——ν ἀχώριστον οὖ-/[σαν τ]ὴν ἡδονήν, εὑρισ-/[κόμε]νον δ’

ὁμολογοῦσι/[τυχεῖν] καὶ οὗτοι πολλά-/[κι]ς οὐκ ἀπο[ Sedley. On the other hand, Smith, Supplement to
Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean Inscription, ad loc. proposes the following reconstruction of fr. 33
1.9–14: [—τὸ ζ]ῆν δι[ὰ] παντὸς ἡ-/[δέως τῶν] πασῶν ἀρετῶν/[αἰεὶ ἐστ]ὶν ἀχώριστον, οὒ/[φασι τὴ]ν
ἡδονὴν εὐρίσ-/[κειν, μό]νον δ’ ὁμολογοῦσί/[γε σοφισ]ταὶ οὖτοι πολλά-/[κι]ς οὐκ ἀπο[ .
83 See Hammerstaedt, “Zum Text der epikureischen Inschrift des Diogenes von Oinoanda,” 32–38.
84 However, such acts derive their value from the pleasure that ensues, not from the virtue involved
in their performance.
Hedonism 171
On the above interpretation, in fr. 33 (including NF 128), Diogenes proceeds to accuse

the Cyrenaics of failing to understand what sort of cause of pleasure virtue is: they
believe, mistakenly, that virtue is a sort of cause that precedes its effects in the way in
which cautery and surgery precede the restoration of health (6.4–11). In fact, however,
virtue is a kind of cause that temporally coincides with its pleasurable outcome.85 If a
hedonist holds, as Diogenes accuses the Cyrenaics of holding, that pleasure has only
antecedent causes, then he must exclude the pleasures of anticipation, as indeed the
Cyrenaics do. If, on the other hand, a hedonist also recognizes simultaneous as well as a
posteriori causes, then he has the conceptual room both to view virtue as intrinsically
pleasant and to value present experiences whose causes lie in the future. Of course, this
is precisely what Epicurus recommends, and Diogenes’s polemics are intended to show
why the Epicurean position is far preferable to the brutal instrumentalism entailed by
Cyrenaic hedonism.
In the end, Epicurus and his followers reject the choice of Hercules narrated by
Prodicus. They choose the path of pleasure but also of virtue. They uphold hedonism
and also propose a way of reconciling the pursuit of pleasure with the observance of
traditional moral norms. What principally enables them to combine these two elements
are, I submit, their view that painlessness of the body and tranquility of the mind consti-
tute the highest pleasure, and the rigorous rationalism of their ethical doctrine. Their
belief that the good is naturally easy to get also lends support to the idea that the pleas
urable life and the virtuous life can coincide. The same holds for the Epicureans’ con-
ception of the virtues as the only proper and effective means to Epicurean pleasure.
Consequently, Epicurus and his followers feel entitled to claim that their hedonism does
not advocate luxurious extravagance, as its critics contend. On the contrary, it is com-
patible with and conducive to a respectable, sober, and rather frugal lifestyle. Nowhere is
the effort to combine the egoistic bend of Epicurean hedonism with the values prized by
conventional morality more evident than in the school’s attitudes towards friendship.
For present purposes, it is enough to mention Epicurus’s notorious claims that the sage
will love his friend as much as himself (Fin. 1.67–68), and that he will sometimes die for
his friend (DL 10.121), which appear to be in tension with the idea that the supreme goal
consists in the attainment of one’s own pleasure or removal of pain. That tension mainly
results from Epicurus’s more or less successful attempt to reconcile his self-interested
and self-regarding hedonism with the altruistic attitudes commonly admired and
praised, and his effort to draw a picture of Epicurean hedonism as a cheerful but austere
ethical system compatible with the ideals of self-denial and self-sacrifice.86
85 According to David Sedley, “Diogenes of Oinoanda on Cyrenaic Hedonism,” the Cyrenaics are
the only group of ancient hedonists that both view virtue instrumentally and describe it as an irksome
means to pleasurable ends; and therefore, it is plausible to think that they are the targets of Diogenes’s
charge.
86 Some later Epicureans, probably under the pressure of Academic criticism, have admitted sources
of motivation other than pleasure and have asserted that friendship is intrinsically valuable for the
good life (Fin. 1.67–70; SV 23 Brown).
172 VOULA TSOUNA
Cicero’s criticisms and

Epicurean responses
Whether Epicurus and his adherents succeed in their enterprise depends in great part
on the conceptual coherence and practical applicability of their brand of hedonism. The
long history of the reception of Epicurean ethics reveals that these features have been
challenged both in antiquity and in modern times. To conclude this chapter, we should
look at some of the earliest criticisms against Epicurean hedonism spelled out by the
character Cicero in De finibus, Book 2. Many of them are of Academic origin, others
reflect Stoic reactions, yet others are probably formulated by Cicero himself. Their rhe-
torical effectiveness varies, while their philosophical relevance is, I submit, greater than
it has been commonly thought to be.87 To appreciate their philosophical value we should
consider, as far as space allows, both the objections raised by Cicero and the ways in
which the Epicureans could reply to them.
One set of objections concerns the alleged psychological foundation of Epicurean
hedonism, and in particular the Epicureans’ use of the Cradle Argument. While Epicurus
appeals to the behavior of newborn animals to support his contention that pleasure is
the supreme good and pain the greatest evil, one may question the legitimacy of that
move. For the instincts of animals in the cradle may be wrong, even though they have
not been corrupted (Fin. 2.33). Or lower animals may not be analogous to humans in the
relevant way. Or it may be that the dispositional tendencies of infants are not analogous
to adult human behavior. Or perhaps Epicurus and his followers simply misread the
facts: newborn creatures are oriented towards self-regard, self-preservation, and protec-
tion from injury in both mind and body; and they seek the primary natural objects of
desire, which may include pleasure but are certainly not restricted to pleasure (2.33–34).
So, as Cicero suggests, Epicurus’s ethical hedonism cannot be inferred from or illus-
trated by the behavior of very young humans and other animals. Even assuming that the
Cradle Argument could provide support for the normativity of pleasure, Cicero points
to further problems arising because of the dual character of Epicurean pleasure, and
because of the view that katastematic pleasure rather than kinetic pleasure constitutes
the highest good. For instance, even if we concede that newborn creatures first and fore-
most seek pleasure, it may be that they are after the agreeable feelings of kinetic pleasure
and not after the mere absence of pain (2.35). Therefore, the Cradle Argument may be
judged irrelevant to the most crucial aspect of Epicurean hedonism, i.e., the supreme
value of aponia and ataraxia for the good life.
More generally, Cicero’s observation concerning the pleasures of newborns may lead
one to wonder whether the katastematic condition has motivational power or to what
extent it does. For unlike the objects of desires related to kinetic pleasures, aponia and
ataraxia are determined in negative terms and are not connected with any specific sort
87 See also the chapter of Carlos Lévy on Cicero in this volume.

Hedonism 173
of desire or any specific sort of process by which they may be attained. Hence, it is
questionable whether aponia and ataraxia can provide adequate motivation or in what
manner they can do so. In response, Epicurus would probably insist on the legitimacy of the
analogy between humans and other animals, stress the uncorrupted nature of creatures
soon after their birth, and insist on his own reading of the psychological facts. Moreover,
he could either concede that newborn creatures seek kinetic pleasure, taking this obser-
vation to be sufficient for his purposes, or, more likely, contend that they primarily seek
to remove discomfort, thus illustrating the supreme importance of katastematic pleas
ure. In any case, Epicurus and his followers would seem to have no option but to defend
the idea that the removal of pain or disturbance constitutes our basic source of motiva-
tion. And they would probably do so, in great part, on the basis of an analogy between
katastematic pleasure and health: more than anything, we naturally desire to be healthy
in body and mind; and, as infant behavior shows, we are disposed to act accordingly.
This latter point becomes clearer when we turn to the criticisms concerning Epicurus’s
twofold concept of pleasure and its implications. Although, as Cicero confirms, he does
not entirely disapprove of definitions nor of determining the meaning of our terms,
Cicero accuses him of leaving vague and ambiguous his use of “pleasure” (Fin. 2.6; Tusc.
3.17.38). For either the term refers to what everybody takes pleasure to be, i.e., some sort
of agreeable stirring of the mind or of the senses, or it points to the peculiarly Epicurean
notion of pleasure as absence of physical or mental pain. Torquatus’s retort, that no defi-
nitional outline of pleasure is necessary because everybody understands what the term
means (2.6), will not do, and Cicero is right to reject it. For, by the first century bce, the
nature of pleasure was debated both outside and inside the Epicurean school, for the
very reasons that Cicero also mentions: the idea that the highest pleasure is the absence
of pain is counterintuitive; and the suggestion that pleasure has two distinct kinds or
aspects (alia genera: 2.9) arguably undermines the unity of the Epicurean supreme good.
Certain members of Epicurus’s school took the option of disputing the thesis that aponia
and ataraxia are included in the moral end (P.Herc. 1012 1.1–8, 38.1–13),88 whereas others
upheld the view that Zeno’s school attributed to Epicurus’s canon, i.e., that the absence
of physical pain and mental suffering represent the highest good for man. Cicero’s criti-
cisms concerning the ambiguity of pleasure match the former line of thought, whereas
Torquatus’s insistence that “freedom from pain” means the same thing as pleasure (2.9)
reflects the orthodox position as constructed by Zeno of Sidon, Demetrius Laco, and
Philodemus. Philosophically, the above controversy points to substantial problems
affecting Epicurus’s dual moral end. Does the mere removal of pain, which is deemed
equivalent to the katastematic state, qualify as pleasure? How does the kinetic pleasure,
e.g., of actually quenching one’s thirst, relate to the katastematic condition of having
quenched it (Fin. 2.9)? If these are two different sorts of experiences, how can they both
88 Demetrius Laco corrects Epicureans who, in their writings, formulate in an equivocal manner
Epicurus’s conception of the moral end, and he insists that Epicurus considers pleasure to be, first and
foremost, the removal of pain.
174 VOULA TSOUNA
be pleasure? Or assuming that they are two different kinds of pleasure (2.9), how are
they related to each other?
As I maintained earlier, Epicurus probably viewed kinetic pleasures as steps towards,
or alternatively, if they occur when all pain is absent, variations of the katastematic state.
However, his extant works and those of his followers do not provide a satisfactory
answer to Cicero’s queries concerning the exact sense in which kinetic pleasures are
claimed to be variations or varieties (varietates) of static pleasure but to constitute no
increase of this latter (Fin. 2.10). On the one hand, it is easy to understand how there may
be variations of a poem, a speech, a character, or someone’s fortunes. Moreover, pleasure
too can be called varied in the sense that different things produce different pleasures. On
the other hand, it is difficult to specify the sense in which the pleasant experiences that
we may have when we are free from pain are variations of aponia (2.10). For instance, the
experience of listening to music when all pain is absent does not depend on aponia
in the way in which a variation of a poem or a speech depends on the main body of the
poem or speech. Nor is it related to aponia in the way in which, e.g., pink is related to red
or green is related to color. Nor yet is it the case that listening to music and being in a
state of aponia are different pleasures of the same kind produced by different sources.
One possible answer might be that, while the experiential quality of restorative kinetic
pleasures depends on the sort of need that they address, the experiential quality of non-
restorative kinetic pleasures is determined by the fact that they supervene on the katas-
tematic state. Having a drink when we are not thirsty simply feels different from drinking
in order to quench one’s thirst. Relatedly, the Epicureans could also try to respond to
Cicero’s accusation that they define the highest good solely in negative terms (2.41)
by denying that their conception of the highest pleasure is negative. Namely, insofar as
aponia and ataraxia correspond, respectively, to physical and mental health, they are
equivalent not only to the absence of the greatest evil but also to the presence of the
greatest good: a wonderful feeling of well-being that accompanies the unimpeded func-
tion of our body and mind and admits of no increase. This feeling is related to kinetic
pleasures in a manner comparable to the manner in which health is related to the activ-
ities of the healthy organism. We preserve (and ought to preserve) our health by restoring
the needs of our mind and body; and so long as we are healthy, we enjoy that condition
both when we engage in various activities and when we do nothing at all. Similarly, the
Epicureans make (and believe that we ought to make) every effort to keep the body free
from pain and the mind free from disturbance. And they appear to think that anyone
who finds oneself in the katastematic state does have a feeling of well-being, whether
or not one enjoys kinetic pleasures as well while in that state. Objectively, then, kinetic
and katastematic pleasures differ in that the former involve motions but the latter do
not. Subjectively, however, although they are different sorts of experiences, they do
share something in common: a sense of agreeableness, of things working as they should,
physically and mentally. Whether this feature suffices to cement the unity of Epicurus’s
twofold notion of pleasure is a question calling for further investigation.
Epicurus’s conception of katastematic pleasure and the parallelism of this latter with
health may explain why, as far as we know, Epicurus did not consider particularly
Hedonism 175
damaging Anniceris’s attempt to ridicule the moral goal of painlessness by comparing it

to the condition of a corpse (DL 2.89). He probably believed that he had made suffi-
ciently clear his view that aponia and ataraxia do not amount to insensitivity, but to
positive states of awareness of one’s physical and mental well-being. A similar thought
may underlie his contention that the supreme good is self-evident and that this holds for
katastematic as well as for kinetic pleasure. While Cicero objects to the idea that painless-
ness is self-evidently the good, Torquatus retorts without argument that, surely, nothing
can be more pleasant than freedom from pain and that this latter is the most intense
pleasure possible (Fin. 2.11).89 Unlike Cicero, he appears to treat kinetic and katastematic
pleasures on an equal footing: if the value of the one is self-evident, so is the value of the
other. Again, katastematic pleasure is presented as a positively and supremely pleasant
condition, not merely as a condition in which evil is absent. And again, Torquatus’s
account of katastematic pleasure points to a close analogy between this latter and health:
like health, katastematic pleasure is unconditionally good, not merely not bad; and it
feels great, not just neutral.90 Nor do the Epicureans need to worry about Cicero’s
suggestion, also entertained by modern interpreters, to remove altogether the kinetic
pleasures from the sphere of the supreme good and confine this latter to katastematic
pleasure (2.12). For, as Epicurus and every consistent hedonist maintain, every pleasure,
in so far as it is pleasure, is intrinsically good (cf. KD 8). And no competent language
speaker would doubt that the kinetic pleasures, i.e., the agreeable stimulations of the
senses or the mind, constitute genuine cases of pleasure and, therefore, belong to the
domain of the good (cf. Fin. 2.8).
If the absence of pain falls under the heading of pleasure on account of being a posi-
tively (and supremely) agreeable condition, the Epicurean thesis that there is nothing
intermediate between the experiences of pleasure and of pain acquires some plausibility.
For it does not imply that we are always actually stirred by some feeling pleasurable or
painful. Rather, the point is mainly that our body and mind function well (whether or
not pleasurable motions occur) or badly, and we have a pleasant or painful sense of the
relevant fact. Contrast the Cyrenaics, who define all pleasures and pains in terms of
smooth and rough motions and, therefore, feel compelled to grant also the existence of
value-neutral experiences that do not correspond to such motions. Moreover, consider
Cicero’s objection, that ordinary life indicates that there are intermediate experiences
which are neither pleasant nor painful (Fin. 2.16). Cicero believes this, because he shares
the common assumption that pleasure consists solely in the agreeable stirring of the
senses or the mind (2.14–15). But this is precisely the assumption that Epicurus rejects,
thus inviting us to revise our understanding of pleasure and draw the appropriate
inferences. Diogenes pursues this matter in an interesting direction, for he relies on
89 However, Torquatus believes that proof is useful in order to counter the arguments of the school’s
rivals regarding pleasure (Fin. 1.31).
90 Cicero’s further objection that, even assuming that the katastematic condition is the most pleasant
state it does not need to be identical with pleasure, i.e., kinetic pleasure (2.11), remains undeveloped.
The crucial question is this: if one can be in a katastematic condition without experiencing any kinetic
pleasure at all, on account of what factor would the former be pleasant?
176 VOULA TSOUNA
Epicurus’s rejection of an affectively intermediate state in order to defend the articles of

the fourfold medicine and specifically the third dictum, i.e., that the good is easy to get
(NF 146.1.1–2.13):
[Life offers us for our nutrition], although barley-bread [is sufficient] for our natural
sustenance, [many] (foods) that do not involve unpleasantness when they are taken,
and a bed that does not fight against the body because of hardness, and clothing that
is neither extremely soft nor indeed extremely rough so that our nature would be
repelled, just as if [we were clothing ourselves] [ . . . ] [with what] pricks [our consti-
tution]. And in fact these things and those much greater are easily obtained, so that
if (life) becomes one of continual luxury, and to others perhaps both a beneficial
redeemer in their necessity, and———[a supporter] of the incapacitated in need.
According to this passage, the amenities that do not cause any discomfort are thereby
pleasurable. If food does not provoke disgust (ἀηδία, aedia), it is pleasant for nutrition; if
a bed does not make us physically uncomfortable, it is good to sleep on; etc. His point is
not merely that natural desires are easy to satisfy with simple and readily accessible
goods. Rather, he declares that the pleasures that begin just where discomfort ends are
no less than those deriving from refined luxuries. In fact, according to Diogenes, the
pleasures related to the removal of all discomfort do count as luxuries, precisely because
the absence of pain is the highest pleasure.
Cicero raises additional objections pertaining to both the value of katastematic pleas
ure and the third article of the Epicurean tetrapharmakos positing that the good is easy
to get. According to Cicero, this latter makes more sense for people who do not value
pleasure highly than for those who do (Fin. 2.91):
Persons who despise pleasure in itself can say that they value a sturgeon no higher
than a sprat; but a person whose chief good consists in pleasure must judge every-
thing by the senses and not by reason and call those things the best which are most
pleasant.
According to Cicero, then, consistent hedonists ought not to remain satisfied with
nature’s resources which are easily available to us. On the contrary, they ought to aim for
more and varied pleasures, deriving from things that are rare or expensive and difficult
to get.
A related criticism is oriented towards Epicurus’s classification of desires and his sug-
gestion that we ought to seek the pleasure deriving from the satisfaction of natural
desires but resist the pull of desires that are non-natural or empty (Fin. 2.22):
This one point I cannot make out: how is it possible for a person to be devoted to
pleasure and, nevertheless, keep his desires within bounds?
Of course, Epicurus and his adherents could reiterate their view that a correct under-
standing of pleasure entails that one realizes its limits and adjusts one’s desires accordingly.
Hedonism 177
However, it seems to me that Cicero’s remark retains some weight, especially against
Diogenes’s aforementioned idea that, as long as they remove discomfort, the most
rudimentary goods count as luxuries. For, assuming that more refined pleasures do not
result in greater pain, why would a hedonist not seek them but be content with the plain
pleasures at hand? Philodemus implicitly concedes the force of this point, when he
attempts to draw a tenuous line between the easy accessibility of the good at hand and
the Epicurean property manager’s natural tendency to enjoy more goods, if they can be
relatively easily secured (Oec. 16.4–6). However, the contention that the Epicurean
hedonist will take huge risks at the prospect of considerable gains (Fin. 2.56–57) is flatly
contradicted by Philodemus. In truth, the property manager conducting himself accord-
ing to the ethical principles of the school will never take such risks. He will not engage in
aggressive money-making, but will administer his wealth with moderation, primarily
aiming to preserve it rather than to greatly increase it, cutting down expenses when
necessary, and honoring his obligations to society and the requirements of friendship
(Oec. 26.1–9, 27.5–12).
Cicero also puts his finger on what he perceives as inconsistencies between different
claims that Epicurus makes. These concern, notably, the respective value of kinetic and
katastematic pleasure, the roles of physical and mental pleasures, and the limitations of
these latter. First of all, he invites his audience to consider Epicurus’s professed view that
painlessness is the highest good in connection with his assertions that he cannot con-
ceive of the good independently of the enjoyment of bodily pleasures, and that he would
find no fault with profligates if they were free from fear and error (cf. KD 20). According
to Cicero, if Epicurus were really committed to the former, he should not have stressed
the dependence of all pleasure on the body nor should he have been ready to condone
profligate pleasures provided that they are not accompanied by distress (Fin. 2.20–25).
So, the argument goes, either Epicurus held conflicting views about the highest good or,
in fact, he privileged kinetic pleasures over the katastematic state. However, I think that
this argument is not decisive. As I proposed above, Epicurus’s comment that he cannot
imagine the good apart from bodily pleasure probably makes a conceptual point, but
neither asserts nor implies that the good is equivalent solely to bodily pleasure. As for
his statement that he would not blame those living in a swirl of pleasures if they were not
afflicted by fear and falsehood, it is counterfactual. In truth, sybarites have the wrong
conception of pleasure and, therefore, could never be rid of fear and empty beliefs. Even
if it were possible for them to put aside for a while their passions, these latter would
return and cause further suffering. Furthermore, Cicero asks (Fin. 2.21–22), what is the
point of imagining profligates who, though living licentiously, might not be blamed by
Epicurus? This question too has an answer: precisely, to point to the counterfactual
nature of that hypothesis and underscore the hopelessness of the profligates’ unceasing
quest for pleasure.
Generally, Cicero interprets Epicurus’s statement “that he cannot even understand
what good there can be or where it can be found apart from that which comes from food
and drink, the delight of the ears, and the grosser forms of gratification” (Fin. 2.7; cf. also
1.55) as being equivalent to the view that, in the end, all pleasure is bodily pleasure.
178 VOULA TSOUNA
In fact, this interpretation appears to belong to the anti-Epicurean polemics of the

Academy, for Plutarch too appeals to it in order to accuse the Epicureans of profligacy.
He argues that, contrary to the Cyrenaics, who realize that mental pleasures can be inde-
pendent from and irreducible to bodily pleasures and hence propose practices of self-
restraint, the Epicureans believe that every pleasure is rooted in the bare sense and
therefore encourage the mind to run riot by arousing more and more bodily pleasures
(Non posse, 1089A–B). However, although the claim that all mental experiences origi-
nate (cf. nasci: Fin. 1.55) in the body can be taken to entail that all mental experiences are
reducible to bodily ones, it does not need to be read in that manner. For the former claim
presupposes that the body and the mind interact and that the involvement of the body is
necessary for mental functions to occur. But that claim does not entail that, ultimately,
mental functions are bodily functions, let alone that the pleasures of the body are more
desirable than those of the mind. In this case as in others, Epicurus and his followers
have to tread carefully, both acknowledging the necessities of our physical nature and
making room for the moral predominance of rationality and the mind. Even if residual
tensions remain, I submit that Torquatus has good grounds for denying that the afore-
mentioned Epicurean views are inconsistent, and that Epicurus’s tenet concerning the
bodily origin of all pleasure constitutes a theoretical justification of profligacy.
This last remark holds both for the heedless profligate, who, by most accounts, does
not really live pleasantly, and for the sophisticated profligate, who enjoys refined pleas
ures of the body and the mind without getting vulgar, ill, or bankrupt (Fin. 2.23). For
contrary to what Cicero or his source appear to think (2.23), Epicurus would not accept
that the sophisticated profligate lives well. Both these kinds of profligates think about
pleasure in the wrong way, i.e., in quantitative terms. And both have empty beliefs that
hinder the successful performance of the hedonistic calculus and cause anxiety and fear.
Cicero’s next criticism, that the mental pleasures of recollection and anticipation con-
cern almost exclusively the kinetic pleasures of the body and hence are contemptible
(2.107), is belied by Epicurus’s own example. For the memories that he entertains on his
deathbed and that enable him to feel joyful amidst great physical suffering are not about
food, drink, and the like, but about his past conversations with his friends (DL 10.22).
The Epicureans could give a similar answer to a related Academic criticism leveled
against them by Plutarch (Non posse 1089B):
Remembering and containing in oneself the sights and feelings and motions related
to pleasures [the Epicureans] are in fact recommending a practice unworthy of the
name of wisdom; they allow the dregs of pleasure to remain in the soul of the wise
man as they would in the house of a profligate.
The Epicureans could retort that, in fact, the pleasures that the wise man stores and
recollects are chiefly of the mind, not of the body; Epicurus’s own example on his death-
bed illustrates precisely that fact. Moreover, although it has been commonly assumed
that, according to Epicurus, the pleasures of memory or anticipation are always kinetic,
I contend that, in truth, they can be katastematic as well. For example, in the treatise
Hedonism 179
On the Moral End, Epicurus stresses the importance of the physical stability of the body
as well as the value inherent in the anticipation of that stability (Plutarch Non posse
1089d):
For the stable condition (katastēma) of the flesh and the reliable expectation con-
cerning it (sc. the katastēma) contain the highest and most secure joy for those who
are able to reach it by reasoning.
More damaging to the Epicurean cause, however, are the arguments brought by Cicero
against the fourth principle of the tetrapharmakos and Epicurus’s related contention that
mental pleasures are always capable of offsetting physical pain. As indicated, the fourth
principle consists in the claim that the bad is easy to avoid, for the reason that severe
pain is brief, whereas milder and prolonged pain grants intervals of respite and can be
counterbalanced by the mind. Nonetheless, Cicero objects that pain cannot be disregarded
all that easily, especially by those who posit it as the supreme evil. He uses the rhetorical
technique of demonstrating by example that, in fact, pain can be both severe and pro-
longed and also can occur intermittently and in bouts (Fin. 2.93–94). Also, he traces
what he takes to be the limitations of Epicurean rationalism by arguing that, in cases of
great and chronic pain, the strategy of recollecting past experiences in order to secure a
preponderance of pleasure over pain does not work. For, because of his belief that pain is
the greatest evil, the afflicted hedonist lives in bitter remembrance of the pain experienced
in the recent past and in fear of the pain to come in the near future (2.95). One may find
this a decisive objection and, furthermore, one may share Cicero’s scepticism regarding
our capacity to remember only what we choose to remember (2.104).91 Also, some may
go as far as endorsing Cicero’s thesis that the best method of facing pain is to view it as a
physical handicap rather than a moral evil, and to lessen its impact, whenever it occurs,
by summoning one’s own psychological and moral strength (2.95). If one opts for that
path, then, of course, one must reject hedonism altogether.
There is no need to linger over Cicero’s attack on Epicurean instrumentalism regard-
ing the virtues and friendship for, as mentioned earlier, this topic is addressed elsewhere
in the volume. In brief, he is unimpressed by Epicurus’s effort to preserve central fea-
tures of morality by stressing the unique role of the virtues in the good life and by deter-
mining this latter chiefly in terms of mental serenity rather than physical delights.
Cicero makes use of the picture sketched by Cleanthes of the virtues ministering to
pleasure as its handmaids (Fin. 2.69), which is intended to illustrate Epicurus’s idea
that the value of the virtues is only derivative and depends on the fact that they serve as
means to pleasure (2.69, 107). Also, he argues that, in principle, Epicurus leaves open the
possibility that one will commit any action, however base or criminal, provided that it
remains undetected (28). And, anticipating the Epicurean retort that, pragmatically
speaking, we have good reasons to act virtuously because wrongdoers are usually
91 I quite agree with Cicero that Epicurus expects too much from his followers (2.105), insofar as he
takes for granted that they can use their memory exactly as they want.
180 VOULA TSOUNA
caught, he remarks that actions are genuinely virtuous only if they derive from a good
disposition, not from one’s fear of punishment. Hence, Epicurean virtue is a sham (Fin.
2.69–71). Now, this objection may be considered unfair, for Cicero does not take ade-
quately into account Epicurus’s thesis that pleasure and the virtues are interrelated nor
the relevant features of the Epicurean wise man. However, Cicero’s contentions that virtue
is a matter of one’s moral disposition and not of deterrents, and also that instrumental
virtue is no virtue at all, should give us pause for reflection. And Epicurean hedonists
would have reason to find disturbing Cicero’s suggestion, probably inspired by Glaucon’s
and Adeimantus’s amplification of Thrasymachus’s challenge in Republic Book 2, that the
mere appearance of virtue serves the Epicureans just as well as virtue itself does (2.71).
Similar remarks concern Epicurean friendship as well. On the one hand, Epicurus
advances the claims that the sage will love his friend as much as himself (Fin. 1.67–68)
and will sometimes die for his friend (DL 10.121), alongside his thesis that each
agent’s own pleasure is the moral goal. Hence he gives the impression of a more or less
successful attempt to reconcile his self-interested and self-regarding ethics with the
altruistic attitudes praised by conventional morality.92 On the other hand, Cicero con-
tends that genuine friendship is fundamentally incompatible with the overarching pur-
suit of one’s own pleasure and hence Epicurean friendship is not friendship at all (Fin.
2.78–85). Like other criticisms, this one too was probably in circulation before Cicero’s
time. For Torquatus reports the response of certain Epicureans, according to whom
friendship originates from self-regard but eventually acquires independent value
(1.67–68). Whether this latter approach is compatible with the egoistic bent of the
Founder’s hedonism or whether it allows for genuine altruism is another matter.
As mentioned, the Epicureans are eudemonists and Cicero views them as such.
According to his account, they believe that happiness extends over one’s life making it
perfect and complete, and also that happiness consists in a preponderance of the good
over the evil and that, once acquired, it cannot be lost. However, Cicero maintains that
their kind of eudemonism is flawed and their notion of happiness problematic, precisely
because it is ultimately determined by reference to pleasure. One set of arguments tar-
gets the Epicurean tenets concerning the quantification of pleasure over a lifetime and
the relevance of this to the finitude of one’s life and the possibility of achieving perfect
happiness (cf. KD 19–21). Like most ancient and modern interpreters, Cicero under-
stands Torquatus to say that the temporal duration of pleasure is irrelevant to its pleas-
antness, and that both a shorter and a longer period of time contain equal amounts of
92 Some scholars believe that Epicurus held that friendship has elements of altruism and other-
concern even if these elements cause problematic tensions in the doctrine: see Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical
Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, ch. 3; and Annas, The Morality of Happiness, ch. 11. Others
maintain that Epicurus values friendship only instrumentally: see O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship
Altruistic?”; and Brown, “Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (Sententia Vaticana 23).” An argument to
the effect that egoistic hedonism is entirely compatible with Epicurus’s view of friendship is advanced
by Dimas, “Epicurus on Pleasure, Desire, and Friendship.”
Hedonism 181
pleasure (2.87).93 So, he retorts that, in fact, if pleasure is the good, the more we get of it
the better life should be; in other words, if one is a hedonist, one ought to be committed
to the maximization of pleasure. Cicero defends that contention, first, by postulating a
symmetry between pleasure and pain. If pleasure is not increased by duration, nor is
pain; but this implication is absurd. Conversely, if pain is greater the longer it lasts, so
pleasure is better the longer it lasts. Second, Cicero appeals to Epicurus’s notion of the
gods as blissful and eternal: if duration does not matter, why describe the perfect happi-
ness of the gods as everlasting? Both arguments point to the conclusion that, in truth,
duration does matter and Epicurus implicitly recognizes that fact.
However, an alternative interpretation is now on the table as well.94 When Epicurus
claims that infinite and finite time have equal pleasure (KD 19) and that the person who
realizes both the limits of pleasure and the limits of life knows what makes the whole life
complete (pantelēs), he does not mean that the duration of one’s life is irrelevant to how
much pleasure one will experience. Rather, he means that a life acquires its value in
virtue of being finite and of having a proper structure from which nothing essential is
missing. The opening lines of Epicurus’s deathbed letter to Idomeneus express just that
concern: “I wrote this to you while I was spending and at the same time bringing to its
proper close that blessed day which is my life” (DL 10.22).95 If the Epicurean position is
read along these lines, Cicero’s criticism becomes moot. If, on the other hand, one opts
for the former, traditional interpretation of Epicurus’s stance concerning the temporal
duration of pleasure, the Epicureans could defend their position as follows: they could
deny that there is symmetry between pleasure and pain, but insist that the correct
understanding of pleasure entails, precisely, removing the belief that pleasure increases
with time.
Yet another group of Ciceronian arguments focuses on the vulnerability of Epicurean
happiness with regard to the supreme evil and to factors beyond our own control. In the
first place, if pleasure is the supreme good but pain the greatest evil, and since pain is
bound to affect all of us some time in life, then even the sage cannot be happy when he is
afflicted by pain (Fin. 2.104). But insofar as happiness is permanent and not intermittent,
one might draw the conclusion that the sage cannot be happy at all. If so, then something
must be very wrong with Epicurus’s hedonistic eudemonism, for it jeopardizes the pros-
pect of the good life. A related point is this: since Epicurus makes pleasure importantly
dependent on external sources, and since the availability of these external sources is
subject to fortune, it follows that happiness too is subject to fortune. This holds not only
for Epicurean laymen, but also for the wise man. Of course, Epicurus would deny that
the sage is in any way the slave of fortune. Physical pain cannot shatter the katastematic
pleasure of Epicurean exemplars. As for mental pains, even though they can have greater
intensity than physical suffering (cf. 2.108), they cannot affect those who live according
93 Most ancient and modern scholars read Epicurus’s thesis in the way Cicero does. I call this the
traditional reading which, however, is rejected by Sedley, “Epicurean versus Cyrenaic Happiness.”
94 Sedley, “Epicurean versus Cyrenaic Happiness.”
95 Both the translation and the interpretation of that passage belong to Sedley, “Epicurean versus
Cyrenaic Happiness.”
182 VOULA TSOUNA
to the principles of Epicureanism. For these latter have the intellectual resources of
eradicating the empty beliefs constitutive of the passions, and hence of removing the
causes of mental or psychic pain.
However, the answer available to the Epicureans vis-à-vis the criticism that pleasure
crucially depends on externals outside our control may be judged unsatisfactory.
Consider, for instance, Metrodorus’s claim that happiness consists in sound health and
an assurance of its continuance (Fin. 2.92). As Cicero points out, there can be no certi-
tude that one will be healthy for the entire span of one’s natural life. Moreover, his remark
that the actions of many illustrious people demonstrate that their motives were other
than pleasure (2.34–35)96 also bears on the Epicurean conception of happiness, as does
Torquatus’s response. On the one hand, this latter maintains that eminent statesmen
acted as they did because of hedonic motives: one had his child beheaded, another sent
his son to exile, yet another committed suicide, and so on. On the other hand, however,
Torquatus does not even broach the question how happiness could be factually or psy-
chologically possible in the aftermath of such actions. Overall, I think that his position
would be more defensible, if he argued that people with sound Epicurean values shall
not do such things, precisely because the latter cause far greater pain than pleasure in
both the short and the long run.
A last challenge raised by Cicero seems to me to constitute a serious philosophical
problem for Epicurean hedonism. Cicero aptly calls it “the silence of history” (Fin. 2.67):
there are simply no recorded examples of distinguished persons who have explained
their actions by claiming that they were seeking their own pleasure. According to
Cicero, the reason is that they feel shame. So, Cicero asks, what are the Epicureans’
options (Fin. 2.77)?
Are you to affect an artificial language and say what you do not think? Or are you to
change your opinions like your clothes and have one set to wear indoors and another
to wear when you go out? Outside all show and pretense, but your true self con-
cealed within? Reflect, I ask of you, is this right? It seems to me that these opinions
are true which are honorable, praiseworthy, and noble, and which can be openly
avowed in the senate and the popular assembly and in every company and gather-
ing, so that one need not be ashamed to say what one is not ashamed to think.
Of course, the Epicureans could deny that they conceal their hedonistic motivations.
For example, they could mention the fact that they participate in the banquets devoted
to the worship of Epicurus, a man who professed and practiced hedonistic values and
thereby lived an exemplary moral life. However, the Garden was not a public venue. And
the ritualistic celebration of Epicurus in that context does not constitute a counterex-
ample to the above criticism. In the end, Cicero’s claim that genuine moral ideals must
96 Evidently, the debate between Cicero and Torquatus concerning the performance of heroic deeds
bears also on the topics of the hedonistic calculus, the instrumentalism of the virtues, and the egoistic
aspect of Epicurean eudemonism.
Hedonism 183
have a public character is both defensible and attractive. Whether Epicurean pleasure
could, in fact, possess such public character remains, to my mind, an open issue.
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chapter 8
Psychol ogy
Elizabeth Asmis
Epicurus held that nothing exists by itself except bodies and void, and that bodies are
either atoms or made up of atoms.1 There is no third type of thing. There is, therefore, no
special soul stuff. The soul (psychê) does exist, and it is made up of atoms and void. The
same is true of mind (dianoia), which is part of the soul. The soul is a corporeal part of
the living body, interacting physically with the rest of the body. This makes Epicurus an
antidualist: for, although soul and mind differ in composition from the rest of the living
being, they are corporeal substances just like the rest.2
Despite the outdated physics, there is something intriguingly modern about Epicurus’s
antidualism. Epicurus took up the challenge of providing detailed materialist explana-
tions of mental processes; and, in this endeavor, he encountered many problems that
continue to spur investigation today. This chapter will focus on three main questions. In
the first place, how are soul, mind, and body related to each other? Second, how does the
union of body and soul produce cognition? Third, how does the union of body and
soul produce a person? I shall divide the second topic (cognition) into two parts: sense
perception and belief. I shall also divide the third topic (the person) in two: motivation
(comprising feelings, emotions, and action collectively) and self-development. The chap-
ter as a whole will thus be divided into five sections, beginning with the physical nature
of a living being and ending with the nature of the person.
A question that has become prominent in recent discussions of Epicurean psychology
is: how can physical processes account for mental functions? David Sedley, for instance,
has argued that Epicurus took a radically emergentist position, according to which the
1 Abbreviations: Arr. = Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere; L = Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus, On
Nature, 25th Book”; LS = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers; DK = Diels and Kranz, Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. For Lucretius, I use the numbering of Bailey, Lucretius. De rerum natura.
2 In recent discussions, there has been a tendency to transliterate psychê instead of translating it as
“soul.” I use the traditional translation as a way of signaling the continuity of the Epicurean theory with
other ancient discourses about the “soul.”
190 ELIZABETH ASMIS
mind can cause changes in its underlying atomic structure.3 Others have argued that
Epicurus held that all mental activity is caused by events at the atomic level, without any
“top-down” causation from the mental to the atomic level. I shall defer this issue until
the last section of the chapter. Meanwhile, I shall lay the groundwork by outlining the
atomic structure of a human being and examining how it produces cognition and moti-
vation. Along the way, I shall draw attention to the continuity of animal life with human
life. I shall also highlight an aspect of Epicurean psychology that has received rather
scant attention in the past: the concept of attention (called epibolê, Latin iniectus), or
directing oneself to an object of awareness. This, I suggest, may be regarded as a precur-
sor of modern theories of intentionality. In the penultimate section, I shall offer a rough
chart of the emotions, an area of vital importance to Epicurean ethics.
Soul, Mind, and Body
First, then, Epicurus held that the soul is a distinct kind of body, different from the kind
of body that it animates. There are two points that he especially emphasizes in his short
explanation of the soul in the Letter to Herodotus, a summary of his physics. One is that
every claim about the soul must be confirmed by the evidence provided by our sense
perceptions (aisthêseis) and feelings (pathê). This is basic Epicurean methodology
(Ep. Hdt. 38). Epicurus reiterates the point both at the beginning and at the end of his
explanation of the soul in the Letter to Herodotus (63–68). There is need, it seems, of a
special reminder because the soul is traditionally fraught with mystery. Epicurus insists
that, like everything else that is not immediately accessible to observation, the soul must
be explained by inference from sense perception and feelings. All the rest is myth.
The second point concerns the relationship of the soul to the rest of the animate body.
Epicurus devotes most of his brief explanation to showing the interdependence of
soul and the “rest of the aggregate (athroisma).” The latter is a circumlocution for the
word “body” (sōma). Epicurus conspicuously avoids opposing the soul to the “body” in
this physical explanation. This is in contrast with the treatment he offers in the summary
of his ethics, the Letter to Menoeceus, where he admits the commonplace distinction
between body and soul.4 The reason is that, at the level of the atoms, the soul is no less a
body than what is normally called “the body.” By calling the soul a “body” in the Letter to
Herodotus (63), Epicurus emphasizes that the soul is one kind of body linked to another
kind of body. The whole “aggregate” is a single body, consisting of parts that pass on
powers to one another.
What sort of body is the soul? Epicurus calls it a “fine body,” spread through the whole
complex, and “most like breath (pneuma) having a certain mixture of heat” (Ep. Hdt. 63).
3 Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism” and “Epicurean Anti-Reductionism.”

4 Ep. Men. 127, 128, and 131. Lucretius uses “body” frequently as a shortcut for “rest of the aggregate”
in his lengthy treatment of the soul in Book 3 of his poem.
Psychology 191
Lucretius names air as a third component additional to breath (which he also calls
“wind”) and heat (3.232–37, 247–48). This analysis is compatible with that of Epicurus;
for, as Lucretius explains, heat comes with air. Lucretius also adds a fourth component
(3.238–57). This is also compatible with Epicurus’s exposition; in fact, there is reason to
suppose that Epicurus himself added it in the rather opaque sentence that follows the
description just cited.5 As Lucretius sets out in detail, the fourth component is finer and
more mobile than anything else; and it does not have a name. It is necessary for sensation
to occur. As the origin of sensory awareness, it passes on this power to the other compo-
nents of the soul (first heat and wind, then air), then to the rest of the body (first blood,
then flesh, and finally to bones and marrow). Lucretius calls it the “soul of the soul”
(3.275–81), while insisting that it forms a single “body” with the rest of the soul (3.265).
The four components are intertwined with one another into a “single nature” (3.270), the
soul, which pervades the entire complex.
The fourth unnamed component has an air of mystery about it. One might object that
Epicurus is here resorting to a method that he so strenuously decries elsewhere: this is
myth, not science. Yet Epicurus insists, just after he has explained the composition of
the soul, that “all of this is shown clearly by the powers of the soul, feelings, ease of move-
ment, thoughts, and what we are deprived of when we die” (Ep. Hdt. 63). Lucretius pro-
vides an example: we infer that there is something warm and breath-like in the living,
for this is what departs from the dying (3.232–33). Other observations, we may assume,
indicate that something even finer is needed to produce sensation (we can’t just reani-
mate a corpse, for example, by breathing warm air into it); and for this we don’t have a
name in ordinary experience. We can, however, be sure that it is corporeal; for there
is nothing incorporeal except void, and this cannot act or be acted on (Ep. Hdt. 67). On
this line of reasoning, the unnamed nature is no more mysterious than the atoms in
general; we infer its existence on the basis of our observations.
To illustrate the interdependence of soul and its bodily container, Epicurus focuses on
a particular kind of power, sense perception (aisthêsis). None of our sources says explic-
itly that all beings with soul have sense perception, but this may be taken as implied. In
any case, there is no indication that Epicurus, like Aristotle, assigned soul to plants as
well as animals. Just like the soul as a whole, the power of sense perception extends
throughout the ensouled being. The soul supplies the “main cause” of perception, but is
not itself sufficient for perception. It needs to be joined by another cause, a suitable
enclosure, for perception to occur. This enclosure is provided by the “rest of the aggre-
gate,” and it is in a relation of “sympathy” (or “co-feeling,” sympatheia) with the soul.
There is, in the first place, the entire enclosure, which contains the whole animal; this is
what enables the soul as a whole to initiate the process of perception, then pass it on to
the enclosure as a whole. In addition, there are enclosures that exist as parts of the animal,
enabling the soul to have particular kinds of sensory powers. These particular enclosures
5 So Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 138; and Morel, Epicure. La nature et la raison, 105;
cf. Bailey, Epicurus, The Extant Remains, 227. Others (including Kerferd, “Epicurus’ Doctrine of the
Soul,” 82; and Gill, “Psychology,” 126) take the sentence to refer to the whole soul.
192 ELIZABETH ASMIS
are dispensable; but if the enclosure as a whole is dissolved, the soul is dispersed and
there is no more perception.
In this summary, Epicurus speaks only abstractly of the whole and parts, without
naming any particular organ of perception. This makes the entire exposition convoluted
and hard to follow. Fortunately, Lucretius makes things clearer in his more expansive
account. Take the organ of sight, for example. The eyes provide a suitable enclosure,
enabling the soul within it to be configured in such a way as to initiate sight and pass
on the power of sight to the eyes as a whole. The important point is that the eyes see as a
whole: starting with the fourth unnamed component of the soul, the power of sight is
passed on to the rest of the soul within the eyes, then to the blood and fleshy parts of the
eyes. The whole organism both is the cause of sight and has sight. Just try to remove
the eyes, Lucretius suggests, as though they were just doors through which the soul sees:
the soul should be able to see better, with door posts removed (3.359–69).
The same applies to the rest of the sense organs. Each is configured in such a way as to
house a certain arrangement of soul atoms, having a particular power of perception.
Whereas sight, hearing, taste, and smell are localized in a particular part of the bodily
complex, touch belongs to the body as a whole. The animate body as a whole is a sense
organ, endowed with the sense of touch; it also has specialized powers depending on the
configuration of its parts.
The reader may well be surprised that Epicurus gives no separate attention to the
mind (dianoia) as a part of the soul. Although he refers to thought (dianoêsis) as one of
several powers of the soul, his brief explanation of the soul contains no mention of a
division of the soul into two parts, the mind and the rest of the soul. This is in contrast
with the much more detailed treatment of Lucretius in the third book of his poem.
Lucretius pairs the mind (animus, also called mens, 3.94) with the soul (anima) as parts
of the human being (3.96 and 3.131) from the very beginning of his discussion. More
precisely, he divides the soul as a whole into two parts, the mind and the rest of the soul
(3.142–51).6 Whereas the rest of the soul extends through the whole body, the mind is
situated in the middle of the chest, or heart. Lucretius describes the mind as a kind of
control center (regimen at 3.95, corresponding to the Stoic hêgêmonikon), having the
power of deliberation (consilium, 3.95 and 3.139). Likewise, other sources speak of the
soul as divided into a rational (logikon) part, situated in the heart or chest, and a non-
rational (alogon) part.7
Again, there is no incompatibility between the two accounts. Although Epicurus does
not single out the mind in his explanation of the soul, he indicates that the power of
thought, too, depends on a certain bodily enclosure. The mind is another part of the
soul that owes its special powers to its union with a certain type of bodily container.
6 Lucretius repeatedly conjoins mind (animus) and soul (anima) as though they were
complementary entities. As he makes clear at 3.143 and 150, however, the mind is part of the soul as a
whole. Anima, or the part of it which is distinct from the mind, is often translated as “spirit.” This
translation obscures the fact that the mind is part of the anima and has all the same powers, along with
powers of its own.
7 Usener 311 and 312, and Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 37, col. 1.5–7.
Psychology 193
The reason that Epicurus does not single out the mind, or indeed any particular sense
organ, is that his aim is to give a general explanation of how the soul comes to have any
powers at all, with a special focus on sense perception: since the soul is a body that
depends for its powers on the rest of the body, it is dispersed when the rest of the body is
dissolved, with the result that there is no longer any perception. This explanation applies
to all animals, not just humans. At the same time, it provides a physical explanation for
the ethical truth that death is nothing to us; for there is no longer any perception. By
contrast, Lucretius is concerned with the particular structure of the human soul, with a
special focus on its rationality.
What, then, distinguishes the mind from the rest of the soul? Only human beings
have reason, or more precisely “calculation,” logismos.8 The human soul can, therefore,
be divided into a rational and a non-rational part; but this division can be misleading. In
the first place, the human mind has a variety of non-rational powers, along with
rationality. At the most basic level, the mind contributes more to the preservation of life
than any other part of the soul.9 Further, it has images—both in dreams and when
awake—that occur without any rational process; in this respect, it functions as a sense
organ. In addition, it has memory, which does not require reason. Finally, it initiates
movement, another power that does not require reason. In humans, the mind can control
these functions by the use of reason. It is appropriate, therefore, to call it rational as a
whole. What the rational mind directs, however, is an assortment of non-rational powers
within it. Instead of dividing the human soul, therefore, into a rational part (mind) and a
non-rational part (all the rest), it would be more accurate to view the entire human soul
(including the mind) as a seat of non-rational powers, varying from one bodily part to
another and joined in the chest by rationality.
A related problem is that the division tends to obscure the continuity between
humans and the rest of animal life. Although only humans have reason, this does not
imply that only humans have mind.10 Contrary to a strong Platonic-Aristotelian tradi-
tion, which assigns mind (dianoia) only to humans, Lucretius explicitly assigns mind
(mens) to horses and deer (2.265, 2.268, 3.299); he cites the former as initiating the
movement of their bodies in the mind, the latter as feeling panic in the mind.11 Lucretius
(4.987–1010) also assigns dreams, a function of the mind, to a variety of animals: race
horses dream of running races; hunting dogs dream of pursuing stags; and birds dream
of the attack of hawks. In general, there is evidence of an attempt by the Epicureans to
bridge the gap between humans and other animals by imputing analogous powers to
8 Cic. ND 1.48; and [Demetrius Laco, The Shape of God] cols. 14.11–15.7 Santoro.
9 Lucr. 3.396–416.
10 Aristotle generally denies “mind” (dianoia, nous) to non-rational animals, but allows it to some at
On the Soul 410b22–24 and elsewhere; see further Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, 13.
Although the Stoics did not assign “mind” (mens, dianoia) to non-rational animals, they attributed the
directive part of the soul, hêgēmonikon, to non-rational animals as well as humans.
11 See also Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 135 and Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human
Morals, 28.
194 ELIZABETH ASMIS
non-rational animals. Thus Epicurus speaks of memory or something analogous;12

Philodemus attributes to non-rational animals something analogous to mental distress.13
Philodemus also notes that voluntary movement requires foresight and expectation or
something analogous.14
Given that some non-rational animals have some mental functions, it seems reason-
able to assign mind to them, as Lucretius did, although some Epicureans might have
preferred to speak of what is analogous to the mind. In any case, some non-rational
animals, too, have a rich mental life, even if they cannot reason out what is happening to
them. Just as animals, taken as a genus, partake of a continuum of sensory powers, so
they partake of a continuum of mental powers, depending on their corporeal structure.
This is a gradualist view of differences among animal species. Humans are shaped differ-
ently from other animals: that is why they have rationality. They have nothing to thank
for their rationality except the particular structure of the chest and heart. They are a
particular kind of chested animal—that’s all. If horses could have chests like humans,
they too would have rationality.
In conclusion, there is a unitary soul, joined with the rest of the bodily complex into a
single animate being. The soul has a variety of functions, which depend on the kind of
body in which it is enclosed. Touch belongs to all animals as the basic type of sense per-
ception. In addition, animals may have one or more of the other senses, each with its
own bodily organ. There are also mental functions, which are located in the chest. Only
humans have rationality; but other animals, too, have mind or something analogous to
it. Animals as a whole have a range of psychic functions from minimal perception to
rationality, with some functions being analogous to others. All animals have the same
goal, pleasure, but are equipped differently for accomplishing this goal.
This is an especially animal-friendly system of philosophy, second, perhaps, only to
Pythagoreanism during antiquity. Lucretius’s poetry gives poignant expression to this
sentiment. At its basis is a unitary view of the animate being as a corporeal composite of
body and soul. For the human being, happiness is not just a state of soul, but consists of
a smoothly functioning adjustment of body and soul. What happens to a foot, or the
stomach, or any part of the whole, makes a difference to one’s well-being; in the case of
humans, reason offers a powerful way of controlling these events.
Sense Perception
So far, we have considered the functions of the soul only in a very general way. In this
section, I shall examine sense perception, with special attention to sight and the sensory
powers of the mind. As a combination made out of atoms, an animal is continually being
12 Arr. 34.19, L p. 14, and Arr. 34.20, L p. 16.

13 On the Gods 1, col. 11.33–35 Diels; cf. cols. 13.30–31 and 14.27–30; and On Piety 1.234–38 Obbink.
14 Philodemus, On the Gods I, col. 13.16–22 Diels.
Psychology 195
bombarded by atomic movements from outside. How does it discriminate anything

from out of this barrage of atoms? And how does it organize this information within
itself? As I shall argue, Epicurus developed a theory of attention to deal with the com-
plexity of sensory and mental stimulation: the animal selects what it becomes aware of
by an act of attention called epibolê (Latin iniectus, etymologically, “a thrust on”).15
Through successive acts of attention, an animal gradually acquires mental patterns that
result, in the case of humans, in rationality.
First, a word on terminology. The term that I translate as “sense perception” is aisthêsis.
An alternative translation, which is often used, is “sensation.” I prefer “sense perception”
(or “perception” simply) because Epicurean aisthêsis is not merely sensation: it is a form
of judgment. The organ of perception, acting as an organ of judgment (kritêrion),
discriminates its proper objects, such as a certain color or shape (in sight), or sound
(in hearing), and so on. Epicurus paired “sense perception” (aisthêsis) with “feeling”
(pathos) as the two kinds of evidence by which we determine whether a belief is true
or false (Ep. Hdt. 38, cf. 63, 68, and 82). In this pairing, “sense perception” is directed
at objects other than one’s own condition, whereas a “feeling” is the awareness of one’s
condition. In what follows, I shall deal only with sense perception, leaving feelings until
my fourth section.
Epicurus explained sense perception as a response to an influx of atomic streams into
the organ of perception. In the case of sight, a continuous stream of thin layers of atoms,
called eidôla (“semblances”), is emitted from the surface of solids, reaching from the
solid to the eyes. Though very thin (so that they cannot be seen by themselves), these
configurations can preserve the shape and color of the solid as they travel to the eyes;
sometimes distortion occurs. Sight occurs as a result of eidôla entering the eyes in very
rapid succession. Other kinds of streams are responsible for hearing and smell; taste and
touch are due to an immediate contact with the perceived object.16
What enters the sense organ depends on the condition of the sense organ. The organ
must have channels that are commensurate with what enters.17 If the organ is in distress—
that is, if its channels are in disarray—it will not receive the same influxes as when in
a healthy condition. So a sick person may taste honey as bitter although it is normally
sweet; that is because the sensory channels are disturbed in such a way as to meet up
with the roughly shaped atoms in the incoming stream rather than those that are
smooth.18
When an arrangement of atoms enters the sense organ, it produces a “presentation”
(phantasia). For its part, the sense organ is not merely passive: it responds to the impact
15 The translation iniectus occurs just once, at Lucr. 2.740. Cicero uses the conjoined verbal forms
se iniciens et intendens for epiballein at ND 1.54; cf. intentam infixamque, ND 1.49; and intenta simply
at 1.105.
16 Ep. Hdt. 47–53, and Lucr. 4.26–721. Although Lucretius uses the translation imago along with
simulacrum (which captures the Greek brilliantly), the English translation “image” is misleading. The
eidôla are simply atomic configurations—“little shapes” or “unsubstantial (ghostly) forms”; neither the
configuration nor the object it presents is an “image” of another thing.
17 Ep. Hdt. 49 and 53; Usener 250. 18 Lucr. 4.655–72.
196 ELIZABETH ASMIS
of atoms from outside by an act of bringing into focus an object of perception. This act
is called epibolê, literally “a thrust toward” a thing. It is an “act of attention” in the sense
of “attending” to an object of awareness; in modern terminology, it is an act of intention-
ality, directed at an intentional object. As far as our sources show, Epicurus was the first
philosopher to use the term epibolê in this technical sense. In his view, whatever we
grasp with our senses by an act of epibolê is without error; for it is free from any interpre-
tation; it is just what is presented from outside (Ep. Hdt. 50–51). Importantly, the presen-
tation occurs without any conceptual input. The senses, by themselves, have the ability
to discriminate their proper objects. Conceptions are formed subsequently out of these
raw, uninterpreted objects of cognition.
Sense perception, then, is an act of attention, epibolê, produced by the interaction of
an organ of perception with an influx of atoms. What complicates this theory is that
Epicurus assigned the same type of process also to the mind. At its lowest cognitive level,
the mind functions just like a sense organ, specifically the organ of sight. Whenever the
mind thinks of anything, it responds by an act of epibolê to eidôla that enter it from out-
side. These eidôla are just like those that enter the eyes, with two differences: they are
much finer and not all of them come from the surface of bodies. Because they are espe-
cially fine, they are susceptible to combining with other eidôla in midair so as to form a
composite arrangement; eidôla can also form spontaneously in midair.19 Thus, the mind
can think of perceptible objects such as a table or chair, as well as of fantasy objects such
as a centaur or a pink elephant. Contrary to Platonic tradition, we do not draw on thoughts
that are stored, as it were, within ourselves. Instead, we make a selection from the vast
possibilities of thought created by the atoms outside us. Whenever we think of anything,
we direct our attention to objects newly presented by atoms entering from outside.
How can this theory be at all plausible? In the case of atomism, a visual theory of
thought seems to run into absurdity. And so some ancient critics thought. Lucretius
admits there are a lot of questions, and he tackles them with gusto. So he asks, with a
sarcasm that mimics the scorn of his critics: How can we think of anything we please—
the sea, sky, battles, banquets—whenever we please? Do eidôla wait on our will and
come as soon as we want? And what about dancing figures, such as we see in dreams?
Have the eidôla been trained to put on a nocturnal spectacle by learning to coordinate
their movements so smoothly?20
Lucretius’s answers throw further light on the process of attention. His explanation
has two parts, corresponding to the two causal components of sense perception: exter-
nal stimuli and the response of the organ of perception. In the first place, the number of
eidôla moving about at any time in any place is so huge that we can think of virtually
anything at any time. In the second place, the mind sees sharply only what it “strains,” or
“has prepared itself,” to see; the rest is lost from its awareness. By “preparing itself ” and
19 Lucr. 4.722–67. The special fineness of mental eidôla implies that, even though the mind is
composed of the same four types of atomic complexes as the rest of the soul, its atoms are especially fine.
20 Lucr. 4.768–822, as reordered by Asmis, “Lucretius’ Explanation of Moving Dream Figures at
4.768–76.”
Psychology 197
expecting what comes next, it comes to see it (4.802–806). Lucretius compares the
preparation of the mind to that of the eyes whenever they strain to see something small.
They cannot see a tiny object accurately unless they “strain and prepare themselves.”
Even in the case of readily visible things, the object is “as though removed forever and
far away” unless “one pays attention” (advertas animum). Likewise, the mind “loses
everything except what it is given to” (4.807–15).
What accounts, then, for mental vision is a huge availability of possible visions
together with a state of alertness. The latter causes the mind to make a selection from
the range of possibilities. The same happens in the case of sight, or (as implied) any other
sense organ. In the case of the five senses, the range of possibilities is not nearly so great,
nor is the complexity of self-preparation. But, just as in the case of the mind, the organ
selects its objects on the basis of a certain state of self-preparation, or straining, consisting
in the opening up of channels that permit the entry of certain types of atomic complexes.
The straining is obvious in the case of objects that are barely perceptible; but there is also
some degree of straining in all cases of perception. The organ sees clearly only those
objects for which it is prepared by some element of straining. We feel the straining of the
organ only when it is especially intense. But it exists as a state of alertness at the level of
atomic composition whenever we perceive. Otherwise, we do not bring anything into
focus at all.
The next question is: what accounts for the “self-preparation” that is needed to pro-
duce a clear presentation? We may note at the outset that, as a process belonging to the
organ of perception, the kind of self-preparation described by Lucretius is not a volun-
tary movement. The self-preparation of the mind as an organ of perception is no more
voluntary than the self-preparation of the eyes. The organ itself is constituted in such a
way as to bring an object into focus. An organ’s process of self-preparation might indeed
be initiated by an act of volition; but this type of act (as will be discussed later) is a differ-
ent function of the mind from that of perception, nor is it necessary to the process of
perception. If a thought escapes us, or if a thought keeps obtruding itself on us against
our will, we might form an act of volition, seeking either to capture the thought or else to
stop it. It is an important principle of Epicurean ethics that we have the ability to control
our thoughts by acts of volition; but this is a different kind of self-preparation, involving
the individual as a whole, from the self-preparation of the organ of perception. As we
shall see in the final section of this chapter, it raises problems of its own.
The opening of channels in one organ may trigger openings in other organs. We are
told by one source, Diogenes of Oenoanda, that after the first impacts of eidôla on the
eyes, a path is opened which allows the mind to receive similar eidôla even when the
seen object is no longer there.21 Presumably, pathways are opened up from the sight
organ into the mind, creating channels within the mind that allow it to receive eidôla of
its own, showing the same object directly from outside. Such pathways may persist for a
long time. In the case of dreams, as Lucretius explains (4.973–77), intense and long occu-
pation with certain activities during the day leaves channels in the mind that receive
21 Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 9 col. 3.3–14.

198 ELIZABETH ASMIS
eidôla of the same kind during sleep. The same process explains memory. Through
repetition of sensory experience, passages become embedded in the structure of the
mind, allowing the mind to recall objects through the reception of similar eidôla.
In general, the opening of channels may take a very complex form. Just like the eyes,
the mind sees not only stationary but also moving things. This is especially amazing; but
here, too, the mind operates in the same way as the organ of sight. In the case of sight, the
organ puts together rapidly arriving, stationary eidôla into a moving figure. Similarly,
the mind can focus on an extremely rapid succession of stationary representations—
each having a slightly different pose from the preceding one—to see a group of smoothly
coordinated dancers.22 It sees this succession through a network of passages that receive
the incoming atoms in imperceptibly fast succession. Again, there is no need to suppose
anything voluntary about the successive activation of passages. Just as the mind sees sta-
tionary figures through channels that were previously opened up by sense experience,
so it sees moving figures by a complex network of slightly varying passages that were
previously put in place by sense perception. This is cartoon animation, produced by the
mind just as by sight.
Depending on the pathways within it, then, the sense organ or mind focuses on only
a tiny part of the information that is available to it from the outside. In response to a
continuous bombardment from outside, the interior channels block many atomic con-
figurations from entering, impede others, and admit others freely. Channels keep open-
ing up in response to what is admitted. Where there are more channels receiving more
atomic influxes of the same kind, there is greater alertness, resulting in greater clarity
of awareness. There is intensity, or straining, within the organ whenever one has a clear
presentation. In agreement with atomic physics, this is not, strictly speaking, the tight-
ening of a tension, but an accelerated process of collision. Where there is little activity,
there is just a vague awareness. In sight, for example, there is focused vision, which is
clear, and peripheral vision, of which we are barely aware. Analogously, the mind sees
clearly only what it strains to see; the rest exists on the periphery of awareness. In
Lucretius’s words, the mind “loses” all the rest. The loss may be total unawareness, or just
a vague awareness, consisting in a failure to focus. This range of possibilities suggests a
theory of the subconscious; and this has important implications for ethics, as we shall
see in the next section.
Whenever the mind acts like a sense organ, focusing on an object as presented from
outside, the act of epibolê is described as “presentational” (phantastikê). That is because
it obtains a presentation (phantasia), just as the five senses do. There is no need to add
the qualifier “presentational” to the acts of the five sense organs; for all of them are nec-
essarily presentational. The “presentational attention” of the mind is the first step in a
cognitive process that leads to other kinds of attention; like any other sensory act of
attention, it is not an act of reason.
Epicurus’s choice of the term epibolê to signify an act of intentionality fits atomic
theory. In ordinary usage, the meaning of the term ranges from “assault” to “attempt” or
22 Lucr. 4.768–76.
Psychology 199
“intention.” Instead of connoting a dynamic continuum (as Greek enteinein/entasis

or Latin intendere/intentio do), it suggests the propulsion of one entity upon another.
Underlying the intentional act of focusing on an object of perception is the propulsion of
one configuration of atoms on another. To invoke Lucretius’s battle imagery, one army
of atoms (the configuration of channels in the organ of perception) throws itself upon
another (the configuration of incoming atoms). Cicero used both the etymological
counterpart inicere and the more general term intendere (“strain”) to translate epibal-
lein.23 In a broad sense, the two terms have the same meaning; both signify the directing
of attention to an object.
Belief
The human mind is not merely a kind of sense organ; it also has rationality. As the seat of
rationality, it can add beliefs to what is presented from outside. To form a belief (doxa),
we take “another motion within ourselves which is attached but has a distinction
(dialêpsis)” (Ep. Hdt. 51). There is a succession of movements: first, there is an act of per-
ception, which is prompted from outside; next, there is an act of interpretation, originat-
ing within ourselves. Though “attached,” the new motion is not simply a continuation of
the act of perception. It differs in two ways. At the physical level, the movement of belief
originates within us, instead of being imposed from outside. Cognitively, the object of
belief does not match the object of perception. The act of perception is said to be “non-
rational” because it neither moves itself nor, insofar as it is moved by another, does it
have the capacity to subtract or add anything.24 A belief, by contrast, is rational insofar
as the mind adds or subtracts something by a movement of its own. Unlike the object of
perception, the belief admits of being either true or false.
The truth of beliefs is discussed elsewhere in this volume. Here, I shall focus on what
happens in the mind. In order to add a belief, it is necessary to have a preconception
(prolêpsis) of what is added. This is an assumption that exists “prior” (pro-) to the forma-
tion of the belief. Suppose I have a presentation of a bent oar (a much cited example),
and I add the belief that the oar, which is partially submerged in water, really is straight. I
need a number of preconceptions, including a notion of “straight.” Lucretius tells us how
we can have a mental image of “straight” right away. What he does not tell us, however, is
what makes us connect the conception corresponding to this image with the presenta-
tion. Following Lucretius, we may suppose that as soon as the visual organ transmits the
sensory perception to the mind, the mind is prepared to add a conception. But which
conception? Or why add a conception at all? If I have an entrenched belief (that bent
oars are really straight, for example), the mind will be structured in such a way as to
admit the same joining of images as previously. But what happens when I first form a
23 Cic. ND 1.54, cf. 1.49 and 105. 24 DL 10.31.

200 ELIZABETH ASMIS
belief, or change a belief? Is our mental circuitry such that it allows us to form new beliefs
without any change of structure? Or does the mind somehow create a new structure?
I shall return to this problem in the last section of the chapter. For now, let us have a
closer look at preconceptions. A preconception is another type of epibolê. Just like sen-
sory discrimination, it is an act of attention to something clear.25 Unlike sensory dis-
crimination it contains some degree of judgment about sensory presentations. It is
said to be “something like” a “correct belief,” or “a universal thought,” consisting of “a
memory of what has often appeared from outside.”26 At some point in our experience,
memories of similar particulars turn into a general conception. As a sort of belief, a pre-
conception differs from the beliefs we form by means of preconceptions. Necessarily
correct, it serves along with sense perception and the feelings as one of the three stan-
dards by which we determine truth and falsehood.27
A prominent example is the preconception of god as an indestructible, blessed, living
being (Ep. Men. 123). In this case, we direct our mind conceptually to three salient
features, namely indestructibility, blessedness, and living being. Using the translation
iniectus animi to designate this type of epibolê, Lucretius (2.739–47) illustrates it by the
preconception of a colorless object. We form this preconception as a result of repeatedly
perceiving objects in the dark, just like blind persons. In general, the mind forms a pre-
conception by focusing on sensory particulars in such a way as to pick out universal
characteristics.
One might object that what is presented to the mind from outside is always a particular
thing—a particular horse, for example, never a generic horse. This is another challenge
to the visual theory of thought. The answer lies, once again, in the ability to select what
one attends to. The mind selects not merely sensory particulars, but also universals. As
Diogenes Laertius (10.33) points out, “as soon as the word ‘human being’ (anthrōpos) is
spoken, the outline (typos) of it is thought of by preconception.” The “outline” consists of
the salient features that make up the human being as a type. There are no eidôla that
present just the generic human being, stripped of any contingent properties. The generic
properties are picked out conceptually from the particulars that are presented.28
Equipped with both sensory awareness and preconceptions, we form two kinds of
belief. One kind concerns what is not presently perceived, but can be perceived (as illus-
trated by the belief about the apparently bent oar); the other concerns what cannot be
perceived (whether subperceptible, such as the atoms, or beyond the range of percep-
tion, such as the weather on the moon). In the first case, the mind enfolds a present
object of sensory awareness within a preconception in such a way as to situate it within
an objectively existing, perceptible order of things. The belief is verified or falsified by
further observation. In time, we acquire a detailed conceptual map of the perceptible
“nature” of things. In the second case, we use preconceptions to extend our knowledge
25 Usener 255; cf. DL 10.33.

26 DL 10.33. 27 DL 10.31.
28 There is no need, therefore, to hypothesize an image created by a “superposition” of individual
images, as suggested by Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, 419.
Psychology 201
beyond the perceptible order of things. Suppose I form the belief that there is void in
addition to bodies (Ep. Hdt. 40). This belief is confirmed by the argument that bodies
would not move, as perceived, without there being void. Further argument shows that
bodies are ultimately atomic. I now have two conceptions about what cannot be per-
ceived: those of atoms and void. Additional investigation produces many more such
conceptions, for example, of the infinity of the universe, or the parts of atoms, or the
atomic swerve.
Just like preconceptions, conceptions about imperceptible things are acts of attention,
epibolai. Cicero describes the mind as “thrusting” (iniciens) itself into the universe with-
out ever finding a boundary.29 Here the object of attention is the infinity of the universe.
When Lucretius (1.69–74) tells how the “vigorous force” of Epicurus’s mind broke open
the barriers of the world and traversed the universe, he is offering a poetic version of
epibolê. In Epicureanism, soul travel is a rigorously rational affair: the mind constructs
an intricate chain of reasoning, checked by reference to sensory perception, so as to dis-
cover the hidden structure of the universe.
Apart from void, the basic objects of attention are bodies and their properties. As
Epicurus explains in the Letter to Herodotus (68–73), these properties are of two kinds:
permanent and incidental. The former make up the whole body and always accompany
it; the latter accompany it only upon occasion. We may illustrate the former by the prop-
erty of rationality in the case of a human being, and weight in the case of an atom.
Incidental properties may be exemplified by slavery, laughter, or walking in the case of a
human being; and a collision or swerve in the case of an atom.30 Permanent properties
are said to have “certain distinctions (dialêpseis) and acts of attention (epibolai)”
(Ep. Hdt. 69); incidental properties are also said to have epibolai (Ep. Hdt. 70).
Epicurus elsewhere uses dialêpsis in the sense of distinguishing spatial parts (Ep. Hdt.
57–58). This is a different sense from that of distinguishing properties. Properties are
distinguished from other properties or from the wholes to which they belong; or they
are distinguished as one of two types, permanent or incidental. Whenever one distin-
guishes anything, there is an act of attention. Concerning bodies in general, one may
direct one’s attention to the whole body, or a permanent property, or an incidental prop-
erty, or a spatial part; and one may direct one’s attention to either a particular object or a
type. Acts of attention begin at the sensory level, then are transformed into conceptual
acts. With the formation of preconceptions, a person has learned to distinguish perma-
nent from incidental properties. Confronted with a particular object, one recognizes the
general type by focusing on the permanent features that make up the preconception.
In addition to focusing on things of the world, one may focus on texts that tell
about the world. Epicurus makes prominent use of this sense of epibolê in the Letter to
Herodotus as he urges the reader to give comprehensive attention to his doctrines and
to commit them to memory (Ep. Hdt. 35–36 and 83). An Epicurean is attentive to the
29 Cic. ND 1.54.
30 See Lucretius’s examples of the two kinds of properties (1.449–58). Contrary to Sedley, “Epicurean
Anti-Reductionism,” 312–15, I see no reason to exclude incidental properties from the atoms.
202 ELIZABETH ASMIS
facts, as taught by Epicurus, throughout his life, ready to recall them at any time. The
preparation of the mind culminates in a thoroughgoing philosophical preparation. This
is what allows a person to meet every exigency by immediately calling to mind the
appropriate doctrine.
Paying attention is a method of selection; and to practice it correctly, one must know
both what to select and how to attend to what has been selected. Epicurus and his fol-
lowers aimed to direct the student’s attention to things they considered essential to
happiness. This is not simply a matter of showing the way, but of overcoming resistance.
Philodemus speaks of people “pushing away acts of attention (epibolas) to death,” so that
when it comes clearly into view, it catches them by surprise.31 As Lucretius (3.37–58) sees
it, people put on a mask, claiming to know that there is no life after death. Deep down,
however, they are infected by a fear that drives them to extremes of irrational behavior.
Likewise, Diogenes of Oenoanda (fr. 35. col. 2) distinguishes between clear fears, such as
a fear of fire, and vague fears, sunk within one’s nature and lurking in the depths, while
one turns one’s mind to other things. Such deeply sunk fears contaminate one’s mind,
like a vessel, spoiling everything that enters it.32 Lucretius pushes, pulls, cajoles, and
chides his readers into giving full attention to the object of their fears, just as he does
everything to shock obsessive lovers into a recognition of the reality of their situation.
Along with paying attention to some things, one must know not to pay attention to
others. An important example is that of diverting attention from experiences that are
painful to those that are pleasant. Epicurus famously demonstrated this precept on his
deathbed when, suffering from the extremes of a gastro-intestinal disease, he professed
delight in the memory of past philosophical conversations.33 In general, one should pay
“the most continuous attention (tên synechestatên epibolên) to past, present, and future
goods.”34 Another way of practicing selection is to avoid preoccupation with insoluble
problems, such as trying to figure out the precise causes of distant events, particularly
those in the heavens (Ep. Pyth. 85–88). Regarding such events, it is enough to know a
range of possible causes; for this is sufficient for happiness. To seek the precise cause is,
at best, a futile endeavor; at worst, it brings about pain and distracts us from paying
attention to what matters.
In a discussion that involves sophistic quibbles, Epicurus talks of paying attention to
the universal instead of the particular.35 It is easy to see how one might get entrapped by
a sophist as a result of not paying attention to relevant distinctions. There is much more
at stake, however, than just losing an argument. Epicurus held, for example, that pleasure
as such is a good; but not every pleasure is to be chosen as a good, since some pleasures
lead to an excess of pain. Taking a particular pleasure as a good, without calculating how
much pain it might cause, is a quick path to unhappiness. Here, it is crucially important
to attend to particulars. On the other hand, there is a limit to the search for particularity,
both in theoretical and practical reasoning. In planning an action, we may need to act
31 On Death Henry 39.8–11. 32 See Lucr. 6.22–23. 33 DL 10.22 (Usener 138).

34 On the Gods 3 col. d.25–27 (Diels). 35 Arr. 31.19–20.
Psychology 203
on the assumption that a belief will be confirmed subsequently, without knowing the
particulars in advance.36
In conclusion, Epicurus developed a comprehensive theory of cognitive attention.
Whenever a sense organ perceives, or the mind thinks of, anything, it “attends to”
(epiballei) an object. Mental acts of attention comprise both non-rational acts of sensory
awareness, such as imagination and dreams, and the conceptual recognition of the entire
range of what exists. What one attends to may be a universal or a particular, or a whole
body or a property of it, whether perceptible or imperceptible. Every act of attention
is an act of selecting from a vast range of possibilities. Picking out the right things and
being prepared to call them to mind at any time is of fundamental importance to
happiness.
The use of the term epibolê (epiballein) became very common among ancient philoso-
phers of various persuasions after Epicurus.37 Entering the general philosophical vocab-
ulary, the term was used to designate the cognitive act of focusing on an intentional
object, regardless of theoretical explanation. The “thrust” of directing one’s attention
was no longer tied to atomic theory. Like the Epicureans, other philosophers distin-
guished between sensory and conceptual acts of attention.38 They also distinguished
between simple and composite epibolai of the mind, the latter involving more than one
intentional object.39 The term was used frequently to refer to the act of picking out dif-
ferent aspects of a single entity, or, to put it another way, picking out intentional aspects
of a single extensional entity. Thus Aristotelian archê was said to be, according to dif-
ferent epibolai, both a beginning and a cause.40 Augustine’s use of intentio, I suggest, cor-
responds to Greek epibolê. Although Augustine repudiated Epicurean materialism, his
theory of intentionality appears indebted to a Greek tradition that owes not just the
word, but a comprehensive theory of attention, to Epicurus.41
36 Arr. 31.17 and 20.

37 A striking exception is the Stoics, who assigned to epibolê the very narrow function of designating
one of the elements that precede action (SVF 3.173), as exemplified in the definition of love (SVF 3.396,
etc.); its meaning is something like “intention” (in the ordinary sense). Later authors used the term
epibolê to explain Stoic intentional objects; this, however, is not a technical Stoic use. Thus, Sextus
Empiricus (S.E. M. 7.251) writes about “attending to” all the unique features of an “apprehensive”
presentation; and the Stoics are said to call the same thing truth, cause, nature, necessity, and so on,
according to different epibolai (SVF 2.913).
38 See, for example, S.E. M. 7.370 and P. 2.72 and 3.50.
39 See S.E. M. 8.161–62 (on correlative objects) and Philoponus In Arist. libros de anima
commentaria, Proem (Hayduck, Philoponus In Aristotelis libros de anima commentaria p. 2) (on
demonstration).
40 Alexander In Arist. metaphys. comment. 203 (Hayduck, Alexander in Aristotelis metaphysica
commentaria, 247).
41 Caston, “Augustine and the Greeks on Intentionality,” 39 suggests that “selective attention” is one
of the main features of Augustine’s theory of intentio, and notes that “commentators have endlessly and
(unconvincingly) sought it in earlier Greek philosophy.” To my mind, all have overlooked the
Epicureans. Ingenkamp, “Zur stoischen Lehre vom Sehen” and Todd, “Synentasis and the Stoic Theory
of Perception” trace Augustinian intentio to Stoic entasis “intensification”; this interpretation overlooks
the fact that one of the few testimonies (SVF 2.866) cited in its favor conjoins enteinein with epibolê.
204 ELIZABETH ASMIS
Motivation: Feelings,
Emotions, and Action
We now turn from our experience of the world around us to our experience of ourselves.
The primary topic will be the “feelings” (pathê), which consist in an awareness of our
own condition. As previously mentioned, Epicurus paired them with sense perceptions
(aisthêseis) as the two types of evidence by which we infer what is not presently experi-
enced (Ep. Hdt. 38). This is a cognitive function. We must, therefore, backtrack briefly.
Just like sense perceptions (which are directed at objects other than one’s inner condi-
tion), feelings (directed at one’s inner condition) do not admit of falseness. Feelings are
divided into two main kinds, pleasure and pain;42 and whenever we feel pleasure or
pain, there really is something pleasant or painful within us. We go wrong by adding
beliefs. Thus, I might add the belief that a present feeling of pleasure will persist in the
future: this belief is confirmed or disconfirmed by another feeling, which occurs subse-
quently. Or I might infer, on the basis of having feelings throughout the body, that soul is
spread throughout the body. This is an inference about a state of affairs that cannot be
experienced directly and so needs to be confirmed or disconfirmed by argument. Just as
in the case of perceptions of external things, I may select certain feelings for my atten-
tion: thus I may attend to the feeling of pain in my toe or the fear I feel in my mind, or try
to divert attention from them.
The feelings, however, have another function besides a cognitive function. In addi-
tion to serving as a standard of truth, they serve as a standard of action. All animate
beings experience pleasure as something akin to themselves, hence good, and pain as
something alien, hence bad. Pleasure and pain are therefore the “yardstick” or “rule”
(kanōn) by which all acts of choice and avoidance are judged.43 This constitutes a funda-
mental difference between sense perceptions (aisthêseis) and feelings (pathê). Although
feelings may accompany perceptions, feelings alone comprise an attitude, pro or contra,
concerning the object of awareness. To attend to something pleasant entails being
attracted to it; to attend to something painful entails having an aversion from it.
This section will focus on the feelings as a standard of action. This entire area has pro-
voked much controversy among scholars. By way of a preliminary, I shall lay out some
basic assumptions, all of which are subject to disagreement. First, Epicurean pathê are
not simply passive conditions (pathê in the most general sense), but felt conditions, in
short “feelings.” Otherwise, they could not have the two functions assigned to them.
Second, as Cicero reports, whenever we have a feeling, it is a feeling of either pleasure or
pain; there is no middle ground.44 Third, Epicurus divided pleasure into two kinds:
“katastematic,” or the pleasure belonging to a settled condition, and “kinetic,” or
pleasure belonging to a mobile condition. In the case of katastematic pleasure, the atoms
42 DL 10.34. 43 DL 10.34 and Ep. Men. 128–29; cf. Cic. Fin. 1.30 and 2.31.
44 Cic. Fin. 1.38.
Psychology 205
move in normally smooth patterns, without any painful disruption. In the case of kinetic
pleasure, there is a pleasurable agitation, or excitement, of atoms. Fourth, katastematic
pleasure consists in the absence of pain and is the height of pleasure; kinetic pleasure
does not increase pleasure, but merely varies it.45 Fifth, pain and pleasure as a whole are
divided into two kinds: of the body (or “bodily”), and of the soul (or “psychic”).46
Concerning the second point, Epicurus’s way of delimiting pleasure and pain seems
counterintuitive. Ordinarily, as Epicurus’s opponents pointed out, we think of the
absence of pain as a condition that is intermediate between pleasure and pain, not as a
pleasure, let alone the height of pleasure. On the traditional view (with which I agree),
Epicurus extended the meaning of pleasure to include the feeling of an absence of pain.47
We feel pleasure when we simply feel comfortable or relaxed. Epicurus’s theory of atten-
tion (epibolê) gives plausibility to this position by explaining how the feeling occurs. Just
as an act of sense perception requires an act of attention, so an awareness of a pleasure or
pain requires an act of attention. If we ignore our condition, we have only a vague, unfo-
cused awareness; the feeling of pain or pleasure is, as it were, lost to us. If we do pay
attention, we have a clear feeling. In the case of katastematic pleasure, we feel a certain
kind of pleasure as the result of giving attention to it; otherwise, the feeling is lost to us.
Nor is it absurd to suppose that this is the height of pleasure. We might object that we go
for kinetic pleasure—sex, a gourmet meal, mental exhilaration—as something preferable
to the mere absence of pain. Epicurus concedes that a desire for kinetic pleasure is natural
so long as it is not based on false belief; but he insists that what we go for in such cases is
not really an increase, but a variation.
For the rest, I will focus on the fifth point, the division of pleasure and pain into
those of the body and the soul. To begin with, what are pleasures and pains of the body,
as opposed to pleasures and pains of the soul? The nomenclature can be misleading.
Any type of feeling at all originates in the soul; hence feelings of the body, too, may be
ascribed to the soul. What makes the difference is the type of thing that both feels and is
felt. In the case of bodily pleasures and pains, this is a composite of body and soul, con-
sisting of soul together with its bodily enclosure (as discussed in the first section); and
it may be either the whole animate body or a part of it, including any particular sense
organ. This composite is what both feels and is felt. It is called “body” on the assump-
tion that it is the body (or bodily part) of an animate being. In the case of psychic
pleasures and pains, the soul in itself feels a condition of itself, separately from its
bodily enclosure.
45 Cic. Fin. 1.37–39; cf. KD 3 and 18.

46 DL 10.136–37; and Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 44. The division is implicit in Ep. Men. 127–28.
47 I follow Diano, “La Psicologia d’Epicuro e la teoria della passioni I”; and Rist, Epicurus. An
Introduction, 100–14. Purinton, “Epicurus on the Telos,” esp. 283–84, 300–302, followed by Erler and
Schofield, “Epicurean Ethics,” 653–56, has argued that we do not feel katastematic pleasure; instead, we
rejoice in it (kinetically) as an object of pleasure. See further Gosling and Taylor, The Greeks on
Pleasure, 365–407, who reject the distinction between katastematic and kinetic pleasures; and
Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 176–79 who takes Epicurus to identify genuine
pleasure as the conjunction of an attitude and an object.
206 ELIZABETH ASMIS
This division forms the basis of a set of correspondences. Corresponding to pain of

the body (algein) is psychic distress of various kinds (tarbein, tarattesthai, lupeisthai).48
Katastematic bodily pleasure, consisting of a lack of bodily pain (aochlêsia, aponia), cor-
responds to katastematic psychic pleasure, identified as a lack of anxiety (ataraxia).49
Kinetic bodily pleasure corresponds to kinetic psychic pleasure; the latter is exemplified
by joy (chara).50
Let us consider, first, the pleasures and pains of the body. They tend to be associated
with the flesh (sarx). Three of Epicurus’s Authoritative Opinions (KD 4, 18, and 20) refer
to the pleasure or pain of the flesh.51 Although it is possible to understand “flesh” nar-
rowly to refer to the type of bodily complex that serves as the sense organ of touch, it is
preferable to take it to refer to all five sense organs, on the ground that what primarily
perceives and feels in all cases is the flesh, as animated by soul.52 In any case, all sense
organs feel both pleasure and pain. Taking the sense of taste as a paradigm, Lucretius
explains that the tongue and palate feel pain when an influx of rough, hooked atoms
breaks up their pathways, and pleasure when there is an influx of smooth and round
atoms.53 The latter is a kinetic pleasure. As has been widely noticed, Lucretius does not
appear to give an example of katastematic pleasure with reference to any particular
sense. However, he may be taken to offer a general explanation of sensory katastematic
pleasure, applying to all sense organs, when he explains that the return of atoms to their
normal patterns, after being disrupted “throughout the flesh and limbs,” produces “a
soothing pleasure” (blanda voluptas, 2.963–66).
The sense of touch differs from the other senses in that it is stimulated not only from
outside the animate body but also from inside; in both cases, its proper object of percep-
tion is “body,” as Lucretius points out (2.435). An example of pleasure is that of sexual
arousal, when a certain type of body—semen—is generated from within (2.433–43). In
the case of hunger and thirst, pain is produced by a weakening and inflammation
(respectively) of the bodily structure (4.860–76). Notoriously, Epicurus is said to have
called the pleasure of the stomach the “beginning and root of good.”54 This claim may be
understood by reference to the corresponding desire. According to Epicurus’s classifica-
tion of desires (which will be discussed shortly), the desire for food and drink fits the
most basic type of desire, the desire for life. The pleasure of the stomach may therefore
be regarded as a basic kind of pleasure, underlying all other pleasures as a prerequisite
for the rest.
Lucretius (4.710–21) offers an especially intriguing example of visual pain. In the
case of lions, roosters emit semblances (eidôla) that stab the pupils in such a way as to
48 Ep. Men. 128 and 131; KD 3 and 10. 49 Ep. Men. 127–28 and DL 10.136; cf. Lucr. 2.16–19.
50 SV 1. Wolfsdorf, “Epicurus on εὐφροσύνη and ἐνέργεια (DL 10.136)” has argued that euphrosynê
designates kinetic bodily pleasure.
51 See also Usener 410–12.
52 See, for example, Lucretius’s use of viscera in connection with all the senses at 2.964.
53 Lucr. 2.398–407 (followed by a treatment of the rest of the senses, to 2.443) and 4.615–32; see also
Usener 67.
54 Usener 409.
Psychology 207
produce pain, making the lion flee. This is a good example of the difference between
feelings of the body and those of the soul. The soul of a lion (as shall be discussed shortly)
is constituted in such a way as to feel anger, as opposed to fear. When a lion sees a rooster,
his eyes experience a feeling that overrides the feeling of anger that the soul would feel
on its own. Instead of feeling angry, the lion flees—not out of fear, but out of bodily pain.
Next, I turn to the feelings of the soul. How do they differ from those of the body and
from each other? The Stoics offered a very intricate classification, consisting of four
main types of irrational emotions or “passions” (called pathê, a term often translated as
“emotions” simply) and three main types of rational feelings (eupatheiai); and they
linked the former with false belief, and the latter with knowledge. The Epicureans did
not offer nearly as tidy a classification. This does not, however, imply a lack of coherence.
They offered their own classification by dividing the pathê, in the first place, into feelings
of pleasure and pain, then extending them to both the body and the soul. Psychic feel-
ings correspond roughly to “emotions.” Although these feelings have something in
common with Stoic pathê and eupatheiai, the Epicureans proposed their own way of
managing them in order to attain their own distinctive goal, pleasure.
It is helpful, at the outset, to add some examples to the set of correspondences out-
lined above. These examples suggest an order of priority. Epicurus’s “fourfold remedy”
(tetrapharmakos, consisting of the first four Authoritative Opinions) implies four main
kinds of psychic pain: fear of the gods, fear of death, fear of pain, and excess desire.
Indeed, Diogenes of Oenoanda explicitly divides the “feelings that trouble the soul” into
these four kinds, calling them the “roots of all ills.”55 These “roots” may be distinguished
from secondary types of psychic pain, such as grief, hatred, fear of poverty, fear of
disgrace, fear of punishment, lust for power, obsessive sexual desire, and so on.
Correspondingly, there are four main kinds of katastematic psychic pleasures, consist-
ing of a lack of disturbance about the gods, death, pain, and one’s desires, together with
many secondary kinds.
As for kinetic psychic pleasure, there are various kinds of joy (chara). Epicurus puts the
following at the top: “a settled condition of the flesh and firm expectation of it provides
the highest and most secure joy for those able to reason out the matter.”56 Concerning
both physical and psychic pain, we take “unsurpassed delight” (gêthos) in having escaped
a great evil.57 Lucretius (2.1–13) illustrates the delight of escaping psychic pain when he
claims that there is nothing more pleasant than to be in a position, protected by the for-
tress of wisdom, to look down on those struggling for honor and wealth below. This is not
Schadenfreude, but gratitude for one’s own escape from evils. We also take delight in
bestowing favors on others. Lucretius’s exuberant joy at making Epicurus’s teachings
accessible to others through poetry (1.921–50) is an example of this kind of pleasure.
Lucretius and Philodemus, along with later sources, cite fear and desire together as
causes of psychic distress.58 This pairing corresponds to the Stoic classification of fear
and desire as the two kinds of passion concerning the future. The overlap, however, is a
55 Fr. 34, cols. 6–7; cf. KD 10 and 11. 56 Usener 68. 57 Usener 423.
58 Lucr. 5.45–46 and 6.25; Phld. Peri oikonomias col. 23.40–42; and Usener 203 and 485.
208 ELIZABETH ASMIS
surface feature of Epicurean doctrine; and it is best understood as fitting a context of

inter-philosophical debate. Proposing pleasure as the goal of life, the Epicureans offered
their own diagnosis of what stood in the way of this goal, together with remedies on how
to remove these obstacles.59
What, then, is distinctive about Epicurean psychic feelings? As a bearer of cognitions,
the soul feels its condition as informed by cognitions. What is this condition? As the
examples indicate, the soul feels pain at having certain wrong beliefs and receives
pleasure in having correct beliefs. To have beliefs is a rational function of the mind.
Accordingly, Epicurus (KD 18) contrasts the pleasure of the flesh with the pleasure that
the mind generates for itself by making the right calculations. Another source contrasts
bodily feelings of pain, which concern only the present, with the greater amount of pain
that the soul feels in relation to past, present, and future.60 The ability to extend pain in
this way appears to depend on belief about the past or the future.
It is worth asking, however, whether psychic feelings are necessarily tied to belief, or
whether they may also belong to certain non-rational functions of the mind. The Stoics
offered a clear answer. They held that the irrational emotions, pathê, are necessarily
joined to belief. At the same time, they differed among themselves on how they are joined.
Zeno is said to have held that the pathê supervene on (epiginomenai) belief, whereas
Chrysippus identified them with belief.61 Galen, who reports this distinction, associates
Epicurus with Zeno.62 Philodemus lends support to this testimony, for he speaks of
“feelings in the soul that attend (parakolouthounta) because of our wrong beliefs.”63
Concerning anger, Philodemus draws a distinction between the feeling (pathos) itself,
which is “distressing (lupêron) or analogous,” and the combination of feeling and dispo-
sition (diathesis). As a type of pain, the feeling is something bad; viewed in conjunction
with a disposition, however, it may be something good. If the disposition is good, so as to
have correct beliefs about punishments and harm, the feeling is good; otherwise not.64
The feeling as such is bad, but insofar as it follows on a correct belief it is good.
This does not yet answer, however, whether the Epicureans held that all psychic feel-
ings are joined to belief. As discussed previously, the mind has both non-rational and
rational functions. The former include presentations, imagination, dreams, and mem-
ory; and non-rational animals share in them. What is to prevent a non-rational animal
or a human being from responding with a feeling of psychic pain or pleasure to a mere
association of images, without belief? Philodemus attributed a feeling analogous to
mental distress to non-rational animals. Lucretius goes further. In his explanation of the
composition of the soul, he extends feelings of anger and fear to non-rational animals,
while assuring humans that they can overcome any natural predisposition to one kind of
59 As Konstan, A Life Worthy of the Gods, 27–77 has shown, fear and desire are intricately
interwoven in this project.
60 DL 10.137. 61 SVF 1.209, 3.461. 62 SVF 3.463.
63 Phld. De ira col. 6.13–16. Philodemus also constructs an argument based on the assumption that
anger “follows on” (ἐπακολουθεῖ) suppositions that precede (De ira col. 47.18–32).
64 De ira cols. 37.24–39; cf. col. 27.19–23.
Psychology 209
emotion or another by the use of reason (3.289–322). The whole explanation offers an
intriguing insight into the material basis of the emotions.
Let us, then, consider Lucretius’s analysis in some detail. As we saw, the soul has four
kinds of components: heat, wind (breath), air, and a fourth unnamed kind (3.231–87).
The first three kinds, Lucretius explains, correspond to three kinds of emotion. There is
psychic heat whenever the mind boils up in anger and the eyes flash with anger; cold
breath accompanies the fear that stirs limbs; and air belongs to the chest and face when-
ever they are placid (3.288–95). Placidity is intermediate between anger and fear. The
three components are mixed in different proportions in different species of animals,
as well as in individual humans, with the result some species or human beings are more
prone to anger, others to fear, and others to placidity. A preponderance of heat, for
example, makes lions prone to anger; a preponderance of wind makes deer fearful; and a
preponderance of air makes cattle placid (3.296–306). Likewise, in the case of humans,
the proportion of components makes one person turn more quickly to anger, another to
fear, and so on. The proportions vary greatly among humans, with the result that their
“natures” are attended by a huge variety of habits, exceeding existing names (3.316–18).
Humans, however, can counteract their natural predispositions by the use of reason.
Although the “first imprints (or ‘footprints,’ vestigia) of the nature” of the mind cannot
be rooted out (3.307–10), it is possible to diminish their effect to insignificance: “the
imprints of natures (naturarum vestigia) that reason cannot dispel are left so small that
nothing prevents us from living a life worthy of the gods” (3.320–22).
According to Lucretius, then, humans and non-rational animals share a range of feel-
ings, demarcated by anger and fear at both ends, with placidity placed in the middle.
These feelings are said to originate in the mind or the chest. The natural proportion of
components in the soul makes the animate being, whether rational or non-rational,
prone to a certain kind of feeling. Humans differ from other species in having a huge
variety of natural predispositions. The fundamental difference, however, is that humans
have the ability to control their natural inclinations by the use of reason, thus all but
effacing the “imprints” of their natures. Their inborn “natures” persist; but if one looks
for their tracks, so to speak, they are all but gone. Reason has stopped the natural pro-
portion of soul constituents from having any but the slightest effect.
Lucretius poses a challenge to humans: do not simply give in to your natural inclina-
tions, as determined by the atomic constitution of the soul; control your nature by the
use of reason. This challenge is based on a recognition of two kinds of psychic feelings:
responses without belief, dependent on the natural constitution of the soul, and responses
that depend on belief.65 Non-rational animals have only the first kind of feeling; humans
have both. The Stoics subsumed the first kind under the general heading of propatheiai,
feelings prior to pathê. An Epicurean such as Philodemus might have preferred to regard
65 Demetrius Laco (On Poems I, cols. 9–13 Romeo) mentions that certain kinds of pathê come to be
“in accordance with the non-rational [part] of the mind” (κατὰ τὸ ἄλογον [δια]νοίας, col. 13.4–5, cf. col.
10.4–7). This happens in the context of judging a poem; but the gaps in the text make it difficult to pin
down a precise meaning.
210 ELIZABETH ASMIS
the first kind as analogous to the second, thus restricting the scope of the term pathos in
line with Stoic terminology. Whatever the terminology, however, Lucretius’s analysis
attests both the reality of non-rational psychic feelings and their ethical importance.
Like animals, humans are prone to psychic feelings without belief; and these feelings are
subject to control in the case of humans. There is no reason not to impute this basic view,
together with a broad use of the term pathos, to Epicureanism as a whole.
Interestingly, Lucretius’s analysis offers a material explanation for the sort of feelings
that Plato assigned to one part of his tripartite soul, the spirit, thumos. In the case of the
Epicureans, the nature of the soul as a whole accounts for a full range of feelings associ-
ated with the spirit, from extremes of aggressiveness to extremes of timidity. How are
these feelings related to desire, epithumia, another part of the Platonic soul, or the total-
ity of emotions? It is tempting to suppose that, on the Epicurean view, a degree of
aggressiveness or its opposite, shirking, belongs to every act of pursuing pleasure or
shunning pain. The mixture of soul atoms provides the motive force that allows an ani-
mate being to realize its inborn inclination for pleasure and aversion from pain. In the
case of humans, reason can control this motive force. All three functions belong to a
unitary soul, as blended out of a mixture of atoms.
Taking Lucretius as a guide, then, we may divide psychic feelings into feelings with or
without belief. How does this position square with the role of the feelings, pathê, as a
standard of truth? How can feelings that follow on belief be exempt from falsehood,
when a belief (as Epicurus held) admits of being either true or false?66 The answer, I sug-
gest, lies in distinguishing the feeling from the cognitive condition on which it follows.
As something that follows on belief, the feeling is neither identical with belief (as
Chrysippus supposed) nor a constituent of belief. Whether or not it follows on belief,
the feeling is just as unalterable as a sense perception or bodily feeling; for it cannot
move itself, nor does it add anything to or subtract anything from movements produced
by something else. The belief on which a feeling may follow is an act of interpretation,
added from within; but the feeling is not—it cannot be otherwise than as it is. Lucretius
offers an example of how psychic feelings, even when they follow on belief, serve as a
standard of truth: the feeling of joy or fear in the chest, he asserts (3.141–42), is evidence
that the mind is located in the chest. The inference is based on the fact that there really is
a feeling of joy or fear in the chest; the existence of such feelings is not in doubt. Along
with serving as a standard of truth, psychic feelings have special importance as a standard
of action. The misery that we feel when we fear death or the gods is an unalterable fact,
and so is the pleasure that comes from eliminating these fears. Both kinds of feelings
serve as a standard for regulating our lives: naturally constituted to seek pleasure and
avoid pain, we must do all we can to eliminate psychic pain no less than bodily pain.67
66 Konstan, “Epicurean ‘Passions’ and the Good Life” and A Life Worthy of the Gods, 5–25 has raised
this question as an objection against extending the term pathos to emotions joined by belief. He assigns
the term pathos only to feelings that occur in the non-rational part of the soul as distinct from the
mind.
67 Cf. Usener 311. According to Demetrius Laco (Puglia, Aporie Testuali ed Esegetiche in Epicuro
(P.Herc. 1012). P.Herc. 1012, col. 47 = Usener 413) we feel the process of reasoning (logizesthai), as well as
distress (lupeisthai), in the chest.
Psychology 211
Just like bodily pains, psychic pains cannot be avoided altogether. Further, they must
sometimes be sought out; for they are just as much subject to a hedonistic calculus as
bodily feelings. Philodemus illustrates both points in his discussion of anger. First, it is
inevitable for humans, as something belonging to them by nature, to feel anger.68 Not to
feel anger is a sign of moral perversion or madness.69 At the same time, it is necessary to
confine anger within natural bounds. Second, just as some bodily pains (such as medical
treatment) should be chosen to avoid future pain, so moderate anger helps to eliminate
future pain through appropriate punishments.70 According to Philodemus, one should
inflict punishment not as something to be enjoyed, but as if undergoing surgery or
drinking wormwood; paradoxically, the angry person assumes pain himself in order to
avoid pain in the future.71
Epicurus’s analysis of desire (epithumia) offers a guide on how to manage all the emo-
tions. Desires are divided into natural and unnatural, and natural desires are divided
into necessary or unnecessary.72 The result is three kinds of desire: natural and neces-
sary, natural and unnecessary, and unnatural and unnecessary. The last kind is “empty,”
for desires of this kind are based on wrong, or “empty,” beliefs, so as to bring more pain
than pleasure. Natural and necessary desires are in turn divided into three kinds: neces-
sary for life, necessary for lack of pain in the body, and necessary for happiness.
One example is the desire for possessions, or means of sustenance. The basic contrast
is between “natural wealth” and that of “empty opinions” (KD 15). In addition, natural
wealth may be divided into property that is necessary (beginning with the necessity of
having enough to live on) and the kind that is unnecessary. Philodemus’s “natural
desires for more [possessions]” fit the category of natural and unnecessary desires.73 As
Philodemus argues, a moderate person “inclines in his will (boulêsei) toward a more
affluent” way of life.74 Having more provides a margin against not having enough; but a
wish for more must be strictly limited against wanting ever more. Set off by boundaries
on either side, the category of natural and unnecessary desires offers a range of choices;
an individual may select among them, depending ultimately on how he wishes to vary
his pleasures.75
There is ample, even if unsystematic, evidence that the classification of desires applies
to the full range of emotions. Fear of the gods and fear of being dead are “empty,” since
they are based on wrong beliefs. But fear of dying, for example, spans the entire spec-
trum. Fear of extinction, we may suppose, is necessary to the preservation of life. For the
rest, Philodemus offers detailed advice on what sort of fear about death is natural and
68 De ira col. 40.18–27. The basic reason, it seems, is that we are naturally weak, so as to be prone to
anger and favoritism (col. 43.29–36).
69 De ira col. 38.20–29. 70 Cf. De ira col. 40.32–41.9. 71 De ira col. 44.15–23.
72 Ep. Men. 127, KD 29 and 30, SV 21, and Usener 456.
73 Peri oikonomias col. 16.30–32.
74 Peri oikonomias col. 16.4–6. Philodemus is here using the Stoic term (boulêsis) for the sort of
desire that belongs to a wise person.
75 On the types of desire, see further Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 190–98. I have argued
elsewhere (“The Necessity of Anger in Philodemus’ On Anger,” 176–82) that anger, as a desire for
avoiding harm, extends over the entire spectrum of desires.
212 ELIZABETH ASMIS
what is unnatural. He holds, for example, that it is naturally painful to leave behind loved
ones who will be in distress;76 it is foolish, on the other hand, to be pained at the thought
of not having a lavish burial.77 There is nothing wrong, we may add, with being more
fearful than others, so long as there is moderation. In the same way, some persons will
be more angry than others; this is natural. Other kinds of emotion, such as grief,
shame, pity, regret, hatred, and indignation fit the same pattern. They, too, appear inevi-
table to some degree; they admit of a range of optional feelings; and all must be avoided
in excess.
As discussed in the previous two sections, one must focus attention on some things,
while diverting it from others. This lesson applies with special force to the feelings,
whether of the body or of the soul, since happiness is a state of feeling. There are two
methods: one is to divert attention from pain to pleasure; the other is to remove pain
by replacing wrong beliefs with the right ones. It is fundamentally important to know
which method to apply. In the case of emotions that arise from false beliefs, it is disas-
trous not to pay attention; if suppressed, they simply fester within, spoiling all our joys.
For the Epicureans, philosophical therapy consists, in the first place, in bringing our
emotions to the forefront of our attention, so as to purge those that are harmful and
delight in those that are beneficial.
Last, I turn briefly to the topic of action. Feelings prompt action, in addition to being
truthful. Lucretius is our main source on this topic; and he deals with voluntary move-
ment rather than deliberate action. Using walking as an example (4.877–906), he distin-
guishes between two stages: first, a representation of walking; and, second, the volition
(voluntas). The mind first sees what it will subsequently desire to do. The volition, con-
sisting in the desire to walk, impels the atoms of the soul throughout the body; the
soul atoms then strike the body. Lucretius does not mention the addition of belief to the
image of walking. Though dealing with humans, therefore, his analysis is applicable
to non-rational animals as well. It provides a template, as it were, into which belief may
be inserted.
He provides an example of non-rational voluntary movement in his analysis of the
movement of racehorses in his proof for the swerve. Citing the eagerness with which the
horses rush from the starting barriers, he argues that there would be no “free volition”
(libera . . . voluntas, 2.256–57) without a swerve. In agreement with his analysis of
walking in Book 4, he situates the volition in the mind and has it initiate a motion that is
subsequently passed on to the whole body (2.269–71). The argument is extremely con-
troversial (and is treated elsewhere in the following chapter in this volume). Not least
among the problems is that “free volition” is associated with non-rational animals, acting
without belief.
In sum, Epicurus divided the feelings (pathê) into pleasure and pain, and assigned
them to both body and soul. Feelings are of paramount importance in Epicurean ethics
as the standard by which we determine action: acting on the basis of present pleasures
76 On Death col. 25.2–10; see further Armstrong, “ ‘Be Angry and Sin Not.’ ”
77 On Death col. 30.7–11.
Psychology 213
and pains, which are necessarily true, we aim to attain the goal of pleasure. Pain is
inevitable in both body and soul; but we can control it by the formation of correct beliefs
in such a way as to enjoy a life of pleasure.
Self-Development
So far, we have looked at the ways in which humans experience the world and themselves;
and we have touched on how they act in the world. It remains to consider their ability to
shape themselves. This question takes us back to their physical nature. As complexes of
atoms and void, do humans have any control over what they do as personal agents, or
“selves”; or is everything they do determined by the physical laws that govern the move-
ments of atoms? Do humans “themselves” determine what they do or become?
Unlike his atomist predecessor, Democritus, Epicurus held that phenomenal entities
have an existence of their own. Democritus claimed that phenomenal entities, such as
sweet, bitter, and so on, are mere appearances, having no existence of their own; only
atoms and void exist.78 By contrast, Epicurus proposed that there are two kinds of enti-
ties: the ultimate constituents of things, atoms and void, together with their properties;
and the phenomenal things and properties that are created out of atoms and void.79
A stone, a cow, a human being, and their properties exist no less than the atoms that
compose them.
Given this two-tier ontology, the question arises: are phenomenal entities wholly
explainable by the properties of the atoms and void? Or do they have causal powers of
their own, which can act “from above” on the atoms that constitute them? Sedley has
argued for the latter position, which may be called “radically emergentist.”80 Against this
view, two main objections have been made.81 One is that it undermines Epicurus’s
theory of causation; for, instead of recognizing atoms and void as the sole causes of what
there is, it introduces new causes at the level of the phenomena. The other is that it lacks
sufficient evidence. In what follows, I shall focus on the primary piece of evidence that
has been cited. It provides a tantalizing glimpse of Epicurus’s notion of the self.
78 DK 68 B 125. 79 Ep. Hdt. 40 and 68–73; see Sedley, “Epicurean Anti-Reductionism,” 303.
80 Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism,” 38–43 and “Epicurean Anti-Reductionism,”
316–24; and LS 1.109–10. Mitsis, “Epicurus’ Ethical Theory” had argued for a traditional view of
bottom-up emergence, which he then subsequently defended against Sedley’s top-down version in
Epicurus’ Ethical Theory. The Pleasures of Invulnerability, 160 ff by arguing that Sedley’s view
undermined causation at a micro level and that the passage could show at best indirect causal influence
of macro on micro-states.
81 See esp. Laursen, “Epicurus On Nature XXV (Long-Sedley 20, B, C and j)” and “The Later Parts of
Epicurus, On Nature, 25th Book”; Annas, “Epicurus on Agency”; and O’Keefe, “The Reductionist and
Compatibilist Argument of Epicurus’ On Nature, Book 25.”
214 ELIZABETH ASMIS
This piece of evidence consists of a fragmentary stretch of text, Book 25 of Epicurus’s

On Nature.82 Here Epicurus argues that there is a cause which consists “in ourselves” (di’
hêmōn autōn). The problem is: how can “oneself ” be distinct from the atoms, if one is
made up entirely of atoms? Epicurus’s answer is full of obscurities, due partly to abstruse
language, but mostly to the fact that there is no continuous text.
I shall begin by setting out three oppositions that appear clearly in the text. They are:
between the atoms and “what has been created,” or “products” (ta apogegennêmena);83
between one’s original constitution and one that is growing;84 and between having the
cause “in themselves” and having it in one’s original constitution together with one’s
surroundings and the inflow of atoms.85 The original constitution, as well as the growing
constitution, are said to consist of both atoms and what has been created.86
In contrast with the atoms, we may surmise, “products” belong to the realm of phe-
nomena. Epicurus seems to sum up the latter as “actions, thoughts, and dispositions.”87
They include memory or an analogue, calculation, and beliefs.88 I shall call a “growing”
constitution one that is “developing.” This development is twofold, occurring at both the
level of the atoms and the level of the products.
What, then, is it to have the cause within oneself? I shall consider three main texts,
each of which admits of a variety of interpretations. On balance, I shall suggest, they do
not support an emergentist (in a radical sense) line of interpretation. Epicurus, it seems,
distinguished between two kinds of development: one that follows necessarily on the
original constitution; and one that may depart from it. In the latter case, the cause lies
within the developing individual, not the atoms. Despite this difference, there is no
reason to suppose that what the individual does, as a cause, is not fully explainable by
the atoms.
The first text deals with the case when an individual does something, by reason of
“oneself,” that is “similar” to a bad original constitution:
If he undertakes something similar to his original constitution, which is bad,

because of the cause that comes already from himself, we sometimes rebuke him
still more, though by way of admonition, and we do not absolve him as we do wild
animals by combining the products (apogegennêmena) and the constitution alike
into a single thing.89
82 Since Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, the relevant portion of the book has been re-edited by Sedley as
LS 20B, C, and j, and by Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus, On Nature, 25th Book.”
83 Arr. 34.21, L p. 19. Sedley and others translate ta apogegennêmena as “developments”; I reserve the
term “development” for the development of a constitution, consisting of both atoms and ta
apogegennêmena.
84 Arr. 34.20, L pp. 16–17. 85 Arr. 34.27, L p. 35. 86 Arr. 34.20, L pp. 16–17.
87 Arr. 34.26, L p. 32.
88 Arr. 34.20, L p. 16; Arr. 34.17 (Laursen, “The Early Parts of Epicurus, On Nature, 25th Book,” 107);
and Arr. 34.26, L 33.
89 Arr. 34.25, L p. 31.
Psychology 215
Epicurus here draws a contrast between wild animals, who are exempt from blame,
and others who are subject to blame because the cause comes “already” from themselves.
In the case of wild animals, we regard the original constitution and the products as a
single entity, thus exonerating them from blame. Wild animals, it appears, cannot help
but act in accordance with their original constitution. By contrast, when someone has
reached the stage of acting “from himself,” we blame him for following a bad original
constitution. In this case, we do not treat the products and the original constitution as
one; instead, we distinguish between the original constitution and the products. The
term “already” indicates a stage of development when the individual—a child, let us say,
or an animal who is beginning to be tamed—is no longer constrained by the original
constitution. Just previously in the text, Epicurus mentioned that “when someone pro-
gresses in age,” the sort of thing that is produced is not by necessity but comes from
oneself.90 In the fragment just cited, the individual is blamed for persisting in his original
constitution—throwing a temper tantrum, perhaps, or throwing one’s rider.
The second text distinguishes between two kinds of causes, atoms and products:
Many [animals?] have a nature that can accomplish both this and that, but fail to
accomplish it on account of themselves (and not because of the same cause con-
sisting of the atoms and of themselves), whom we especially fight against and
blame . . . having an initially disorderly nature, as in the case of all animals. For the
nature of the atoms did not contribute to some of their deeds and the magnitude of
their deeds and dispositions, but the things that have been created (ta apogegennê-
mena) have acquired the whole or main cause of these [results].91
Again, there is a situation of blame. Epicurus attributes to many animals (or products, as
some scholars supply) the natural ability to accomplish something that they failed to
accomplish, and he blames them for this failure.92 The failure is due to the individuals
(or products) “themselves,” not the atoms; for individuals (or products) and atoms are not
one and the same cause. The “nature of the atoms” contributes nothing to some deeds or
their magnitude, or to the magnitude of their dispositions; instead, the products are
entirely, or mainly, responsible.
What, then, does the difference between the “(nature of the) atoms” and the products
consist in? Let us recall Lucretius’s claim that humans can reduce the “imprints of [their]
natures” to tiny traces. Persisting from birth, these “imprints” consist of a certain propor-
tion of the types of atoms that make up the soul; Lucretius also calls them “first imprints.”
These imprints make certain individuals prone to anger, others to fear, and so on.
Although they cannot be eradicated, we can dispel them sufficiently, through the ruse
of reason, to live a life worthy of the gods.93 In the cited passage, I suggest, Epicurus is
90 Arr. 34.24, L p. 28. 91 Arr. 34.21, L pp. 19–20.

92 I follow LS 20B (2.105) in supplying “animals” as the probable subject. Contrary to Laursen,
“Epicurus On Nature XXV (Long-Sedley 20, B, C and j),” 10 and “The Later Parts of Epicurus, On
Nature, 25th Book,” 57, I do not think that there is a compelling reason for supplying “products.”
93 3.306–22.
216 ELIZABETH ASMIS
drawing the same contrast between nature and responsibility, except that he joins tame
animals to humans.
Let us take a naturally irascible individual. He has a preponderance of fiery atoms
within his soul, persisting from birth. But he has also formed memories, a kind of “prod-
uct,” that allows him to counteract this nature. If he is a human being, he may form the
calculation that if he flares up in anger, he will fail to achieve his goal, pleasure. Suppose,
then, that someone threatens to harm him: he might flare up in anger, or he might remain
calm. The “nature of the atoms” that make up his soul is conducive to a flare-up of anger;
the products can eliminate or diminish such a response. In the case of wild animals, as
we saw, the response will necessarily follow on the original constitution of the soul. In
other cases, however, the original constitution admits of either response. Acting “from
himself,” an individual may act either on the basis of the “nature of the atoms” or on the
basis of the products. Acting on the basis of products, he may remain calm, or calmer
than he would be if he acted on the basis of the atoms alone; and his disposition may be
more gentle than irascible. When we blame someone, we hold him responsible on the
basis of the causal force of the products within him.
Third, we come to the crucial passage, which follows shortly after the one that has just
been cited:
Thus, whenever something is created which takes on some difference (heterotêta)

from the atoms in accordance with a certain method of distinction (tina tropon
dialêptikon)—not the method [of distinguishing] as from a different area (ou ton
hōs aph’ heterou diastêmatos)—it obtains the cause out of oneself. Next it passes on
[the difference] immediately to the first natures and makes all somehow a single
[cause].94
In brief, something is created that results in having responsibility from oneself. There is
some obscurity in the referents: “it” (the subject of the two sentences) might be either
the animal (or person) or the product; and what is passed on could be the product or the
difference (as I prefer) or perhaps the cause. The various interpretations, however, admit
of an underlying, general explanation. What is passed on unites with “the first natures”
so as to combine “somehow” into a single cause.
The debate between an emergentist and non-emergentist position has centered on
the interpretation of the first sentence. What is the “difference,” and what is the “method
of distinction”? Sedley translates:
When a development occurs which takes on some distinctness from the atoms in a
transcendent way—not in the way which is like viewing from a different distance—
he acquires responsibility which proceeds from himself.95
94 Arr. 34.22, L p. 22.

95 Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism,” 37; cf. “Epicurean Anti-Reductionism,” 320
(with the translation “in a differential way” and “it acquires causation which proceeds from the self ”).
Psychology 217
On this view, the created entity differs from the atoms in such a way as not to be causally
reducible to them. It has “transcendent” (or “emergent”) properties that allow it to act on
the atoms by way of “top down” causation.
There is, however, a simpler explanation, which not only saves Epicureanism from
mysterious causal forces but also agrees with Epicurus’s usage elsewhere. As discussed
previously in the section on belief, Epicurus uses the term “distinction” (dialêpsis) in
two ways: one is to distinguish properties; the other is to distinguish one place from
another.96 In the cited passage, Epicurus immediately attempts to clarify what he means
by “some method of distinction” by saying he doesn’t mean distinguishing one place
from a different one.97 What he means, I suggest, is a distinction of properties. This dis-
tinction consists in a “difference” from the atoms.98 What is this “difference”? Just previ-
ously, as we saw, Epicurus argued that the atoms and what has been created are two
distinct types of cause. What he meant there by the “(nature of the) atoms” is the con-
genital configuration of atoms that make up the soul. He now refers to this configuration
as “first natures”; this is what Lucretius called “first imprints.” The “difference,” then, is
between the sort of effect produced by the congenital nature of soul atoms, such as an
outburst of anger resulting from a fiery configuration of atoms, and the newly created
product, such as calmness.
The first cited text tells us about the opposite situation: that is, where the product is
necessarily “similar” to the original constitution. In that case, there is no difference from
the atoms nor any cause from oneself. If, on the other hand, the product differs from the
congenital mixture of the atoms, the cause is from oneself. This is not a difference of
place: the product is different from what might have occurred in the same place. If a
person remains calm in the face of provocation, something has been created that differs
from the sort of product that the congenital atoms would have created by themselves.
There is no need to posit a sudden acquisition of new, “transcendent” powers. What is
responsible is the creation of the sort of products that can make the difference. At a cer-
tain point in their development, the products are sufficiently complex to tilt the balance
toward the creation of a difference from the original constitution. The products act
through their own atomic configuration to create this difference.
As soon as it is created, this difference is passed on to the congenital mixture of the
atoms so as to merge into a single cause: this is the individual, acting from himself. The
merging results in a modification of the composition of the soul, but it cannot change
the original proportion of soul atoms. Through the continual creation of differences, the
96 Cf. O’Keefe, “The Reductionist and Compatibilist Argument of Epicurus’ On Nature, Book
25,” 175.
97 So Purinton, “Epicurus on the Degrees of Responsibility,” 164–66 and “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’
and the Atomic Swerve,” 293; followed by O’Keefe, “The Reductionist and Compatibilist Argument of
Epicurus’ On Nature, Book 25,” 174.
98 In my view, there is no need to translate “within the atoms,” as most of Sedley’s opponents have
done; so Laursen, “Epicurus On Nature XXV (Long-Sedley 20, B, C and j),” Annas, “Epicurus on
Agency,” 56 n. 17; and O’Keefe, “The Reductionist and Compatibilist Argument of Epicurus’ On Nature,
Book 25,” 173–74. The comparative sense “from the atoms” can stand.
218 ELIZABETH ASMIS
initial configuration of atoms will gradually diminish as a causal force, but it cannot lose
its force altogether. Just like footprints, the initial imprints retain their outline, although
they may become blurred. It is up to the individual, acting as a cause, to continue to
create the sort of differences that prompt praise instead of blame.
That some non-rational animals should be held responsible is perhaps strange; but it
fits ordinary experience, along with a gradualist view of differences among animals.99
For Epicurus, memory or its analogue seems sufficient for acting “from oneself,” without
the power of reason. Whereas others saw the training of animals as a form of condition-
ing, imposed from outside, Epicurus recognizes an internal shift, due to the animal
itself. That is how race horses exemplify “free volition” (2.256–57 of Lucretius’s poem);
they are themselves responsible for rushing from the barriers. The training of humans is
continuous with that of non-rational animals, but reaches a new level of complexity
through the acquisition of reason. Humans have the advantage that they alone have the
means, reason, to attain a life “worthy of the gods.”
In conclusion, Epicurus proposed a materialist philosophy of mind that sought to
explain cognition, emotion, and action without taking away responsibility from our-
selves. There is a twofold thrust in his philosophy: one is to give a rigorously materialist
explanation of the phenomena; the other is to inspire humans to take charge of their
happiness. The two aims are both inseparable and in tension with each other. On the one
hand, Epicurus strives to make absolutely clear that everything that happens is due to
the movements of atoms in the void; this is what frees us from fear of the gods and death,
along with other misconceptions that blight our lives. On the other hand, he focuses
attention on ourselves as the cause of our happiness. The problem is: if we are nothing
but atoms and void, how do “we” exist as a distinct causal entity? Epicurus’s answer is
that “we” exist as a phenomenal entity, having numerous powers to create our happiness.
This chapter has attempted to set out the main psychological powers. Each of us is a uni-
tary complex of body and soul, having the power to shape our feelings through our
powers of cognition so as to attain the goal of pleasure. These powers, I have suggested,
are fully explainable by our material constitution, without the need to posit any causal
forces other than those of the atoms.
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chapter 9
Volu n ta ry Action
a n d R esponsibilit y
Walter Englert
Necessity (ἀνάγκη) is bad, but there is no necessity to live with necessity.

Epicurus Vatican Sayings 9
One who says that all things come about by necessity (κατ᾿ ἀνάγκην) is
not able to find fault with one who says that all things do not come about
by necessity. For he says that this comes about by necessity.
Epicurus Vatican Sayings 40.1
Introduction
The goal of Epicureanism was to teach human beings how to look at the world so that
we can attain happiness. According to Epicurus, there was only one way to do this: to see
that the universe and everything in it—including all compound bodies, our own bodies
and souls, and the gods—are made up of atoms and the void. Once human beings see the
full implications of this, we are able to realize that all of our fears and anxieties (includ-
ing the belief that death is an evil, that the gods will punish us here or in an afterlife, and
that pains are unendurable) are baseless, and that happiness, defined as the absence of
pain, which is also the state of highest pleasure, or ataraxia (literally, “untroubledness”),
is easy to attain. Epicurus taught that this life of happiness could be achieved by anyone
who becomes an Epicurean and studies and lives by its doctrines.
What, though, if not everyone is able to benefit from Epicureanism? Epicurus argued
against those who held that human thought and action might be constrained by neces-
sity or fate so that it was impossible for us to be responsible for our own actions and to
1 English translations in the chapter are my own, unless otherwise noted.

222 WALTER ENGLERT
develop into the sorts of people we would like to be. If this were true, it would mean
some of us, because of the characters we are born with and our experiences growing up,
are the sorts of people who can become Epicureans and attain happiness, and others
are not. Epicurus’s message of happiness would thus only be of value to a limited number
of people.
We know from a variety of sources that Epicurus worried about these problems, and
that he tried to address them by exploring the concepts of voluntary action and moral
responsibility. Like some Greek philosophers before him, and particularly Aristotle,2
Epicurus was deeply committed to the view that human beings are capable of acting
voluntarily, are responsible for their actions, and are able to direct their lives towards
happiness.
Closely connected to Epicurus’s views on voluntary action and moral responsibility
was his highly controversial doctrine of the swerve of atoms (παρέγκλισις in Greek,
clinamen in Latin), a tiny, random motion of atoms that occurs at no fixed time and
place. Although the swerve is not mentioned in any of the extant writings of Epicurus, it
is found in a number of ancient authors, and it is clear from their reports that it was
Epicurus’s own doctrine.3 The ancient source that describes the swerve’s role in
Epicurean physics and ethics in the greatest detail is Lucretius’s De rerum natura (DRN)
2.216–93. As we will see, Lucretius’s description of the swerve is extensive, but unfortu-
nately not detailed enough to allow us to gain a precise and universally accepted under-
standing of the swerve’s role in voluntary action. Many scholars argue that the Lucretius
passage can be read to show that the swerve of atoms must play a role in every voluntary
action of all living creatures, though they differ on the precise role the swerve plays.
Other scholars argue that the Lucretius passage does not prove that the swerve plays
a role in every voluntary action, and have made suggestions about how the swerve
was meant to preserve moral responsibility. Our other ancient sources besides Lucretius
(including Cicero, Philodemus, Diogenes of Oenoanda, Galen, Plutarch, Plotinus,
Augustine) help fill in the picture of the swerve, but do not settle the problem.4
Over the past half century many scholars have tried to solve the problem of the role
the swerve played in Epicurus’s account of voluntary action and moral responsibility.
Scholars, on the basis of the ancient evidence, have come up with a variety of views,
and no consensus view has emerged. Indeed, it seems the more studies that have been
published on the topic, the more diverse the options for interpreting the swerve have
become.5
2 For Aristotle’s views on voluntary action and moral responsibility, see especially EN 3.1–5. Scholars
differ greatly on the extent to which they think Epicurus had access to the works of Aristotle and was
affected by them.
3 Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 9–11.
4 Cic. Fat. 18, 22–3, 46–8, ND 1.69, Fin. 1.19, 1.28: Phld. Sign. 36.11–17; Diog. Oen. Smith fr. 54; Gal.
De Plac. 4.4; Plu. Mor. 964C, 1015C, 1045B–C, 1050B–C; Plotinus, Enn. 3.1.15–20; August. C. acad. 3.23.
5 For discussions of the different ways modern scholars interpret the swerve, see O’Keefe, Epicurus
on Freedom; and Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente 218–55.
Voluntary Action and Responsibility 223
The purpose of the present essay is to discuss the main ancient texts that bear on
Epicurus’s notions of voluntary action, moral responsibility, and the swerve of atoms,
and consider some of the ways they have been interpreted. I will proceed by examining
the relevant ancient evidence first, and exploring what the issues were that our ancient
sources show Epicurus and later Epicureans were concerned with as they thought about
voluntary action, moral responsibility, and the swerve of atoms. I will argue that the
evidence, especially Lucretius 2.216–93, favors the interpretation that Epicurus believed
the swerve of atoms plays a role in every voluntary action of living creatures. But I also
take seriously the views of scholars who disagree with this position, and I do not believe
their views should be discarded entirely. Indeed, viewed from one perspective, the lack
of scholarly consensus on the role of the swerve in Epicurean psychology and ethics
provides strong justification for thinking that the precise role that the swerve played in
Epicurus’s analysis of voluntary action and moral responsibility is irrecoverable from
the ancient evidence available to us.6 But viewed from a different perspective, I will
argue, the lack of scholarly consensus, combined with the plausibility of a number of
different views about the role the swerve may have played in Epicurus’s system, may
point to a solution of a different kind. Rather than maintaining that the swerve played a
single role in Epicurean psychology, as most scholars have assumed, it may be more
productive to suppose that it played a number of roles. In what follows, I will argue that
once Epicurus posited the swerve, he seems to have used it in a number of aspects of his
psychology and account of voluntary action and moral responsibility.
Building on the views of previous scholars, I will argue that Lucretius’s discussion
of the swerve in 2.216–93 was not primarily designed to present a detailed account of
exactly how the swerve functioned to preserve voluntary action and moral responsibility.
Indeed, if that was Lucretius’s purpose, he clearly failed. Rather, the passage was designed
to argue for the existence of the swerve by pointing to aspects of the world around us
(the existence of compound bodies, and the voluntary motions of all living creatures)
that, according to Lucretius, would be impossible to explain without supposing some
atomic motion like the swerve. Once Epicurus had established that the swerve exists
with arguments like those Lucretius presents, he was able to use it to account for a number
of issues, including sensation, consciousness, memory, and the ability of humans to
develop their characters to be the sort of persons they wish to be as part of his arguments
against necessity and for the existence of moral responsibility. In brief, I will suggest
that rather than search for a single solution to the role the swerve played in Epicurus’s
account of voluntary action and moral responsibility, we are better off positing a number
of roles for the swerve. This would mean that a number of modern theories about the
role the swerve played to account for voluntary action and moral responsibility might be
equally plausible and correct.
6 Gigandet, “Les principes de la physique,” 71 notes that Lucretius leaves the role the swerve plays in
voluntary action so obscure that scholars are reduced to conjectures and reconstructions.
224 WALTER ENGLERT
Some Preliminary Considerations
Before looking at specific passages dealing with voluntary action and moral responsibility
in Epicurus, we must discuss a more general question that has a direct bearing on our
topic. What sort of an explanation was Epicurus likely to give of voluntary action,
moral responsibility, and the swerve? Or asked another way, what kind of an atomist
was Epicurus? In the last three decades, scholars have debated how best to describe
Epicurus’s account of the relationship of the atomic to the macroscopic realm, and the
relationship of the ultimate principles of reality, atoms, and void, to the world of com-
pound bodies we live in. In a recent account,7 Tim O’Keefe has helpfully distinguished
three possible views: eliminativism, reductionism, and anti-reductionism. In the context
of ancient atomism, an eliminativist can be defined as one who believes that only atoms
and the void exist and are real, and that the visible world around us is not real in the
same way; a reductionist as one who believes that both atoms and the void at the
microscopic level, as well as compound bodies (including our minds) at the phenome-
nological level, are real and have causal efficacy; an anti-reductionist as one who holds
that events at the phenomenological level cannot be reduced straightforwardly to events
at the atomic level, and that compound bodies (including our minds) can acquire prop-
erties that are not completely reducible to atomic motions.
Although some scholars have argued that Epicurus was an anti-reductionist, I agree
with those who argue that the ancient evidence points to the conclusion that Epicurus
was a reductionist.8 Unlike his predecessor Democritus, who appears to have been an
eliminativist and held that the only things that truly exist are atoms and the void at the
atomic level, Epicurus held that atoms and the void, and the world around us created
from them, were both equally “real,” and that all of the properties and actions of the
compound bodies in the visible world could be accounted for in terms of the properties,
motions, and arrangements of their component atoms. If this is the case, any analysis of
how Epicurus accounted for voluntary action, moral responsibility, and the swerve must
involve an account that makes them explainable in terms of atoms and the void. This is
significant, because if true, it means that the thoughts and actions of humans and all
living creatures always correspond to and depend on the motions of the atoms that make
them up, and that Epicurus would not posit qualities, occurrences, and actions in the
7 O’Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom, 65–109.

8 Proponents of the anti-reductionist view are Mitsis, “Epicurus’ Ethical Theory” and Epicurus’
Ethical Theory. The Pleasures of Invulnerability 129-166; Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism”
and “Epicurean Anti-reductionism”; and Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.102–12. On the
other hand, Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve,” Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic
Motion, 428–43, and O’Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom, 65–109 argue for reductionist positions. Sharples,
“Epicurus, Carneades, and the Atomic Swerve,” 175 n. 4 contains a clear discussion of the distinction
between eliminativism and reductionism. Németh, Epicurus on the Self, 70-107 opposes both
reductionist and anti-reductionist positions, arguing instead for a “non-reductive physicalist
interpretation” (72).
mind or the physical world in general that could not be explained in terms of the properties
and movement of atoms that compose them.
Necessity and Moral

Responsibility in Epicurus
There are three major surviving texts of Epicurus that bear on the topic of voluntary
action, moral responsibility, and the swerve: the Letter to Herodotus (Ep. Hdt.), Letter to
Menoeceus (Ep. Men.), and the fragments of On Nature (De Nat.) Book 25.
In the Letter to Herodotus Epicurus provides a succinct account of the principal tenets
of Epicurean physics. Since its main topic is physics, and not ethics, it is in one sense not
odd that there is no mention of the topics of moral responsibility and voluntary action in
it. It is striking, though, that Epicurus does not mention the swerve of atoms alongside
the other two motions of the atom, those caused by weight and those caused by colli-
sions, in sections 43–44 and 61–62. Scholars have proposed different explanations for
this. Some have suggested that there is lacuna in the text where the swerve was originally
mentioned,9 while others have argued that Epicurus chose not to mention the swerve
in the Letter, either because he did not want to emphasize it,10 or because he did not
consider it to be a continuous motion like the motions caused by weight and collision.11
Still others have argued that Epicurus probably developed the doctrine of the swerve
after he had composed the Letter.12
In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus treats the issue of moral responsibility and what
is in our power more directly. Near the end of the letter, Epicurus argues against the “fate
of the physicists”:
Since who do you consider to be better than the one who . . . laughs at the fate which
is introduced by some as the mistress of all, saying that some things happen by
necessity (κατ᾿ ἀνάγκην), others by chance (ἀπὸ τύχης), others depend on us
(παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς), because necessity (ἀνάγκην) is beyond our control, chance is unstable,
and what depends on us (παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς) is without a master, and it is to this that blame
and its opposite naturally are attached—since it would be better to follow the stories
about the gods than to be enslaved to the fate (εἱμαρμένην) of the natural philosophers.
For the former supports a hope that we can supplicate the gods by honoring them,
while the latter involves an inexorable necessity (ἀνάγκην).
9 Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, 186.

10 Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve,” 295.
11 Asmis, The Epicurean Theory of Free Will, 11–3; Epicurus’ Scientific Method, 280; and “Free Action
and the Swerve,” 278.
12 Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 11; Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente,
218–27.
226 WALTER ENGLERT
Although there are some textual difficulties in the passage,13 it is clear that Epicurus
is distinguishing the view of an all-controlling fate (εἱμαρμένη) introduced by natural
philosophers (οἱ φυσικοί) from what he takes to be the correct view: that some things
happen by necessity, some by chance, and some “depend on us” (παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς).14 In
Epicurus’s view, the concepts of “what depends on us” and of praise and blame are clearly
incompatible with the view that fate or necessity controls everything. Although he does
not go into detail about this threefold classification in this passage, Epicurus claims to
leave room for necessity, chance, and what “depends on us,” i.e., moral responsibility.
The letter is silent, though, about how Epicurus would explain each of the three
categories in atomic terms.
By far the most important discussion of moral responsibility and ethical development
in Epicurus’s own writings is contained in Book 25 of his major work On Nature, a trea-
tise in thirty-seven books that Epicurus composed over a period of many years. The
book has been partially reconstructed from the papyri surviving in Herculaneum after
the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 ce. The book, which has been identified as Book 25,15
has survived in three different fragmentary exemplars.16 Scholars have studied the work
extensively in the past thirty years, and have made great progress, despite the poor con-
dition of the papyri and obscurity of Epicurus’s discussion, in establishing the Greek text
and interpreting its meaning.17
The chief edition of the fragments of the book is by Simon Laursen, and the most
complete recent studies are those of Francesca Masi and Atilla Németh.18 In her detailed
and thoughtful study, Masi has reviewed earlier treatments of Book 25, discussed its
main themes, and presented a persuasive reading of what Epicurus was trying to accom-
plish in it.19
13 See the apparatus criticus to fragment 20 A in Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2.104.
14 For discussions of the meaning of the phrase “depends on us” (παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς), see Annas, “Epicurus
on Agency,” 55–6 and O’Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom, 82 n. 48.
15 Laursen, “Epicurus On Nature XXV.”
16 The three exemplars are contained in six Herculaneum papyri fragments: the first consists of
P.Herc. 1191; the second of P.Herc. 1420, 1056; the third P.Herc. 419, 1634, 697. For more detailed
information on the papyri of Book 25, see Laursen, “The Early Parts of Epicurus,” 1–38; and Masi,
Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 13–19.
17 Important studies include Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism” and “Epicurean
Anti-reductionism”; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.102–11; 2.104–13; Mitsis, Epicurus’
Ethical Theory, 148–66; Laursen, “Epicurus On Nature XXV,” “Epicurus On Nature XXV (Long-Sedley
20, B, C and j),” “The Early Parts of Epicurus,” and “The Later Parts of Epicurus”; Annas, Hellenistic
Philosophy of the Mind, 123–37 and “Epicurus on Agency”; Purinton, “Epicurus on the Degrees of
Responsibility,” and “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve”; Bobzien, “Did Epicurus
Discover the Free Will Problem?”; Hammerstaedt, “Atomismo e libertà nel XXV libero περὶ φύσεως di
Epicuro”; O’Keefe, “The Reductionist and Compatibilist Argument” and Epicurus on Freedom, 65–109;
Masi, “La nozione Epicurea di ΑΠΟΓΕΓΕΝΝΗΜΕΝΑ,” “L’antideterminismo di Epicuro e il suo
limite,” Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, “Libertà senza clinamen,” and “Memory, Self and Self-
Determination”; Németh, Epicurus on the Self.
18 Laursen, “The Early Parts of Epicurus,” and “The Later Parts of Epicurus”; Masi, Epicuro e la
filosofia della mente; Németh, Epicurus on the Self.
19 My discussion of Book 25 is much indebted to the work of Laursen and Masi, and to the work of
scholars who preceded them. Németh, Epicurus on the Self, is an important more recent treatment.
As far as we can tell from the extant fragments, the main purpose of Book 25 of On
Nature was to discuss the formation and development of various mental states of human
beings, including memory, self-perception and self-knowledge, the point at which we
human beings can be said to develop reason, and the extent to which we are responsible
for how our mind develops and for the way we act. In particular, in the course of this
discussion Epicurus seems to be arguing against various objections, probably raised by
some of the students in his school but traceable to Democritus and later members of his
school, that humans are not responsible for their mental states, characters, and actions,
and that everything happens by necessity.20
Many of the details of the discussion are obscure, but the major terms in which
Epicurus frames the discussion are clear. As is well known, Epicurus taught that the
mind and soul are corporeal, made up of very fine, smooth, and mobile atoms that
through their motions and the way they interact with the atoms of the body create life
in a living creature and are responsible for sensation, self-awareness, memory, and
thought. In Book 25, Epicurus contrasts the individual atoms that comprise the mind
and soul with the mind and soul taken as a whole, and in part of the argument discusses
the psychological development of human beings.21 As part of his account, Epicurus uses
various forms of the verb ἀπογεννάω (“to produce”), and in particular the perfect parti-
ciple of the verb in the singular (τὸ ἀπογεγεννημένον) and plural (τὰ ἀπογεγεννημένα) in
ways that make it clear that the term is central to his analysis. What is Epicurus trying to
say about how humans develop as they grow up, and how much of this development
depends on us or is out of our control?22
At birth, human beings have a “nature” (φύσις) which Epicurus describes as our
“original constitution” (ἡ ἐξ ἀρχῆς σύστασις) and also as “the first constitution of both
the atoms together with the original product” (ἡ πρώτη σύστασις τῶν τε ἀτόμων ἅμα καὶ
τοῦ ἀπογεννηθέντος). As human beings grow, we experience many things from the envi-
ronment through our senses, are affected by them, and change in response to them. At
the same time, we gradually acquire mental concepts, language, and the faculty of reason.
As a result of this process, our “original constitution” (ἡ ἐξ ἀρχῆς σύστασις) changes,
in such a way that it can be described as an “increasing constitution” (ἡ ἐπαυξομένη
σύστασις). For this intermediate stage Epicurus employs another form of the verb
20 For this view about who Epicurus’s philosophical opponents are in Book 25, see Masi, Epicuro e la
filosofia della mente, 106–57.
21 For the terms and their translations that follow, see Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 10. On
some points, and especially for the important term “developments” (τὰ ἀπογεγεννημένα) and its
cognates I follow Masi’s interpretation and analysis in “La nozione Epicurea di ΑΠΟΓΕΓΕΝΝΗΜΕΝΑ,”
Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, and “Libertà senza clinamen.”
22 In the outline of Epicurus’s view of human development in the next paragraph, I am following the
account in Masi, “La nozione Epicurea di ΑΠΟΓΕΓΕΝΝΗΜΕΝΑ,” 40 and “L’antideterminismo di
Epicuro e il suo limite,” 171. Indeed, as Francesca Masi plausibly argues, it appears that in Book 25
Epicurus uses three different forms of ἀπογεννάω (“to produce”) to refer to three different
developmental stages: the aorist participle (ἀπογεννηθέν: “the original product”), the present participle
(ἀπογεννώμενον: “the developing product”), and the perfect participle (ἀπογεγεννημένον: “the
developed product”). For a different account of ἀπογεγεννημένον and related terms, see Németh,
Epicurus on the Self, 86-98.
228 WALTER ENGLERT
ἀπογεννάω, the present participle ἀπογεννώμενον, or “the developing product.”23

During this intermediate period of development, we somehow become responsible for
our own development and our actions, and are rightfully subject to praise and blame.
We have the “cause from ourselves” (ἡ ἐξ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν αἰτία). At a yet later stage, our
characters become fully formed, and we, or our characters, are described as “fully devel-
oped” (τὰ ἀπογεγεννημένα). At this point, when we have reached adulthood, our char-
acters and the way we look at the world are fairly set, though not impossible to change.
With this basic framework in mind, we can examine six important passages from
Book 25 to explore in more detail how Epicurus tries to explain the role we play in our
own psychological and ethical development, and why his philosophical opponents who
think that this development happens by necessity are wrong.24
On Nature Passage 1:25
. . . of the things resulting from the (atoms) having been forced together, but also
(the atoms) having been forced together clearly in the same way. For having been
forced together, the same (atoms) have the nature to produce (ἀπο̣ γ[ενν]ᾶ̣ν̣) such
things and start on such a thing in accordance with the way of the same distance.
And the original products (τ[ὰ] ἀπ[ο]γεν[νηθέ]ντα)26 . . . [lacuna of a few letters] . . .
things happen in accordance with the way we have described and are able to cause
(ἀπεργαστικά) the same things. But many (original products), having the nature to
become causes (ἀπεργαστικά) of these things and those things because of themselves
(δι᾿ ἑαυτά), do not become causes (ἀπ[εργ]αστικά) (of them), not because of the
same cause of both the atoms and themselves (οὐ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν τῶν τε ἀτόμων
καί ἑαυτῶν), and with these especially we fight and rebuke, (thinking) that they behave
in accordance with a nature disturbed from the beginning, just as in the case of all
living creatures. For the nature of the atoms (ἡ τῶν ἀτόμων φύσις) has not assisted
them at all in certain actions and in the magnitude of their actions and dispositions,
but it is the developments themselves (αὐτὰ τὰ ἀπογεγεννημένα) that possess all or
most of the cause (αἰτία̣ν) of some of these things, and it is from that that some of
the atoms move with disturbed motions, not entirely because of the atoms . . . the
ones from those making their way in by necessity from the environment [into?] the
natural [cause] . . . being also the original constitution . . .”
23 In this translation, I follow Masi’s phrase “prodotto in via di sviluppo,” from “La nozione Epicurea
di απογεγεννημενα,” 40.
24 The translations that follow are my own, but have been informed by those of Sedley, “Epicurus’
Refutation of Determinism”; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers; Laursen, “The Later Parts of
Epicurus”; Inwood and Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy; and Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente. For
the most part I follow the Greek text found in Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus”; and Masi,
Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, but in several places I instead translate the Greek text found in Long
and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers.
25 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 19–20 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers,
20B (1–4) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 82–3, T7 (a, b).
26 For the reading (τ[ὰ] ἀπ[ο]γεν[νηθέ]ντα) I here follow Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente,
82, T7 (a).
Given the condition of the text, the complexity of the grammar, and the obscurity of the
terminology, scholars have differed in their interpretations of this section. The main
outline of the argument, however, seems to be as follows: When (individual mind27
atoms) are forced together in the body, they produce a new sort of entity, which is called
an “original product.” These original products, under normal conditions, are able to
become causes of different sorts of things, i.e. they are able to develop in a number of
different ways, “because of themselves” (δι᾿ ἑαυτά). The mind, then, because of this, plays
a role in its own development, and can be seen as a cause, and is thus responsible for its
own development. In some cases, though, this process seems to fail. The “original prod-
ucts” in this case seem not to allow for different types of development, and develop in
one way. Epicurus says in such cases we still fight with and rebuke these individuals,
thinking that the natures of their souls have remained, as if they were animals,28 as dis-
turbed as they were at birth, and have not developed. In such a case, Epicurus argues,
it is wrong to absolve them of responsibility by blaming the “atoms and themselves,”
implying, it seems, that it is not the nature of the atoms of the mind and soul that one
should hold responsible, but rather the developments themselves, i.e. the way the mind
has developed, that play the largest role in determining our actions and dispositions.
. . . at the same time fighting with many people and admonishing them, which is
contrary to the necessary cause belonging to the same method. Thus, whenever
something develops (ἀπογεννηθῇ) having some difference from the atoms in some
way that is distinct (τὸ λαμβάνον τ̣ινὰ ἑτερότητ̣[α τῶ]ν̣̣ ἀτ̣όμ̣ω̣ν κατά τινα τρόπον
διαληπτικόν), not in a way as if from a different distance (οὐ τὸν ὡς ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρου
διαστήματος), it acquires the cause from itself (τὴν ἐξ [ἑ]αυτοῦ αἰτίαν) and it imme-
diately distributes it as far as the first natures and somehow makes this all one.
Whence also those who are not able to distinguish such things correctly create a
storm for themselves about the judging of causes (περὶ τὴν τῶν̣̣ α̣ἰ̣τίων ἀπ̣ό̣φασιν),
and in the case of these very things we fight with and reproach and . . . some more
and some less . . . not on account of the cause out of themselves (τὴν ἐξ α̣ὑ̣τῶ̣ν̣ αἰτίαν)
but (the cause) of the best actions and thoughts . . . then we do not fight with them at
all, but they with themselves, since they join the cause with the atoms themselves.
And although they hate the cause out of themselves (τὴν̣̣ ἐξ αὑ̣τ̣ῶν̣̣ α̣[ἰ]τ̣ία̣ν̣) . . . or at
least do not rebuke as many things as . . . if they still do not have what is common
with the original . . . and briefly from the same causes . . .
27 In the discussion that follows, I use the English term “mind” for the mind/soul complex of atoms
that Epicurus argued was located in the chest, and was responsible for sensation, thinking, memory,
and other mental functions. Our fullest account of Epicurus’s views on the mind/soul (animus/anima)
complex is found in Lucretius Book 3.
28 The status of living creatures besides human beings in Book 25 is controversial. See Huby, “The
Epicureans, Animals, and Free Will”; and Verlinsky, “Do Animals Have Freewill?”
29 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 22–3 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 20B
(5–7) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 83, T7 (c).
230 WALTER ENGLERT
This is one of the most frequently discussed passages from Book 25. Epicurus begins
by describing how his opponents, who believe that everything happens by necessity,
fight and admonish others, and he points out that this seems contrary to the belief that
the people they are admonishing act out of necessity. Epicurus then describes how the
mind “develops” in ways not completely determined by the atoms that make it up, and
through this process can be said to “have the cause from itself ” (τὴν ἐξ [ἑ]αυτοῦ αἰτίαν).
Exactly how Epicurus thought this process works is difficult to tell. He states in the pas-
sage that as the mind develops, at a certain point it is able to take on what he calls a “dif-
ference from the atoms in some way that is distinct, and not in a way as if from a different
distance.” David Sedley has argued that in this passage we can see evidence of Epicurus’s
anti-reductionism, and he and others have suggested that there is a reference to the
swerve in such language.30 While Sedley’s view has stimulated valuable discussion, most
scholars who have commented on the passage since Sedley have seen it as explaining
how the mind somehow, as it develops, is able to bring about changes in itself, and then
integrate those changes in a way that affects its own atomic makeup and integrates them
into a unified whole. What sort of process Epicurus is describing here is perhaps best
paralleled in a passage in Lucretius (3.288–322) where he explains human character
development, and argues that no matter what type of atoms predominate in our minds,
or what sorts of motions they take, we can still learn through reason (ratio) to reshape
our minds so that we can attain happiness. Lucretius implies that reason allows us to
reconfigure how our mind atoms move, so that, even if we cannot completely eradicate
certain behaviors to which we are prone, we can reshape our thoughts and actions suffi-
ciently to live a happy Epicurean life.
If our characters developed by necessity, it seems, the type of mind and soul atoms
and the patterns of their movement would all either be fixed from birth, or if changeable,
not be under our control. Epicurus, denying this, explains that our characters can develop,
presumably at first under the influence of those like parents, teachers, and friends, and
gradually through our own thoughts and initiative, by acquiring new patterns of move-
ment that allow us to change our characters in ways that affect our behavior. As this pas-
sage shows, during part of this process, the development of the soul is able to affect the
mind and soul atoms, making the change “one,” i.e. effective, again probably by creating
new atomic arrangements and movements and making them permanent. This process,
Epicurus thinks, is unfortunately overlooked by those who think everything happens by
necessity. Not being able to judge causation well, they contradict themselves, and in
effect “hate the cause out of themselves,” i.e., do not acknowledge nor take advantage of
the fact that they can change their characters and actions.
30 Sedley, “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism” and “Epicurean Anti-reductionism”; Long and

Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.107–12; Hammerstaedt, “Atomismo e libertà nel XXV libero περὶ
φύσεως di Epicuro,” 157–58 suggests that the reference to “some difference (ἑτερότητα) of (or from) the
atoms” is a reference to the swerve, though I think there is not enough evidence to tell, and the passage
can be interpreted without such an assumption.
31 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 32–4 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers,
20C (1) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 94, T8 (a).
From the first beginning we always have seeds (σπέρμ̣[ατά) leading us, some towards
these things, some towards those things, and some into both of these, of actions
and of thoughts and of dispositions, both to a lesser and greater extent. Therefore it
depends on us (παρ’ ἡμᾶς) at some point absolutely that the development (τὸ
ἀπογεγεννημ̣έ̣ν̣ον) has become this way or that way, and that those things flowing in
by necessity through the pores from what surrounds us (τά ἐκ τοῦ π̣εριέχοντος κ[α]τ᾿
ἀνάγκη̣ν διὰ τοὺς πό[ρο]υ̣ς εἰσρέοντα) at some point depend on us (παρ’ ἡμᾶς)
or rather on our own beliefs from ourselves (παρὰ τ̣α̣ς ἡμετ̣έ̣ρ̣α̣ς [ἐ]ξ ἡμῶν
αὐτ̣ῶ̣ν̣ δόξ[ας]) . . .
This section seems to repeat some of the analysis from On Nature passage 1, describing
how we have elements in our minds and souls that can develop in different directions.
Because of this potential for developing our actions, thoughts, and dispositions in dif-
ferent ways, Epicurus argues that it “depends on us” at some point how our souls have
developed. He is more specific in this passage, though, about what that means for us
as we develop. Epicurus here indicates that once we have developed in a certain way,
it affects our relationship with “those things flowing in by necessity through the pores
from what surrounds us.” These “things” are apparently the atomic images that flow off
all objects and impinge on our sense organs when we perceive anything, and on our
minds when we think about anything.32 In the latter case, the mind must selectively
focus, by means of the process called the “focusing of the mind” (ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας),
on one object and not on all of the almost infinite images available to it.33 Of all of the
nearly infinite images our minds can focus on as we sense things through our eyes, ears,
and other sense organs, and as we receive thoughts as we think, we in fact only focus on
one particular stream of images, and let all of the other nearly infinite number of image
streams pass by unnoticed. These countless external images can in one sense be viewed
as flowing in “by necessity,” since we have no control over all of the images that stream in
at us, but in another way, Epicurus argues, which image we choose to focus on is depend
ent on us, that is, on our process of focusing, which ultimately depends, he says, on our
beliefs. How? A brief example might help clarify this. When two people see a piece of
cake on a table, they may have very different reactions to it. One person might next focus
on mental images of getting the cake and eating it while shutting out all other images
that stream in at him from outside, while the other person might focus on a different
mental image, out of all that stream in at him, and shun eating it. The different reactions
of the two people in such a situation, Epicurus holds, ultimately depend on their beliefs
and the thoughts that stem from them, and how things seem to us depends on our
“developments” that are, or are parts of, our characters. Since our “developments,” or
32 Our fullest ancient account of the atomic images that account for perception and the even finer
atomic images that account for thought is found in Lucretius 4.1–822.
33 On Epicurus’s concept of ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας, see Lucretius 4.794–815 and the helpful discussion
in Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of the Mind, 165–66.
232 WALTER ENGLERT
how we develop, depends on us, then so too do what mental images we focus on as we
think and deliberate depend on us.
. . . of which the emotions do not cease to become . . . both admonishing and fighting
and reforming one another as if having the cause also within themselves (ὡς ἔχοντας
καὶ ἐν ἑαυ̣τοῖς τὴν αἰτίαν) and not only in the original constitution and in the acci-
dental necessity of that which surrounds and enters. For if someone should attribute
to admonishing and being admonished the accidental necessity of what is present to
himself then on each occasion . . . [gap of a number of words] . . . understand, blaming
or praising, but if he should do this, he would be admitting the very thing which in
regards to ourselves we think in accordance with the preconception of responsibility
(κατ]ὰ̣ τὴν τ̣ῆ̣ ς̣ α̣ἰτ̣ί̣ας πρό[λ]η̣ ψ̣ιν), changing the name . . .
Here again, Epicurus is engaged in arguing with opponents who say everything we do
happens by necessity, and is trying to show their view is self-defeating. He points out
that his opponents admonish, fight with, and try to reform the views of others as if “they
have the cause also within themselves,” and not in the “original constitution” (of their
souls) and in the “accidental necessity of that which surrounds and enters,” that is, in the
images that stream in by necessity from outside. Such an opponent, Epicurus argues,
merely changes the name, not the idea, of what we mean by “cause” or “responsibility.”
Here Epicurus makes reference to his doctrine of πρόληψις, or preconception,35 of “cause”
or “responsibility.” Epicurus argues that his opponent, although he attributes the process
of understanding, blaming, or praising to necessity, actually acts in a way that fits what
we mean by the concept of “responsibility,” changing only the name but not the reality.
. . . of so great an error. For such an argument is turned upside down and is never
able to establish that all things that we say are by necessity really are such, but he
fights with someone about this very thing as if that person is foolish through his
own agency (δι᾿ ἑαυτόν). And even if he should keep saying forever that he does this
in turn by necessity on each occasion on the basis of arguments, he does not reason
well in attaching the responsibility of reasoning correctly to himself (εἰς ἑαυτόν),
and of not reasoning correctly to his opponent. But unless he should stop (attach-
ing responsibility) to himself ([εἰ]ς ἑαυ̣τό[ν]), but should assign it to necessity, he
would not . . .
34 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 35 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 20C
(2–4) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 95, T8 (c).
35 For the Epicurean doctrine of “preconception” or “general concept” (πρόληψις) see Rist, Epicurus:
An Introduction, 26–30; Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method, 19–80; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 1.87–90.
36 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 37 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 20C
(5–7) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 95, T8 (d).
Here again Epicurus describes his opponent who is arguing that everything happens
by necessity as arguing in a self-contradictory way. When the opponent argues with
others in order to try to change their minds, he is acting as if the one he is arguing against
is responsible for his or her views. Even if Epicurus’s opponent should deny this, and say
that at each stage of the argument he is arguing by necessity, Epicurus maintains that his
opponent is still really maintaining that he is responsible for arguing correctly, and the
one he is arguing with is responsible for not arguing correctly. Epicurus imagines that
his opponent could then argue that he is not responsible for how he argues, but that he
argues necessarily, but even here Epicurus thinks this would count against the view of
his opponent.
. . . but labeling that which is called “from ourselves” (]φ̣᾿ [ἡμ]ῶ̣ν αὐτωγ) with the
name of necessity is only to change the name. But he needs to show that we use a
preconception with faulty outlines when we call the cause “through ourselves”
(δι᾿ ἡ̣μῶ[ν αὐ]των) and not . . . [long lacuna] . . . but it becomes empty even to apply
the term “by necessity” to what you are saying. But unless someone will show this
and is able to turn away some helping element (συνεργόν) and impulse (ὅρμημα) of
ours from those things we accomplish when we call the cause “through ourselves”
(δι᾿ ἡμῶν αὐτων), but applies the term “necessity” (ἀνάγκην) to all the things that we
are eager (προ]θ̣[υ]μ̣ούμεθα) to do in space (κατὰ χ̣ώραν)38 and name the cause
“through ourselves” (δι᾿ ἡμῶν αὐ̣[τω]ν̣), he will only change the name, and he will
not modify any action of ours, just as in some cases a person who comprehends the
sorts of things that are necessary is accustomed to turn aside those who are eager
(προθ̣υμουμένους) to do something in spite of the compulsion. But thought will seek
to discover what sort of thing it is necessary to consider that which is done some-
how out of ourselves (τὸ ἐξ [ἡμ]ῶν αὐτω[ν π]ω̣ς π̣ραττόμενον) with an eagerness (τῇ
προθυμ̣[ίαι) for acting. For he has nothing else to do but to say . . . [long break] . . . espe-
cially of the silliest. But if someone does not force the point or does not set out the
thing he is refuting or introducing, only the word is changed, as I have been saying
for a long time. Those who first wrote adequately about causes, and who not only far
surpassed those who came before but also those who came after them many times
over, even though they provided great relief in many things, failed to see that they
made necessity and the accidental (τ[ὴ]ν ἀνάγκην καὶ ταὐτόματ[ο]ν) the cause of
everything. The very account that teaches this fell apart and it escaped the notice of
the [great] man that in his actions he was clashing with his opinions and unless a
certain forgetfulness of his opinions affected his actions he would constantly be
causing trouble for himself. But where his opinion prevailed, he was falling into dire
straits, and where it did not prevail, he was filled with strife because of the opposi-
tion between his actions and his beliefs. Since these things are so, it is necessary also,
37 Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 37–42 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 20C
(8–15) = Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 95–6, T8 (e, f, g).
38 The exact role of the phrase κατὰ χώραν (“in space”) in the sentence is unclear. I follow Laursen,
“The Later Parts of Epicurus,” 54 in construing it with “to do” (πράττειν) rather than with “necessity”
(ἀνάγκην) as Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 98 does.
234 WALTER ENGLERT
concerning the point I had reached speaking from the beginning for the purpose of
clarifying these things, to give an account . . .
In this final lengthy passage from Book 25 that we will examine, Epicurus returns to the
notion of πρόληψις, or preconception, and maintains that it counts against his opponent
that human beings have a preconception of a cause being “through ourselves,” and that
his opponent must show why this preconception of “through ourselves” is not correct. It
does no good, Epicurus argues, to simply replace the phrase “through ourselves” with
the term “necessity,” because this fails to explain where our preconception of “through
ourselves” comes from, or why it is incorrect. The exact nature of the argument that
Epicurus makes about our preconception of “through ourselves,” and why any attempt
on the part of his opponent to rename it “necessity,” is difficult to determine, both
because of the uncertainty of the text and the difficulty of Epicurus’s discussion. The
translation I have given above is based on the texts of Laursen and Masi, who disagree
on how to interpret parts of it. I want to make a suggestion about the terms of Epicurus’s
argument that, while conjectural, seems to fit the evidence.
In the first half of this passage, Epicurus challenges his opponent, who is trying to
argue that everything we do is necessitated, to show where our preconception of
“through ourselves” (δι᾿ ἡμῶν αὐτων) is in error. We normally distinguish, Epicurus
implies, between actions that are necessary and those that are “through ourselves.” For
his opponent to succeed, if the text and my translation of it are correct, Epicurus says
that his opponent must separate off (conceptions of) a “helping element” (συνεργόν) and
“impulse” (ὅρμημα) from our description of actions that we call “through ourselves” and
which “we are eager (προ]θ̣[υ]μ̣ούμεθα) to do in space (κατὰ χώραν).” If true, this
passage suggests that part of our preconception of actions that we perform “through
ourselves” is, according to Epicurus, that such actions involve a “helping element” and
“impulse” (presumably within us), and are actions that we are eager to perform. Unless
his opponent can show that there is no “helping element” or “impulse” involved, or that
these elements are not central to the concept of “through ourselves,” all he will do is
change the name, not “modify any action of ours,” i.e., change the nature of our actions.
Epicurus then compares what his opponent is trying to do with someone who, know-
ing that some people are eager to do something but cannot because of some necessity
that prevents them (and which they presumably are not aware of), is accustomed to
turn them aside from what they are eager to do in spite of the compulsion. But such a
comparison still leaves his opponent with a problem: if everything we do is done out of
necessity, how are we to explain “that which is done somehow out of ourselves with an
eagerness for acting” (τὸ ἐξ [ἡμ]ῶν αὐτω[ν π]ω̣ς π̣ραττόμενον τῇ προθυμ̣[ίαι τοῦ
πράτ]τ̣ειν)?
Although much of this discussion must remain conjectural because of the poor con-
dition of the text, it is possible to see Epicurus arguing here that no matter how much his
opponent tries to redefine actions that are “through ourselves” as in reality “necessary,”
his opponent still will not be able to account for our preconception of acting “through
ourselves,” a preconception which Epicurus argues involves the notions of a “helping
element,” “impulse,” or an “eagerness for acting.”39 Such terminology, as we will see

when we look at Lucretius’s discussion of the swerve, is suggestive. Although Epicurus
nowhere mentions the swerve in On Nature Book 25, it could be argued that he is
heading in the direction of the swerve in this section with his discussion of the precon-
ception of “through ourselves” and the connected notions of “helping element,”
“impulse,” and “eagerness for acting.”
In the second half of this passage, Epicurus turns to describe the great achievements
of his predecessors (the early atomists) who “first wrote adequately about causes.” As
great as they were, they failed to see that their teaching made “necessity and the acciden-
tal” (τ[ὴ]ν ἀνάγκην καὶ ταὐτόματ[ο]ν) the cause of everything. This being so, even the
great man (i.e., Democritus himself)40 failed to see that his opinions clashed with his
actions. Presumably, while he taught that everything happened by necessity, he acted as
if he was not constrained in all that he did. Epicurus, with his teaching that not all things
happen through necessity, and leaving room for notions like things “depending on us”
and happening “through us,” has shown that we can be considered responsible for the
way our characters develop and for actions that are performed “through us.”
Having surveyed some of the major sections of On Nature Book 25, we are now in a
position to take stock of how they help us reconstruct Epicurus’s analysis of moral
responsibility. As we have seen, Epicurus’s main concern in the book is to defend his
views on moral responsibility and human psychological development against objec-
tions that our characters, thoughts, and actions are all necessitated from birth. He does
this by distinguishing the individual atoms that we are born with from the mind and
soul complex composed by them. Epicurus claims that our minds, as they develop, begin
to be the cause of themselves, and to be responsible for how we develop. As we grow up
and acquire reason, we become responsible for what our characters are, and how we
react to external stimulus. Because of the poor state of preservation of the text, many of
the details of how this happens must be supplied, but it looks like Epicurus imagines that
the mind, through the use of reason and the education we receive, becomes responsible
for what kind of person we become. As noted earlier, this view is consistent with the
account of character development and reformation that Lucretius presents at 3.288–322,
where he argues that even if we have a preponderance of one type or another of mind
atom, and have a tendency to be prone to anger, or to passivity, or to other character
types, we have the ability to modify our characters through philosophical training to
achieve a happy life. Precisely how this happens is not spelled out in Book 25 or in the
Lucretius passage, but it must involve changing the way our minds react in certain situa-
tions. A likely mechanism is through changing the way our mind focuses on images as
39 For a clear and insightful analysis of this section of Book 25, see Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover
the Free Will Problem?,” 302–305. I agree with Bobzien that in this passage we see that “Thus Epicurus
seems to envisage necessity as some kind of compulsion, and to presuppose that if our actions are
necessitated, they will happen even if we do not desire to bring them about; by contrast, if we are the
causes of our actions, our desiring to act will be causally connected with the action itself.”
40 Epicureans often referred to Democritus as “the great man.” See Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 2.108.
236 WALTER ENGLERT
we think. As mentioned earlier, Epicurus taught that our mind thinks by focusing on
external images. This focusing ability of the mind, named ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας, is the
power of the mind that allows it to focus on new thoughts as we think. In order to change
our characters, the mind must somehow learn to focus on some images and exclude
others. For example, if a person is too prone to anger, she may have to learn how, after
receiving a perceived slight, to focus not on images of a kind that lead to a feeling of
anger, but on other images that lead to different sorts of feelings.
Surveying the fragments of Book 25, I agree with Francesca Masi that in these pas-
sages Epicurus is discussing mental states and is trying to maintain that at some point in
our psychological development, through education and our reason, we are able to have
some control over how we develop morally, and become morally responsible.41 I also
agree with Masi that it looks like when Epicurus composed Book 25 of On Nature he had
not yet developed the swerve, but that he was working on issues that would ultimately
lead him to do so. Masi’s view is that Epicurus’s worries about how and the extent to
which we have control over and are responsible for our character development was the
aspect of the discussion in Book 25 that may have led him to develop the swerve. This is
possible, but it may also be another aspect of the discussion in Book 25 that played a
greater role in Epicurus’s development of the swerve. As we saw in Passage 6 above,
Epicurus emphasized that humans think that in actions that we perform “through our-
selves,” and that we are eager to perform, there is a “helping element” (συνεργόν) and an
“impulse” (ὅρμημα). It is possible that Epicurus, pushed to explain what this “helping
element” or “impulse” might be at the atomic level, came up with an explanation that
involved the swerve of atoms.
The Swerve and Freedom

of Action in Lucretius 2.216–93
The main source of our knowledge of Epicurus’s doctrine of the swerve and the role it
plays in Epicurus’s physics and psychology is the Roman poet and Epicurean, Lucretius.
Lucretius introduces the swerve in De rerum natura Book 2, as part of his discussion of
atomic motion. After treating the motions of atoms caused by collision and by weight,
Lucretius discusses a third motion of the atoms, the swerve. His discussion falls into two
main parts: the first (2.216–50) discusses the role the swerve plays in Epicurean physics,
and the second (2.251–93) the role it plays in Epicurean psychology.
As we begin to examine the two sections of Lucretius’s treatment, it is important to
see what Lucretius’s purpose is in discussing the swerve at this point in his account.
Lucretius is here not primarily concerned with giving a detailed account of the precise
role that the swerve plays in Epicurean physics and psychology. Rather, his main purpose
41 Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 256–62.

is to prove, simply and conclusively, that the swerve exists.42 Since the swerve, as he tells
us, is a random and unpredictable motion of the atom a minimal amount of space, it is
something that one might easily doubt exists. To prove its existence, Lucretius argues in
good Epicurean fashion that we can see evidence of the swerve’s existence by looking at
the world around us. He argues that the swerve must exist, because if it did not, (1) no
compound bodies would exist (lines 216–50), and (2) we would not be able to explain
the ability of living creatures to initiate their own actions (lines 252–93). Exactly how he
does this will become clear as we examine the two sections of his account.
Lucretius’s first proof of the swerve’s existence is based on Epicurean physics
(2.216–50):43
In this matter there is this, too, that I want you to understand,

that when the first bodies are moving straight downward through the void
by their own weight, at times completely undetermined
and in undetermined places they swerve a little from their course,
but only so much as you could call a change of motion. 220
Because unless they were accustomed to swerving, all would fall
downwards like drops of rain through the deep void,
nor would a collision occur, nor would a blow be produced
by the first beginnings. Thus nature would never have created anything.
But if by chance anyone believes that heavier bodies, 225
because they are carried along more quickly straight through the void,
fall upon lighter ones from above and so produce
the blows which are able to supply generating motions,
he goes astray, far from true reasoning.
For whatever things fall through water and insubstantial air 230
must hasten their falls in proportion to their weight,
since the body of water and the thin nature of air
are not at all able to delay each thing equally,
but yield more quickly when they are overcome by heavier things.
But on the other hand neither on any side nor at any 235
time can empty void hold up anything,
but must, as its nature requires, hasten to give way.
Therefore all must be borne on through the peaceful void
moved at equal rates, though not of equal weights.
Thus heavier bodies will never be able to fall on lighter 240
ones from above nor on their own to cause collisions which produce
the various motions through which nature accomplishes things.
Wherefore again and again it is necessary that bodies
swerve a little, but no more than a minimum, lest we seem
to be inventing oblique motions, and the true facts refute it. 245
For we see that this is clear and manifest, that weights,
42 This point is well made by Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 324; and Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia
della mente, 231, 237.
43 All translations from Lucretius are from Englert, Lucretius, On the Nature of Things.
238 WALTER ENGLERT
insofar as in them lies, cannot travel obliquely,

when they fall from above, as far as you can perceive.
But that it does not make itself swerve at all
from the straight direction of its path, who is there who can perceive?
As scholars have noted, Lucretius’s account in this section is an example of a form of

argument favored by the Epicureans, σημείωσις ἀπὸ τῶν φαινομένων (“inference from
the phenomena”), a form of the “modus tollendo tollens,” or “Denying the Consequent”
argument.44 In lines 216–50, the basic structure of the argument is:45
Proposition to be proved (ll. 216–20): The swerve of atoms exists.

Step 1 (221–24): If the swerve did not exist, atoms would not collide and form com-
pound bodies.
Addendum to step 1 (225–42): Refutation of the belief that atoms could collide in
some other way without the swerve.
Step 2 (implied): But compound bodies exist.
Step 3 (243–44): Therefore the swerve exists.
Addendum to entire argument (245–50): The swerve must be a minimum, and no more,
because if were larger than a minimum, we would see its effects around us when com-
pound bodies fall downwards.
There is much that could be said about this first section on the swerve. Democritus
apparently posited only one type of atomic motion, that caused by collision, and schol-
ars have debated why and how Epicurus developed his theory of three types of atomic
motions: downward fall caused by weight, motion in all directions caused by collisions,
and the minimal swerve of atoms.46 The most important point to notice for our purposes,
however, is that the main thrust of this section is to prove that the swerve exists. As we
will see, this is identical to the main thrust of the second section (2.251–93) on the swerve
that immediately follows:
And next if every motion is always linked,

and a new one always arises from an old one in sure succession,
and if by declining the primary bodies do not make
a certain beginning of motion to burst the laws of fate,
so that cause does not follow cause from infinity, 255
from where does there arise for living creatures throughout the world,
from where, I say, is this free will, torn from fate,
44 Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 191, 301, 309; O’Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom, 112; Masi,
Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 231, 237.
45 For a clear and more detailed outline of the argument, see Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion,
309.
46 On this question, see Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 27–62; O’Keefe,
“Does Epicurus Need the Swerve” and Epicurus on Freedom, 110–22; Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free
Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve,” 259–64; Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 305–309.
by which we go wherever pleasure leads each of us,

and likewise decline our motions at no fixed time
or fixed region of space, but where the mind itself carries us? 260
For doubtless one’s own will provides for each a beginning
of these things, and from it motions stream through the limbs.
For don’t you also see that while the starting gates drop in an instant,
the desirous force of the horses is nevertheless not able
to burst forth as suddenly as the mind itself desires? 265
For the entire store of matter throughout the whole body has
to be stimulated to motion, so that once it is stimulated and has exerted itself
throughout every limb it can follow the mind’s eagerness.
So you can see that a beginning of motion is created in the heart,
and comes forth first from the will of the mind, 270
and then is conveyed through the whole body and limbs.
Nor is it similar to when we are struck by a blow and travel forward
by the great strength and great constraint of another.
For then it is clear that the whole matter of our entire
body moves and is seized against our will, 275
until the will reins it in throughout the limbs.
Now you see, don’t you, that although an external force pushes many,
and often forces them to move forward and to be thrown headlong
against their will, there is nevertheless something in our breast
which is able to offer resistance and fight back? 280
And at its bidding too the store of matter
is sometimes forced to change direction through the limbs and joints,
and although it is pushed forward, it is checked and again comes to rest.
Wherefore it is also necessary to admit that there is likewise in the atoms
another cause of motions besides collisions and weight, 285
from which comes this innate power in us,
since we see that nothing can come into being from nothing.
For weight prevents everything from happening by blows
as if by external force. But so that the mind itself
has no internal necessity in performing all its actions, 290
and is not forced as if conquered to bear and suffer,
the tiny swerve of the atoms at no fixed region
of space nor fixed time brings it about.
This is a difficult but crucial passage. Many scholars have analyzed it over the past five
decades, and no agreement has been reached about how to interpret it.47
47 Important discussions include: Giussani, Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, 125–67, 186–95;
Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, 2.837–52; Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists;
Asmis, The Epicurean Theory of Free Will and “Free Action and the Swerve”; Sedley, “Epicurus’
Refutation of Determinism” and “Epicurean Anti-reductionism”; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 1.102–12; Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action; Gulley, “Lucretius on Free
Will”; Sharples, “Epicurus, Carneades, and the Atomic Swerve” and Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,
42–3, 64–6; Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of the Mind and “Epicurus on Agency”; Cucchiarelli,
240 WALTER ENGLERT
As was the case with the first section on the swerve (2.216–50), this second section is
an argument in the form of a modus tollendo tollens. Its basic intent is to show that the
swerve of atoms exists by pointing out phenomena that cannot otherwise be explained,
and the overall argument has been well captured by Don Fowler:
If there is no clinamen, there is no voluntas; but we can see that there is a voluntas;
therefore the clinamen exists.48
How does Lucretius make this case, and what does the way he makes the case tell us
about what role the swerve plays in Epicurean psychology and in Epicurus’s analysis of
voluntary action and moral responsibility? To find out, we must examine the passage in
more detail. The section thus falls into three main sections: (1) 251–62, which introduces
the section; (2) 263–83, which presents examples of voluntary and forced actions; and (3)
284–93, which summarizes and concludes the argument.49 Set out in the form of the
modus tollendo tollens, the argument can be outlined as follows:
Proposition to be proved (carried over from lines 216–20): The swerve of atoms exists.
Step 1 (251–62): If the swerve of atoms did not exist, living creatures would not pos-
sess libera voluntas.
Step 2 (263–83): But living creatures do have libera voluntas.
A. (263–71): Example of voluntary action: horses moving from the starting gate.
B. (272–83): Example of forced action (person who is shoved), with voluntary action
initiated to counteract it.
Step 3 (284–93): Therefore the swerve exists in the atoms.
(1) 251–62: Although Lucretius expresses his thought in a somewhat complicated way in
this section, the main line of his argument is clear. If atoms do not swerve, Lucretius
asks, what is the source of libera voluntas that living creatures possess, by which they
move wherever and whenever their minds lead them? The section is composed of two
sentences. It opens with an elaborate conditional that is composed of a protasis (“And
next if . . . from infinity”) in 251–55, and apodosis (“from where . . . carries us?”) in 256–60.
More simply put, this section of the text argues, “If the atoms do not swerve, what is the
source of libera voluntas that animals50 possess, by which they move when and where
“Lucrezio, de rer. nat. IV 984 (parte prima)” and “Lucrezio, de rer. nat. IV 984 (parte seconda)”;
O’Keefe, “Does Epicurus Need the Swerve,” Epicurus on Freedom, and “Action and Responsibility”;
Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve”; Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover the
Free Will Problem?”; Mitsis, “How Modern is Freedom of the Will?”; Russell, “Epicurus and Lucretius
on Saving Agency”; Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion; Wendlandt and Baltzly, “Knowing Freedom”;
Maso, “Clinamen ciceroniano”; Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 218–55 and “Swerves and
Voluntary Actions” ; Németh, Epicurus on the Self, 92–107, 133–165.
48 Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 323.
49 For a more detailed analysis of each of the three sections, see Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and
Voluntary Action, 63–74. Some of the present analysis is based on my earlier account. For a slightly
different outline of the section, see Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 323.
50 Lucretius’s account makes clear that libera voluntas, or the ability to act voluntarily, applies to all
living creatures, human and non-human alike.
they wish?” The main point of the sentence is to connect the swerve of atoms with the
actions of living creatures.
As I interpret this section, Lucretius analyzes voluntas as the faculty of the mind that
is responsible for the power which living creatures possess to initiate movement, and
presents the swerve as the means by which the voluntas begins the motions it wants to
perform. The swerve, in other words, is the source of motion within us, and is involved
in every voluntary action. The text shows this in several ways. First, in lines 253–54,
Lucretius says that atoms by declining provide a motus principium quoddam (“a certain
beginning of motion”), and in 261–62 that the voluntas provides a beginning of acting
(his rebus . . . principium), thus identifying the swerve with the action of the voluntas.
Second, Lucretius carefully links the swerve with our actions by applying terminology
which implies a close connection with the swerve, when in lines 259–60 he says that it is
through the voluntas that we “likewise swerve our motions” (declinamus item motus) at
no fixed time or place. And third, Lucretius’s entire argument gains in strength if we
realize he is identifying the swerve as the source of motion in living creatures. What
in effect he argues, in the form of a modus tollendo tollens argument, as we mentioned
earlier, is that if the swerve does not exist, we cannot explain why living creatures have
the power to move when they want, i.e., why they seem to have the source of their
motions within them.51
(2) 263–83: In this section, Lucretius analyzes two examples of the actions of living
creatures, one a voluntary action of horses leaping forth at a starting gate, and one a
forced action of a human who is pushed but then recovers. Scholars have analyzed these
examples in a wide variety of ways, in line with their views of the role swerve plays in
Epicurean psychology, and I will have more to say about their views below. For now,
I argue that the two examples are taken most naturally, in line with the opening of the
passage, as illustrations of the swerve as the source of motion in living creatures, in line
with Lucretius’s main goal in the passage of pointing to features of the visible world that
cannot be explained without the supposition that the swerve of atoms exists.
In both examples Lucretius is careful to point out that the motion involved must have
a beginning within the living creature. The horse’s body has to be stimulated to action
from within, and Lucretius points to a beginning of motion (initum motus, 269) in the
“heart and voluntas of the mind” which then transfers the motion throughout the body.
Likewise, the ability we have of recovering from enforced motion illustrates not only
that there is a difference between forced and self-initiated motions, but indicates what
the difference is. There is something in our breast (in pectore nostro quiddam, 279–80)
which can fight back against enforced motion. Lucretius, I think, leaves no doubt that
this “beginning of motion” (initus motus) is the same as the “certain beginning of
motion” (motus principium quoddam) of 253–54, the swerve. The living creatures in the
51 For a different view, see Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 237–39, who suggests that
Lucretius is not arguing simply that the voluntas exists, but that the capacity of the mind to form the
voluntas exists. This is part of her argument that the swerve is not involved in every voluntary action,
but as Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists and Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover the Free Will
Problem?” have argued, that it is designed to introduce a non-deterministic element in character
formation.
242 WALTER ENGLERT
two examples initiate actions by the power they possess, called voluntas, which in turn is
a faculty of the soul that initiates motion by means of the swerve, which is defined as a
beginning of motion. Lucretius, attempting in 2.216–93 to prove the existence of the
swerve, introduces in these lines examples of actions that he thinks cannot be explained
without the supposition of the swerve, which is responsible for them.
That Lucretius is here pointing to events in the physical world that we can see (the
horse leaping from the starting gate, and the person who is shoved and recovers) as the
clear result of the motion of atoms at the atomic level (in this case, of the swerve) is fur-
ther strengthened by an earlier passage in Book 2 (112–41), where Lucretius notes that
the motions of motes in a sunbeam provide not only an example of what atomic motion
is like, but actually illustrate the visible effects of motions at the atomic level. The back
and forth motions of the motes we can see in a sunbeam must ultimately be caused by
the motions of atoms which strike larger atomic complexes which in their turn move
even larger atomic complexes, until they move the motes we can see moving in the sun-
beams. As Lucretius writes (2.138–41):
So motion arises from the first beginnings and gradually reaches

the level of our senses, so that those things are moved
also which we are able to see in the light of the sun,
yet by what blows they do this is not readily apparent.
As several scholars have pointed out,52 Lucretius seems to be describing a similar

process in the examples of the horse leaping forth from the starting gate and the person
recovering after being shoved. In the examples of the horse and the person, the actions
we see are the results of swerves of atoms that start a series of atomic motions that even-
tually culminate in the motions of the whole living creatures.
(3) 284–93: In the final section, Lucretius concludes his argument by reminding the
reader that the swerve must be posited as a third type of motion to allow us to explain
where the innate power (innata potestas: 286) of acting voluntarily comes from. Lucretius,
after presenting examples of the actions of living creatures which he says demonstrate
that there is something within us which enables us to initiate action and fight back against
external force, returns with the “wherefore” (quare) of 284 to the atoms and asserts that
there must be a type of motion, different from collisions and the downward fall caused
by weight, which accounts for this power in us, since, according to the Epicurean
maxim, nothing can come into being from nothing. In other words, if we cannot explain
the movements of living creatures in terms of the collisions and weights of their compo-
nent atoms, there must be a third type of motion in terms of which they can be explained.
The “tiny swerve of atoms” (exiguum clinamen principiorum) makes sure that the “mind
itself ” (mens53 ipsa) does not have internal necessity in doing everything and is not
52 Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 328; and Sharples, “Epicurus, Carneades, and the Atomic
Swerve,” 182.
53 The manuscripts read res instead of mens. Mens is Lambinus’s emendation which is accepted by
most editors. See Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 326–27.
forced, as if conquered, to bear and suffer. In line with what he has already said in the
passage from 251 onwards, I take it that when Lucretius says the swerve prevents the
mind from having internal necessity, he means that it is the basis of the mind’s ability to
be active and makes it so that its motions are not subject to necessity. Without the
swerve, the mind, and thus all living creatures, would act “as if conquered” and be forced
to bear and suffer whatever came to them. If this were the case, we would not see, as we
do, living creatures actively initiate their own motions.
On the basis of this interpretation of lines 251–93, it is clear that when Lucretius says
that the swerve is the source of libera voluntas in living creatures, he means that the
swerve is the source of the ability that living creatures have of initiating their own
actions, in other words, that it is the ultimate source of their motions, and he emphasizes
this aspect throughout the passage, both explicitly and with the two examples of the race
horses and the falling man who recovers his balance. Again, the basic structure of the
argument is: If the swerve of atoms did not exist, living creatures would not be able to
initiate their own motions. But they do. Therefore, the swerve of atoms must exist.
But if the swerve is involved as a source of motion in every voluntary action of all liv-
ing creatures, what is the precise role that it plays? This is a more difficult question, and
given the nature of our sources, impossible to settle with certainty.54 Various theories
have been proposed,55 but if I am correct that the main point of Lucretius 2.216–93 is
primarily to prove the existence of the swerve with two modus tolendo tollens arguments,
one based on the existence of compound bodies (216–50), and one based on the volun-
tary motions of living creatures (251–93), we should not be surprised if in this passage
Lucretius does not provide enough information for us to determine precisely the
swerve’s role at the atomic level in Epicurean psychology, theory of action, and ethics.
Modern Views on the Swerve
As noted earlier, modern interpretations of the role the swerve plays in Epicurean
psychology and ethical theory are numerous and vary greatly. Also as noted earlier, the
54 One place where we might have expected an account of the role the swerve plays in the voluntary
actions of living creatures is in Lucretius 4.877–906. Although Lucretius does not explicitly mention
the swerve in the passage, I agree with those who believe that given the account of the swerve in
Lucretius 2.251–93, the swerve must be assumed to play a role in the process described at 4.877–906.
For different views on what role the swerve may have played in this account, see Englert, Epicurus on
the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 121–26; Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic
Swerve,” 276–79; and Fowler, “Lucretius on the Clinamen and ‘Free Will’ (II 251–93),” 338–44 and
Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 415–20.
55 For some of the suggestions made about the role the swerve plays in voluntary action, see Asmis,
The Epicurean Theory of Free Will and “Free Action and the Swerve”; Fowler, “Lucretius on the Clinamen
and ‘Free Will’ (II 251–293)” and Lucretius on Atomic Motion; Saunders, “Free Will and the Atomic
Swerve in Lucretius”; Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action; Sharples, “Epicurus,
Carneades, and the Atomic Swerve”; Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve.”
244 WALTER ENGLERT
major division among scholars is between those who believe the swerve somehow plays
a role in individual voluntary actions, and those who believe it does not, but was meant
to play some other role in Epicurus’s efforts to argue against determinism and defend the
possibility of human beings’ being responsible for their actions and being able to obtain
happiness.
A common assumption of scholars who have written on the swerve is that the swerve
must have played one, and only one, role in Epicurean psychology. If true, given the
nature of our sources, it is unlikely we will ever be able to figure out what that exact role
is. Scholars have come up with many different theories, and all of them have stronger
points and weaker points. Rather than end this discussion with an endorsement of one
particular theory of the swerve, however, I want to propose a new paradigm for looking
at the swerve. Whatever Epicurus’s original reasons for proposing the swerve of atoms,
once he posited it, it was available to him to exploit fully in his psychological and ethical
system. Exactly how he did this may be difficult to see in our sources, but the various
conjectures of scholars made over the past fifty years give us an idea of the range of
options available to him.
First, as those scholars who have argued that the swerve plays a role in every volun-
tary action argue, it is reasonable to interpret Lucretius 2.251–93 as showing that the
swerve is the physical basis of volition, or striving. Every time a living creature starts to
act on a desire and moves to accomplish something, a swerve is involved.56 It is also
reasonable to argue, as Don Fowler57 has argued, that the mind’s ability to focus on one
image as opposed to others involves the mind’s self-motion, and that this also involves
a swerve of mind atoms. Similarly, all of the mind’s activities that involve the mind
moving itself, including sensation, thinking, and remembering, can be argued, on the
basis of passages in Lucretius Book 3 (143–46, 182–85, 237–40, 269–72), to involve some
self-moving principle in the soul like the swerve.58 Lucretius and Cicero also provide
evidence that the swerve was meant to prevent the motions of the atoms that make up
the mind from being subject to necessity: Lucretius notes (2.289–93) that without the
swerve the mind would have internal necessity “in performing all of its functions”
(cunctis in rebus agendis), and Cicero makes a similar argument in Fat. 23.59
Once Epicurus had established the swerve as part of his account of voluntary action,
and of the freedom of the mind’s activities in general, he was free to exploit it more
broadly. One problem with Lucretius’s account of the swerve is that although it makes it
56 For variations on this position, see Asmis, The Epicurean Theory of Free Will and “Free Action and
the Swerve”; Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action; Sharples, “Epicurus, Carneades, and
the Atomic Swerve”; Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of the Mind, 186; Purinton, “Epicurus on ‘Free
Volition’ and the Atomic Swerve.”
57 Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion, 322–39, 405–27.
58 Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 146–51. In all of the mental activities
described in the Book 3 passages listed, Lucretius writes as if the mind’s atoms are self-moving.
59 Cic. Fat. 23: “Epicurus introduced this theory [of the swerve] because he feared that, if the atom
were always carried along by the natural and necessary force of weight, nothing would be free for us,
since the mind would move as it was forced to by the motions of the atoms” (nihil liberum nobis est,
cum ita moveretur animus ut atomorum motu cogeretur).
clear that the swerve is involved in the voluntary actions of all living creatures, he leaves
it an open question about what role, if any, the swerve played in helping to explain why
human beings, as opposed to animals, are able to develop morally, are held responsible
for their good and bad actions, and are liable to praise and blame.
This is where the views of a second group of scholars, including Furley, Bobzien, and
Masi, are important.60 Although their views differ in some particulars, all three maintain
that the swerve is not involved in the individual voluntary actions of humans or other
animals, but was posited by Epicurus to play a role in the development of human charac-
ter. The swerve insures that not all of the movements of our mind atoms are determined
and thus that our character development is somehow “up to us,” and that we are thus
responsible for our actions, subject to praise and blame, and able to attain happiness by
studying Epicureanism and putting its tenets into practice.61
A third group of scholars, including Conway, Pope, Mitsis, Wendlandt and Baltzly,
O’Keefe, and Németh,62 locate the swerve’s effect neither in the individual actions of
living creatures, nor in the formation of our characters so that that our characters are
“up to us.” They argue instead, each in different ways, that the very existence of the swerve
insures that there are no infinite and unbreakable chains of causation at the atomic level,
and thus that worries that everything in the universe, including human volitions and
actions, is determined are unfounded. They thus argue that Epicurus left room for
human freedom of action and moral responsibility, but that he based this position on
the fundamental indeterminism of the motion of atoms at the atomic level without
needing to be more specific than that.
Given what I have argued about Lucretius 2.216–93, I think that the latter two groups
of scholars are mistaken in their belief that the swerve does not play a role in every
voluntary action of living creatures, but that some important aspects of their views on
the swerve are correct. As we saw above, in On Nature Book 25 Epicurus argues against
determinism, and there is no reason to suppose that once Epicurus came up with the
swerve he would not use it as broadly and as effectively as he could to argue that we
humans at a certain point in our development are responsible for our characters and
actions, and that it depends on us how we turn out and whether we are able to lead a
happy life or not. Indeed, this broader view of the swerve finds support in a section of
the Lucretius passage from Book 2 we discussed above, when in lines 251–55, Lucretius
notes that if the swerve did not exist, every motion would be always linked, a new one
would always arise from an old one in sure succession, the laws of fate could never be
broken, and cause would follow cause from infinity. These lines make clear that Lucretius
60 Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists; Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover the Free Will
Problem?”; Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente.
61 That the swerve was thought to preserve “what depends on us” or “what is up to us” is well
attested in a number of ancient sources, including Phld. Sign. 36.14 (τὸ παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς); Cic. ND 1.69
(in nostra potestate); and Plu. Mor. 964c (τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν).
62 Conway, “Epicurus’ Theory of Freedom of Action”; Pope, “Epicureanism and the Atomic Swerve”;
Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory; Wendlandt and Baltzly, “Knowing Freedom”; O’Keefe, Epicurus on
Freedom; Németh, Epicurus on the Self.
246 WALTER ENGLERT
believes that if the swerve exists, no determinist theory like the one Epicurus argues
against in On Nature Book 25 can be right. Our actions, the motions of our minds, our
characters, and all the atomic motions on which they are based are not and cannot be
subject to necessity and determinism.
In sum, it may be that the swerve, once Epicurus developed it, made an appearance
in a number of places in Epicurus’s atomic system. In the works of Epicurus that have
survived, including the Letter to Menoeceus and On Nature Book 25, we see Epicurus
clearly worried about causal determinism and arguing against it, but without explicitly
invoking the swerve. At some point, though, as Lucretius 2.216–93 clearly shows, Epicurus
developed the swerve and pointed to the existence of compound bodies (2.216–50) and
the self-initiated voluntary actions of living creatures (2.251–93) as proof that the swerve
exists. Once posited, Epicurus could invoke it whenever there was a need to explain, at
the atomic level, why a whole range of phenomena was possible: the existence of com-
pound bodies, the voluntary motions of all living creatures, the ability of the mind to be
active and self-moving in its activities (including sensation, focusing on images, remem-
bering, and thinking), the concept of “what is up to us,” or moral responsibility, why our
character development, and thus our characters, are up to us, and why the principle of
bivalence must be false, since the swerve insures that not everything is determined by
pre-existing causes.
Conclusion
In Letter to Herodotus 80, Epicurus writes:
And so if we think that something might happen also in a particular way, we will be
as undisturbed knowing that it happens in a number of different ways as if we knew
it happens in a particular way.
As this passage illustrates, Epicurus famously advised his followers that there are some
cases where, given our remove from a particular phenomenon, we are not able to deter-
mine with certainty which of a number of possible explanations is or are correct. Rather
than argue that one particular explanation is correct, and all the others incorrect,
Epicurus urges us, in order to escape mental disturbance, to accept all of the possible
explanations that are not contradicted by the phenomena.
Given the problems with our ancient sources on the swerve, and the many excellent
modern studies that have reached such different conclusions about the swerve and its
role in voluntary action and moral responsibility, it may be best to follow Epicurus’s
advice and not be dogmatic about any particular solution. I have tried to suggest in this
chapter, though, that the most likely view is that Epicurus, trying to find an answer to the
question of how human beings, if our minds are made up of atoms, and atoms necessarily
are moved due to their own weight or collisions with other atoms, can develop morally
and change our beliefs, thoughts, and actions to attain happiness, and be responsible for
our actions, came up with the doctrine of the swerve. Trying to find evidence to support
the view that the swerve exists, he found examples like those in Lucretius of the horse
taking off from the starting gate and the person who is pushed and initiates his own
recovery, to be good evidence. Once the existence of the swerve in the mind of living
creatures was established, it could then be exploited further: the mind, thanks to the
swerve, initiates many of its own motions. Among these motions are the ability to sense,
think, determine our own actions, and even change our characters. The swerve allows
all living creatures to act voluntarily, humans to be morally responsible for their actions
and characters and direct their lives towards happiness, and the universe to exist without
being fully determined at the atomic level.
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chapter 10
Fr ien dship
Phillip Mitsis
In the nearly fifty years since John Rist’s classic discussion of “the problem of friendship”
in Epicureanism,1 no scholarly consensus has emerged about how to interpret the
muted evidence for Epicurus’s view or even, in a deep sense, about what counts as evi-
dence for his view. Indeed, these two questions have become so intricately entwined that
it is fair to say, I think, that those who generally take a more restricted view of the textual
evidence tend to attribute to Epicurus a narrowly self-regarding conception of friend-
ship. Conversely, those who take more expansive views, especially regarding claims
made by Cicero, Lucretius, and Philodemus, typically conclude that Epicurus took on
board, or at least, might have given reasons for his followers to think that he took on
board, the commonplace notion that in order to be genuine and trustworthy friends,
individuals must not treat each other solely as instruments for personal gratification.
Rather, they should view or, at least, act towards one another in ways that go beyond
mere self-regard. Whether Epicurus embraced such a disinterested view of friendship—
either as part of an indirect hedonistic strategy or even, perhaps, at the cost of consist
ency with the central tenets of his hedonism—still remains a matter of further
disagreement, however, even among those who hold more sanguine views about the
value of later evidence.
Since Rist’s discussion, three general views of Epicurean friendship have gathered the
most scholarly support:
(1) Epicurus takes friendship to be strictly self-regarding. Any texts of Epicurus that
have been taken to hint at or endorse disinterested friendship have been
misinterpreted and any later attributions of such a view to him, even by
Epicureans, are misunderstandings that resulted in the undoing or abandon-
ment of his original position. This view often further assumes or is explicitly
bolstered by a particular picture of ancient Epicurean social practices in which
1 Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction, 127–39 along with his amended discussion, “Epicurus on
Friendship,” 121–29.
Friendship 251
cohesive groups of Epicurus’s followers participated in mutually advantageous

conventions of help, confidence in that help, and so on, but without valuing each
other either as individuals or in their own right.
(2) Epicurus recommends behaving towards friends in non-self-regarding ways, but
only as part of a larger, indirect, hedonist strategy whose overall goal is still
purely self-regarding.
(3) Epicurus thinks we should regard and treat friends in non-self-interested ways
even though this might appear to conflict with the demands of his overall hedon
ism. It is unclear whether he merely was unaware of a potential inconsistency or
whether he perhaps believed that his hedonism was able to encompass disinter-
ested friendships. He might have thought, for instance, that his conception of
pleasure could include, without contradiction, the pleasures of disinterested
friendship, thus maintaining the consistency of both his hedonism and egoism.
These are broad categories and not all scholarly accounts fit snugly within them.
Nonetheless, they reflect three general strategies typically used by historians of philosophy
when facing a seeming contradiction: eliminate one of the inconsistent elements; try to
show how, all things considered, both can fit into a larger pattern; or embrace the contra-
diction and attempt to explain its sources, even perhaps commending it for being ulti-
mately philosophically productive or, at least, honest. Rather than declaring any outright
winner among these—indeed, I doubt that is possible—I will try to give an account of
some of the salient methodological and interpretive disagreements that have arisen among
proponents of these three positions. Occasionally, I will also linger in more detail over a
few particularly problematic evidential and textual flashpoints that so far have mostly led
to stand-offs. Any hope of squaring this particular circle at the moment seems distant, but
the problem of friendship raises some of the most wide-ranging and significant questions
about the overall nature and goals of Epicurus’s ethics, a few of which I try to touch on here.
Let us first turn to the few texts of Epicurus that all parties to the dispute must take
into account, starting with his ringing assertion about the fundamental importance of
friendship. At KD 27, Epicurus proclaims that of all the things that wisdom provides for
the blessedness of life as a whole (εἰς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου βίου μακαριότητα), by far the greatest
is the acquisition of friendship. Elsewhere, friendship is said to dance around the world
calling us to awaken to blessedness (ἐπὶ τὸν μακαρισμόν SV 52)2; and in a similar vein,
Epicurus seems to up the ante by calling friendship an “immortal” (ἀθάνατον) good, in
comparison even to wisdom, which is merely a mortal one (SV 78). Associations with
the divine are perhaps hinted at as well in the Letter to Menoeceus which concludes with
the claim that “you will live like a god among men” (ζήσεις δὲ ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις)
by studying/practicing Epicurus’s precepts “day and night” with “one like yourself ”
(τὸν ὅμοιον σεαυτῷ), hence, arguably, a friend.3
2 For possible resonances with the language of mystery cult, David Armstrong, “Epicurean Virtues,
Epicurean Friendship: Cicero vs. the Herculaneum Papyri,” 105–106.
3 Long and Sedley (The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1:144), however, reject Usener’s πρός <τε> and the
notion of mutual study.
252 PHILLIP MITSIS
But along with these promises of blessedness and immortal goods, maintaining
friendships in Epicurus’s view might involve great pains or require great sacrifices. This
is because an Epicurean sage would experience no less pain when his friend is tortured,
perhaps,4 than when he himself is, and he also would be willing to lay down his life for a
friend; his whole life, moreover, would be thrown into confusion were there a breach of
trust with a friend or a betrayal (SV 56–57; cf. DL 10.121b). This is perhaps one of the rea-
sons we need to be careful in choosing the right kinds of friends, since we must risk
pleasures in order to gain the pleasures of friendship (cf. SV 28). The importance of trust
between friends is raised as well in SV 34, where we are told that it is not so much the
help of friends that we need as our assurance of that help (τῆς πίστεως τῆς περὶ τῆς
χρείας). Our understanding of the reliability of friendship, moreover, is anchored in the
same understanding as other central Epicurean insights, as KD 28 further elaborates:
The same thinking that equips us to be confident that nothing terrible is either eter-
nal or even for very long, gives us within these same limits to understand friend-
ship’s security (safety, reliability, secureness) as being most complete (ἀσφάλειαν
φιλίας μάλιστα κατεῖδε συντελουμένην).5
Relations of utility and friendship are touched upon in SV 23, though both the text and
its interpretation have been much disputed.6 Hermann Usener corrected the manu-
script which reads, “Every friendship is by itself a virtue, though it has taken its begin-
ning from benefit” to “Every friendship is choiceworthy for itself, though it has taken its
beginning from benefit” (Πᾶσα φιλία δι ἑαυτὴν αἱρετὴ [Usener: ἀρετή MSS] ἀρχὴν δὲ
εἴληφεν ἀπὸ τῆς ὠφελείας). Both of these readings have been used as fulcrums for larger
interpretations, though even proponents of the same general position have disagreed
over which of them is more likely.
Our evidence, therefore, is slim and filled with serious textual difficulties, but it might
be useful to offer a few preliminary and non-partisan observations. On the face of it,
Epicurus’s various statements run the gamut from a few claims that at first glance look as
if they might be motivated by attitudes of emotional sympathy,7 other-regard,8 or by
religious sentiment and divine aspiration,9 while others might suggest an easy and
4 The reading is in doubt, though most accept that there is an equivalence made between the pain
that the sage feels and what his friend feels.
5 Many scholars interpret ἀσφάλειαν φιλίας as “the security provided by friendship,” no doubt
because of the prominence of ἀσφάλεια in connection with justice and the security it provides from
others. (Cf. Torquatus’s paraphrase at Fin. 68–69: amicitiae praesidium esse firmissimum.) However, it is
not clear whether φιλίας functions as an objective or subjective genitive and Epicurus might just as well
be pointing to the sureness or reliability of friendship itself.
6 Brown, “Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (Sententia Vaticana XXIII),” 68–80.
7 Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, 53 ff.; Wolffe, L’Être, l’homme, le disciple. Figures
philosophiques empruntées aux Anciens, 172 ff.
8 Mitsis, “Epicurus on Friendship and Altruism,” 126–53; Annas, The Morality of Happiness.
9 Festugière, Epicurus and His Gods, 46; Piergiacomi, Storia delle teologie atomiste: da Democrito a
Diogeniano.
Friendship 253
transparent10 or shrewd and cautious egoism.11 But none offers any explicit statement
about the value of friends per se. Those who think Epicurus is an egoist of some stripe
argue that this is exactly what we should expect, though by the same token, there is noth-
ing here that explicitly claims that friends are to be viewed only instrumentally. Others,
thinking that the tenor of some of his claims requires something stronger than purely
instrumental attitudes towards friends, have relied on later reports that Epicurus
thought that we should value our friends as much as ourselves, often in conjunction
with a particular reading of SV 23. Accordingly, proponents of egoism, given their own
inability to offer any explicit textual basis for the instrumentality of friendship, have
arguably been tasked, perforce, with explaining how these later sources at times could
be so mistaken.
The silence of Epicurus’s surviving texts on this crucial question of the value of friends
thus creates a scholarly impasse. Egoist accounts that stress, for instance, the importance
of mutual security for Epicureans and the putatively instrumental nature of such rela-
tions can point to no texts that explicitly claim that Epicurean friends value each other
merely as instruments to their security. So, for example, Pylades and Orestes12 provided
each other with help and protection and were willing to die for one another, but they
were not friends only for the sake of that protection. Clearly, I may receive help from a
friend without that help being the sole motive for my friendship or its goal. Similarly, the
mere fact that two people are useful to each other for protection is not sufficient to make
them friends without some further personal, affective attachment.13 My burglar alarm
provides me with security, but only an advertising company could describe it as “my
friend.” Thus, the burden of proof arguably remains on egoist accounts to explain how
affective attachments of the sort suggested by some Epicurean evidence—and not
merely the pretense of affective attachment—can be generated from purely egoistic
motives. There also remains the question of whether egoist accounts can convincingly
explain the links Epicurus himself seems to suggest between friendship and blessedness,
divinity, and so on, given that the gods provide a model of friendship not based on
mutual utility. Conversely, those who think that Epicurus’s views cannot be explained
without the claim that friends should value each other in their own right are unable to
point to any unambiguous statement to that effect in the surviving texts of Epicurus
himself. Thus, on the basis of evidence from these few texts alone, any account of
Epicurean friendship must dance, if not around the world, at least around a glaring hole
at the very center of its arguments.
10 O’Connor, “The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship,” 165–86; Dimas, “Epicurus on

Pleasure, Desire, and Friendship,” 164–82.
11 Brown, “Epicurus on the Value of Friendship”; Evans, “Can Epicureans Be Friends?,” 423; Rossi,
“Squaring the Epicurean Circle: Happiness and Friendship in the Garden.”
12 Torquatus, the Epicurean spokesman in De finibus, compares Epicurus’s friendships to those of
the great mythical friendships in the past at 1.65. Some scholars view this as a bit of irony on Cicero’s
part.
13 Cf. Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, who articulates this distinction especially well.
See as well Roskam, Λάθε βιώϲαϲ: On the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean Doctrine.
254 PHILLIP MITSIS
Friendship as Self-regarding
I begin with a family of views that attribute to Epicurus a transparently self-regarding

conception of friendship.
Proponents of these views are able to begin building their case with a powerful initial
argument. Throughout the extant corpus, Epicurus insists over and again that our eudai-
monia consists in our bodies being in a healthy pain-free condition (aponia) and our
minds being in a tranquil and undisturbed psychic state of ataraxia (cf. Men. 128 ff.). The
achievement of these twin internal conditions, he claims, is what comprises our eudai-
monia and, therefore, is what we all aim at as our natural telos. All of his extant argu-
ments for his hedonism, which he further identifies with “living blessedly” (Men. 128),
depend on identifying pleasure with these two subjective inner states of individuals and
he nowhere directly includes other-regarding elements, features, characteristics, etc. in
his descriptions of them. Nor is it particularly clear, even if he had so wished, how he
might have done so.
Some scholars have wondered about the extent to which Epicurus is committed to
psychological and/or ethical egoism,14 but whatever the verdict on this question, the
general starting point, final goal, and overall structure of his ethical theory would seem
to leave no obvious place for a notion of valuing others for their own sakes. When cou-
pled with Epicurean denials that we have any natural instincts for social solidarity, even
at the level of family,15 it seems that the whole thrust of Epicurus’s ethical project tells
against valuing others non-instrumentally, even if they are friends.
Tim O’Keefe, in an important and systematic paper,16 makes this overall structural
point with special clarity and argues that there is consequently a strong presumption
based on the principle of charity to conclude that Epicurus endorses treating friends
instrumentally.17 Of course, charity, even of the philosophical variety, often can be mis-
placed and with detrimental results, and it is not clear to me that this argument, which is
a common refrain among many of this view’s defenders, necessarily has the kind of bed-
rock status that it sometimes tries to assume. One does not have to take an Emersonian
view of inconsistency or tout its merits in order to observe that as historians, we often
come across inconsistencies, some of them gross, when reading long, connected pas-
sages in the great philosophers. Depending on our views about their styles of argument,
we try to assess the nature of the inconsistency, its sources, whether there are any devel-
14 See the discussion of Voula Tsouna in this volume.

15 Cf. Epictetus, Diss. 2.20. In direct opposition to the Stoic view that there is a natural bond
between parents and children and that this is the origin of our developing sociability, at DRN 5.116–17,
Lucretius claims that children had to break down their parents’ uncivil temperament (ingenium
superbum) with caresses (blanditiis) in order for family units to begin to come together. It might be that
Lucretius is innovating here, but there are no suggestions of natural sociability in what we have of
Epicurus’s own texts.
16 O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?,” 269–305.
17 O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?,” 276.
Friendship 255
opments in their views that explain inconsistencies among different works, and so on.
With Epicurus, on the other hand, we mostly are faced with little floating wisps of evi-
dence that have broken loose from different contexts, chronological periods, and for
some of the most important collections of these, the jury is even out about what bits are
from Epicurus himself. In trying to piece together actual arguments and recognizable
positions, we typically cannot hope to wield the kinds of tools to test consistency that
interpreters, say, of a Platonic dialogue or of a treatise by Locke can.
So, for instance, if Locke’s corpus had fallen into a state similar to that of Epicurus’s,
what would be the best way to go about handling his commitments to the importance of
making decisions in light of the moral law along with his strong endorsements of hedon
ism? Many have thought Locke inconsistent on this score, since it is not easy to see at
first glance how these twin commitments are meant to go together. But if we were faced
with trying to put together several remaining Lockean fragments endorsing hedonism,
an ambiguous and lacunose statement about the moral law, and a certain amount of
criticism from his contemporaries claiming to see a contradiction in these two commit-
ments, it is not clear to me that the principle of charity would necessarily demand that
we view him strictly as a doctrinaire hedonist. If we did, we would arguably miss out on
what some have found inconsistent, but others have deemed explicable and philosophi-
cally productive in Locke’s overall theory.
Correspondingly, with Epicurus we find strong endorsements of hedonism and a few
emphatic general claims about the importance of friendship for a blessed life that are
coupled with particular claims about the sacrifices friends make for each other, the help
they can offer, and a few glimmers of what might suggest the possibility of non-egoistic
attitudes among friends. These are augmented by a lot of static both among later
Epicureans and in the doxography suggesting that Epicurus himself embraced friend-
ships that were not entirely instrumental. My analogy to Locke, of course, is hardly
innocent, but given the welter of possibilities, I think it safer to remain an agnostic about
what philosophical charity demands in this case, since one might with equal plausibility
claim that it demands trying to ferret out the reasons Epicurus might have been com-
mitted to both hedonism and non-instrumental friendships.
By the same token, those who advance demands for consistency tend to make the
claim that it would be extremely odd for Epicurus to be inconsistent on this one topic
alone. But again, this is hardly a knockdown argument, since some of our most
important evidence suggests that the relation of hedonism and friendship became
the source of a disputatio (cf. Cic. Fin. 1.66) not only with their critics, but also among
Epicureans themselves. If Epicurus’s views about friendship were so smoothly com-
patible with his hedonism, it strikes me as unlikely that all the subsequent internal
and external fuss would have occurred, especially given, as we are also often
reminded in this context, later Epicureans typically were so firm in their adherence
to his doctrines, even in the face of criticism by opponents. But in any case, these are
all extremely general considerations that are not likely in and of themselves to move
the argument forward, so it may be helpful to turn to the arguments for a strict ego-
ism in more detail.
256 PHILLIP MITSIS
Egoistic readings of the evidence, however, have often led to widely diverging pictures
of the kinds of relations that Epicurean friends purportedly had with each other. I begin
with a rosier view. In an influential paper, David O’Connor articulated what he charac-
terized as an alternative ideal of Epicurean friendship and argued that we can best come
to understand this ideal in the context of the social practices of Epicurean communities.
The goal of these various practices within the Garden, he claims, was to create a sense of
communal “fellowship,” in opposition, say, to the goals of joint political action or shared
theoretical investigation of the Academy. Such fellowship and solidarity also meant that
Epicurean friendships were not “personal” in the way that those of “contemporary bour-
geois academics” might be.18 Rather, they were grounded in social practices that empha-
sized communal celebrations and communal pleasures for both body and mind. These
consisted, on the one hand, of a “hobbit-like appreciation of good food, ample drink,
and a warm fire,”19 and “refresher courses”20 about the central commitments of
Epicurean philosophy. Even more powerful tools for shaping communal solidarity were
remembrance and example, and the opportunities they provided for imitating and
embodying paradigmatic Epicurean values. Taken together, these practices of support-
ive fellowship helped to brush a protective coat of varnish on the general contentment of
Epicureans living within their communities. They also, O’Connor claims, are ultimately
behind Epicurus’s written praise of friendship and his “practical arrangements for
arranging the community that looked to him for leadership.”21
In its larger outlines, O’Connor’s account reflects a long tradition of scholarship that
takes Epicurus to be less theoretically driven than, say, his Academic neighbors, and that
takes his thought to be best understood as a practical philosophy embodying specific
cultish practices of solidarity, recruitment, and so on aimed at fostering personal and
communal contentment. I myself harbor grave doubts that Bilbo Baggins, for instance,
would find plowing through the Περὶ τῆς ἐν τῇ ἀτόμῳ γωνίας with his daily pint of thin
wine sufficiently gemütlich, even if he were reading along with Epicurus himself, but
O’Connor’s argument raises more pressing methodological questions. First, given the
paucity of direct textual evidence, can we read off anything tangible about Epicurus’s
view of friendship from school practices? While such attempts have been common
enough, they are not without serious, perhaps even fatal, pitfalls. Imagine trying to
reconstruct, for instance, the doctrines of the Gospels, much less the teachings of the
historical Jesus, on the basis of communal practices in early Christian communities. I
offer this particular analogy because of the parallels often drawn between Christian and
Epicurean communities. Various early Christian communities practiced infant bap-
tism. Does this give us a license to infer that Jesus baptized infants? Surely not, nor does
it really help in clarifying the admittedly meager evidence about baptism found in the
Gospels. Similarly in the case of Epicureanism, even when we have some very faint
18 O’Connor, “The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship,” 174.

19 O’Connor, “The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship,” 170. This analogy rather deflates
the ritual/sacrificial valences of these communal feasts in the Greek context.
Friendship 257
e vidence for a particular school practice, the actual point of that practice is likely to
remain elusive. When Epicurus exhorts Menoeceus to μελέτα πρὸς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας καὶ
νυκτός (Ep. Men. 135)—to study or practice (μελέτα is wonderfully ambiguous here) day
and night on his own—does this reflect the boot-camp mentality of a drill instructor
breaking down the resistance of recruits through lack of sleep and continual practice in
order to facilitate indoctrination and solidarity? Or is it the slight exaggeration of a
benign and slightly avuncular teacher urging hard study and maybe the usefulness of a
study partner? Both views of Epicurean school practices have been put forward on the
basis of later evidence, whose ultimate point, however, remains sketchy at best. Either
way, of course, Epicurus strikes me as being a little over-zealous for someone offering
only “refresher” courses, but perhaps actual school practices were rather different from
what we can divine from this passage. In sum, it seems to be anybody’s guess.
O’Connor, realizing that his argument ultimately is one of ignotum per ignotius, is
commendably forthright in claiming that his account is “frankly speculative, an appre-
ciation of the Master’s spirit rather than an interpretation of his letter”22—a detail often
lost on those who subsequently have taken over his basic framework as if it were
straightforward historical reconstruction and then have deduced from it further pur-
ported communal practices. Many of these papers perhaps provide fertile ground for
meta-ethical speculation, but they unfortunately have little basis in what we can hope to
know about school practices in Epicurus’s own time—which is exceedingly little23—
much less about their actual point.
A related assumption also sometimes lurks in the background of egoist accounts. In
distinguishing “fellowship” from individual “bourgeois” friendships, O’Connor invokes
a particular picture of the nature of ancient social relations24 that ultimately derives
from a kind of perfect storm of late twentieth-century academic anthropology,
Marxism, and postmodern critique. Here I can only be brutally schematic, but this view
came into being through an admixture of anthropological claims that in ancient societ-
ies friendship was an assigned not an achieved relation, together with Marxist claims
about social relations in pre-capitalist societies as opposed to those among alienated
individualist bourgeois; and it was topped off with claims about “the self ” being an early
modern invention. One conclusion of this influential paradigm was that friendship in
antiquity was not an intimate, affective attachment between individual selves, but some-
thing closer to what O’Connor describes as “fellowship.” This is not to suggest, of course,
that O’Connor explicitly subscribes to any of these particular theories, but his conclu-
sions and methodology often keep in step with them. In my view, with respect to ancient

23 A well-known paper by Diskin Clay (“Individual and Community in the First Generation of the
Epicurean School”) is often cited in support of these practices, but, of course, Clay’s whole point was,
given the school’s communal face and its ongoing identification with Epicurus, how difficult it is to
chronologically locate particular doctrinal formulations and practices.
24 O’Connor, “The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship,” 174. I say “invokes” here,
because he does not do this explicitly, though his arguments are in line with these claims.
258 PHILLIP MITSIS
Greek and Roman friendship generally, David Konstan25 has put such general claims to
bed for good with his detailed documentation and analysis of the emphasis on intimate,
affective, and deeply personal relationships in ancient literary and philosophical
sources. Again, however, if we restrict ourselves to the few remaining texts of Epicurus
himself, this is unlikely to be a battle that can be won. To be sure, there is the claim that
the sage will feel no less pain than his friend, perhaps even when his friend is tortured
(SV 57), which strikes me as a rather supererogatory demand for lodge buddies. But the
text is too insecure to withstand attacks on its own from those who promote a notion of
fellowship or other impersonal forms of Epicurean friendship.
One further important lesson that the fellowship view is supposed to hold for philos-
ophy is that individualistic notions of egoism, hedonism, and other-regard do not map
neatly onto the communal character of ancient Epicurean relations, and thus can distort
our conceptions of Epicurus’s real concerns. The plausibility of this claim will come to
the fore when we look at subsequent direct and indirect accounts below, but for now we
can turn to egoistic accounts that offer a picture of relations in Epicurean communities
that are more studied, calculated, and ultimately grim.
In a paper notable for its argumentative crispness, Matthew Evans argues that
Epicurean friendship is directly egoistic, but despite that, Epicureans can be friends, just
so long as we understand that friendship does not require that friends value one other
for their own sakes. Indeed, Epicurus’s hedonism, Evans claims, requires him to reject
this “valuation condition” as a species of practical irrationality26 and to argue that
friends should treat each other only instrumentally. As we have seen, Epicurus nowhere
explicitly makes such an argument, so Evans must try to reconstruct one to anchor his
account of “direct” egoism. He begins by attempting to link, or better, to reduce friend-
ship’s value to mutual security. “Often, he (Epicurus) suggests that its value lies in the
security it affords.”27 Actually, I count one possible suggestion at best, KD 28, where we
perhaps find the claim that one valuable benefit of friendship is security, and even that
depends on a reading of the Greek that is hardly the most natural. Security, especially
from others, is a value closely linked not to friendship, but to justice (KD 6, 7, 13, 14, 39,
40).28 To be sure, in later texts we hear about the sense of safety and comfort, psycholog-
ical and otherwise, that friendship provides, but typically only as one of many other
25 Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World.

26 Evans’s argument (“Can Epicureans Be Friends?,” 408) for the claim that non-instrumental
friends would be too much of an hedonic liability is rather curt. William Baird’s thought experiment
and conclusion about how Epicureans in Valuationville will achieve ataraxia more readily than those in
Selfopolis offers a more plausible alternative. Baird, “Friends with Benefits: Other Regard in Epicurean
Ethics,” 30 ff.
27 For a more nuanced account, Barigazzi, “Sul concetto epicuro della sicurezze esterna,” 73–92.
28 The relation of friendship to justice, especially in later sources, is a complicated one that is taken
up below (260). Cicero’s account in Fin. hints at the relation of friendship and security, but since Evans
dismisses Cicero’s evidence I will deal with it in the section on Cicero below (263). O’Keefe argues
(p. 277) that KD 40 is about the security that friendship offers, but the argument is rather that once one
has achieved security from one’s neighbors (presumably through contracts of justice), one can then
enjoy the fruits of friendship. It is not that friendship itself secures protection from neighbors.
Friendship 259
valuable benefits from friendship. These drop out of the picture here, but it is worth
following out Evans’s claim, especially since it regularly shows up in the literature in
similar incarnations.
What is the security provided by friendship supposed to consist of, then? Here Evans
dials up a single passage from Epistulae Morales 9.8 in which Seneca asserts that he is cit-
ing a letter of Epicurus and claims that unlike Stoics, who have friends in order to help
others, Epicureans have friends only in order to gain help from them. It is worth looking
at Seneca’s letter more closely, however, and also at the nature of the contrast he is mak-
ing. Seneca is addressing the general question of whether the self-sufficiency of the wise
man precludes his having friends. He himself endorses Stilpo’s famous and, for many
Stoics, exemplary declaration of self-sufficiency and indifference to all external losses
when his city and family were destroyed (omnia mea mecum sunt). Yet, although the
wise man is utterly self-sufficient, he will not only have friends, Seneca claims, but he
alone is able to live solely for another in everything, “in a commonalty (consentium
rerum omnium) that is grounded in the bond shared among all human beings.”29
According to Seneca, Epicurus attacked this notion of self-sufficiency in a letter by
arguing that the wise man has friends “in order to have someone to sit beside him when
he is sick or to come to his aid when he is cast into bonds or is in want” (ut habeat, qui sibi
aegro adsideat, succurrat in vincula coniecto vel inopi . . .). The Stoics do the reverse. They
have friends in order to sit with them when they are sick or to set them free when they
are in bonds. Even if the ultimate purpose of a friend in Seneca’s account seems to be
only to furnish an excuse for a Stoic to exercise his virtue, still, the Stoic sapiens, because
of his self-sufficiency, is better able to give to others. Interestingly, this latter sentiment
echoes rather nicely Epicurus at SV 44 (cf. Plutarch Non posse 1097a), but Seneca is keen
to use Epicurus in this letter as a foil. For the Stoic, Epicurus both undermines the self-
sufficiency of the wise and destroys the proper motivation for friendship.
So the question arises, do we have reason to trust this report of the instrumentality of
Epicurean friendship? We are better informed about Epicurean attacks on Stilpo in the
realm of epistemology, but presumably in this context Epicurus may have argued against
Stilpo’s view of self-sufficiency, for example, by touting the importance of aponia, health,
and other things classed by the Stoics as indifferents for one’s happiness. Our evidence
for Epicurus’s views about self-sufficiency are complicated at best, but we might initially
have expected Seneca to ridicule the need for such comforts from friends for an
29 Margaret Graver (in this volume, 495). Seneca’s views about friendship and his use of Epicurean
friendship as a foil have been much studied—e.g., Brinckman, “Der Begriff der Freundschaft in Senecas
Briefen”; Gagliardi, Un legame per vivere: (sul concetto di amicitia nelle lettere di Seneca)—mostly with a
negative view of Seneca’s reliability in reporting Epicurus’s views. A more positive account can be found
in Schottlender, “Epikureisches bei Seneca. Ein Ringen um den Sinn von Freude und Freudenschaft,”
133–48. The question of whether friendship has its origins in inopia, indigentia, imbecillitas, and so on
(cf. Laelius, 26) and their relation to self-sufficiency is a standard question that Epicurus no doubt
weighed in on. But questions about origins need to be distinguished from claims about the point or
goal of friendship. Seneca nowhere in 9.8 mentions pleasure as a goal of Epicurean friendships, for
instance, and we have no corroborating evidence that Epicurus claimed that the point or aim of
friendship was, for instance, to have someone who could perform sick visits.
260 PHILLIP MITSIS
Epicurean sage whose happiness is supposed to be immune to sickness and even torture
on the rack. His criticism, however, quickly turns its focus away from self-sufficiency. It
is not the Epicurean sage’s desires for what Stilpo takes to be indifferent—and here it is
perhaps worth remembering Seneca’s own pre-occupation with physical health and
sickness—it is the selfishness of those desires that Seneca holds up for criticism.
Perhaps if we had Epicurus’s Περὶ δώρων καὶ χάριτος, we would be in a better position
to assess Seneca’s claims about Epicurean motives in giving, but is it likely that Epicurus
himself ever wrote that the wise man has a friend simply in order to have someone to sit
with him when he is sick, visit him when he is in bonds, and so on? It is hard not to
notice, moreover, that Seneca’s claim is embedded in an argumentative context that aims
to make the strongest rhetorical contrast between Epicurus’s view and his own.
Undeniably, the antithesis makes for a clever rhetorical flourish: we Stoics only want to
help our friends; Epicureans only want to get help from them. But neither claim is plau-
sible in such a crude and simplistic form, and in the course of the letter, Seneca slowly
backs away from this clever formulation of the Stoic view. Epicurus’s view does not
receive a similar fine-tuning (cf. SV 39). If one wanted to speculate, I would think it more
plausible to suppose that in arguing against Stilpo’s claim about self-sufficiency, Epicurus
might have said that the wise man and his friends offer each other mutual support and
that the sapiens benefits from them in ways that show that he is not utterly self-sufficient
in the sense of omnia mea mecum sunt. This is as much as he needs to attack Stilpo’s
claim. Epicurus might even have said that friendships grow out of such needs (cf. SV 23).
But to counter Stilpo’s claim about self-sufficiency, he does not need to argue that the
only point or goal of friendship is to merely fill particular needs, such as having a visitor
when sick. Seneca’s question about the motives for friendship is a red herring, since hav-
ing friends whom I value for their own sakes may likewise threaten my self-sufficiency.
It is doubtful, therefore, that he provides sufficiently secure evidence to ascribe to
Epicurus the claim that the motive for friendship is simply to secure these kinds of help.
Moreover, even if we were to give credence to Seneca’s account, Evans’s claim that
Epicurus attributes the value of friendship to the security it affords still remains at best
an extremely hasty generalization from one instance that, in any case, is slightly
off-target.30
Rather than letting Evans’s argument grind to a halt here, however, it is perhaps worth
following it out because its next steps raise important and long-standing questions
about the relation of friendship and justice in Epicurus’s thought. Evans next links his
claim about the importance of security to the question of trust between friends raised in
SV 34, where we are told that it is not so much the help of friends that we need as our
assurance of that help.31 To help understand the mechanisms of trust and the way that
they structure friendships among Epicurean egoists, Evans offers Epicurus a number of
30 That is, the claim that visiting prisoners and the sick count as central cases of asphaleia; rather,
they seem commonplace instances of inopia, imbecillitas, and so on, as in the Laelius.
31 Eric Brown, following Evans, concludes “. . . the most important benefit a friend provides is the
confidence that he will help” in “Politics and Society,” 182, turning what is clearly a general, comparative
claim in SV 34 into a particular, absolute one.
Friendship 261
“fruitful” parallels32 from Epicurean doctrines about justice. Thus, for instance, if a sage
were worried about the reliability of a friend, he might fortify himself with the thought
that, like law-breakers, untrustworthy friends in a community of Epicureans cannot
escape the fear of detection. By the same token, a sage might need to relax his require-
ment of trusting a friend and to merely act as if he trusts an untrustworthy friend so that
it assures him of help from other Epicureans. Then there is the problem raised by
untrustworthy free riders on the trust of the community and so on and so forth. Many of
these problems of individuals slipping through the Epicurean “security net” can perhaps
be met “if friendship is nested in a relatively broad community of Epicurean agents—
such as the Garden . . . ”33 and, we should add, I think, if Epicurean friends are treating
one another as potentially hostile neighbors and in accordance with the mutually suspi-
cious and self-regarding canons of Epicurean justice. We should also add that it is hardly
clear that any of the mechanisms based on mutual fear and suspicion that we find in
contracting agents in the realm of justice apply to the attitudes and behavior of sages.
Thus, it is unclear, indeed doubtful, that they can be incorporated into the sage’s atti-
tudes towards friends.
When last we left an imaginary Epicurean Garden, friends were unselfconsciously
enjoying the fellowship of communal feasts and a warm fire. Evans, however, asks us to
imagine a “community of Epicurean agents” (an unintended ambiguity, no doubt) in
which Menoeceus and his messmate regard one another almost with the same attitudes
as two dissidents huddled over a samizdat text fearing that the other might be an inoffici-
elle Mitarbeiter of the Stasi. On this view, even Epicurus, it seems, cannot completely
trust his Ministers of Internal and External Security. It is true, of course, that Torquatus
at Fin. 1.65 speaks of Epicurus maintaining a huge flock of friends bound together by a
conspiratio, but I think the Latin there, especially since Torquatus describes it as a con-
spiratio amoris, suggests a unity or harmony of love, though, perhaps, Cicero is merely
reporting a clever example of an Epicurean Zersetzung aimed at their philosophical ene-
mies. At any rate, Evans argues that such agents will come to have friendships character-
ized by many of the behaviors typical of non-instrumental friendships. They will appear
cheerful, solicitous, giving, etc., since these traits can be instrumentally valuable in get-
ting others to help them, though it seems to me unlikely that such purely instrumental
behaviors can get one all the way to feeling no less pain than a friend when he is tortured.
Although Evans dismisses such worries as irrelevant to his project, one might wonder
whether agents can actually be solicitous when their motives in helping friends are
unconnected to any non-instrumental concern for their friends’ well-being. But more
generally, we might wonder as well, in this community founded on strategies of trust
and mistrust, what has happened to the μακαριότης and the immortal good that was
promised from friendship?
32 Evans, “Can Epicureans Be Friends?,” 419.

33 Evans, “Can Epicureans Be Friends?,” 420. Rossi, “Squaring the Epicurean Circle” argues
convincingly that many of these strategies for egoistic trust formulated by Evans are, in any case,
ultimately self-defeating.
262 PHILLIP MITSIS
In the evidence for Epicurus’s views that I set out at the beginning, I suggested that
there seemed to be a rough division between what appear to be more affective, perhaps
altruistic, and even divine elements in friendship, and those that may reflect a more cau-
tious and canny egoism. This is hardly an original observation, of course, since the rela-
tion of these two registers has for a long time raised fundamental methodological
questions. Moreover, the tension between them becomes even more pronounced when,
in search of larger structures of Epicurean social theory, elements from Epicurus’s the-
ory of justice and social formation are incorporated more broadly into his account of
friendship. We have seen, for instance, in Evans’s argument, the logical conclusion of
following out one side of this evidence in combination with elements from the theory
of justice. Some scholars have argued that there are certainly Epicurean precedents for
mixing together elements of justice and friendship in this way, since we find such an
amalgam in Lucretius’s and Hermarchus’s descriptions of the origins of societies and
their mechanisms of development.34 Justice and friendship emerge in these accounts in
overlapping contexts and from similar affective beginnings.
Consequently, there arises a question not only about the nature of Epicurus’s own
view about the relation between justice and friendship, but also its relation to later expo-
sitions of their common beginnings. The problem has been attacked in various ways.
Victor Goldschmidt, for instance, attempted to sort the Kyriai Doxai into separate
groupings to show how they correspond to various divisions among the domains of
friendship, justice, and social formation.35 Others have tended to collapse the evidence
for all of these domains within larger constructs of a general social theory36 or of school
practice. David Konstan’s recent seminal analysis of ancient friendship has complicated
the discussion further, however, with his argument that there are different registers
between φίλος and φιλία. The latter encompasses wider social and familiar relations that
include concerns about ἀσφάλεια, justice, and so on, while φίλος corresponds to “friend”
in the sense of an intimate, personal relation. He argues that, for Epicurus, φιλία is an
affective, stable relation of other-regard, love, and altruism associated with happiness
that arises across a wide range of social relations. It is often best studied in its origins and
early development. The relations of φίλοι, in contrast, are based for Epicurus on rela-
tions of personal loyalty and mutual utility. It was only in the centuries following his
death, Konstan claims, that the relations of φίλοι began to be discussed in terms not only
of mutual utility, but also of philia as well. Such things as emotional attachment or, for
instance, sincerity, as evidenced in Philodemus’s Peri Parrhesias,37 increasingly began to
become topics for reflection among later Epicurean φίλοι as they were faced with living
with one another in a close community.
34 See the discussion of Roskam in this volume.

35 Goldschmidt, La Doctrine d’Epicure et la droit.
36 This has been encouraged in the English-speaking world (and more recently in the French, 2001)
by Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.125–39. They include evidence about friendship
under the section on “Society.”
37 Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, 109 ff. Cf. also Konstan, A Life Worthy of the Gods: The
Materialist Psychology of Epicurus, 91–92.
Friendship 263
This kind of nutshell summary hardly does justice to all the ramifications of Konstan’s
powerful arguments, but in a brilliant response, Alain Gigandet38 argues that the origi-
nal tension between cautious egoism and other-regard in the evidence for Epicurus’s
view still crosses the line that Konstan attempts to draw between philos and philia. For
instance, the personal loyalty that Konstan sees underlying the sage’s attitude to his
φίλος in SV 56 would not be explicable, Gigandet argues, unless he valued his friend as
much as himself. By the same token, the use of philia in KD 28 reflects an emphasis on
subjective personal trust more in line with the concerns of φίλοι. Gigandet takes these
and other instances that he analyzes to be indications that Epicurus was actually rethink-
ing and revising conceptions of both philia and philoi from the very beginning. Whereas
Konstan had argued that Epicurus himself was not particularly concerned with rela-
tions of philoi, Gigandet suggests that it would be unlikely if Epicurus, who is so keen on
the powers of reason and rational evaluation, would favor inherited, social, and institu-
tional ties over those that require reflective evaluation and autonomous choice in order
to assess their contribution to ataraxia and aponia.
Similarly, Epicurus’s concerns about the nature of ataraxia, autonomy, and our invul-
nerability to chance would put the nature of relations among philosophical philoi at the
very center of what we might call the high philosophical discourse about the nature of
our individual selves and the conditions of our happiness. Moreover, while SV 78 and
KD 28, for instance, raise these kinds of questions about individual ataraxia, they also
open a window onto the wider question of sociability in general and the possibility of
giving philia as well a rational defense. In KD 28 it is gnōmē—rational judgment—that
convinces us of the reliability of philia. We should see Epicurus, therefore, Gigandet
argues, as also holding up traditional features of philia for examination in the light of
their contribution to autonomy and invulnerability. Although Konstan argues that we
can see the origins of sociability and something that approaches altruism in Lucretius’s
account in DRN 5,39 for instance, origins do not explain why we as individuals should
rationally adopt such other-regarding attitudes. The outcome of Epicurus’s examination
of philia, Gigandet argues, results, therefore, in replacing traditional philia and its social
structures with a social life among philoi—rational friends who have reflected on the
philosophical questions that we see mooted for instance, in Cicero’s De finibus. To see
these in more detail, we can now turn to Cicero’s account and also to the possible evi-
dence for indirect egoism and altruism that scholars have noted there.
At De finibus bonorum et malorum 1.65–70, Cicero, through the character of
Torquatus, offers our most detailed and seemingly systematic surviving account of
Epicurean views of friendship. It is worth remembering, however, that this work has a
particular focus and that its overall structure and arguments clearly reflect it.40 Cicero is
38 Gigandet, “Épicure, la philia et les philoi: un réexamen,” 89–106.

39 Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, 109 ff. Cf. also Konstan, A Life Worthy of the Gods: The
Materialist Psychology of Epicurus, 91–92.
40 For many acute observations about Cicero’s methods of rhetorical argument and the nature of his
arguments against Epicurean hedonism, see Inwood, “Rhetorica Disputatio: The Strategy of de Finibus
II.” For Cicero’s attitudes to Epicureanism generally, see Carlos Levy in this volume.
264 PHILLIP MITSIS
examining what the fines (limits, ends, criteria, etc.) of goods and of evils are in various
rival philosophical theories and in the first two books he sets himself the project of pre-
senting and criticizing the Epicurean claim that pleasure serves as a final end or goal for
our actions. One recurring problem in his account is that he glosses the notion of finis
with terms having different valences and, thus, those wishing to extract from Cicero’s
discussion Epicurus’s original view of friendship are faced with the problem that he
often describes the relation of friendship to pleasure in terminology imprecise enough
to encompass different theoretical outlooks. By the same token, his discussion presents
several further formidable obstacles and again no consensus has emerged on how to
overcome them.41 One problem is that from the outset we are confronted with descrip-
tions of friendship in a Latin vocabulary that are often emotionally charged42 in a way
reminiscent of, say, Montaigne speaking about his friendship with La Boétie. This is
aided, no doubt, by the perceived etymological connections between amicitia and amor
that Cicero plays on (cf. De amicitia 8). We should not assume, though, that this directly
captures the particular emotional nuances of Epicurus’s original theory.
Perhaps the most difficult and problematic feature of Cicero’s presentation, however,
is that it is structured around the claim that true friendship requires us to love friends as
much as ourselves (e.g. aeque amicos et nosmet ipsos diligamus, Fin. 1.67). Some would
argue that this shows that Cicero is viewing questions of Epicurean friendship through
the lens of solidifying professional disputes over generations both within and without
Epicurean circles. On the other hand, Gigandet, as we have seen, has made a strong case
for these philosophical controversies going back to Epicurus himself, though not neces-
sarily in this exact form. It is this slippage, however, between Cicero’s preoccupations
and the original wider context of these philosophical questions, along with the inexact-
ness of Cicero’s vocabulary that continues to bedevil contemporary scholarship.
What is clear, however, is that Cicero relentlessly uses the requirement of friends lov-
ing one another as much as themselves throughout his criticism of Epicurean views
(2.82–86) and in the service of his overall argument that hedonism is incompatible with
the normative fabric of Roman ethical and political life. Even if some Epicureans think
they can meet this requirement for friendship, he claims, they are being inconsistent
with their overall commitment to hedonism, while other Epicureans come to realize this
and give up hedonism in order to save their commitments to true friendship. Again, we
have no direct evidence that such a requirement ever served as this kind of lynchpin in
Epicurus’s original account. Moreover, it is hard not to be suspicious of the notion of any
Epicureans giving up hedonism. Thus, one often suspects that Cicero may be construct-
ing and reifying Epicurean “positions” in order to be able to go after them later in his
own response with a very blunt cleaver.
41 The most recent comprehensive discussion is Frede, “Epicurus on the Importance of Friendship
in the Good Life (De Finibus 1.65–70; 2.78–85).”
42 Fin. 1.65 amoris conspiratione consentientes; 1.67 amicos et nosmet ipsos diligamus; 1.69 tamen ipsi
amici propter se ipsos amentur, etc.
Friendship 265
To be sure, Torquatus’s presentation of these positions sometimes seems to present

actual points of contact with surviving texts of Epicurus. Unfortunately, scholarly attempts
to show precise correspondences have been frustrating. For example, Torquatus claims
that Epicurean friends will rejoice in their friends’ joy as much as their own and be equally
pained by their anguish (1.67–68). At SV 56 we find the claim that the wise man will suffer
(Ἀλγεῖ μὲν ὁ σοφός) no more than his friend who is being tortured. However literally this
claim is meant to be taken, it is perhaps reasonable to infer a sage’s symmetrical attitudes to
a friend’s pleasures as well. We might thus conclude that Torquatus is correctly reflecting a
general position of Epicurus himself in saying that a wise man will feel in the same way
towards his friend as he does towards himself (Quocirca eodem modo sapiens erit affectus
erga amicum quo in se ipsum . . . Fin. 68 ff.). Not all scholars would be willing to make such
an inference, however, without a more secure and directly corresponding text. Moreover,
it is an even greater jump from the affective claim that one will feel a friend’s pain no more
than one’s own (however that is to be understood) to the general evaluative claim that
Epicureans will value or, in Cicero’s terminology, “love” friends as much as themselves.
This is fairly typical of the elusive nature of Torquatus’s account. He seems to sometimes
draw near to known texts of Epicurus, but none of the positions he outlines maps directly
onto those that survive. Nor, unfortunately, does his exposition straightforwardly fill in
gaps that might help us put those texts coherently together with any confidence.
Torquatus begins his exposition by saying that friendship has been debated by Epicureans
in three ways (1.66). Many have taken this to mean that there was a dispute among
Epicureans themselves and that the three positions Torquatus presents are meant to repre-
sent reified factions or historical layers within the Epicurean school. This again seems open
to question, since the three positions do not necessarily conflict and to a certain extent they
might seem to address different aspects of friendship and different kinds of friends. It might
just as well be the case that these three “positions” have been extracted from a variety of
argumentative contexts and from arguments that Epicurus and later Epicureans used in the
course of their debates with rival schools. Cicero seems to take particular relish, for instance,
in the claim that the second Epicurean position on friendship appears to have conceded a
crucial criticism of the Academics (1.69). Yet, the supposed concession overlaps with the
two other accounts in key ways and, unlike them, it offers a causal empirical explanation of
the origins of friendship of the sort one could imagine in an Epicurean text dealing with the
psychological or social origins of friendship. It is not certain, then, that these three “posi-
tions” are anything more than constructions by Cicero based on a selective presentation of
Epicurean arguments taken out of their immediate context.
We can make a parallel with Epicurus’s account of justice. In trying to show how the
virtues are compatible with hedonism, Torquatus emphasizes that, like the rest of the
virtues, justice is connected to a life of pleasure and tranquility. This aretaic conception
of virtue as a virtuous trait of character has correspondences in Epicurus’s theory
(Ep. Men. 132), but in other sources, Epicurus develops a contractual theory of justice.43
43 For the general problem of the relation of aretaic and contractual justice, see Mitsis, Epicurus’
Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, ch. 3. For detailed discussion of contractual justice see
Paganini in this volume.
266 PHILLIP MITSIS
The relation of these two strands of Epicurus’s thinking about justice is left unexplored
in Cicero’s account, but it would be easy to construct a kind of Epicurean disputatio of
the following form: “some say justice is a contract,” while “others, giving in to Stoic criti-
cism, say it is an inner virtue exemplified by sages,” and “a third group says that justice
has its empirical/historical origins in rival groups beginning to feel pity for each other’s
children” (cf. DRN 5.1119–23). These three attested positions about justice show some-
thing important about Epicurus’s overall theory, yet however ultimately consistent they
are, they hardly represent the positions of three competing historical Epicurean groups.
Of the three positions on friendship described by Torquatus, the first is one that many
scholars have taken to best capture at least some elements of Epicurus’s original posi-
tion, though it is itself problematic as set out, and Cicero only says (2.82) that he seemed
(mihi videbar) to recognize a dictum of Epicurus himself in it. This is further compli-
cated by the fact that the initial part of the dictum he recognizes—that friendship cannot
be sundered from pleasure—is said by Torquatus to hold for all three positions at a gen-
eral level both as he opens and closes his exposition (cf. 1.70, without pleasure “no prin-
ciple (institutionem) for friendship can be found”). Cicero, however, continues with
what seems to be an allusion to KD 28 (see above 252), and a polemical one at that, and
further links this general principle to the claim that without friends one cannot live in
safety and without fear—which parallels the criticism we saw figuring prominently in
Seneca. In any case, Cicero goes beyond what KD 28 explicitly says to the extent that we
may have reason to suspect that he is only making use of the pretense of an allusion for
his own purposes and to anchor a common charge made by Epicurus’s opponents.
It is also difficult to assess the various ways in which Cicero is distancing his own
views from those of his character, Torquatus, and the effect that literary tropes of presen-
tation have on the accuracy of his account. Arguably at other key places in Torquatus’s
exposition of Epicurus’s doctrines, Cicero seems to be undercutting the arguments of
his literary creation in a manner similar to, say, the way that Plato often handles
Socrates’s interlocutors.44 Thus, it is difficult to assess how much of the confusion that
scholars have seen in some of the positions outlined by Torquatus is being foisted on
Epicurus by Cicero and is merely part of a general strategy of showing how Epicurean
accounts of the virtues and friendship are inconsistent with hedonism.
This is not the place to try to resolve these crucial questions, but it might be helpful to
begin by first setting out in more detail the two accounts of Epicurean friendship marked
out by Cicero as being later developments. There is not really enough independent evi-
dence to corroborate his claim, but both offer inklings of views that are sufficiently dif-
ferent from any of the surviving glimpses we have in Epicurus’s texts that it has led some
scholars to find Cicero’s assertion plausible. However, as I have suggested, these posi-
tions might just as well represent extracts of arguments culled out of context, from
works by Epicurus or his followers that we no longer have. So, at least in my view, cau-
tion is in order about them being actual, distinct, later Epicurean “positions,” however
useful they may ultimately prove in shedding light on Epicurus’s original views.
44 Cf. Mitsis and Piergiacomi, “Epicurei e Cirenaici a confronto,” 109–13.

Friendship 267
I begin with the last and briefest of the three accounts (1.70). Torquatus here
describes friendship as a certain compact (foedus quoddam) among the wise to love
their friends no less (nec minus) than themselves. By itself, of course, this admits of a
range of interpretations. Such a pact, for instance, might be innocent of any ulterior
motives for furthering some other self-interested goal. So, for instance, we might imag-
ine two sages becoming something like “blood brothers” on recognizing their mutual
virtue. Like the vow of an ideal marriage, such a pact merely puts a seal on a particular
relationship as intrinsically valuable, without making it the first step in a wider egoistic
strategy. Of course, a pact, just as in marriage, might also be used as a means to some
further goal, and this is certainly one construal that Cicero offers in his criticism at 2.83.
There is some reason for thinking that such a construal might not be a fair account of
the Epicurean position, however, since in his account of compacts of justice, Epicurus
gives no independent binding force to contracts themselves and argues that they are
only valid so long as they reflect an individual’s good. Thus, it does not seem likely that
an Epicurean sage would need to try to bind another sage in a strategic contract of
friendship in the hopes of furthering some long-term interest, especially since the con-
tract in itself, if the parallel with contractual justice holds, might have no independent
force and becomes void if it harms his interests. While it might initially seem plausible
to see these contracts as part of an indirect strategy for maximizing pleasure, it is not at
all clear that Epicurean sages would either need or abide by them as part of an indirect
selfish strategy. This is not to say, of course, that contracting sages could not be genuine
friends and would not be committed to each other in sub-optimal circumstances. It is
just that the Epicurean notion of a contract does not on its own serve to underwrite
such commitments.
At the same time, Cicero also seems to leave open, however ironically, the possibility
that such Epicurean compacts might not be purely strategic, and he suggests that the
kinds of attitudes that they underwrite should be extended to loving all the virtues
intrinsically as well (2.83). Whether this is ironic or not on his part, Cicero thinks that he
has shown that either such compacts are made strategically for further self-interested
goals, in which case the intrinsic value of the compact and, hence, true friendship is
undermined, or, if the compact is indeed innocent of further self-centered goals, then
like an intrinsic love of virtue, it is incompatible with Epicurus’s hedonism. In trying to
peer through Cicero’s account to an original Epicurean argument, it is difficult to see
why sages would need to make contracts with one another for either strategic or benign
reasons. If contracts are strategic, they may not be binding on their own. Nor is it clear
how one can enter a contract to love another as oneself, unless one already does so. If the
love fades, moreover, that would seem to outweigh any contractual force. Conversely, if
the contracts are merely benign, symbolic tokens of mutual love, one wonders why
Epicurean sages would go in for such outer trappings in the first place. We have a certain
amount of information about Epicurus and his relations with his most important fol-
lowers. We also hear from Philodemus about relations of friendship among the gods.
Nowhere do we hear about Epicurean sages making explicit contracts of friendship with
their fellows, nor gods with gods, for either symbolic or strategic reasons. One reason
268 PHILLIP MITSIS
for this, perhaps, is that neither sort of contract seems to make much sense in an
Epicurean context. Arguments from silence can cut both ways, of course, and it might
be that Cicero is indeed reporting a genuine later Epicurean position. Nonetheless, as we
have seen, there are too many obstacles to make any secure inferences of any particular
substance from this account to Epicurus’s original position.
In turning to Torquatus’s second account, which is not explicitly limited to sages, we
see the same tensions presented between hedonism and the intrinsic valuation of
friends, but—at least in Cicero’s reckoning—more clearly resolved against Epicurus’s
hedonism. Torquatus relates that this group, though sharp enough (satis acuti—appar-
ently unlike Epicurus himself, 2.81), are more timid (timidiores) than the first group
because they fear that friendship will be crippled by the demands of a self-regarding
hedonism. In fact, they seem to agree with Cicero in this and are described as coming to
this “more humane” (2.82) conclusion because of their fear of Academic (vestra convi-
cia) censure. Torquatus explains that, for these Epicureans, friendship finds its begin-
nings in our initially seeking pleasure from one another, but by growing accustomed
(usus) to each other, familiarity (familiaritas) results, from which blossoms (efflorescere)
such mutual love that we come to love friends for their own sakes, even if there is no
advantage (utilitas) from their friendship (1.69).
This account is striking for several reasons. On the one hand it seems a remarkable
anticipation of the long empiricist tradition of associationist theories beginning with
Locke and Hume, then on to Bentham, Mill, and Bain, and finally to contemporary con-
nectionists. Associationists tie the cognitive armature of individuals to their experien-
tial and causal history and treat psychological development as a mechanical empirical
process. In general, Epicurus was keen on such mechano-empirical explanations of ori-
gins and we find glimpses of associationism throughout his philosophy, for instance in
his account of the development of language, society, concepts, etc. On this telling,
Epicurean friends come to value each other in their own right, like Epicurean sages, but
these attitudes of intrinsic valuation arise, not through conscious rational choice, but
through a causal and experiential process involving habit, familiarity, and growing
intimacy.
What is more striking, however, and almost unheard of in the wider context of ancient
ethical theorizing, is Cicero’s suggestion that the criteria grounding these friendships
trump Epicurean friends’ conception and pursuit of their own telos or pleasure. While
Peripatetics, Stoics, and even various Cyrenaics might have had to do some fancy foot-
work to justify valuing friends for themselves in the context of their overall theories of
self-regarding good, such an explicit rejection, if that is what it is, of their own favored
view of the telos by these Epicureans is nothing short of astonishing. We might have
expected, for instance, that on coming to the realization that hedonism cannot explain
disinterested friendship, they might have either given it up or shopped around for a rival
theory to explain how friendships can remain part of their conception of their own
good. These Epicureans, however, although satis acuti, persist in consciously maintain-
ing an inconsistent set of doctrines because of their supposed fear of Academic reproach
and, thus, it seems, are satisfied with remaining Epicureans only in name.
Friendship 269
All of this is decidedly odd, and there are further difficulties in Cicero’s picture. He
concludes at 2.82 that this group of Epicureans abandons hedonism, though not
Epicureanism, but confusingly changes terminology in criticizing their views. Whereas
Torquatus says that such friendships blossom from association even if there is no utility
(nulla utilitas) in them, Cicero describes such friendships in his critique (2.82) as occur-
ring, even with all expectation of pleasure disregarded (etiam omissa spe voluptatis).
While we might suppose that utilitas and voluptas are being used interchangeably in the
two accounts, two potential problems present themselves. First, some scholars45 have
seen a connection between this second account and the claim in SV 23, “Every friend-
ship is choiceworthy for itself, though it has taken its beginning from benefit.” (Πᾶσα
φιλία δι᾽ ἑαυτὴν αἱρετὴ [Usener: ἀρετή MSS] ἀρχὴν δὲ εἴληφεν ἀπὸ τῆς ὠφελείας). One
thing that is not clear in its compressed Greek, however, is whether friendship continues
to remain beneficial while being choiceworthy (and presumably pleasurable) despite
taking its origin from benefit, or whether it remains choiceworthy (and pleasureable?)
even apart from benefit. Here ὠφελεία has seemed to some to correspond to utilitas. In
Torquatus’s account, though, we have an explicit wedge driven between utilitas and
friendship not found in SV 23, and it is unclear whether this might be to serve Cicero’s
purposes in showing that the requirement of loving a friend intrinsically is incompatible
with hedonism. One could imagine, however, given the flexibility of Cicero’s vocabulary
here, some friendships not being advantageous or producing utility in some sense, but
still being pleasurable and thus choiceworthy.
Moreover, the notion of Epicureans giving up hedonism in the face of Academic
opprobrium certainly raises suspicions and it is hard to imagine a concrete group of
them consciously continuing to do so as ongoing adherents of the school. Other expla-
nations of this “position” beckon, and it might well be, for instance, that Epicurus in a
particular argumentative context gave an associationist account of the origins and
growth of friendships through familiarity, some of which might and others might not
foster utility or an individual’s pleasure. This does not mean, of course, that Epicurus
then endorsed those that do not, rather than, say, advise against them and insist that
they be eliminated like other sorts of troubling personal relations. This is surely what we
would expect and in many ways it strains credulity to believe that any Epicureans would
hold that troubling friendships should be maintained, regardless of their genesis.
Indeed, Epicurus is clear about the costs of such troubling friendships (SV 56–57; cf. DL
10.121b). Nor is the psychological explanation of the genesis of a particular behavior suf-
ficient to recommend it for an Epicurean; it must be held up for rational evaluation and
it is this that ultimately must justify it.
In any case, as presented, this second account is easy pickings for Cicero, since, on the
one hand, these Epicureans violate a cardinal rule of ancient theorizing about the telos,
while they concede exactly what Cicero is keen to show, i.e. that hedonism cannot
45 See Eric Brown for an extremely careful examination of the evidence in “Epicurus on Friendship
(Sententia Vaticana 23),” 68–80. Also now, H. Essler, “Die Lust der Freundschaft und die Lust des
Freundes von Epikur bis Cicero.”
270 PHILLIP MITSIS
s upport the requirement that friends treat each other non-instrumentally. To the extent
that they do so, however, they are more acute than their master in Cicero’s eyes since
they accept a dictum that he never did (2.82), that we can love our friends for their own
sakes without the expectation of pleasure.
We can now turn to Torquatus’s first and most extensive account. For many scholars
his exposition has seemed incoherent and they have concluded that Cicero either is
unfairly foisting an inconsistent argument on Torquatus or his account merely reflects
the inconsistency of Epicurus’s original position. Torquatus begins with the claim that
some Epicureans deny that the pleasures of our friends are to be sought after as much as
our own (1.66). Moreover, they further deny what seems to be the case to some of their
nameless critics, that such a view undermines the stabilitas of friendship. He then con-
cludes his argument by claiming that the sapiens will feel (erit affectus) exactly towards
his friends in the same way as he feels towards himself and will undertake the same
efforts for his friend’s pleasure as for his own (1.68). At first glance, there seems to be a
fairly straightforward contradiction between his opening claim and his conclusion, and
we might wonder about the intervening steps. These would seem to be initially purely
self-interested and strategic. Reason itself (ratio ipsa), he claims, advises that one acquire
friends because a solitary life is filled with metus (fear) and insidiae (snares), and friend-
ships offer reassurance and the promise of pleasure. Thus, since (1) a life of secure and
continuing pleasure is not possible without friends, and (2) friendship itself requires
loving friends as much as we love ourselves, as a consequence, (3) intrinsic mutual love
between friends is brought about (efficitur) and it is connected with pleasure (connecti-
tur). This central argument is followed by the claim above (1.68) about the sapiens that
seems to serve as a purely parenthetical amplification. Then Torquatus goes on to reiter-
ate his rather imprecise claim about the relation between friendship and pleasure in (3).
He does so by drawing a parallel to his earlier conclusion about the virtues and says that
both virtue and friendship always inhaererent (adhere, cling to, stick fast, etc.) to pleas
ures (1.68). Given that Torquatus had earlier argued that the virtues are purely instru-
mental to pleasure, this would seem to suggest that friendship is as well. But there is also
a significant disanalogy. Virtues are valued only instrumentally, whereas friends value
each other as much as themselves.
At first blush, Torquatus’s account seems to be a jumble of claims that perhaps reflect
arguments from different contexts. The concluding assertion about the sage seems to
have been tacked on to the argument in a way that is both unexplained—why this sud-
den claim about the sapiens?—and also pleonastic. By the same token, Torquatus inter-
jects a strong non-instrumental requirement about friends’ mutual regard, but leaves its
exact relation to hedonism unclear. Finally, the account begins and ends with seemingly
opposing views about how friends are to view and act towards one another’s pleasures.
For many, all this is sufficient to suggest the inability of these later Epicureans to coher-
ently explain their justification of friendship, and it also has been tempting to read this
confusion back onto Epicurus himself.
It might be helpful to begin, however, by distinguishing two competing views con-
cerning the opening move of Torquatus’s argument. He says that some Epicureans deny
Friendship 271
that the pleasures relating to our friends are to be striven for, desired, etc. (expetendas) as
much as our own. Nonetheless he believes that they are still able to easily defend a con-
ception of friendship that does not totter. One problem is the scope of this initial claim.
Is Torquatus summarizing an overall position from the outset or is he merely beginning
to build a larger argument? Dorothea Frede, for instance, takes the latter view. She
argues that the claim about the lesser value of friends’ pleasures is just the first step in a
developmental argument in which friends later come to recognize that in order to main-
tain friendships they need to come to value friends’ pleasures as much as their own.
What distinguishes this argument from associationism, it seems, is that it appears to be a
more rational and conscious process in which individuals begin from and do not lose
sight of their own self-interest, even if they eventually realize that they must give up a
narrow pre-occupation with it. Frede also suggests that such an account is not necessar-
ily contradictory.46 The pleasures of our friends are not initially as desirable as our own,
but they take on equal value in the course of our recognition that a warrant of real
friendship comes to be provided by our shared emotions. Our friends’ pleasures, that is,
gain an equivalent value to our own in the context of new bonds of emotional mutuality.
To Frede’s picture one might also add the observation that in this account it is only
within the parameters of such mutual relations that friends come to “love each other as
much as themselves . . . ” (aeque amicos et nosmet ipsos diligamus . . .), whereas in associa-
tionism, friends love others propter se ipsos (1.69) and mutuality is not explicitly raised
as a necessary criterion for attitudes that are not purely self-interested. It may not be
prudent, given the potential imprecision in Cicero’s renditions, to lean too heavily on
these possible differences in the attitudes of friends toward one another in these two
accounts, but neither should they be discounted.
In many ways, Frede’s is initially an attractive suggestion, but it still leaves unex-
plained exactly how this sea change in our attitudes towards friends’ pleasures occurs
and why it is justified. Torquatus merely says idcirco et hoc ipsum efficitur in amicitia . . .
(1.67), without giving an account of its mechanisms or justification. More worrying is
that Frede maintains that “[t]he case of friendship is, indeed, exactly analogous to that of
the virtues.”47 This is in line with Torquatus’s assertion, but virtues clearly are only a
means to pleasure—a necessary means, perhaps, but still only a means. But surely if the
virtues are exactly analogous to friendship, it makes friends purely instrumental to one’s
own pleasure as well. This is perhaps what we might have initially expected if we take
Torquatus’s opening sally to summarize this position, but such a view seems to directly
undercut the kinds of disinterested attitudes apparently underwritten by the mutuality
of loving a friend as much as oneself.
One notable line of argument tries to address this difficulty head on and to bring
coherence to Torquatus’s account in a different way. Eschewing a developmental view of
46 Frede, “Epicurus on the Importance of Friendship in the Good Life (De Finibus 1.65–70; 2.78–85),”
106. See as well Stern-Gillet, “Epicurus and Friendship” for defense of the claim that a desire for
ataraxia necessarily leads to mutual bonds of trust and self-sacrifice.
47 Frede, “Epicurus on the Importance of Friendship in the Good Life (De Finibus 1.65–70;
2.78–85),” 106.
272 PHILLIP MITSIS
the passage, Timothy O’Keefe offers an analysis that endorses an initial expectation that
the argument will show us how friendship is compatible with friends ultimately not
valuing the pleasures of their friends as much as their own. Whereas Frede must hold
that the opening denial about the equal desirability of the pleasures of our friends (quae
ad amicos pertinerent) reflects loose writing on Cicero’s part—since, strictly speaking,
those whose pleasures we view as being less valuable are not yet “real friends”—O’Keefe
takes this claim at face value and thinks that it underlies the whole argument in a crucial
way. He does so by relying on an argument that, at least in embryonic form, has become
prominent in contemporary defenses of indirect consequentialism.48 Of course, the
coherence of contemporary indirect consequentialism is hotly debated,49 but O’Keefe
attempts to find in Torquatus’s exposition something other than a mere farrago of
Epicurean confusions or Ciceronian misunderstandings.
O’Keefe makes a distinction between our first-order and second-order strategies as
friends.50 My overall strategy in friendship as an Epicurean is still to maximize my pleas
ure, but I see that my best first-order strategy for doing so is to treat my friends’ pleas
ures as being equal to my own. On occasion, perhaps, this first-order strategy may not
directly pay off, but by following it as a general rule, I will tend in this way to best maxi-
mize my pleasures overall. On this account, only my own pleasures remain intrinsically
valuable, but in making my decisions, I recognize that the best way of achieving my
second-order or higher-level goal is to behave in a way that treats my friends’ pleasures
equally with my own.
For O’Keefe, Epicurean friends are not, however, engaging in what he calls “double-
think,” but instead recognizing that in one sense only their own pleasure has intrinsic
value, while in another sense they do indeed love their friends as much as themselves.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will eschew this language of “doublethink,” since I
prefer the more neutral term of art “one thought too many.” Unlike “doublethink,” it
does not raise the wider specter of societal or ideological manipulation of the sort we
saw earlier in Evans’s account. Unlike some contemporary political or economic theo-
rists who see in two-level theories a potential for manipulating individuals for a larger
good, Epicurus never suggests that it would be good for a society of Epicurean friends as
a whole to be manipulated into first-order other-regard and to give up any further com-
plicating second-order thoughts about the priority of their own individual interests in
order to unwittingly maximize both their own and the larger social good. In an
Epicurean context, each individual must personally adopt the kind of double strategy
proposed by O’Keefe.
So the question arises, why does O’Keefe think that this double strategy does not lead to
the problem of holding one thought too many? At first glance, it certainly might appear that
48 In a stimulating and far-ranging discussion Julia Annas explores the possibility of such a
two-level theory to explain the evidence. She argues that Epicurus needs such a theory, but does not
produce it. O’Keefe argues that Epicurus does in fact produce it. Cf. Julia Annas, The Morality of
Happiness, 240 ff.; and O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?”
49 See, for instance, E. Mason, “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?”
50 O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?,” 294.
Friendship 273
when I am acting, I must be able to hold in my thoughts both the priority of my own pleasure
and the equivalence of my friends’ pleasures to my own. O’Keefe tries to meet this challenge
by appealing to a distinction between beliefs and behavior. He claims that Epicureans
behave towards friends and treat them in ways that display an equal concern for their inter-
ests, but they do so by maintaining the second-order goal of maximizing their own p leasure.
This is meant to be different from Evans’s claim that the Epicurean friend often will need to
act with a kind of duplicity by behaving in one way, while believing something else.
In support of his claim, O’Keefe argues that Torquatus’s terminology of diligo and
affectus erga can be read as behavioral or dispositional terms. Thus, when Torquatus says
in 1.68, Quocirca eodem modo sapiens erit affectus erga amicum quo in se ipsum . . ., it can
have the more generic meaning that the sage “will be disposed” in the same way toward
his friend as toward himself, not necessarily that he “will feel in the same way toward his
friend as toward himself.” I find O’Keefe’s reinterpretation of the Latin unlikely, but
more telling in this particular instance is its overall context. This claim about the sage
follows directly from (quocirca) the preceding claim that “we rejoice in our friends’ joy
as much as in our own, and are equally pained by their sorrows” (1.67–8; Rackham).
These joys and sorrows hardly seem to be merely a description of ways of treating or
being disposed towards others (cf. SV 57).
More important, it is hard to see how O’Keefe’s argument that these are best under-
stood as behavioral terms can ultimately evade the problem of these wise Epicurean
friends’ having one thought too many. O’Keefe sometimes speaks as if when Epicureans
are treating their friends’ pleasures in a manner equivalent to their own, they are merely
behaving in a particular way. But, of course, Epicureans think that all of our actions
and behaviors are the result of particular cognitive states, so there can be no clean
division between second-order thoughts and first-order behaviors.51 When we are acting
on behalf of our friends’ pleasures, we clearly must have corresponding beliefs about their
value. But it is unclear how those beliefs would not be in tension with our second-order
beliefs about the primacy of our own pleasures. By the same token, even if we were to
follow O’Keefe in cashing out our first-order relations to friends in terms of disposi-
tions, when we act we would still have one disposition too many—a disposition to treat
our friends’ pleasures as equivalent to our own, but still another general disposition to
treat our own as being more important. That is, I doubt that an Epicurean can claim that
our diathesis to pursue our own pleasure as primary is somehow silenced when we are
disposed to treat friends’ pleasures equivalently to our own. The same holds for the sug-
gestion that Epicureans in one sense take their own pleasures to be primary and in
another view their friends’ pleasures as having equal value.52 In whatever sense they are
51 Cf. the discussion of Nemeth, Epicurus on the Self.

52 O’Keefe tries to bolster his account by making an analogy to the Stoics’ distinction between the
goal and the target of their moral craft. The Stoics, however, are appealing to a craft with an internal
goal, i.e. I fulfill the moral craft when I properly aim at preferred indifferents, independently of whether
I successfully hit the target or not. The Stoics are keen to show how external results are not part of the
goal of their moral craft. In contrast, the Epicurean, by merely aiming at his friend’s pleasure correctly,
is not thereby fulfilling his goal, which remains separate and external from the process itself of aiming.
274 PHILLIP MITSIS
taking these twin commitments, they are saddled with one commitment, one sense, one
disposition, or one belief too many.
O’Keefe further argues that some surviving bits of evidence (SV 34, SV 39) are com-
patible with his account of first- and second-order strategies. As far as I can tell, how-
ever, the thrust of these passages has other aims. At SV 34 Epicurus says that it is not so
much the help of friends that we need, but the confidence of that help. But I can hold
both of these thoughts at the same time since they are perfectly compatible and, in any
case, what would the first-order strategy be in order to insure such confidence? Should I
make it a rule to not help friends in order to bolster their confidence in me or should I
aim to help them? SV 39 describes reciprocity and says that both those who are always
asking for favors and those who never do get it wrong. The passage is not explicitly lim-
ited to relations of friendship, pace O’Keefe, but again, the worry is one of finding a
proper balance. There is no suggestion that one needs to aim at one thing in order to
gain another.
Annas raises the more general objection that Epicureans do not engage in multi-level
strategies in their deliberations because they always are supposed to do just one thing: to
always check each and every prospective choice against one’s final goal, pleasure (KD 25;
cf. Men. 130, ταῦτα πάντα κρίνειν καθήκει; Men. 132 τὰς αἰτίας ἐξερευνῶν πάσης αἱρέσεως
καὶ φυγῆς):53
Εἰ μὴ παρὰ πάντα καιρὸν ἐπανοίσεις ἕκαστον τῶν πραττομένων ἐπὶ τὸ τέλος τῆς
φύσεως, ἀλλὰ προκαταστρέψεις εἴτε φυγὴν εἴτε δίωξιν ποιούμενος εἰς ἄλλο τι, οὐκ
ἔσονταί σοι τοῖς λόγοις αἱ πράξεις ἀκόλουθοι.
Unless at every appropriate moment you refer each one of your actions to the telos
of nature, but first divert your avoidance or pursuit to some other thing while acting,
your words will not correspond to your actions.
O’Keefe argues that the conception of deliberation we find in KD 25 does not preclude a
two-level strategy. First of all, Epicurus, he claims, is not suggesting that we evaluate
each and every one of our choices for its hedonic payoff. He is only recommending that
we evaluate our choices, desires, etc. at a more general level, a level that approaches
second-order reasoning about our goals. Whether the Greek allows this is certainly
arguable, since Epicurus’s almost formulaic use of πᾶς in these contexts certainly seems
to rhetorically suggest “each and every” choice, action, etc. Even if we were to grant
O’Keefe the generality of these claims, however, it would still leave Epicureans with the
problem of balancing two general and conflicting demands when faced with individual
decisions. So, for instance, I might generally come to believe that I should treat my
friends’ pleasures on a par with my own and, of course, I might also believe that my
friends’ pleasures are less valuable than mine in general. What do I do now? In some
sense, the whole point of indirect consequentialism was to distinguish motives of indi-
vidual actions from their overall consequences. O’Keefe’s version of a two-level theory,
53 Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 241 ff.

Friendship 275
owever, ascribes the same motivation for adopting both of these general desires, i.e. to
h
maximize my individual pleasure. In distinguishing levels, he depends on a distinction
not so much between motives and consequences, but in valuing a friend’s pleasure and
acting on behalf of it. As we have seen, however, Epicurus does not hold such a view,
given his account of the relation of beliefs and action. For the Epicurean, our actions are
grounded in and flow from our beliefs in the kind of straightforward manner familiar
from a long line of cognitivist/materialist theories. As we are acting on behalf of our
friends’ pleasures, we are not somehow merely acting or play-acting in a cognitive vac-
uum. In O’Keefe’s account, Epicureans are unnecessarily saddled with contradictory
thoughts, dispositions, desires, etc. Therefore, whatever difficulties we may face in put-
ting together the various pieces of Torquatus’s account, O’Keefe’s sophisticated attempt
at finding coherence in it, I think, falters.
One seemingly unavoidable conclusion in the face of these unsuccessful attempts at
finding coherence in Cicero’s account is that either he is wittingly or unwittingly foisting
confusions on Epicureans or he is merely reporting the tensions in Epicurus’s and his
followers’ thinking about friendship. For the moment, it seems that we do not have a
convincing way of avoiding either of these not particularly appealing alternatives.
By way of conclusion, I will turn to evidence that is emerging from the ongoing work
on Philodemus.
Philodemus
As always, the hope is that new material from Herculaneum will come forth to help put
more of the pieces together. At the same time, however, it is worth remembering Voula
Tsouna’s cautionary assessment in another context, “. . . Philodemus pressed by the
objections of his rivals . . . nuances the canonical positions of his school and makes it
more palatable.”54 At this writing, we are still waiting for new editions of critical evi-
dence, and beyond that, the difficult work will need to begin of attempting to sift out
what might be palatable nuance, innovation in the face of later polemics, or develop-
ments stemming from Philodemus’s own individual preoccupations with psychological
explanation, delineations of character, and expositions of Epicurean social practices in
the larger context of the Roman world.
The evidence we have about Philodemus’s views of friendship is embedded in discus-
sions of such things as Epicurean pedagogy, the management of property, social conven-
tions, the relations among gods, etc. Given the fragmentary nature of these discussions,
the passing nature of his references to friendship, and Philodemus’s penchant for palat-
able nuance, a unified and considered view of his conception of friendship is hard to
come by. Tsouna, however, offers what is probably the most plausible overarching
account to date. Relying partly on Cicero’s presentation, she surmises that we can find in
54 Voula Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 276.

276 PHILLIP MITSIS
the second account of Epicurean friendship in De finibus not only correspondences to

Philodemus’s own view, but also indirect references to Philodemus himself and the cir-
cle of philosophers living in Piso’s villa.55 Moreover, the emphasis on disinterested con-
cern for others that we find in Cicero’s second account, she argues, seems to be reflected
in Philodemus’s personally favored attitudes in social relations generally, in pedagogy,
and in the management of external goods.
If this is the case, of course, it raises two immediate obstacles in reading evidence
from Philodemus back onto Epicurus.56 First, we have Cicero’s insistence that this is a
later, “more humane” development in Epicureanism that arose in response to Academic
criticism. More troubling, as we have seen, is Cicero’s claim that these Epicureans essen-
tially give up the strict demands of hedonism in favor of a theory of friendship that lets
the importance of purely disinterested attitudes towards friends trump one’s own pleas
ure. Thus, one is tempted to conclude that evidence from Philodemus, at least so far, is
unlikely to help coherently explain the tensions we have seen in Epicurus’s original texts
between hedonism and disinterested friendship, since hedonism seems to lose out in
this view.57 This does not mean that Philodemus could not be drawing on authentic ele-
ments of disinterested attitudes from Epicurus’s own texts. But at best, he seems not to
be worried that this tension needs to be openly addressed; nor do we have any text in
which he relates an explicit response on the part of Epicurus himself to this worry.
One further complicating factor is that Philodemus is our most extensive and detailed
source for the kinds of relations enjoyed among Epicurean gods. These gods, of course,
are not burdened by human practical needs, or indeed any needs from each other at all,
so they are able to maintain relations of mutual affection without any concerns about
mutual advantage. One question that hovers over Philodemus’s various discussions is
how much human beings, especially sages, can partake in corresponding relations of
disinterested affectionate friendship independent of personal need. At the same time,
there arises a larger question about the role of theology in Epicurus’s ethics more gener-
ally. Cicero’s account of Epicurean ethics is decidedly understated about the role played
by theology in shaping Epicurus’s ethical views, whereas, for instance, the Letter to
Menoeceus begins with a discussion of the gods and insists that a correct view of them
plays a pivotal role in one’s happiness. Whether Cicero’s manner of presenting Epicurus’s
ethical theory should best be attributed to the particular disciplinary divisions he sets,
perhaps arbitrarily, between De finibus and De natura deorum, he nevertheless tends to
leave us in the dark about the connections between Epicurus’s various accounts of
friendship and the possible theological considerations that might be giving them their
particular nuances.
55 Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, esp. pp. 27–31. Cf. Nathan Gilbert, “Among Friends: Cicero and
the Epicureans.”
56 David Armstrong seems to agree with Tsouna about the correspondences between Philodemus’s
views and Cicero’s second account, but is far more sanguine about the use of Philodemus in
reconstructing Epicurus’s original view. “Utility and Affection in Epicurean Friendship: Philodemus On
the Gods 3, On Property Management, and Horace, Sermones 2.6,” 182–208.
57 Cf. the discussion of Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 31.
Friendship 277
When we turn to Philodemus, it is perhaps not implausible to conclude that his

emphasis on disinterested friendship at times resembles a species of homoiosis theoi.58
To the extent that the pleasures of sages are equal to those of the gods, one might plausi-
bly assume that their friendships also parallel those of the gods. Friendships among the
gods in Philodemus’s view are clearly pleasant, but they are not rooted in concerns about
external necessities. Thus, his account also raises general questions about the nature of
the relation between pleasure and utility in human friendships, and we might wonder as
well about Cicero’s own moves between pleasure and utility in his discussions of
Epicurean friendship and the extent to which he is merely reflecting, or perhaps exploit-
ing elements of later developments for his own purposes.
It might be useful to offer by way of illustration a comparison that Philodemus draws
between divine59 and human friendship from Gods 3:
(fr. 87.25–32) . . . τῶ]ν ἔ̣ξ̣ω-

[θ]εν χρειωδῶν ἡ συμφυλία πρὸϲ [τὴν] συνανα-
σ]τροφὴν ἀπῆι, τὰ πάθη παρα̣[δί]δωσιν. οὐ
γὰρ δυνατὸν σχεῖν τὴν συμφυλίαν ἄνευ
π̣ ^ά^σηϲ ἐπιμειξίαϲ ὄντας. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ ἐ-
φ’ ἡμῶν τῶν ἀ̣σθενῶν καὶ προσδε̣ο̣μένων πρὸς [τ]ὰ
[χ]ρ[ει]ώδη τῆς φ^ι^λίας, οὐκέτι πρὸς τοὺς φ[ί]λου̣ [ς ἀ]
π^οβ^ληθ̣έ̣ν̣τας ἔχ̣[ε]ι χρείας, [οντιν’] α̣ὐτὸς ὁ
(fr. 83.1–8) . . . τ[ῶ]ν ἠθῶν τῶν ὀμοίων [θ]αυμασμὸς ἐπὶ καὶ
τῆς ἄκρας οἰκειώσεως σ[υ]νέχει. καὶ τὰς ἄλλας
μέντοι χρείας ἀπολαμβάνουσιν παρ’ ἀλλή-
λων, εἰ καὶ δύνανται δι’ αὑτῶν παρασκευάζεσ-
[θα]ι̣, καθάπερ ἡμεῖς ἐνίοτε παρὰ τῶν ταὔτ’ ἐχόν-
[τω]ν̣. καὶ γὰρ τῆ̣[ς] ἁ̣φῆς καὶ τῶν πρὸς τὴν ἀφ[ὴ]ν
καὶ τὴν [ἀκ]οὴν, καὶ πά[λιν τ]ῶ̣ ν ὅλω^ν^ [τ]ῶν πρὸς τὴν̣ φύσιν
[ἔ]ξωθεν οἰκ[ει-.] . . . .[. .] δη και. [. . . . . . . .
Gods 3 fr. 87.25–32 (Essler)60
(fr. 87.25–32) . . . mutual friendship for the purpose of association lacks external
necessities, it entrusts emotions. For it is not possible to maintain mutual friendship
without there being a complete joining together. Indeed, even among us who are
weak and in further need of necessities from friendship, no longer with respect to
lost friends does it (friendship) have need, to whom that . . . (fr. 83.1–8) wonderment
of like character holds together even to the highest peak of affection. And, indeed,
they take from each other all the rest of their needs, even though they are able to
provide them for themselves, just as we sometimes do from those who have the
same things. For, indeed, of touch and of the things related to touch and hearing and
again of all things that in accordance with nature are external, it is fitting . . .
58 On this general tendency in Epicureanism, see the stimulating paper of Erler, “Epicurus as deus
mortalis: homoiosis theoi and Epicurean Self-cultivation.”
59 Essler, “Freundschaft Der Gotter und Toten mit Einer Neuedition von Phld., DI iii, Frg. 87 und 83.”
60 Essler, “Freundschaft Der Gotter.”
278 PHILLIP MITSIS
Presumably Philodemus is talking about friendships among the gods who are in need of
nothing, but join together in relations that transmit or entrust their emotions to each
other. Unfortunately from this fragmentary passage we do not learn what motivates
them to do so. Philodemus observes, in addition, that we do not gain any external neces-
sities from friends that we have lost, or perhaps who have died. In a series of far-ranging
papers on friendship and the virtues in Philodemus, David Armstrong has argued that
this passage makes the poignant observation that although human friendships are typ-
ically bound by mutual need, a revealing exception seems to be our relation to our dead
friends. He takes this to be a significant exemplification of the kind of disinterested
friendship available to us in life and that continues after the death of friends. As we
delightedly think about our former mutuality of character and do so without the natu-
ral grief Philodemus thinks we are likely to feel at their initial loss, we come to think
about our lost friends in a true perspective. It is not that this highest degree of friend-
ship can only be experienced after a friend’s death. But it is an experience parallel to the
kinds of pleasures of mutuality that the gods continually experience in their freedom
from need.61
It is perhaps plausible to see Philodemus’s remark here as a further development from
the claim at the end of the Letter to Menoeceus (135) that one will live as a god if one stud-
ies Epicureanism day and night with τὸν ὅμοιον σεαυτῷ. Whereas in Epicurus the argu-
ment is that the doctrine itself will enable one to live as a god and that it is helpful to
study it with one who is akin to oneself, here the suggestion seems to be that those who
have perfected their characters by means of the doctrine are able to derive ongoing
pleasure from contemplating one another, even in memory. Although Philodemus does
not explicitly endorse the Aristotelian claim that one comes to understand one’s own
character through the eyes of another, it may be that Peripatetic echoes can be faintly
heard in this notion of the mutual thaumasmos among those whose characters are alike,
especially if as Armstrong plausibly argues, such wonderment is reserved for those who
have perfected their Epicurean virtue. Yet given that Epicurus and the Epicurean sage
serve as exempla, there are strains in earlier Epicureanism as well that might serve to
underwrite the benefits of such mutual admiration. Thus, at the human level we move
from the recommendation in the Letter to Menoeceus to master the content of Epicurean
doctrine with a friend, finally arriving at Philodemus’s image of friends admiring that
content as it is embodied in their friends’ characters. Given the fragmentary nature of
this extract, it is only a matter of supposition whether the gods too enjoy the admiration
of each other’s virtues and perfection, though this too seems a plausible inference and
perhaps furnishes a motive for their engaging in friendship over and beyond the sharing
of emotions.
61 Armstrong, “Epicurean Virtues, Epicurean Friendship” and “Utility and Affection in Epicurean
Friendship.” I wish to thank David Armstrong for personal clarifications of his argument. There are
some puzzles here, of course. Is a dead friend really a friend in any robust sense? Aren’t these relations
purely of memory and asymmetrical, rather than the kinds of mutual relations enjoyed by gods? Etc.
Friendship 279
At the same time, this passage seems to hold out the possibility of disinterested giving
among living human friends—a notion Philodemus takes up more widely in other
works. What remains unexplained, however, in this parallel, is why gods take from each
other all the rest of their needs (καὶ τὰς ἄλλας μέντοι χρείας ἀπολαμβάνουσιν παρ’
ἀλλήλων), if they need nothing. One suspects that the puzzles we have seen for Epicurean
friendship raised by the self-sufficiency of the sage merely spill over into the divine
realm.
At De elect. 14.1–14, we find another characteristic amplification. In the Letter to
Menoeceus (132), Epicurus had written that one cannot live a pleasant life without also
living phronimο-s, kalο-s, and diakaiο-s. Philodemus expands this list to include courage,
temperance, magnanimity, making friends, and being philanthropic. Courage and tem-
perance make an appearance in Torquatus’s account in De finibus, and are part of tradi-
tional discussions of virtue, but his further expansion seems to reflect Philodemus’s
personal preoccupations with philanthropy and generosity, and it also perhaps serves to
parry charges of philosophical rivals. However, if making friends is connected to pleas
ure in the same way as virtue, is it, then, merely instrumental? This would seem to con-
flict with other views Philodemus holds. Or is friendship inter-entailing with pleasure in
the way that prudence is? We might say that the Epicurean sage will be happy and will
remain phronimos, kalos, and diakaios even on the rack. Will he also have the opportu-
nity of making friends and being philanthropic?62 Or can he be happy on the rack with-
out friends? One would be inclined to think so on the basis of Epicurus’s strong claims
about self-sufficiency, but then what justifies this Philodeman expansion? One senses in
such passages that we are entering a different world with different kinds of discussions
and levels of philosophical precision. Much the same can be said with the material in
Philodemus about the role of friendship in teaching, in showing proper gratitude, in
managing property, in combatting false flattery, and in criticizing one’s peers in a con-
structively frank manner. However interesting in their own right, the particulars of
Philodemus’s account do not necessarily map onto Epicurus’s texts, at least so far, in a
way that helps to bring their most pressing philosophical worries into focus. Thus, they
are better left to discussion in the next section of this volume on later developments and
questions of reception in Epicureanism.
In closing, it is perhaps worth addressing a common and longstanding general criti-
cism leveled against Epicurean friendship. Given the overall goals of an Epicurean life,
so the objection goes, aren’t the friendships of Epicureans after all rather small beer, in
the sense that they lack, in Dorothea Frede’s words, “excitement and high aspirations”?63
An Epicurean might make a perfectly pleasant and emotionally low-maintenance
friend, someone to have over for a cup of coffee and a game of backgammon, but not
someone who is going to rush out with you and try to solve climate change or distribu-
tive inequalities—however little they may contribute to such problems themselves.
62 De elect. 14.1–14. Indelli and Tsouna McKirahan, [Philodemus] [On Choices and Avoidances].
63 Frede, “Epicurus on the Importance of Friendship in the Good Life,” 113–17.
280 PHILLIP MITSIS
In short, such a life and such friends seem depressingly self-absorbed, placid, and just,
well, small. As such, perhaps Epicureans are right to want to keep their lives hidden.
In the face of these charges, I will offer a slightly polemical Epicurean response on
their behalf, beginning with their usual penchant for turning the tables of their rivals.
“So do you prefer Socrates, who had no friends? Whose relations with others were based
on dissimulation and a desire for power and mastery over others by intellectual humilia-
tion and a histrionic air of self-righteous moral superiority? Of course, the hope is that
after one achieves a double first, one might grow out of these traits, but in Socrates’s case,
this never happened. His pupil Plato, moreover, merely carried over in spades these
unattractive vices into his writing, with tiresome games of authorial dissimulation, the
primary aim of which seems to be to underwrite a similar Socratic pose of untouchable
superiority and knowledge. But neither the master in life, nor the pupil hiding behind
his texts, ever made the slightest nod to straightforward reciprocity, to an honest
entrusting of mutual emotions and respect, or to anything that might qualify as human
friendship. And unfortunately, they founded a metaphysically damaging tradition of
looking right through fellow living individuals in a vain attempt to grasp at rather chilly,
inhuman abstractions. Indeed, it remains a great mystery in the light of his fervent
espousal of abstraction how Plato justifies a rather perverse obsession with one person
for all of his adult life; clearly, he must have been in the psychologically twisted grips of
some species of attachment disorder.
“Next we have their poor metic student, Aristotle, whose friendship fantasy is a group
of wealthy gentlemen sitting around in, say, White’s (so aptly named!) and exchanging
war stories and stock tips. Of course, a few of the most competitive members might try
to suss out exactly where they stand in each other’s estimation so they can get a better
sense of their overall ranking in the club hierarchy, but only a poor chap peering from
the outside could envy membership within these cramped halls of smug and blinkered
privilege. As for Stoics, much like Socrates they view others merely as an excuse for dis-
playing their virtue. Unlike him, however, they might actually do something for you, but
at the end of the day, you might prefer that they hadn’t because of their insufferable
moral self-satisfaction and sense of superiority. And as they say, their only real friend is
the perfect sage, whom they have never met and are unlikely to ever meet. But if he were
to move his finger prudently, that is more important to them than your offer of an arm
and a leg, or, indeed, your life. As for the Cyrenaics, who are always being confused with
us, didn’t they think a friend, like a body part, is useful only so long as it is there? Good
luck with that unless your goal is loneliness.”
At the very least, when one compares Epicurus’s account to his ancient philosophical
competitors it is not immediately clear that he stumbles more spectacularly, and in many
ways he seems to be on much more promising ground. It is also perhaps worth remem-
bering that though the Epicurean ideal is not heroic in the grand sense of Achilles or
Antigone, Epicureans are also not likely to wreak the kind of carnage of their more
heroic counterparts. Yes Pylades’s and Orestes’s friendship is memorable—memorable
for killing Orestes’s mom. By the same token, the tests of Epicurean friendship depend
on circumstances and it is not at all clear that the sage will not give his life or make great
Friendship 281
sacrifices for a friend in a way that has touches of nobility. One can cavil and charge that
Epicureans, because they value so little, give up little, including when giving up their
lives, so that somehow Epicurean sacrifices inevitably lack grandeur. Yet, Epicurus’s
view often seems to capture more of what one might want in a friendship: reciprocity
without any metaphysical rigamarole; someone who will remember you fondly without
a lot of drama attached to your loss; someone to share intellectual and more ordinary
pleasures without the psychic burdens of hidden competition and the smothering
demands of status. It may, of course, be that as Cicero and others have charged, the
Epicureans’ overall theory ultimately cannot justify their vision and practice of friend-
ship. But a century of battles between consequentialists and Kantians has not done any
better and the few renegade theorists who have tried to carve out a separate space for
friendship64 have not been particularly successful in getting either side to modify their
ethical and meta-ethical arguments accordingly. Questions about intimate relations
such as friendship have never rested very easily within the confines and demands of
larger ethical theories and, in this, Epicurus’s account is no exception. Some scholars
have seen signs that he did in fact try to shoehorn his conception of friendship into his
larger hedonic theory. If this is indeed the case, it is not clear that this ultimately
redounds to his philosophical credit. But there are also signs that both he and his follow-
ers went forward with the kind of attitude we see elsewhere in his philosophy. For
instance, he thinks he has good evidence for atoms, but also good evidence for thinking
that the phenomenal world is not just an illusion. How these two features of our world
are compatible and how one avoids scepticism about either in the light of their seem-
ingly contradictory demands is hard to work out. But they seem to be related and both
justified by the best available evidence, so an enviable willingness to follow out both fea-
tures of the world leads Epicurus into the more difficult position of giving up neither,
even if he cannot explain their exact relation. Sort of like pleasure and friendship, I
think. Epicurus may not be precisely sure how all the parts are related, but that doesn’t
mean that he gives up either his commitments to pleasure or to friendship or that he rec-
ommends treating a friend like a body part that is useful only so long as it is there.
Perhaps recognizing his admirable honesty in this case and its difficulties can be more
revealing than misplaced charity.
References
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deontological theories, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories”.
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chapter 11
Politics a n d Societ y
Geert Roskam
Epicurus was a tree trunk. This, at least, is the suggestion of Plutarch of Chaeronea,
when he attacks in one of his treatises overly rigid people who keep to an excessively
disciplined way of life. In his view, such immutability is only fitting for men who have
chosen a leisurely and solitary life in the shade,1 devoid of friends and honor (Advice
about Keeping Well 135B), and obviously Epicurus and his followers, “who ran away
from every activity that involved ambition (φιλοτιμία)” (135C–D), are prominent members
of this group. It is well known indeed that Epicurus generally recommended the avoid-
ance of public life with all the misery it entails. As a rule, the pleasant and happy life is to
be found in a sequestered life among friends, rather than in the disordered turmoil of
politics, and Epicurus’s famous advice to “live unnoticed” (λάθε βιώσας; Usener 551) is
one of the most lapidary expressions of this ideal. Now Plutarch’s sharp reaction against
Epicurus’s supposed anti-political position is only one of many similar attacks in his
voluminous œuvre.2 His anti-Epicurean polemics are a precious source of information,
to be sure, and they contain many arguments that are quite intelligent, although most of
them are also unfair and rather unconvincing. In any case, he plants more than one poi-
sonous spine in Epicurus’s cherished flesh. In short, if Epicurus was a tree trunk,
Plutarch himself was a cactus.
And yet, even if nearly all of his spiny arguments would in the end fail to convince
Epicurus, it is often unwise to simply ignore or despise them. Polemists like Plutarch
often raise interesting questions that repay closer attention. In this case, Plutarch’s great
indignation, however unjustified it may have been, may well recall how controversial
Epicurus’s position actually was. It is safe to say that the great majority of the
1 On the topos of a pleasant, leisurely life in the shade, see Smith, “Lentus in umbra.”
2 I deal with the Epicurean doctrine of λάθε βιώσας and with the polemical objections of Epicurus’s
opponents respectively in Roskam, Live Unnoticed and Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo, 85–179 on
Plutarch. On Plutarch’s criticism of Epicurus, see also the general discussions of Hershbell, “Plutarch
and Epicureanism”; and Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Epicure. A brief discussion of Plutarch’s
polemic against Epicurus’s political philosophy can also be found in Roskam, “The Displeasing Secrets
of the Epicurean Life.” See Erler in this volume.
Politics and Society 285
ell-educated people in antiquity would side with Plutarch. Aristotle no doubt

w
expressed the communis opinio of the intellectual upper class with his statement that a
man can only realize himself and reach happiness in the political community of the polis
(cf. Pol. 1.1253a29–39). Both Plato and Zeno, and their respective followers, would basi-
cally agree (each of them, of course, laying his own accents), and outside the philosophi-
cal schools, the members of the aristocratic families would usually adopt the same view.3
It may well be that many of them even endorsed the much more radical view of Callicles
in Plato’s Gorgias, who regarded philosophy as a youthful pastime that has to be aban-
doned for a more serious, public career (Grg. 484c4–486d1).4
However that may be, Epicurus radically opposed the widespread enthusiasm for a
brilliant political or military career. In his view, the unnoticed life far away from the
crowd guarantees much more secure pleasure. The young, uncultivated Pythocles is
more successful than Themistocles, the victor of the Persians, the slave Mys is happier
than Alexander the Great, and the hetaera Hedeia is more blessed than Queen Gorgo of
Sparta, the wife of Leonidas. This is quite a remarkable view, and far from self-evident
indeed. One begins to see why a public-minded Platonist like Plutarch suggestively
associates Epicurus with a tree trunk. But was Plutarch right?
The Basics
1. The follies of a political career

Epicurus’s philosophical view is in its essence quite simple. Every individual should
pursue pleasure as his final end and should take care to refer all his actions to this ulti-
mate standard (KD 25). Even brief observation and reflection soon shows that a political
career usually harms rather than contributes to one’s pleasure. It is far easier and safer to
enjoy simple pleasures in the company of like-minded friends than emulate Achilles in a
vain attempt to “always be the best”5 in order to reach an ephemeral fame. Epicurus’s
view on politics is in that sense merely the simple and consistent, though radical, con-
clusion of his principal choice for pleasure as the summum bonum.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude that a political career is almost casually
abandoned for an unreflected carpe diem. Epicurus explained his view with elaborate
philosophical arguments. Especially important in this context is his famous distinction
between three kinds of desires: those that are (1) natural and necessary, (2) natural
though not necessary, and (3) neither natural nor necessary (KD 29; SV 20; Ep. Men. 127).
Only those of the first kind (e.g. the desire for food and drink) are absolutely indispensable,
3 Although there were exceptions who deliberately abstained from engaging in political life. On the
conduct and motivations of these ἀπράγμονες, see esp. Carter, The Quiet Athenian, where earlier
literature can be found.
4 Cf. Thucydides, 2.40.2; see also Dover, Greek Popular Morality, 229–35 on ambition and
competition; and Carter, The Quiet Athenian, 1–25 on fame and honor.
5 Hom. Il. 11.784: αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων (cf. also 6.208).
286 GEERT ROSKAM
and fortunately, these desires are also very easy to satisfy. A moderate amount of food
suffices to silence the voice of the flesh (cf. SV 33). The second kind of desire (e.g. for
more sophisticated food) can be pursued in certain circumstances, to be sure, but only if
they do not entail any harm (SV 21: ἂν μὴ βλάπτωσι).6 In any case, a man’s happiness is
not diminished if this second kind of desire remains unsatisfied. The main problem lies
with the third category of desires. These are absolutely to be avoided. Under this cate-
gory fall, for instance, the pursuit of power and influence, or the thirst for glory and
honor and its material expression (crowns, statues, inscriptions, etc.). Many of these
desires are directly or indirectly related to political life. They are by definition limitless7
and moreover easily entail competition and rivalry, which reduces the political arena to
a battlefield of all kinds of passions. Hatred, envy, and contempt are the order of the day,
and these in turn directly entail harm from other people (βλάβαι ἐξ ἀνθρώπων).8 In
Epicurus’s view, other people are indeed a possible source of damage, and an important
part of his thinking that will be discussed in the next pages precisely aims at avoiding or
neutralizing this harm. Engagement in politics is definitely not the best means to that
end, since it generally harms and even ruins blessedness (Plut. Pyrrh. 20.3 = Usener 552),
interferes with true friendship,9 and entails great difficulties and dangers.10
While the politician has to face all these troubles, he simply forgets to enjoy the plea-
sures of life. His whole life passes while he is occupied and he dies while he is still busy
with all kind of public duties.11 Particularly interesting in this context is a scene from the
life of King Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus was preparing a military campaign against Italy, his
collaborator and friend Cineas asked what the king would do if he should be able to con-
quer the Romans. Pyrrhus replied that at that moment, he should get control of the whole
of Italy. Sicily would soon follow, and then Libya and Carthage, so that in the end Pyrrhus
would triumph over all his enemies (Plut. Pyrrh. 14.4–11). Cineas insisted (14.11–13):
“γενομένων δὲ πάντων ὑφ᾿ ἡμῖν, τί ποιήσομεν;” καὶ ὁ Πύρρος ἐπιγελάσας, “σχολήν”

ἔφη “ἄξομεν πολλήν, καὶ κώθων ὦ μακάριε καθημερινὸς ἔσται, καὶ διὰ λόγων συνόντες
ἀλλήλους εὐφρανοῦμεν.” ἐνταῦθα δὴ τῶν λόγων καταστήσας τὸν Πύρρον ὁ Κινέας,
“εἶτα” ἔφη “τί νῦν ἐμποδών ἐστιν ἡμῖν βουλομένοις κώθωνι χρῆσθαι καὶ σχολάζειν
μετ᾿ ἀλλήλων, εἰ ταῦτ᾿ ἔχομεν ἤδη καὶ πάρεστιν ἀπραγμόνως, ἔφ᾿ ἃ δι᾿ αἵματος καὶ
πόνων μεγάλων καὶ κινδύνων μέλλομεν ἀφίξεσθαι, πολλὰ καὶ δράσαντες ἑτέρους κακὰ
καὶ παθόντες;”
6 Similar provisos can often be found in Epicurus’s works and illustrate his fondness for conditional
qualifying and the paramount importance he attaches to φρόνησις; see infra.
7 On the importance of the notion of limit in Epicurus’s philosophy, see esp. De Lacy, “Limit and
Variation in the Epicurean Philosophy”; and Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes, 83–99.
8 See DL 10.117 (= Usener 536); cf. Cic. Fin. 1.67; and Sen. Ep. 14.10 and 105.1–4.
9 The latter argument does not occur in Epicurus’s extant works, but it can be found in
Philodemus’s Rhetoric, P.Herc. 1078/1080, fr. 19.6–22 (II, 158–9 Sudhaus), a passage which is quoted
under Usener 552. An interesting complement to this view may be found in Philodemus, De bono rege
col. 29 Dorandi, as is shown by Fish, “Not All Politicians Are Sisyphus,” 91.
10 See, e.g., Cic. Rep. 1.4; Lucr. DRN 2.11–13; 3.996–97; 5.1124 and 1132; Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 2.
II.3–4.
11 SV 14; cf. also Seneca’s dum differtur vita transcurrit (Ep. 1.2), and SV 30 = Metrodorus, fr. 53 K.
“But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?” Then
Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: “We shall be much at ease, and we’ll drink bum-
pers, my good man, every day, and we’ll gladden one another’s hearts with confiden-
tial talks.” And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument,
he said: “Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while
away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at
hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by blood-
shed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much
ourselves.”12
This story is a telling illustration of the unlimited process of ever-increasing desires.

A series of new challenges should in the end culminate in the ultimate pleasure, some-
where in the distant future. But this final pleasure is again and again postponed,
although it is within reach from the very beginning. This perverse dynamic is laid bare
by Cineas’s rational intervention. Although Cineas was probably not an Epicurean,13 his
down-to-earth reaction is perfectly in line with the Epicurean perspective and actually
shows the power of Epicurus’s alternative. Even Plutarch shows no trace of disapproval
here. At the same time, however, the story also illustrates the great difficulties which
Epicurus and his followers encountered in persuading politicians. Plutarch goes on to
say that Cineas’s words troubled Pyrrhus more than they converted him (14.14: ἠνίασε
μᾶλλον ἢ μετέθηκε). Pyrrhus gained insight into his situation, to be sure, but nonetheless
persisted and in the end perished without ever having reached his great ambitions or
enjoyed his simple, easily attainable pleasures.
Pyrrhus was certainly not the only one who was victim of this pernicious spiral.
As mentioned above, the great majority of Epicurus’s aristocratic contemporaries in all
likelihood heard at their own level a similar Siren song, and once they had given their
ears to it and ended up in the surging waves of the stormy sea of politics, it was often dif-
ficult for them to withdraw. This throws penetrating light on the relevance of SV 58,
where politics is called a prison (δεσμωτήριον). This is a particularly striking imagery
with great rhetorical power. The ambitious and famous politician is not a man who is
able to do whatever he likes, being master of the situation, but a mere prisoner, the slave
of both his own immoderate desires and the crowd (cf. SV 67). This is quite an
eye-opening perspective, to say the least.
Such salient images can thus contribute a great deal to a man’s insight into his own
miserable condition. Sometimes they may even be the starting point of a more sub-
stantial process of recovery.14 Epicurus indeed more than once explicitly presents his
philosophy as a therapy of the sick soul. He provides an elaborate cure of erroneous
12 Translation B. Perrin.
13 Plutarch calls him a pupil of Demosthenes (Pyrrh. 14.1). Stähelin, “Kineas (3),” 473 and Benferhat,
Ciues Epicurei, 44–47 regard Cineas as an Epicurean, but none of the passages which they adduce really
proves that Cineas himself adheres to the doctrines which he mentions.
14 Cf. Sen. Ep. 28.9 (= Usener 522): initium est salutis notitia peccati.
288 GEERT ROSKAM
convictions and empty, unnatural desires which interfere with a man’s happiness.15 In
the context of this Seelenheilung, he frequently adopts a radical, even offensive point of
view. The above characterization of politics as a prison is only one of the many examples
of such straightforward frankness (παρρησία). Idle, empty phrases are mercilessly
unmasked. The concept of τὸ καλόν, for instance, which was traditionally used in order
to express the “honorable” ideal of politics (see, e.g., Arist. EE 1.1216a23–27 or X. Mem.
3.6.2), is for Epicurus as such merely an empty term (Usener 511 = Cic. Tusc. Disp. 5.73;
5.119 etc.).16 He refuses to deem it the key notion of the ideal of the public interest, which
is after all rather vague. Philodemus would later frankly state that it is better to care for
oneself than for the ordinary multitude (Rhet., P.Herc. 1078/1080 fr. 17.3–8; Sudhaus II.157).
Epicurus himself is even more provocative: he simply spits upon what is honorable
(προσπτύω τῷ καλῷ) and on those who vainly admire it, whenever it does not bring any
pleasure (Ath. 12.547a = Usener 512). This may sound like a shocking statement—and
that is probably at least part of Epicurus’s own intention—but it is not the expression of
an anarchist agitator. Rather, it is a strong, thought-provoking appeal not to fall for
empty words but rather look to the actual facts (εἰς τὰ πράγματα βλέπειν; KD 37).
This sober-minded look at the “facts” (πράγματα) is, in my view, one of the most
attractive strengths of Epicurus’s philosophy. It is telling that an experienced statesman
such as Cicero, who cannot be expected to show much sympathy or positive bias for
Epicurus, is occasionally prepared to admit that in the political situation of his day,
Epicurus’s advice to retire from public life may well be wise.17 It is no less telling that
Philodemus can confidently—and correctly—claim history as an argument for his own
position (Rhet., P.Herc. 1506 col. 6.28–30; Sudhaus II.209), and his observation that poli-
ticians are often slaughtered like cattle, even for trivial reasons (Rhet., P.Herc. 1669
col. 5.6–15; Sudhaus I.234–5), may have been a rhetorical hyperbole, to be sure, but it was
in all likelihood closer to real life than a somewhat naive or highly idealized appreciation
of politics. Epicurus’s statements may have been offensive and provocative, no doubt,
but his radical frankness never lost touch with concrete reality.
The same holds true for Epicurus’s evaluation of famous politicians. Often he does not
shrink from ridiculing them in fairly coarse terms.18 A case in point is Epameinondas,
whom he calls “iron guts” and whose famous accomplishments he ridicules and belit-
tles.19 This polemical laughter20 has more than one important function. First of all, it
strongly diminishes the potentially seductive character of the example of these famous
statesmen: they should not be imitated at all, since they were actually utter fools who
15 See, e.g., SV 54 (= Usener 220) and 64; Porphyry Marc. 27 (292.3–7 N = Usener 471) and
31 (294.7–11 N = Usener 221); Nussbaum, “Therapeutic Arguments.”
16 It is not simply rejected, though, but rather reinterpreted from a more Epicurean perspective; cf.,
e.g., Sen. Ep. 2.6 (= Usener 475); KD 5 (which returns, with some variations, in SV 5 and Ep. Men. 132);
Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” 302–304.
17 De orat. 3.63. I deal with Cicero’s anti-Epicurean position at length in Plutarch’s De latenter
vivendo, 49–69, where further literature can be found.
18 Cf., e.g., Plut. Against Colotes 1127A; Cic. Rep. 1.1 and 1.3: Usener 558–60.
19 Plut. Against Colotes 1127A–B (= Usener 560).
20 On the significance of laughter in Epicureanism, see Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes, 167–74.
were unable to make the right choices and enjoy the pleasures of the present moment.
And Lucretius argues that their most fundamental motivation was a silly, unjustified
fear of death.21 Secondly, this criticism of renowned politicians illustrates once again
Epicurus’s striking sober-mindedness and sense of reality, in that he demystifies, as it
were, the great past and reduces its protagonists to their normal proportions. Finally, his
polemic also confirms the value of his own alternative and underlines his own inde
pendence. According to Metrodorus, this polemical laughter is that of a truly free man
(Plutarch Against Colotes 1127C = fr. 32 K).
Many of the above-mentioned topics are crystallized in one of the most notorious
fragments from the same Metrodorus:22
οὐδὲν δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ᾿ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ᾿ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ᾿
ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν οἶνον, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως.
There is no need to save the Greeks or to receive crowns from them for wisdom, but
merely to eat and drink wine, Timocrates, and gratify the belly without harming it.
What immediately strikes the eye in this fragment is its unequivocal clarity. Two basic
alternatives are diametrically opposed to each other. Great “honorable” ideals are here
made concrete in the salvation of Greece, and simply rejected and replaced by a much
more feasible and far less dangerous alternative, viz. moderate eating and drinking.
Be your own ordinary self rather than Themistocles! This presents the very core of
Epicurus’s message in all its radicalness. It is difficult to be sure about the original con-
text of this fragment,23 but my suggestion is that Metrodorus’s words did not belong to a
polemical attack against his brother24 but should rather be understood in a pedagogical
context of Seelenheilung and as such illustrate the frankness for which Metrodorus was
so renowned in Epicurean circles (cf. Philodemus On Frank Criticism fr. 15.6–10 and
col. 5b.1–6). This would imply that the emphasis is rather on constructive self-affirmation
than on offensive or abusive rebuke.
2. The blessings of the Epicurean life

If that is true, this fragment is a welcome transition to our discussion of the second pole
of Epicurus’s Seelenheilung. For indeed, the above analysis tells only one half of the story.
Epicurus’s therapy was based on two complementary poles: sharp ἔλεγχος (SV 21) and
21 DRN 3.59–86, a much-discussed passage. See, e.g., Perret, “L’amour de l’argent”; Desmouliez,
“Cupidité, ambition”; Schrijvers, Horror ac divina voluptas; Schmid, “Lucretius ethicus,” 140–51; Monti,
“Lucretius on greed”; Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 90–93.
22 (Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1098C–D (= fr. 41 K); cf. also
1100D and Against Colotes 1125D).
23 According to Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals,” 132 these words were not really
uttered by Metrodorus himself but should be regarded as a polemical misrepresentation of Timocrates.
I would rather regard it as a verbatim quotation that is isolated from its context; cf. Roskam, Live
Unnoticed, 73.
24 Angeli, “Frammenti di lettere,” 14 argues that the fragment probably dates from the period before
the rift between Metrodorus and Timocrates.
290 GEERT ROSKAM
constructive admonition (νουθέτησις; fr. [34].22.3–4; [34].25.22–3 and 30; [34].27.2–3 and
10–11 Arr.2). This more constructive approach was probably in the first place adopted in
the more confined circle of friends, sympathizers, or potential adherents, if possible in a
face-to-face conversation (cf. Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 3.III.13–14) or through personal
letters. In such a context, sharp provocative language often has to yield to a milder tone
and sound advice. Thus, in a letter to Idomeneus, Epicurus recommends his friend to
abandon political life (Sen. Ep. 22.5–6 = Usener 133). What is remarkable, however, is that
he does not elaborate at length on the usual refrain of all the miseries and dangers which a
political career entails. This refrain is obviously the justification of Epicurus’s advice, as
Idomeneus no doubt knew very well, but the full emphasis is here apparently on the
demand to adapt one’s attitude to the specific circumstances. Idomeneus should not leave
politics in a hurry and without consideration, but in a well-reflected way, taking into
account the right opportunity and deciding himself on the most appropriate course to
follow (apte . . . tempestiveque). The fragment thus provides an interesting illustration of
Epicurus’s common sense and of his sincere respect for the freedom and personal judg-
ment of Idomeneus. If Epicurus had been a doctor, he would have never simply forced his
patient to drink the bitter medicine. He would quietly hand him the cup, explain why the
medicine is useful, and further await the initiative of the patient himself.
Sometimes he was even willing to coat the lip of the cup with honey, as Lucretius
would do later (DRN 1.936–42). We see this in another fragment from probably the same
letter to Idomeneus (Sen. Ep. 21.3 = Usener 132):
Si gloria tangeris, notiorem te epistulae meae facient quam omnia ista, quae colis et
propter quae coleris.
If you are attracted by fame, my letters will make you more renowned than all the
things which you cherish and which make you cherished.25
This is a beautiful sample of psychological insight, which moreover demonstrates that

Epicurus not only takes into account the particular situation of his correspondent but his
or her character and shortcomings as well. Instead of sharply castigating Idomeneus’s
empty desire of honor, he subtly reorients it towards a more salutary perspective: a turn
towards the Epicurean way of life will not merely guarantee happiness but even secure his
reputation (which, by the way, also proved correct in this particular case, since Idomeneus
is better known for his connections with Epicurus than for his political achievements in
Lampsacus). Early Epicurean literature contains more traces of this technique. Epicurus
himself suggests that everybody can pursue a crown of ἀταραξία (Plutarch Against
Colotes 1125C = Usener 556),26 and Metrodorus promises every future Epicurean a great
25 Translation Gummere.
26 Somewhat similarly, Lucretius aims at a crown with conspicuous praise, in his capacity as a poet
(DRN 6.95). Lucretius sometimes also takes the communis opinio as his starting point, which he then
adapts to his own perspective; cf. Monti, “Lucretius on Greed,” 58–66; and Roskam, Live Unnoticed,
92–93. A similar approach can also be found in Cic. Fin. 1.43–44.
reputation (Sen. Ep. 79.16 = Körte fr. 43). In all of these cases, basically the same strategy is
at work: the actual existence of the unnecessary and unnatural desire for honor is not
ignored but accepted as the point of departure, after which it is argued that this desire
may equally well, if not better, be satisfied in an Epicurean perspective, because Epicurus
generously grants long-lasting fame to his friends and followers. A true helper indeed!
This individual approach is further supported by an enthusiastic description of the
Epicurean ideal. The pure happiness of the Epicurean life is depicted in the most positive
terms. The Epicurean lives “like a god among men” (Ep. Men. 135), enjoys the fullest
intimacy in a company of friends, and his happiness is ultimately not even troubled by
the death of a friend (KD 40). He quietly looks down from his templa serena on the con-
fused life of other people (Lucr. DRN 2.7–13). The paradigm par excellence is, of course,
Epicurus himself, who enjoyed, together with Metrodorus and many others, the pleasures
of a perfectly tranquil life without being concerned about a possible lack of political
honor and fame (Sen. Ep. 79.15 = Usener 188 and Metrodorus, Körte test. 23). It is clear
that such positive examples have a particularly strong protreptic power, and moreover
they also prove the feasibility of Epicurus’s ideal.
Among the many blessings of the ideal Epicurean life is also that of relative independ
ence. Self-sufficiency based on a simple way of life is highly esteemed in the Garden27
and contrasts sharply with servility to mobs or kings (SV 67). No less important is the
Epicurean’s security (ἀσφάλεια), a notion that is of paramount importance in Epicurus’s
social and political thinking.28 Personal security is an indispensable conditio sine qua
non for a pleasant life. I shall return to this crucial topic in due course. Here it suffices to
note that this precious security is much easier to find in Epicurus’s Garden than in politi-
cal life and that some of its most essential ingredients29 are a sequestered life, a good
contact with one’s neighbors,30 and, of course, friendship.
It is well known indeed that friendship occupies an extremely important place in
Epicurus’s thinking. He explicitly juxtaposes friendship to wisdom (SV 78) and sings its
praises in almost mystic terms (SV 52).31 This is not the place to deal in detail with the the-
oretical problem to what extent Epicurus is able to love his friend for the latter’s own sake.
If every friendship really takes its starting point in its usefulness, as Epicurus indeed
believes (SV 23; cf. DL 10.120b = Usener 540), it is difficult to see how one could still do jus-
tice to the friend’s alterity. This issue is much discussed, from antiquity to the present day,32
27 See, e.g., SV 44, 45, and 77; Ep. Men. 130; Stobaeus 3.17.13 = Usener 135a.
28 See esp. Barigazzi, “Sul concetto epicureo”; Schofield, “Social and Political Thought,” 748–56;
Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 37–40.
29 See also below on the paramount importance of legislation for the Epicurean’s security.
30 The importance of a smooth relation with the neighbor (ὁ πλησίον, ὁ πέλας, or οἱ ὁμοροῦντες) is a
recurrent motif in Epicurus’s works. See, e.g., KD 40; SV 15, 61, 67, 70; Plut. Against Colotes 1127D = fr.
134; cf. also Arrighetti2 fr. [29].11.3.
31 See on this Armstrong, “Epicurean Virtues, Epicurean Friendship.”
32 See Cic. Fin. 1.66–70. Good discussions of (aspects of) this problem can be found in Mitsis,
Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, 98–128; O’Connor, “The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship”;
Müller, Die Epikureische Ethik, 110–29; O’Keefe, “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?”; Brown,
“Epicurus on the Value of Friendship”; Evans, “Can Epicureans Be Friends?”; Armstrong, “Epicurean
Virtues, Epicurean Friendship.”
292 GEERT ROSKAM
but it need not detain us here because it is primarily a theoretical problem (which, of
course, does not mean that it is a trivial question). There is little doubt that in practice
Epicurus had no difficulty in finding like-minded friends—according to Diogenes
Laertius (10.9), he could even count his friends by whole cities (cf. also Cic. Fin. 1.65)—
and this is what primarily matters here.
Friendship is so important for Epicurus because it provides him with the necessary
security. It is not so much the friend’s actual assistance as the confidence that this help
will come whenever he will need it that lays the foundation of the Epicurean’s faith in the
future (SV 34; cf. also SV 39; KD 27, 28, and 40). That explains why a friend’s disloyalty is
so dreadful, and that is also one of the main reasons why Timocrates’s quarrel with
Metrodorus, and his decision to leave the Garden and begin a base slander campaign
against the Epicurean community,33 found so much response in Epicurean circles: it
really hit Epicurus in the heart. It is important to add, though, that the great value of
friendship does not rest on mutual material support alone. Epicurean friendship also
implies συμφιλοσοφεῖν, living together in the contubernium of the school,34 improving
and encouraging one another. It implies, in short, δι᾿ ἀλλήλων σῴζεσθαι, “being saved
through one another” (Philodemus On Frank Criticism fr. 36.1–2).
Epicurus’s philosophy thus combined a sharp attack against vain and conceited
opinions and a fairly systematic exposure of unreflected traditional ideals with a sincere
concern for friends and a great enthusiasm for all the advantages of the Epicurean way of
life. Tight philosophical argumentation is combined with sober sense of reality, sharp
criticism and frankness with mildness and laughter. In any case, Epicurus was not a dead
tree trunk. The strong roots of his doctrines full of vital sap guaranteed a healthy growth
in the well-cultivated environment of his Garden.
Towards a More Nuanced

Perspective
The core of Epicurus’s ideal is thus, as shown above, the rational pursuit of the intense and
well-considered enjoyment of a simple life in the company of friends and in the security
provided by the Garden, far away from the dangerous troubles of political life. This attrac-
tive tree—to maintain this image for a while—did not grow in vacuo but was firmly
rooted in a garden that was to a certain extent part of the polis and needed the polis for its
survival.35 Epicurus neither retired into the uninhabited wilderness (thus Plut. Against
33 See on Timocrates’s polemic, Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals”; and Roskam,
Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo, 43–49.
34 Cf. Seneca Ep. 6.6; DeWitt, “Epicurean contubernium.”
35 Cf. Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” 286–87.
Colotes 1115A), nor placed his followers outside his native land (thus Sen. Ep. 90.35),36 nor
fled away into an idyllic dream world. After all, the κῆπος never became a παράδεισος.
Various indications suggest that Epicurus carefully took into account the surround-
ing society. We already saw that he gave much attention to harmonious contacts with
neighbors. Other sources repeatedly confirm that Epicurus did not completely retire
from his society and take refuge in an ivory tower. His κῆπος was no hanging garden
either. The Epicurean sage did not ignore worldly business such as making money (DL
10.121b = Usener 567; cf. also 10.120a = Usener 572), administering his estate in a well-
considered way (see on this esp. Philodemus, On Property Management), or acting as a
judge (10.119 = Usener 576). What we know of Epicurus’s own conduct points in the
same direction. His testament shows that he was well aware of the existing legislation at
Athens and knew how he could cleverly reconcile his own wish to leave the Garden to
his successor Hermarchus with the law that did not allow bequeathing real property to
non-citizens.37 He frequently participated in festivals of the polis religion (although he
no doubt understood the ceremonies differently from the multitude),38 and as an
outsider, he attentively followed the political developments of his day. He knew of the
presence of Persaeus and Philonides at Antigonus’s court39 and stayed in close touch
with several influential politicians such as Idomeneus, a minister with important powers
at Lampsacus,40 and Mithres, a minister of King Lysimachus.41 One might object that he
mainly advised these politicians to abandon their public career (cf. Cic. Rep. 1.3). In gen-
eral, that may well be correct,42 but at the same time, Epicurus did not hesitate to take
advantage of their services whenever necessary and possible.43 It has even been argued
that the foundation of the school at Athens should at least partly be understood against
36 According to Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus was a real patriot (10.10).

37 A good discussion of this topic can be found in Leiwo and Remes, “Partnership of Citizens and
Metics.”
38 Philodemus On Piety col. 28.8–28 Obbink (= Usener 169); cf. also col. 20.6–11, col. 26.5–12, and
col. 51.3–13 Obbink.
39 DL 7.9 (= Usener 119); cf. Steckel, “Epikuros,” 591–92; and Silvestre “Epicuro e la politica,” 134–35.
Kechagia, “Rethinking a Professional Rivalry,” 139 suggests that “Epicurus’ reference to the Stoics’ close
association with the Macedonian court was probably unfavourable or even critical in tone.”
40 Cf. Sen. Ep. 21.3 (= Angeli fr. 13; cf. Usener fr. 132): rigidae tunc potentiae ministrum et magna
tractantem.
41 He is called διοικέτης in DL 2.102 and 10.4.
42 Although it is important to add that Epicurus’s position may have been less absolute and that he
in any case was not blind to the needs of the politician’s concrete situation, as appears from his advice
to Idomeneus discussed above. Later, Lucretius refrained from encouraging Memmius to withdraw
from politics (DRN 1.41–43); cf. Fish, “Not All Politicians Are Sisyphus,” 76, 87.
43 We know that Mithres gave financial support to the Garden; cf. Philodemus, Πραγματεῖαι (P. Herc.
1418) col. 30.13–16 Militello (= Usener 151); 31.11–16 (= Usener 177), 35 inf. (= Arrighetti2 fr. 74). When
Mithres was later imprisoned, the Garden was able to return the favor and show its gratitude (cf. DeWitt,
“The Epicurean Doctrine of Gratitude,” on the importance of gratitude in Epicureanism), for the Syrian
minister was apparently set free through an intervention of Metrodorus (Plut. That Epicurus Actually
Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1097B and Against Colotes 1126E–F = Usener 194). Idomeneus may have
been helpful in securing the good contacts between the Garden at Athens and the Epicurean community
at Lampsacus, as is suggested in passing by Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Epicure et le droit, 59–60.
294 GEERT ROSKAM
the background of political events. Epicurus actually established himself at Athens

shortly after the expulsion of Demetrius of Phaleron and the inauguration of the new
government under Antigonus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes.44 It is rash to conclude
from this observation that Epicurus was fully involved in political events and that his
preference for a retired life is a mere myth or alibi.45 In all likelihood, Epicurus never had
political ambitions, but he was intelligent enough not to ignore the political situation
but to use it in the service of his own philosophical ideal.
In any case, he clearly acknowledged the importance of politics and probably also
granted it its own autonomy.46 Moreover, his advice to withdraw from participation in
politics definitely did not imply a lack of respect for law and justice. The opposite is
rather true. He strongly appreciated the existing body of law and the legislative work of
the first legislators, because these guarantee the social stability and security he needed
to enjoy his ἀταραξία. One of the most significant texts in this respect is a well-known
fragment from Colotes of Lampsacus, one of Epicurus’s good friends (Plut. Against
Colotes 1124D):
τὸν βίον οἱ νόμους διατάξαντες καὶ νόμιμα καὶ τὸ βασιλεύεσθαι τὰς πόλεις καὶ
ἄρχεσθαι καταστήσαντες εἰς πολλὴν ἀσφάλειαν καὶ ἡσυχίαν ἔθεντο καὶ θορύβων
ἀπήλλαξαν· εἰ δέ τις ταῦτα ἀναιρήσει, θηρίων βίον βιωσόμεθα καὶ ὁ προστυχὼν τὸν
ἐντυχόντα μονονοὺ κατέδεται.
The men who appointed laws and usages and established the government of cities by
kings and magistrates brought human life into a state of great security and peace
and delivered it from turmoil. But if anyone takes all this away, we shall live a life of
brutes, and anyone who chances upon another will all but devour him.47
These words express the core of the Epicurean view in a particularly concise and pregnant
way and with a striking imagery. A well-ordered and harmonious society presupposes,
in an early stage of the history of human civilization, the intervention of some gifted
persons who had a good insight into both their own advantage and the common good
and who persuaded the majority to refrain from harming one another. In that way, they
were able to leave behind the bestial life, with all the dangerous struggles and conflicts
it entails.
Basically the same perspective can be found in Hermarchus’s account of the origin of
the law on homicide and in Lucretius’s famous genealogy in Book 5 of DRN. The great
outlines of Epicurus’s own view on law and justice are to be found at the end of the Key
Doctrines (31–38). This is not the place to enter at length into all the subtleties of and
44 See Momigliano, “Su alcuni dati della vita di Epicuro”; and Silvestre, “Epicuro e la politica.”
45 As Silvestre, “Epicuro e la politica,” 136 and 138 suggests.
46 This is certainly the position of Philodemus (see Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 104–25) and in all
likelihood also that of Metrodorus. The latter in any case argued that the statesman and the natural
philosopher both have their own domain; see Philodemus Rhet. VIII, P.Herc. 832 fr. 32,11–col. 45.2; II,
45 Sudhaus.
47 Translation Einarson and De Lacy.
problems connected with Epicurus’s position.48 Here it suffices to recall very briefly that
Epicurus closely connects justice and usefulness. In his view, justice is not something
that exists in its own right49 but it always rests on a contract of mutual non-interference
(KD 31 and 33) which is itself justified by its usefulness (cf. KD 36). This understanding of
justice has several important implications. Although the just is always and everywhere
what is useful in a social context, the concrete interpretation of it can vary from place to
place (KD 36). There is also room for reconsideration and revision, for laws that no
longer contribute to social usefulness are by definition no longer just (KD 37 and 38). On
the other hand, the fact that justice is based on a contract implies that there can be no
justice towards animals or towards people who are not prepared, or unable, to make a
contract (KD 32). Finally, breaking the contract is absolutely to be avoided, not because
injustice is bad in itself but because a man can never be sure that he will escape detection
and thus has to live in constant fear of punishment (KD 34 and 35).
This brief and fairly general survey may suffice to illustrate Epicurus’s great respect for
existing legislation. More than rival philosophical schools, Epicurus indeed took seri-
ously the concrete law code. Whereas the Stoics called all existing laws bad,50 Epicurus
and his followers emphasized their great importance for the well-organized stability of
the polis. This position places Epicurus’s doctrine of μὴ πολιτεύεσθαι in a somewhat dif-
ferent perspective. His view cannot be reduced to doxographic black and white opposi-
tions and generalizing simplifications. It is rather remarkable how multi-faceted and
extremely nuanced his thinking really was. He had no difficulty juxtaposing the most
sarcastic criticism of distinguished politicians with the most enthusiastic appreciation
of traditional legislators and laws, and to combine his refusal to actively engage in poli-
tics with his great esteem for the security which the political system provides.51
48 Much has been written on this subject; see, e.g., Philippson, “Die Rechtsphilosophie der Epikureer”;
Müller, Die Epikureische Gesellschaftstheorie, “Konstituierung und Verbindlichkeit,” and “Die epikureische
Sozial- und Rechtsphilosophie”; Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Epicure et le droit; Alberti, “The Epicurean
Theory of Law and Justice”; Besnier, “Justice et utilité.” On Hermarchus’s view see, in addition to the more
general studies already mentioned, Van der Waerdt, “Hermarchus and the Epicurean Genealogy of
Morals”; on Lucretius see, e.g., Manuwald, Der Aufbau der lukrezischen Kulturentstehungslehre.
49 Alberti, “The Epicurean Theory of Law and Justice,” 181 most interestingly points to Ep. Hdt.
68–71, where Epicurus distinguishes between bodies, which exist per se, and properties, which do not
but which have nevertheless real existence too. This clear parallel does not alter the fact that KD 33 also
has an obvious anti-Platonic ring, as has been noted by the majority of commentators.
50 Eusebius PE 6.8.14 (= SVF 3.324); cf. Cicero Ac. 2.136 (= SVF 3.599); and Plut. On Stoic Self-
Contradictions 1033F.
51 Epicurus’s seemingly ambivalent position was often attacked. Plutarch (Against Colotes 1127A)
sharply notes that the Epicureans are the only ones among the many philosophers who share in the goods
of the community life of the polis without contributing anything at all (ἀσύμβολοι, quite a significant term
in view of KD 31, where Epicurus defines the “justice of nature” (τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιον) as a σύμβολον τοῦ
συμφέροντος aimed at mutual non-interference). The literature about this controversial passage is
immense; thorough philological discussions can be found in Bollack, La pensée du plaisir, 353–59; and
Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Epicure et le droit, 25–41. A similar attack against Epicurus’s supposed
“parasitism” can be found in Cicero (De orat. 3.64) and Epictetus (2.20.6–20 and 3.7.19). I deal with
Cicero’s and Epictetus’s attacks in Roskam, Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo, 66–68 and 82–84.
296 GEERT ROSKAM
This tension can be found throughout Epicurus’s socio-political thinking. On the one
hand, several fragments suggest a deep feeling of contempt for the great multitude and a
distinct preference for the pleasant life among the small circle of the happy few.52 In that
sense, the effect which his words will have on the crowd are only of minor importance,
as appears from Vatican Saying 29:
παρρησίᾳ γὰρ ἔγωγε χρώμενος φυσιολογῶν χρησμωδεῖν τὰ συμφέροντα πᾶσιν

ἀνθρώποις μᾶλλον ἂν βουλοίμην κἂν μηδεὶς μέλλῃ συνήσειν, ἢ συγκατατιθέμενος ταῖς
δόξαις καρποῦσθαι τὸν πυκνὸν παραπίπτοντα παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἔπαινον.
Employing frankness in my study of natural philosophy, I would prefer to proclaim
in oracular fashion what is beneficial to all men, even if no one is going to under-
stand, rather than to assent to [common] opinions and so enjoy the constant praise
which comes from the many.53
Passages such like this one are beautiful testimonies to Epicurus’s radical straightfor-
wardness and intellectual courage. Epicurus always kept to his philosophical principles
and was apparently not willing to abandon his insights for the sake of a “seeming” com-
promise. And many of his notoriously provocative statements54 amply illustrate that the
above fragment was no idle talk.
On the other hand, precisely these philosophical principles require from Epicurus
due caution. For if the sage indeed wants to enjoy his pleasures in perfect tranquility, he
does well not to provoke the crowd too much, since that would no doubt undermine his
security. Epicurus’s well-known advice to “live unnoticed” can be understood in this
light as well. And thus, it is not surprising that several other fragments show Epicurus’s
concern for social decorum. The Epicurean sage, for instance, will take thought for his
good reputation (εὐδοξία), though only in so far as not to be despised (DL 10.120a =
Usener 573). The qualifying specification introduces a clear limit—the sage has no
unbridled ambition and love for honor, but merely avoids the contempt that will entail
βλάβαι ἐξ ἀνθρώπων—to be sure, but as a whole, the fragment shows that Epicurus was
not blind to the importance of what others think of him. In the same vein, he observed
that a man who is regarded with fear can never be without fear himself (Usener 537).
Again, the Epicurean should thus take care of his own reputation. His general conduct
52 Especially illustrative is a fragment from a manuscript from Paris (Usener 187), which in its Latin
version also occurs in Seneca (Ep. 29.10): “I never desired to please the many, for I did not learn the
things which please them, and what I did learn was far removed from their perception.” Translation
Inwood and Gerson; οὐδέποτε ὠρέχθην τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρέσκειν. ἃ μὲν γὰρ ἐκείνοις ἤρεσκεν, οὐκ ἔμαθον· ἃ
δ᾿ ᾔδειν ἐγώ, μακρὰν ἦν τῆς ἐκείνων αἰσθήσεως. Basically the same attitude can be found in Sen. Ep. 25.6
(= Usener 209) and Porph. Marc. 30 (294.2–3 N) = Usener 489. For Epicurus’s preference for a small
circle, see Sen. Ep. 7.11 = Usener 208.
53 Translation Inwood and Gerson, slightly modified.
54 Such as προσπτύω τῷ καλῷ (discussed above), or the view that ἀρχὴ καὶ ῥίζα παντὸς ἀγαθοῦ ἡ τῆς
γαστρὸς ἡδονή (Ath. 7.280a and 12.546f = Usener 409; cf. Gargiulo, “Epicuro e ‘il piacere del ventre’ ” on
this fragment).
should avoid negative reactions of other people as much as possible.55 It may be noted in
passing that this attitude remains important for later generations of Epicureans, as
appears for instance from Polystratus’s polemical treatise against those who irrationally
despise popular beliefs and from Philodemus’s attempts to show that the Epicurean phi-
losopher also contributes to the public interest.56 Philodemus’s rejection of arrogance as
a source of all kinds of misfortune57 and his insistence that the sage deals in an affable
and hospitable way with other people (De vit., P.Herc. 1008 col. 9.1–10) may be under-
stood in the same light.
This tension once again demonstrates that Epicurus was a sober-minded thinker. His
philosophical position shows a well-considered balance between fundamental radical-
ness on the one hand, and, on the other, caution and even a certain degree of conformity.
Epicurus was neither a subversive troublemaker nor a cynic who shamelessly and inso-
lently barked at the establishment.58 He was not afraid of barking whenever he thought
it would be helpful, but he always took care not to bite the hand which could both feed
and strike him.
Further Complicating the Picture:

Exceptions and Qualifications
But that is not all. Epicurus knew very well that the complex practice of daily life can
never be completely reduced to a comprehensive theoretical perspective. In concrete
situations, every Epicurean will always have to evaluate which choices will most contrib-
ute to his pleasure, both in the short run and in the long run. This calculus (συμμέτρησις;
Ep. Men. 130) is of paramount importance for Epicurus’s ethical praxis. Careful calcula-
tion and evaluation by sober reasoning (νήφων λογισμός: Ep. Men. 132) shows that the
Epicurean should often prefer pain to instant pleasure because the former yields more
pleasure in the long run.59 This judicious computation is the task of φρόνησις, which is
very highly esteemed by Epicurus: he calls it an even more precious thing than philoso-
phy itself (Ep. Men. 132). This is quite an extraordinary statement for a philosopher,
although one easily understands why Epicurus adopts this view. Philosophy can provide
general insights and rules which may be valid in the great majority of situations, but it
will be φρόνησις which, in the end, has to decide in each concrete case how the final
τέλος, rebus sic stantibus, can best be reached. In everyday life, a man’s happiness thus
directly depends on the correct use of his φρόνησις.
55 Cf. also KD 39 and Plut. Against Colotes 1127D (= Usener 134).

56 Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 121–25. 57 Cf. Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 149.
58 According to DL 10.8 (= Usener 238), Epicurus even called the Cynics “enemies of Greece”;
cf. also 10.119 (= Usener 14).
59 See, e.g., KD 8; SV 16 and 71; Ep. Men. 129–30; Sen. Ep. 18.9 (= Usener 158); Cic. Tusc. 5.95
(= Usener 439); Eusebius, PE 14.21.4 (= Usener 442).
298 GEERT ROSKAM
The implications of this view can hardly be overestimated. It not only strongly
c onditions almost all aspects of Epicurus’s view of ethically correct behavior, but it also
makes its influence felt on the general character of his thinking. It results in what I have
called a “qualifying philosophy.”60 It is quite remarkable indeed that a great many
fragments of Epicurus are characterized by all kinds of qualifications. Conditional or
temporal clauses introduce important provisos (“do this if x,” “avoid this unless y” . . .),61
predicative adjuncts or relative clauses add various nuances and specifications,62 and
partitive genitives suggest the existence of distinctions in more general categories.63 The
most different (attributive or adverbial) adjuncts time and again recall the importance
of concrete circumstances for more general rules.64 It is quite remarkable in this respect
that many traces of such qualifications even occur in the doxographic tradition, where
clarity so often prevails over accuracy and the full emphasis is usually on the great out-
lines of a philosopher’s position, often in contradistinction to that of rival schools. This
adds to the impression that Epicurus qualified and nuanced his views as much as possi-
ble, in line with his insistence on the paramount importance of φρόνησις.
In the remainder of this chapter, I deal with a few examples that illustrate this qualify-
ing character of Epicurus’s philosophical thinking.
1. A nuanced view of the past

A good starting point is Key Doctrine 7:
Ἔνδοξοι καὶ περίβλεπτοί τινες ἐβουλήθησαν γενέσθαι, τὴν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀσφάλειαν

οὕτω νομίζοντες περιποιήσεσθαι. ὥστε εἰ μὲν ἀσφαλὴς ὁ τῶν τοιούτων βίος, ἀπέλαβον
τὸ τῆς φύσεως ἀγαθόν· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἀσφαλής, οὐκ ἔχουσιν οὗ ἕνεκα ἐξ ἀρχῆς κατὰ τὸ τῆς
φύσεως οἰκεῖον ὠρέχθησαν.
Some men wished to become famous and respected, believing that they would thus
gain security from other men. Thus if the life of such men is secure, they acquired
the natural good, but if it is not secure, they do not have that for the sake of which
they strove from the beginning according to what is naturally congenial.65
This is a famous example of Epicurus’s fundamental willingness to make room for

exceptions. Apparently a man can engage in politics if this will bring him security
(cf. also KD 6). We may first pause for a moment to consider the striking presence of this
nuanced perspective in the Key Doctrines. As is well known, these are a series of fairly
short, general tenets that express the core of Epicurus’s thinking and were to be memo-
rized by the members of the community. This being the case, it is quite surprising that
60 Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 148 and passim. 61 See, e.g., SV 21 and 51.
62 See, e.g., Plut. Against Colotes 1125C (= Usener 554): ἄριστα and ἑκὼν εἶναι; DL 10.121b (= Usener
564): ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ἑκόντα; DL 10.121b (= Usener 567): ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ μόνης σοφίας; etc.
63 Cf., e.g., KD 32: ὅσα τῶν ζῴων and τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅσα.
64 See, e.g., KD 6 (ποτε); DL 10.119 = Usener 19 (κατὰ περίστασιν δέ ποτε βίου); 10.121b = Usener 590
(ποτέ); DL 10.121b = Usener 577 (ἐν καιρῷ); etc.
65 Translation Inwood and Gerson, strongly modified.
Epicurus, near the beginning of the whole series, introduces a possible objection against
his general convictions and even acknowledges its possible value. Even the Key Doctrines
thus show the same readiness to take into account the importance of specific
circumstances and the working of φρόνησις—a fact that was not sufficiently recognized
in previous research. Apart from a few general principles such as the nothingness of
death and the ultimate end of pleasure, this is not a set of rigid rules and universal truths.
On the other hand, precisely the presence of such differentiations and qualifications
contributes much to the practical usefulness of the Key Doctrines. What the Epicurean
has learned by heart is a series of fundamental principles that are nuanced enough to do
justice to the particularity of specific situations and circumstances.
The implication of KD 7 (and 6) is thus that security can be obtained through other
people (ἐξ ἀνθρώπων).66 Through a brilliant political career a man might gain the power
that enables him to enjoy his pleasure in perfect security. The pain of political engage-
ment would thus have yielded a greater pleasure in the long term. Nevertheless, it would
be rash for an Epicurean to use these two Key Doctrines as a possible justification of his
decision to enter political life. First of all, his success is far from certain, and there is
actually a good chance that he will end like Pyrrhus, entangled in the net of his always-
increasing ambitions. More importantly, such an interpretation would run counter to
the spirit of these two Key Doctrines. That these should definitely not be understood as a
straightforward exhortation to pursue security through a political career appears from a
third tenet, in which Epicurus juxtaposes the possible security that can, in a political
context, be reached through other people to the purest (εἰλικρινεστάτη) security that
comes from a quiet life and withdrawal from the many (ἡ ἐκ τῆς ἡσυχίας καὶ ἐκχωρήσεως
τῶν πολλῶν ἀσφάλεια; KD 14).
All of this shows that the main importance of KD 6 and 7 lies in the interpretative key
which they provide for the evaluation of the past.67 They enable Epicurus’s followers to
reinterpret the achievements of great figures of the past in light of their own Epicurean
doctrine. It is all too often neglected in more recent literature that nearly all the verbs of
KD 7 are in the past tense. Epicurus focuses in these doctrines not so much on what can
be done nowadays than on what has been accomplished in earlier days. This helps to
explain the presence of KD 6 and 7 in this collection. These two doctrines introduce an
important interpretative perspective that yields many interesting advantages. They have
an elenctic power in that they diminish the value of tradition. At the same time, they
positively contribute to the Epicureans’ self-confirmation by showing that the decisions
of the great statesmen of the past, to the extent that they can be admired, perfectly illus-
trate the standards of Epicurus: truly successful politicians did not selflessly serve the
most “honorable” ideals, but simply knew how to pursue their own interest in a well-
considered way. This perspective may be very helpful in polemical debates, as is clearly
the case in Torquatus’s reply to Cicero’s attacks in On ends (1.34–36). It also helps the
Epicurean to throw light on the direct relevance of the past for the present, and this may
well explain the somewhat unexpected turn to the present tense ἔχουσιν near the end of
66 Cf. Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 37–40. 67 Cf. Besnier, “Justice et utilité,” 154–55.
300 GEERT ROSKAM
KD 7. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this change in verbal tense occurs precisely in the
context of the negative alternative. Examples of political success can be found in the past
(ἀπέλαβον; cf. also Lucr. DRN 5.1105–12), whereas the present primarily illustrates politi-
cal failure. If that is true, the sudden change of tense is not an example of Epicurus’s care-
less writing but a subtle means to steer the reader’s evaluation of both the present and
the past in a specific direction. At the same time, KD 7 shows the all-important willing-
ness to take into account the importance of φρόνησις. However implausible a successful
outcome of a political career may be, its possibility is never categorically denied in KD 6
and 7, but instead is even theoretically acknowledged. For all those reasons, both Key
Doctrines show Epicurus as an extremely sophisticated and nuanced philosopher.
2. The sage at the royal court
A second case is Epicurus’s conviction that the sage “will pay court to a king when the
occasion is appropriate” (DL 10.121b = Usener 577: μόναρχον ἐν καιρῷ θεραπεύσειν). This
fragment cannot be understood as an indication of Epicurus’s preference for
monarchy,68 but should once again be interpreted in light of the general importance
which Epicurus attaches to the prudent calculus of desires.
In general, the presence of an Epicurean is not to be expected at the court of a king.
According to Plutarch, Epicurus recommends against living with kings (τὸ συμβιοῦν
βασιλεῦσι; Against Colotes 1127A = Usener 6*) and in this case, Plutarch’s information is
probably correct. The term συμβιοῦν is important in this respect, for in an Epicurean
context, συμβίωσις is a word pregnant with meaning.69 In all likelihood it denotes the
pleasant living together of friends in the Garden, and implies that the members of the
community really share (cf. συμ-) their lives with one another. And why should an
Epicurean share his life with a monarch? Living at the Court would imply a loss of his
autonomy (cf. SV 67) and involvement in all kinds of dangerous machinations.70
Moreover, it is far from certain that the king would be eager to listen to the Epicurean’s
παρρησία.71 In general, then, an Epicurean has no business at a royal court.
And yet, he will occasionally go to the king. We may note in passing Epicurus’s apt
choice of words: in this context, the first meaning of the verb θεραπεύειν is obviously “to
pay court to,” but nothing prevents the addition of the connotation of medical treatment
as well. The Epicurean’s contact with a king can thus in principle aim at the latter’s
Seelenheilung, which suggests that the Epicurean will not merely subject himself but
may at least to a certain extent maintain his independence.72 On the other hand, the
Epicurean will only turn to the king if it serves his own interest, and therefore has to wait
68 See also Benferhat, Ciues Epicurei; and Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 54–55; contra Gigante and
Dorandi, “Anassarco e Epicuro ‘Sul Regno’ ”; and Fowler, “Lucretius and Politics,” 130.
69 Cf. Del Mastro, “Il PHerc. 1589,” 224.
70 One might recall Plato’s fate in Sicily. According to DL 10.8 (= Usener 238), Epicurus called the
followers of Plato “flatterers of Dionysius.”
71 Cf. Philodemus On Frank Criticism col. 23b.12–24a.7. Colotes dedicated his work to King Ptolemy
(cf. Plut. Against Colotes 1107E), to be sure, but addressing a book to a king is obviously not the same as
living with him.
72 One may compare the position of Philodemus; see Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 121–25.
for the right opportunity. The addition of ἐν καιρῷ is one of the typical qualifying
additions that illustrate the importance of φρόνησις in Epicurus’s thinking. The question
of how this vague reference to the καιρός can be understood remains to be addressed.
3. Exceptional circumstances: Epicureans in politics
At this point, the best way to make further progress is by broadening the question and
asking when the Epicurean will engage in politics. In a famous passage, Seneca states
(Dial. 8.3.2–3 = Usener 9; cf. also Cic. Rep. 1.10 and 1.11):
Epicurus ait: non accedet ad rem publicam sapiens, nisi si quid intervenerit.
Epicurus says: “The wise man will not engage in public affairs unless something
occurs.”73
This fairly vague phrase nisi si quid intervenerit recalls the importance of the καιρός.
According to the traditional explanation, the Epicurean would engage in politics in
emergency situations, when the general stability and social order of the state is under-
mined and his own tranquility of mind menaced. In such exceptional circumstances,
the sage should briefly intervene in order to restore law and order, for this short pain will
obviously yield much more pleasures in the long term.74 And once he has succeeded in
re-establishing the social stability, he can retire and resume his pleasant life.
In my view, this traditional view is problematic for several reasons. First of all, it
would expose Epicurus to Cicero’s pertinent objection that in such a situation, the
Epicurean will be entirely powerless (Rep. 1.10–11). For it obviously requires much politi-
cal experience and influence to deal with such emergency situations. More importantly,
the traditional explanation does not reflect Epicurus’s point of view. There is no reason
indeed why the Epicurean would not keep to his retired life under such extreme circum-
stances. One may even argue that precisely at such moments, a sequestered life far away
from the general public disorder would yield much greater advantages than an attempt
to “take the helm of the state when the waves dash highest” (Cic. Rep. 1.11). Moreover, a
few later texts throw additional light on Epicurus’s position. Philodemus argues that it is
perfectly possible to live under a bad political regime.75 Alternatively, when a man is
convinced that he cannot live well under bad laws, he should merely leave the place
and enjoy his pleasures elsewhere (Rhet., P.Herc. 1669 col. 24.33–39; I, 259 Sudhaus;
cf. also Cic. Phil. 12.14). This is Epicureanism pur sang. The Epicurean will not identify
himself with his state and its problems, and will prefer to escape the great dangers of
73 Translation Basore, modified.

74 See, e.g., Bringmann in Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” 321–22; Griffin, “Philosophy, Politics,
and Politicians at Rome,” 30; Besnier, “Justice et utilité,” 148; Asmis, “The Politician as Public Servant,”
118. On the basis of Plut. Life of Brutus 12.3, Sedley, “The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius,” 47 adds that
such extreme situations could create in the Epicureans “an overriding sense of obligation to their
non-philosophical fellow-citizens.”
75 Rhet. VIII, P.Herc. 1015/832 col. 57.11–16 (II, 63 Sudhaus), with the analysis of Roskam, Live
Unnoticed, 117 and 120.
302 GEERT ROSKAM
social commotion simply by living unnoticed. Precisely these emergency situations

tellingly show that the Epicurean can obtain and safeguard his security far better “from
leisure,” ἐκ τῆς ἡσυχίας (KD 14).
If that is true, we may well wonder when the Epicurean will engage in politics. To
which exceptional situations does Seneca’s phrase nisi si quid intervenerit refer? In my
view, the most interesting information can be derived from the actual practice of the
Epicureans themselves. We know of two moments in the early history of the Garden
when one of the members decided to appear briefly on the public scene.76 Epicurus him-
self sent two of his pupils to a king’s court in order to refute Timocrates’s slander (Plut.
Against Colotes 1126C). This, by the way, is a striking example of μόναρχον ἐν καιρῷ
θεραπεύειν. Metrodorus for his part tried to help Mithres when the latter got into trouble
in the Piraeus.77 In both cases, the decision to enter politics was conditioned by external
circumstances rather than personal ambition, and twice, the immediate cause was a
concrete situation that had direct implications for the Epicurean community. The emer-
gency situation, in short, concerned the Garden, not the state. In the first case,
Timocrates’s slander campaign was a menace to Epicurus’s good reputation (εὐδοξία;
cf. Usener 573, discussed above) and security, and as such required refutation. That
Epicurus did not go himself to the court of the king, but preferred to send some of his
followers, probably reflects his accurate evaluation of the situation. Whether or not he
thought that these followers would be more able to obtain satisfactory results, there can
be little doubt that it was in any case much safer to settle this problem through interme-
diaries and avoid a direct confrontation with Timocrates. Furthermore, through this
“political” intervention, if it may really be called so, Epicurus did not directly aim at
ἀσφάλεια ἐξ ἀνθρώπων.78 He wisely preferred to obtain his security by staying in Athens,
that is, to pursue an ἀσφάλεια ἐκ τῆς ἡσυχίας. This is not without importance, as it shows
that Epicurus himself had no need of KD 6 and 7 to motivate his decision to enter public life.
In the second case, Metrodorus went himself to the Piraeus, but in all likelihood his safety
was far less at stake than that of Epicurus in the first case. He probably went on a fairly risk-
free diplomatic mission where he had ample opportunity to remain in the shade,79 and at
the same time he could show that the Epicureans were really concerned about the well-
being of their friends. And in this case too, the Epicurean’s calculus proved right, for a min-
imum of pain in the end yielded a great pleasure. Metrodorus’s intervention proved
successful and thus caused much satisfaction and delight in the Garden.80
Both cases thus show that the Epicureans would only engage in politics, or pay court
to a king, if that would serve the interest of their community or its members and friends.
76 I deal with a few other cases in Roskam, Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo, 39–40.
77 Cf. n. 43 above.
78 He rather tried to avoid βλάβαι ἐξ ἀνθρώπων (viz. the harm caused by Timocrates) and therefore
adopted an intelligent double strategy: staying himself in his own safe environment at Athens and
trying to refute Timocrates’s slander from a distance, through intermediaries who would run less risk
than he would do.
79 One may compare, mutatis mutandis, the attitude of Cicero’s friend Atticus.
80 Cf. Plut. That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1097B and Against Colotes
1126E–F = Usener 194.
If that is true, this may have important implications for the evaluation of the “orthodoxy”
of many Epicureans who were politically active. How should we regard, for instance, the
Epicurean Diogenes of Seleucia, who long enjoyed the king’s favor in spite of his offen-
sive behavior, until he was finally executed (Ath. 5.211a–d)? What about the Epicurean
Lysias of Samos, who became tyrant in his city and slaughtered many of his fellow citi-
zens (5.215b–c)? What about Aristion, who studied Epicurean philosophy (App. Mith.
28) before he became a cruel tyrant at Athens? And finally, what about the many Roman
officers and politicians, including Caesar himself, who have more than once been asso-
ciated with Epicureanism?81 It is far too easy to refer in all of these cases systematically
to KD 6 and 7. We already saw that Epicurus himself adopted a completely different
course. Moreover, even if they entered politics in order to obtain personal security,82
we can only conclude that they usually failed to reach their end.83 Their judgment was
wrong and their φρόνησις defective. To the extent that they really regarded themselves as
Epicureans, we can only conclude that they were bad Epicureans.84
81 Momigliano, “Review of Science and Politics in the Ancient World;” Castner, Prosopography of
Roman Epicureans; Benferhat, Ciues Epicurei; on Caesar see also Rambaud, “César et l’Epicurisme.”
Interesting material on other Epicureans who were politically active can be found in Koch, Comment
peut-on être dieu?, 51–75.
82 A fairly implausible hypothesis, after all, since the sources often suggest that their decision was
based on different motivations such as ambition or other unnecessary and empty desires.
83 One could object that their political engagement could also be motivated in a different way.
According to Plutarch, Epicurus did not believe that “men who are eager for honor and glory
(τοὺς φιλοτίμους καὶ φιλοδόξους) should lead an inactive life, but that they should fulfill their natures
by engaging in politics and entering public life, on the ground that, because of their natural
dispositions, they are more likely to be disturbed and harmed by inactivity (ἀπραγμοσύνης) if they
do not obtain what they desire” (On Tranquility of Mind 465F–466A = Usener 555; translation
Helmbold). First of all, however, this may well be a misrepresentation of Epicurus’s position, in that
Plutarch may have turned Epicurus’s originally descriptive statement into a normative one (see
Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 52–54). In any case, it was Plutarch, not Epicurus, who was especially
preoccupied with φιλοτιμία (cf., e.g., Frazier, “A propos de la ‘philotimia’ dans les ‘Vies’ ”; and
Pelling, Plutarch and History, passim), and the term ἀπραγμοσύνη likewise sounds more Platonic
than Epicurean (thus rightly Grilli, “Considerazioni sul fr. 555 Us. di Epicuro,” 385). If this is true, the
only possible value of the fragment is based on the words τῇ φύσει (thus again Grilli,
“Considerazioni sul fr. 555 Us. di Epicuro,” 385), which is quite poor and even problematic, for
Epicurus never recommends to follow nature on an irrational basis. See esp. Morel, Epicure. La
nature et la raison; cf. also Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, 119 n. 39.
84 This conclusion, however, may be in need of some Epicurean qualification, as I realized when
I read the forthcoming contribution of Jeff Fish on the Roman Epicureans (now Fish, “Not All
Politicians Are Sisyphus”). In the context of the late Roman Republic, people of inherited status such
as Calpurnius Piso may well have found it more difficult to live unnoticed than to enter the cursus
honorum. It is true that fifth- and fourth-century Athens knew its aristocratic ἀπράγμονες too (cf. supra
n. 3), but there remain important differences with the political situation of well-born Roman
aristocrats. This is not to say that these were doomed from birth, as it were, to enter politics and
endure its troubles, but as every Epicurean, they had to judge their situation with sober φρόνησις, and it
is not impossible that in their case, the calculus of pleasure and pain yielded somewhat “atypical”
results. I prefer to leave the matter here and refer to Fish, “Not All Politicians Are Sisyphus” for an
in-depth discussion of this question; see also the interesting discussion of Armstrong, “Epicurean
Virtues, Epicurean Friendship.”
304 GEERT ROSKAM
More difficult is the case of Philonides and Philodemus. Both were obviously
t horoughly familiar with Epicurus’s view. Both regarded themselves as Epicureans, and
yet both also associated with powerful rulers. The question of course remains as to
whether they really lived together (συμβιοῦν) with these rulers, although they appar-
ently did more than just occasionally θεραπεύειν κατὰ καιρόν. Both may have sought a
creative and innovative interpretation of Epicurus’s point of view in order to adapt it to
their own concrete situation, but that is a topic that goes far beyond the scope of this
contribution.
Conclusion
A study of Epicurus’s view of politics and society is basically a study of means, not of
the final end. It tells us relatively little about more fundamental philosophical topics,
although these are relevant of course.85 The primary focus is on ethical praxis, that is,
on the selection of what contributes to pleasure and the avoidance of what is painful
or harmful. In that context, Epicurus pointed to general patterns and rules. Politics, for
instance, is usually a bad means to pursue pleasure, whereas security, laws, and friend-
ship are highly appreciated. This general approach, however, was always to be based
on careful observations and consistent thinking that did not refrain from criticizing
widespread but erroneous convictions.
On the other hand, these general patterns never became laws of the Medes and
Persians. One of the most striking characteristics of Epicurus’s philosophical thinking
is, as we have repeatedly seen, the sense of (conditional) qualification. Epicurus knew
very well that every choice and every decision is made in concrete circumstances, and
there the individual’s φρόνησις is of paramount importance. Sound judgment and com-
mon sense are then often more helpful than philosophical insights. This is not to say, of
course, that those insights are unimportant for an adequate therapy of vain desires (and
irrational fears). It is clear that φρόνησις should be completed by φυσιολογία, but in daily
life, the former is in any case a most precious possession.
Epicurus’s philosophy is thus permeated by sober realism. It is an open-minded
way of thinking that shows much appreciation for the accurate and correct evaluation
of the concrete situation. Many fragments contain telling evidence of Epicurus’s
well-considered and nuanced judgment and his admirable intellectual honesty. We can
confidently conclude, then, that Epicurus was no tree trunk. What this study has not
demonstrated is that Plutarch was no cactus either. But that is a different story.
85 E.g. Epicurus’s view of man, more particularly his conviction that man is not social by nature but only
loves others sua causa; cf. Lactantius Inst. 3.17.39 (= Usener 581); cf. also Usener 523, 540, and esp. 580*.
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chapter 12
L a nguage
Enrico Piergiacomi
The Epicurean analysis of language has become a battleground divided between two
major camps. As Atherton already noted, we may distinguish a debate between
“extensionalists” and “intensionalists.”1 Extensionalism represents the traditional
interpretation—one that found its most rigorous expression in a seminal article by
Anthony Long. Intensionalism recognizes instead its champion in David Glidden, who
challenged in important respects the extensionalist view.2
In approaching the disagreement between these two exegetical positions, it will
perhaps be helpful to distinguish three main philosophical issues. The first is the
description of the relationship between language and reality. Extensionalists hold that
Epicureans believe that words refer to things through some medium, typically the
“meanings” of terms that show what qualities or properties are possessed by the objects
that are signified. Intensionalists, however, think that words express things directly and
thus do not require the medium of meaning. Accordingly, they claim that it is mislead-
ing to speak of an Epicurean “theory of language,” because Epicureans hold a philosophy
of linguistic behavior. Indeed, Epicureans, on this view, maintain that our words repre-
sent how we behave when we communicate with each other, just like the sounds or
utterances of animals that communicate something without “meaning” anything.
A second point of disagreement concerns the origin of language, more precisely the
passage from the private utterances of primitive human beings to the social or codified
ones employed in civilizations. Extensionalists argue that Epicureans believed this hap-
pened when human beings found words that better captured the meanings of the things
to which they were trying to refer. Intensionalists, on the other hand, claim that this
particular transformation occurred purely through changes in behavior. If in earlier his-
torical periods individual human beings employed their own personal ways to refer to
1 Atherton, “Epicurean Philosophy of Language,” 198–99.

2 Long, “Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus”; Glidden, “Epicurean Semantics,”
“Epicurean prolēpsis,” “Epicurean thought.” Further literature on the debate is quoted and discussed in
the next section. Here I present just a general synthesis.
Language 309
reality, later on they began to employ some codified versions. Meaning has once again
no role in this process, however, because language is a matter of what specific words
accompany particular behaviors.
The third area of disagreement lies in the description of how errors arise in our com-
munication. Words often refer to non-existent things (e.g., centaurs), or mistakenly
refer to things that do exist, as happens, for instance, when I say “I see Socrates near the
tower,” when in reality the person near the tower is Plato. So we need an explanation of
how such errors arise. Extensionalists claim that Epicureans employed a conceptual test.
We recognize that a word like “centaur” signifies something impossible or inconceiv-
able, or that a phrase like “I see Socrates near the tower” errs in attributing to the distant
man the quality “being Socrates” instead of “being Plato.” Such a test shows, therefore,
that sometimes we use words to express some subjective constructions, rather than
objective (= real) counterparts. On the contrary, intensionalists claim that Epicureans
require only an empirical test. Errors arise because words are associated with the wrong
referents. They would be true, hence refer to real things, if as in the case of “centaur” one
referred to the movement of the mind that makes me see an image of a creature that is
half man and half horse; or if with the phrase “I see Socrates near the tower” one is refer-
ring to a state of affairs where that person is actually near the tower.
I will argue that Epicurean evidence about the nature of language, though scanty,
nonetheless allows us to conclude that an extensionalist interpretation is more likely. In
some sense, therefore, I will not be presenting a novel reading or a compromise position
between the two established camps. But in defending the traditional interpretation, I
will try to shed some new light by setting out the historical development of Epicurean
analysis of language. Scholars tend to concentrate mostly on Epicurus and Lucretius,
while giving only minor attention to contributions of other Epicureans. I believe that an
investigation of the development of Epicurus’s analysis of language will show that
nuances were introduced by his later pupils. Although the core of the master’s doctrine
remained, some of these later contributions have significant philosophical import.3
3 The present essay uses abbreviations. Those that are not readily understandable and appear just
once in the essay are immediately followed by the full reference in a footnote. The other more quoted
but less known abbreviations should instead be interpreted as follows: Emped. DK = Empedocles,
Fragments, ed. Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker; Emped. LM = Empedocles, Fragments,
ed. Laks-Most, Early Greek Philosophy. Volume V; Diog. Oen. fr. Smith = Diogenes of Oenoanda,
Fragments, ed. Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription; Epic. De nat. = Epicurus, On
Nature; Epic. fr. Arr.2 = Epicurus, Fragments, ed. Arrighetti, Epicuro: Opere; Epic. fr. Usener = Epicurus,
Fragments, ed. Usener, Epicurea; Epic. RS = Epicurus, Ratae Sententiae, ed. Arrighetti, Epicuro: Opere;
Hermarch. = Hermarchus, Fragments, in Longo Auricchio, Ermarco. Frammenti; P.Herc. x
= Herculaneum papyrus no. x; Philod. De ira = Philodemus, On Wrath, ed. Indelli, Filodemo. L’ira;
Philod. De piet. = Philodemus, On Piety, ed. Obbink, Philodemus. On Piety, Part I; Philod. Oec.
= Philodemus, On Property Management, ed. Tsouna, Philodemus: On Property Management; Philod.
Rhet. II = Philodemus, Rhetoric, Book II, ed. Longo Auricchio “Φιλοδήμου Περὶ ῥητορικῆς libros
primum et secundum”; SVF = Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum
Fragmenta.
310 ENRICO PIERGIACOMI
Epicurus’s Linguistic Methodology
A reconstruction of Epicurus’s original position should start from the summary found
in his Epistle to Herodotus. The most important claim is placed at the beginning (37–38).
Epicurus writes that the study of physics must start from the grasp of things that under-
line φθόγγοι (τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα τοῖς φθόγγοις), otherwise we would miss the πρῶτον
ἐννόημα that requires no demonstration or clarification and that allows us to settle ques-
tions, develop opinions, and raise problems. What is more, all the φθόγγοι that can
receive such scrutiny are opposed to φθόγγοι that are empty, i.e. that do not help one to
proceed in scientific inquiry. It is probable that the method here described was applied
to different fields of inquiry. For example, Cicero reports its usage in ethics, more pre-
cisely in the analysis of honesty and pleasure (Tusc. 3.18.42, Fin. 2.1.3–2.6 and 15.48 = frr.
69, 257, 264 Usener).
Many terms that I have deliberately left in Greek are not immediately perspicuous in
this dense passage. The least controversial is φθόγγοι. As has been recognized, the term
may have the meaning of generic vocal sounds or utterances,4 which include names but
are not limited to them. A brief look at the section of the letter dedicated to the origin of
language—where φθόγγοι again appear (75–76)—may confirm this idea. The context
shows that Epicurus wants to explain the origin of names. So they must be included
among φθόγγοι. However, the reference to utterances—like “void”—that some experts
developed by using reasoning (λογισμός)—also makes clear that φθόγγοι must include
expressions more complex than single ὀνόματα. This, for instance, is the case for ἀναφὴς
φύσις (intangible nature), which is a way of speaking of void in technical terms.5
Much more problematic is the significance of πρῶτον ἐννόημα. It is here that the
debate between extensionalists and intensionalists arises. The former argue that πρῶτον
ἐννόημα might be a reference to a πρόληψις or preconception, which Cicero (ND 1.17.44)
and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 2.4.16.3 = fr. 255 Usener) trace back to Epicurus him-
self. Diogenes Laertius (10.33), however, attributes it to Epicureans in general. According
to these sources, preconceptions are direct apprehensions, true beliefs, concepts, and
universal thoughts that are formed from the outside by the repeated impressions of sim-
ulacra emitted by objects, which ultimately are stored in our memory through an act of
focalization of the mind (ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας). They allow us, moreover, to make
inquiries and to name things, but are also what are primarily underlined (τὸ πρώτως
ὑποτεταγμένον) in all names, and in turn are evident and consist in the meanings com-
monly attached to them by individuals. In this sense, preconceptions are irrefutable cri-
teria of truth, since no one who pronounces “cow” will ever fail to make the hearer think
of this animal with its specific form and behavior. The extensionalists conclude, there-
fore, that the πρῶτον ἐννόημα is the “pre”-conception that one finds underlying all our
4 Cf. Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, 77–78, for references and analysis.
5 Cf. Ep. Hdt. 40 and 86 with Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.101; Glidden,
“Epicurean Semantics,” 205.
Language 311
φθόγγοι, while the main properties of the named object represent the common meaning
of a linguistic utterance.6
However, Glidden has challenged this claim by objecting that, if πρῶτον ἐννόημα is
really “a stand-in for πρόληψις, one must go on to read the passage as requiring a
πρόληψις for every utterance.” But this is contradicted by Ep. Hdt. 72, where Epicurus
says that we must study time not by looking at a preconception stored in us. We must do
so by reasoning from analogy with evident phenomena that make us pronounce utter-
ances like “short time” or “long time.” The philosopher recognizes then that χρόνος has a
name, but no πρόληψις. Moreover, Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch report that Epicureans
eliminated propositions (λεκτά), which in their opinion are necessary to develop con-
cepts and preconceptions.7 Glidden claims that Epicureans could not admit the “mean-
ings” of terms. The πρῶτον ἐννόημα must then be interpreted differently, in his opinion,
as the “first referent” of each utterance. As regards the πρόληψις itself, Glidden proposes
that it could be read as a “referent of a mass term,” i.e. a word that refers to many things
that share the same properties: for example, “motion” is a preconception, because it
refers to all things that move in the universe.8
Glidden’s case seems not entirely consistent. Since preconceptions are also true
beliefs, it seems implausible to claim that they have no meaning. For a δόξα is declared to
be false or true through an analysis of its contents, i.e. of what it means.9 This appears
particularly evident for the preconception underlined in the name “god,” that entails the
true belief “blessed and immortal living being” (Ad Men. 124). Since divine activities are
not directly observable, the πρόληψις of θεός cannot be a habitual referent of what we
repeatedly perceive within the environment;10 hence, the truth-value of this δόξα could
be checked only with conceptual analysis, such as by reasoning that possessing
6 For further clarifications, cf. Long, “Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus,” 119–22;
Manuwald, Die Prolepsislehre Epikurs, 4–10, 95–102; Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method, 24–34; Annas,
Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 167–70; Striker, “Kριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας,” 37–42; Morel, “Method and
Evidence: On the Epicurean Preconception,” 29–48; Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, 78–83
and “Percezione, errore e residuo percettivo in Aristotele, Epicuro e Alessandro di Afrodisia,” 50–62;
Fine, The Possibility of Inquiry, 226–45. On the relationship between πρόληψις and ἐπιβολή, which are
not two identical criteria of truth (cf. indeed DL 10.31), cf. however Glidden, “Epicurean prolēpsis,”
194–98 and Hammerstaedt, “Il ruolo della πρόληψις epicurea nell’interpretazione di Epicuro, Epistula
ad Herodotum 37 sg.,” 234–37; Morel, “Method and Evidence: On the Epicurean Preconception,” 39–47;
Konstan, Lucrezio e la psicologia epicurea, 53–54; Verde, Epicuro nella testimonianza di Cicerone, 350–57.
7 See SE M 8.13 and 258; Plut. Adv. Col. 1119f2–1120a2 (= fr. 259 Usener); Glidden, “Epicurean
Semantics,” 185–87.
8 Glidden, “Epicurean Semantics,” 192–99, 222–24. Citations are on pp. 195 and 222. Cf. also
Glidden, “Epicurean prolēpsis,” 180–212. Similar observations were already in de Lacy, “The Epicurean
Analysis of Language,” and recur also in Everson, “Epicurus on Mind and Language,” 80–87; Atherton,
“Epicurean Philosophy of Language,” 200–201; Németh, Epicurus on the Self, 30–43.
9 Cf. Jäkel, “Philosophisch orientierte Ansätze einer Sprachtheorie bei Gorgias, Isokrates und
Epikur,” 47–55; Mitsis, “Commentary on Glidden,” 448–49; Everson, “Epicurus on Mind and
Language,” 81–83; Hammerstaedt “Il ruolo della πρόληψις epicurea nell’interpretazione di Epicuro,
Epistula ad Herodotum 37 sg.,” 227–37; Fine, The Possibility of Inquiry, 242–45.
10 Pace Glidden, “Epicurean prolēpsis,” 199–205.
lessedness and immortality means avoiding painful acts (e.g. governing the world).11
b
Moreover, DL 10.33 explicitly reports that a preconception underlines all names (cf.
παντὶ ὀνόματι) and this includes “time.”12 As other scholars have noticed,13 Epicurus’s
claim that χρόνος does not have a preconception that is stored in us does not then signify
that it does not have a preconception at all. It means that the πρόληψις of the word “time”
is derived by looking at external phenomena to which time is attached, like the passage
from day into night. With respect to Sextus Empiricus’s and Plutarch’s reports about the
elimination of λεκτά, Epicureans might only require relations between words and things
without the medium of propositions. Thus, the idea that προλήψεις require λεκτά is not
necessary, for it might be a tendentious addition of Sextus/Plutarch. That preconcep-
tions proceed directly through words is confirmed in Diogenes Laertius (10.33).14 Here
we read that, by pronouncing a word like ἄνθρωπος, one immediately (εὐθύς) thinks
κατὰ πρόληψιν what a human being is.
One could raise an obvious objection. If each name is made meaningful by a pre-
conception, it follows that the word “centaur” also has a πρόληψις. But this would
entail that it also embodies a true belief and universal concept derived from the out-
side, which is absurd. Indeed, since we know that centaurs do not exist, would not the
argument that preconceptions are meanings associated with each name contradict
itself?15 The answer to this objection is that, on the one hand, even the πρόληψις of a
centaur is actually derived externally. It consists, after all, in the repeated experience
of the mental representation of this monster caused by the motion of simulacra of a
horse combined with those of a human being.16 On the other hand, the true belief
associated with a name does not always require the existence of the named object. The
association of “centaur” would be, for example, that of “non-existent animal of such
and such form, color, behavior.”17
If, then, preconceptions are what give meanings to all names and their recognition is
the premise of every philosophical inquiry, we could suppose that the opposition
between empty φθόγγοι and φθόγγοι implicitly “full” (i.e., that keep a πρῶτον ἐννόημα)
might be read as follows. Utterances of the first kind do not respect the προλήψεις
11 The human mind can indeed only perceive the basic properties of god (anthropomorphism,
blessedness, immortality). Everything else has to be checked through reasoning. For references on
Epicurean theology, cf. the essay of Spinelli and Verde published in this same collection and
Piergiacomi, Storia delle antiche teologie atomiste, 50–72 and 152–62.
12 Cf. Philod. De piet. col. 66A.1885–1887.
13 Verde, “Rebus ab ipsis consequitur sensus”; Goeury, “L’absence de préconception du temps chez
Épicure.”
14 Further proofs in Barnes, “Epicurus: Meaning and Thinking”; Everson, “Epicurus on Mind and
Language,” 85–91; Hammerstaedt, “Il ruolo della πρόληψις epicurea nell’interpretazione di Epicuro,
Epistula ad Herodotum 37 sg.,” 229; Morel, “Method and Evidence: On the Epicurean Preconception,”
33–34.
15 Fine, The Possibility of Inquiry, 235–37.
16 Cf. Giannantoni, “Epicurei e Stoici sul linguaggio,” 268 on Lucr. 4.722–48.
17 Atherton, “Epicurean Philosophy of Language,” 206, argues the same with the example of the
Fury, which “would amount to no more than a belief that this is what a Fury looks like, with no built-in
commitment to the image’s representing a three-dimensional continuant.”
Language 313
that are underlined in them, while those of the second kind do so.18 In the case of
non-existent objects like a centaur, a full φθόγγος would be “centaurs do not exist,” an
empty one “centaurs live among us.” In the case of existing things, like the soul (Ep. Hdt.
67), the same principle holds. A phrase or φθόγγος like “the soul is incorporeal” is empty,
because it does not respect the πρόληψις of “incorporeal” or ἀσώματον that emerges
with the common usage of this name, namely “being thinkable by itself.” The ψυχή is
conceivable, after all, through the active effects that it has on the body (e.g., the power of
sensation) and the passive effects that it receives from the body (e.g., the protection
from external blows).19 Instead, the contrary statement “the soul is corporeal” is a “full”
φθόγγος. For it respects the preconception of σῶμα, that requires that all bodies touch
and are touched by bodies.20
So the traditional interpretation, that the things underlined in each utterance are the
preconceptions, remains sound. A question remains unclear, however. Does the πρόληψις
that emerges from common usage represent the “natural” meaning of the words that we
use? Once again, sources do not give a direct answer. But a brief look at the doctrine of the
origin of language might hint at a plausible solution.
Epicurus distinguishes in Ep. Hdt. 75–76 two stages in the formation of names.21 The
first occurs at the beginning of civilization (ἐξ ἀρχῆς), when the natures of human beings
were influenced by the environment. They received proper affections and representa-
tions (ἴδια πάθη, ἴδια φαντάσματα) from external things that in turn were expressed by
their properly emitting air (ἰδίως τὸν ἀέρα ἐκπέμπειν). Such utterances are already
ὀνόματα of objects,22 although they are not as clear and synthetic as those developed in
the successive (ὕστερον) period. Here, indeed, human beings established proper expres-
sions (τὰ ἴδια) to commonly (κοινῶς) refer to these same objects, which also were less
ambiguous and prolix than the previous φθόγγοι.23 The insistence on ἴδιος and its cog-
nate adverb ἰδίως shows that all languages (Greek, Scythian, etc.) are “private” idioms.
Each has different means to refer to different things.24 However, in the second stage,
when the natural responses are codified in conventional expressions, the private dimen-
sion is abandoned, at least by the individuals of the same nation. Private expressions are
replaced by expressions that allow one to communicate.
18 Cf. Everson, “Epicurus on Mind and Language,” 103–106.

19 Cf. Ep. Hdt. 64–68; Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 148–51; Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a
Erodoto, 190–92.
20 Cf. Philod. De sign. col. 34.5–9 (ed. de Lacy and de Lacy, Philodemus. On Methods of Inference);
and Lucr. DRN 1.304, 5.152.
21 Some scholars actually think there are three stages: a natural phase and two conventionalist
moments, one of which determines the origin of names of normal objects and the other the birth of
names of more complex entities. On this debate, cf. Verde, Epicuro, 141–46.
22 Everson, “Epicurus on Mind and Language,” 92–98; Verlinsky, “Epicurus and His Predecessors on
the Origin of Language,” 65–71; Konstan, Lucrezio e la psicologia epicurea, 126–27; Reinhardt,“Epicurus
and Lucretius on the Origins of Language,” 130; Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, 142–44.
23 All this is demonstrated by Verlinsky, “Epicurus and His Predecessors on the Origin of Language,”
71–83.
24 On the topic, cf. especially Pigeaud,“Épicure et Lucrèce et l’origine du langage.”
Now, when does the formation of preconceptions occur? Since the causes of
a ffections and representations that occurred in the first stage probably correspond to
the repeated reception of simulacra emitted by external objects, it is not implausible to
suppose this was the starting point of the formation of προλήψεις in human memory. At
the same time, however, these first utterances were ambiguous and prolix. They did not
yet have the clearness or ἐνάργεια that DL 10.33 attributes explicitly to preconceptions.
So I think that it is necessary to suppose that successive conventions and the teaching of
experts (Ep. Hdt. 76) ended the process of the formation of preconceptions. It is here
that the act of ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας, which (as we have seen above) “completes” the
πρόληψις, might occur.
If this is true, it could be said that the dialectical process between nature and conven-
tion responsible for the formation of language25 could be extended to the formation of
preconceptions. These might not therefore just be the natural meanings of terms.
Preconceptions might be culturally refined natural notions that one fully grasps by
speaking in the most proper way. This hypothesis agrees with Arrighetti’s interpretation
of the λέξεις κύριαι that Epicurus used to employ—and that Aristophanes the
Grammarian considered too personal (ἰδιωτάτη)26—as the philosophical terminology
that expresses in the best way a πρόληψις of a given thing.
Thus far, Epicurus’s writings have indicated that his analysis of language had a meth-
odological function. Studying our utterances or φθόγγοι is needed in order to recognize
the preconceptions that allow us to make sound inquiries about nature. Even if Epicurus
does not state this explicitly, it is a study that contributes to his ethical goal. If φυσιολογία
is practiced for calming our souls (Ep. Hdt. 37, RS XI–XII), then language that allows us
to proceed in physics has in turn an instrumental ethical function: otherwise, we would
not study it. Further evidence for this hypothesis comes from the fact that he rejects other
linguistic activities that do not contribute to this goal, or even damage our well-being,
like rhetoric and literary criticism (cf. frr. 5–6, 46–56 Usener).
Epicurus’s magnum opus, Περὶ φύσεως, especially Book 28, dedicated entirely to
language and the problem of the linguistic expression of things imperceptible,27
may confirm most of what has been said until now, as well as give important details
about the application of this methodology and its ethical value. First, it shows that
Epicurus’s method aimed at confuting the practice of changing names,28 playing with
terms, or having recourse to empty utterances, which obscures the preconception of
a thing and generates confusions/turmoil in souls. Thus, for instance, in Book 21,29
25 Pigeaud, “Épicure et Lucrèce et l’origine du langage,” 128–35; Verde, Epicuro, 143.

26 DL 10.13 (= fr. 404 Slater, Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta); Arrighetti, “Epicuro, la κυρία λέξις e i
πράγματα,” 19–21. Cf. also Acosta Méndez, “Diogenes Laertius X 14,1–2.”
27 From now on, I refer, both in the principal text and in footnotes, to the edition and translation of
Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature, Book XXVIII.” For the second point, cf. Leone, “Rileggendo il XXVIII
libro Della natura di Epicuro: riflessioni e proposte.”
28 He allowed the use of this only in exceptional cases. Cf. Book 28, fr. 8, col. 5; and Long, “Aisthesis,
Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus,” 124–26.
29 Frr. 38.2–3 Arr.2 (the number of the book has been recognized by Del Mastro, “A proposito del
Περὶ φύσεως di Epicuro”).
Language 315
Epicurus argues that some opinions damage and cause us stress because they are
based only on empty names ([κενὰ]30 ὀνόμα[τα]), i.e. without mental content. In
Book 25, he attacks the determinists who contradict themselves by calling “necessity”
the power that is in us to make free decisions and of which we have a clear πρόληψις.31
In Book 28, he attacks some philosophers (possibly the Megarians) that worry us
with their linguistic paradoxes.32
Second, Epicurus’s Περὶ φύσεως explains that the method of having recourse to
common usage for making inquiries does not mean that we have to trust all linguistic
conventions. Words in themselves are ambiguous and generic because they have many
meanings. Confusions might therefore occur precisely because we do not distinguish the
one that most fits with a specific scientific inquiry.33 An example is Epicurus’s method-
ological observation on the λεπτότης of the simulacra, which must not be confounded
with the homonym “fineness” of other objects (such as that of mosquitoes or bees).34
Third, and finally, we find the important claim in Book 28 that “all human error is
exclusively of the form that arises in relation to preconceptions and appearances because
of the manifold conventions of language.”35 This allows us to deduce that to determine
whether a verbal utterance like an argument or an opinion is true or false means to check
whether its contents respect phenomena and the πρόληψις of a thing together.36 This
point is explicitly made in fr. 13 col. 12 sup. (ll. 12–16), where it is stated that one avoids
falling into falsehood by using an evident canon, which may be another way of referring
to preconceptions (cf. DL 10. 31). Earlier in the same book,37 moreover, Epicurus recog-
nizes that a clear study of language confutes two kinds of error. On the one hand, we have
the mistakes concerning opinions and discourses about practice, which fade away when
an empirical test shows that a specific action does not produce the ethical advantage that
one was searching for, or that it brings something disadvantageous. An example that
may be adduced here is from the preconception of justice (RS XXXVII–XXXVIII).
When the decrees of laws (νομισθέντα) do not prescribe something that is advantageous
for bringing citizens to a peaceful association, they contradict what one expects from
30 I follow the conjecture of Leone, “La chiusa del XIV libro Della natura di Epicuro,” 58, n. 78.
31 Cf. fr. 34.20 Arr.2, now edited by Laursen, “The Later Parts of Epicurus, On Nature, 25th Book,”
16–17.
32 Fr. 13, coll. 5 and 9.11. On the opponents of Epicurus, cf. Leone, “La chiusa del XIV libro Della
natura di Epicuro,” 67–76.
33 Cf. De nat. Book 14, col. 43 (ed. Leone, “Epicuro, Della natura, libro XIV”) with Leone, “La chiusa
del XIV libro Della natura di Epicuro,”57–66 and “Questioni di terminologia filosofica,” 250–52.
34 Cf. Book 2, coll. 118–19 (ed. Leone, Epicuro: Sulla natura. Libro II, 677–84), with Atherton,
“Epicurean Philosophy of Language,” 212–13. Another example is Epicurus’s letter published in P.Oxy.
LXXVII 5077, fr. 2, col. 2 (ed. Angeli, “Lettere di Epicuro dall’Egitto (POxy. LXXVI 5077)”), where the
philosopher invites us to recognize the different meaning that the term σχῆμα shows when it is applied
to Socrates (= his physical form), or to justice (= its structure).
35 Fr. 12, col. 3.6–9. Cf. here Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature, Book XXVIII,”22–23.
36 I agree with the point made by Glidden, “Prolepsis in Peri physeos XXVIII fr. 12 III 3–14,” not with
his conclusions.
37 I recur to fr. 13 (coll. 6.8 inf.–7.5 sup.; coll. 7.5 inf.–9.11 sup.) and to Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature,
Book XXVIII,” 23–33 and 65–68.
the πρόληψις of δίκαιος (= the advantage for social life), hence they must be regarded as
empty φθόγγοι that contradict the canon of preconception.38 On the other hand, the
second kind of error confuted by the study of language is identified with theoretical
opinions, which disappear either by noticing that theoretical absurdities derive from
them, or once again, that they produce ethical disadvantages. In the former case, one
may presumably think of the aforementioned belief about the soul’s incorporeal nature,
which leads to the absurd idea that the ψυχή (like void) influences not the body nor is
influenced by body, while in the latter case one may adduce an utterance like “gods are
interested in us,” because it leads to vain turmoil (Ep. Hdt. 77, 81).39 What is clear in this
treatment of the two kinds of error is that it confirms once more the instrumental and
ethical value of the Epicurean analysis of language. These mistakes are not simply
harmful for knowledge; they must be dissolved for achieving our ultimate goal of pleasure.
Orthodoxy and Innovations from

Metrodorus to Polystratus
Epicurus’s analysis of language represents a doctrine that none of his followers was
allowed to dismiss. Indeed, textual evidence shows how it remained unquestioned in the
first and second generations of the Epicurean school.
A first confirmation comes from Metrodorus. Sedley had already noticed that Book
28 of the Περὶ φύσεως also contains Epicurus’s report of the linguistic views of this
Epicurean. Epicurus himself had shared the opinions of Metrodorus in the past, but
now expounds them to a large audience of pupils (fr. 13, coll. 12.11 inf.–13.13 sup.),
while noticing their limits and defects, especially the dangerous assumption of some
conventionalist claims about the nature of language.40 Tepedino Guerra has advanced
some revisions to Sedley’s reconstruction. Metrodorus probably wrote a treatise that
focused on the problem of naming things which are invisible.41 Moreover, he never
held a conventionalist conception of language; he simply raised some problems of
consistency/method that required a solution, which suggests that Epicurus and
Metrodorus did not enter into a polemic. As Tepedino Guerra argues, Book 28 represents
actually “il punto di partenza per proporre ai presenti quanto è maturato attraverso
riflessioni e dubbi, autocritiche e anche cambiamenti dovuti probabilmente alla spinta
degli avversari.”42
38 Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Épicure et le droit, 208–37.

39 For tests of beliefs in general, cf. Striker, “Kριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας,” 42–51.
40 Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature, Book XXVIII,” 21–23.
41 Tepedino Guerra, “Il contributo di Metrodoro di Lampsaco alla formazione della teoria epicurea
del linguaggio,” 24–25 supposes that it could have been his lost Πρὸς τοὺς Διαλεκτικοὺς (fr. 4). This and
successive fragments are collected in Körte, Metrodori Epicurei Fragmenta.
42 Tepedino Guerra, “Il contributo di Metrodoro di Lampsaco alla formazione della teoria epicurea
del linguaggio,” 17.
Language 317
But what were Metrodorus’s personal contributions? Fragments of Book 28 enable us

to distinguish those that Epicurus approved of in the past from those that he came to
view to be false or problematic. The master praises Metrodorus for his attempts to create
a philosophical vocabulary that at the same time respects common usage and corrects
the ambiguity of words, thus confuting also those who attributed to the latter some
absurd senses (fr. 4, coll. 4.3 inf.–5.13 sup.; fr. 11, col. 11). However, Epicurus recognizes
that, in his choice of some of his terms (fr. 13 col. 2.3 inf.–3.13 sup.), Metrodorus did not
provide confirmatory evidence from phenomena and did not notice some counter
evidence to his selection (fr. 11, col. 11), so that he fell into the same ambiguities and
absurdities that he struggled to avoid.
This summary is enough to suppose that Metrodorus did not introduce major
innovations into Epicurus’s analysis of language. He may have tried to reinforce the
method of establishing some λέξεις κύριαι that let preconceptions of words emerge.
Confirmation derives from those texts that show how Metrodorus investigated com-
mon language: (1) in his attempt to recognize the true meaning of poverty, i.e. as the lack
of many things, and to attack Aristotle’s lost work On Wealth, which in his opinion did
violence to the πρόληψις underlined in the term “moneymaker”;43 (2) his attempt to
classify the kinds of fearsome passions that many group under the single ambiguous
word of “fear”;44 (3) his investigation conducted together with Epicurus and Hermarchus
of the true meaning of “wrath,” necessary for inquiring if and to what extent the wise
man will ever feel enraged.45
Much the same procedure will come to be shared by the Epicureans Colotes and
Polystratus. The former searched for the exact meaning of the utterance “good poet”
with the aim of confuting the pedagogical perspective of Plato’s Lysis, which attached to
the expression a false pedagogical and erotic meaning.46 The latter urges us to recognize
the true ethical content that emerges from the opinions held by human beings in
general,47 i.e. from their linguistic common usages.
Hermarchus, however, might be interpreted as an Epicurean who presented original
philosophical innovations. Proof comes here from two texts. The first is a fragment of
Hermarchus’s criticism of the Empedoclean metaphor, the intent of which is not clear.
Among the many interpretations that could be given,48 I tend to agree, because of
its theological context, with the supposition that the Epicurean wanted to reject
43 Frr. 13 and 16 = Philod. Oec. coll. 22.9–24.28 partim. Cf. here Tsouna, “Epicurean Attitudes to
Management and Finance,” 703–10; and Tepedino Guerra, “Metrodoro ἀγαθὸς οἰκονόμος. Rileggendo
Philod., Oec. coll. XIV 23–XV 21 (PHerc. 1424).”
44 P.Herc. 57 col. 3 (ed. Tepedino Guerra, “Un frammento di Metrodoro di Lampsaco (P.Herc. 57,
col. 3)”).
45 Fr. 64 = Philod. De ira col. 43.5–25, Epic. fr. 8 Arr.2, Hermarch. fr. 43.
46 Cf. coll. 2–5 (ed. Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos, 163–70); Alesse,“La polemica di Colote contro
il ‘socratico’ Menedemo,” 101–106.
47 Cf. coll. 24.8-29.1 and 32.14-33.21 of the treatise De contemptu (ed. Indelli, Polistrato: Sul disprezzo
irrazionale delle opinioni popolari).
48 Cf. the references in Longo Auricchio, “Osservazioni e precisazioni su Ermarco,” 11–12, who also
gives a new edition and commentary of fr. 29 (= Philod. De piet. coll. 19.542–20.554).
Empedocles’s reading of divine names as metaphors for the four elements which are
venerated because they bring life to mortals.49 If that is true, Hermarchus would be con-
tinuing a polemic of Epicurus, who had endorsed the respect of divine names and their
traditional meaning, while attacking those philosophers like Antisthenes who studied
the etymologies of these ὀνόματα with the intent of demonstrating that they prove the
existence not of many, but of a single divinity.50
The second text concerns the arguments for the attribution of voice and language to
gods, which are both necessary for preserving their blessedness and immortality, i.e. the
πρόληψις of θεός.51 Here we have comparably more interesting evidence, because it indi-
rectly reports some additions to Epicurus’s analysis of language. On the one hand,
Hermarchus argues that one of the reasons the gods must have voice is that they are
anthropomorphic living beings. They must then release utterances (ἐκκοπτόντων
ἀναφθέγματα) in ways not different from us. Given the similarity of the expression with
Epicurus’s § 75 of the Epistle to Herodotus (τὸν ἀέρα ἐκπέμπειν), it could be supposed
that Hermarchus is recognizing here that divine and human beings are identical in one
respect. Both express their private feelings by emitting the proper vocalizations. On the
other hand, Hermarchus claims that gods must speak Greek or something similar to
Greek. Indeed, all wise men have articulations of speech that are not too different (μὴ
πολὺ διαφερούσαις κατὰ τὰς ἀρθρώσεις χρῆσθαι φωναῖς). And since Epicurus already
recognized that a σοφός is just the man who speaks Greek (fr. 226 Usener = Clem. Al.
Strom. 1.15.66), then it is plain why gods—who are implicitly regarded by Hermarchus as
σοφοί—must at least have a language similar to Greek.
We could regard this last argument as a philosophical innovation that the Master
himself did not develop. Nowhere do we read that Epicurus thought that gods must
vocalize or speak. Actually, he could have held the opinion that they do not use voice
at all (Cic. ND 1.33.92). Moreover, Hermarchus’s argument offers the basis for the
following supposition. The Greek language is superior and worthy of wise men for
unspecified reasons. Now, since σοφία is a virtue only when it contributes to pleasure
(Cic. Fin. 1.13.43–14.46), we could imagine that Greek is proper to the σοφοί because
it is the most conducive διάλεκτος for knowledge that exists. Why so? Since in the
previous section we have seen that names developed in the second phase of the origin
of language clarify the reference to natural preconceptions, it could be supposed in
turn that Greek is a language that expresses these same προλήψεις less ambiguously.
Therefore, it may be more conducive to inquiries that gain the knowledge necessary
for well-being.
49 Emped. 31 A 33 and B 6 DK = LM 22 D56–57.

50 Cf. Ep. Hdt. 77, fr. 392 Usener (= Plut. Adv. Col. 1119d9–e8); Cic. ND 1.13.32; Philod. De piet.
col. 19.533–541 (= Epic. fr. 27.2 Arr.2 partim, Antisthenes, SSR V A 79, ed. Giannantoni, Socratis et
Socraticorum Reliquiae), with Verde, Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, 222; Obbink, Philodemus. On Piety,
Part I, 359–63.
51 Fr. 32 = Philod. De dis III, coll. 13.20–14.13.
Language 319
Poetry, Translation, utilitas:

Lucretius’s Perspective
If we now move to Lucretius’s De rerum natura and try to search for signs of a potential
development in the Epicurean analysis of language, we face a methodological problem.
It has been argued that the poem may be a work of a “fundamentalist” Epicurean,
namely one that faithfully expounds the contents of the books of the Περὶ φύσεως
through the medium of poetry. The analysis of language may therefore be one of the
many topics that are expounded while looking back at the founder of Epicureanism.52
Detailed comparisons between Epicurus and Lucretius have shown, however, that
their accounts show some explicit internal differences.53 Nonetheless, I will try to argue
that most Lucretian claims about language can be traced back to the original teachings
of Epicurus, with two notable exceptions. Let us begin with the points of convergence.
Probably orthodox are the many scattered passages of the poem where Lucretius tries
to establish why a thing or phenomenon received its right name from experience.
Examples of this practice include his discussion of animus and anima, which sometimes
are conjoined into a single name because they are unitary and connected (3.417–24), yet
at other times are distinguished clearly (e.g., when the animus is identified with the
mens, since that is where all rational operations occur: 3.94–97, 3.136–42); sensus (3.350–55);
amor, which the poet derives from umor (4.1049–60);54 fretum, which is the technical
name of the fulmen that is produced during autumn (6.371–78). Also orthodox is the
practice of showing the “empty” use of a word. This occurs in 3.98–135, where we find
Lucretius’s polemic against those philosophers and practitioners who identified the soul
with the “harmony” of the body.55 The poet insists here that the Greek original that he
translates with harmonia (3.100) was badly misplaced from the realm of music to phys-
ics (3.130–35) and makes an interesting hypothesis of its cause. Maybe “harmony” was
derived from an unknown object different from the soul. However, since the latter was
in the past without a name (3.134: tum res nomine egebat), it may have happened that
harmonia was given to it for filling this gap. The practice of calling the soul a “harmony”
was a linguistic habit that now must be substituted with better candidates that express its
nature, namely animus and anima.
With some caution, there is reason to believe also that this kind of explanation derives
ultimately from orthodox Epicurean teachings. The recognition of nameless things is
52 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Philosophy, 62–93.

53 Sasso, Il progresso e la morte, 31–40.
54 Cf. 4.1049–60. The derivation of amor from umor is just one of the many proofs that Lucretius
holds “a theory that relationship between substances was naturally reflected in relationship between
words,” according to Ferguson, “Epicurean Language-theory and Lucretian Practice,” 100.
55 For ancient references and bibliography, see Warren, “Psychic Disharmony: Philoponus and
Epicurus on Plato’s Phaedo”; and Piergiacomi, “Corpo divino e musicale. La negazione ‘estetica’
dell’anima tra IV e I secolo a.C.”
proved by the identification of an ἀκατονόμαστος fourth quality of the soul, composed

of fine atoms and responsible for perception/thought, that Lucretius describes in
3.237–45 and 3.273–75 and that external sources already attribute to Epicurus.56 Even
if we do not have textual confirmation, this may not have been the only thing or
phenomenon of the sort. The precedent of Aristotle—who also recognized a psychic
quality without a name—showed indeed that many objects of ordinary experience actu-
ally lack names, and not necessarily for some metaphysical mysterious reason. More
simply, common usage did not find terms for referring to these things and phenomena.57
Lucretius’s explanation may then have derived from Epicurus, who in turn may have
followed Aristotle in thinking that this fourth quality has no name, due to its lack of
existence in ordinary expression.58
More controversial is the problem of whether Lucretius’s version of the origin of lan-
guage (5.1028–90) also expresses orthodox Epicurean teachings. Indeed, there are many
details in the poet’s account that are not explicitly mentioned in the summary of the
Epistle to Herodotus, which could be either interpreted as novel additions, or as early
arguments that were contained in Epicurus’s Περὶ φύσεως.
The text may be divided in two main parts. In the first half (5.1028–40), Lucretius
presents a positive short account of the origin of language that raises the following
points absent from Epicurus’s:
(a) the natures of human beings generated the sounds of language, while need or
utility (utilitas) formed the names of things (5.1029–30);
(b) proof of this spontaneous power to communicate is its display by babies. We
observe that, well before learning to name objects, they are compelled by a need
to communicate with unarticulated sounds accompanied by gestures,59 just like
animals that already naturally attack and defend themselves, well before their
natural media (horns, teeth, etc.) are formed (5.1031–40).60
In the second half (5.1041–90), Lucretius develops a negative argument, confuting the
opinion that language was the invention of a single individual who taught names to
others (as in Plat. Crat. 388b13–390e4). Here we find four counter-arguments, all absent
from Epicurus:
56 Cf. the texts of frr. 314–15 Usener and Ep. Hdt. 63. Here Epicurus recognizes a fine element. It is
true that the philosopher does not mention it in his summary of the Ep. Hdt. But this may be a later
development of Epicurus’s psychology (cf. Verde, Monismo psicologico e dottrina dell’anima in Lucrezio
ed Epicuro).
57 Cf. Aristotle’s On Philosophy, ap. Cic. Tusc. 1.10.22, 17.41 (= frr. 994–95 Gigon, Aristoteles) and,
e.g., Aristot. APo 1.74a9–10, Mete. IV 379b14–20, Po. 1447a28–b9.
58 For another interpretation, cf. Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 139–40.
59 I completely agree here with Sasso, Il progresso e la morte, 94–95; Verlinsky, “Epicurus and His
Predecessors on the Origin of Language,” 86–90; Konstan, Lucrezio e la psicologia epicurea, 123–25;
Reinhardt, “Epicurus and Lucretius on the Origins of Language,” 134–35.
60 On the spontaneity of language learning, cf. Schrijvers, “L’origine du langage (DRN V 1019–1090).”
Language 321
(c) it is absurd to believe that only a single man and not a multitude was capable of
referring to things with sounds/names (5.1041–45). Presumably, the implicit rea-
son is that a power of signification is easily observable in simple beings, like
babies in point (b) above.
(d) the notion (notitia) of utilitas that is the first cause of the formation of names,
cf. (a), could not have been formed without the prior existence of language. This
man could not have then wished to teach it to others, because it is through the
communication with others that the concept of “language” itself is formed
(5.1046–49);
(e) it would have been impossible for a single individual to gather (cogere)61 a mul-
titude and to teach them to talk. For such a multitude would not have under-
stood the command to stand still and learn, and they would have found it painful
to hear for a long time incomprehensible sounds (5.1050–55);
(f) the ability to begin to utter sounds and to vary them requires no teaching of a
superior individual. Even animals show a similar capacity, while responding to
external environment (5.1056–98).
Now, points (b) and (f) can in my opinion be safely ascribed to Epicurus, thanks to
the parallel source of Proclus, who says that Epicurus compared the origins of the first
verbal utterances or the first attempts at communication to animal behavior,62 which
is what Lucretius reports. Arguments (c), (d), and (e) could also be traced back to
Epicurus,63 provided that one accepts the idea that they could be the products of the
reflections of the first generation of the Epicurean school. It is during this time that
reflection on the notion of a first inventor of language and other technai was introduced.
Metrodorus attacked this belief, while Hermarchus recognized that some first inventors
did exist, e.g. the lawgivers that convinced the less intelligent members of the commu-
nity to recognize the utility of justice.64 Finally, the reference to the formation of names
from utilitas, cf. (a) and (d), although not explicit in the Epistle to Herodotus, may have
been implicit for Epicurus. Such utility could correspond to the need of developing
clearer and more concise names in order to improve communication, that in turn may
61 I follow Verlinsky, “The Epicureans against the ‘First Inventors’: Lucr. V, 1041–1055;” Diog. Oen. fr.
12 Smith; Sext. Emp. Adv. math. IX, 30–33,” 309–10. Contra Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura
libri sex, 3.1493.
62 Cf. In Plat. Crat. 17 (= fr. 335 Usener): ὡς οἱ βήσσοντες καὶ πταίροντες καὶ μυκώμενοι καὶ
ὑλακτοῦντες καὶ στενάζοντες. On the historical trustworthiness of the source, cf. Campbell, Lucretius on
Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on De rerum natura 5.772–1104, 311; Mackey, “New Evidence
for the Epicurean Theory of the Origin of Language,” 82. Contra Atherton, “Lucretius on What
Language Is Not,” 121–25.
63 Cf. already Reinhardt, “Epicurus and Lucretius on the Origins of Language,” 138–39.
64 For Metrodorus, cf. his Πρὸς τοὺς Διαλεκτικοὺς published in P.Herc. 255, fr. 1 (ed. Spinelli,
“Metrodoro contro i dialettici?”), according however to the disegno of Janko, New Fragments of
Epicurus, 56–57. For Hermarchus, fr. 34 (= Porph. Abst. I 8.1–11.1) with at least Vander Waerdt,
“Hermarchus and the Epicurean Genealogy of Morals.”
have been necessary for making social contracts and other useful means for daily
necessities. If this is true, then the appearance of utilitas may coincide with the
conventionalist phase of Ep. Hdt. 76, which otherwise would be completely absent from
Lucretius’s passage.65 The belief that the notion of “language” itself could have derived
only when language was already formed agrees instead with the doctrine of πρόληψις.66
Nothing precludes, after all, that it was the repeated experience of communication that
formed this notion and stored it in memory.
Where linguistic doctrines are concerned, De rerum natura seems to present nothing
particularly different from Epicurus. If we now move to Lucretius’s method of writing,
however, we may find two reflections that Epicurus could not have developed; hence
they must spring from Lucretius’s personal convictions or goals.
The first is the problem of translating Greek into Latin. This is obviously a problem
that only an Epicurean poet who addresses a Roman audience could have posited.
Lucretius notices that new words (nova verba) are required, because the subject of his
poem is new and the current Latin vocabulary is too poor for accomplishing the task
with success (1.136–39, 3.258–61). It is this requirement that probably induces the poet to
find corresponding Latin words for some Greek expressions, or at least good paraphrases.67
Here, the search for preconception seems not to be involved. What is at stake is only the
practical task of an Epicurean who is forced to spread Greek Epicureanism in a different
historical context.
A second point that might appear to be a personal Lucretian innovation is the reflec-
tion on poetry as a form of deliberate falsehood. I am thinking here of the digression
(2.655–60) that follows the myth of the Magna Mater. Lucretius writes that a poet is
allowed to use language in the wrong way, i.e. to do violence to a word (2.656: nomine
abuti) and to its common meaning, for example by calling wine “Bacchus,” provided
that he practices this linguistic “game” with extreme caution. Many verses of De rerum
natura fortunately hint at the proper use of improper deliberate poetic falsehood, by
giving the right explanation. Calling the earth “mother” is of course per se a form of lin-
guistic violence. But since he is careful in making clear that it is just a poetic way of refer-
ring to earth’s power to give birth to/nourish things and not an explicit recognition that
this element is alive, nor a goddess (2.646–654, 2.991–998, 5.783–825), Lucretius plays
the game of poetry without falling into scientific absurdities or harmful superstitions.
One may of course doubt the cogency of this method. If it is so dangerous, would it
not be better to entirely avoid poetry? I believe that Lucretius’s procedures can be saved
by remembering that poetic diction is like the honey that helps one to drink the bitter
65 Cf. Giussani, Studi lucreziani, 280–83; and Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex,
3.1488–1490.
66 Notitia might indeed be the Latin translation of this Greek word. Cf. Sasso, Il progresso e la morte,
102–103; Costa, Lucretius: De rerum natura V, 121–22; Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution:
A Commentary on De rerum natura 5.772–1104, 294–97; Atherton, “Lucretius on What Language Is
Not,” 129–35; Verlinsky, “Epicurus and His Predecessors on the Origin of Language,” 90–98.
67 For some examples, cf., e.g., 1.449–58, 1.830–33, 2.629, 3.314–20, 4.45–53, 6.323–25, 6.701–702,
6.738–55, 6.906–909; and Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Philosophy, 50–57.
Language 323
hemlock of Epicurean philosophy.68 If Romans heard that earth alone can give birth and
nourish everything without the help of a divine living being, then they would feel scared
by Epicureanism and return to their ancestral customs. If the same message is in fact
conveyed with poetic touch, namely with references to the Magna Mater, they would
more gladly hear Epicurean teachings and, little by little, might be finally brought to
renounce the same superstitions that they previously held.
It is in this original description of poetry as deliberate falsehood that one finds
probably the only doctrinal addition of Lucretius that creates some tensions with
Epicureanism. It is true that many scholars have successfully argued that Greek Epicureans
were not totally hostile to poetry and allowed one to listen/practice it with caution.69 But
the concession of doing violence to the meaning of words would have been implicitly
avoided by them through their theory of preconceptions, or their belief that one must
not play with divine names. In this respect, therefore, the only significant philosophical
innovation of Lucretius may actually be regarded as a non-Epicurean element in his
all-Epicurean discourse.
The Method κατὰ διά́ ληψιν in

Demetrius Laco and Philodemus
Moving now to Demetrius Laco and Philodemus, we will confirm once more that their
basic beliefs follow the traditional teachings of their school. Indeed, the former recog-
nized the natural origin of names in line with Epicurus and Lucretius. And although
Demetrius never mentions the conventionalist phase, one probable reason is that the
recognition occurs in the context of a definition of what “natural” means.70 Moreover,
both Demetrius and Philodemus continue to search for preconceptions of words by
referring to common parlance, or to attack those philosophers who “play” with terms
and their supposed etymologies, thus deriving many absurd conclusions.71 However, as
with Hermarchus, their orthodoxy did not preclude them from developing the theory of
the master, or, at the very least, introducing some technical innovations.
One of these is found in Jacob Mackey’s new evidence about Philodemus’s view of the
origin of poetry in Book 5 of On Poems. The Epicurean concluded that it “came to
68 Cf. 1.935–50 with Mitsis, “Committing Philosophy on the Reader.”

69 Cf., e.g., the essays collected in Obbink, Philodemus and Poetry.
70 P.Herc. 1012, coll. 64–66. I follow here and henceforth the edition of Puglia, Demetrio Lacone.
Aporie testuali ed esegetiche in Epicuro (P.Herc. 1012).
71 For Demetrius, cf. De poem. II coll. 36–37 and 44 (ed. Romeo, Demetrio Lacone: La poesia). For
Philodemus, cf. Rhet. II, P.Herc. 1674, coll. 18.29–19.21, 32.2–15, and 42.8–43.26 with Chandler,
“References to ‘Common Parlance’ in Philodemus’ Rhetorica Book II,” and Philodemus: On Rhetoric,
Books 1 and 2, 81–103; De div.I col. 49.5–12–39 (ed. Tepedino Guerra, “Il primo libro Sulla ricchezza di
Filodemo”), De ira col. 43, Oec. coll. 4–6, 20.1–21.35, De mus. IV coll. 61.27–45,74.26–76.18, 118.36–119.10,
129.15–44 (ed. Delattre, Philodème de Gadara. Sur la musique. Livre IV).
ankind because of emulation of people employing expressions in new ways for new
m
benefits.”72 This evidence gives ample confirmation of what scholars could only conjec-
ture before this discovery, namely that poetry appears in the conventionalist stage of the
origin of language described in Epic. Ep. Hdt. 75–76.73 Philodemus seems to argue that
poets emulated people who introduced new words and by doing so benefited the com-
munity. It is probably a reference especially to the wise men who, by revising the ambi-
guities of common parlance, found the φθόγγοι underlying the preconceptions that
enable us to make the inquiries leading to well-being.74
More important, however, is another technical detail that is introduced at the time of
Demetrius and Philodemus. This is the analysis of the meaning of words with a method
of separation (κατὰ διάληψιν). This expression, moreover, only occurs in the terminol-
ogy of this generation of Epicureans. Indeed, the potential exception of Galen’s com-
mentary on Hippocrates’s On Fractures (vol. 18, p. 542 K.) is a misspelling of the original
Hippocratic phrase κατὰ διάλειψιν (De fract. 25; cf. also Galen De praen. ad Epig. vol. 14,
p. 671 K). And in any case, the text talks of a method of surgery.
Now, if we look at κατὰ διάληψιν in Demetrius and Philodemus, we may notice that
for Philodemus it expresses the method of studying something specifically (Rhet. II,
P.Herc. 1674, col. 53.25–34; II, P.Herc. 1672, col. 21.1–5). In the De ira, Philodemus also
opposes it to the practice of speaking κατὰ συμπλοκήν (col. 37.17–32). Contrary to κατὰ
διάληψιν, this expression has other Greek parallels, especially in logical contexts. Before
Philodemus, it occurs in Aristotle’s Categories (1a16–19) and in Chrysippus (SVF II 381 =
Galen. Inst. log. 4) to denote a conjunction between a subject and a predicate, such as
“Dion walks” or “Socrates sits.” In this passage of the De ira, we may then suppose that
κατὰ διάληψιν is opposed to κατὰ συμπλοκήν because the former tries to study what a
specific word indicates without referring to particular individuals, while the latter does
the contrary. Indeed, Philodemus claims here—against those who say that “wrath” indi-
cates only a bad or only a good emotion—that a proper use of our language shows that
the problem is far more complex. If we describe the passion separately (κατὰ διάληψιν)
from specific individuals, we will conclude that it is painful and damaging, hence an
evil. But if we speak of it in conjunction (κατὰ συμπλοκήν) with a person’s specific moral
disposition (διάθεσις: coll. 37.29–38.43), it could be inferred that it is a good. For some
individuals know how to liberate it in a “natural” and useful way.75 With some caution,
we may add that a description κατὰ συμπλοκήν may anticipate the sixth trope of
72 Text, edition, and translation of fr. 5, col. 1, P.Herc.403 = Mackey, “New Evidence for the Epicurean
Theory of the Origin of Language,” 76–83.
73 Obbink, “Epicurus on the Origin of Poetry in Human History,” esp. 686–95.
74 Mackey, “New Evidence for the Epicurean Theory of the Origin of Language,” 82–83 adds the
elaboration of legal and social terminology.
75 For confirmation that κατὰ συμπλοκήν means the conjunction with something specific, cf. De
sign. col. 37.4 (συμπλοκήν ἔχειν ἰδίαν), De poem., Tractatus Tertius, fr. b, col. 2.12–13 (ed. Sbordone,
“Φιλοδήμου Περὶ ποιημάτων tractatus tres”: συνπλεκομένων τῶι ἰδίωι). For the concept of διάθεσις and
the transformation of wrath into a good thing, cf. Grilli, “ΔΙΑΘΕΣΙΣ in Epicuro.”
Language 325
Hermogenes’s Περὶ στάσεων (1.5), which consists in the practice of connecting a person
with a thing or experience (τὰ κατὰ συμπλοκὴν προσώπου καὶ πράγματος).
Demetrius’s use of κατὰ διάληψιν appears only in P.Herc. 1012 (coll. 63–64), within his
reply to some unknown adversaries who tried to refute Epicurus by accusing him of
inconsistencies (col. 59). Apparently, one of the refutations concerned the Master’s lin-
guistic explanation of ἀναπνοή (= “respiration” in general), as a synonym of εἰσπνοή
(= only “inhalation”). Demetrius’s defense consists in noticing that this practice is con
sistent, if one recognizes the preconceptions of the terms employed by Epicurus and,
more important, through the κατὰ διάληψιν method, the specific senses that these terms
assume in context.76 In Greek, ἀναπνοή can mean indifferently “respiration,” or “exhala-
tion,” or “inhaling.” Epicurus is then consistent, because he is using the word specifically
in the third sense. As a further proof, Demetrius quotes briefly from Empedocles’s
description of respiration (col. 65),77 where ἀναπνέω (here meaning “to exhale”) is used
consistently as a synonym of ἐκπνέω (just “to exhale”). These columns show then that
the κατὰ διάληψιν method consists in separating from the many senses that a word
could have the specific one that best fits the context.
Three problems are raised by this analysis. The first is to decide whether the κατὰ
διάληψιν method and its opposition to a κατὰ συμπλοκήν description can be traced back
to Epicurus, or if it is an invention of Philodemus and Demetrius. I believe that the solu-
tion is in the middle. Philodemus and Demetrius—but especially the latter, who proba-
bly revived the practice of dialectic division that was rejected by the first generation of
the school78—expressed more technically what was already contained in nuce in
Epicurus, who after all sanctioned the awareness of difference (διάληψις) in one’s vocab-
ulary (De nat. 28, fr. 13, col. 7.5–10 inf.).
The second problem concerns the relationship of the specific senses of words with
their preconception. Are the former contained in the latter, or are they different? Enzo
Puglia supposes that the preconception is the “accezione primaria e fondamentale di un
vocabolo,” while its specific sense grasped with the κατὰ διάληψιν method is “una delle
sue accezioni secondarie.”79 I believe that he is right and that his hypothesis could be fur-
ther confirmed by Philodemus’s On Poems Book 5.80 Here, a preconception is considered
as a genus or common element of all the particular things to which the word “poetry”
could refer. If we apply this discourse to Demetrius, we could suppose that “respiration” is
the preconception or generic meaning of ἀναπνοή, while “inhalation” and “exhalation”
correspond to the specific senses that it assumes depending on the context.
The third problem is whether Philodemus’s and Demetrius’s versions of the κατὰ
διάληψιν method agree with each other. At first sight, it seems not. Philodemus employs
κατὰ διάληψιν for describing the grasp of the meaning of a word without referring to a
76 Puglia, Demetrio Lacone,91–93 and 290–91. 77 Emped. 31 B 100.1–2 DK = LM 22 D 201a–b.

78 Cic. Fin. 2.6.18 (= fr. 69 Usener); S.E. M. 10.219–27; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 1.101.
79 Puglia, Demetrio Lacone, 293.
80 Cf. col. 30.25–33, ed. Mangoni, Filodemo, with the commentary ad loc.
particular subject, while Demetrius resorts to it for abstracting the precise sense of a
term. The former abstracts then a more generic sense, the latter a more specific one.
However, this apparent contradiction can be solved by supposing that the κατὰ διάληψιν
method can work in both directions. It could equally abstract from the genus to its spe-
cies, or move up from the species to their genus. Philodemus and Demetrius do not then
contradict each other: they complete each other’s perspective.
Diogenes of Oenoanda and

Diogenianus on Language
Finally, two brief comments can be made about the use of Epicurus’s analysis of
language in two final Epicureans, Diogenes of Oenoanda and Diogenianus.
The former covers the topic in three fragments (frr. 12, 23, NF 192).81 Frr. 23 and NF
192 are not especially interesting. Respectively, they just attack the ambiguous utterances
of oracular sayings and argue that disagreement about the idea that pleasure is the
good—including the one between Cyrenaics, Stoics, and Epicureans—depends on the
fact that often the name “pleasure” is used in the wrong way by the non-Epicurean par-
ties, namely without attaching to it the meaning given by its πρόληψις.82 Fr. 12 contains,
however, two little points of importance. On the one hand, it confirms directly the
hypothesis sustained earlier that φθόγγοι include names and phrases.83 On the other
hand, it presents a polemic against the so-called first inventors of language that differs
from Lucretius’s version (cf. §12.3) in the following respect. Diogenes extends the
Epicurean attack to the idea that language is the product of a god, probably using as an
objection the recovery of Epicurus’s argument that learning an art or capacity requires
both a need and time (cf. coll. 2.6–11 and 3.4–8 with Ep. Hdt. 75). Secondly, he presents in
much more detail Lucretius’s argument that a man could not have gathered others to
teach them to talk if they did not already possess the power of understanding speech
and an ability to speak (5.1050–55). Diogenes adds that its impossibility rests on the fact
that at that time there were no kings84 who could gather the subjects with a public
decree, nor was there writing. The existence of either presupposes, after all, the existence
of language (coll. 3.9–5.14). Once again, this more detailed version could be traced back
to the time of Epicurus, especially because the criticism of the gods as name-givers was
81 “NF” is an abbreviation for the new fragments edited by Hammerstaedt and Smith, The Epicurean
Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda.
82 I accept the interpretation of NF 192 given by Taylor, “Diogenes of Oinoanda on the Meaning of
‘Pleasure’ (NF 192).” For the polemic of Diogenes against Stoicism and Cyrenaics, cf. now Masi, “Virtue,
Pleasure, and Cause”; and Tsouna, “Diogenes of Oinoanda and the Cyrenaics.”
83 Cf. col. 2.11–14: τῶν φθόνγων . . . λέγω δὲ τῶν τε ὀνομάτων καὶ τῶν ῥημάτων.
84 Actually the word β̣α̣σ̣ιλέ̣ες is an uncertain reading. For its defense, cf. Chilton, “The Epicurean
Theory of the Origin of Language. A Study of Diogenes of Oenoanda, Fragments X and XI (W),”
164–65.
Language 327
already moved by Plato’s Cratylus (425d3–9); that writing teaches a large audience at
once could have been made explicit by Diogenes, however, because he attributed this
same function to his inscriptions (frr. 2–3).
As regards Diogenianus, nothing of importance can be added to the still fundamental
article of Hammerstaedt. He demonstrated how Epicurus’s method of recognizing
preconceptions underlying the utterances we make is still active in this Epicurean.85
The only thing that is worth mentioning is the anti-Stoic application of this idea in fr. 2
(SVF II 914 = Euseb. PE VI 8.8–23), that appears to be a novel feature.86 Diogenianus
asks Chrysippus, who concludes that some commonly used names demonstrate a belief
in an almighty destiny, if his position is really consistent with itself and with other Stoic
claims. Indeed, if those ὀνόματα were established by the irrational mass of humankind,
then he must renounce his idea that they express something true, since only the wise
man knows truth (SVF III 548–50); or he must admit that knowledge could be possessed
by non-wise men. If, however, such names were established by σοφοί, Chrysippus still
needs demonstration. One could object that those ὀνόματα prove not the dominion of
destiny, but of the natural law that everything happens for a cause.
Conclusions
It is possible to draw two general conclusions about the Epicurean theory of language,
one philosophical, the other historical. It seems safe to infer that almost all Epicureans
always respected the core of Epicurus’s philosophy. None ever denied that language is
the dialectical outcome of the natural influence of the environment and a conventional-
ist phase, even though later Epicureans concentrated more on the former; nor did they
deny that one must try to recognize the evident preconceptions or common meaning
underlined in words. The only exception consists in Lucretius’s admission of breaking
some linguistic customs or the true meanings of names (especially the divine ones)
while writing poetry. Even this divergence, however, may be interpreted as the compromise
of an Epicurean poet with a philosophy generally hostile to poetic diction, rather than a
divorce from Epicureanism itself.
From the historical point of view, it is clear that Epicureans did not simply repeat what
Epicurus had taught them. They actually tried to refine his teachings and to defend them
from the objections of their adversaries. This appears especially true for Hermarchus,
Philodemus, and Demetrius, who introduced technical innovations that do not contra-
dict but strengthen Epicurus’s teachings. In this sense, the famous claims of Seneca and
Numenius of Apamea that the Epicureans refer everything they say to the beliefs of their
85 Cf. fr. 4 (= Euseb. PE VI 3.6) and Hammerstaedt, “Das Kriterium der Prolepsis beim Epikureer
Diogenian.” Diogenianus’s fragments are collected by Gercke, “Chrysippea.”
86 The polemic against Stoicism was begun only after Epicurus. Cf. Kechagia, “Rethinking a
Professional Rivalry.”
Master87 is partly true, but also partly false. Its truth lies in the fact that even the most
innovative additions are fitted to Epicurus’s ancient perspective; its falsity lies, perhaps, in
the clear recognition that an innovation is the product of original and personal thinking.
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chapter 13
R hetor ic
Clive Chandler
In 155 bce a delegation of philosophers arrived from Athens to address an appeal to the
Roman senate against an arbitration delivered by the city of Sicyon. The delegation
included representatives from the Academy, Peripatos, and Stoa.1 No one from the
Epicurean School had been co-opted. We have no way of knowing whether the
Epicurean scholarch of the day had been invited and declined, but the omission is not
surprising given the reputation and practice of the Epicurean School with respect to
engagement in civic affairs. Epicurus had famously instructed his followers to “live
unnoticed” (λάθε βιώσας), that is to refrain from all non-essential participation in the
various institutions and offices which were part of civic life in Greek cities, particularly
Athens.2 Even before the time of Epicurus, and for centuries after him, any such partici-
pation required years of training in the art of public speaking, rhetoric. If Epicureans
failed to see the importance of engagement in civic affairs, it is hardly likely that they
would have allocated priority to expertise in the very medium of that engagement.
The practice of avoiding civic distinction provides a sound reason for Epicureans to
avoid rhetoric, but when the Founders of the school sought to articulate their rejection of
rhetoric they did not have to come up with arguments which were entirely new and origi-
nal since they operated within a tradition, or at least a collection of conceptual habits,
established already by previous philosophers. In response to the increased professional-
ism and systematizing of expertise in rhetoric, and the claims made by its teachers and
1 The event and its social and cultural consequences are recoverable from a number of sources,
including Plut. Cat. mai. 22 and Cic. De or. 2.155.
2 In his monograph on the broader significance of this doctrine within the Epicurean school and
beyond, Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 33 reminds us that the maxim does not actually appear in the extant
works of Epicurus. In the first book of On Life-styles Epicurus said that the wise man will not
participate in affairs of the city (οὐδὲ πολιτεύσεσθαι, DL 10.119). The Epicurean Philodemus notes that
Romans and Spartans did not need rhetoric to make treaties (On Rhetoric 21 P.Herc. 1674 fr. 5.5–10
Longo Auricchio, Ricerche).
334 CLIVE CHANDLER
practitioners, philosophers in the decades before Epicurus had felt obliged to engage with
the question of rhetoric’s status as an art or science, its objectives, and its utility for life.
The most significant and influential voices in this tradition were those of Plato and
Aristotle, neither of whom advocated withdrawal from civic engagement. Plato conspic-
uously focused on the issue of rhetoric and its difference from philosophy in the Gorgias
and Phaedrus. In the Gorgias Socrates shows that rhetoric is not an effective science of
political activity since it is at best a kind of knack for catering to the views of its audience.
The rhetor fails to achieve his objective, if the objective is persuasion and to influence
decisions and policy, since he is constrained by the opinions and desires of his audience,
and can only reaffirm those opinions and desires, not change them or replace them with
his own. While the Phaedrus acknowledges that rhetoric can have some sort of effect on
an audience, the value and nature of that effect is called into question. Rhetoric in itself
cannot provide the kind of knowledge which is required for a reliable appreciation
of what needs to be said on a particular subject. Only a method which is philosophical
(here entailing a process of collection and division) offers the discursive procedure
which can serve to clarify a subject, and can thereby be truly persuasive. In the
Phaedrus Socrates leaves open the possibility of a reformed procedure for delivering
speeches, which one may wish to continue to label rhetorikē. Aristotle, on the other hand,
explicitly acknowledges rhetoric’s legitimacy by labeling it the “counterpart to dialectic”
(ἡ ῥητορική ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῇ διαλεκτικῇ, Rh. 1.1.1354a1) at the beginning of his three-
book treatment of the art.3 It emerges that, for Aristotle, rhetoric is to be classified as an
art, that its objective is persuasion, and that it is useful for life. The options presented by
these two thinkers to subsequent philosophers are therefore either a dismissal of rheto-
ric’s status altogether, or an engagement with the discipline which leads to an accommo-
dation of its claims, even if those claims are effectively adjusted or reformed.
As will become clear from a consideration of the ancient evidence for Epicurus’s atti-
tude towards rhetoric, Epicureans would seem to have more in common with Plato than
Aristotle, but since Plato is not opposed to civic participation as such but believes the
philosopher is better equipped than the rhetor to provide leadership in this activity,
there remains a significant distinction.
The Received Ancient Opinion on

Epicurus’s Attitude to Rhetoric
With the exception of one source (Philodemus) the reports on early Epicurean views on
rhetoric are sparse but reasonably consistent. The Epicureans are represented as
uncommitted to the value of the disciplines which constitute paideia, that is traditional
3 See Grimaldi’s clarification of the meaning of antistrophos in this context (“analogue,”

“correlative”): Aristotle Rhetoric I, 1–2.
Rhetoric 335
e ducation and culture (including poetry, music, rhetoric), and question the kinds of life-
styles and civic contexts in which expertise in these disciplines can be successfully
applied.4 Diogenes Laertius (10.6) preserves a piece of advice which Epicurus gave to
Pythocles in a letter which is now lost, “launch your boat, blessed man, and keep avoid-
ing education” (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος). The allusion to
the seductive and destructive song of the Sirens from Homer’s Odyssey is unmistakable:5
traditional education has the potential to lead the Epicurean follower astray from his
ultimate destination, the safe haven of philosophy.6
Epicurean hostility to paideia in general was so famous in antiquity that in a review of
philosophical evaluations of rhetoric as an art Quintilian could dismiss Epicurean criti-
cism of rhetoric as simply part of an unspecific avoidance of all learned disciplines (Inst.
2.17.15). Again, in addressing the question of which sect of philosophy can offer most aid to
the budding orator, Quintilian remarks that it is Epicurus who has sent the orators away
from his door (Inst. 12.2.24). While rhetoricians habitually accorded their art a pivotal role
in the development and maintenance of organized society and civilization, Lucretius did
not even include it in his catalog of arts and crafts in DRN 5.7 This picture is confirmed by
another anti-Epicurean source, Plutarch, who declares, “they [i.e. Epicureans] write about
the formation of the city (περὶ πολιτείας), when they do write about it, in order that we do
not take part in the affairs of the city, and about rhetoric in order that we do not make
speeches in public (περὶ ῥητορικῆς ἵνα μὴ ῥητορεύωμεν)” (Adv. Col. 1127a–b). Diogenes
Laertius, who is sympathetic to Epicureanism, informs us that Epicurus composed a trea-
tise On Rhetoric, but offers nothing about the content of this work except that it insisted on
clarity (saphēneia) in speech: “he was so clear that even in his On Rhetoric he claims that he
requires nothing other than clarity” (10.13). Several other statements pertaining to rhetoric
are dispersed in the summary collection of injunctions and expectations for the wise man
assembled by Diogenes. Thus we read, “he will not give fine speeches” (οὐδὲ ῥητορεύσειν
καλῶς, 10.117), “he will plead his case in court; he will leave behind writings; but he will not
deliver speeches at public festivals” (καὶ δικάσεσθαι· καὶ συγγράμματα καταλείψειν· οὐ
πανηγυριεῖν δέ, 10.120), “he will give readings in a crowd, but not voluntarily” (καὶ
ἀναγνώσεσθαι ἐν πλήθει, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἑκόντα, 10.121b). We can only speculate as to the source
of these statements, but they constitute a consistent stance in accordance with Epicurean
principles. The wise man may not be able to avoid going to court and so may have to speak
in that environment, but he is not obliged to give a fine or rhetorically elaborated speech.
Already within this injunction we may detect the view that a rhetorically fine speech is not
4 The opening of S.E. M. 1.1–4 can be taken as representative. See Blank’s introductory remarks
which serve to contextualize the Epicurean position and his commentary on these passages: Blank,
Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians, xxvii–xxxii and 69–80.
5 Plutarch caught the allusion (Quomodo adul. 15d). Ironically DL uses the same allusion when he
speaks of the beneficial effect of Epicurus’s doctrines (10.9).
6 Blank, “Philosophia and techne,” 218–19 uses Philodemus On Household Management (De oec.)
col. 37.2–40 to illustrate a view in Epicureanism that the competent amateur can perform many useful
activities successfully while avoiding the immersion which would become too distracting and harmful.
7 All the more insulting since he acknowledges poetry, writing, and painting in lines 1444–51. One
might compare the claims of Crassus in Cic. De or. 1.8.33.
336 CLIVE CHANDLER
the surest means of securing success in a forensic context. So too, taking a leading role in a
public festival is a matter of choice, and one the wise man should not make. There is a clear
avoidance of public performance before large audiences,8 with some compromise in the
case of public readings (presumably of the kind of works which will benefit the audience).
Crowds increase the risk of stressful interaction, and the arts which focus on activities
associated with crowds are not required by the Epicurean. The conception of art attributed
to the Epicureans by a scholiast on Dionysius Thrax, “art (technē) is a method which
achieves that which is advantageous to life” (227b Usener), is not remarkable for its origi-
nality and resembles one by the Stoic Zeno.9 As a definition it even leaves room for a view
that rhetoric can achieve its stated aims (persuasion of crowds, say) but it insists on the cri-
terion of advantage. Yet the understanding of what is advantageous will depend on what
one prioritizes in life.
Epicurus may have been motivated to belittle rhetoric because potential followers
would have regarded teachers of rhetoric as a viable alternative for acquiring “life-skills.”
Epicurus, in a sense, was in competition not only with other rival philosophers but also
with the teachers of oratorical technique.10 While these declarations reveal that rhetoric
was a neglected, or hardly valued, discipline within the School, it was an inevitable fact
that nearly every person in antiquity who decided to follow Epicurean philosophy
already had some training in rhetoric, because they would have received the same sort
of standard education as every other member of the social elites of the Greco-Roman
world.11 The Epicurean School recruited its members from adults, not children, and
there is no evidence that membership was sustained by rearing the children of existing
members within an alternative educational system. So we can assume that rhetoric was a
kind of knowledge that every Epicurean already possessed before becoming a member,
and that although an Epicurean might consciously choose not to activate certain ele-
ments of that education or deploy them in the pursuit of certain objectives, it would be
impossible, and not necessarily desirable either, for him to eradicate this education
entirely. The superficial Epicurean rejection of rhetoric as a preoccupation does not
therefore inevitably entail the absence of rhetorical form from all Epicurean discourse,
or the eradication of such knowledge.12
8 Even the establishment of a school should not result in the drawing of crowds (σχολὴν
κατασκευάσειν, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὥστ’ ὀχλαγωγῆσαι, 10.121b).
9 Preserved by Olympiodorus in his commentary on Plato’s Gorgias 12.1.69, echoed in S.E. M. 2.10.
10 Or possibly in competition with individuals who claimed expertise in both, such as Nausiphanes
of Teos, Epicurus’s former teacher, as reported by S.E. M. 1.2; his colleague and successor, Hermarchus,
whose father, we are told, was poor was initially a student of rhetoric (DL 10.24).
11 A notable exception may have been the Apelles addressed by Epicurus as “untainted by any
education at all” (καθαρὸς πάσης παιδείας) in another lost letter, a fragment of which is preserved by
Plutarch and Athenaeus (= Usener 117). Modern views that Epicurus aimed to make his doctrines
accessible to the “average person”—Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, 233–34; Pesce, Saggio su
Epicuro, 22—need to be qualified, even if the tradition reports (DL 10.3 and 10) that the slave Mys was
admitted into Epicurus’s circle.
12 Marković, The Rhetoric of Explanation, 19–29 argues that Epicurean didactic procedure adopts
and improves upon certain formal characteristics in the standard educational practices of the elite in
the second and first centuries bce.
Rhetoric 337
The Evidence of Philodemus on

Earlier Epicurean Attitudes to
Rhetoric
We possess substantial portions of a long work On Rhetoric (Rhet.) by Philodemus, an

Epicurean philosopher who resided in Italy in the first century bce.13 Although the text
of this work is fragmentary and editorial efforts are still in progress, it provides valuable
evidence that the Epicurean stance towards rhetoric was not as simple as might be sup-
posed from other testimonies, and even that the position on rhetoric was a matter of
some debate within the School, at least in later periods.14 The first three books are
devoted to establishing the correct understanding of rhetoric’s status and the limits of its
applicability in conformity with the direction provided by Epicurus and the Founders of
the School. At the same time, it is important to be aware that Philodemus’s own citations
from Epicurus and the early Epicureans serve to substantiate his own position in an
argument with other Epicurean communities on the view of the Founders on the status
of epideictic rhetoric. Philodemus, following the scholarch Zeno of Sidon,15 believes
that Epicurus and the Founders distinguished epideictic rhetoric (or “sophistic,” as
Philodemus prefers to label it) from the other kinds of rhetoric practiced in law courts
and assemblies (forensic and deliberative). According to Philodemus, Epicurus declared
that epideictic was an art, while forensic and deliberative rhetoric were not arts, but
activities based on practice and experience.16 Since we only have the voice of one side in
this debate (Philodemus’s), and we do not have access to the entire corpus of Epicurean
13 About sixty of the numbered papyrus items in the Herculaneum library, the most for any work:
Dorandi, “Per una ricomposizione,” 59–64. Its original length is still not known for certain, though
evidence is accumulating that it extended to twenty books: Ranocchia, “Philodemus’ On Rhetoric was
in 20 Books,”.
14 Sudhaus, Philodemi Volumina Rhetorica I issued an edition of the papyri which he considered to
belong to the work at the time. The only attempt at an English translation of Sudhaus’s text is Hubbell,
“The Rhetorica of Philodemus,” but since this is based on a text published before the advances in
editorial technique which were developed subsequently, and especially in the past forty years, it is not
only often inaccurate but even misleading. More recent translations in various modern languages have
been made of freshly edited portions of the text; a very significant development recently is Nicolardi,
Filodemo, il primo libro della retorica. David Blank is preparing a new edition of Books 1 and 2, Robert
Gaines of Book 4. A very convenient overview of the contents of the work is offered by Di Matteo, “La
retorica da Epicuro a Filodemo.”
15 Philodemus insists that Zeno did not write formally on the subject (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 col.
53.12–14 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche), but we assume he lectured on it; Blank, “La philologie comme
arme philosophique,” 248–49 has argued that Zeno may have incorporated a reformed version of
rhetoric into the curriculum. Philodemus’s citations from Epicurus and the Founders are assembled
and analyzed by Longo Auricchio, “Testimonianze dalla retorica di Filodemo.”
16 Detailed discussion of this issue in the surviving sections of Books 1 and 2 can be found in Blank,
“Philodemus and the Technicity of Rhetoric” and “La philologie comme arme philosophique”; and
Chandler, Philodemus on Rhetoric Books 1 and 2, 59–103.
338 CLIVE CHANDLER
writing to verify Philodemus’s arguments, we should entertain the possibility that he has
been selective in his citations and biased in his interpretations. It would certainly be
risky to assume that Philodemus presents us with Epicurus’s most significant pro-
nouncements on the subject of rhetoric.
Be that as it may, Philodemus does provide the only evidence that comes unequivo-
cally from a professional Epicurean philosopher in his own voice. Philodemus’s study
conforms in many respects to the standard discussions of rhetoric as a discipline, as can
be seen from a comparison with treatments by Cicero and Quintilian. The same issues
are addressed, the same topics are covered.17 Is rhetoric an art? What are rhetoric’s
objectives? Can those objectives be achieved through some other means? What are the
contexts or divisions of rhetoric? What are the virtues of style?
Philodemus has a problem, in that the term “rhetoric” was habitually used to cover
expertise in a variety of applications. Although earlier philosophers and rhetoricians
had long recognized different branches of rhetoric determined by the context of their
performance (deliberative, forensic, and epideictic being common broad divisions) the
general assumption was that the branches could still be unified under a single over-
arching science. Philodemus’s strategy is to invoke a form of analysis which makes
uncompromising demands on what can be meaningfully classified as art (τέχνη), but
claims to be basing his classification on Greek language usage (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 col.
38.2–15 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche):
Well then, among the Greeks art is conceived and spoken of as a faculty or disposi-
tion derived from observation of certain common and basic elements which per-
vade the majority of cases, a faculty which both apprehends and achieves the kind
of thing which no one of those who have not learned it (can do) in a similar way,
whether firmly and securely or by conjecture . . .18
and in this analysis deliberative and forensic rhetoric are found wanting while “sophis-
tic” rhetoric, it is argued, satisfies the criteria. As Philodemus says (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674
col. 43.14–22 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche):
17 Barnes, “Is Rhetoric an Art?” provides a good overview of the tradition in which Philodemus is
writing, elaborated upon by Roochnik, “Is Rhetoric an Art?,” who emphasizes the foundational roles of
Plato and Isocrates on these questions and why they mattered.
18 I have followed Blank’s editorial decisions here (“Atomist rhetoric,” 71), though Gaines, “Cicero,
Philodemus, and the Development,” 209 n. 26 makes a case for a slightly different restoration in lines
14–15 (ἤ]|τε instead of Blank’s [εἴ]|τε), and follows Longo Auricchio in maintaining μαθόντων ἔ[νιοι],
“some of those who have learned,” against Blank’s μαθόντων <οὐδείς>, εἴ[θ’] in line 13, but little hangs
on this distinction. Philodemus would seem to be following a procedure which establishes concepts
linked to ordinary language (cf. Ep. Hdt. 37–38, and perhaps Epic. On Nature 28 P.Herc. 1479 fr. 13 cols.
4 inf., 1–5 sup., 12 Sedley, “Epicurus, On Nature book XXVIII,” 48); see Fine, “Concepts and Inquiry,” 91,
104–105 on the Epicurean view that it is essential to have a concept (prolepsis) of something before one
can inquire into it.
Rhetoric 339
We declare that sophistic rhetoric is an art and that political rhetoric is not an art.
And if someone forces us to apply the labels, we shall say that the one, as we have
laid out, is marked with an identifying characteristic, while the other is not.
Philodemus denies the common assumption that the three main domains of oratory
represent three parts of the same thing because they share a common designation,
rhetorikē (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 col. 58.2–26 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche):
And we show our handiwork and the reason why we say the rhetoric called “sophistic”
is an art and not a part of rhetoric. For the panegyric activity is not a part of rhetoric,
and the political, and the forensic, in the way he himself supposes in his entire
treatise,19 just as the marine animal is not a part of dog nor the land animal . . . .
“Sophistic” rhetoric seems to match the epideictic domain which would ordinarily
include “panegyric.” Philodemus is not necessarily guilty of contravening Epicurus’s
injunction against participating in panegyric (10.120).20 Even if the philosopher
acknowledges the technical status of the kind of rhetoric which informs panegyric dis-
play, that does not mean he chooses to engage in such displays. This is no doubt why
Philodemus reports that the Founders of the School showed sophistic to be an art of
prose writing as well as composition of displays, not an art of pleading cases and address-
ing the people (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 col. 24.1–7 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche):
τέ|χνην [εἶν]αι τὴν σοφιστι|κὴν τ[οῦ λ]όγους συγγράφειν | καὶ ἐπ[ιδε]ίξεις πο.ι̣εῖσ|θαι,
[τοῦ δὲ] δίκας λέγειν | καὶ δη[μη]γορεῖν οὐκ εἶ|ναι τέ[χνη]ν.
The positioning of written speech (συγγράφειν) first in this report is significant. One
detects a tendency for Philodemus to distance himself from the application of epideictic
in public performance.
In Book 3, when Philodemus elaborates on the failure of political rhetoric, his cita-
tions from Epicurus imply that the Founder of the School acknowledged that a certain
kind of pleasure was to be derived from a speech which was composed and delivered by
one trained in rhetoric (Rhet. 3 P.Herc. 1426 col. 3a.7–17, 25–29, col. 4a.8–14 = P.Herc. 1506
col. 50.22–32, col. 51.4–11, 19–24, Hammerstaedt, “Der Schlussteil,” 26–29):
Every time they listen (to sophists) in displays and at festivals (ἐν̣ τα̣ῖ̣ς δε̣ί̣ξεσι̣[ν] κ̣α̣ὶ
τ̣αῖς πανη̣γύρεσι̣[ν]), says Epicurus, and are stirred in their souls (ψ[υ]χαγωγηθῶσι̣)
because the speech is not about a contract, or not about things to their advantage, as
is the case in assemblies and law courts . . . . In the festival and display speeches of
the sophists they waste neither a thought for an oath (for they have not sworn to
19 The unnamed target of Philodemus’s attack composed a refutation of Zeno’s claim that the
Founders of the School stated that rhetoric is an art.
20 Erbi, “La retorica nell’epicureismo,” 190–91 draws attention to this and other apparent
discrepancies between Philodemus and the doxographical tradition on Epicurus.
340 CLIVE CHANDLER
judge correctly) nor for whether what is being said is to the city’s advantage or
not . . . in fact the speech is about nothing urgent (οὐ περὶ κατ̣επ[ε]ί̣γ̣ο̣ν̣τός̣ τιν̣ός γ̣ε̣
ο̣ὐ̣δεν̣ός̣)—so that they listen at festival speeches in a state where they are detached
from the debate.
And a little further on (Rhet. 3 P.Herc. 1426 cols. 4a.14–5a.2 = P.Herc. 1506 cols. 51.24–52.4
Hammerstaedt, “Der Schlussteil,” 28–31):
And when they listen in this way, they do not pay attention to whether what is said
is to their advantage or not, or whether it is altogether true or not, but because they
feel led in their souls by the sound alone, by the periods, the precisely balanced
clausulae, the antitheses, and the homoeoteleuta, they come to expect that if they
babble in the same way in assemblies and courts they will make a good impression,
not realizing that they would not have endured it if they heard (someone else) dron-
ing on like this in an assembly or court.
The audience in these panegyric displays is impressed by the sonic and formal aspects of
the speech, not the content as such. In fact it would be wrong to construe the emotional
experience labeled psychagōgia as “persuasion” at all, since it does not impose convic-
tion or alter the opinions of an audience. Presumably it lasts only as long as the perfor-
mance itself.21 Yet we should be alert to the careful imposition of limits in Epicurus’s
formulation. Pleasure is central to Epicurean doctrine, but the sources of pleasure
require discrimination in Key Doctrines (KD) 8/Vatican Sayings (SV) 50, “No pleasure in
itself is bad; but the things which are capable of creating (ποιητικά) certain pleasures
add many more disturbances (ὀχλήσεις) than the pleasures.” The word translated here as
“disturbances” (ochlēseis) is related to a word which means “crowd” or “mob” (ochlos).
The selection of this term is interesting, given its political associations, and the meta-
phor perhaps recalls the discomforts entailed by dealing with crowds in the assembly. To
apply the principle of this doctrine to an evaluation of rhetoric which is also a thing pro-
ductive of pleasure: the pleasure which one legitimately experiences during an epideic-
tic speech can in fact lead to considerable discomfort if one assumes that the discursive
conventions are transferable to a different context (such as assembly or law court). The
limitations for this pleasure are provided by the context of the epideictic or panegyric
performance. In the fourth book of On Rhetoric, Philodemus draws attention to the fact
that when delivering a panegyric before a mass audience, the speaker must either con-
form with the opinions of his audience which may diverge from the truth, or with the
dictates of philosophy which may offend his audience and put him at risk.22
21 Warren, Epicurus and Democritean Ethics, 181–83 examines the idea of psychagōgia as compelling
rhetoric; see Chandler, Philodemus on Rhetoric Books 1 and 2, 147–67 for an attempt to contextualize
psychagōgia in Epicurean thinking.
22 As pointed out by Gaines, “Philodemus and the Epicurean Outlook on Epideictic Speaking,” 197
citing Rhet. 4 P.Herc. 1007 cols. 36a.15–24, 33a.13–24, and 37a.4–17.
Rhetoric 341
Although the limits and rules of the debate on rhetoric were largely set already,
Philodemus may have had some specific objectives of his own which emerged from his
own immediate context: an Epicurean philosopher living in Italy in the first century
bce.23 The uncoupling of epideictic rhetoric (sophistic) from deliberative and forensic
enables Philodemus the freedom to incorporate expertise in prose composition into an
Epicurean program of activities and disciplines while simultaneously preserving the
disdain for activities of the rhetors who claim that their teachings are useful for civic life.
Thus when Philodemus deploys the distinction between skills, conjectural arts, and
exact arts in discussions of rhetoric’s technical status, he does so not with a view to dem-
onstrating the success of the art in producing persuasion in any of them.
The separation of epideictic from the rest of rhetoric is a bold move, yet Philodemus
maintains that it is supported by statements found in the writings of the Founders and
that he is following the teachings of Zeno, the scholarch of the Garden at Athens. Yet the
fact that the stance adopted in Athens was a source of considerable confusion in other
Epicurean communities (Philodemus mentions Cos and Rhodes) and raised questions
as to whether this teaching was consistent with Founders’ own writings and whether
rhetoric as a whole was now to be regarded as a respectable art, is surely an indication of
how radical it appeared.24
An Epicurean Rhetoric?
If rhetoric retains a place within the Epicurean’s world, is there a specifically “Epicurean”
rhetoric, or at least a set of preferred tendencies and practices in oratory and composi-
tion? Though Epicurus avoided the kind of objectives and environments which required
him to deploy rhetorical training in a particular way, he was obliged to communicate his
philosophy to his peers and followers, and potential students. Within the confines of the
Garden, the philosopher can speak directly with a specific individual or individuals face
to face. The Epicureans developed a sophisticated and nuanced set of procedures for this
kind of communication, which was termed “frank criticism” (παρρησία). But not all
communications were of this kind. Even if the philosopher avoided public lectures,
there were many occasions when he was required to entrust his speech to written form.
We know that Epicurus wrote works which circulated both within and outside the
23 One can only speculate as to what these were. Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 38, supported by Di
Matteo, “La retorica da Epicuro a Filodemo,” 87–88, would see Philodemus adjusting the Epicurean
approach to rhetoric, poetry, and music in response to a new appreciation for ἐγκύκλια μαθήματα
prevalent in Italy of the late Republic; or even an undeclared polemic against Cicero (Gigante, Filodemo
in Italia, 40–45), a possibility which is further debated by Gaines, “Philodemus and Cicero on Models
of Rhetorical Expression,” 269–72; and Wisse, “Atticists, Academics and Epicureans.”
24 The picture can be reconstructed from Philodemus’s account in Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 cols.
52.11–53.7 Longo Auricchio, Ricerche, with Blank’s editorial improvements: “La philologie comme arme
philosophique,” 252. The disagreement has been discussed several times, e.g. Sedley, “Philosophical
Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 112–13; Blank, “La philologie comme arme philosophique.”
342 CLIVE CHANDLER
School. Works designed to be read within the School (perhaps with guidance) by those
already committed to philosophy, such as On Nature, could focus on careful examina-
tion of problems and their explication. Rhetorical elaboration is hardly to be expected.
The letters addressed to specific individuals represent a slightly different kind of compo-
sition.25 Epicurus would have been aware that once one has committed speech to writ-
ing in this way one loses control of who the audience might be. Although the speech
may have been originally directed to a specific audience, it might need to serve others
too. In this sort of situation there are no opportunities for the philosopher to react to
incomprehension in the audience or to add clarifications in response to questions.
Epicurus’s focus on clarity (saphēneia) in speech, and this must include textualized
speech, would seem to be a predictable response to the challenge posed by discourse
where the speaker is not physically present.26 We have seen already how even some
Epicureans disagreed on the message conveyed in some of the Founder’s writings.
Philodemus tends to attribute this disagreement to a misunderstanding of Epicurus’s
speech, but the cause of the misunderstanding does not lie in Epicurus’s failure to
achieve clarity, it is the fault of the reader.27
Epicurus’s critics sometimes make his supposed lack of rhetorical or literary elabora-
tion a target. Timocrates, the renegade brother of the trusty Epicurean Metrodorus,
claimed that Epicurus repeated himself most of the time in the thirty-seven books of On
Nature. Yet if clarity is the most reliable means for conveying the findings of reason, then
mere variety for its own sake is not a legitimate objective. Diogenes Laertius informs us
that Epicurus used the ordinary terms with respect to things (κέχρηται δὲ λέξει κυρίᾳ
κατὰ τῶν πραγμάτων, 10.13), which implies an attempt to reduce ambiguity and avoid
metaphor.28 But the term κύριος also means “having authority,” the sense which it has in
the collection of texts known as “Key Doctrines” (Κύριαι δόξαι). These doctrines might
be expected to require a corresponding κυρία λέξις. Yet metaphor is not entirely absent
even from the brief gnomic utterances attributed to the Master.29 We detect a preoccu-
pation with the objectives of speech, and not speech itself. Speech never becomes the
end-in-itself. Thus a short speech or a long speech is just as effective.
Although Epicureans were aware of the fact that an audience is to be taken into
account when composing a speech, they did not pursue the line opened up by
Nausiphanes of Teos, who imagined that knowledge of natural philosophy would enable
the philosopher-rhetor to craft a persuasive speech. Such claims were apparently stifled
25 Clay, “Philodemus on the Plain Speaking,” 58 has described Epicurus’s epistles as philosophy
exhibited in action.
26 The entire topic of saphēneia receives detailed treatment by Milanese, Lucida Carmina, reviewed
by Longo Auricchio, “Retorica da Epicuro a Lucrezio.”
27 An established strategy, which finds parallels in the accusations which Philo directs against rival
interpreters of the scriptures (e.g. On the Unchangeableness of God, 21).
28 Aristotle explicitly linked κύρια ὀνόματα (“ordinary nouns”) to clarity in Poet. 1458a18–20 and
Rh. 1404b5–8. See Arrighetti, “Epicuro, la κυρία λέξις e i πράγματα,” 18–22 on this and the connection
between Diogenes’s testimony and Epicurus’s understanding of the correct use of language for
philosophical inquiry.
29 See the remarkable phrase “voice of the flesh” (σαρκὸς φωνή) in SV 33.
Rhetoric 343
early.30 At one point in On Rhetoric 8 Philodemus seems to be trying to ascertain how

such knowledge of nature could achieve persuasion, and proposes one possible inter-
pretation, that it is derived from a knowledge of the elements from which people are
constituted (ἐκ τ[ί]νων ἢ ποίων στοιχείων̣).31 An unknown Epicurean opponent of the
line on rhetoric taken by Zeno and Philodemus confidently declared that the Founders
deny the possibility of there being an art which can persuade crowds (ὄ̣χλων
πει[[σ]]στικήν),32 and Philodemus never contradicts him on this point in the surviving
portions of On Rhetoric. Instead, the Epicurean teacher focused on the more feasible
adjustment of discourse to the moods and experiences of an individual in direct contact,
as is shown by passages from On Frank Criticism. Attempting to respond effectively to
similar fluctuations in mood in a mass audience would be beyond the power of anyone.
Besides, it is not moods and atomic constitutions which are the first target of Epicurean
discourse, but the opinions which inspire those moods.
Arguably, Epicurus and his audience would have had no other expertise to fall back
upon in composing speech and writing than the very rhetorical training they had
enjoyed as youths. In particular, those works which are addressed to a specific individ-
ual but are simultaneously amenable to broader circulation provide opportunities for
the deployment of strategies and tropes derived from the rhetorical education of the day.
Some of the letters are clearly protreptic in character, and thus have the explicit objective
of persuading their audience to turn to philosophy.33 Perhaps the most famous, and
controversial, example of an Epicurean who turned his rhetorical education to the serv
ice of Epicureanism is the Roman poet Lucretius. Yet, as Armstrong has demonstrated,
Philodemus too can turn out elegant, rhetorically manipulated discourse when he
chooses. In a passage devoted to the subject of painful death (On Death cols. 8.1–9.14)
Armstrong finds the effectiveness of the argument lies in the very avoidance of the more
obvious formal devices associated with Isocrates, and in the judicious deployment of
poetic imagery and metaphorical language to enhance originality of thought: this blend
of informality and eloquence gives the discourse the character of sincerity.34
Philodemus provides one Epicurean perspective on how technical skills inherited
from rhetorical education could be adjusted and deployed. Robert Gaines has shown
30 Philodemus preserves the title of a work by Metrodorus, Against Those Who Say That Good
Rhetors Come from Natural Philosophy (Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 col. 27.16–19 Longo, revised by Blank,
“Atomist Rhetoric in Philodemus,” 74 n. 22). Blank, “Atomist Rhetoric in Philodemus,” 75–88 has a
detailed discussion of Philodemus’s refutation of Nausiphanes’s claims in Rhet. 8 (P.Herc. 1015 and 832).
31 P.Herc. 1015 col. 15.13–15; Blank, “Atomist Rhetoric in Philodemus,” 80. Warren, Epicurus and
Democritean Ethics, 174 makes the point that the fact that Philodemus poses this possibility as a
question suggests that it was not a link that Nausiphanes made himself.
32 Rhet. 21 P.Herc. 1674 cols. 54.34–55.2 Longo Auricchio with Blank’s editorial improvements,
“Atomist Rhetoric in Philodemus,” 72.
33 The opening sentences of the Letter to Menoeceus offer a good example of carefully manipulated
language; Usener, Epicurea, xlii even imagines one might question the letter’s authenticity propter ipsam
stili elegantiam ab Epicuro non solum neglectam sed etiam contemptam. Schenkeveld, “Philosophical
Prose,” 206–209 offers a useful analysis of the letter, while pointing out that it starts as a protreptic and
then takes on a paraenetic complexion.
34 Armstrong, “All Things to All Men,” 23–27.
344 CLIVE CHANDLER
that Philodemus engaged critically with this body of knowledge, selecting and
prioritizing the virtues of style which conformed to the prescriptions of Epicurus and
the Founders.35 Even if Philodemus admits the technical status of epideictic, and the
possibility of an Epicurean’s utilizing it when composing his own discourses, he is ruth-
less in exposing the limits of this art and the competence of its practitioners. For
instance, in the composition of speeches of praise and blame, a prominent element in
epideictic and panegyric, Philodemus draws attention to the inability of rhetors to
execute this activity credibly and in accordance with rational principles.36 From an
Epicurean perspective the rhetoric of praise and blame are potentially useful in the dis-
course of protreptic (and here we surely see a kind of persuasion as the object of rheto-
ric), but only a philosopher will be qualified to deploy the rhetorical tropes properly,
since he possesses knowledge of what should truly be praised and blamed. Unlike the
display speeches and panegyrics, the discourse of Epicurean protreptic is concerned
with the most important matters of all, more important in fact than those discussed in
assembly or court. The key principle is that the philosopher must prevent his audience
from being distracted by the sound of the discourse and from not paying careful atten-
tion to what is being said, a fault which Epicurus reportedly (by Philodemus in Rhet. 3
mentioned above) identified in panegyric. At the same time—and perhaps Zeno and
Philodemus represent some Epicureans who felt this way—the philosopher should not
discourse in a manner which alienates his audience or readership.
In conclusion, it is probably fair to say that the Epicurean attitude to rhetoric as an art
or discipline is not owed so much to the ontological status of the art itself as it is to the
kind of lifestyle (or βίος) that is entailed by prioritizing the art. The Epicurean sage dis-
dains the life of the practitioner of the art (the rhetor), who deploys his art in order to
attain objectives which are given undue priority and in so doing experiences a life of
frustration and anxiety. David Blank has correctly asserted that the Epicurean attitude
to the arts (including rhetoric) was conditioned by the privileged position accorded phi-
losophy.37 From our own modern perspective, we might add that it was also conditioned
by another kind of privilege, the socio-economic status enjoyed by Epicurus and his
peers who were able to take the benefits of a liberal education for granted, and thus
despise it.
35 Grube’s outline in The Greek and Roman Critics, 200–206 is still useful, but surpassed by Gaines,
“Qualities of Rhetorical Expression in Philodemus” and “Philodemus and Cicero on Models of
Rhetorical Expression,” on parallels between Cicero and Philodemus on models of expression, which
may be arbitrary and unconnected to naturally beautiful expression. Gaines, “Cicero, Philodemus, and
the Development” convincingly demonstrates how Philodemus is anchored in developments and issues
in rhetorical theory during the first century bce.
36 See Philodemus Rhet. 4 cols. 39a.4–40a.4; Gaines, “Philodemus and the Epicurean Outlook on
Epideictic Speaking,” 195–96.
37 Blank, “Philosophia and Techne,” 216.
Rhetoric 345
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chapter 14
Poetics
Michael M c Osker
Introduction
Epicurus1 famously got his start in philosophy when a teacher was unable to explain
Hesiod’s Chaos to him.2 Since its teachers claimed a great deal of cultural prestige for
poetry, Epicurus expected that they would be able to justify their claims.3 When this
particular teacher could not explain a problem, Epicurus left in disgust and turned to
philosophy and natural science. This anecdote need not be literally true to stand as an
emblem for Epicurean engagement with the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία (roughly “liberal arts”)
and with poetry above all: teachers of paideia cannot explain the way the world works,
and when that fact is forgotten, problems arise and people’s lives are troubled.
My goal here is to explain Epicurean engagement with poetry. The first part of my
discussion takes the form of a chronologically organized account of the Epicureans’
attitude towards poetry. Epicurus’s opinion can be reconstructed, but imprecision on a
crucial point has clouded the issue. In the second part, examples of Epicurean engagement
with poetry, both as critics and writers, will be examined.
Scholarly engagement with the views of ancient philosophers, especially Hellenistic
philosophers, on poetry, rhetoric, and music has been limited both by the paucity of
ancient evidence and by modern interest in different topics. Nonetheless, good, interesting
1 I would like to thank Jeff Fish and Kirk Sanders for their advice; David Armstrong and Richard
Janko for reading drafts, talking over problems, and their support; and Phillip Mitsis for his help and
leadership. Jeff, David, and Richard made unpublished work available to me, for which I am grateful.
Much of the material in this essay is found in ch. 2 of my forthcoming book. Fragments of Epicurus are
quoted from Usener’s edition (1887).
2 For the story, see Diogenes Laertius’s citation of the scholarch Apollodorus, the “Tyrant of the
Garden,” at 10.2. For theological criticism of poetry, see Obbink, Philodemus and Poetry; and for the
relationship between discipleship and autodidacticism in Epicureanism, see Erler, “Autodidact and
Student.”
3 Cf., e.g., Plato’s words, in Ion’s mouth at Ion 531c1–d2.
348 MICHAEL MCOSKER
work has been done on Epicurean and Stoic rhetoric and musicology.4 Pride of place has
long belonged to Epicurean poetics, however, in large part because so much of
Philodemus’s treatise On Poems survives in the Herculaneum papyri. These papyri present
particular challenges, but for On Poems, at least, an end is in sight: Richard Janko has
published editions of three of the five books (1, 3, and 4); a fourth (2) is nearing comple-
tion, and the fifth book, already available in Cecilia Mangoni’s reliable edition, is being
re-edited with the aid of infrared photography and new techniques for arranging
fragments. The newly achieved textual security allows certain opinions to be firmly
rejected and others to take their place in the debate.
In the past, scholars have attributed a variety of positions and attitudes to Epicurus
and his followers. For the most part, their evidence was drawn from Diogenes Laertius
and Cicero, in an attempt to explain Lucretius’s poem. These scholars divide into two
camps, broadly speaking (with some in the middle). One group argues that the original
ban on poetry was complete, while others think that the ban did not exist or was limited
in some way.
Belonging to the first camp is Tescari, who thought that Epicurus had originally for-
bidden all poetry, but that later Epicureans had relaxed the ban; both he and Giancotti
claimed that the sage’s enjoyment of Dionysiac spectacles was a test of impassivity, rather
than an occasion to enjoy and derive pleasure from them (despite the actual wording of
frr. 20 and 593).5 Boyancé attributes a great deal, like Giancotti, to Lucretius’s historical
setting and thinks that poetry is, for Lucretius, light and charm (“lumière et charme”),
and that this means that it was fully capable of argumentative clarity (even better than
prose!) and of providing real hēdonē, which attracts the non-rational parts of us.6 De
Lacy and De Lacy take Colotes to be following Epicurus’s position, which they claim is a
total ban on poetry, because poetic language is unclear and confusing, and therefore ill-
suited to expressing philosophical argumentation.7 In their second edition, they main-
tain that Colotes objects to Plato’s use of the phrase “good poet” at Lysis 206b8 because it
is an opinion and not evident (κατὰ δοξαζόμενον, and not κατὰ τὸ ἐναργέϲ).8 Crönert
also thought that Epicurean doctrine evolved over time, arguing that early Epicureans
tried to turn their students away from study of the poets; later Epicureans permitted it
under the influence of the Stoics.9
4 Atherton, “Hand over Fist” discusses Stoic rhetoric. Delattre, Philodème de Gadara is an excellent
source for Epicurean and Stoic musicology. See Chandler in this volume for Epicurean rhetoric.
5 Tescari, Lucrezio; Giancotti, “La poetica epicurea in Lucrezio, Cicerone, ed altri.”
6 Boyancé, Lucrèce et l’épicurisme, 57–68.
7 De Lacy and De Lacy, Philodemus: On Methods of Inference: A Study in Ancient Empiricism, 140.
8 De Lacy and De Lacy, Philodemus: Methods of Inference, 190.
9 Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemus, 8: “Daß aber weder er (= Kolotes) noch Metrodoros in den
Schriften des Demetrios und Philodemos Περὶ ποιημάτων erscheinen, erklärt sich daraus, daß der
spätere Epikureismus unter dem Einfluß der Stoa seine ablehnende Stellung in vielen Punkten aufgab.”
Classen, “Poetry and Rhetoric in Lucretius,” 110–11 summarized the debate and pointed out the
differences between study of poetry as part of the ἐγκύκλιοϲ παιδεία, its enjoyment as part of the pleasant
life, and its use to publicize or publish Epicurean doctrine on the other, but he did not stake new positions
in the debate.
Poetics 349
In the second camp, Schmid suggested that any poetry which served hēdonē or
ataraxia was acceptable.10 Waszink thought that simple poetry by early men, of the sort
described by Lucretius in his account of the development of human culture at 5.1379–1411,
was acceptable, but not ambitious poetry (e.g. that of Lucretius), because the pleasure
from it is “too complicated to be the truly Epicurean hēdonē” (cf. Lucretius 5.1412–35).11
Philippson points out that Epicurus’s line ποιήματα δ’ ἐνεργείαι οὐκ ἂν ποιῆϲαι (the
sage would not write poetry for an energeia) (fr. 568 = DL 10.121b) was not a total ban,
but that Epicurus thought the sage simply had more important things to do.12 Asmis
has argued strongly (and correctly, in my view) for a version of Philippson’s view: she
takes energeia to mean that poetry should not be an occupation for an Epicurean that
takes up too much time and effort.13 This view is opposed by Arrighetti: see below in the
next section for discussion.14
Since so much more evidence is now available, we must re-evaluate Epicurus’s posi-
tion. We can see that Epicurus and his immediate followers probably held developed
views about poetry from the start, but their focus, so far as it is revealed by the surviving
fragments, was on the harmful effects of the standard educational curriculum, which
included a great deal of poetry. Later, with Demetrius Laco and Philodemus of Gadara,
we have extant treatises that focus specifically on poetry. Poetry, except for Lucretius,
never becomes a didactic tool for Epicureans, but in it they are able to find utility, in the
form of illustrations and starting-points (aphormai) for discussion.
Epicurus
The major problems in understanding Epicurus’s position are (i) reconciling his appar-
ently negative attitude towards poetry with Philodemus’s apparently more positive one
and (ii) reconciling this attitude with Philodemus’s and Lucretius’s poetic production.
However, the problem is really just one of perspective: is poetry being treated qua poetry
or as part of, or as a synecdoche for, liberal arts education generally? Once we have
Epicurus’s opinions about liberal arts education—of which poetry was a large part—we
can see his attitude about poetry, qua poetry, much more clearly.
To be blunt, Epicurus did not value the contemporary ἐγκύκλιοϲ παιδεία. Two
famous lines from his letters to Apelles and Pythocles tell most of the story: μακαρίζω ϲε,
ὦ Ἀπελλῆ, ὅτι καθαρὸϲ πάϲηϲ παιδείαϲ ἐπὶ φιλοϲοφίαν ὥρμηϲαϲ (“I call you blessed,
Apelles, because you set out for philosophy, pure of all education”) and παιδείαν δὲ
10 Schmid, “Review of Tescari, Lucrezio 1939,” 12–15.

11 Waszink, Lucretius and Poetry.
12 Philippson (RE s.v. Philodemos 2479).
13 Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics,” 21–22.
14 Arrighetti, “Gli epicurei, la poesia e Lucrezio.”
350 MICHAEL MCOSKER
πᾶϲαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενοϲ (“hoist the sail on your raft and flee, O blessed
one, all education”).15
Why such hostility? In short, because poetry is not Epicurean philosophy, which is
the only means by which someone can live a good life. Rhetoric, history, poetry, and
declamations do not teach happiness; they lead instead towards a life of busy civic
involvement rather than peaceful contemplation and pleasure. They are therefore to be
avoided. Poetry, additionally, contained the ὀλέθριον μύθων δέλεαρ (“destructive lure of
myths”) that is, the danger that the contents of poetry might be understood as authorita-
tive and so mislead its audience into false and damaging beliefs (ποιητικὴ τύρβη, “poetic
confusion”) about the world.16
Sextus Empiricus preserves a series of four arguments against the utility of poetry
which were made by others “and especially the Epicureans.”17 They are as follows:
1. Poetry contains both useful and harmful statements, and it is not the role of
grammar but of philosophy to distinguish what is useful from what is harmful.
Lacking such a guide, the audience will misunderstand the poetry.
2. Poets do not have any special access to the truth nor particular knowledge of
what is useful; only philosophers do.
3. Poets do not aim at providing anything useful in their poems, unlike prose
authors, but aim solely at entertainment, which is better accomplished with fiction
than truth.
4. Poetry is not only useless, but actually harmful since it encourages the passions.
The first three of these arguments attack the usefulness of poetry as a source of truth,
for it is either ambiguous or has no legitimate claim to authority; the fourth attacks it on
the basis that it is positively harmful. Any sufficiently advanced Epicurean, who knows
that poetry is no source of truth and could be the source of injury, probably could read it
without distraction or harm.18 The situation would be parallel to others, according to
15 To Apelles fr. 117 (apud Athenaeus XIII, 588a, and Plutarch, Non Posse 1094d) and Ep. Pyth. fr. 163
(apud DL 10.6, Plut. De Poetis Audiendis 15d, Non Posse 1094d; and Quint. IO 12.2.24). There is probably
a note of scorn in fr. 164 (Plutarch’s report, Non Posse 1094d, of a letter to Pythocles): Πυθοκλέουϲ δέ
πάντεϲ καὶ πᾶϲαι δέονται δι’ Ἐπικούρου καὶ ἀντιβολοῦϲιν, ὅπωϲ οὐ ζηλώϲει τὴν ἐλευθέραν καλουμένην
παιδείαν (“All the men and women beg Pythocles, through Epicurus, and entreat him not to be eager for
the so-called ‘liberal’ education”). At Ep. Pyth. 85, “genuine” (γνήϲιοϲ) physiologia is contrasted with the
liberal arts (τὰ ἐγκύκλια), to the discredit of the latter.
16 Both phrases, the first found in Heraclitus’s Allegories of Homer 4 (= fr. 229) and the second in
Plutarch, Non Posse 1086f (= fr. 228), may be Epicurus’s own.
17 SE Math. 1.299: τὰ μὲν οὖν τῶν ἄλλων λεγόμενα κατὰ τὸν τόπον, καὶ μάλιϲτα τῶν Ἐπικουρείων, ἐϲτὶ
τοιαῦτα. The arguments are at 1.279–98. Blank (Sextus Empiricus Against the Grammarians, 286 and
introduction §6) suggests that Sextus’s source is a treatise by Zeno of Sidon; that the arguments treated
here are genuinely Epicurean is argued by Blank on pp. 296–97. For other treatments of these arguments,
see Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics,” 25–6; and Beer, Lukrez und Philodem, 77–78. If Sextus’s source is Zeno, it
will be the Περὶ ποιημάτων χρήϲεωϲ “On the Use of Poetry.”
18 Blank, Sextus Empiricus Against the Grammarians, 298–301, suggests that only the Epicurean sage
can safely read poetry: since only he is immune to being taken in by its bad sentiments, he alone can
allow himself the lesser good of aural pleasure without running the risk of losing the greater good of
freedom from the pain caused by false beliefs.
Poetics 351
the principle set out in KD 8: “No pleasure is per se a bad thing, but some things which
cause pleasures bring also disturbances many times more than the pleasures.”19 For
instance, Epicurus said that we should not have sex while overfull from eating or drunk
because of possible damage to our atomic constitutions, but sex generally was counted
among the pleasures.20 Similarly, luxurious food and drink are pleasant so long as we do
not become accustomed to them and therefore pained when we cannot have them.21
Likewise, the fact that poetry could be damaging in certain situations does not necessar-
ily warrant a total ban. Indeed, there is evidence that there was no such ban.
That Epicurus was not hostile to poetry, qua poetry, is demonstrated by a variety of
sources. For example, Plutarch reports but misrepresents Epicurus’s attitude when he
remarks on the strangeness of some Epicurean statements (fr. 20, ap. Plut. Non Posse 1095c):
. . . ἀτοπίαν ὧν Ἐπίκουροϲ λέγει φιλοθέωρον μὲν ἀποφαίνων τὸν ϲοφὸν ἐν ταῖϲ Διαπορίαιϲ
καὶ χαίροντα παρ’ ὁντινοῦν ἕτερον ἀκροάμαϲι καὶ θεάμαϲι Διονυϲιακοῖϲ, προβλήμαϲι δὲ
μουϲικοῖϲ καὶ κριτικῶν φιλολόγοιϲ ζητήμαϲιν οὐδὲ παρὰ πότον διδοὺϲ χώραν.
. . . the strangeness of what Epicurus claims, who demonstrates in the Diaporiai that
the sage likes spectacles and rejoices just like anyone else at recitals and Dionysiac
spectacles, but who does not grant a place to musical questions and the philological
problems of literary critics even at a party.
For Plutarch, the enjoyment of poetry and the study of poetry are inseparable. Not so for
Epicurus; the sage can go to recitals and performances at festivals of Dionysus and enjoy
them just like any other person, sc. any non-philosopher. What he will not do is waste his
time studying the grammarians only to score points in eristic symposium table-talk.22
19 οὐδεμία ἡδονὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν κακόν· ἀλλὰ τὰ τινῶν ἡδονῶν ποιητικὰ πολλαπλαϲίουϲ ἐπιφέρει τὰϲ
ὀχλήϲειϲ τῶν ἡδονῶν.
20 Cf. SV 51 (an extract from a letter from Metrodorus to Pythocles): πυνθάνομαί ϲου τὴν κατὰ ϲάρκα
κίνηϲιν ἀφθονωτέραν διακεῖϲθαι πρὸϲ τὴν ἀφροδιϲίων ἔντευξιν. ϲὺ δὲ, εἰ μὴ τοὺϲ νόμουϲ καταλύειϲ μήτε τὰ
καλῶϲ ἔθει κείμενα κινεῖϲ μήτε τῶν πληϲίον τινὰ λυπεῖϲ μήτε τὴν ϲάρκα καραξαίνειϲ μήτε τὰ ἀναγκαῖα
καταναλίϲκειϲ, χρῶ ὡϲ βούλει τῇ ϲεαυτοῦ προαιρέϲει. ἀμήχανον μέντοι γε τὸ μὴ οὐχ ἑνί γέ τινι τούτων
ϲυνέχεϲθαι· ἀφροδίϲια γὰρ οὐδέποτε ὤνηϲεν, ἀγαπητὸν δὲ εἰ μὴ ἔβλαψεν (“You tell me that the movement of
your flesh is too inclined towards sexual intercourse. So long as you do not break the laws or disturb proper
and established conventions or distress any of your neighbors or ravage your body or squander the necessities
of life, act upon your inclination in any way you like. Yet it is impossible not to be constrained by at least one
of these. For sex is never advantageous but a fine thing if it does no harm”). I follow the text and translation
of Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers 2.120 and 1.116, except the last clause, which I understand
following Purinton, “Epicurus on the Telos”; and Brennan, “Epicurus on Sex, Marriage, and Children.”
21 Fr. 181 shows his practice and reason: βρυάζω τῶι κατὰ τὸ ϲωμάτιον ἡδεῖ, ὕδατι καὶ ἄρτῳ χρώμενοϲ,
καὶ προϲπτύω ταῖϲ ἐκ πολυτελείαϲ ἡδοναῖϲ οὐ δι’ αὐτὰϲ ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξακολουθοῦντα αὐταῖϲ δυϲχερῆ
(“I revel in bodily pleasure using only water and bread, and I spit on the pleasures that come from
extravagance—not on their own merits but because of the troubles that follow on them”). Of course, if
he could come by something extravagant without trouble, he would not hesitate to enjoy it (fr. 182, to a
follower): πέμψον μοι τυροῦ κυθρίδιον ἵν’ ὅταν βούλωμαι πολυτελεύϲαϲθαι δύνωμαι “Send me a small pot
of cheese, so that I can feast whenever I want.” See also fr. 464 about eating meat.
22 Cf. SV 45: οὐ κόμπου οὐδὲ φωνῆϲ ἐργαϲτικοὺϲ οὐδὲ τὴν περιμάχητον παρὰ τοῖϲ πολλοῖϲ παιδείαν
ἐνδεικνυμένουϲ φυϲιολογία παραϲκευάζει, ἀλλ’ ἀϲοβάρουϲ (Leopold: ἀλλὰ ϲοβαροὺϲ MS). καὶ αὐτάρκειϲ καὶ
ἐπὶ τοῖϲ ἰδίοιϲ ἀγαθοῖϲ, οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῖϲ τῶν πραγμάτων μέγα προνοῦνταϲ (“The study of nature does not make
352 MICHAEL MCOSKER
A revealing summary of all this can be found in Cicero’s De finibus, when he makes
Lucius Torquatus say (De fin. 1.71–72):
[sc. Epicurus] qui quod tibi parum videtur eruditus, ea causa est, quod nullam erudi-
tionem esse duxit nisi quae beatae vitae disciplinam iuvaret. an ille tempus aut in
poetis evolvendis . . . consumeret, in quibus nulla solida utilitas omnisque puerilis
est delectatio? aut se, ut Plato, in musicis geometria numeris astris contereret, quae
et a falsis initiis profecta vera esse non possunt et, si essent vera, nihil afferrent quo
iucundius, id est quo melius, viveremus? eas ergo artes persequeretur, vivendi artem
tantam tamque et operosam et perinde fructuosam relinqueret? non ergo Epicurus
ineruditus, sed ii indocti, qui quae pueros non didicisse turpe est, ea putant usque
ad senectutem esse discenda.
[sc. Epicurus] who seems to you hardly educated, for the reason that he thought
that it was not an education unless it would aid the practice of a happy life, or should
he waste time in perusing poets . . . in whom there is no solid utility but pure, child-
ish delight? Or wear himself down, as Plato says to do, in the study of music, geom-
etry, mathematics, astronomy, all of which, because they set out from false premises,
cannot be true, and even if they were true, bring no help by which we might live
more pleasantly, that is, better? Should he pursue those arts and neglect the large
and so difficult, but therefore fruitful, art of living? Therefore, Epicurus was not
uneducated, but they are, who think that what was not shameful to learn as boys
should be studied straight through until old age.23
What always mattered to Epicurus was the good life, and the only means to get there is
his philosophy. The liberal arts, poetry chief among them, cannot guide a student on the
way; indeed, they can be a waste of time, if not damaging. But, importantly, poetry can
still be a pleasure.
We can now turn to the two most famous fragments of Epicurus on poetry: those
preserved in Diogenes Laertius (10.121 = frr. 568 and 569): ποιήματα δὲ ἐνεργείαι (sc. τὸν
ϲοφὸν) οὐκ ἂν ποιῆϲαι (“the sage would not write poetry as an energeia”) and μόνον τε τὸν
ϲοφὸν ὀρθῶϲ ἂν περὶ τε μουϲικῆϲ καὶ ποιητικῆϲ διαλέξεϲθαι (“only the sage would
people skilled producers of boasts or their own voice nor show-offs of the education that is much fought
over among the hoi polloi, but instead humble and self-sufficient and proud of their own good qualities
rather than their own good possessions”).
23 Giancotti and Boyancé argued over the exact interpretation of the phrase in poetis evolvendis . . . in
quibus nulla solida utilitas . . . est. I side with Boyancé in thinking that it means “in reading poets, in whom
is . . .” which would require ⟨iis⟩ poetis. For discussions of Epicurean opinions about music, see Delattre,
(generally, as a rule) there is no solid utility” rather than “in reading [sc. only those] poets, in whom there
Philodème de Gadara, esp. pp. 91–113 and for geometry and mathematics, see Sedley, “Epicurus and the
Mathematicians of Cyzicus.” Cosmology and several astronomical phenomena are handled at length in
Ep. Pyth. 88–98: the constitutions of the sun, moon, and stars, their movements (including the solstices)
and apparent changes (the phases of the moon, eclipses) and the changing length of days and the seasons.
In short, to say that the Epicureans did not care at all about these topics is a misrepresentation.
Poetics 353
iscourse correctly about poetry music and poetics”).24 Asmis has demonstrated that
d
the first statement is not nearly as strong as it is usually taken, and she translates ἐνεργείαι
as “energetically,” that is, the prohibition is against “busying [oneself] with it or practicing
it in the manner of a professional poet.”25 This argument is reinforced by a consideration
of another activity that Epicurus calls ἐνέργεια: philosophy.26 To write poetry with the
intensity with which Epicurus wants you to study philosophy is, in short, to be something
like a professional poet.
As the second statement in Diogenes shows, the sage was not prohibited from engage-
ment with poetry on an intellectual level; after all, he can discourse correctly about it.
Epicurus’s discussion of Menander’s Georgos and Philodemus’s treatise On the Good
King According to Homer are examples of such discourses.27 Without being able to dis-
course correctly about poetry, the sage would be open to the criticisms of grammarians
and critics who claimed to find useful content in literature, but more importantly, as I
will later discuss, he knows how to turn poetry to useful ends in his lessons.
Metrodorus
No extensive discussion survives from the pen of Metrodorus, the second-in-command

of the Garden, but he did write an On Poems in at least two books, of which some
fragments are preserved in Philodemus’s On Rhetoric II.28 These discuss what type(s) of
24 Note the perceptive comment of Wigodsky, “The Alleged Impossibility of Philosophical Poetry,” 60
n. 13: “That the following statement (fr. 568) was drawn from a different context is implied by the use of
τε rather than δέ; Usener prints the two statements, in reverse order, as two fragments (frr. 569 and 568).”
I have no firm suggestion as to their origin, but the Diaporiai, from which fr. 20 is drawn, is a possibility.
25 Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics,” 22 and 32–33; the statement is often taken to be a categorical prohibition
of Epicurean involvement with poetry or, at least, of their writing poetry. See, contra, Arrighetti “Gli
epicurei, la poesia e Lucrezio,” 70, who cites and (partially) translates fr. 2: ἡ δὲ χάρα καὶ ἡ εὐφροϲύνη κατὰ
κίνηϲιν ἐνεργείαι βλέπονται “nella loro realtà, nel loro verificarsi . . . di fatto.” But he had previously
translated it as “dalla loro attività” (Epicuro: Opere, 161).There are at least two possible lines of interpretation:
1. reading ἐνέργειαι as a nominative in apposition: “Joy and happiness are understood to be intense
activities in motion”; 2. taking ἐνεργείαι as a dative and follow his older translation (“by their practice,” i.e.
by practicing them) and understanding with, e.g. Gosling and Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure, 373–94 or
Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 123–24, that kinetic pleasures practiced responsibly and in
good conscience often do in fact somehow make up an important part of the Epicurean’s life.
26 Philosophy: fr. 219: τὴν φιλοϲοφίαν ἐνεργείαν εἶναι λόγοιϲ καὶ διαλογιϲμοῖϲ τὸν εὐδαίμονα βίον
περιποιοῦϲαν (“[sc. he said that] philosophy is an activity which achieves the happy life by arguments and
discussions”). Additionally, other Epicureans do not use the word (and its cognates) lightly: Polystratus
On Contempt 11.1, Philodemus [On Choices and Avoidances] 22.10, On Anger 26.17. It is, however, used
more generically at On Arrogance 21.15 (“activities, occupation”).
27 See below for discussion, and see note 92 for bibliography.
28 They start at B.49.27 (p. 145 Longo Auricchio) and B1.21.10 (p. 215 Longo Auricchio; this part of
Philodemus’s On Rhetoric II is preserved in two rolls, which are given the arbitrary designations B and
B1 and their columns are numbered sequentially within each papyrus, so B1 col. 21 comes from later
in the work than B col. 49). Metrodorus’s fragments were collected by Körte Metrodori Epicurei
Fragmenta; frr. 20–23 are from the On Poems.
354 MICHAEL MCOSKER
rhetoric could be considered technai. Metrodorus must have used rhetoric as a

comparandum for poetry, i.e. was it a technē or not, and on what grounds? We know
Philodemus’s answer: it is a technē, but not very much of one.29
The most famous and important fragment, however, is in Plutarch’s Non Posse
(1094e = fr. 24 Körte):
. . . ὅθεν μηδ’ εἰδέναι φάϲκων, μεθ’ ὁποτέρων ἦν ὁ Ἕκτωρ, ἢ τοὺϲ πρώτουϲ ϲτίχουϲ τῆϲ
Ὁμήρου ποιήϲεωϲ ἢ πάλιν τὰ ἐν μέϲωι, μὴ ταρβήϲηιϲ.
. . . for which reason do not be upset to say that you do not know on whose side
Hector was or the first lines of Homer’s poetry or what happened in the middle.
Plutarch quotes it to abuse the Epicureans for ignoring the pleasures of the liberal arts,
but he misrepresents the point: you do not need to know Homer’s poetry thoroughly, or
even anything about it, to live a pleasant life according to Epicurus. Put differently, once
you are freed from the fear (N.B. ταρβέω) that you need to know Homer’s poetry and
from the mistaken belief that Homer teaches the truth, you are free to enjoy his poetry as
poetry (or to ignore it as irrelevant).
We can gather from lengthy paraphrase (preserved in Philodemus’s discussion of
rhetoric in the second book of his On Rhetoric) that Metrodorus discussed rhetoric and
poetry in parallel in his On Poems. His point seems to be that, beyond elementary
training in the rules (ἐπαγγέλματα), experience was necessary to become a better poet
or orator.
On Rhetoric II, P.Herc. 1674, col. 51.16–29 (p. 149 Longo Auricchio):30
16 ὁ πρ]ο� τεθ̣[ειμένοϲ He who has proposed to speak in public or be a

λέγειν [ἐν] ὄχλωι κ[αὶ ποη- poet hunts down, starting from the basics, the
τὴϲ εἶναι θηρεύε[ι ἀ- main part of what follows on such lessons, and
πὸ τῶν ἐπαγγελμ[ά]των he obviously looks towards a sort of image of
20 τὸ ἐφέξηϲ τοῦ ἀκολού- capability and himself accomplishes the task of
θου τοῖϲ τοιούτοιϲ ἐπαγ- his art, so that nothing through which he might
γέλμαϲιν, ὃ[ϲ] δυνάμ[ε]ω̣ϲ become a better orator or poet can somehow
οἵαν εἰκ̣όν’ ἀποβλέπ[ω]ν escape him.
καὶ α[ὐ]τὸϲ τὸ ἔργον [ϲυ]ν-
25 τ]ελῶν τῆϲ τούτο[υ] τ[έ-
χνηϲ φαίν]εται, μή π̣ου τι
α[ὐτ]ὸν διαφεύγη͙ ι δι’ ὧ[ν
ἂν β̣ελτείων̣ γίνοιτο ῥη-
29 τω]ρ ἢ ποητήϲ.
29 See On Rhetoric II, P.Herc. 1672, col. 22.28–39 (p. 219 Longo Auricchio); at On Rhetoric III,
col. xlviii.33–5 (Hammerstaedt) lessons in poetry are mentioned.
30 I print Sudhaus’s subjunctive in l. 27 in place of the indicative on the papyrus, and alter the editors’
punctuation. I understand τὸ ἐφέξηϲ as the object of θηρεύει (with Longo Auricchio), and compare τὸ
ϲύνεχον “the important thing” for its meaning (see LSJ s.v. ϲυνέχω 3).
Poetics 355
As Chandler points out, the discussion is about the training of orators and what counts
as rhetoric for the Epicureans.31 We can assume that Metrodorus handled the same
analogous topics in the case of poetry, but we do not have any hints about what else
Metrodorus might have discussed in his treatise.
Colotes
Colotes was a favorite student and friend of Epicurus.32 He is primarily known for his
polemical treatise On the Proposition “That It Is Impossible Even to Live According to the
Doctrines of Other Philosophers,” which Plutarch refuted at length. The Herculaneum
papyri preserve fragments of two other works of his, the anti-commentaries Against
Plato’s Euthydemus (P.Herc. 1032) and Against Plato’s Lysis (P.Herc. 208).33 In the latter,
in a discussion occasioned by a remark of Socrates at the beginning of the Lysis, about
how best to seduce an erōmenos, he mentions the prolēpsis (preconception) of the good
poet. (One of the interlocutors, Hippothales, was so enamored that he even wrote
poetry!) Socrates rounds off the discussion by warning him to not make his beloved too
arrogant, lest he come to spurn him, and finishes by saying (Plat. Lysis 206b6–8):
καίτοι οἶμαι ἐγὼ ἄνδρα ποιήϲει βλάπτοντα ἑαυτὸν οὐκ ἄν ϲε ἐθέλειν ὁμολογῆϲαι ὡϲ
ἀγαθόϲ ποτ’ ἐϲτὶ ποιητήϲ, βλαβερὸϲ ὢν ἑαυτῶι.
And yet I think that you would not be willing to agree that a man who harms him-
self with poetry is a good poet, since he is harmful to himself.
It is this conclusion that Colotes discusses:34
Against Plato’s Lysis (T. IV, p. 10b, ll. 4–14 = p. 164 Crönert)
4 οὗτοϲ παρ’ ἑ- . . . this man on his own . . . to define “a good
5 αυ]τῶι καλεῖν ἀγαθὸν poet” . . . thought he was a good poet. And it
πο]ι̣ητ[ὴν] ἐδοξάζεν was necessary to contradict Hippothales
α]ὐτὸν ἀγ̣αθὸν ποιη- who (?), being charged on his own to define
τὴν εἶναι. κ̣αὶ τῶι Ἱπ- such a man as a good poet according to
π̣οθάλ[ε]ι̣ ἐχρῆ[ν] μ̣άχεϲθαι what is clear and not a matter of opinion . . .
10 ὃϲ] διατεταγμ[έ]νοϲ παρ’ ἑ-
31 Chandler, Philodemus On Rhetoric Books 1 and 2: Translation and Exegetical Essays, 117–22.
32 As the pet names Κωλωταρᾶν and Κωλωτάριον suggest, both attested by Plutarch Ad. Colotem 1007e.
33 Their editions are to be found in Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemus, in the Nachtrag, pp. 163–67; and
see also Mancini, “Sulle opere polemiche di Colote.” Michael Erler is currently re-editing them.
Crönert’s numeration. He read μὴ ⟨τὸ⟩ in line 12, which I consider unnecessary: “what is clear and non-
34 T(abula) and p(agina) stand for “cornice” (the frames that the papyri are stored in) and “column” in
conjectural” taken together as one idea, makes sense, since what is clear for Epicureans is not conjectural.
ὃϲ] in l. 10 is my supplement; Crönert printed ὁ].
356 MICHAEL MCOSKER
14 αυ]τῶ̣ι [κ]αλεῖ[ν] κ̣ατὰ τὸ

ἐν]α̣ρ γὲ[ϲ] καὶ μὴ [δ]ο̣ξαζό-
μ]ε̣νον ἀγα[θὸν] ποι[η-
τὴν τ]ὸν τ[οιοῦτο]ν . . .
Against Plato’s Lysis (T. IV p. 10d, ll. 2–11 = p.165 Crönert):35

2 βού- . . . (sc. “what”) the sound might signify. Well,
λει ϲημ̣ή{ο}νηι͙ ὁ φθόγ- the common way of speaking among all of us
γοϲ. [ἀλ]λὰ μὴν ἥ γε κοι- (Epicureans) was to preserve the utterances
5 νη πάντων ἡμῶν ὁμι- in accordance with what is clear, not the mat-
λία ἦ̣ ν τ̣[η]ρεῖν τοῦϲ φ[θ]ό̣γ- ter of opinion, nor what this man claims.
γου[ϲ] κα̣[τ]ὰ τὸ ἐν[α]ργέϲ,
[οὐ] τ̣ὸ δοξαζόμενόν
γ’ ἐκ[ε]ῖνο καὶ οὐχὶ ὃ ο[ὗ-
10 τό]ϲ̣ φ̣[ηϲι]ν.
Against Plato’s Lysis (T. IV p. 10 e, ll. 2–13 = p. 165 Crönert):
2 κατὰ τὸ ἐν]αργὲϲ . . . according to what is clear and not what is

κ̣α[ὶ οὐ τὸ δοξαζό]μ̣ε νόν ever a matter of opinion, also addressing his
π[ο]τε καὶ προϲδιαλ̣ε- utterances to me. But in the detailed sections
5 γόμενόϲ μοι τοὺϲ φθόγ- about poets, let us refute then what they claim,
γο[υ]ϲ̣. ἐν δὲ τοῖϲ κατὰ whether what is known about good poets is
μέρ[ο]ϲ̣ περὶ ποιητῶν clear in his mind in some way (?) . . .
ἤδη̣ ἀντιλέγωμεν κα[ὶ
ὃ μέν̣ φαϲ̣[ι] εἴτ’ ἐναρ̣γ[̣ ὲϲ εἶ-
10 να[ι] τὸ γ̣[νω]ριζόμ[ε]ν[ον
π[ερὶ] ποιητῶ̣ ν̣ ἀγαθ̣ ω̣ ν
τ]ῆι [διανοίαι τρ]όπον
13 [τινά . . .]
Concolino Mancini pointed out that Colotes speaks as if there were a prolēpsis of the
good poet, founded on to enarges, what is clear, and opposed to to doxazomenon, what is
a matter of opinion.36 Further, as we see in the second passage, the rules for correct use
of language, which is founded on prolēpseis, are relevant to the discussion. We know
35 Janko (per litt.) conjectured ὅ, τι in line 2 before the preserved text. ϲημήνηι is my correction for
Crönert’s reading ϲημηονην; the construction is a deliberative subjunctive after βούλει (see Smyth §1806).
36 Concolino Mancini, “Sulle opere polemiche di Colote,” 62, developing suggestions by Körte,
“Review of Crönert” 253–54 and Long, “Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus.” Crönert,
Kolotes und Menedemus, 8 thought that Colotes was reflecting Epicurus’s ban on poetry; Philippson (RE
2479–80) points out that this is not necessarily the case.
Poetics 357
from Philodemus that the Epicureans did think there was a prolēpsis of the good poet,
and this discussion confirms that Colotes also had one: how could he call someone
“good poet” without reference to a prolēpsis guaranteeing meaning to that phrase?37 It is
worth noting also that Colotes uses the opportunity to discuss Epicurean views on lan-
guage, which is closely connected to epistemology for the Epicureans.
Obviously, given the discussion, it was not Colotes’s goal to explain in detail what the
prolēpsis of the good poet is, but he felt free to invoke the idea, which shows that it had
already been discussed previously in the school. The most likely place for such a discus-
sion is Metrodorus’s On Poems, which seems to have been less concerned with the status
of poetry in Epicurean education, but rather with understanding it as a human endeavor:
is it a technē? What makes a good poet? This last question hints that, even among the first
generation of Epicureans, there was a complete “theory of poetry,” in which quality and
judgment were discussed as well as the ethical import of the contents. That some of these
questions were handled by later Epicureans is not an argument against their earlier
treatment here: school doctrine had to be defended in the face of criticism, if not devel-
oped over the course of time to meet new challenges.
Zeno of Sidon
Zeno of Sidon was scholarch in the early first century bce and taught Philodemus and
Cicero (apparently at different times). His treatise Περὶ ποιημάτων χρήϲεωϲ, “On the
Use of Poems,” is not extant.38 It is possible that a section at the end of Philodemus’s
37 For Philodemus’s statement, see his On Poems 5.30.29–33 and 5.33.33–36. In this connection, Colotes
mentions Archilochus at T. IV p. 10b* l. 7 (p. 164 Crönert, a fragment preserved only on the Oxford
disegno, where αρχιλοχα is to be emended to Ἀρχιλόχω͙ [ι, cf. Archilochus fr. 301 West). Because he was a
canonical poet, he is often used as a test case in Philodemus’s On Poems: at 2.34 alongside Semonides,
Hipponax, and Euripides; at 4.104 as a poet who is good despite using insufficiently pleasurable diction;
and in 5.17–18 as a poet who is considered good “only with indulgence” by a Stoic literary critic who could
not find intellectual contents of any value in his poetry. The discussion here was surely similar: is
Archilochus, who slandered others and admitted shameful things about himself in his poems, thereby a
bad poet? Or is he a good poet who wrote about bad topics? Philodemus clearly comes down in favor of
the second option, and Colotes probably did as well. As Concolino Mancini suggests, Archilochus might
have been mentioned because his verse κηλέ͙ε͙ται δ’ ὄτιϲ [βροτ]ῶν ἀοιδαῖϲ, (“whichever mortal is
enchanted by songs,” Phld. On Music 4.49.38–39 = fr. 352 West), was compared with the argument in
Plato (206b1–2) that poetry should κηλεῖν, enchant, and not ἐξαγριαίνειν, enrage. (εε is Treu’s emendation
of the ω in the Neapolitan disegno, West prints a more fragmentary text as fr. 253.)
38 Its title is mentioned in a list at P.Herc. 1005, col. 10.19–20 (= fr. 12 Angeli-Colaizzo): περὶ ποιημάτ̣ω̣ν̣
χρή|[ϲεωϲ (χρη|[ϲτῶν, “On Useful Poems,” is also possible). In the same context, works Περὶ γραμματικῆϲ
(“On Grammar”), Περὶ ἱϲτορίαϲ (“On History” or perhaps “On Grammatical Inquiry,” as Sbordone,
Philodemi: Adversus [Sophistas], 144 suggested), Περὶ παροιμιῶν καὶ ὁμοίων (“On Proverbs and Similes”),
and Περὶ λέξεωϲ (“On Language” or “On Style”) are mentioned.
358 MICHAEL MCOSKER
On Poems 5 is indebted to it, but if so, he used Zeno’s treatise only as a sourcebook for
others’ views.39 In light of Philodemus’s loyalty to his teacher and his statements at On
Poems 5.17.20–24 that no poet has ever written or will ever write a poem containing use-
ful contents, and at col. 32.17–19, that useful poems are not useful qua poems, it seems
unlikely that Zeno radically re-evaluated the Epicurean position about the utility of
poetry either to meet the new demands of a Roman context or under the influence of
Stoic thought.
The title of the work suggests that it was concerned with claims that poetry could be
educational or otherwise useful. One thinks of Stoic opponents, who claimed that verse
and music had beneficial psychological effects. However, it does not seem to have dealt
with questions of how poetry works or is to be judged, that is to say, poetics on its own
terms.40
Demetrius Laco
Demetrius was probably active in the late second and early first centuries bce; his dates
are not secure. He refers to Zeno and is probably a rough contemporary.41 His treatise,
in contrast to the others discussed so far, actually survives in some extensive parts.
P.Herc. 1014 contains Book 2 and P.Herc. 188, much less extensive, is agreed to contain
Book 1.42 Neither book contains a positive exposition of school doctrine in the surviving
parts, but Demetrius seems to have been interested in problems rather than the system-
atic refutation of opponents (like Philodemus) and so, potentially, there is much to be
learned from him.
The remains of Book 1 are very scanty and difficult to understand. Its topic seems to
be the question of whether the hearing or the mind judges the quality of poetry.43
39 Phld. On Poems 5.29.29 mentions a “Zeno” and the discussion constitutes the end of the work.
Unfortunately, the section is identified solely as αἱ παρὰ Ζήνωνι δόξαι “The opinions in Zeno,” and what
follows is a listing of various opinions, not focused on utility, with summary objections.
40 Several doctrines found in other philosophers’ works have been ascribed to Zeno. See above on the
extracts from Sextus Empiricus about the utility of poetry and below on the atom-letter analogy in
Lucretius. Further, two references to a Zeno in Demetrius Laco’s Textual and Exegetical Problems in
Epicurus (edited by Puglia as Aporie testuali ed esegetiche in Epicuro) may indicate some work in that field
by him. The name “Zeno” appears at coll. 44.2 and 50.6; in the first he is called ὁ φίλτατοϲ Ζήνων, which
makes it all but certain that this Zeno is the scholarch, since φίλτατοϲ was almost a technical term for
referring to fellow Epicureans.
41 For his biography, see Gigante apud Puglia, Aporie testuali ed esegetiche in Epicuro.
42 For Book 2, see Romeo, Demetrio Lacone: La poesia, which includes both books along with
introduction, Italian translation and commentary, but whose reconstruction of the second book is faulty
in some particulars. I re-edited Book 1 in McOsker, “A New Edition of PHerc. 188 (Demetrius Laco, On
Poems I),” and am currently re-editing Book 2. References here are to Romeo’s column and line numbers.
43 See McOsker, “A New Edition of PHerc. 188 (Demetrius Laco, On Poems I)” for discussion of the
topic and adversaries, who are Andromenides (also known from Philodemus) and possibly Crates of
Mallos.
Poetics 359
The second book discusses questions of genre (the Pythian Nome, in which the poems
depicted Apollo’s victory over the Python, is handled in some detail) and some, more
technical, aspects of λέξιϲ (language) and poetry: the definitions of lexis (col. 36), meta-
phor (col. 40), and a discussion of ϲτεναὶ φωναί (narrow sounds, col. 27).44
Of great interest is Demetrius’s mention of a πραγματικὴ ζήτηϲιϲ, or “investigation
into the facts.”45 He uses the same phrase in his treatise on the textual criticism of
Epicurus’s works at P.Herc. 1012, col. 46.3–6, in a discussion of the rational part of the
soul: ὡϲ καὶ τούτου πραγματικὴν τὴν ζήτηϲιν ἔχοντοϲ κα[ὶ] κατὰ λόγον (“since this [sc. part
of the soul] has the capacity to investigate into facts and rationally”). The phrasing is
drawn from Epicurus’s distinction between researches about language alone and those
about facts (cf. DL 10.34). His use of the phrase in On Poems shows that poetry was an
object of Epicurean research into facts. The idea that poetry could be an object of
research should not be surprising by now, and that poems are considered things rather
than pure language is not, after a moment of reflection, particularly surprising either:
poems can be analyzed for their propositional contents (as hinted at above) or for their
verbal beauty, but even verbal beauty is not “pure language.”
Demetrius has several other potentially interesting but, as yet, poorly understood
positions about genre and perhaps the intelligibility of poems. A phrase of his,
ἐντροχάζουϲα κοινότηϲ “occurring commonality” picks out the feature, or collection of
features, which grants a poem its genre. In Demetrius’s example, it is the Pythian Nome:
On Poems II col. 49.1–1046

1 [ἐ-] . . . for tension (adjective missing) and for vocal
π̣ὶ διαταϲιν [.]η[. .]ν modulation or such a situation. Because of the
καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν ἔνκλι̣ϲ̣ι̣ν ἢ occurring commonality, from which very
τοιαύτην κατάϲτα- thing . . . such poems, which the grammatikoi
5 ϲιν ν δ̣ι̣ὰ̣ τὴν ἐντρο- either write or discover . . .
χάζουϲαν κοινότητα,
ὅθεν δὴ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦ-
τα τῶν ποημά[τω]ν̣,
ἃ ἢ̣̣ γ̣ρ̣άφ̣ο̣ υϲιν οἱ γρ̣αμ-
10 μα[τικοὶ] ἢ̣ ε̣ὑ̣ρί̣ϲκου[ϲι]ν
44 For a preliminary attempt at understanding the structure and topics of On Poems II, see McOsker,
“Towards a New Edition,” 2. Cf. Phld. On Poems 1.104.2–4. Narrow sounds were considered unpleasant
and difficult to pronounce by the Kritikoi.
45 For discussion of the term, see Romeo, Demetrio Lacone: La poesia, 162, i.e. her note to 2.15.4
onwards. I follow Longo Auricchio’s suggestion for the translation (in Romeo).
46 The text is substantially the same as Romeo, Demetrio Lacone: La poesia, though I have succeeded
in reading several more traces which make the text more secure. The only major differences are that
Romeo prints [χρ]η[ϲτὴ]ν at the end of line 2, which seems too long for the space, and that I read τῶν
ποημά[τω]ν̣,|ἃ at 49.8–9 for her τῶν ποημά[τω]|ν̣. See also Romeo, “La testimonianza di Demetrio
Lacone sul nomos pitico (PHerc. 1014 col. XLVIII).”
360 MICHAEL MCOSKER
and col. 51.4–8
4 [λέ-] . . . they are called poems because

γεται πο̣ή̣ μ̣ατα διὰ̣ of the occurring commonality
τὴν κατὰ τ[ὸν Ν]όμον throughout the Nome genre.
ἐντροχαζού[ϲ]α[ν κοινό-
8 τητα.
The previous editor, Costantina Romeo, took κοινότηϲ to mean ambiguity or vagueness
(in contrast with ἰδιότηϲ “precision” or specificity). But the word in the sense of “com-
monality” (derived from a set of features or characteristics in common) is equally
Epicurean and when Demetrius wants to say “the ambiguity or lack of clarity that
occurs,” he says so.47 All this is evidence not only of a discussion of individual genres,
but a theory of genre in which the identifying features had been worked out, and gener-
ally, for a technical language developed for literary criticism.
There are several terms which are problematic owing to the poor quality of the text.
ἀνυπότακτοϲ, however, is surely to be understood in reference to Epicurean linguistic
practice, especially the demand at Ep. Hdt. 37, that we understand what is arrayed
beneath (τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα) our utterances (φθόγγοι). Only in this way will we be able to
make reliable, well-founded judgments about the world:
On Poems II.45.2–11
2 [ἀ- . . . it is difficult to understand48 anhypotakta
νυπότ̣ακτα ποή̣[μα- poems. In fact, the poems of Polydeuces and
τα δυϲκολον μ̣[ὲν διαι- Europhronides, though some are incoherent
5 ρεῖν. και ⸌[γ]ὰ̣ρ⸍ τὰ Π̣ [ολυδεύ- and false, plainly signify, but generally they are
κουϲ καὶ τὰ Εὐφ̣ρ̣ο̣νιδου not anhypotakta . . .
διηρτημένα μέν τι-
να καὶ ψευδῆ προφα-
νῶϲ] ϲημαίνει, v καθό-
10 λ]ο̣υ δ’ οὐκ ἔϲτιν ἀνυ-
πο̣τακτ[ὰ ̣ ̣ ̣ (̣)]ο ̣[ ̣ ̣]α
In Ep. Hdt. 37, ta hypotetagmena stand for the prolēpseis which stand behind our utter-
ances. Here, the anhypotakta poems are perhaps those without any meaning derivable
47 Cf. On Poems II col. 61.5–10: δι̣ὰ γ̣ὰρ τὴν ἐν|τροχάζουϲαν ἀδηλό|τητα περὶ τοὐν̣ γλ̣[ωϲ]|ϲήμαϲιν εἰϲιν
Ἀλ̣κ̣α̣ι|οϲ̣ τε καὶ ϲαπφω κ̣[α]κ[ο]ύ|με̣ν̣ο̣ι̣ (“for on account of the lack of clarity which obtains, regarding the
aspect of rare words, Alcaeus and Sappho have both been abused”). κοινότηϲ is used twice in Ep. Hdt. 58
and only in the plural to mean “common features” as at, e.g., On Anger 24.28 and On Death 24.8.
48 The word is uncertainly restored and of uncertain meaning. Note that Mangoni’s note ad loc.
actually refers to δύϲκολον, not διαιρεῖν as written.
Poetics 361
from the text. The context is broken, but Demetrius may be saying that Polydeuces and
Euphronides wrote poems that were difficult to understand, but which signify in some
way. This is not a demand for historically or factually accurate poetry, but rather poetry
that is intelligible and is not nonsense.49
With Demetrius, we finally have substantial remains of an Epicurean author treating
poetry, and it seems that he had access to developed theories about poetry: not only did
he investigate poetry though the pragmatikē zētēsis, but he had a theory of genre, dis-
cussed the importance of communicating some meaning in poetry, and could discuss
individual poetic and rhetorical techniques in some detail.
Philodemus
Philodemus of Gadara’s interest in the fine arts is made obvious by the effort he spent on
them: five books On Poems, four On Music, and at least eight On Rhetoric.50 In On
Poems, he is concerned mostly to refute mistaken doctrines about poetry, for example,
those of the kritikoi (euphonist critics) who are the subject of Books 1 and 2. There is no
positive exposition of doctrine. Instead, Philodemus’s opinions are revealed through
occasional positive statements, often in asides, and through his refutations of opposing
positions. This state of affairs means that he assumes that his audience has read or heard
an earlier exposition of doctrine, either from his own lectures, or by reading Zeno’s On
the Utility of Poetry or Metrodorus’s On Poems. Similarly, the lack of a purpose statement
is probably due to the damaged state of the beginning of the first book.51
Thanks to the relatively large amount of surviving text and despite the lack of an
explicit statement of purpose, we can discuss Philodemus’s motives for writing the trea-
tise. In the first instance, almost the entirety of the On Poems is dedicated to refuting
opponents’ incorrect views about poetry, specifically their views about what makes
poetry good. But it is interesting to note that many of these views touch on larger issues.
For example, the kritikoi hold that poetry entertains solely through its sounds or formal
features. These views entail that the communicative content of poetry is irrelevant to the
judgment of a poem. These views undermine the power of language by allowing it to say
less than the words apparently mean. On the other end of the spectrum, Crates of
Mallos’s sphairopoiia (“sphere-making”) involves over-interpreting the text and import-
ing ideas which do not belong, while also judging it on the basis of its phonic qualities
49 It is plainly connected with Philodemus’s term ἡ ὑποτεταγμένη διάνοια.

50 On Philodemus’s biography, see Dorandi and Capasso in this volume. Previous excellent work on
Philodemus’s poetics can be found in Greenberg, The Poetic Theory of Philodemus; Pace, “Problematiche
di poetica in Filodemo”; the articles of Asmis listed in my bibliography; and Obbink, Philodemus and
Poetry, as well as the editions.
51 Ancient introductions were much shorter than we are accustomed to; the introductions to Plutarch’s
works against the Stoics and Epicureans are only about a Teubner page and a half long each.
362 MICHAEL MCOSKER
divorced from the meaning: he “tears the language away from the contents” (cf. On
Poems 5.28.33–29.7) and makes it mean too much.52 Neither approach to poetry can be
approved of because of the implications for philosophy of language, though this is not
the only objection to either group.
Because of the comparatively large amount of text which survives and its intractabil-
ity, I can only provide an outline of his key ideas.53 The art (technē) of poetry is the craft
of writing poetry or poems, which were understood to be language communicating
ideas in a form in which no prose author would set them. Content (ὑποτεταγμένη
διάνοια, underlying thought) and form mutually affect each other and, if one is changed,
the other changes as well. A suggestive passage in On Rhetoric 3 probably indicates that
poetic form in conjunction with its content produces entertaining thoughts in the audi-
ence. Poems are not mimetic (at least in any interesting way) and genre, while real, is not
particularly relevant to the judgment of poems. Poetry qua poetry is not useful, but its
content might conceivably be useful or harmful—but no poet has ever written a useful
poem. Prose is a better medium for arguments, since poetic form, festival context, and
music, inter alia, distract the audience from the contents of arguments.
The point about utility is worth dwelling on for a moment. There are two crucial state-
ments. The first is that poems qua poems do not aid either in language or in content; the
second is the claim that “no poet has written poems containing such thoughts nor could
they ever.”54 The second might be an ad hoc point mocking the Stoic critic whom
Philodemus is rebutting at that point in the argument, but the first statement stands:
poems as such do not help their audiences. Their actual contents might be helpful or
harmful, but poetic form is irrelevant to that question.
The difference between Epicurus and Philodemus is not one of doctrine so much as of
attitude. At no point can it be demonstrated that Philodemus is innovating doctrinally,
though this may be because of the accidents of transmission. His attitude towards
poetry, however, is much friendlier. Another important difference is that, while
Epicurus criticized the claims that people made on behalf of poetry’s educational value,
Philodemus is criticizing people who misinterpret and misjudge it. It is clear that a com-
plete account of poetry underpins Philodemus’s discussion, and we can find in
Philodemus traces of critical positions that anticipate New Criticism (in his tight link
between form and content) and reader-response criticism, in the importance he places
on the audience’s own dianoiai, or thoughts.55
52 For a collection of Crates’s fragments with detailed commentary, see Broggiato, Cratete di Mallo: I
frammenti.
53 See my “On the Good Poem According to Philodemus” for full discussion of details.
54 Phld. On Poems 5.25.30–34: ε{υ}`ἰ´γάρ{ο̣ι̣} καθὸ πόημα φυϲικὸν οὐδὲν οὔτε λέξεωϲ οὔτε δι̣[α]ν̣ο̣ήματοϲ,
ὠφέλημα π[αρ]αϲκευάζει and 5.17.20–24: οὐ γε[γρ]αφό̣τοϲ [τι]νὸϲ τῶν ποι[η]τῶν τ[οι]αύταϲ περιέ[χοντ]α̣
π̣[ο]ήματα διανοίαϲ [ο]ὔ̣τ’ ἂν γράψοντοϲ; cf. 5.5.6–11.
55 For discussion, see Greenberg, The Poetic Theory of Philodemus; and Rostagni, Scritti minori I,
356–443 who explicitly considers Philodemus a forerunner of Benedetto Croce.
Poetics 363
Philodemus’s Poems
One of the most immediately striking aspects of Philodemus’s poetry is its non-engagement
with Epicurean philosophy. To be sure, some poems rely on a knowledge of Epicurean
thought for the audience to get the point, but here philosophy serves poetry.56 That this
was a minor part of Philodemus’s poetic project is revealed by the fact that more poems
(including the incipits in P.Oxy. LIV 3724) refer to his Italian, Neapolitan context than to
his Epicureanism.57 It is clear that what we read now and the picture we draw of
Philodemus’s poetic production is due very much to Philip of Thessalonika’s editorial
choices when he formed his Garland; equally, it is certain that Philodemus did not write
doctrinal poetry in the mode of Lucretius. He did however hew closely to his own
strictures for good poems.
The most famous of his poems is the invitation to Piso (27 Sider = 11.44 AP):
αὔριον εἰϲ λιτήν ϲε καλιάδα, φίλτατε Πείϲων,

ἐξ ἐνάτηϲ ἕλκει μουϲοφιλὴϲ ἕταροϲ
εἰκάδα δειπνίζειν ἐνιαύϲιον· εἰ δ’ ἀπολείψειϲ
οὔθατα και Βρομίου Χιογενῆ πρόποϲιν,
ἀλλ’ ἑτάρουϲ ὄψει παναληθέαϲ, ἀλλ’ ἐπακούϲηι
Φαιήκων γαίηϲ πουλὺ μελιχρότερα.
ἢν δέ ποτε ϲτρέψηιϲ καὶ ἐϲ ἡμέαϲ ὄμματα, Πείϲων
ἄξομεν ἐκ λιτῆϲ εἰκάδα πιοτέρην.58
Tomorrow, friend Piso, your musical comrade drags you to his modest digs at three in the
afternoon,
feeding you at your annual visit to the Twentieth. If you will miss udders and Bromian wine
mis en boutilles in Chios,
yet you will see faithful comrades, yet you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the
Phaeacians.
And if you ever turn an eye to us too, Piso, instead of a modest feast, we shall lead a
richer one.
Behind the Epicurean occasion (a feast in honor of Epicurus) and the school in-joke (on
the Phaeacian philosophers), it evokes a setting in which a group of Epicurean friends
join together at least occasionally. Quite similar are 28 Sider (= 11.35 AP) and P.Oxy. LIV
3724.vii.8, the first definitely and the second perhaps invitation poems, and his poem on
56 Sider throughout his commentary, The Epigrams of Philodemos, takes a related tack and argues that
in some poems, Philodemus presents himself as a failed Epicurean.
57 Being generous, 3, 5, 27, 28, and 29 have to do with philosophical themes, if “loftier thoughts” in 5 is
understood as “philosophy” rather than “anything that isn’t drunken revelry” and 28 is taken to be the
same kind of dinner as in 27. For Roman poems, among the complete poems, only 12, on Flora, is secure,
but many from the incipit list probably qualify: iv.14, iv.15, v.29, vi.2, viii.4, and possibly *iv.25 and *vii.23.
58 Epigrams are cited according to Sider’s edition and I use his translations.
364 MICHAEL MCOSKER
the deaths of Antigenes and Bacchius (29 Sider = 9.412 AP), which also has the theme of
Epicurean grief in the face of death. It gets its particular effect from the description of
preparations for a simple, Epicurean meal, presumably a happy occasion for feasting like
those of 27 and 28, but it takes a darker turn at line 5, when Philodemus says that they
will not be out on the beach or promontory like they always used to be. Then Sosylus
responds that Antigenes and Bacchias were alive and joyous yesterday, but today they
will be carried out for burial, and the feast is turned to ash in our mouths as it is revealed
that the preparations are for a funeral meal.59
But this poem has a hint of parrhesiastic criticism in it: Philodemus is already Piso’s
“musical comrade,” that is, he is in an established patronage relationship (does ἕταροϲ trans-
late amicus?), but he needles Piso to pay more attention, and to pay more, to the group. The
best livelihood for an Epicurean philosopher, according to Philodemus, is to give lectures
on Epicurean philosophy, but what if the students are late with the tuition checks?60
Another excellent poem is 4 Sider (= 11.41 AP), about his turn to philosophy:
ἑπτὰ τριηκόντεϲϲιν ἐπέρχονται λυκάβαντεϲ,

ἤδη μοι βιότου ϲχιζόμεναι ϲελίδεϲ·
ἤδη καὶ λευκαί με καταϲπείρουϲιν ἔθειραι
Ξανθίππη, ϲυνετῆϲ ἄγγελοι ἡλικίηϲ
ἀλλ’ ἔτι μοι ψαλμόϲ τε λάλοϲ κῶμοι τε μέλονται
καὶ πῦρ ἀπλήϲτωι τύφετ’ ἐνὶ κραδίηι·
αὐτὴν ἀλλὰ τάχιϲτα κορωνίδα γράψατε, Μοῦϲαι
ταύτηϲ ἡμετέρηϲ, δεϲπότιδεϲ, μανίηϲ.
Seven years are coming up on thirty; papyrus columns of my life now being torn off;
now too, Xanthippe, white hairs besprinkle me, announcing the age of intelligence;
but the harp’s voice and revels are still a concern to me, and a fire smolders in my insatiable heart.
Inscribe her immediately as the koronis, Mistress Muses, of this my madness.61
At the age of thirty-seven and beginning to go gray, Philodemus has decided to leave his
undergraduate career behind him and settle down. Sider takes this poem as a sort of
wedding announcement and points out that precisely thirty-seven was the right age to
marry according to Aristotle (Politics 1335a26–29) and his intended bride is named
Xanthippe, namesake of Socrates’s wife. The poignancy of the poem is in its gentle evo-
cation of the inevitable ravages of age: his blood is not as hot, he can’t drink as much.
He can still have a good time, he insists, but he is slowing down a bit. The wit of the poem
is in the gentle jokes about Socrates and Aristotle.
59 For another reading of this poem, see Capasso in this volume.

60 Phld. On Household Management 23.23–36 and DL 10.121: χρηματίϲεϲθαι τε, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ μόνηϲ ϲοφίαϲ,
ἀπορήϲαντα (“and he will make money, but only from his wisdom, if he is poor”).
61 Sider, whose translation I follow, takes the genitives in the last line to depend on κορωνίδα, the
mark in a papyrus text that indicates the end of the text (or of a longer poem in stanzas, like many poems
of Sappho and Alcaeus): “the finis to this my madness.” Nisbet, in his review of Sider, took them as
dependent on δεϲπότιδεϲ: “mistresses of this my madness.”
Poetics 365
To that poem, we should join the incipit found at P.Oxy. LIV 3724.iii.14,
ὀκτωκαιδεχέτιν, “An 18-year-old [girl?],” which probably not coincidentally is the age at
which Aristotle (Politics 1335a26–29) suggested a young woman marry. It is easy to imag-
ine that Philodemus built up an emotionally resonant image in the first epigram, about
his increasing age, and then somehow undercut it with a marriage to a much-younger
woman, who perhaps was still in the partying phase of life. Alternatively, he could have
had the 18-year-old be a perfect match for the older man.
Sider suggested that Philodemus’s metrical roughness in 22 (= 5.126 AP) is intentional
and matches the vulgar tone of the poem:
πέντε δίδωϲιν ἑνὸϲ τῆι δείναι ὁ δεῖνα τάλαντα

καὶ βινεῖ φρίϲϲων καί, μὰ τόν, οὐδὲ καλήν·
πέντε δ’ ἐγὼ δραχμὰϲ τῶν δώδεκα Λυϲιανάϲϲηι
καὶ βινῶ, πρὸϲ τῶι, κρείϲϲονα καὶ φανερῶϲ.
πάντωϲ ἤτοι ἐγὼ φρέναϲ οὐκ ἔχω ἢ τό γε λοιπὸν
τοὺϲ κείνου πελέκει δεῖ διδύμουϲ ἀφελεῖν.
Mr. X gives Mrs. Y five talents for one favor, and he fucks, shivering with fear, one
who is, what’s more, God knows, no beauty.
I give five drachmas to Lysianassa for the twelve favors, and I fuck, what’s more, a
better woman, and openly.
Assuredly, either I’m crazy or, after all this, he should cut his balls off with
an axe.
The epigram as a whole shows signs of careful composition: πέντε begins ll. 1 and 3; καὶ
βιν- begins ll. 2 and 4. The incomplete oath μὰ τόν in l. 2 is balanced by the incomplete
phrase πρὸϲ τῶι in l. 4. Correption and hiatus in δείναι ὁ suggest the halting, jerky con-
junction of people. In general, the first two distichs are very balanced and information is
given in first or second line of the first distich is found in the same line of the second dis-
tich. In the final line, τοὺϲ κείνου πελέκει ends on an indistinct note of menace before the
full weight of the statement is revealed in the second half of the pentameter.
The metrical irregularities of the first line are the word division in the first hemistich
(violations of Meyer’s First and Second Laws), correption of δείναι before ὁ, and the vio-
lation of Hermann’s bridge at the same place; the form of δείναι additionally is solecistic
(intended to emphasize the fact that the other party is a woman). Here, the shaky and
jerky effect of the rhythm enacts the shaky and jerky behavior and actions (βινεῖ
φρίϲϲων) of Mr. X. The quality of the meter picks up when “Philodemus,” the narrator,
speaks about himself, becoming as smooth and suave as his actions. Of the two correp-
tions in l. 5, the first is not worrisome, but the second is less easily explained. It may have
but to do perhaps with the possibility, voiced by “Philodemus,” that he has lost his mind,
or with the same motion at issue throughout the poem. The parallel structures empha-
size the parallel situations shared by “Mr. X” and “Philodemus,” but the differences in
metrical practice show their differing degrees of confidence.
In short, Philodemus’s poetry shows his concerns for good content housed in good
form (note his usually Callimachean metrics) which, taken together, were to be suggestive
366 MICHAEL MCOSKER
of further thoughts in his audience. He wrote about philosophy, but not only Epicurean
philosophy, and, in accord with his belief that poetry cannot be useful, none of his
poems is didactic.
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus wrote a didactic epic expounding Epicurean physics, possibly
complete in six books.62 The incongruity of an Epicurean writing poetry to promote
Epicureanism motivated interest in Epicurean poetics, resulting in most of the views
canvassed above at the start of this chapter. Although the apparent incongruity has now
disappeared—at least on Asmis’s and my view—it remains in a different form: Lucretius
was not violating a ban on writing poetry, but his use of poetry as a medium for
Epicurean protreptic is still surprising.
Lucretius, as he shows in a famous passage, believes that poetic form can be useful in
the service of Epicurean philosophy (1.931–50):
primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis

religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
carmina musaeo contingens cuncta lepore
id quoque enim non ab nulla ratione videtur
sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore
ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur
labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur
sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle,
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem
naturam rerum, qua constet compta figura.63
62 For a general introduction to Lucretius, see Gale in this volume; here, I will focus on his poetics. I
intend to develop these views more elsewhere.
63 On the many poetic and rhetorical complications of this passage, see Mitsis, “Committing
Philosophy on the Reader,” and Gale in this volume. The translation is from Rouse and Smith, Lucretius
On the Nature of Things, 77–79, with modifications.
Poetics 367
(sc. I deserve garlands) . . . first because my teaching is of high matters, and I proceed
to unloose the mind from the tight knots of superstition; next because the subject is
so obscure and the lines I write so clear, as I touch all with the Muses’ grace. For even
this seems to happen not for no reason, but just as when physicians try to administer
bitter wormwood to children, they first touch the rims of the cups with the sweet
yellow fluid of honey, so that unthinking childhood be deluded as far as the lips, and
meanwhile may drink up the bitter juice of wormwood, and though beguiled be not
betrayed, but rather by such means be restored and regain health, so now do I, since
this doctrine commonly seems somewhat harsh to those who have not used it, and
the people shrink back from it, I have chosen to set forth my doctrine to you in
sweet-speaking Pierian song, and as it were to touch it with the Muses’ delicious
honey, if by chance by such a reason I might hold your mind in my verses, while you
are learning to see in what shape the whole nature of things is framed.
Lucretius reverses Epicurus’s criticism of poetry and uses the deceptive power of poetry
for a good end. And just as honey is ultimately useful in treating children, Lucretius the
philosophical therapist is licensed to deceive his audience a bit for their own good. Of
course, this means his poem stands as a response to the challenge implicit in
Philodemus’s claim that no poet would ever write a useful poem. As Bailey noted,
Lucretius is in his own view primarily a philosopher, and he treats poetry, as Gale argues,
as a “mere vehicle or adjunct” to philosophy which draws its utility secondhand from
the utility of the philosophy it contains.64 Lucretius’s project is philosophical education
and his means are poetry.
Although a contemporary of Philodemus, Lucretius departs from his opinions in an
interesting way. Philodemus had denied that poetry qua poetry was useful, and had
given reasons that no poet had ever written, or could ever write, a poem containing use-
ful contents: (i) no poem qua poem is useful, (ii) poetic form is distracting, and so (iii)
prose is the medium for arguments.65
Lucretius describes and defends his project with the famous “honeyed cup” simile,
quoted above, but it is not clear that he meets the challenge. We can imagine a dialogue:
philodemus: Poetry qua poetry is useless.

lucretius: I grant that what is most useful in my poem are the argumentative
contents, but the poetic form will make people read those arguments, who other-
wise would not have. In fact, poetic form can be illustrative of the doctrines: puns
like “ignis in lignis” illustrate the concept of atoms and objects.
philodemus: This kind of play in poetic form is seductive, but it merely distracts
from the contents.
lucretius: On the contrary, this sort of thing makes my audience pay attention to
contents which they wouldn’t care about otherwise.
64 Bailey, Lucretius De Rerum Natura, 757; and Gale, “Lucretius and Previous Poetic Traditions,” 60
and 72–74.
65 For (i), cf. Phld. On Poems 5.25.30–34 (cited above); for (ii), cf. Phld. On Music 4.140.1–14; and for
(iii), cf. Phld. On Music 4.124.11–21 (it is also an inference drawn on the basis of (i) and (ii): if poetic form
is useless and distracting, then prose is the only medium appropriate for philosophy).
368 MICHAEL MCOSKER
philodemus: Perhaps so, but how can you write a convincing argument in verse?
Prose is the only good medium for making arguments.
Lucretius now has two possible responses, besides admitting that he is not really an
Epicurean acting sincerely:66
1. Lucretius: My goal is not really to convince people right away, but to lure them to
read the prose technical works; the beauty of my poetry will lure them, but unlike
Epicurus’s “destructive lure of myths,” mine is a helpful lure of truth.67
or:
2. Lucretius: You are simply wrong to claim that it is impossible to write a convincing
argument in verse; just learn Latin, read my poem, and you’ll see for yourself.68
The first option implies a serious division in doctrine (and tactics) between Philodemus
and Lucretius. Philodemus firmly denies the possibility of just the kind of poetry Lucretius
did in fact write, but we know from Philodemus himself (and other sources) that there
were heterodox groups of Epicureans. Despite geographical and chronological proximity,
Lucretius and Philodemus may have held different views.69 But if he was just trying to get
them to read Epicurus, would it not be better to write a thoroughly enjoyable and pleasant
poem, rather than one with difficult and potentially boring argumentative passages?
Accordingly, arguments that Lucretius in some way deliberately used bad or incomplete
arguments should be avoided, since they do not do justice to the claims of real utility that
Lucretius makes throughout his work. This view simply admits that the bitter wormwood
is not really curative at all, that another medicine is necessary.
The second option seems more in line with Lucretius’s apology in the honeyed-cup
metaphor: the honey is to the poetic form as the wormwood is to the arguments; but the
argumentative medicine must be good to have any effect. This better explains the long
66 Boyancé, Lucrèce et l’épicurisme, 59 hints at the possibility: “. . . si Cicéron pour exposer le système
de celle-ci ne se réfère jamais à Lucrèce, une raison à laquelle on n’a peut-être pas songé pourrait être,
nous l’avons dit, que les épicuriens désavouaient ce poème comme l’expression autorisée d leur doctrine.
Mais Lucrèce, lui, n’avait certainement pas cru faire acte d’hérétique et nous serons de son avis.” But
Sallust, his contemporary, translated Empedocles into Latin, and Varro and Egnatius both wrote poems
De rerum natura (the former is either M. Terentius Varro or Varro Atacinus, the latter is totally unknown
and only assumed to postdate Lucretius) without, we presume, being philosophical followers.
67 Versions of this view have been held by many critics, including Classen, “Poetry and Rhetoric in
Lucretius,” 77–118; and Asmis, “Reason and Rhetoric in Lucretius.”
68 Wigodsky, “The Alleged Impossibility of Philosophical Poetry,” 64–65 provides the basis for my
second option here: Philodemus’s previous lack of experience with genuinely useful didactic poetry (i.e.
genuinely Epicurean didactic poetry) leads him to deny the possibility of it. For a committed empiricist,
this is not such a difficult step. On this view, Lucretius simply post-dates Philodemus (or Philodemus did
not read Latin), and so Philodemus did not have the empirical grounds for revising his view.
69 See Sedley, “Epicureanism in the Roman Republic.”
Poetics 369
technical passages. If he simply wanted to seduce readers into trying their hand at
Epicurus’s own works, why include so much difficult, abstruse, and perhaps boring
material? They must serve his end of winning converts to the truth one way or another,
and giving them a pleasant start down that road is a good way to do it.
Another fascinating aspect of Lucretius’s poetics is his analogy between atoms and
letters.70 In brief, just as atoms join together to form compounds and then other larger
bodies, so letters join together to form words, which join together to form statements.
He illustrates this (1.907–14) with the example of lignum and ignis, words which contain
many of the same letters. A change in the choice of letters or their position will change
the word just as surely as a change in constituent atoms or their position would change a
physical object. Diels suggests that this formed an aspect of Democritus’s poetics, for
whom Homer’s poetic achievement was an ἔπεων κόϲμοϲ παντοίων (“kosmos of all kinds
of words,” fr. B 21 DK) in which kosmos is to be understood as a unified, carefully con-
structed, complete creation.71 The analogy probably did not play a role in Epicurus’s
poetics, although Armstrong suggests that he probably used the analogy in a discussion
of language, and that its introduction into Epicurean poetics is later, due to Zeno of
Sidon.72 Philodemus is concerned with metathesis of words as a tool of critical judgment,
but not with the atom/letter analogy or metathesis of individual letters, so it seems likely
that the innovation is Lucretius’s own.
Snyder divides Lucretius’s punning into two categories: rhetorical and thematic.73
The rhetorical puns are like gilding: they adorn the verbal form with echoes of earlier
poets, stylistic play, and various sonic or visual effects. Lucretius is licensed to do this by
his conception of poetry as adornment for the contents.
The second class, the thematic puns, is used to emphasize points. These puns use
similarity of sound and form to emphasize the semantic or conceptual closeness of
related words, like mater and materies, or the distance between them, as at 1.891–92,
where in lignis . . . ignis incisively mocks Anaxagoras’s position that there were seeds of
fire in wood while at the same time pointing out that the same elements make up both
wood and fire: fire is in wood after all, just not the way Anaxagoras thought.74 This class
puts poetic play more directly into the service of philosophy by emphasizing the con-
ceptual contents of the poem without sacrificing the more purely esthetic aspects of the
rhetorical class.
I wonder if this sort of punning is itself a play on Philodemus’s view that metathesis of
poetic lines was useless as a critical tool: rearranging lines of verse or transposing them
70 See Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Metathesis,” for a general discussion of the topic and earlier
bibliography; and, more recently, Holmes, “ ‘Daedala Lingua’: Crafted Speech in ‘De Rerum Natura,’ ”
527–85 and Beer, Lukrez und Philodem, esp. 118–26. Armstrong and Oberhelman, “Satire as Poetry and
the Impossibility of Metathesis in Horace’s Satires” is a practical example.
71 Diels, Elementum, 1–14.
72 Cic. ND 2.93–4 reports Posidonius’s criticisms of Democritus’s letter-atom analogy. Armstrong,
“The Impossibility of Metathesis,” 224 suggests that the idea had been recently revived by Zeno.
73 Snyder, Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, 144, and see her whole concluding chapter
pp. 122–46.
74 Snyder, Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, 44 for this example.
370 MICHAEL MCOSKER
into different meters or swapping synonyms change the line too fundamentally for it to
be called “the same.”75 Lucretius points out that, just as all things are just arrangements
and rearrangements of the same set of basic elementa (atoms), his poem is just arrange-
ments and rearrangements of the same set of basic elementa (letters). Accordingly, each
poem—including Lucretius’s—is its own (mikros) kosmos (cf. Democritus frr. B 21 and
B 34 DK), and metathesis is useful for poetry after all: on the level of the word, it is a
basic precondition for it.
Epicureans as Literary Critics
Beyond the poems of Philodemus and Lucretius, we are in possession of two works of
Epicurean literary criticism. Neither, however, is literary criticism stricto sensu; both
deal instead with ethical lessons that can be taught using a literary text as an aphormē or
“starting point” for discussion.76 In fact, they demonstrate the principle that the sage can
discuss poetry correctly (cf. fr. 569). Further, we should keep in mind the principle put
forward in fr. 221, that any philosophical discourse which does not eliminate mental
disturbances is useless.77
The first is in P.Herc. 1570, probably containing the second book of Philodemus’s On
Wealth, though the relevant part of the discussion is very likely drawn from Epicurus
himself. In coll. 11 and 12, there is a summary of a scene in Menander’s Georgos in which
a character makes a long list of complaints about poverty. At the end of the summary, the
topic turns to philosophical criticism [On Wealth II] col. XII.15–18:
15 “τ̣ί̣ν̣α̣ γ̣ὰ̣[ρ] πρ(ὸϲ) ἑ-

κάϲτην αὐτῶν, ἀπολογητέον,” φη(ϲὶν) ὁ ἱερόϲ [“ὁ-
μοτρ(όπωϲ) περ[ι]αιροῦντ[ι] τὰ ψευδῶϲ ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων
18 αὐτῆι πρ(οϲ)τιθέμ[ε]ν̣̣[α]· τ̣α̣ῦτ’ οὖν ποιή̣ϲ̣ομεν.”78
75 This paragraph depends heavily on Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Metathesis,” and I thank him
for discussing it with me.
76 Erler, “Aphormen labein.” On Epicurean literary criticism, see most importantly Asmis, “Philodemus’
Poetic Theory and On the Good King According to Homer.”
77 Fr. 221 ap. Porph. Ad Marc. 31: κενὸϲ ἐκείνου φιλοϲόφου λόγοϲ, ὑφ’ οὗ μηδὲν πάθοϲ ἀνθρώπου
θεραπεύεται· ὥϲπερ γὰρ ἰατρικῆϲ οὐδὲν ὄφελοϲ μὴ τὰϲ νόϲουϲ τῶν ϲωμάτων ἐκβαλλούϲηϲ, οὕτωϲ οὐδὲ
φιλοϲοφίαϲ, εἰ μὴ τὸ τῆϲ ψύχηϲ ἐκβάλλει πάθοϲ (“empty is the discourse of that philosopher, by which
no human suffering is healed. For just as there is no help from medicine if it does not drive out the
illness of the bodies, thus there is no help from even philosophy, if it does not drive out the suffering
of the soul”).
78 The text follows Armstrong and Ponczoch, “[Philodemus] On Wealth,” with additional suggestions
communicated to me by David Blank. The diple in the publication is misplaced (I have double-checked
the papyrus), and so the quotation from Epicurus begins at line 15 instead of 16 (my text reflects this).
Poetics 371
“What should one say, against each of these (the accusations)? One must offer a defense,” says
the holy man (Epicurus),79 “in the same way as someone stripping away the things that men
have falsely attributed to it (poverty); so this I shall do.”
It is not clear whether Epicurus or Philodemus made the promise at the end of the quo-
tation, and consequently to whom the discussion which follows it should be attributed.
The editors argue for Epicurus and I accept their arguments.80 However, if Philodemus’s
authorship is accepted, it remains a genuine piece of Epicurean criticism of poetry.
Epicurus’s argument will not be a pure defense of poverty (i.e. defending the proposi-
tion that it actually provides a good lifestyle) but a series of refutations of the accusations
against it, probably by pointing out that poverty and its effects are irrelevant to the good
life. An example is in col. 13, in which Epicurus asserts that ([On Wealth II] col. 13.7–12):
πε̣νία̣⟨ι⟩ τιϲ̣ ἀκέραι̣οϲ καὶ ἀδ̣ι̣ά̣π̣τ̣ωτοϲ ᾖ, πολ|λ̣ῶ̣ι̣ μᾶλλον καὶ παρρηϲίαν ἔχει καὶ
ὁ γ̣ὰρ̣ τ[ρ]όπο̣ϲ τὸ ἀπαρρηϲίαϲτον καὶ ταπ̣ε̣ι̣νὸν̣̣ ἐπιφέρει, οὐχ̣ ἡ̣ πενία. ἀλλ̣’ ἐὰν ἐμ
ἀκα|ταφρόνητόϲ (ἐϲτιν).
It is a man’s character that brings on lack of free speech and humility, not his pov-
erty: but if he is pure and faultless in poverty, he has much greater freedom of speech
and is much more difficult to despise.
Menander had probably said (12.10–11) that poverty “makes such a man unfree of
speech” (ἀπαρρηϲίαϲτον̣ ο̣̣ιο̣ντο̣̣[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣] π̣οι̣εῖ τὸν τοιοῦ̣το̣ ̣ν̣). In general, Epicurus will admit
that poverty does make life hard, but he denies that many of the criticisms of it are cor-
rectly targeted. But what interests us is Epicurus’s use of Menander, a synephebe (there-
fore exact contemporary) of his, as a starting point for a discussion of philosophy.
As almost always, not much survives of the discussion, but we can safely make several
claims: Epicurus does not bother with the artistic qualities of the play but concentrates on
the accusations leveled against poverty, that is to say, its intellectual contents. That is,
Epicurus does not engage in literary criticism by criticizing the literary merits of the play,
but rather argues against the ethical attitudes that it displays. Of course, he did not need
Menander to argue about these topics. He may have simply found in the Georgos a
79 For this description, cf. fr. 130 from a letter to Idomeneus: πέμπε οὖν ἀπαρχὰϲ ἡμῖν εἰϲ τὴν τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ϲώματοϲ θεραπείαν ὑπέρ τε αὑτοῦ καὶ τέκνων· οὕτω γάρ μοι λέγειν ἐπέρχεται (“So send first fruits to us
for the care of our holy body on both your behalf and that of your children. For it occurred to me to
speak this way”). See also how Philodemus speaks of his dead teacher Zeno of Sidon at P.Herc. 1005, col.
14.6–12: καὶ Ζ̣ήνωνοϲ ἐγεν[ό]μην περιόν[το]ϲ τε {α} πιϲτ̣[ὸϲ] ἐραϲτὴϲ καὶ τ ελευ[τήσαν]|τοϲ ἀκοπίατοϲ
ὑμνητήϲ, μάλιϲ̣τα παϲῶν αὐτοῦ τῶ[ν]|ἀρετ̣ῶ̣ν̣ ἐπὶ ταῖϲ ἐξ Ἐπικ[ού]ρου κατ̣ο̣χαῖϲ τε καὶ θεοφ̣[ο]ρίαιϲ (“and
while Zeno was alive, I was a faithful lover of his and, now that he’s dead, and I am untiring singer of
hymns in his honor [hymnētēs], especially of all his virtues based on his possessions and divine ecstasies
[theophoriai] from Epicurus,”) and the anonymous Epicurean ethical treatise preserved in P.Herc. 346
(col. 4.26–27): ὑμνεῖν καὶ τὸν ϲωτ[ῆ]ρα τὸν ἡμέτερον (“to sing hymns for our savior as well”).
80 See especially Armstrong and Ponczoch, “[Philodemus] On Wealth” 137–8. Armstrong, per litt.,
adds the argument that the discussion of parrhēsia assumes that a poor man actually could stand up and
address an assembly, which (he says) was a possibility during Epicurus’s lifetime, but not during
Philodemus’s.
372 MICHAEL MCOSKER
c omplete list of the topics he wanted to discuss, but he could have simply extracted them
and stripped them of their poetic setting if he had wanted to. It seems that Epicurus found
it worthwhile to deal the cultural authority of poetry an implied blow while criticizing the
content (not the artistic merits) of a recent work by a famous, successful poet.81
The second work of Epicurean literary criticism to be examined here is Philodemus’s
On the Good King According to Homer.82 This work takes the poems of Homer as a
starting point for drawing ethical lessons for Piso and the (Epicurean parts of the)
Roman aristocracy more generally. Epicurus himself had written an On Kingship (frr. 5–6,
cf. fr. 557 and KD 6–7) and Philonides of Laodicea, a later Epicurean, spent time in the
Seleucid courts of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Demetrius I Soter, so there was some
precedent for Philodemus to follow.83
Here too the cultural authority of an author is subverted by an Epicurean’s criticism of
common beliefs. Philodemus argues that some Homeric characters are good examples
but others are bad, and he provides readings of scenes with an eye towards ethical
instruction. His goal is to provide a discussion of correct practices for the benefit of Piso
and his other readers, and Homer’s text provides a convenient aphormē, starting point,
for the discussion, since it was so well known and the subject matter was amenable. This
does not mean that Philodemus thought that Homer was any sort of moral authority,
only that his text was convenient for Philodemus’s purposes. Apollonius’s Argonautica
could have served the same end. The message, however, is still ethical and the poetry is
still just a starting point for ethical discussion. In fact, in both cases, the philosophy
could have happened without the poetry.84
Conclusion
I hope to have laid out, at least in summary, what there is to know about the Epicurean
school’s engagement with poetry throughout much of its history. Initially, Epicurus was
81 Menander wrote over a hundred plays and won eight victories and, after his death, continued to be
extremely important in Greek education; papyrus finds of his works are extremely numerous. Because
Epicurus and Menander served their ephebeia together (according to Strabo 14.1.18), Epicurus wrote his
criticism very soon, within decades at the most, after the performance of the play.
82 Dorandi, Filodemo: Il buon re secondo Omero is an edition with Italian translation, commentary,
and introduction and contains a useful survey of previous work on the treatise, its context, and the
question of Philodemus’s orthodoxy in writing it; Fish, Philodemus: On the Good King According to
Homer will replace it. See Fish, “Philodemus’ On the Good King According to Homer: Columns 21–31” and
“On Orderly Symposia in Homer” for new editions of some sections. See also Murray, “Philodemus on
the Good King According to Homer” and “Rileggendo Il buon re socondo Omero”; Gigante, Philodemus
in Italy, 63–78.
83 There is no reason to believe that Philodemus departs doctrinally from what Epicurus will have
written in his On Kingship, cf. Fish, “On Orderly Symposia in Homer,” 90–91. P.Herc. 1044 contains a
biography of Philonides and was edited by Gallo, Studi di papirologia ercolanese, 59–205.
84 In this regard, they anticipate Plutarch’s tactics in his De poetis audiendis; see Konstan, “The Birth
of the Reader.”
Poetics 373
critical of poetry due to its outsize importance in the educational curriculum of the day,
which was only distracting at best and did not help anyone arrive at the philosophical
truths which he could provide. But that does not mean that poetry was not studied
within the school: Metrodorus dedicated a treatise in at least two books which at least
touched on the topics of poetry as a technē and the education of poets. Colotes in the
next generation was able to use the prolēpsis of poetry as a paradigm case, indicating that
at least that much was uncontroversial within the school. Zeno of Sidon probably criti-
cized poetry as useless, and his contemporary Demetrius Laco discussed some aspects
in great detail, and provides evidence for Epicurean thought on genre, the importance of
meaning, and specific rhetorical effects. With Philodemus, a nearly complete theory of
poetry comes into view, though his own poems are not particularly Epicurean in sub-
stance. Lucretius remains a special case. Due to the fragmented nature of our sources,
we can only attribute views to those first known to have held them, but my suspicion is
that the views found in Philodemus were fully formed, or nearly so, in the first genera-
tion of the school, probably in Metrodorus’s On Poems. Rare examples of Epicurean lit-
erary criticism, such as those found in the discussion of Menander in [Philodemus]’s
[On Wealth II] and his On the Good King According to Homer focus on ethical lessons,
either directly rebutting false views found in the poetry under question, or mining the
poems for examples of positive behavior.
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pa rt I I
A NC I E N T
E PIC U R E A N ISM
A N D I T S C R I T IC S
chapter 15
Phil odem us a n d th e
Hercu l a n eum Pa py r i
Mario Capasso
Philodemus: From Gadara

to Herculaneum
Philodemus was likely born around 121 and 118 bce1 in Gadara (Umm Qais), a
Palestinian city located roughly 10 km southeast of Lake Gennesaret in what is today
Jordan.2 Very little is known about the history of this city. It was one of the Middle-
Eastern areas that witnessed a major diffusion of Greek culture during the Hellenistic
period. The motives that led Philodemus to leave Palestine are unknown.3 The hypothe-
sis put forward by Gigante might be correct: according to him, the Gadaran had left his
native country due to the turmoil of its civil wars.4 What is known is that Philodemus
the intellectual went fittingly to Alexandria—an important center for philosophical,
scientific, and literary studies5—and subsequently to Athens.6 Philodemus himself
recalls this in an important passage of the History of the Academic Philosophers, one of
the books from his work on the history of philosophy entitled Syntaxis tōn Philosophōn.7
1 See Angeli, “La Villa dei Papiri e gli scavi sub divo fra archeologia, filologia e papirologia,” 57.
2 See Schaller, “Gadara,” 654; Dorandi, “La patria di Filodemo,” 254–56; Leisten, “Gadara,” 729–30.
3 An overview of the life and the works of Philodemus in Longo Auricchio, Indelli, and Del Mastro,
“Philodéme de Gadara,”, 34–59; Blank, “Philodemus.”
4 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 87.
5 See Philod. Ind. Acad., Dorandi col. 34, 2–6. For a complete and updated bibliography on the
papyri from Herculaneum see Gigante, Catalogo dei Papiri Ercolanesi; Capasso, “Primo Supplemento al
Catalogo dei Papiri Ercolanesi”; Del Mastro, “Secondo Supplemento al Catalogo dei Papiri Ercolanesi”;
Chartes. Catalogo dei Papiri Ercolanesi online.
6 It is possible that Philodemus had been to Himera in Sicily as well. Cf. Sider, The Epigrams of
Philodemus, 9–10, 231.
7 See Puglia, “Filodemo da Alessandria ad Atene,” 131–42.
380 MARIO CAPASSO
In Alexandria, the cultural capital of the time and the home of the Library and the
Museum, Philodemus was able both to learn from others and to experience directly the
extraordinary things that he reports in his De signis (De Lacy col. 2.3–18), and for which
he is the only source. These things include, for example: the man half a cubit tall with a
colossal head, and the pygmies of Acoris, an area in central Egypt;8 making friends with
Stoic and Academic philosophers; and refining his talents as a poet and broadening his
education, which subsequently served him in composing the many treatises written
after his adoption of Epicureanism.9
The passage in the History of the Academic Philosophers allows us to uncover a funda-
mental stage in Philodemus’s life and formative education. In a passage from Book 5 of
his On Rhetoric (Sudhaus 2.145, 1–18), likely written in the second half of the first century
bce, Philodemus lists Alexandria among the group of major cities able to attract philos-
ophers for various reasons.
We do not know exactly when the Gadaran arrived in Athens. In one of his epigrams
(AP VI 349),10 he invokes a series of divinities—among them the Nereids, daughters of
Nereus, the ancient god of the sea; Poseidon, the powerful lord of the waters; and
Zephyrus, the mildest of winds—so that he may be brought “safely to the sweet shore of
the Piraeus” (σῷον ἐπὶ γλυκερὴν ᾐόνα Πειραέως). According to Gigante:
When Philodemus was composing the epigram . . . he was leaving Gadara, the home-
land of Meleager, where he had spent his youth in complete veneration of poetry. He
was headed to Athens, to the delightful shores of the Piraeus, in order to become a
wise man in the Garden of Zeno, who himself had moved from Sidon to Athens.
That the verses are not from someone who already professed Epicurean philosophy
is apparent to anyone reading with historical perspective, without bias or prejudice.
No one could reconcile this prayer, confident in the favor of the gods and rich in
mythological doctrine, with an Epicurean theology that isolates the gods in inter-
worlds. . . . Lucretius’s prayer to Venus was written by a Roman in a time filled with
iniquity, and written in order that the philosophy of pleasure would with rhythm
and poetic image win over the great Memmius. The prayer is not comparable to
Philodemus’s epigram, which seeks freedom from the passions that Lucretius firmly
dominated when composing his poem, and hopes to find it with the arrival to the
delightful Attic land. . . . Such subtle allusion justifies the epithet γλυκερή, which had
remained unexplained so far; it was missing the joy of salvation that I here present
for the first time.11
Gigante’s attribution to the poet of a cognizant, clear will to go to Athens—of which we

have no sign whatsoever—and to join Epicureanism and thereby be freed from passions,
8 See Capasso, “L’Egitto nei papiri ercolanesi,” 51–64; J. Delattre and D. Delattre, “Le recours aux
mirabilia,” 221–37.
9 See Puglia, “Filodemo da Alessandria ad Atene,” 37–142; Angeli, “La Villa dei Papiri e gli scavi sub
divo fra archeologia, filologia e papirologia,” 53–54.
10 Kaibel XXIV = Gow-Page XIX = Gigante XVI.
11 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 65, 68.
Philodemus and the Herculaneum Papyri 381
leaves us bewildered. The attribution of the epithet “sweet” to the shore of Piraeus is, as
Gigante himself admits, an element too “subtle” for one to be able to speak of a reference
to the “sweetness of the Epicurean message” in Zeno. In a lacunar passage from De bono
rege (Dorandi col. 30, 2–4), Philodemus speaks of χώρα γλυκεῖα, very likely referring to
the land of the Phaeacians. In De libertate dicendi (Olivieri col. 21) Philodemus tells of
the sage who is able to curb and cure passions, bringing about goods (τὰ καλά) with the
exercise of parrhēsia while keeping dangerous and licentious desires at bay (ἐπιθυμίαι
πονηραὶ καὶ γλυκύτητες). In Philodemus’s language, therefore, terms for the concept of
“sweet” do not necessarily refer to Epicurean philosophy and do not necessarily hold a
positive connotation. With γλυκερός, Philodemus might designate the land where he
has decided to go in order to change his existence, believing it will offer him a better life:
a sort of “promised land.”
In Athens, Philodemus attended the lectures of Zeno of Sidon, who was born around
150 bce and succeeded Apollodorus as head of the Epicurean school of the city from 110
to 105.12 Zeno was the scholarch for approximately thirty years. According to the testi-
mony of Philodemus, during Sulla’s siege he was probably sent into exile by the
Epicurean dissident Aristion, who, having risen to power, pushed the Athenians towards
an impossible resistance by imposing many sacrifices on them.13 When the city was cap-
tured by the Romans, Zeno regained his office, and in 79–78, when he was already old,14
Cicero and Atticus heard him speak.15 As strong and systematic an opponent of
Epicureanism as Cicero calls Zeno princeps Epicureorum and remarks how, in contrast
to the majority of adherents to the school, Zeno was in the habit of speaking “in a clear,
solemn, elegant fashion,” enough for Cicero to lament that “such a vast intellect” wound
up mixing with doctrines lacking any meaning, not to mention useless.16 It is probable
that Zeno’s lectures, which somehow fascinated the Roman orator and political figure,
helped Philodemus embrace Epicureanism with conviction. In one of his works (P.Herc.
1005/862 Angeli col. 14, 6–12), he confesses to having been a trusty admirer of Zeno
while he was alive, and after his death a tireless eulogist of all his virtues conformant
with the magniloquence and divine inspiration of Epicurus.17 As we learn from the sub-
scriptiones of papyri that have been restored to various extents, at least two of
Philodemus’s works come directly from Zeno’s lectures. The first is a work on logic com-
prised of at least three books, and from the third P.Herc. 1389 recovers fragments and part
of the final title: (Φιλοδήμου | [Κ]ατ̣[ὰ] . [. . . . . . ]η [.]εως | Ἐκ τῶν Ζήνωνος σχολῶν | γ´.18
The second work, Περὶ ἠθῶν καὶ βίων, On Characters and Ways of Life, discusses ethics,
having been composed by the Gadaran on the basis of Zeno’s lectures that he reworked
12 See Angeli and Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio,” 49.

13 Angeli and Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio,” fr. 3.
17 See Del Mastro, “Filodemo e la lode di Zenone Sidonio,” 89–109.
18 Angeli and Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio,” fr. 16, on which see the related comment
at pp. 102–103.
382 MARIO CAPASSO
and synthesized. P.Herc. 1471 recovers an unidentified book from this work that was
dedicated to freedom of expression. This is the subscriptio:19 (Φιλοδήμο[υ] | Τῶν
κατ’ἐπιτομὴν ἐξειρ|γασμένων Περὶ ἠθῶν καὶ βίων Ἐκ τῶν Ζήνων[ος σχο]λῶν | [.] ὅ ἐστι
Περὶ παρρησίας. In the book Philodemus presents the concept of freedom of expression
as practiced by the Epicurean School; the παρρησία constituted a moment of communal
search in which the master and pupil, through reciprocal benevolence and friendship,
work every day towards achieving wisdom. In synthesizing and popularizing the lec-
tures of the person who showed him the way to wisdom in the Kepos of Athens,
Philodemus puts into actual practice the ideal of supportive and affable collaboration as
conceived by the Founder. We do not know where and when the Gadaran reworked and
synthesized Zeno’s lectures. Nonetheless, if we consider the presence, among the rolls of
the Villa in Herculaneum, of a volumen containing one of Zeno’s works (P.Herc. 1533:
Ζήνωνος Πρὸς τὸ Κρατέρου Πρὸς τὸ Περὶ τῶν γεωμετρικῶν ἀποδείξεων, Zeno, Against
Craterus’s Refutation of “Demonstrations of Geometry”), in which the Sidonian
responded to attacks from the Euclidian Craterus against his essay “Demonstrations of
Geometry,”20 it is sensible to assume that the Gadaran carried with him when leaving
Athens, along with the writings of Epicurus and the school’s other founders, the works
of his master, including the texts of his lectures—materials that he very likely reworked
after his arrival in Italy.
When and why does Philodemus move from Athens to Rome? It is difficult to answer
these two questions. We can safely assume that the living conditions in Athens did not
meet his expectations. It has been thought21 that the Gadaran decided to relocate to Italy
around 75 bce, ultimately because he was disappointed by the fact that, following the
death of Zeno, whom he eagerly followed, Phaedrus was favored as successor to the head
of the school. Born around 138 bce, Phaedrus was from a noble Athenian family and
named scholarch at a late age (Cic. ND 1.33.93),22 likely around 75.23 Although this his-
torical circumstance is not in itself improbable, we have no confirmation of it.24 Probably
the death of his beloved master had deprived Philodemus of an important existential
frame of reference and this, perhaps along with the need for better economic opportuni-
ties, led him to relocate to Italy.
If, as appears likely, the Gadaran brought with him Zeno’s works and the notes from
his lectures, as well as the writings of the founding masters of the Kepos, it is clear that in
coming to Rome he intended to spread the Epicurean philosophy in Italy. The scope of
such philosophical undertaking has been debated. According to Sedley, we do not have
proof that Philodemus’s treatises had been published.25 They may have only had a

20 See Kleve and Del Mastro, “Il PHerc. 1533: Zenone Sidonio A Cratero,” 149–56; Capasso, “Per
l’itinerario della papirologia ercolanese: I,” 69.
21 See Dorandi, “Lucrèce et les Épicuriens de Campanie,” 35–48.
22 On Phaedrus see Sbordone, “Primi lineamenti d’un ritratto di Fedro epicureo,” 21–30.
23 See Dorandi, Indelli, and Tepedino Guerra, “Per la cronologia degli scolarchi epicurei,” 141–42.
24 See Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XVII.
25 See Sedley, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 97–119, esp. 103–17.
idactic purpose, and this fact would explain why none of them is mentioned in later
d
sources, with the exception of his works in philosophical historiography. After having
been challenged by Tepedino,26 and with good reason, Sedley’s thesis has been recuper-
ated by Dorandi.27 According to him, once in Italy, the Gadaran dedicated his entire
philosophical activity to the diffusion of Zeno’s thought among the Roman public, per-
haps in opposition to that of Phaedrus. For Dorandi, it was nevertheless a diffusion lim-
ited only to the public that was able to frequent Piso’s Villa in Herculaneum and there to
converse with Philodemus and read his rolls, which, as Sedley believed, had never been
published “in the modern sense of the word.”28 As a result, the adaptation of the
Epicurean doctrines to the exigencies and politico-cultural reality of Rome—which is
present in the writings of Philodemus, according to some scholars, among them
Erler29—is for Dorandi to be attributed not to the Gadaran, but rather to Zeno, who was
just a “spokesperson” and not at all concerned with being an original thinker.
We can raise the following objections to such a reductive view of Philodemus’s philo-
sophical dedication:
1. It is beyond doubt that the Gadaran is, at least to a certain extent, an original
philosophical writer. On this topic, refer to the work of Tepedino30 in disagree-
ment with Sedley, but above all to the following volumes by Gigante: Ricerche
filodemee (Naples, 1983), Filodemo in Italia (Florence, 1990), Altre ricerche filode-
mee (Naples, 1998), and Filodemo nella storia della letteratura greca (Naples, 1998).
In the last work, Gigante contends, among other things, that in the history of
Epicureanism31 and more broadly in the history of Greek literature, Philodemus
plays a role that has an “efficacy neither passive nor inert.” Gigante shows how
what we know about both Zeno and Philodemus is not trivial, as assumed by
Dorandi. It above all allows us to distinguish between what belongs to one or the
other. It allows us to identify in a decisive fashion the method of the master, and
the forms and modes in which Philodemus, while faithful to the content, inherits
and puts into practice such a method in order to articulate his deep historical and
historiographical knowledge within the context of the Roman world.
2. I am sceptical of the possibility that Philodemus only addressed a small circle of
learned men associated with the Villa (five, ten in total?), and that the papyri of
Herculaneum never left the Villa itself. This is, after all, the underlying assump-
tion of the thesis put forward by Dorandi. It is also the assumption of Sedley, who
on the other hand holds32 that the Herculaneum copies of Epicurus’s Περὶ φύσεως
demonstrate irrefutably that the treatise was in circulation in Italy, and that
26 See Tepedino Guerra, “Filosofia e società a Roma,” 126–29.

27 Dorandi, “Lucrèce et les Épicuriens de Campanie,” 35–48.
28 Dorandi, “Lucrèce et les Épicuriens de Campanie,” 48.
29 See Erler, “Orthodoxie und Anpassung,” 171–200.
30 Tepedino Guerra, “Filosofia e società a Roma,” 126–29.
31 Gigante, Filodemo nella storia della letteratura greca, 49.
32 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 142.
384 MARIO CAPASSO
Lucretius could have procured the text by having a copy produced from the very
version among the papyri of the Villa. In my view, the fact that such books were
read in the Villa does not preclude their being read outside of it. Cicero, just to
name one example, recognized Philodemus’s profound knowledge, not just in
philosophy. It is hard to believe that such recognition was not motivated by his
reading the writings of the Gadaran, and I do not believe Cicero visited the Villa
in Herculaneum! It should also be noted that from a paleographic-bibliological
point of view the rolls of Philodemus appear to have been produced by a team of
reasonably qualified scribes and correctors.33 Moreover, the presence of abbrevia-
tions and other critical markings in the books of Philodemus is known to be quite
rare. These two facts are in my opinion difficult to reconcile with this vision of a
private library, reserved and limited to the study and didactics of a master.
It is probable that Philodemus did not want to spread the Epicurean philosophy in
Rome in a systematic and, I would say, disruptive manner, as Lucretius tried to do. He
wanted, rather, to popularize and deepen, with substantial methodological and doctri-
nal loyalty to the master Zeno, those aspects he believed to be more consonant with the
audience he wanted to reach. Such an audience of course needed to possess a vast educa-
tion and the ability not simply to read and understand the Greek language, but to follow
complex reasoning in Greek on topics like epistemology, theology, and geometry, as well
as to appreciate the great erudition underlying the writings of Philodemus. Among
these people there must have been more than just the few friends of the Gadaran who
frequented the Villa, as well as a potentially more numerous contingent of the Roman
aristocracy. It was Philodemus who moved to and lived in Italy long enough to under-
stand in a deep way the public and private vices and virtues of the Roman aristocratic
circles. He adapted the doctrine of Epicurus for such people.34 Zeno could not have had
a similarly deep understanding of the Italian reality.
It is undeniable that Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was the most important
point of reference in Italy for Philodemus, as shown unequivocally by the following
records:
1. The Gadaran dedicates to him his De bono rege secundum Homerum, in which
he portrays the ideal figure of the optimus princeps; and we can indeed read in
the closing passages of this work (Dorandi col. 43.15–20): εἰ δέ τινας
παραλελοί|παμε]ν τῶν ἀφ[ορμῶν], ὦ Πεί|σων, ἃς ἔστι παρ’ Ὁμήρου, λα|βεῖν εἰς
ἐπανόρθωσιν δυ|να‹σ›τε[ιῶν], καὶ τ[ῶν] πα[ρα]|δε[ιγμά]των [...“If, Piso, we have
left aside some arguments that we can draw from Homer to improve the princes,
and some examples . . . ”.35 According to Sudhaus, it was Piso himself who had
33 I am here referring, of course, to the rolls that contain definitive editions of the texts of the Gadaran.
34 On this problem, see the formulation by Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV,
XXXVIII.
35 On this passage, see Dorandi, Filodemo, Il buon re secondo Omero, 42, 109, 132, 208; Gigante,
Filodemo in Italia, 81–83.
commissioned the treatise to Philodemus.36 It is more likely that it was the

Epicurean who dedicated it to him, and with the intention of defending him
from Cicero’s accusations.37 To Gigante, “the connection between Piso and
Philodemus . . . is deeper and more meaningful when we link the series of por-
traits of Hellenistic princes found in the Herculaneum Villa with the subject of
Philodemus’s pamphlet, which is the indication of ἀγαθὸς δυνάστης, analogous
to that of ἀγαθὸς ποιητής pursued in the Poetica.”38
2. In one of these epigrams (AP IX 44),39 Philodemus invites Piso to his humble
shack (εἰς λιτὴν καλιάδα) for a frugal lunch to be consumed on the occasion
of the annual birthday celebration held by Epicureans in honor of the
founder.40
3. In his oration In Pisonem, written in August of 55 bce, Cicero offers a testimony
of the close relationship between Philodemus and the politician: est quidem
Graecus, qui cum isto vivit . . . ; dedit se in consuetudinem sic, ut prorsus una viv-
eret, nec fere umquam ab eo discederet (In Pis. 68).
Thus, the Gadaran, a Greek poet and philosopher, once in Italy developed a close
familiarity and friendship with Piso, who was his patronus.41 Those who believe that
Piso was simply one among many of Philodemus’s patroni are unconvincing.42 Among
these are Allen and De Lacy, who believe the dedication in the De bono rege and the
invitation to lunch were mere attempts—and not necessarily successful ones—by the
Gadaran to get protection and friendship from the politician, analogous to Lucretius’s
try with Memmius, to whom De rerum natura is dedicated. Furthermore, according to
Allen and De Lacy, proof that the relationship between Philodemus and Piso was not
exclusive can be shown by two facts. First, the philosopher dedicates his work On
Rhetoric to a young Gaius.43 This person is believed to be Gaius Memmius, whose “early
connection with Epicureanism is well established.”44 Second, there was a close connec-
tion between the Gadaran and the Epicurean School of Naples, headed by Siro and com-
prised of poverty-stricken people who lived and studied together, among whom there
could not have been rich individuals like Piso or Memmius.
In my opinion, even if we only had at our disposal Cicero’s testimony, this by itself
would be enough to prove the strong tie between the Gadaran and Piso.45 As to the
36 Sudhaus, “Philodemeum,” 475–76. 37 Dorandi, Filodemo, Il buon re secondo Omero, 42.

38 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 82–3.
39 Kaibel XXII = Gow-Page XXIII = Gigante XVIII = Seider XXVII.
40 On this epigram, see Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 103–106; Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus,
152–60.
41 See Bloch, “L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in Samothrace and Herculaneum,” 485–93, esp.
490–92; Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 64–65.
42 I am here referring to Mommsen, “Inschriftenbüsten,” 32–36; and Allen and De Lacy, “The
Patrons of Philodemus,” 59–65.
43 I 222 s. Sudhaus: ἀποτεθεωρημένων τοιγαροῦν ὦ Γάιε παῖ, ἁπάντων ...
44 Allen and De Lacy, “The Patrons of Philodemus,” 64.
45 See Gigante, Ricerche Filodemee, 35–53.
386 MARIO CAPASSO
beneficiary of the dedication in On Rhetoric (or at least in the fourth book of the work,
which contains the passage where the author refers to him), Dorandi demonstrates,
albeit not flawlessly, that it is Caesar’s lieutenant Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, who
was consul in 43 bce, and who was sympathetic to Epicureanism and interested in rhet-
oric.46 Such dedication confirms what was stated above, namely that the Gadaran was
not addressing only the small circle of people frequenting the Herculaneum Villa.
Moreover, I cannot see how Philodemus’s connection with the Epicurean circle of Siro
could weaken the bond with Piso. The friendship with Siro was the result of a profes-
sional and ideological tie, quite different from that with Piso, which was evidently based
on the more tangible need for security, and so a relationship built on trust and devotion.
Where did Philodemus live in Italy? An initial answer to this question comes from the
previously mentioned epigram AP IX 44, in which the Gadaran invites Piso to a frugal
lunch for the Epicurean commemorative day, εἰς λιτὴν καλιάδα, in his “humble shack.”
According to Gigante, the epigram:
. . . is an invitation to the patronus, transpiring of a sentiment of friendship rather than

servitude, a Stimmung based on trust and devotion. The underlying situation pre-
sented in the epigram implies that the small home offered by the poet-philosopher
as a meeting point is in Rome and not on the shores of Campania: as Philippson
believed, it could have [been] a gift by Piso. . . . the tone of the invitation shows how,
in spite of the difference in social milieu, the relationship is not of subordination,
but friendship. . . . the patron has become a trusted friend, who in turn has deeper
confidence with the spiritual world of Epicurus and Philodemus.47
It is likely that the humble home of the Gadaran is to be located in Rome, and that it
had been donated by Piso is a mere suggestion (perhaps an unnecessary one) by
Philippson.48
In a passage from the oration In Pisonem 70, Cicero writes that Philodemus was
Graecus facilis et valde venustus, nimis pugnax contra imperatorem populi Romani esse
noluit. According to Cichorius, who was among the first researchers to look for autobio-
graphical data in Philodemus’s poetry, Cicero’s quote indicates both that the Gadaran
was already living in Piso’s home during the years in which he ruled that province, and
that they had met there, since Piso was imperator only during the years he was governor
of Macedonia (58–55), and since he could no longer pride himself on this title upon
returning to Rome.49 Later, in 55, Philodemus followed Piso to Italy and lived with him
in his home. I think that what can be inferred from Cicero’s passage is too weak to
establish whether or not Philodemus came to Italy following Piso. In my view, Cicero
simply wants to stress that during Piso’s time as governor of Macedonia the Gadaran was
46 Dorandi, “Gaio bambino,” 41–42 reads: ὦ Γάιε Πάν `σ´ α, πάντων, but the letter supra lineam is a
nu and not a sigma, so it should be written: Πά `ν´ σα.
48 Philippson, “Philodemos,” 2445, 2449 (repr. 230, 232).
49 Cichorius, Römische Studien, 295–97.
never overly hostile to his patronus, a fact that does not necessarily lead to the conclu-
sion that the two lived in the same house during that time.
If, as everything suggests, the Greek library in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri
was assembled by Philodemus—in the sense that he added the more substantial group
of his treatises to the original core of manuscripts from the school’s founders, collected
by him in Athens and carried to Italy50—then it is certain that he frequented the lavish
residence, which was built practically on the beach of Herculaneum and (as we will see
later on) very likely belonged to Piso himself. In such a home Philodemus might have
encountered the group of Augustan intellectuals represented by Lucius Varius Rufus,
Quintilius Varus, Plotius Tucca, and Vergil, whom he is addressing in certain books of
the work On Vices and Their Opposing Virtues, sharing reflections on ethical topics
developed in the important treatise.51
Gigante has identified two pieces of evidence for the regular presence of Philodemus
at the Villa in Herculaneum.52 The first one is AP IX 421:53
Already the rose has arrived, the chickpea in its full bloom, the cabbage stalk need-
ing to quickly be cut, Sosylos, the springing sardines, the salty cheese beginning to
set, and the foamy leaves of the curly lettuce; we are not ascending the promontory
nor are we on the prospect as ever in the past, Sosylos. Indeed, just yesterday,
Antigenes and Bakchios were playing; but today, we are now carrying them out to
be buried.54
Gigante argues that:
The epigram belongs to the short series of those written in Italy and fits naturally in
the context of Epicurean philosophy: everything is ephemeral except omnipresent
death, which undermines life, suddenly takes away your friends, and breaks the
habit of even an everyday life made of plain food and relaxing amusements after the
effort of philosophical research and strict study.55
According to him, ἀκτήν was not, “as commonly intended, the beach, but the promon-
tory,” which is to say “the tall edge of the villa” of the Piso family, whereas ἄποψις should
be the belvedere (vista point) of the building, accessible via a four-step staircase.56 For
Gigante, the belvedere was for “joint entertainment along with modest dining, in
contemplation of nature and in playing social games, particularly during the spring.” In
his view:
50 See Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 151–98.

51 See Gigante and Capasso, “Il ritorno di Virgilio a Ercolano,” 3–6; Capasso, Les papyrus latins
d’Herculanum, 45–58.
53 Kaibel XXIII = Gow-Page XX = Gigante XXXXIII = Sider XXIX.
54 English translation by editor.
55 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 70. 56 See Mustilli, “La villa pseudourbana,” 10–11.
388 MARIO CAPASSO
The reference to ἄποψις at the belvedere of the Villa helps us in a decisive way to rid
the epigrams of other mistaken references and other mistaken interpretations.57
Sider translates line 5: “But we neither go on the shore nor are we on the promontory,
Sosylos, as we always used to.”58 He considers the identification put forward by Gigante
“inviting,” yet stresses that Herculaneum was built on a promontory, hence:
May be referring in ἀκτῆς to that part of Herculaneum that juts out most promi-
nently, and in ἐν ἀπόψει to the view of the sea from that point.59
According to Longo, the findings of the recently resumed excavation of the H erculaneum
Villa instead “seem to confirm” the interpretation offered by Gigante.60 Angeli61 also
thinks that apopsis is the belvedere of the Villa. In my view, and as Gigante believed, the
epigram harmonizes perfectly with the Epicurean ideology. The bond of friendship,
the communal frugal lunch, the enjoyment of the beauty of nature, the awareness of the
ineluctible unexpectedness of death and the extreme fragility of man in the face of it,
and the grief for the loss of people dear to us are all typical motifs of the Philosophy of
the Garden. Nonetheless, I do not believe it is crucial for the interpretation of the poem
to identify the Herculaneum Villa as the meeting place for Philodemus and his compan-
ions. Of course Sosylos, whom the Gadaran is addressing, knew well the place refer-
enced by the poet.62 But nevertheless, if he wanted to mention the house of his patronus,
he would have been less vague. Ἀκτή carries three major meanings: “high shore, prom-
ontory” (e.g., Od. 5.405); “peninsula” (e.g., Arist. Pol. 1329b 11); and “prominence” (e.g.,
Aesch. Ch. 722: of a tomb). Today we know that the Villa of the Papyri was built on the
beach and expanded to at least five floors, the uppermost being the finest one on which
the owner lived and where the exedra-belvedere was located.63 The main entrance of the
building was located at the height of this floor, which was not any higher than the
entrances to most of the exclusive villas situated within the city. We can therefore ask
whether it makes sense to use the expression “climb to the promontory” to indicate
heading to the Villa in Herculaneum, as its elevation was not significantly higher than
57 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 71. 58 Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus, 167–68.

59 As attested by Strab. 5.4.8; Sen. QN 6.1; Sisenna fr. 53 Peter.
60 Longo Auricchio, “La biblioteca ercolanese,” 202.
61 Angeli, “La Villa dei Papiri egli scavi sub divo fra archeologia, filologia e papirologia,” 58–61.
62 According to Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus, 164, 168, the last two verses should be delivered
by Sosylos, but the hypothesis is unfounded.
63 On the architecture of the Villa, see Mustilli, “La villa pseudourbana,” 7–18; De Simone, “La Villa
dei Papiri,” 15–36; Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 27–39; De Simone et al., “Ercolano
1992–1997,” 10–13; De Simone and Ruffo, “Ercolano 1996–1998. Lo scavo della Villa dei Papiri,” 325–44;
Guidobaldi and Esposito, “Le nuove ricerche archeologiche nella Villa dei Papiri di Ercolano,” 331–70;
Guidobaldi and Esposito, “New Archeological Research at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum,”
21–62.
that part of the city. In my view, the ἀκτή of which Philodemus generally speaks was
probably a section of the Campania coast that offered a good view.64
The second epigram is AP XI 35, in which Philodemus invites his friends to a modest
communal lunch:
Artemidoros has given us cabbage, Aristarchos baccala, Athenagoras spring onions,

Philodemos a small liver, and Apollophanes two pounds of pork (three are left from
yesterday). Slave, get us Chian wine, wreaths, sandals, and myrrh: I want to have
them in at 4 PM sharp.65
According to Gigante, the epigram “integrates the other one, leading us to the belvedere
of the Villa” and revealing “the testimonial value of the simple life of the Epicurean com-
munity at the Villa in Herculaneum.”66 The scholar refutes the hypothesis of Cichorius,
who believed the epigram should be situated in the context of the Roman Epicurean cir-
cle of Philodemus.67 For Cichorius, Artemidorus should be the rhetorician from Knidos
(son of Theopompus) and friend of Julius Caesar (son-in-law of Piso Caesoninus), who
on the fateful Ides of March had foretold the betrayal of Caesar as he approached the
Curia;68 Apollophanes, moreover, should be the freedman of Sextus Pompeius and
expert admiral who switched to Octavianus’s side in 38 and very likely lived in Rome
thereafter. Gigante deems it:
. . . hard to think of the four dinner guests as figures of high social rank. The feast
is simple and organized in accordance with the custom, and Philodemus adapts
to his reality models in the epigrammatic tradition of the symposium ἔρανος, of
συμβολαί.69
For Sider, Cichorius’s suggestion about Artemidorus is “most attractive”; with respect
to Apollophanes, however, he does not believe he was the admiral of Sextus Pompeius,
as it is difficult to regard 38 as terminus post quem for the epigram’s composition.
Concerning the objection by Gigante, Sider observes that “if Piso could be invited to
share in a simple Epicurean fare, could any Greek be too socially elevated to be
invited?”70
I find this last observation weak. In the case of the Invitation to Piso, the patronus is
only called upon to participate in the frugal meal honoring Epicurus; he is not asked to
bring anything to help prepare the table. In AP XI 35, however, each one of the guests—
whom we can recognize as the graeculi mocked by Cicero71—offered something for the
64 If the epigram is set in Italy; but we must recognize that this is not entirely certain.
65 Gow-Page XXII = Gigante XIX = Sider XXVIII. The translation is by Sider.
66 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 76–9. 67 Cichorius, Römische Studien, 297.
68 Plut. Caes. 65; App. BC 2.116. 69 Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 78.
70 Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus, 162.
71 See Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 77.
390 MARIO CAPASSO
lunch. If they were figures of higher rank, would Philodemus have asked them just the
same for a modest contribution? I believe the guests are destined to remain in the shad-
ows. We can only say, as with Sosylos, Antigenes, and Bakchios of AP IX 421, that they
are part of Philodemus’s circle. But, as Gigante maintains, we do not possess sufficient
evidence to affirm that the epigram takes place within the Villa in Herculaneum.
In my opinion, attempting to extract autobiographical data from the poetry of
Philodemus is legitimate, as long as it is done, on one hand, without succumbing to fee-
ble hypotheses and, on the other, without falling into the temptation of a “panepicurean”
or “panherculaneum” vision of his verses.72 The Gadaran dossier of poems was certainly
enriched in 1987 after the publication of P.Oxy. 3724 (dated around the end of the first
century ce), which contained a long list of roughly 175 incipits of Greek epigrams, of
which at least twenty-seven match the epigrams by Philodemus we know from the
Palatine Anthology. This makes it probable that other epigrams in the papyrus were
composed by the Gadaran.73
Finally, it is also quite probable that in Campania the Gadaran associated with the
Epicurean Siro, master of Vergil and leading figure of the Epicurean circle in Naples.74
We do not know when and where Philodemus died. In a passage from his De signis
(De Lacy col. 2.18) he mentions “the pygmies that Antonius had recently brought from
Syria”; since this episode dates back to 40 bce, we can assume that the philosopher was
still alive then. It is therefore likely that he died sometime between 40 and 35 bce.75
It is equally likely that he died in Rome or Campania.
72 A weak hypothesis, for example, is that advanced by Cichorius, Römische Studien, 295 with regard
to AP X 21 (= VIII Kaibel, XV Gow-Page, III Gigante, VIII Sider). This is an epigram in which
Philodemus addresses a prayer to Aphrodite, asking her, among other things (ll. 3–4): “Kypris, (rescue)
the one halfway dragged from the saffron bridal bed, me, the one snowed upon by Celtic snowstorms.”
Cichorius hypothesized a trip by Philodemus to Gallia during a winter in the 50s. He was following
Piso, who traveled to get his son-in-law Caesar. But see also Philippson, “Philodemos,” 2445–46 (repr.
230), who, on the basis of the same verses, in the footsteps of Kaibel, believed that the Gadaran had at
some point been married. With regard to this, see Gigante, “Filodemo tra poesia e prosa,” 131–32; and
Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus, 91–94.
73 Which epigrams listed in the papyrus refer to Philodemus and what possible autobiographical
value they may have has been much discussed. See at least Luppe, “POxy 54,” 125–26; Sider, The
Epigrams of Philodemus, 205–25; Gigante, “Filodemo tra poesia e prosa,” 129–51; Puglia,
“Considerazioni bibliologiche e testuali sulla raccolta di epigrammi di POxy 3724,” 357–80. That the
activity of the epigrammatic poet is not in conflict with his Epicurean philosophical doctrine is shown
by Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXIV–XXV.
74 On Siro see Gigante, “I frammenti di Sirone,” 175–98.
75 On this passage of De signis, see at least Capasso, “L’Egitto nei papiri ercolanesi,” 58–63; Delattre
and Delattre, “Le recours aux mirabilia,” 221–37; Carruesco, “Le Nain d'Alexandrie (Philodème, De
signis, col. 2, 4 ss.),” 133–36; Longo Auricchio, “I nani di Antonio. Valore di una testimonianza,” 209–13.
The Villa of the Papyri

at Herculaneum
When and Why It Was Built

It is likely that the greater part of Philodemus’s life and work in Italy took place in
Herculaneum, where he frequented the luxurious building that was very probably
owned by his patronus, Piso Caesoninus, and located just north-west of the city. It was
built on the shore and for reasons of climate expertly placed with the corners, not the
sides, aligned with the cardinal directions. The Villa was divided into five floors in total.
It was one of those typical villas erected by wealthy Roman aristocrats sometime
between the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. They were located in
pleasant places all over the gulf of Naples, such as Baiae, Puteoli, Herculanum, Stabiae,
and Surrentum, so that the aristocrats could spend their leisure time enjoying gentle
climes and panoramas of the sea. The Villa, extending 253 m in length and approxi-
mately 100 m in width, for a total of at least 20,000 m2,76 had five major sections: (1) the
atrium quarter (to the south), where one of the entrances was located; (2) the square or
minor peristyle (at the center); (3) the living quarter with the library and bathroom (to
the north-east); (4) the rectangular or large peristyle (to the west); (5) the garden with
some rooms and, to the far west, the exedra-belvedere. With our present information it
is not possible to set precisely the date at which the Villa was constructed. It was com-
monly assumed that it had been built over two periods of construction: the central
frame of the domus, that is to say the atrium and the square peristyle, along with adja-
cent areas, dated back to the first half of the first century bce, whereas the rectangular
peristyle had been added towards the end of the same century.77 The recent excavations,
carried out particularly in the atrium area and the first lower level during the years
1996–98 and 2007–2008, allow us to estimate with greater accuracy the time and mode
of construction. According to De Simone and Ruffo, the wall decoration and mural
technique in the atrium area lead us to believe that the building could date back to the
period 60–40 bce, but more likely 60 bce.78 But according to Guidobaldi and Esposito,
76 This last overall measurement takes into account only the atrium floor and the two peristyles, and
not any of the lower floors. See Guidobaldi and Esposito, “Le nuove ricerche archeologiche nella Villa
dei Papiri di Ercolano,” 370 n. 129.
77 See at least Wojcik, La Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano, 36, 272. On the hypothesis that the rectangular
peristyle was subsequently added to, see also Scatozza Höricht, Nota bibliografica, 137; De Franciscis,
“Considerazioni sulla Villa Ercolanese dei Pisoni,” 621–35.
78 See De Simone and Ruffo, “Ercolano 1996–1998. Lo scavo della Villa dei Papiri,” 341–42 and
“Ercolano e la Villa dei Papiri alla luce dei nuovi scavi,” 307. Later, however, the same scholars, “I
mosaici della Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano (NA). Il quartiere dell’atrio,” 175, 177 speak of “an essentially
unitary conception of the complex, to be placed in the second half of the 1st c. B.C., around 50–30 B.C.”
and eventually they propose 40–30 bce.
392 MARIO CAPASSO
we should abandon the thesis that the building was constructed in two distinct periods.
In fact, in their view:
The open air excavation of the atrium quarter has demonstrated that this constitutes
an organic architectonic complex, surely the result of a single project, that received
few and insubstantial modifications.79
They believe the construction technique for both the atrium floor and the wall decora-
tions suggests that the Villa was erected between 40 and 30 bce. If confirmed by future
excavations, such dating could potentially have very important consequences. The Villa
might have been built when both the leading characters connected to it, i.e. Piso
Caesoninus and Philodemus, were either very old or already deceased.80
Who Built It, Who Lived in It, and How It Was

Furnished
The identification of the Villa owner has always been one of the problems concern-
ing the Herculaneum papyri. Over the course of the last two centuries, a total of
eight proposals for the Villa attribution have been put forward: (1) Lucius
Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus; (2) Marcus Octavius; (3) Lucius Calpurnius Piso
Pontifex; (4) Appius Claudius Pulcher; (5) Mammii; (6) Balbi; (7) Lucius Marcius
Philippus; (8) C. Memmius.
The credit for having organically and scientifically developed hypothesis (1) (Piso
Caesoninus) goes to Domenico Comparetti, who after an initial formulation in 187981
presented it extensively in the renowned volume La Villa Ercolanese dei Pisoni. I suoi
monumenti e la sua biblioteca.82 The volume was written in collaboration with the arche-
ologist G. De Petra and appeared in Turin in 1883. It is significant that the first attempt at
attributing the Villa was based substantially on the presence of Greek books in the build-
ing. These are the main elements on which Comparetti established his proposal:
1. The massive number of works in the Greek library of the Villa (the library con-
sisting of Epicurean texts) by Philodemus, a rather unknown author in ancient
times. This suggests that it was he himself who assembled the library. It is no
coincidence that among the writings of this philosopher there are texts that
figure as preparatory works for subsequent ones.
79 See Guidobaldi and Esposito, “Le nuove ricerche archeologiche nella Villa dei Papiri di Ercolano,”
367–68.
80 See the next section.
81 In Comparetti, “La Villa de’ Pisoni in Ercolano e la sua biblioteca,” 159–76.
82 Comparetti, “Relazione sui papiri ercolanesi,” 55–85.
2. Philodemus, who was penniless and in need of protection by a patronus, could

not have owned the Villa; it had to belong to a rich and noble man, Philodemus’s
contemporary and friend, who in that residence hosted him, or at least his books.
3. Piso Caesoninus (101–after 43 bce), who was close to Philodemus according to
Cicero and others, might very well have been the owner of the sumptuous home.
4. According to Cicero, the beautiful marble and bronze sculptures adorning the
building were the result of Piso’s appropriations in Byzantium and many other
Greek cities during his proconsulate in Macedonia.83 According to Comparetti,
after Caesoninus’s death in 43 bce, the Villa passed to his son, Lucius Calpurnius
Piso Pontifex, consul in 15 bce and proconsul in Syria and Pamphylia in 13 bce.
The strongest points in Comparetti’s argument are in identifying both the importance of
the relation between Caesoninus and Philodemus, and the relevance of the presence of
drafts among the Gadaran’s writings. The Piso hypothesis—reaffirmed by Comparetti
some thirty years later when, following advancements in the study of the Herculaneum
Papyri, he attempted to establish a brief chronology of the Villa library84—was immedi-
ately opposed, especially in Germany. The position held by T. Mommsen is well known.
He underlined the complete lack of archeological evidence for the presence of the gens
Calpurnia in Herculaneum.85 Hermann Diels did not believe in the Piso hypothesis
either.86 We owe him hypothesis (2) (Marcus Octavius). He proposed it in 1882, on the
basis of the name Μάρκου Ὀκταουίου placed, like an ex libris, under the second to last
column of both P.Herc. 993/1149 (Epicurus, On Nature II) and P.Herc. 336/1150
(Polystratus, Irrational Contempt of Common Opinions of the People). Diels maintained
that this Marcus Octavius was either the owner of these two rolls that ended up in
Philodemus’s library, or the owner of the Villa. According to Diels, the fact that the name
on each of the two rolls was from a hand different than the one that had penned the text
prevents us from thinking the name was written by a scribe. In his view, assigning own-
ership of the building to Octavius was basically no less risky than attributing it to Piso or
Poseidonax, son of Biton, whose name was in the bottom margin at the end of P.Herc.
1426 (Philodemus On Rhetoric III), and could have been either the scribe of the roll or
the owner of the volumen.87 Diels’s hypothesis has, after some ups and downs, been pro-
posed again on several occasions since 1959 by B. Hemmerdinger. According to
Hemmerdinger, the Marcus Octavius mentioned in the two Herculaneum ex libris, and
83 See Cic. De provinciis consul. 6–7; Pro Sest. 94; In Pis. 96.
84 In Comparetti, “La bibliothèque de Philodème,” 118–29.
85 See Mommsen, “Inschriftenbüsten,” 32–6. The reaction by Comparetti was rather resentful. See
Comparetti and De Petra, La Villa Ercolanese dei Pisoni, 28; Cerasuolo, “Giuseppe Fiorelli e Domenico
Comparetti,” 53–60.
86 See Capasso, “Gli studi ercolanesi di Hermann Usener nel suo carteggio inedito con Hermann
Diels,” 116–17.
87 In reality, as Bassi and Comparetti thought, Poseidonax was likely the scribe of the roll who, for
purposes of remuneration, indicated his name and the number of columns copied. See Bassi, “La
sticometria nei papiri ercolanesi,” 483–84; Comparetti, “La bibliothèque de Philodème,” 125; Capasso,
Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 45.
394 MARIO CAPASSO
who was the owner of the Villa, should be identified with the homonymous politician
who was aedile curule in 50 bce. From time to time correct objections to Hemmerdinger’s
arguments have been raised. For my part, I will only mention the extreme fragility of the
equation on which they are based: Marcus Octavius owner of only two rolls = Marcus
Octavius owner of the entire library = Marcus Octavius owner of the entire Villa. In my
opinion, the more prudent hypothesis is to consider Marcus Octavius a reader or, more
likely, the previous owner of the two rolls, which likely ended up in the library of the
Villa at the end of the first century bce.
Comparetti’s hypothesis found better footing in the English-speaking context. It was
reaffirmed on several occasions by H. Bloch, among others. In 1940, on the basis of an
inscription found in Samothrace dating back to 56–55 bce and dedicated to Piso
Caesoninus, Bloch was able to confirm the pro-Hellenism of the politician and to sup-
port the possibility of attributing the Villa to him.88 Subsequently, in 1961, Nisbet asked
whether the library of the Villa was actually Philodemus’s.89 In so doing Nisbet down-
played the significance of the preponderance of writings by the Gadaran, as he believed
that the most illustrious Epicurean philosopher of the time “had to be well represented
in any Epicurean library.” Bloch responded that the library in Herculaneum could not be
considered “just any Epicurean library.”90 If over the course of more than a hundred
years, from Philodemus’s death to the eruption of 79 ce, the Villa did not receive any
new accessions, this meant that there was a wish to respect the integrity of the collection
of books and papers of Philodemus. And that can only be explained if the Villa remained
with the same Piso family until the end. These two contributions by Bloch have some-
what strengthened Comparetti’s hypothesis, even if we have no proof that the Greek
library of the Villa did not receive accessions after the death of Philodemus, a death that,
as was said, we can conventionally assume to have occurred no later than 40–35 bce. On
the contrary, according to Cavallo, there were acquisitions of Epicurean works (includ-
ing some by the Gadaran as well) at the Villa between the end of the first century bce
and the early years of the first century ce.91
In 1971 Pandermalis brought to the debate a new consideration that thereafter could
not be left aside: the meaning and inspiration of the complex and organic sculptural
decorations of the building, and their relation to the library conserved within it.92 The
possibility that the rich display of sculptures was organized by a single person with a
precise project had already been introduced in 1923 by G. Lippold.93 Pandermalis, how-
ever, was the first to attempt to identify the owner of the house by clearly reconstructing
88 Bloch, “L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in Samothrace and Herculaneum,” 485–93.

89 Nisbet, Cicero, In L. Calpurnium Pisonem oratio, 186–88.
90 Bloch, “Review of Cicero, In L. Calpurnium Pisonem oratio, by R. G. M. Nisbet,” esp. 561.
91 See infra 420.
92 Pandermalis, “Zum Programm der Statuenausstatung in der Villa dei Papiri,” 19–50.
93 Lippold, Kopien und Umbildungen griechischer Statuen, 77. According to Lorenz, Galerien von
griechischen Philosophen-und Dichterbildnissen bei den Römern, 10 ff., a relationship does not exist
between the books of the library of the Villa and the sculptural decoration, which seems to have been
enriched until the final period.
the program that inspired the sculptural decoration and connecting that program
directly with the book heritage of the house. Having found a variety of correspondences
between the Epicurean’s writings and the ideology of his patron, Piso Caesoninus,
Pandermalis believed he could conclude that the owner had organized the sculptural
decorations according to an organic program inspired by Philodemus and focused on
the juxtaposition of res privata and res publica, the contemplative life and the active life.
On this view, Philodemus had intended to compare two notions of existence: on the one
hand, that of the erudite philosopher and Epicurean poet who lives a secluded life, and
on the other hand that of the politically active man, the orator and the warrior—the lat-
ter of which was, according to Pandermalis himself, a notion quite close to the Stoic
philosophy of the time. An examination of the style of the various relics, along with con-
sideration of some historical events, led Pandermalis to believe that the Villa’s sculptural
decoration dated back to the last decades of the first century bce. This is a rather impor-
tant conclusion, one perhaps not explored enough by others. If we indeed accept such
dating and believe that the architectonical complex belonged to the gens Calpurnia, then
we must rule out the possibility that Philodemus suggested the decorative selections of
the house to Piso Caesoninus, who died around 40 bce. It is no accident that
Pandermalis finds it more likely that the owner was the son, L. Calpurnius Piso Pontifex
(48 bce–32 ce), a friend and patron of the epigram composer Antipater of Thessalonica
and lauded by Velleius Paterculus (2.98.3) for his rare ability to reconcile the love for
idleness (otium) with an active commitment towards fulfilling his duties (negotium).94
The hypothesis of Pandermalis received important support in 1990 from Adamo
Muscettola.95 According to her, the bust originating from Herculaneum and very likely
depicting Pontifex was originally located in the Villa tablinum, along with portraits of
other members of the owner’s family. If the scholar is right, the bust represents the
unequivocal archeological testimony of the connection of the Villa on the one hand with
Herculaneum, broadly speaking, and on the other hand, with the Piso family, a condi-
tion required by Mommsen, as discussed, in order to attribute the building to this fam-
ily. For my part I would like to point out that, if Philodemus had conceived of the project
for the galleries of statues and busts and suggested it to Pontifex, this could not have
occurred before 28 bce, when the Roman noble was twenty years old. Philodemus, how-
ever, could have been ninety years old then, or already dead. Above all, I would like to
ask: can we make, as Pandermalis is inclined, all of the Villa’s sculptures fall under a sin-
gle figurative program, from the larger sculptures to the smaller ones, from the finer
ones to the less-refined ones? Let me provide just one example: the imposing statue of
Athena Panathenaic and Promachos, situated between two columns connecting the tab-
linum, an area realistically dedicated to reading the books of the house, with the squared
peristyle.96 Could it really have symbolized, as Pandermalis thinks, the ancient
94 The view now seems accepted among scholars that the Epicureans, above all in the Roman
context, permitted political engagement. See Roskam, Live Unnoticed; Fish, “Not All Politicians Are
Sisyphus,” 71–104; Armstrong, “Epicurean Virtues, Epicurean Friendship,” 105–28.
95 Adamo Muscettola, “Il ritratto di Lucio Calpurnio Pisone Pontefice da Ercolano,” 145–55.
96 On this matter, see at least Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 65–83.
396 MARIO CAPASSO
a ntagonism between wisdom and power? Is it not odd to suppose that a disciple of
Epicureanism, one who certainly did not love war even if he tried hard to adjust to the
Roman mentality, might have suggested placing in such a crucial position—i.e. in align-
ment with both tablinum openings and therefore also quite visible from the back of the
rectangular peristyle—a statue that, according to Pandermalis himself, had been appre-
ciated by reviled Stoic rivals?97
In 1980 the reconstruction by Pandermalis was refuted by G. Sauron in an article that can
be regarded as the most extreme speculation by which critics attempt an all-encompassing
interpretation of the Villa.98 Sauron begins from the fact, which he finds incontrovert-
ible, that the owner was an adherent of Epicurean philosophy. But Sauron never deals
with the problem of the owner’s identity. On his view, this antithetical principle, which
Pandermalis sees as the basis for the sculptural decoration, is the result of a flawed
methodological analysis, since it “blends the systematic usage of details, in most cases,
outside of their context, with an aprioristic concept of the intentions of the client.”99 For
Sauron, the Villa floorplan is fundamental because it shows how the building largely
replicated a Hellenistic gymnasium according to the precise choice of the owner. The
owner’s intention with such a structure was to represent the garden of Epicurus, follow-
ing a trend that became popular towards the second half of the first century bce, a trend
in which gymnasiums dedicated to Athena would mimic the philosophical schools of
Athens, which were mostly located in gymnasiums. For Sauron, the owner identified his
garden of Epicurus with the Garden of the Blessed, and so he filled it with images of the
Greek political and cultural heroes of Epicurus’s time. The reconstruction by Sauron is
intriguing. What makes it methodologically weak is its starting point: namely, taking
the building floorplan as evidence of the owner’s intentions. Relying on the floorplan of
a house to date or interpret it is risky method. It does not seem impossible that the owner
wanted to imitate a Greek gymnasium in some way, but that he wanted to identify it with
Epicurus is certainly excessive.
In 1980 an essay by Wojcik took up again the problem of the commission of the sculp-
tural decoration, as well as the connected one concerning the identification of the
owner.100 The essay anticipated a larger study, published in 1986, on the materials recov-
ered in the Villa.101 With Wojcik archeology takes over the field of research completely
and eliminates papyrology almost entirely. For her, the dichotomy between philological
analysis and archeological investigation has, in the attempt to find a solution to both
problems, given a dominant role to the content of the Philodemean and Epicurean
papyri of the Villa. The recovered rolls, however, are probably only remnants of the
building’s library. For Wojcik, the Herculaneum art gallery is inspired not by esthetic
intentions or by a sympathy for Epicureanism, but rather by a set of eclectic cultural
97 On the statue of Athena in the Villa, see at least Wojcik, La Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano, 139–41,
150–51; Mattusch, The Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum, 147–51.
98 Sauron, “Templa serena,” 69–82. 99 Sauron, “Templa serena,” 73.
100 See Wojcik, “La ‘Villa dei Papiri’ di Ercolano,” 359–68; see also Wojcik, “La ‘Villa dei Papiri’.
Alcune riflessioni,” 129–34.
101 This is discussed by Wojcik, La Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano.
t ensions. These tensions were quite common among Roman nobiles in the late Republic,
which had already largely moved on from the contrast between otium and negotium,
typical of the preceding period, to a synthetic effort aimed at recovering otium as a value,
as a thought, that distinguishes man from beast, and hence constitutes “a necessary and
useful activity for public life.”102 As a consequence, the Epicurean presence in the Villa
needs to be significantly reduced. This point, along with Mommsen’s objection, leads to
the refutation not only of Comparetti’s hypothesis, which attributes the house to
Caesoninus, but also the hypothesis of Pandermalis, who thinks it belongs to Pontifex.
According to Wojcik, the owner was Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 54 bce and
uncle of the homonymous patron of Herculaneum, who in turn was consul in 38 bce.
The philhellenism of Pulcher was deeper than that of Piso and his ties with Asia Minor
were stronger. He was a man of letters and an orator who participated in the political life
of the late Republic. Wojcik accepts the possibility that at the time of catastrophe the
Villa was being cleared out, or at least undergoing some kind of transformation. This
was in her view attested by the presence of papyri in boxes around the two peristyles and
some grain in one of the noblemen’s quarters, as well as by the altering of the tablinum
decoration.103 As Gallavotti first realized, the tablinum was intended as a monumental
entrance to the library, which was located in adjacent quarters and later also used for
displaying portraits of some members of the new owner’s family—someone different
from the Appius Claudius Pulcher who had commissioned the entire sculptural decora-
tion.104 According to Wojcik, the new building owner might have been among the
Mammii family that emerged in the Julio-Claudian period and replaced the Claudii
Pulchri as Herculaneum’s patrons. That family included both L. Annius Mammianus
Rufus, duovir quinquennalis, who lived at the time of Augustus and built the
Herculaneum theater, and the wealthy freedman L. Mammius Maximus, the Augustan
priest of the Claudian period to whom the people of Herculaneum dedicated a bronze
statue on the summa cavea of the theater itself.
Wojcik’s attempt to remove the link between the Villa and the Piso family found some
support in 1984 from Costabile.105 He identified in Latin P.Herc. 1067 and 1475 a political
and judicial oration, respectively. From this Costabile affirmed that the Greek section of
the library, which likely belonged to Philodemus, must have been incorporated into the
more general book collection of the house, which was comprised of various sections,
one of which might have included P.Herc. 817 (Carmen de Bello Actiaco) and the two ora-
tions. For Costabile, the three texts align well with the Republican ideology that, accord-
ing to Wojcik, is the basis for the sculptural decoration of the Villa. He holds that the
owner of the Villa might even have been an Epicurean or an eclectic character with
102 Wojcik, La Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano, 260.

103 On the relocation of the papyri in the Villa and the circumstances of their recovery, see Capasso,
Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 67–83; Les papyrus latins d’Herculanum, 13–22; and “Custodia e
lettura dei testi nella Villa Ercolanese dei Papiri: alcune riflessioni”.
104 See Gallavotti, “La libreria di una villa romana ercolanese (nella Casa dei papiri),” 129–45.
105 Costabile, “Opere di oratoria politica e giudiziaria nella biblioteca della Villa dei Papiri,” 591–606,
esp. 599–603. On the thesis of Costabile, see Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 54–56.
398 MARIO CAPASSO
Epicurean sympathies, but the owner was in any case a representative of the senatorial
ideology and tradition. Beside the figure of Appius Claudius Pulcher, Costabile believes
we can nominate Lucius Marcius Philippus, who was consul in 91 bce and whose phil-
hellenism is attested many times by Cicero.106
In 1987 Scatozza and Longo subjected Wojcik’s research to a strict examination, and
with good reason.107 Scatozza noticed, among other things, that we cannot always be
certain of Wojcik’s interpretations of individual pieces of the sculpture gallery, since
those interpretations are often based on the building context alone, because of the lack
of replicas of the images. Scatozza does not rule out attributing the building to the Piso
family. But given the possibility that the portraits, despite the common belief that they
had been found in the tablinum, most probably came from a different part of
Herculaneum, she deems it possible to attribute ownership to the Balbi family, the fam-
ily to which the proconsul and patron of Herculaneum, Marcus Nonius Balbus,
belonged.108 Longo, for her part, observed that the roughly 1,000 papyri that have been
discovered probably did not constitute the “remnants” of the original library, as Wojcik
wrongly believed, but rather a real specialist library. This was probably Philodemus’s
personal library and contained, as demonstrated by Cavallo, rough drafts and provi-
sional editions of books of the works Ordering of the Philosophers and On Rhetoric.109
Longo finds Wojcik’s attempt to loosen the bond between Philodemus and Piso
Caesoninus to be weak, and rightly so.
In 1987 Gigante intervened in the debate over the ownership of the building and the
interpretation of the decoration plan.110 According to Gigante, Wojcik’s giving up the
influence of Epicurean doctrine and multiplying the possible interpretations of the dec-
oration yielded a weak hypothesis. On his view, it seems most probable that Piso
Caesoninus was the owner of the building and the commissioner of the decoration that
may have been further developed by Philodemus to a significant extent. The works of
the Gadaran present by and large all the Hellenistic science and culture that we find
reproduced in the Villa. The Hellenistic rulers portrayed in the house—Ptolemy II
Philadelphus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Archidamus III of Sparta, Philetaerus of
Pergamon, Pyrrhus king of Epirus, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Seleucus I Nicator, and
Antiochus IV Epiphanes—“are not simply those under whom the philosophical civiliza-
tion surveyed by Philodemus developed, but a political model as well.”111 In fact, in his
On the Good King According to Homer, dedicated incidentally to Caesoninus,
Philodemus discussed famous rulers as negative examples (e.g. Nicomedes III
106 See Cic. De or. 2.316 and Brutus 173.

107 Scatozza Höricht and Longo Auricchio, “Dopo il Comparetti-De Petra,” 157–61 and 161–67.
108 The candidacy of the Balbi was already proposed in 1984 by Guadagno in an essay in which
doubts were raised about the attribution to the Claudii Pulchri and to the Mammii. See Guadagno,
“Note prosopografiche ercolanesi,” 155 n. 63.
109 Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 61–64.
110 Gigante, in the volume La bibliothèque de Philodème et l’épicurisme romain, Paris 1987, which
appeared in Italian in 1990 with the title Filodemo in Italia (of which see especially pp. 1–101) and in
English in 1995 with the title Philodemus in Italy.
Euergetes, Cambyses, Demetrius Poliorcetes) in opposition to the Homeric heroes.

According to Gigante, the statues of Aeschines, Isocrates, and Demosthenes can be
explained by Philodemus’s On Rhetoric. The images of Sappho, Panyassis, and
Antimachus represent the poetry on which the Gadaran has written the most; those of
Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Zeno of Citium refer, in turn, to his Ordering of the
Philosophers; and the images of divinities like Athena, Hermes, and Pan reflect the theol-
ogy of the Garden, where the gods are anthropomorphic.112
In 1994 Warden and Romano argued that the sculptural plan for the building
addressed the need to offer the observer a set of contrasts: private/public,
otium/negotium, internal/external, and order/disorder.113 According to the two schol-
ars, this message does not contradict the Epicurean philosophy of the Villa’s owner.
In 2005 the debate on ownership was shaken, albeit indirectly, by a new discipline:
archeometry. This was thanks to a rich volume by C. Mattusch that, like Wojcik’s in 1986,
had the merit of thoroughly examining and cataloging the over eighty sculptures recov-
ered in the Villa (including statues, herms, and busts, in bronze and marble).114 From
the archeometric examinations of the marble and bronze materials, as well as from
X-rays of many of those in bronze, Mattusch was able to establish the following points:
1. In the rectangular peristyle of the Villa, the vast majority of the sculptures were
made from imported marble. The fact that the figures depicted were Greek and
the materials precious undoubtedly increased the guests’ admiration for the
owners, who in turn encouraged their guests to reflect in a sophisticated way on
famous Greek rulers, warriors, orators, writers, athletes, and divinities.
2. The small bronze busts of Epicurus (three pieces), Hermarchus (two pieces),
Demosthenes (two pieces), and Zeno of Citium found in the tablinum, in the
adjacent areas, and in the library-storage echo the Roman habit, attested by Pliny
the Elder (NH 35.2.9), of adorning private libraries with portraits of famous liter-
ary figures. They appear to originate from a local workshop “that produced
bronze busts of famous literary figures of the Greek world.”115 They might have
been purchased directly by the Villa owners, “but it is easy to imagine that the
guests stopped by the workshop, located on the way to the Villa, and purchased
the busts as gifts to the hosts,” an occurrence that would also explain the pres-
ence of duplicates. Among these was a small bust, found in the tablinum, of a
woman belonging to the Julio-Claudian family (likely Agrippina the Younger,
15–59 ce, the wife and perhaps murderer of the emperor Claudius). Whoever
owned the house in the first century ce probably wanted, with this bust, to brag
about his close ties to the imperial family. Acquisitions from the imperial period
include three bronze busts found in the tablinum and depicting perhaps “three

113 Warden and Romano, “The Course of Glory,” 228–54.
114 Mattusch, The Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum.
115 Mattusch, The Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum, 294.
400 MARIO CAPASSO
generations of the same family.”116 Also acquired were two bronze busts presumably
from the reign of Tiberius.117
3. Those who inhabited the Villa between the first century bce and the first century
ce collected, as a result of purchases and gifts, all sorts of marble and bronze
sculptures, some of which were fine pieces, others mass produced.118 The variety
and duplication of the subjects prove that they had different tastes. Some sculp-
tures show a rather complacent imitation of the imperial family’s tastes.
4. Neither in the rectangular peristyle nor in any other part of the Villa does there
appear to have been a unifying decorative theme, as we are led to believe by the
considerable variety of formats, styles, production types, and subjects of the
pieces exhibited.
5. The tight bond between Philodemus and Piso Caesoninus remains crucial for
attributing the Villa to the latter. The most gripping evidence that Piso owned
the building is the merciless portrait of him by Cicero in the oration of 55 bce.
The case for Piso Pontifex is weaker. It is not possible, however, to know: first,
which pieces were part of the sculpture collection at the time of Caesoninus;
second, who eventually enriched the collection and when; and finally, if the
building had changed ownership in the course of time. The fact that Philodemus’s
writings were still in the Villa over a hundred years after the deaths of the
Gadaran and Piso suggests, at any rate, that it might have remained in the hands
of the same family.
The most significant contribution by Mattusch is to have brought a diachronic and at the
same time “dynamic” vision to the sculpture collection of the building, assembled in her
view over the course of a long stretch of time, from the first century bce to the first
century ce, and originally produced in many workshops.
Rather agnostic is Dillon. According to her:
The unusual and particular character of the portraits from the Villa of the Papyri
clearly demonstrates . . . a high level of interest and engagement on the part of the
patron in the selection of subjects. That is, these are not the kinds of portraits one
would have found readily available in a sculptor’s workshop, or the selection one
would have received in response to a generic commission for Greek portraits for a
garden. . . . The precise programmatic intentions of the patron (or patrons) who
chose the portraits for this villa are, however, difficult to reconstruct without know-
ing the identity of all the portrait subjects.119

118 According to Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen, 198 ff., the sculptural complex of the Villa,
dominated by Augustan themes, dates back to the second half of the first century bce.
119 Dillon, Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture, 42–9.
The most recent hypotheses on the building’s ownership show that there is still a good
deal of perplexity among archeologists over the Piso hypothesis. M. Pagano, after having
expressed on several occasions support for the attribution of ownership to Appius
Claudius Pulcher,120 has recently suggested the candidacy of C. Memmius,121 who was
praetor in 58 bce, an orator and literary man, author of erotic poems, and the husband
of Fausta, daughter of Sulla. He is known above all because Lucretius’s De rerum natura
(1.25) is dedicated to him. Pagano builds upon both the attested presence of the gens
Memmia in Herculaneum and the fact that during his exile in Athens (where he had
been sent for electoral fraud) Memmius “renovated the home of Epicurus.” As
Guidobaldi122 pointed out in her refutation of this suggestion, Pagano in fact misread
the episode about Epicurus’s home, of which we are informed by a letter sent by Cicero
to Memmius either towards the end of June or in July of 51 bce.123 From this letter we
learn that Memmius was planning to demolish the house of Epicurus located in the
deme of Melite, which was owned by Memmius himself and hampering his real-estate
development plans. Behind a heartfelt and pressing request by Patro, then head of
the Epicurean School of Athens, but also by his friend Pomponius Atticus, Cicero asked
the Roman politician to favor the abolition of a decree by the Areopagus permitting the
demolition of the illustrious residence. However, at the time Cicero was writing to him,
Memmius had already abandoned his development plans, although he was still showing
some resistance to fulfilling Patro’s wish.
Guidobaldi contends that the attribution of ownership to Calpurnii Pisones is the
most grounded. In her view, Pagano nevertheless deserves credit for drawing attention
to the fate of the house of Epicurus, which might actually have had “some kind of rela-
tion” to the Villa. By the mid-first century bce, in that decaying home in the deme of
Melite, there was likely still present the library of Epicurus, as attested by Diogenes
Laertius (10.17; 10.21), a library which the philosopher left as inheritance to his successor
Hermarchus, along with the house. Therefore, if we accept that it was Philodemus him-
self who transported to Italy the books of the founder of the Garden and his disciples,
the books which ended up constituting the fundamental core of the Villa’s library, it is
possible, according to Guidobaldi, that it was the Gadaran who took the books from
Epicurus’s house, then in ruins, and brought them to safety in Italy. The hypothesis by
Guidobaldi is attractive, but it does not take into account the fact that Philodemus
moved to Italy from Athens, where he attended the lectures of the then-Epicurean schol-
arch Zeno of Sidon, around 75 bce. At that time the Garden was managed, as mentioned,
by Phaedrus and was still well maintained. We do not possess any support for the idea
that the Gadaran, even later on, towards the mid-first century bce, came into possession
of Epicurus’s library.
120 The first time was in Pagano, Ercolano. Itinerario archeologico ragionato, 97 and the second in
Pagano, Gli scavi di Ercolano, 113.
121 In Pagano, “Herculaneum. Eine Kleinstadt am Golf von Neapel,” 8. See also Pagano, “Le Ville
marittime romane,” 70–71.
122 Guidobaldi, “Abitare a Ercolano,” 269–70.
123 Cic. Ad fam. 13.1; see also Ad Q. fr. 1.2.4; Ad Att. 5.11.6; 5.1.3.
402 MARIO CAPASSO
Recently Angeli124 has pointed out the problems connected with the dating of the
construction of the Villa in the third quarter of the 1st century bce; in her view this dat-
ing makes the presence of the philosopher in the Villa problematic but on the other
hand it is impossible to exclude Piso Caesoninus and Philodemus and their relationship
from the same building, based on archaeological and literary sources. According to her
Piso was the owner of the Villa and Philodemus received protection and hospitality
from him.
On the problem of the owner of the Herculaneum Villa we can establish the f ollowing
points:
1. We do not have indisputable evidence for attributing the Villa to a specific

family.
2. Such evidence can only be the result of a full excavation of the estate, which will
give us clear indications of its phases of construction and living arrangements.
3. The Greek library, with all the rough drafts and provisional editions of the writ-
ings of Philodemus, as well as the second copies of his works, presents an insur-
mountable obstacle for those who do not believe in the Piso hypothesis, which
remains the most successful and the most grounded of all.
4. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was most likely the owner of the house dur-
ing the first half of the first century bce, and for a short time thereafter; there are
no grounds for denying that he had the building erected.
5. If, as some archeologists and art historians maintain, the construction of the
Villa in its entirety dates back to the third quarter of the same century, the
chances that it had belonged to Caesoninus are slim, but still extant. Piso, who
was born in 101 bce, might have had the Villa built when he was in his sixties (if
the building was erected in 40) or seventies (if the building was erected in 30
bce). The hypothesis that it was there that the politician welcomed his protégé,
Philodemus, remains valid as well. It is hard not to think that the Gadaran vis-
ited him occasionally with his friends, the Augustan intellectuals Plotius Tucca,
Lucius Varius, Quintilius Varus, and the great Vergil, to whom he refers often in
his On Vices and Their Opposing Virtues, likely composed during the mid-first
century bce.
6. The three small busts of Epicurus, the two of Hermarchus, and the bronze statue
of a month-old female piglet found in the east edge of the rectangular peristyle
are important elements that increase, if it be possible, the Epicurean presence in
the Villa.
7. The sculptural decoration forms an articulate and quite varied whole, likely
developed, as maintained by Lorenz and Mattusch, over a rather long stretch of
time. Because of its variety it is hard to provide a univocal interpretation.
Developing a general framework can lead to erroneous conclusions. We can
grant that Philodemus offered suggestions on some pieces, but I wonder if it is
124 Angeli, “La Villa dei Papiri e gli scavi sub divo fra archeologia filologia e papirologia,” esp. 57–68.
too easy to assume that the sculptural decoration reflects the entirety of his
work, or a good part thereof. Nonetheless, if this was the case, should we not
have found traces of Philodemus’s suggestions in the wall decorations as well, at
least in the surviving section? It seems to me more prudent to consider the
sculpture gallery of the Villa to be mostly the result of subsequent acquisitions,
reflecting the tastes and needs of the various owners and the fashionable esthet-
ics of their time.
8. There is no reason not to believe that after the death of Caesoninus (we do not
know precisely when after 43 bce) the Villa passed to Piso Pontifex, who may
very well have added more Epicurean texts to the Villa’s library—at least if Cavallo
is correct in his dating of papyri from Epicurus, Metrodorus, Colotes, Polystratus,
Demetrius Laco, and Philodemus himself between the end of the first century
bce and the beginning of the first century ce.125 We cannot rule out that the
building had been built by Pontifex. In that case, however, the construction can
only date back to when Pontifex was at least twenty years old, meaning approxi-
mately around 30 bce. As D. Armstrong suggests, the Villa might have been built
by Caesoninus’s two children, Calpurnia (who married C. Julius Caesar in 59 bce
and was born in 75 bce) and Pontifex (who was born in 48 bce, twenty-seven
years after his sister), in order to honor their father and his beloved protégé,
Philodemus. But this remains a theoretical hypothesis without any evidence to
confirm it. Moreover, I wonder why Calpurnia would have chosen a Villa to
honor the memory of her father and his intellectual friend.
9. The Villa might have remained in the hands of the gens Calpurnia until the catas-
trophe of 79 ce, just like the villa of Gaius Calpurnius Piso in Baiae, which from
the Augustan period to the Neronian belonged without interruption to the
Calpurnii.126
The Greek Library of the Villa
The analysis of the graphic typology, carried out by Cavallo in 1983, has been fundamen-
tal to the diachronic framing of the Greek library of the Villa.127 The analysis allowed us
to develop for the first time a valid hypothesis on the gradual composition of the library.
The graphic examination is at times supported by testimony, so to speak, internal to the
texts. In any case, we should not forget that a paleographic dating always holds relative
125 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 65.

126 This was maintained by Adamo Muscettola, “Il ritratto di Lucio Calpurnio Pisone Pontefice da
Ercolano,” 153–55. On the Villa see also Moesch, “La Villa dei Papiri,” 9–25; on the problem of its
ownership see also Capasso, “Who Lived in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. A Settled
Question?,” 89–113.
127 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 58–67.
404 MARIO CAPASSO
value, and so the historical profile of the Greek books section that we can offer today is
susceptible to variation.
To the best of our present knowledge, the Greek section of the library is almost
entirely comprised of Epicurean texts. It appears to be formed from three principal
sources: an original one, including rolls containing writings from Epicurus and other
members of the school (Carneiscus, Polystratus, Demetrius Laco, and Zeno of Sidon),
datable back to the third, second, or, at the latest, second–first century bce; a second
source consisting of the books on a variety of topics composed by the Gadaran himself
after he came to Italy (approximately 75–40 bce); and a third group of texts by various
Epicureans that was added to the library after Philodemus’s death (end of the first cen-
tury bce–beginning of the first century ce).128
Who Collected and Brought to Italy the Books of Epicurus

and the Other Masters of the Garden?
There are two things that lead us to believe that the first stock of Greek books was assem-
bled outside of Italy.129 First, the materials date back to sometime between the third and
the end of the second century or the beginning of the first century bce. But even at the
beginning of the first century bce, Epicureanism had not spread widely enough among
educated Romans to justify a production and use for the texts of the school. Second,
some rolls (in particular those of Demetrius Laco) show signs of a peculiar graphic that,
according to Cavallo, can be located in the Eastern Mediterranean. This leads us to think
that the Herculaneum library started taking shape in Palestine or, more likely, in
Greece.130 The library might have been first collected by Zeno of Sidon, who led the
school around 100 bce, or by Philodemus himself before his arrival in Italy, of course, in
which case we can probably place it around 75 bce at the latest. Or the library might have
been collected by someone else.
As discussed, the books were quite likely brought to Italy by Philodemus in connec-
tion with his desire to popularize the Epicurean doctrines in Rome.131 It has been pro-
posed that the original core of Epicurean texts, “collected by Philodemus in Athens,
actually belonged to Demetrius Lacon, who was contemporary with most of the rolls
that were passing on his works.”132 We might be inclined to believe this hypothesis
because of the discussed ties between Laco and the Roman world; in that case,
Philodemus might have recovered them and placed them in the Herculaneum Villa.
128 For an analysis of the contents of the Greek library at Herculaneum, see Gigante, Filodemo in
Italia, 19–62; Dorandi, Filodemo in Italia, 2328–68; Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 151–98;
Delattre, La Villa des Papyrus et les rouleaux d’Herculanum, 71–105; Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur
la musique, Livre IV, XI–LXII; Longo Auricchio, “La biblioteca ercolanese,” 190–209; Cavalieri, “La
biblioteca ercolanese: i contenuti,” 57–71.
129 On this matter, see Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 60–61.
130 See Cavallo, “I rotoli di Ercolano come prodotti scritti. Quattro riflessioni,” 5–11, esp. 11.
131 See supra, §15.1. 132 See Romeo, Demetrio Lacone, La poesia, 31–32.
Very recently this reconstruction was questioned by G. W. Houston,133 who called it

reasonable, but not at all sure, and in any case “impossible to prove”; in his view the
reconstruction, although generally accepted by scholars, is founded essentially on
paleographic bases, which are necessarily approximate and moreover may be “slippery”.
To fix the time in which a text was transcribed in a Herculaneum papyrus is not to estab-
lish the era in which the papyrus became part of the book collection of the Villa, in the
sense that it may have been added to it later. Houston also notes that we do not know the
size of the Herculaneum library over time, in the sense that we do not know if and how
many rolls may have been removed because damaged, or lost because donated or loaned
and not recovered, or even sold. Moreover, according to Houston, if archeologists and
art historians are right to trace back the construction of the Villa and the sculptures pre-
served in it to a time not earlier than the third quarter of the first century bce and more
specifically between 40 and 30 (or even 20) bce, namely several decades after the arrival
of Philodemus in Italy, the argument that it was Philodemus who brought from Greece
the oldest Herculaneum scrolls weakens further. In this case, the Villa may even have
been built after the death of the man who is considered its most likely owner, namely
Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who we know is still active in 43 bce; after that year
we do not have more news about him, so he may have died in that year or soon after.
Consequently Houston puts forward two hypotheses:
1. A wealthy Roman bought a collection of Greek books (containing a certain

amount of Epicurean texts), that he later brought to Italy (to his house in Rome
or to his country villa), like Cicero, who bought or hoped to buy a Greek library
with the help of Atticus. Subsequently Philodemus may have been attracted to
those books, as well as Tyrannion and other Greeks who were interested in the
libraries that Lucullus and Sulla brought to Italy from the East. That Roman could
have invited Philodemus to organize his books, like Cicero, who after returning
from exile asked Tyrannion to arrange his library and, later, Augustus, who com-
missioned the poet Pompeius Macer with the task of organizing the Palatine
library.
2. A Roman of the early Imperial period, interested in Epicurean philosophy, pur-
chased Philodemus’s writings from his heirs and deposited them in his villa at
Herculaneum, along with others that he collected or commissioned to copy. The
presence of stichometric notes in many Herculaneum rolls could indicate that
those texts were not transcribed by slaves inside the Villa (which may have been
built at a time subsequent to that in which many of those texts appear to have
been outlined), but expressly commissioned to professional scribes who worked
in Rome, and only later transferred to Herculaneum at the end of the first century
bce. The transfer may have been an opportunity to restore the shabby scrolls, as
133 Houston, “The non-Philodemus book collection in the Villa of Papyri,” 188–89; Houston, Inside
Roman Libraries, 121–29.
406 MARIO CAPASSO
suggested by Del Mastro,134 who believes that at the end of that c entury some
volumina were restored.
According to Dorandi,135 the dating of the construction of the Villa in the third quarter
of the first century bce does not question the belonging of the library to Philodemus and
helps better explain the presence in it of the group of scrolls dating back to a
post-Philodemic era. He accepts the opinion of Cavallo136 who claims that the late
acquisitions of scrolls in the Villa’s library were due not to a “planned book increase but
rather—and always for philosophical interests—to both a sort of renovatio librorum to
replace exemplary worn volumina, especially scrolls that dated back to the third-second
century bce, and some individual copying activity.
The two alternative hypotheses suggested by Houston are not unlikely, but we can
wonder whether we need to introduce another hypothetical, undetermined person into
the reconstruction. It is Philodemus who becomes Epicurean in Athens; it is he who
attends the school library; it is he who moves to Italy, with the plan to diffuse the doc-
trines of the Kepos; he is the person who, for professional purposes, most likely picked
up and brought to Italy the most ancient scrolls of Epicurus and other Epicureans of the
first generation; as I said, he could also have brought some and acquired others after his
arrival in Italy. I add that the fundamental objections raised by Houston against the
Philodemean hypothesis are weak: it is true that it is based largely on the sometimes-
misleading paleography, but in this case the paleography is supported by relevant his-
torical and cultural considerations; and it is also true that, as claimed by Houston, to
determine the date of transcription of a roll is not to establish the date of its addition to
the library of the Villa. Houston refers to the case of P.Herc. 1149/993, containing Book 2
of Epicurus’s Περὶ φύσεως, the end of which includes the name of an unidentified
Roman, Marcus Octavius, a name also affixed by the same hand at the end of P.Herc.
336/1150, which contains the treatise Περὶ ἀλόγου καταφρονήσεως by Polystratus. While
Epicurus’s text was transcribed in the third—second century bce, the other was copied
in the late first century bce: Houston thinks that P.Herc. 1149/993 in particular does not
harmonize with the Philodemean hypothesis. On the contrary, it seems to me that there
is no conflict. Octavius may have been the owner of the two rolls: he might have lived in
the first half of the first century bce or even later and have acquired the two rolls, affixed
his name, and then sold or given them to the owner of the Villa. Neither does the fact
that P.Herc. 1149/993 has been outlined by the same hand that wrote other books of the
primary work of Epicurus (as has been said, 25, 28, and 34) and therefore was part of a
single edition (total or partial) pose a problem. Octavius could have possessed all the
rolls of that edition, which would then somehow have got into the library of the Villa. In
any case, according to Houston, the hypothesis that Philodemus collected most of the
134 Del Mastro, “Papiri ercolanesi vergati da più mani,” esp. 64–65.
135 Dorandi, “Pratiche di redazione e di produzione libraria nella biblioteca di Filodemo a Ercolano,”
71–72; Dorandi, “La nuova cronologia della’Villa dei Papiri’ a Ercolano e le sorti della biblioteca di
Filodemo,” 181–203.
136 Cavallo, “I papiri di Ercolano come documenti per la storia delle biblioteche e dei libri antichi,” 591.
books of the Villa can be accepted, as long as we do not admit that any ancient scroll
belonged to the core of the collection: a particular roll may have joined the books of the
Villa at any time in many possible ways.
Philodemus’s Works
The Early Philosophical Activity of the Gadaran:
Historiographical, Ethical, Musical, and Rhetorical
Writings (c. 75–50 bce)
To the original stock of books in the library, Philodemus added over time the works he
composed while in Italy in order to spread Epicurean philosophy. According to
Cavallo137 “in the Herculaneum Villa Philodemus—around which a circle of men of
letters and followers of the Epicurean doctrine is to be believed—he certainly wrote
part of his treatises, perhaps even most, but not all since it is possible that some of
them were composed in whole or in part before his stay in the Villa of Herculaneum,
the latter to refer to a period between the middle of the first century bce and a date
certainly after 40.”
Based on the dating of the graphic typologies in which the rolls were transcribed,
Philodemus’s philosophical production can be divided into two stages: the early trea-
tises (c. 75–50 bce) and those reflecting his mature thought (c. 50–40 bce).138 The initial
writings seem to have been works of philosophical historiography, since the oldest
papyri contain books from Σύνταξις τῶν φιλοσόφων and from Περὶ Ἐπικούρου, as well
as Περὶ τῶν Στοικῶν and Περὶ τῶν Ἐπικούρου καί τινων ἄλλων πραγματεῖαι.
Perhaps used four centuries later by Diogenes Laertius as a structural model for his
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (10.3), the Ordering of the Philosophers is a manual on the
history of philosophy, consisting of ten books that cover the entire development of
Greek thought, from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic philosophers, including the
Epicureans. The work is not a straightforward philosophical polemic. The author gath-
ers excerpts from previous philosophical historiography and relies on the principle of
succession in order to present, without hostility and for the benefit of the largest possible
circle of Roman readers, the facts and figures defining the internal development of
Greek thought. From the Syntaxis there seems to have survived a book dedicated to the
academic school (in the anepigraphic P.Herc. 1021, which contains an outline of the text
dating back to the second quarter of the first century bce, and in P.Herc. 164, which con-
tains the final version and dates back either to the end of the first century bce or the
137 Cavallo, “I papiri di Ercolano come documenti per la storia delle biblioteche e dei libri
antichi,” 585.
138 With excessive scepticism Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXXI–XXXII
argues that a chronological classification of the works of Philodemus based on the dating of writings of
various rolls is “very problematic.” For in his view, “the writing of a roll remains insufficient to date the
work it contained; one can only say that the work was already composed when the roll was made, and
nothing more.”
408 MARIO CAPASSO
beginning of the first century ce), as well as another book dedicated to the Stoics (in the
anepigraphic P.Herc. 1018, dating back to sometime between the end of the first century
bce and the beginning of the first century ce).139 From a bibliological perspective, a
good deal of interest is raised by P.Herc. 1021, an opisthographic roll showing the pro-
gressive “external” evolution of a Philodemean book.140
We cannot be completely certain that P.Herc. 495 and 558, which contain both an early
draft and the final version of the story of Socrates and his school, belong to the Ordering
of the Philosophers.141 Nor can we be certain that P.Herc. 1780, which offers a history of
Epicureanism, belongs to that work.142 Even more uncertain is whether we can attribute
to the same work two papyri recovered in very poor condition: P.Herc. 327 and 1508,
which were perhaps respectively concerned with the schools of the Eleatics and
Abderites, and that of Pythagoras.143
To the early stage of Philodemus’s philosophical activity belongs the work On
Epicurus, of which P.Herc. 1289 and 1232 give us the second book and an unknown book
(perhaps the first), respectively.144 To the same stage belongs his Treatise on the Memory
of Epicurus and Others, recovered from P.Herc. 1418. The two texts fit well in the encomiastic-
commemorative genre that was especially cultivated in the Garden, where it served as a
valid educational tool and, at the same time, an expression of the disciples’ pride in being
part of the noble Epicurean school. The first text celebrates the affability and wisdom of
the founder through a series of vignettes on the daily life of the original community; for
these vignettes Philodemus makes use of epistolary excerpts from Epicurus. The second
text similarly relies heavily on the letters of Epicurus and other illustrious figures from
the first generation of the school. A duplicate copy of this text is preserved in P.Herc. 310,
a quite fragmentary roll that, judging from the writing, might have been added to
the library after the death of Philodemus.145 The letters do not hold strictly doctrinal
content, but focus constantly on the simple moments of daily life as it happened within
the circle of those philosophers.146
139 See Dorandi, Filodemo, Storia dei filosofi, La Stoà da Zenone a Panezio (PHerc. 1018); Cavalieri,
“Filodemo, Rassegna degli Stoici.”
140 See Dorandi, Filodemo, Storia dei filosofi [.]: Platone e l’Academia (PHerc. 1021 e 164). As we will
see, P.Herc. 164 and P.Herc. 1018 were added to the library in its final stage of development, between the
end of the first century bce and the beginning of the first century ce.
141 See Giuliano, “PHerc. 495–PHerc. 558 (Filodemo, Storia di Socrate e della sua scuola?),” 37–79.
142 See Tepedino Guerra, “Il κῆπος epicureo nel PHerc. 1780,” 17–24.
143 See Cavalieri, “La Rassegna dei filosofi di Filodemo,” 17–53.
144 P.Herc. 1232 became part of the library after the time of Philodemus. On the paleography of the
two papyri, see Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 32, 50. On Περὶ Ἐπικούρου, see at least Clay,
“The Cults of Epicurus,” 11–28.
145 On the two papyri, see Militello, Filodemo, Memorie epicuree (PHerc. 1418 e 310). On other
papyri in Herculaneum that in ways resemble the same work for paleographic reasons or on account of
their content, see Militello, Filodemo, Memorie epicuree (PHerc. 1418 e 310), 81–4. For an analysis of the
recent work on the biographical activity of Philodemus, see Longo Auricchio, “Gli studi sui testi
biografici ercolanesi negliultimi dieci anni,” 219–55.
146 Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, LII dubiously attributes to this work
P.Herc. 176, which was written, however, in a handwriting datable to the second century bce. On the
A work of historiographic polemic entitled Περὶ τῶν Στωικῶν, On the Stoics, is pre-
served in P.Herc. 339 and 155. These two rolls were basically contemporary, and from
them a provisional draft and final edition of the text, respectively, have been
recovered.147
In the first stage of his philosophical activity, Philodemus also considered moral
themes and the debated problem of the educational role of disciplines like music and
rhetoric.148 Treatment of ethical matters can be found in Περὶ παρρησίας, On Frankness,
preserved by P.Herc. 1471. From the subscriptio we learn that it was part of the more
expansive treatise Περὶ ἠθῶν καὶ βίων, On Characters and Ways of Life, a work examin-
ing the most significant phases in the practice of life by which moral perfection can be
achieved and, along with it, absolute tranquility and perfect happiness. Philodemus
composed the book On Frankness by re-elaborating some lectures by Zeno of Sidon. The
central theme of the work is the relationship between the wise educator and the pupil
being educated, a relationship that is fundamentally regulated by freedom of
expression.149
Treatment of ethical matters can also be found in Περὶ μανίας, De Insania (P.Herc. 57),
and Περὶ ὀργῆς, On Anger (P.Herc. 182). These show the Gadaran’s commitment to
exploring human nature and to identifying all that can trouble humans and make them
unhappy. It is possible that they were single books of a larger work entitled Περὶ παθῶν,
although the title is not attested in the Herculaneum materials.150 The first treatise is
rather fragmentary and not yet readable in a reliable edition.151 The second, which is the
oldest text uncovered on the topic, examines in depth the phenomena and behaviors
related to anger.152 For the Epicureans, anger is a pathos, that is to say a natural phenom-
enon that needs to be controlled somehow, but cannot be eradicated. For this reason
anger can, in some circumstances, be justified even for the wise man.
The three works dedicated to the role of liberal arts in education—Περὶ μουσικῆς,
Περὶ ῤητορικῆς, and Περὶ ποιημάτων—are wide-ranging. The graphic typology leads us
to believe that the first and the second were composed by Philodemus in the second
epistolary communication within the Kepos, see Campos Daroca and de la Paz López Martínez,
“Communauté épicurienne et communication épistolaire,” 21–38; Tepedino Guerra, “Le lettere private
del Κῆπος,” 37–39.
147 An edition of the text can be found in Dorandi, “Filodemo, Gli Stoici (PHerc. 155 e 339),” 91–133;
see Sabater Beltrá, “La polémique dans la philosophie hellénistique et romaine,” 115–29.
148 For an analysis of Philodemus’s ethical works, see Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus.
149 For an interpretation of the work, see above all Gigante, Ricerche Filodemee, 55–113. The latest but
not always impeccable edition of the text can be found in Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan, [Philodemus],
[On Choices and Avoidances]. For the most recent studies on the work, see De Sanctis, “Terminologia
tecnica e hapax legomena,” 199–219; Delattre, “Le Franc-parler de Philodème (PHerc. 1471),” 271–91;
Giovacchini, “La nouvelle reconstruction du rouleau du Franc-parler de Philodème,” 293–314.
150 See Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXXVI.
151 However, see at least Bignone, “Philodemea (Pap. Herc. ined. 168 col. 1,2; Pap. Herc. 57
col. 1,2,4,5,9),” 421–22.
152 An edition can be found in Indelli, Filodemo, L’ira. See also Indelli, “The Vocabulary of Anger in
Philodemus’ De ira and Vergil’s Aeneid,” 103–10.
410 MARIO CAPASSO
quarter of the first century bce. The third was, according to Cavallo and as we will see
below, composed sometime after 50 bce.
On Music was comprised of at least four books, as we can deduce from the subscriptio
in P.Herc. 1497, the best preserved of the rolls from which parts of the work have been
recovered. The other materials are more fragmentary: P.Herc. 225, 411, 424, 1094, 1572,
1575, 1576, 1578, and 1583. For the vast majority of these, what has survived are residual
portions of the so-called “husking” (scorzatura) and the drawings.153 According to
Delattre, all these papyri belong to the fourth book of the work.154 On Rhetoric was likely
of greater length and, as it seems, articulated in at least ten books and composed over a
rather long period of time.155 The following parts have survived: the first book for
certain (P.Herc. 1427 + 234, 250, 398 (?), 410, 453, 1601 (?) 1612 (?), 1619); the second
(P.Herc. 1674 + 425, 1079, 1086, 1580, a provisional first draft, or hypomnēma, in two rolls;
P.Herc. 1672 + 408, 409, 1117, 1573, 1574, a second, final draft, in one roll); likely the third
(P.Herc. 1506, a first draft, or hypomnēma; P.Herc. 1426 + 240, 421, 455, 467, 468, 1095,
1096, 1099, 1101, 1633, 1646, a second, final draft). Such books might have been com-
posed in the period 75–50 bce. Others have also been uncovered: the fourth book
(rather long, hence stretching over two tomes, respectively found in P.Herc. 1423 + 221,
232, 245, 426, 463 and in P.Herc. 1007/1673 + 224, 1077a, 1114, 1677a); the eighth (P.Herc.
1015/832); perhaps the ninth (P.Herc. 1004); likely the tenth (P.Herc. 220, 473, 1078/1080,
1118, 1669, 1693); the other undetermined books are included in P.Herc. 238, 434, 435,
469, 470, and 1608.156 Books 4–10 were perhaps composed after the mid-first century
bce.157
As pointed out by Gigante, On Music, On Rhetoric, and On Poems represent a great
trilogy used by the author to demonstrate how the liberal arts (mathēmata) can contrib-
ute to the philosophical development of the person and certainly do not constitute an
obstacle to achieving happiness.158 Philodemus’s recognition of the value of music, rhet-
oric, and poetry marks a shift from the original position of Epicurus and Demetrius
Laco, for whom wisdom can only be obtained through the study of nature (physiologia).
For Gigante, Philodemus remains basically faithful to the masters, and yet he applies a
real cultural change to Epicureanism, one that he believes is very much needed in order
to popularize his own doctrines in contemporary Rome.
153 On the scorzatura, cf. Capasso, A. De Iorio, Officina de’Papiri, 26–35.

154 Delattre, “Philodème, De la musique,” 49–143. An edition of the book can be found in Delattre,
Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV.
155 This work still lacks a complete modern edition that would replace the one published in Leipzig
by S. Sudhaus (1892–1896). Books 1 and 2 were published by Longo Auricchio, Φιλοδήμου Περὶ
ῥητορικῆς libros primum et secundum; what is likely Book 3 was published by Hammerstaedt, “Der
Schlussteil von Philodems drittem Buch über Rhetorik,” 9–117.
156 I do not dwell on other minor papyri belonging to the work.
157 For a reconstruction of the original structure of Περὶ ῤητορικῆς, see Longo Auricchio, “Nuovi
elementi per la ricostruzione della Retorica di Filodemo,” 169–71, who corrects the preceding effort by
Dorandi, “Per una ricomposizione dello scritto di Filodemo sulla Retorica,” 59–87.
The Mature Works of the Gadaran: On Poems, Writings on

Ethics, Theology, Political Ideology, and Gnoseology (c. 50–40 bce)
The Gadaran completed his engagé trilogy on the liberal arts with On Poems, which he
began to write sometime after the mid-first century bce, as we are led to believe by a
paleographic examination of the rolls. The work comprised at least five books, of which,
according to the reconstruction by Janko, we can be certain the following survived: the
fourth (in P.Herc. 207), and the fifth (in P.Herc. 1581, 403, 407, 228, 1425, from which we
have recovered the entire book, and in P.Herc. 1538, which preserves only the second
half), which was perhaps dedicated to Calpurnius.159 It is also likely that the first book
survived (in P.Herc. 444, 460, 466, 1073, 1074a, 1081a), the second (in P.Herc. 1074b, 1419
frr. 11–12, 14–16, 18, 1677a, 1081b, 1676, 994), and the third (in P.Herc. 1087, 1403).160 The
position held by Philodemus regarding poetry is, in comparison to other topics, much
looser than Epicurus’s. The founder decisively condemned poetry, whereas for
Philodemus the contrast between philosophy and poetry was much less clear; as we
have seen, he composed epigrams and resorted more frequently than Epicurus to poetry
and concepts expressed by poets in order to render his demonstrations more lively and
effective. According to Janko, one of the goals of the treatise was to demonstrate, in an
age with high levels of education, that wise Epicureans could ponder the greatest works
of Greek literature on equal footing with philosophical rivals.161 The Gadaran was more
generous towards cultured people than Epicurus was, for he wrote that “only educated
people can understand [poetry], and above all [its] excellence.”162 It would not have
been fitting for a leading Epicurean of the time not to know, and to admit to not know-
ing, the great classics of Greek literature.
P.Herc. 1507 dates back to the second half of the first century bce and contains Περὶ
τοῦ καθ’ Ὅμηρον ἀγαθοῦ βασιλἐως, On the Good King According to Homer.163 This was a
rather original work in which Philodemus used Homeric models to show the figure of
the optimus princeps to Piso Caesoninus, to whom the writing is dedicated and who was
likely the owner of the Villa. According to the Gadaran, the good sovereign should be,
among other things, virtuous, gentle, and balanced, since leadership is consolidated by
benevolence and friendship—both Epicurean virtues.164
From the graphic typology, P.Herc. 1005/862 can be dated back to the second half of
the first century. It contains the first book of a polemical treatise, of which unfortunately
159 See at least Janko, Philodemus, On Poems, Book 1, 12–13.

160 Recent editions of Book 5 can be found in Mangoni, Filodemo, Il quinto libro della Poetica; of
Book 1 in Janko, Philodemus, On Poems, Book 1; of Books 3 and 4 in Janko, Philodemus, On Poems,
Books 3–4, with the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets.
161 Janko, Philodemus, On Poems, Books 3–4, with the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets, 223.
162 Poem. 5 col. 36, 10–13 Mangoni.
163 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 42–43, 46, 55–56.
164 An edition of the text can be found in Dorandi, Filodemo, Il buon re secondo Omero. See also
Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 81–101; for other points of contact with Vergil’s Aeneid, see in particular
Fish, “Anger, Philodemus’ Good King, and the Helen Episode of Aeneid 2.567–589,” 111–38.
412 MARIO CAPASSO
the title is not preserved entirely, so two possible restorations have been proposed: Πρὸς
τοὺς φασ̣κοβυβλιακοὺς (Del Mastro)165 or φαυ̣λ̣οβυβλιακούς (Puglia).166
Philodemus addressed the writing to his school companions, criticizing some of the
Epicureans who had disagreements with the Athenian school, led by Zeno of Sidon, on
interpretations of certain aspects of the founding masters’ thought, such as on the ven-
eration of the wise, on the organization and goals of doctrinal compendia, and on the
fight against encyclopedic knowledge.167 A second copy of that book is contained in
P.Herc. 1485.168
In the work Περὶ τῶν κακιῶν καὶ τῶν ἀντικειμένων ἀρετῶν, On Vices and Their
Opposing Virtues, the Gadaran is mostly focused on the exposition of ethical problems
and the solutions by which to resolve them.169 As such it is “the true counterpart to the
already published On Characters and Ways of Life.”170 The title of this treatise has come
to us in these three other versions: Περὶ τῶν κακιῶν καὶ τῶν ἀντικειμένων ἀρητῶν ἐν οἷς
εἰσι καὶ περὶ ἅ, Περὶ κακιῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν οἷς εἰσι καὶ περὶ ἅ, Περὶ κακιῶν. The four versions
of the title show beyond any doubt, as already observed, that the attention of Philodemus
as philosophus medicans was essentially directed at vices and their therapy.171 The analy-
sis of a vice was the principal issue, and any reference to its contrasting virtue was made
in the context of that analysis. The more extended version of the title is significant and
can be translated: On Vices and Their Opposing Virtues, Of What They Consist and the
Things Close to Them. Philodemus thus intends a truly complete examination of the
vices. They are analyzed in their totality: in relation to their opposing virtues, in their
constitutive structure and, finally, in relation to whatever is somehow related to them.
The treatment therefore included that which is similar to the vices in the sense that the
author, having identified a vice, examined it at length by dwelling on all the negative
behaviors that can be considered an expression of that vice. In such an arrangment there
was, of course, a place for analyzing on occasion the virtue opposing the vice in ques-
tion. But that analysis remained in the context of the analysis of the vice such that there
was not an alternating exposition whereby one book dedicated to a specific vice was fol-
lowed by one in which the opposing virtue was discussed. In the same book one vice was
discussed, and possibly the contrasting virtue. The breadth of Philodemus’s expositive
project is confirmed by the total number of books comprising the work: at least ten.172
165 Del Mastro, “Per la ricostruzione del primo libro del trattato di Filodemo,” 85–96.
166 Puglia, “Il misterioso titolo del Πρὸς τούς di Filodemo (P.Herc. 1005/862, 1485),” 119–24.
167 An edition of the text can be found in Angeli, Filodemo, Agli amici di scuola (PHerc. 1005).
168 See Capasso, “Un libro filodemeo in due esemplari,” 139–48. See also Janko, Philodemus, On
Poems, Books 3–4, with the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets, 30.
169 The ethical problems appear by far to be those dearest to the heart of the Gadaran. See Delattre,
Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXXVIII.
171 See Capasso, “Les livres sur la flatterie dans le De vitiis de Philodème,” 182.
172 On this matter, see Capasso, “Les livres sur la flatterie dans le De vitiis de Philodème,” 180
and n. 5.
Based on the graphical analysis of the materials, Cavallo dates the work “sometime after
the first half of the 1st century B.C.”173
A total of twenty-four papyri have been attributed at different times to De vitiis. We
are currently missing a modern edition of the full work. We can, in any case, ascribe to it
with either certainty or great likelihood the following rolls: Book 1: Περὶ κολακείας, On
Flattery (P.Herc. 222, perhaps with P.Herc. 223, 1082, 1089, 1092, 1643, 1675); Book 2 (?):
Περὶ τῶν κολακείᾳ ὁμοειδῶν, On the Vices Similar to Flattery (P.Herc. 1457); an uncertain
book, possibly Περὶ φιλαργυρίας, On Greed (P.Herc. 253, 415, 465, 1090, 1613, 896);
another uncertain book, possibly Περὶ διαβολῆς, On Slander (P.Herc. Paris 2); Book 9:
Περὶ οἰκονομίας, On Economy (P.Herc. 1424); and Book 10: Περὶ ὑπερηφανίας, On
Arrogance (P.Herc. 1008).174 The fact that the work opened with at least a couple of books
dedicated to flattery and its related vices can be explained: the author must have felt the
urgency to analyze what was in his view the most pervasive and corrosive vice in Rome
at that time. In P.Herc. 222, the Gadaran strongly denies that a parallel exists between the
behavior of the scholar and that of the flatterer: the action of the former and not the lat-
ter has a pedagogical goal and does not corrupt, but rather aims at revealing the vices of
men so that they will be freed from them.175 The author later touches upon the differ-
ence between flattery and friendship (the virtue which was for the Epicureans opposed
to kolakeia, according to the Aristotelian scheme), and upon the limit to be given to the
love of glory.176 From the very fragmentary P.Herc. 1089177 and 223178 we find
Philodemus presenting the relation between flattery and power, recalling famous flat-
terers like Timagoras, the Athenian ambassador to King Artaxerxes II in 367 bce. In this
context, the figure of Alexander Magnus was paradigmatic. This is shown in P.Herc.
1675,179 where the author illustrates the different attitudes towards the Macedonian
monarch displayed by two intellectuals in his entourage: the philosopher Anaxarchus of
Abdera, who on one occasion was treated with insolence by the ruler and responded
with a clever threat,180 and the historian Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was guilty of
having a contradictory attitude towards Alexander insofar as he refused to perform
proskynesis before him, but wrote about him as if he were a god.181 For Philodemus the
difference between flattery and wisdom was clear-cut and did not allow for compro-
mise. In his eyes, the comportment of those two men in the face of power was therefore
certainly not exemplary.
173 Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 64. See also 41–42, 46, 54–55 in the same work.
174 See Capasso, “Per una ricostruzione del De vitiis di Filodemo,” 97–104.
175 The edition can be found in Gargiulo, “PHerc. 222: Filodemo sull’adulazione,” 103–27.
176 See Gargiulo, “PHerc. 222: Filodemo sull’adulazione,” 104–105. In this context see also Glad, Paul
and Philodemus, 108–10.
177 The edition can be found in Acosta Méndez, “PHerc. 1089: Filodemo “Sobre la adulación,”
121–38.
178 See Longo Auricchio and Tepedino Guerra, “Chi è Timasagora?,” 405–13.
179 The incomplete and hardly impeccable edition can be found in De Falco, “Appunti sul Περὶ
κολακείας di Filodemo,” 19–26.
180 See Capasso, “Les livres sur la flatterie dans le De vitiis de Philodème,” 190–94.
181 See Capasso, “Un intellettuale e il suo re,” 47–52.
414 MARIO CAPASSO
In P.Herc. 1457, which is dedicated to an examination of the vices related to flattery, the
Gadaran illustrates the behavior, among other things, of the person who is always
hurrying to talk about other people’s words and attitudes, as well as the behavior of the
ἄρεσκος, the pleaser, a peculiar type of flatterer who is always ready to agree and
comply.182 Philodemus (col. VI, fr. 7 and col. VII) quotes chapter 5 of Theophrastus’s
Characters, and this text provided by the Epicurean is the oldest we possess.183
P.Herc. 1082 is very fragmentary.184 In one of its passages, Philodemus speaks directly
to his four Roman friends belonging to the Augustan circle: Lucius Varius Rufus, Vergil,
Quintilius Varus, and Plotius Tucca. These are the same friends he addresses in P.Herc.
253, which concerns φιλαργυρία and is probably part of Περὶ κακιῶν. In this work, then,
the Epicurean has as interlocutors the same four erudite men who likely contributed to
his own philosophical thinking, as we learn from the last column of P.Herc. Paris 2. This
last text was written with a graphic typology close to the vast majority of the papyri
linked to the Περὶ κακιῶν, and it likely contained a book by Philodemus dedicated to
slander.185 Based on this third mention of the name Varius Rufus, in 1991 Gigante pro-
posed again, and with new arguments, that the poem The Battle of Actium, preserved in
P.Herc. 817, should be attributed to this intellectual in the Augustan circle who was an
elegiac, epic, and tragic poet.186 According to Gigante, since Horace (Sat. 1, 10, 43–44;
Carm. 1.6.1–4; Epist. 1, 16, 25–29) attests with certainty that Varius wrote an epic poem in
several books in honor of Augustus and Agrippa, it could be that this poem was the one
contained in P.Herc. 817. In his On Vices and Their Opposing Virtues, Philodemus also
addresses his Augustan friends, Varius among them, and therefore it is not at all odd
that the epic poem composed by this friend was present among the books of the
Herculaneum Villa. For Gigante, Philodemus (whose treatise On Death, at least accord-
ing to Rostagni,187 influenced a homonymous poem by Varius based on Epicurean ide-
ology) delineates in On the Good King According to Homer the figure of the optimus
princeps. This figure was the enemy of sedition and tyranny, contributing to the antity-
rannical notions held by Varius and Horace himself. The Gadaran, the resident philoso-
pher, and Varius, who was engaged in composing his epic poem, could converse on
shared topics of interest while walking in the garden of the Villa adorned with images of
rulers.188
182 The edition, surely to be revised, can be found in Bassi, Herculanensium Voluminum quae
supersunt Collectio Tertia. See also Kondo, “I Caratteri di Teofrasto nei Papiri Ercolanesi,” 73–87 and
“Per l’interpretazione del pensiero filodemeo sulla adulazione nel PHerc. 1457,” 43–56.
183 Dorandi and Stein, “Der älteste Textzeuge für den ἄρεσκος des Theophrast,” 1–16.
184 It can be read in the edition Herculanensium Voluminum quae supersunt, 84–92. P.Herc. 1092 is
also very fragmentary; we can read some references to the behavior of flatterers; see Capasso, “Nuovi
frammenti del De adulatione di Filodemo (P.Herc. 1092),” 91–101.
185 See Gigante and Capasso, “Il ritorno di Virgilio a Ercolano,” 3–6. On this fragment, see also
Delattre, “Du nouveau sur le P.Herc. Paris. 2,” 175–88.
186 See Gigante, “Virgilio e i suoi amici tra Napoli e Ercolano,” 87–125 (repr. 57–98).
187 See Rostagni, Virgilio minore, 391–404.
188 I do not find Gigante’s hypothesis convincing. See Capasso, Les papyrus latins d’Herculanum,
45–58.
The subscriptio in the ninth book of the Περὶ κακιῶν, preserved in P.Herc. 1424, in
contrast to those in P.Herc. 222 and 1457, does not present the topic of the book, yet it is
certainly dedicated to the οἰκονομία, the management of one’s estate, a sphere of life in
which individual behavior can be balanced and full of virtue, or unbalanced and
immoral. In substance, the book is directed against the Oeconomicus by Xenophon and
the homonymous treatise commonly attributed to Theophrastus. Philodemus, in line
with Epicurus and Metrodorus (from whom he quotes more or less verbatim a large pas-
sage from Περὶ πλούτου), holds that only the wise can soundly manage property, since
he knows the συμφέρον, the “fitting,” meaning the limit set by nature.189 The wise man is
thereby able to satisfy his own needs and those of his friends; excessive love for wealth is
to be condemned, given that its victims egoistically tend to avoid helping others and
nurturing friendships, which represent the only firm possession in the face of life’s
adversities.190
In Περὶ οἰκονομίας Philodemus develops arguments previously discussed in a work
of at least two books, Περὶ πλούτου, recalled by the Epicurean himself in the same ninth
book of De vitiis (col. 12, 21 Jensen). We have recovered fragmented parts of the first
book of Περὶ πλούτου in P.Herc. 163, transcribed sometime between 50–25 bce.191 In
that text the author discusses the relation between the wise man and wealth, and again
there the point of reference is the view on the subject expressed by Metrodorus in the
homonymous treatise, Περὶ πλούτου. Philodemus believes that the wise man must settle
for a modest patrimony such that he is able to satisfy his natural and necessary needs,
whereas those who love money excessively are constantly victims of anguish and worry
for fear of losing what they have. Philodemus offers consolatory words to the poor as
well. In his view, they have to find comfort in philosophy, which can obtain the same
pleasure from poverty and wealth.192
The subscriptio for P.Herc. 1008, which preserves the tenth book Περὶ κακιῶν, does
not report the content of the book, but in any case it concerns ὑπερηφανία, arrogance.193
After sketching the arrogant person, the author quotes text from a letter by the
Peripatetic Aristo of Ceos that is dedicated to the theme On Relieving Arrogance, Περὶ
τοῦ κουφίζειν ὑπερηφανίας. The Epicurean challenges his opponent for having, among
other things, only taken into consideration the arrogance stemming from good fortune,
189 On this matter, see Tepedino Guerra, “Metrodoro ἀγαθὸς οἰκονόμος,” 67–76.
190 For a complete edition of the book, see Jensen, Philodemi περὶ οἰκονομίας qui dicitur libellus.
Timely exegeses of the whole text can be found in Laurenti, Filodemo e il pensiero economico degli
epicurei.
191 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 35, 52. The remains of another book of the work were
identified in P.Herc. 209 by Del Mastro, “Osservazioni sulle subscriptiones dei PHerc. 163 e 209,” 323–28.
192 See Tepedino Guerra, “Il primo libro ‘Sulla ricchezza’ di Filodemo,” 52–95. For discussion of Περὶ
πλούτου, see at least Scognamiglio, “Il PHerc. 163 (Filodemo, La ricchezza, I libro),” 85–92 and “Rilettura
delle coll.49 e 54 del primo libro del trattato La ricchezza,” 181–96.
193 The papyrus can still be read in an old edition by Jensen, Philodemi περὶ κακιῶν liber decimus. A
translation and commentary of some columns can be found in Gigante, “I sette tipi dell’archetipo “il
superbo” in Aristone di Ceo,” 345–56.
416 MARIO CAPASSO
and neglecting the arrogance born from philosophy.194 Angeli and I have conducted a
thorough examination of the place where Philodemus quotes the title of Aristo’s work,
and we have proven conclusively that it was a letter and not, as previously held, an epis-
tolary treatise or epitome.195 The vast majority of critics believe that Philodemus’s oppo-
nent is the Peripatetic Aristo. According to Ioppolo196 and Ranocchia,197 he should be
the Stoic Aristo, but their arguments remain unconvincing.198
No title of Philodemean papyri attests that one or more books of the De vitiis was
dedicated to avarice. The first to envisage, albeit vaguely, the possible existence of a sec-
tion Περὶ φιλαργυρίας was Comparetti in 1883, and he did so on the basis of the recurring
presence of the word φιλαργυρία in the drawings of four papyri subject to scorzatura
(husking) (P.Herc. 253, 465, 1090, 1613).199 Further advances were made more recently by
Dorandi and Spinelli.200 They started from the fact that a number of papyri traditionally
attributed to Περὶ φιλαργυρίας, as shown by Cavallo, were outlined by the same scribe.
These papyri are, to be specific: P.Herc. 253, 465, 896, 1613, and the frr. 8, 9, 10, 12 of P.Herc.
1077, to which P.Herc. 1090 should be added, in their opinion, along with its scorza
(husk), which was traditionally believed to be lost, but has been found in three of the
four fragments from P.Herc. 1077. According to Dorandi and Spinelli, P.Herc. 253, 465,
896, 1090, and 1613 “combine to form one roll (or more?) that originally contained a
writing from Philodemus discussing the vice of φιλαργυρία.”201 They also recognize that
there is a possibility that P.Herc. 415—of which we have the residual husk, not at all read-
able today, and three drawings—may be part of this group. As I believe I have demon-
strated elsewhere, it is possible that these scorze (P.Herc. 253, 415, 465, 1090, 1613) and the
midollo (marrow) (P.Herc. 896) originally constituted a single volumen that was dedi-
cated to φιλαργυρία and that first underwent a partial cut of scorzatura, and then at a
later time an unrolling with Piaggio’s machine.202
If the attribution of some rather fragmentary papyri203 to Περὶ κακιῶν appears
extremely uncertain, it is to be ruled out for two treatises that we have received in less
194 See Capasso, Comunità senza rivolta. Quattro saggi sull’epicureismo, 94–97.
195 See Angeli, “Aristone, Epistola sull’alleggerirsi della superbia,” 9–39.
196 See Ioppolo, “Il Περὶ τοῦ κουφίζειν ὑπερηφανίας: una polemica antiscettica in Filodemo,” 715–34.
197 See at least Ranocchia, Aristone, Sul modo di liberare dalla superbia.
198 See also Angeli, “Aristone, Il carattere dell’ αὐθέκαστος, 105–120.
199 See Comparetti, “Relazione sui papiri ercolanesi,” 78 and n. 4.
200 See Dorandi and Spinelli, “Ancora su P.Herc. 1077, fr. B,” 12 and “Un libro di Filodemo
sull’avarizia?,” 53–59.
201 Dorandi and Spinelli, “Un libro di Filodemo sull’avarizia?,” 3.
202 See Capasso, “I titoli nei papiri ercolanesi. IV,” 59–65.
203 Bassi, “Φιλοδήμου Περὶ ὕβρεως?,” 16 attributed P.Herc. 1017 to a book of Περὶ ὕβρεως, On
Haughtiness. According to Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 42, this was written by a hand
somewhat akin to the hand that worked on the books certainly belonging to De vitiis. Nonetheless
Karamanolis, “Philodemus, Περὶ ὕβρεως? (PHerc. 1017),” 103–10, who published a set of new
interpretations of the text that differed from those by Bassi, believed that even if from thematic and
linguistic standpoints the attribution to Philodemus could be accepted, it is difficult to hold that the
book was dedicated to ὕβρις, which on his view is not a vice, but the expression of a certain vice or lack
of virtue. Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXXVI contends that the text
precarious condition and for which we have the subscriptio: the Περὶ ὁμιλίας, On
Conversation, and Περὶ χάριτος, On Gratitude. The former treatise is comprised of at
least two books, the first being preserved in P.Herc. 1399,204 and the second in P.Herc.
873.205 The work is dedicated to conversation as an important part of the didactic activ-
ity pursued in the Epicurean school in general, and in Philodemus’s circle in particular.
The latter treatise analyzes one of the cornerstones of the Epicurean lifestyle in all of its
aspects: gratitude—of man towards nature for allowing for the satisfaction of basic
needs; of pupils towards their master for guiding them to the good; and of one who has
received help towards the one who gave it, and vice versa.206 The two writings could be
part of the work Περὶ ἠθῶν καὶ βίων, to which certainly belongs the aforementioned De
libertate dicendi.207
In his philosophical maturity Philodemus also dealt with the problem of the gods,
dedicating three works to a complex analysis of the topic: Περὶ προνοίας, Περὶ εὐσεβείας,
and Περὶ θεῶν. The first of these has likely survived in the anepigraphic P.Herc. 1670,
which according to Cavallo is paleographically similar to the rolls of De vitiis and De
musica. The work aims at dismantling the Stoic conception of divine pronoia. The Stoics
admit that the world, which they assume is unique and perfect, can be saved by provi-
dential design. Philodemus asks how they can explain the presence of evil, disease, pes-
tilence, and other catastrophes. For the Epicurean, it is absurd to think that everything is
regulated by pronoia, as there are things that must happen out of necessity and cannot
happen by divine providence.208
Περὶ εὐσεβείας has survived for us in a series of anepigraphic rolls, of which in many
cases only the scorza remains. At least eight of them (P.Herc. 1428, 229, 243, 433, 1077 fr.
11, 1088, 1609, 1610) have been transcribed, according to Cavallo, by the same hand
constitutes a book of the aforementioned Περὶ παθῶν. P.Herc. 1678, attributed to De vitiis by Crönert,
Kolotes und Menedemos, 176 as part of Περὶ ἐπιχαιρεκακίας, On Malicious Joy, and written (according
to Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 42) by a hand akin to other rolls of De vitiis, was more likely
dedicated to jealousy and should rather be ascribed to a treatise Περὶ παθῶν, On Passions. See
Tepedino Guerra, “Il PHerc. 1678: Filodemo sull’invidia,” 113–25; Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la
musique, Livre IV, XXXVI. Crönert himself (Kolotes und Menedemos, 91 n. 447, 176) attributed to De
vitiis also P.Herc. 1025 as book Περὶ φιλοξοδίας, On Love of Glory; yet it contains a text on ethics with
some references to Theophrastus’s Characters. See Tepedino Guerra, “Il PHerc. 1025,” 569–74. Delattre,
Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XXXV, however, still believes that the papyrus contains
a book on On Love of Glory, belonging to De vitiis.
204 See Del Mastro, “P.Herc. 1399: il primo libro del περὶ ὁμιλίας di Filodemo,” 165–70.
205 See Ippolito, “Alcune considerazioni sul titolo finale del P.Herc. 873 (Filodemo, La
conversazione),” 91–100. The papyrus was written after the mid-first century bce. A largely inadequate
edition of it was overseen by Amoroso, “Filodemo sulla conversazione,” 63–76; see Ippolito, Filodemo,
La conversazione libro II (P.Herc. 873).
206 For an edition of the papyrus, see Tepedino Guerra, “Filodemo sulla gratitudine,” 96–113. For a
new reading and interpretation of the subscriptio of the papyrus, see Puglia, La cura del libro nel mondo
antico, 108–10.
207 See Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XLVIII.
208 For an edition of this difficult text, see Ferrario, “Filodemo “Sulla provvidenza? (PHerc. 1670),”
67–92. According to Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XLIII, the text could be a
book of On the Gods.
418 MARIO CAPASSO
sometime in the second half of the first century bce. Two more (P.Herc. 242 and 247)
were produced by the same scribe and seem to date back to a period between the mid-
first century bce and either the late first century bce or early first century ce. The work,
divided in two parts, according to Obbink, has a significant documentary value since
the definition of the Epicurean concept of pietas is presented through a critique of the
theology of the poets (Homer, Hesiod, Mimnermus, and Pindar) and the other philoso-
phers from Thales to the Stoics.209 The largest roll of the group, P.Herc. 1428, is dedicated
in particular to the Stoics, according to whom the divinities are nothing but an expres-
sion of the same god who manifests itself in all the different elements of nature: earth,
air, fire, and water. The Epicureans opposed this form of divine immanentism, as they
supported the two cornerstones of popular religion, anthropomorphism and
polytheism.210
The work On the Gods was comprised of at least three books. The definitive edition of
the first book has survived in P.Herc. 26, and likely the provisional draft of the third has
survived in P.Herc. 152/157, which is noteworthy both for the slightly different title (Περὶ
τῆς θεῶν διαγωγῆς, On the Lifestyle of the Gods) and the many abbreviations and annota-
tions in the margins. In this work, Philodemus is primarily concerned with the divini-
ties considered as living beings. His goal is evidently polemic; defending the gods’
anthropomorphism was a way of combating the criticisms of rivals. For the Gadaran it
was possible to reconcile the two cornerstones of Epicurean theology: the imperturb-
able happiness and the eternity of the Gods, and their human form and physiology.211
P.Herc. 346 was crafted in the latter half of the first century bce and contained an
anepigraphic treatise that is perhaps to be attributed to Philodemus. One of the main
themes seems to be l’οἰκεῖον, personal interest, towards which the wise man has a differ-
ent attitude than the masses.212
The graphical analysis of materials dating back to the third quarter of the first century
bce might lead us to set the following three writings at more or less the height of
Philodemus’s activity: the so-called Ethica Comparetti, Περὶ σημείων καὶ σημειώσεων,
On Signs and Inferences, and the fourth book of Περὶ θανάτου, On Death.
The Ethica Comparetti (P.Herc. 1251, anepigraphic)213 owes its name to Domenico
Comparetti (1835–1927), the great scholar of Herculaneum papyrology214 who first
understood its importance and produced two editions in the second half of the
209 See Obbink, Philodemus, On Piety, Part I.

210 A complete edition of De pietate is still the edition by Gomperz, Herkulanische Studien, II. In
recent decades, however, several partial contributions have appeared, mostly by W. Luppe.
211 On the Gods can still be read in an old edition by Diels (Philodemos Über die Götter erstes Buch
and Philodemos Über die Götter drittes Buch, I). Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 51 characterizes the edition
as “superb and brilliant,” but it in any case needs to be redone entirely. On this work see also Essler,
“Die Arbeiten an Philodem De dis III (PHerc. 152/157),” 153–204 and “Space and Movement in
Philodemus’ De dis 3,” 101–24.
212 For an edition of the text, see Capasso, Trattato etico epicureo.
213 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 39, 64.
214 See Indelli, “Domenico Comparetti (1835–1927),” 21–30.
ineteenth century.215 According to Gigante, who studied the text at length and proposed
n
its attribution to Philodemus on good grounds, the original title might have been Περὶ
αἱρήσεων καὶ φυγῶν, On Choices and Avoidances.216 There the author examines the great
problems of existence: good, evil, laws, death, wealth, past, present, and future, showing
one by one the best way to face them and resolve them. In a recent edition of the papyrus,
Indelli and Tsouna have confirmed the hypothesis of Philodemus’s authorship.217
The work On Signs and Inferences, preserved in P.Herc. 1065, is a defense of inference
by analogy, which was the foundation of Epicurean gnoseology and attacked by the
Stoics.218 For the Epicureans, it is legitimate to make use of objects or events that exist or
happen before our eyes in order to infer, by analogy, characteristics of objects and events
that are far from our perception. The writing, which is readable today in the (not always
impeccable) edition by De Lacy,219 gives evidence that there was, in comparison to
Epicurus, a deepening of the concept of analogy.220
With good reason it is believed that Philodemus produced his best work in On Death.
The work is comprised of at least four books, the fourth of which is recovered from
P.Herc. 1050. The handwriting in this roll, dating back to the third quarter of the first
century bce, leads us to believe that this treatise was the last composition by Philodemus
to enter the Greek library of the Villa while the Gadaran was still alive. Two more vol-
umes seem to contain parts of the work: P.Herc. 189, which is written in a slightly italic
font that might lead us to think it a provisional draft of the text datable to the time of
Philodemus; and P.Herc. 807, which could date back to sometime after the mid-first
century bce.221
The fundamental concept of the work is the ineluctibility of death, which, as a priva-
tion of sensation in which all good and evil lie, is not to be feared by the wise man. He
knows that what matters is not living long, but rather pleasantly, and even if his existence
were everlasting, the pleasure could not become any greater than it is in a short and
finite time.222
We can date back to the first century bce the writing of P.Herc. 1044, an anepigraphic
roll containing the biography of the Epicurean Philonides of Laodicea, who lived in the
215 See Comparetti, “Frammenti inediti dell’etica di Epicuro tratti da un papiro ercolanese,” 401–21
and “Frammenti dell’etica di Epicuro tratti da un papiro ercolanese,” 67–88.
216 See above all Gigante, Filodemo in Italia, 53.
217 Indelli and Tsouna, [Philodemus], [On choices and avoidances]. See also the long review of this
edition published by Obbink, “The Mooring of Philosophy,” 259–81.
218 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 35–6, 52, 64. According to Delattre, Philodème de
Gadara Sur la musique, Livre IV, XLII, the papyrus contained the third book of the work.
219 De Lacy and De Lacy, Philodemus, On Methods of Inference.
220 Angeli and Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio,” 62. The other four papyri from
Herculaneum (P.Herc. 671, 1003, 1389, 861) concern logic: P.Herc. 1003 and 1389 are certainly by
Philodemus; P.Herc. 671 can perhaps refer to the Gadaran; P.Herc. 861 is anepigraphic. See Angeli and
Colaizzo, “I frammenti di Zenone Sidonio,” 86, 128; Capasso, “PHerc. 671: un altro libro ‘De signis’?,”
125–28; Capasso, Manuale di Papirologia Ercolanese, 189 n. 199.
221 The work can be read in the edition by Henry, Philodemus, On Death.
222 On the procedures through which Philodemus composed and published his books see Dorandi,
“Pratiche di redazione e di produzione libraria nella biblioteca di Filodemo a Ercolano,” 69–91.
420 MARIO CAPASSO
second century bce. The unknown author stresses several times his kindness and
restraint, based on direct testimony (e.g. citations extracted from writings, letters, and
documents of Philonides himself) and indirect (e.g. “notes, written annotations,” edited
by a witness present during the events).223
Late Acquisitions: Texts by Epicurus, Metrodorus, Colotes,

Polystratus, Demetrius Laco, and Philodemus (End of the First
Century bce–Beginning of the First Century ce)
Based on paleographic examination it appears appropriate to assume that, between the
end of the first century bce and the beginning of the first century ce, the Greek library of
the Villa incorporated a series of texts by Epicurus, Metrodorus, Colotes, Polystratus,
Demetrius Laco, and Philodemus himself, as well as some Stoic texts.224 The writings by
Philodemus from this last phase are as follows: the book from the work On Epicurus,
preserved in P.Herc. 1232; late transcripts of Works on the Records of Epicurus and Some
Others (P.Herc. 310); the two books of Ordering of the Philosophers dedicated to the
Academics (P.Herc. 164) and Stoics (P.Herc. 1018); and a partial revision of the work On
Piety.225
When and Why Did the Greek Library of the

Villa Stop Expanding?
Cavallo contends that there are no Herculaneum rolls (among those already open, of
course) that can be dated to the “very late” first century ce.226 According to him, this
shows that “interest for Epicureanism in Campania (and in the Roman world?) had
waned.” But, as has been said,227 according to Del Mastro, the revision of some works of
philosophical historiography, along with the restoration of Philodemus’s works by spe-
cialized glutinatores working after his death, attest to the fact that “still in the first
decades of the Christian era, and perhaps later, many Philodemean treatises and works
of philosophical historiography were restored, copied, and read.”228 On his view, these
things together with the findings from the recent excavation of the first lower level of the
223 See the last edition of the papyrus in Gallo, Frammenti biografici da papiri, 2.21–66.
224 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 65.
225 See supra. On other extremely fragmented texts attributed to Philodemus, as well as other works
by him that have been mentioned but not survived, see Delattre, Philodème de Gadara Sur la musique,
Livre IV, XLV–XLVI, XLVIII–LII. On the philosophy of the Kepos see Warren, The Cambridge
Companion to Epicureanism.
226 See Cavallo, Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano, 65. But see Cavallo, “I papiri di Ercolano come
documenti per la storia delle biblioteche e dei libri antichi,” 591.
227 See supra. 228 Del Mastro, “Papiri ercolanesi vergati da più mani,” esp. 64–65.
Villa—where an area with a decoration from 79 ce in the process of being restored was
uncovered—justify the belief that in the Villa “an intense and lively cultural activity was
still on display, even at the time of the eruption and in the decades leading up to it.”
In my opinion, at the present state of our knowledge, we do not possess incontrovert-
ible evidence that in the late first century ce at least the Epicurean section of the library
was still active. After the death of Caesoninus, the building might have passed to his son,
Pontifex, and later to others, who might not have harbored the same sentiments towards
the philosophy of the Garden as did the previous owners, even though we do know that
the philosophy was still followed with interest in Campania as well as in the general
Roman context during the first century ce.229 The owners of the Villa in the second half
of the first century ce were in the fateful year of 79 ce concerned with restoring parts of
the building, but that does not necessarily imply that they were also concerned with
restoring the rolls of the Greek library.
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chapter 16
Lucr etius
Monica R. Gale
te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc

ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis
DRN 3.3–4
I follow you, Glory of the Grecian race, and in the traces left by you I now
plant my own footsteps.1
In these lines, as elsewhere in the De rerum natura, Lucretius proclaims an unswerving

loyalty to Epicurus, representing himself as the faithful disciple of a heroic, even godlike,
master (1.62–79, 5.1–54, 6.1–34; cf. 3.1042–44). At the same time, he repeatedly stakes a
claim to originality, as the first to explore “trackless places of the Muses” (1.926 = 4.1),
and to expound Epicurean doctrine in Latin (5.336–37; cf. 1.136–45, 4.969–70). The rela-
tion between these two assertions has been the focus of considerable debate amongst
scholars both of ancient philosophy and of Latin poetry, and offers a useful starting
point for an examination of Lucretius’s role in the history of Epicureanism.
Lucretius and Epicureanism
The six books of the DRN offer, in effect, a beginner’s guide to Epicurean physics.
Lucretius makes it clear at the outset that his poem assumes no prior philosophical
knowledge, and his addressee, Memmius, is characterized as potentially resistant, or
even hostile, to the lesson he is about to receive (1.52–53, 80–82, 102–103). The subject-
matter to be dealt with is set out in an introductory prospectus or “syllabus,” following
the proem to each book: thus, at 1.54–57, the poet announces that he will “begin to
expound the exalted nature of the heavens and the gods, and reveal the first-beginnings
1 Quotations from the DRN are taken from the OCT of C. Bailey; all translations are my own.
Lucretius 431
of things, from which nature creates all things, nourishes them, and makes them grow,
and into which that same nature dissolves them again when they perish” (DRN 1.54–57):
nam tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque

disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam,
unde omnis natura creet res auctet alatque
quove eadem rursum natura perempta resolvat.
These lines encapsulate several of the distinctive features of Lucretius’s presentation of

Epicureanism, which we shall go on to consider in more detail. Characteristic, first of all,
is the implicit emphasis on the all-encompassing explanatory power of the physical
system, which embraces everything from the atomic level (rerum primordia,

“first-beginnings of things,” 55) to the cosmos as a whole (summa caeli ratio, “the exalted
nature of the heavens,” 54). This totalizing ambition is made retrospectively explicit
towards the end of the poem, at 6.527–34,2 but is also built into the very structure of the
poem, which moves systematically from microcosm (Books 1–2: atoms and their proper-
ties), to macrocosm (Books 3–4: body and soul; perception, thought, sexuality, and hered-
ity) to the suprahuman level (Books 5–6: cosmology and meteorology).3 At the same time,
lines 56–57 exemplify for the first time in the poem what will be a second major structur-
ing principle: the cycle of birth and death, growth and decay.4 This cycle, too, is implicit in
the poem’s architecture: the work as a whole is framed between the hymnic celebration of
springtime, birth, and growth in the opening prayer to Venus, and the final “triumph of
death” in the account of the Plague of Athens with which it ends; and this overarching pat-
tern is complemented by a perceptible movement within individual books—Book 1 above
all—from an initial emphasis on life and growth to closural images of death and decay.
Historically, this tendency has often been interpreted as an indication of pessimism or
melancholy on the poet’s part; but it can also be understood—as we shall see—as a power-
ful rhetorical tool deployed by Lucretius in the service of his protreptic goal.
A third noteworthy feature of the lines from the proem quoted above is the part
attributed to natura or Nature, in contrast to the gods, whose true character Lucretius
promises to reveal (though in the event the promise is not fulfilled—perhaps an indica-
tion that, as is often supposed, the work had not received its final revision before the
poet’s death). This opening hint that creation and destruction are the work of “nature”
2 cetera quae sursum crescunt sursumque creantur, / . . . omnia, prorsum / omnia . . . / perfacilest . . .
haec reperire animoque videre / omnia quo pacto fiant quareve creentur, / cum bene cognoris elementis
reddita quae sint, “as for other phenomena which develop and come into being in the heavens above . . .
for all of these, all of them I say . . . it’s very easy to discover and see in your mind how they all come
about or are brought into being, when once you have thoroughly understood the capacities of the
primary particles.”
3 On the poem’s structure, see most recently Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek
Wisdom, 144–45; and Farrell, “Lucretian Architecture.”
4 On cyclical structures in the DRN, see especially Minadeo, “The Formal Design of De Rerum
Natura” and The Lyre of Science; Liebeschuetz, “The Cycle of Growth and Decay in Lucretius and
Virgil”; and Gale, “The Story of Us.”
432 MONICA R. GALE
(and not the gods) is picked up at the very beginning of the argument proper, where
Lucretius, notably, adds the adverb divinitus, “by divine agency,” to his translation of
Epicurus’s fundamental proposition “nothing comes into being from non-existence”
(Ep. Hdt. 38; DRN 1.150). Divine non-intervention in the world is a constant theme of
Lucretius’s poem, particularly in Books 4–6, and the poet repeatedly draws attention to
the theological consequences of the physical principles he outlines. Equally, the refer-
ence at 1.56–57 to nature’s creation and dissolution of all macroscopic entities points for-
ward to the theme of impermanence and mutability which will be prominent
throughout, but especially in Book 3, where the notion that the birth and death of each
individual are merely part of a universal and unending process of atomic recycling (see
especially 3.847–61, 964–71) is central to Lucretius’s attempt to combat the fear of death.
In these introductory lines, then, we can already see adumbrated an underlying con-
cern with the ethical goal of philosophical study—and in particular with freedom from
the anxieties occasioned by misguided beliefs about the gods and the posthumous fate
of the soul—which, arguably, pervades the poem, surfacing explicitly from time to
time.5 This emphasis is, of course, licensed by Epicurus’s subordination of physics to the
ethical end of ataraxia (KD 11, Ep. Pyth. 85), but seems also to be determined in part by
generic considerations. From Hesiod on, the technical or theoretical subject matter of
didactic poetry typically functions as a vehicle for the communication of a broader, and
generally ethically informed, world-view. In Hesiod’s case, apparently practical instruc-
tion on—for example—the best times for plowing, sowing, and sailing is placed at the
service of the poet’s generalized moral instruction on the importance of justice, piety,
and hard work. Similarly, scholars have increasingly come to recognize that the separa-
tion imposed by earlier editors between the physical and religious teachings of
Empedocles—an important poetic model for Lucretius—is artificial and anachronistic:
the two aspects of Empedoclean doctrine are inseparably related to each other, as—in
effect—two sides of the same coin.6
Lucretius is similarly careful to emphasize, both explicitly and implicitly, the close
connections between the physical and ethical aspects of Epicureanism. Thus, the poet
draws out at several key points in the poem the theological corollaries of the physical
theory, and underlines the harmful effects of false belief on individual and society. A
series of passages in Book 2, for example, draws attention to ways in which atomic phys-
ics renders the concept of divine providence superfluous and indeed highly problem-
atic: the growth of crops and animal nutrition can be accounted for without the need to
invoke beneficent deities (2.167–83, 644–54), while the doctrine that there exist innu-
merable world-systems raises difficulties for the notion of divine governance
(2.1090–1104). Similarly, the long account of the causes of thunder and lightning at the
beginning of Book 6 concludes with an extended satirical attack on the traditional belief
5 Cf. Asmis, “Lucretius’ New World Order,” esp. 149–57.

6 Osborne, “Empedocles Recycled” argues that there is no good evidence that the Physics and the
Katharmoi (Purifications) were in fact separate poems; cf. Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and
Magic, esp. 363–70; Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 2–8; Inwood, The Poem
of Empedocles, 8–21; Trepanier, Empedocles: An Interpretation, 1–30.
Lucretius 433
that these phenomena are divine signs or weapons of the gods (6.379–422). Conversely,
the digression on the cult of the earth-goddess Magna Mater at the center of Book 2
underlines the harmful consequences of false belief as a source of anxiety for the wor-
shipper (the menace and dread associated with the goddess and her acolytes are leitmo-
tifs of the passage: see especially 2.609, 619, 623, 632), anticipating a point made more
explicitly at 5.1194–1240 and 6.68–79. The ethical implications of the discussion of the
soul and sensation in Books 3 and 4 are similarly pointed up by the frame within which
each book is set. Book 3 begins with a powerful analysis of the social upheavals conse-
quent on ambition and acquisitiveness, traced by Lucretius to an unconscious fear of
death (3.41–93), while the book ends with the famous diatribe or consolatio (830–1094)
in which the poet shows at length how the Epicurean understanding of death as the end
of experience renders all such fears meaningless and irrational. The syllabus to Book 4
lays emphasis on the anxiety occasioned by dreams (4.37–45, esp. 38 terrificant, “ter-
rify”), while the book ends with the justly celebrated diatribe against the passion of
romantic love (4.1058–1191)—both of which are shown to arise from the misinterpreta-
tion of sense-data, which are nevertheless in themselves wholly reliable (4.757–67,
1037–57).
The Epicurean analysis of desire, while not set out in detail anywhere in the poem, is
implicit at several points. In particular, Lucretius lays emphasis on the limits of pleasure,
and on the inherent insatiability of those desires that have no concrete object (for
Epicurus, those that are unnatural and unnecessary). The former theme is powerfully
expressed in the recurrent image of the leaky vessel (3.936–37, 6.20–21, and compare the
allegorical interpretation of the Danaid myth at 3.1003–10), but most extensively devel-
oped at the end of Book 5, where warfare and social conflict are seen to be rooted ulti-
mately in ignorance of the nature and limits of true pleasure (quae sit habendi / finis et
omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas, “the boundary of ownership and limit on the
increase of true pleasure,” 5.1432–33). Implicit here is the theory that, once freedom from
physical and mental disturbance has been attained, pleasure admits of no increase, only
variation (KD 3, 18): thus, in the account of early developments in music that leads up to
this general conclusion, satietas cibi (“sufficiency of food,” 5.1391) and the amicable and
relaxed atmosphere amongst the primitive herdsmen seem important preconditions for
the pleasure derived from the new invention; the poet emphasizes, too, that later refine-
ments in musical technique cannot increase the pleasure it produces in the listener or
performer (5.1409–11). Equally, ambition and romantic love, in particular, are shown to
be “empty” desires, which cannot in their nature be satisfied. Lovers do not know what it
is that they want of each other, and are compared to a sleeper vainly attempting to satisfy
a real thirst with dream-images of water (4.1076–83, 1091–1104).7 Political ambition is
figured in the posthumous punishment of Sisyphus, whose never-ending labor suggests
the inherent impossibility of fulfilling this objectless desire (imperium quod inanest nec
datur umquam, “power which is empty and is never achieved,” 3.998); the image of
7 Cf. Konstan, A Life Worthy of the Gods, 70–3, who points to the contrast with the account a little
earlier in Book 4 (870–76) of the physiological process whereby a real thirst is satisfied.
434 MONICA R. GALE
Sisyphus’s impossible task has reverberations elsewhere in the poem, where competition
for fame and power is troped as a pointless and ultimately self-defeating uphill struggle
(2.12–13, 5.1120–35).
In addition to these explicit interventions, Lucretius finds more subtle ways of under-
lining the ethical implications of his teaching. In particular, illustrative material overtly
introduced to clarify a particular theoretical point seems often to be chosen for its sym-
bolic value as much as its immediate contribution to the argument. Two particularly
clear instances are found, again, in Book 2: in explaining, respectively, that a large vari-
ety of atomic types is necessary to account for the diversity in nature, and how macro-
scopic objects can appear stationary even when their atomic components are in
perpetual motion, Lucretius dwells at some length on a mother cow’s ability to identify
her own calf amongst many (2.352–66), and on the spectacle of flocks or military maneu-
vers which—when seen from a great distance—present the appearance of an immobile
patch of brightness and color (2.317–32). Both examples seem pointed. Striking, in the
first case, is the apparently otiose detail that the calf sought by the mother cow has been
slaughtered as a sacrificial victim: the sympathetic portrayal of the cow conveys a hint of
anti-religious polemic. In the second example, the “distant viewer” can be interpreted as
a figure for the philosophically enlightened individual, who will be emotionally dis-
tanced from the apparently impressive displays of (in particular) military and political
might: this reading is reinforced by a comparison with the proem to Book 2, where the
pleasure of philosophical detachment is explicitly likened to the satisfaction of viewing
“the mighty conflicts of war,” in the secure knowledge of one’s own exemption from dan-
ger (2.5–8).8 Again, images of bodily mutilation, which occur, with an overtly illustrative
function, at several points in Book 3 and elsewhere, can be seen to contribute to the
poem’s protreptic purpose. Such reminders of our physical vulnerability at once lend
urgency to the confrontation with our mortality which lies at the heart of the work, and
provide tellingly gruesome images of the futile conflicts from which Epicureanism can
help us to escape.9
The climactic instance of this technique is the account of the Athenian Plague with
which the poem ends. Closely based on Thucydides (2.47–53), and overtly introduced as
a mere illustration of the preceding exposition of the mechanics of disease and epi-
demic, this lengthy finale (6.1138–1286) has often been found problematic.10 It has been
noted, however, that where Lucretius’s version departs from (or apparently mistrans-
lates) that of Thucydides, the effect is to exaggerate the psychological effects of the
8 On these two passages, see especially Segal, “Delubra decora: Lucr. II.352–66”; and De Lacy,
“Distant Views” respectively.
9 E.g. 3.170–71, 3.403–405, 3.408–15, 3.551–53, 3.563–64, 3.642–56, 3.657–63, 5.990–98, 6.1208–12; for
the theme of bodily mutilation and its role in the poem’s rhetorical economy, see Segal, Lucretius on
Death and Anxiety, 118–43; Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, 240–79 (esp. 259–64); and Gale,
“Contemplating Violence.”
10 See, most recently, Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 160–65, who
believes that the abruptness and opacity of the ending are signs of incompleteness and argues that
Lucretius, had he lived to give the poem its final revision, would have reworked the plague narrative in
such a way as to make its ethical implications explicit.
Lucretius 435
isease, in particular the anxiety and depression that afflict the sufferers.11 The passage
d
seems, accordingly, to invite interpretation on the symbolic as well as the literal level: the
epidemic, whose symptoms include restlessness (6.1160–62, 1178–81; cf. 2.9–13, 3.62–63,
3.1053–67, 6.15–16, of the wearying struggles occasioned by ambition and anxiety), burn-
ing heat (1145, 1168–69; cf. 4.1086–87, 1090, etc. for similar imagery used of the passion
of erotic love), and unquenchable thirst (1176–77, 1264; cf. 3.1003–1007, 4.1097–1101,
where “empty” desire is figured as unsatisfied thirst, or as a cracked vessel which cannot
be filled) is at once a metaphor for the “plague” of kenodoxia or false opinion and a pow-
erful illustration of the ill-effects produced by the fear of death, which—on Lucretius’s
account—greatly exacerbates the physical pain experienced by the sufferers. Equally,
the plague-narrative has been described as a kind of final exam for the reader: if we have
truly attained the state of contemplative detachment depicted in the proem to Book 2,
we should be able to read these harrowing lines and remain unmoved.12
If, though, the poem’s didactic technique, with its subtle interweaving of physics and
ethics, seems distinctively Lucretian, we have yet to confront the more controversial
question of whether the poet innovates in the more narrowly philosophical sphere.
Most scholars agree that the general lines of Lucretius’s argument follow Epicurus
closely; indeed, David Sedley has argued persuasively that the poem’s sequence of argu-
ment is modeled specifically on the On Nature.13 But it is less clear how much of the
detail is Lucretius’s own, or how far (if at all) he adapts his model to take account of more
recent developments.
For Sedley, Lucretius is an Epicurean “fundamentalist,” whose sole concern is—as the
poet himself implies—with the writings of Epicurus.14 Certainly, it is difficult to identify
any passage in the DRN where the argument could not be derived from Epicurus him-
self, or which must be understood as directed against more recent opponents. In one
sense, this is unsurprising: not only were the Epicureans in general notoriously devoted
11 See esp. Commager, “Lucretius’ Interpretation of the Plague.” Particularly striking amongst the
instances discussed by Commager are Lucretius’s translation cor maestum, “sorrowing heart” (6.1152),
for Thucydides’s καρδία, “stomach” (2.49.3); anxius angor, “the torment of anxiety” (6.1158) for
Thucydides’s ταλαιπωρία, “suffering” (2.49.4); the addition of references to the fear of death at 1208 and
1212; and the reworking of Thuc. 2.51.5 at 1239–42, where Lucretius introduces the notion that those
who were too afraid of infection to visit the sick were duly punished by dying in solitude. On
Lucretius’s adaptation of Thucydides, see now also Foster, “The Rhetoric of Materials”; on the plague as
conclusion to the poem, see further Clay, Lucretius and Epicurus, 257–66; Segal, Lucretius on Death and
Anxiety, 228–37; P. G. Fowler, “Lucretian Conclusions”; Morrison, “Nil igitur mors est ad nos?”
12 For this view of the finale, see esp. Clay, Lucretius and Epicurus, 262–66.
13 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 134–65; for a different view, see Clay,
Lucretius and Epicurus, esp. 13–35.
14 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 62–93; cf. Furley, “Lucretius and the
Stoics”; Gottschalk, “Philosophical Innovation in Lucretius?”; Farrell, “Lucretius and the
Symptomatology of Modernism”; and (more cautiously) Montarese, Lucretius and His Sources, esp.
11–19; contrast esp. Schmidt, Lukrez, der Kepos und die Stoiker; and Schrijvers, Lucrèce et les sciences de
la vie. See also Kleve, “The Philosophical Polemics in Lucretius”; and the good brief discussion in
Warren, “Lucretius and Greek Philosophy,” 22–31.
436 MONICA R. GALE
to the memory and the ipsissima dicta of their founder,15 but Lucretius’s practice here
would also accord with that of Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic didactic poetry, which
often involves the versification or “metaphrasis” of a specific prose source.16 Equally,
Lucretius is clearly uninterested in later refinements to Epicurean doctrine, or in the
minutiae of contemporary inter-school polemics, apparently taking it for granted that
the founder’s own works offer sufficient ammunition against any potential opponent.
Yet it is difficult to exclude the possibility that the poem ever has contemporary philo-
sophical opponents (particularly the Stoics) in its sights, even if the arguments Lucretius
deploys appear originally to have been directed against earlier targets.17 Particularly
striking is the prominence given by Lucretius to geocentric cosmology (in the finale to
Book 1, 1052–1113) and to divine providence and anthropocentric teleology (5.156–234,
anticipated at 2.167–82)—both central and well-known aspects of Stoic doctrine. In
Sedley’s view, the target in both cases is Platonic/Academic rather than Stoic;18 but we
may, equally, take Lucretius to be, implicitly, redeploying Epicurus’s arguments against
his contemporaries, even if they are less well suited to this purpose than to their original
object. Striking corroboration for this interpretation is offered by a recently discovered
fragment of Diogenes of Oenoanda,19 which closely parallels DRN 5.165–73 but is aimed
explicitly at the Stoics: as Martin Smith suggests in his discussion of the fragment,
Diogenes and Lucretius are perhaps independently adapting to similar ends an argu-
ment originally directed by Epicurus at Plato’s Timaeus.20
Again, the fragmentary state of other Epicurean writings makes it difficult or impos-
sible to judge the degree of Lucretius’s fidelity or innovativeness in areas where he is in
effect our sole source. The discussion of the clinamen or atomic swerve at 2.216–93, for
instance, is the only detailed account of this important element of Epicurean theory to
survive. Another striking instance is the history of civilization at 5.925–1457: while
Epicurus himself, as well as his successor Hermarchus and, later, Diogenes of Oenoanda,
show an interest in early cultural developments, Lucretius’s account is much more
extensive and comprehensive than the surviving fragments of these other texts, so that
we have no way of knowing how much of the detail here is the poet’s own elaboration.
Again, the subtle analysis in the proem to DRN 3 of the relation between the fear of
death, “empty” desires, and social conflict has been seen by some scholars as innovative,
15 A devotion for which they were criticized by both Cicero (ND 1.66, 72) and Seneca (Ep. 33).
16 The classic example is Aratus’s Phaenomena, which follows Eudoxus for the astronomical sections
and (apparently) Theophrastus for the weather signs; Vergil’s Georgics, in the next generation, is closely
based, at least in part, on specific prose sources (see, e.g., Thomas, “Prose into Poetry”).
17 For the possibility that Epicurus himself engaged in polemics against early Stoicism, see now
Kechagia, “Rethinking a Professional Rivalry,” 136–40.
18 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 75–82; cf. Montarese, Lucretius and His
Sources, 14–18.
19 NF 127, of which Smith fr. 20 is the continuation; the relevant passage overlaps the new and
previously known text, at NF 127, col. 9.7–fr. 20, col. 1.3. The Stoics are identified as the target at NF 127,
col. 7.9–11. For text, translation, and discussion, see Smith, “Excavations at Oinoanda 1997.”
20 Smith, “Digging up Diogenes,” 72; cf. Smith, “Excavations at Oinoanda 1997,” 145.
Lucretius 437
by others as deriving directly from Epicurus.21 Stronger arguments can be made for
originality in Lucretius’s attack on the passion of love at the end of Book 4, which draws
extensively on the language and scenarios of Roman comedy and contemporary love-
poetry, and his subtle handling of Greco-Roman mythology, which (as I have argued in
detail elsewhere) can be seen to respond both to modes of allegorical interpretation
practiced by the Stoics and others, and to the exigencies of the poetic form, which
invited a more detailed engagement with mythological tradition than Epicurus himself
may have felt necessary.22
In some areas, it can be argued that Lucretius gives his own distinctive slant to
Epicurean doctrine, without, however, departing radically from his model. Changes of
emphasis can be observed, particularly, in the handling of religion and human-animal
relationships. Where Epicurus urges his followers to take a full part in religious ritual,
though without hope of gaining divine favor or avoiding divine hostility, Lucretius
seems more outspoken in his criticism of contemporary religious practice.23 We have
already noted the satirical tone of the digression on the cult of Magna Mater at 2.600–60;
still more marked is the condemnation of religious ritual, as “no piety at all” (nec pietas
ulla) at 5.1198–1203. Lucretius’s portrayal of animal sacrifice seems particularly hostile:
the mordant reference here to “spraying the altars with abundant blood of four-footed
beasts” (aras sanguine multo / spargere quadrupedum, 5.1201–1202) may remind us of
earlier, and equally negative, accounts of human and animal sacrifice in the proem to
Book 1 (Iphigenia, 1.80–101) and in Book 2 (the sacrificed calf, 2.352–54). This emphasis
may perhaps be connected with Lucretius’s generally sympathetic presentation of
(domestic) animals: in particular, the poet seems to deviate marginally from Epicurean
orthodoxy in his handling of human-animal “contracts” at 5.864–77.24 Epicurus (KD 32)
appears to imply that animals, being irrational, cannot be partners to the kind of
contract-formation that constitutes the foundation of legality and justice in the human
sphere, and the point is made explicit by Hermarchus (Porphyry De abstinentia 1.12.5–6
= Hermarchus, Longo Auricchio fr. 34); Lucretius, on the contrary, suggests that certain
animals are subject to a kind of mutually beneficial contractual arrangement, volun-
tarily (5.868 cupide, “eagerly”) entered into by both parties, and that such arrangements
are, indeed, what enabled these species to survive.
A final area of controversy is the extent and nature of Lucretius’s engagement with
Empedocles. The Presocratic philosopher is highly praised—in striking contrast to
Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, both of whom are made the objects of ridicule—at 1.716–33,
and it is universally agreed that the poetic technique of the DRN has much in common
21 Contrast esp. Kenney, Lucretius: De Rerum Natura Book III, 83–4 with Konstan, A Life Worthy of
the Gods, 40–1, 44–6. See now also McConnell, “Lucretius and Civil Strife.”
22 For Lucretius’s exploitation of comic and other poetic models in the finale to Book 4, see esp.
Kenney “Doctus Lucretius” (1970: 380–90 = 2007: 314–26); and Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex,
132–42; for Lucretius’s handling of myth, see Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, esp. 26–50 and 129–38.
23 See further Summers, “Lucretius and the Epicurean Tradition of Piety.”
24 For a good discussion of Lucretius’s handling of relations between humans and both wild and
domestic animals, see Shelton, “Lucretius on the Use and Abuse of Animals.”
438 MONICA R. GALE
with that of Empedocles: in particular, Lucretius’s adaptation to didactic ends of such

epic features as formulaic repetition and the extended simile seems much indebted to
Empedocles’s analogous exploitation of Homeric form; both writers, too, make exten-
sive use of argument from analogy.25 Furthermore, a number of close verbal echoes have
been detected, particularly in the proem to Book 1 and the zoogony of 5.783–924; but
there is considerable disagreement as to the implications of these echoes. Sedley, point-
ing to the hostile attitude of earlier Epicureans, as attested particularly by Hermarchus’s
work Against Empedocles,26 contends that Empedocles’s On Nature is exclusively a
poetic model for Lucretius; others have argued that acknowledgment of an important
literary forebear is complemented by a subtler engagement at the philosophical level.27
On this latter view, the echoes draw out similarities between (certain elements of)
Empedoclean and Epicurean doctrine, while scrupulously “correcting” such aspects of
the former as are incompatible with the latter. The Venus and Mars of the proem, for
example, can be understood, on one level, as Lucretian counterparts of Empedocles’s
Philia and Neikos, and—as Sedley points out—the subsequent lines 56–57 (quoted
above) have strong overtones of the Empedoclean cosmic cycle, particularly recalling fr.
17.1–2. But, at the same time, the Lucretian lines lay strong emphasis on the fact that
Natura is both the creator and the destroyer of material objects, and (as we have seen)
implicitly reject the notion that the divine has any part to play in these processes. Thus,
the passage can be understood as offering a corrective of, as well as a nod towards, the
Empedoclean cycle: Lucretius accepts the idea that “birth” and “death” are really no
more than combination and dissolution (cf. Empedocles fr. 8), while emphatically
rejecting Empedocles’s dualism and the divinity of his cosmic forces.
Poetic Form
Whatever we make of the relationship between the DRN and the thought of Empedocles,
however, we can agree that Lucretius’s adaptation of Empedoclean poetic form to the
presentation of Epicurean philosophy is his greatest and most striking innovation.
Lucretius will have received little encouragement here from the writings of Epicurus
himself, whose hostility towards the liberal arts in general and poetry in particular was
25 On Lucretius and Empedocles, see esp. Furley, “Variations on Themes from Empedocles in
Lucretius’ Proem”; Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, 59–74; Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation
of Greek Wisdom, 1–34; Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution, 1–3 and 101–109; Garani,
Empedocles Redivivus. Amongst older studies, Kranz, “Lukrez und Empedokles”; and Bollack, “Lukrez
und Empedokles” are still useful.
26 On which see Obbink, “Hermarchus, Against Empedocles.”
27 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, 17–21; for the contrary view, see, e.g.,
Furley, “Variations on Themes from Empedocles in Lucretius’ Proem”; Gale, Myth and Poetry in
Lucretius, 59–62 and 65–73; Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution, 1–3; Montarese, Lucretius
and His Sources, 224–35. Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution gives an exhaustive list of
Epicurean polemics against Empedocles at 167–68.
Lucretius 439
notorious in antiquity.28 Later Epicureans, particularly Philodemus, show considerably

more interest in poetry, music, and rhetoric; but the notion that didactic epic might offer
a suitable vehicle for the presentation of Epicurean physics remains a startling and
paradoxical one.
Epicurus’s isolated remarks on the subject of poetry and paideia (liberal education or
elite cultural formation) in general, along with the—often hostile—testimonia to his
views, suggest that his central objections were two: the study and practice of poetry (and
of the other arts) bring no real benefit to the individual, and are in effect a waste of time
and effort which would be better devoted to philosophy; and, by the same token, the cul-
tural prestige accorded to traditional paideia, and poetry in particular, is utterly mis-
guided.29 Furthermore, neither the style nor the traditional subject-matter of the more
elevated poetic genres is likely to have commended them to Epicurus and his followers.
The mythical world-view embodied in and transmitted by the poets is consistently rep-
resented by Epicurus as a source of tarachē, or mental disturbance, and opposed to
rational thought and philosophical reflection; and his apparent preference for a simple,
unadorned style (DL 10.13; cf. Cic. Fin. 1.14–15) might be thought to rule out the figura-
tive and stylized language of the poets as a suitable vehicle for the communication of
philosophical ideas. While, then, the wise person will derive enjoyment from artistic
performances (like other sources of sensual pleasure), he or she will not set undue store
by poetry or other art-forms, and will not actually compose poetry (or at least not
“assiduously,” ἐνεργῶς, DL 10.120).30
The fragments of Philodemus’s treatises on poems, music, and rhetoric serve on the
whole to corroborate this position. Philodemus is dismissive of the notion that there is
any inherent benefit to be derived from poetry or music, and denies that any great
expertise is necessary for the practice or correct judgment of poetry and (epideictic)
rhetoric.31 To be sure, the very existence of these treatises, not to mention the fact that
Philodemus was himself a poet,32 testifies to a certain shift away from the very negative
attitude apparently manifested by Epicurus himself; yet nothing in either the philosoph-
ical works or in Philodemus’s own poetic output appears as unorthodox as the literary
form of the DRN. While an Epicurean subtext is, arguably, detectable in many of
28 See e.g. DL 10.6 (= Usener 163); Cic. Fin. 2.12; Plut. Non Posse 1087a, 1094d–e, and 1095c–d; Sext.
Emp. M. 1.296–99 and 6.27 (= Usener 229b).
29 See, e.g., Cic. Fin. 1.72; cf. Metrodorus ap. Plut. Non Posse 1094e (with Blank, “Philosophia and
technē,” 220); Phld. De mus. 4, col. 151.29–39 Delattre. For Epicurus’s views on the study and practice of
poetry and the other arts, see esp. Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics”; and Blank, “Philosophia and technē.”
30 Cf. Usener 20 = Plut. Non Posse 1095c–d. The text and interpretation of Diogenes’s report are
problematic: see Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics,” 21–2; and Sider, “Epicurean Poetics: Response and
Dialogue,” 35–6 (who proposes the emendation ἐνεργῶς for the MS ἐνεργεῖν; the more commonly
accepted emendation is ἐνεργείᾳ).
31 See esp. De poem. 5, cols. 25.30–4 and 32.17–19 Mangoni; De mus. 4, col. 147.6–27 Delattre; De rhet.
2b, col. 22.36–9 Longo Auricchio; for full discussion, see Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics”; Blank,
“Philosophia and technē”; Pace, “La poetica epicurea di Filodemo di Gadara”; Janko, Philodemus On
Poems Books Three and Four, 223–27; Halliwell, Between Ecstasy and Truth, 304–26.
32 Some thirty-four epigrams are preserved in the Greek Anthology: see Sider, The Epigrams of
Philodemos.
440 MONICA R. GALE
Philodemus’s epigrams,33 the small scale and relatively lowly generic status of epigram
in antiquity are relevant factors here: Philodemus could plausibly claim to have abided
by the spirit of Epicurus’s injunctions not to engage too seriously in the study or compo-
sition of poetry, in a way that Lucretius assuredly could not.
On the contrary, whereas Epicurus had warned his followers to “hoist sail and steer
clear of all paideia” (DL 10.6 = Usener 163), Lucretius finds a way of appropriating the
high value traditionally accorded by the Greco-Roman elite to literary culture in general
and epic poetry in particular. The programmatic passages of the DRN suggest ways in
which Lucretius’s project can be understood as conforming, in broad terms, to
Epicurean principle, while at the same time stressing the value of poetic form as a teach-
ing tool. Like his mentor, Lucretius is critical of his poetic predecessors; yet he suggests
that poetry can nevertheless constitute a highly effective vehicle for the communication
of rational argument, and—still more—a powerful means of attracting potential con-
verts in the first place.
A key passage here is the poetic manifesto of 1.926–50, repeated as the proem to Book 4:34
avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante

trita solo. iuvat integros accedere fontis
atque haurire, iuvatque novos decerpere flores
insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam
unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae; 930
primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis
religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore.
id quoque enim non ab nulla ratione videtur; 935
sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur
labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum 940
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur,
sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat,
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
vulgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti 945
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle,
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
33 So Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemos, 32–9.

34 Editors have often found the repetition suspect, but the passage should in my view be allowed to
stand in both places: see Gale, “Lucretius 4.1–25 and the Proems of the De Rerum Natura” with a
historia quaestionis at 1–5; and cf. Kyriakidis, “Lucretius’ DRN 1.926–50 and the Proem to Book 4.”
Lucretius 441
versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem

naturam rerum, qua constet compta figura. 950
I roam through trackless places of the Muses, trodden by no foot before mine. It is pleasant
to approach untouched springs and drink, and pleasant to pluck fresh flowers and seek a
glorious garland for my head in places whence the Muses have crowned no other head;
because, in the first place, I teach about great things and proceed to free the mind from the
tight bonds of religion; and, secondly, because I compose such bright verses on an obscure
theme, coating everything with the charm of the Muses. This too seems not without reason;
rather, just as when doctors are trying to administer bitter wormwood to children they first
coat the cup around its rim with sweet, golden honey so that the children, in their unsus-
pecting youth, may be deceived just as far as their lips, and meanwhile drink up the bitter
juice of wormwood and be charmed yet not harmed, but rather may be healed in this man-
ner and become well again; in the same way now, because this philosophy of ours seems on
the whole rather bitter to those to whom it is not familiar, and the masses shrink back from
it, I have desired to set out our philosophy for you in the sweet-speaking verse of the Pierides
and, so to speak, to coat it with the Muses’ sweet honey, in the hope that, in this way, I might
perhaps keep your mind fixed on my poem until you perceive the entire nature of the uni-
verse and how it is composed.
The densely metaphorical texture of this passage is typical of Lucretius, and serves
indeed to exemplify the very point at issue—the virtues of poetic form and poetic diction.
Also typical, however, is the careful, almost prosaic articulation of the argument
(primum . . . deinde . . . id quoque, “in the first place . . . secondly . . . this too,” 931–35;
veluti . . . m
edentes . . . sic ego nunc, “just like doctors . . . in the same way I now . . . ,” 936,
943), which repays careful scrutiny. The opening metaphor of untrodden ground, then,
emphasizes three key factors: the novelty of Lucretius’s enterprise, the pleasure he expe-
riences in composing poetry (iuvat . . . iuvatque, “it is pleasant . . . and pleasant . . . ,”
927–28), and the prestige he stands to gain (insignem . . . coronam, “a glorious garland,”
929). In the subsequent lines, these claims are justified in turn on three grounds: (i) the
poem’s (Epicurean) subject-matter and its purpose, to free the reader from the bonds of
religio, are inherently valuable; (ii) verse-form confers clarity (“brightness”) and attrac-
tiveness (“sweetness”); and (iii) poetic form and philosophical subject-matter serve in
combination to heal the reader, who is compared to a child coaxed into taking bitter
medicine by the ancient equivalent of a sugared pill.
The initial claim to innovativeness serves both to evoke the poetic ideals of
Callimachus—an extraordinarily influential figure in Roman poetics at this period—
and to distance Lucretius from his literary predecessors. The image of the garland con-
nects these lines with the encomium/critique of Ennius earlier in Book 1 (117–26),
where celebration of the epic poet’s undying glory (his “garland of everlasting leaves,”
perenni fronde coronam, 118) is combined with condemnation of his utterly wrong-
headed eschatology. The link between the two passages seems important, pointing
both to Lucretius’s self-conscious hijacking of the prestige associated with Ennian epic
442 MONICA R. GALE
form (he, like Ennius, is assured a “glorious garland”) and his equally self-conscious
distancing from traditional epic subject-matter. To put it another way, the highly pol-
ished verse-form of the DRN is what will persuade an aristocratic audience to take it
seriously;35 its subject-matter both contributes to its literary value, by enabling the poet
to do something really new, as prescribed by the Callimachean poetic creed, and makes
the work acceptable in philosophical terms. Indeed, Lucretius represents himself as, in
his own way, repeating the achievement of Epicurus: the latter “roamed through the
uncharted universe in thought” (omne immensum peragravit mente animoque, 1.74),
while Lucretius’s similar, if more modest, achievement is to “roam through” (peragro,
1.926) the realm of Epicurean physics, previously untouched in Latin verse.
The emphasis at the beginning of the passage on the pleasure of poetic composition is
complemented by the insistence in the honeyed-cup simile on the pleasure experienced
by the reader. Poetry, like honey, can “sweeten” what is not in itself attractive or appeal-
ing; its “consumption” is pleasurable.36 In Epicurean terms, both the reading and writing
of poetry are kinetic pleasures.37 But, crucially, the reading and writing of poetry on
Epicurean themes may also contribute to the attainment of the katastematic pleasure of
ataraxia: the purpose of this poem is to remove anxiety by “freeing the mind from the
tight bonds of religion” (931–32; also, we might add, from unlimited desire and the fear
of death). Important, too, is the connection between pleasure and persuasion implicit in
the honeyed-cup simile and particularly in the adjective “sweet-speaking” (suavilo-
quenti, 945). Lucretius makes this connection explicit at 2.171–74 and 257–60, where
pleasure is portrayed as the “guide” (dux) that lies at the root of our choices and avoid-
ances (cf. Epicurus, Ep. Men. 129, “we recognize [pleasure] as our first, innate good, and
on it we base every act of choice and avoidance”); but the notion is already represented
metaphorically by Lucretius’s prayer to Venus in the proem. The goddess—called upon
in the poem’s opening line as “pleasure of gods and men”—is asked for two things: to act
as the poet’s ally (socia), granting him her “charm” (lepos) in the composition of his
poem (1.24–28), and to persuade the god of war, with her “sweet words” (suavis . . .
loquelas, 1.39; cf. 945 suaviloquenti), to confer peace upon the Roman world. Neither
request can, of course, be meant literally in Epicurean terms (insofar as the gods, having
no connection with or influence on the human world, cannot legitimately be asked for
anything); but both make good sense if Venus is in part a metaphor for the pleasure that
it is our instinct to pursue. Programmatically, then, Venus’s “charm” and her “sweet
words” stand for the persuasive power of (verbal) pleasure, which will in this work be
placed at the service of Epicurean galenismos or “pacification.”
35 In contrast to the earlier or contemporary Latin prose works of Amafinius, Rabirius, and Catius,
which appear to have had some influence in non-elite circles, but to have been met with disdain by the
educated (so Cicero, Ac. 1.5, Tusc. 4.6–7, Fam. 15.16.1; Cassius, ap. Cic. Fam. 15.19.1–2).
36 For the notion that carmina (“songs” or “poems”) and honey are the limit-cases of pleasure in the
spheres of sound and taste respectively, see 2.504–506.
37 For the pleasures derived from sound and form, see Usener 67; cf. also SV 27 for the study of
philosophy as a (kinetic) pleasure.
Lucretius 443
These interrelated programmatic passages, then, suggest a way that the enjoyment of
poetry can become “choiceworthy”: the sensory pleasures of rhythm and verbal music
have an inherently attractive and thus persuasive power which may (though of course
need not) be used as a means to the ultimate ethical end, achievement of ataraxia. By the
same token, Lucretius offers an implicit answer to Epicurus’s ban on “assiduous” poetic
composition. Poetry is, to be sure, a “laborious” art (laborem, 1.141), but one worth
undertaking in the service of a greater good. In the proem to Book 1 (136–45), the pleas
ure of poetic composition is linked to the (anticipated) pleasure of friendship: here the
didactic convention of address to a named individual converges with Epicurean theory,
according to which the acquisition of friends is a good in itself (SV 23). At the same time,
the poet tellingly characterizes his poetic lucubrations as “peaceful” (serenas, 1.142),38
with the implication that the effort involved in composing (Epicurean) verse does not in
itself constitute any impediment to the writer’s ataraxia.
We have yet to consider the emphasis on clarity common to the honeyed-cup passage
and the address to Memmius in the proem. In both instances, poetry is represented as
shedding light on a “dark” theme (Graiorum obscura reperta / . . . inlustrare Latinis versi-
bus, “to shed light in Latin verse on the dark discoveries of the Greeks,” 1.136–37; prae-
pandere lumina menti, / res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis, “to spread light
before your mind so that you might see things deeply hidden,” 1.144–45; echoed at
1.933–34, 949–50). What Lucretius might mean by this is most clearly illustrated by two
passages early on in the poem. The very first (and therefore perhaps inherently pro-
grammatic) extended simile in the poem at 1.271–97 is designed precisely to enable us to
“see” the invisible. Lucretius’s point here is that we do in fact assent to the existence of
corporeal but invisible entities: and this contention is supported by an extended com-
parison between the action of the wind and that of a river in spate. His conclusion
(295–97) is that since river and wind have the same effects in the visible world, they must
be similar in structure at the microscopic level. Striking here is the point-for-point
comparison between the two physically similar entities: both break down trees, make a
loud crashing noise, roll objects before them, etc. Here, then, we have a first instance of
the celebrated “multiple-correspondence simile,”39 also exemplified in the honeyed-cup
passage (where doctor and patient stand for poet and pupil, medicine for philosophy,
honey for poetry, etc.). At 2.112–24, a comparison between atomic motion and that of
dust-particles in a sunbeam is accompanied by explicit methodological reflections: the
dust-particles can serve as a visual analogy (simulacrum et imago, 112), pattern (exem-
plare, 124), or trace (vestigia, 124) of the invisible phenomenon. Indeed in this instance,
38 The adjective is perhaps particularly striking for the learned reader as a self-conscious variation
on a well-known phrase of Callimachus: praising Aratus’s Phaenomena in Epigram 27 Pfeiffer,
Callimachus commends the poet for his “intense wakefulness” (σύντονος ἀγρυπνίη, 27.4). Lucretius’s
wakefulness (noctes vigilare, 1.142) is just as effortful (laborem, 1.141) as that of his didactic predecessor,
yet does not compromise his serenity.
39 West, “Virgilian Multiple-correspondence Similes and Their Antecedents”; on Lucretius’s use of
simile and analogy, see also Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible”; Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and
Imperium, 219–33; Schiesaro, Simulacrum et imago; Garani, Empedocles Redivivus, 95–150.
444 MONICA R. GALE
the relation between comparanda is still closer than one of analogy, since the movement
of the dust-particles is ultimately caused by that of the atoms (2.132–41).
Here, Lucretius’s poetic practice is clearly licensed by Epicurus’s insistence on the
importance and reliability of sensory evidence (Ep. Hdt. 38, KD 23–24), and his advocacy
of analogical reasoning (Usener 36 and 263 = DL 10.32, Plut. Adv. Col. 1124b). At the
same time, as we noted above, Lucretius is indebted to Empedocles’s adaptation of the
extended Homeric simile as an argumentative tool: once again poetic convention and
philosophical principle coincide, or can be made to do so. In a more general sense, too,
Lucretius turns to his advantage the tendency of (ancient) poetry towards concrete and
sensuous detail, repeatedly evoking familiar, everyday phenomena (clothes drying in
the sun, the behavior of children and domestic animals, the light of lamps, the touch of a
cobweb, the lifting of early morning mist) by way of illustration for phenomena that lie
beyond the threshold of sensation, or are remote in time or space.40 Conversely, abstrac-
tion and technical terminology are, on the whole, avoided: as has often been noted, for
example, Lucretius has no single word for “atom,” but makes great poetic and argumen-
tative capital of the metaphors inherent in his standard terms primordia (literally, the
warp threads laid on a loom), semina (“seeds”), and elementa (“elements,” but also “let-
ters of the alphabet”).41 Metaphor, like the epic simile, can help the reader to visualize
the abstract or phenomena not directly accessible to the senses: the world is woven
together like a garment (and can fall apart like one: 5.94–95; cf. 5.267 and 389, where the
heat of the sun is described as, literally, “unweaving” the sea), or assembled from differ-
ent combinations of atoms like words from letters (1.196–98, 1.823–29, 2.688–99,
2.1013–22). Above all, atomic matter behaves in some ways like a miniature society, join-
ing together in assemblies and alliances, but also engaging in never-ending internecine
warfare.42 But the poet is scrupulous in drawing attention to the point where the meta-
phors break down: the world was not “constructed” by a divine author or craftsman
(5.156–234); the atoms are not alive, and their motions have no purpose or intention
(1.1021–28, 2.973–90, 2.1058–63, 5.187–94, 5.419–31).
40 Clothes drying: 1.306; children and domestic animals: (e.g.) 2.317–22, 5.883–85, 5.1030–32,
5.1063–77; lamp-light: 5.294–99; cobwebs: 3.383–84; morning mist: 5.460–66.
41 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom includes excellent studies of Lucretius’s
avoidance of (technical) Greek (35–61) and constructive use of metaphor (193–99). On the atoms/letters
analogy see esp. Friedländer, “Pattern of Sound and Atomistic Theory in Lucretius”; and Snyder, Puns
and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, 11–30; on weaving metaphors, Snyder, “The Warp and Woof
of the Universe in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.” For the problematics of Lucretian metaphor, see also
Kennedy, “Making a Text of the Universe.”
42 See esp. 2.109–41, 2.323–32, 2.569–80, 2.1144–45, 5.380–95, 5.436–42, 6.364–78. As Garani points
out (Empedocles Redivivus, 63–64), the nouns concursus and congressus and their corresponding verbs,
used frequently by Lucretius of atomic aggregation, can be applied to military engagements as well as
more peaceable “meetings.” On Lucretius’s use of military imagery in general, see Murley, “Lucretius,
De Rerum Natura, Viewed as Epic”; Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, 117–27; and Garani, Empedocles
Redivivus, 61–69; and cf. Asmis, “Lucretius’ New World Order”; Shearin, The Language of Atoms,
82–97; and Gladhill, Rethinking Roman Alliance, 71–96 on the “pacts” or “treaties” of nature (foedera
naturae).
Lucretius 445
Lucretius’s poetry may be said, then, to “shed light on what is obscure” insofar as poetic
form can help the reader to conceptualize what is abstract, invisible, or not immediately
perceptible. Figurative language—in particular, the application of organic and social
metaphors to the atoms, and personification of such abstractions as Nature43—certainly
presents potential difficulties for the philosophical teacher; but Lucretius, as we have
seen, appears well aware of these problems, and seeks to neutralize them through explicit
disavowal of his own metaphors at key points in the poem.
The poetic form of the DRN may, in short, be described as both orthodox and unor
thodox. In composing a poem on the theme of Epicurean physics, Lucretius marks a
clear departure not only from Epicurus’s disdain for poetry and paideia in general, but
even from the more tolerant attitude evident in Philodemus and—it appears—in other
contemporary adherents of the school. Yet, as we have seen, he is careful to defend his
project in terms of the fundamental principles of Epicurean ethics and canonic, and we
cannot be sure that Philodemus, had he read the poem,44 would not have approved.
Lucretius and His Contemporary

Readership
Invidia . . . , ceu fulmine, summa vaporant

plerumque et quae sunt aliis magis edita cumque;
ut satius multo iam sit parere quietum
quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.
DRN 5.1127–30
Envy, like lightning, usually scorches the highest peaks and whatever is elevated above other
things; so that peaceful subjection is much better than the desire to hold sway over nations
and rule kingdoms.
“tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento

(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.”
Virgil, Aeneid 6.851–53
43 Cf. Kennedy, “Making a Text of the Universe,” esp. 216–24 (= 2007: 387–94).
44 Knut Kleve claimed in 1989 to have identified tiny fragments of several passages from the DRN
amongst the Herculaneum papyri (Kleve, “Lucretius in Herculaneum”; cf. Kleve, “Lucretius and
Philodemus”). Kleve’s identification has on the whole been accepted by scholars, but his further
conclusion that Lucretius must therefore have had contact with Philodemus’s circle has been less
favorably received—the manuscript might, after all, have been added to the library at a later date, and
its presence there in any case offers no strong evidence for personal contact between the author and the
library’s owner. See, most recently, Obbink, “Lucretius and the Herculaneum Library”; and—for a more
skeptical response to Kleve’s claims—Beer, “Lukrez in Herkulaneum?” (I owe the latter reference to the
late Professor E. J. Kenney, who generously read and commented on an earlier draft of this chapter.)
446 MONICA R. GALE
“You, Roman, remember (these will be your arts): to govern the peoples under your
sway and impose stability upon peace; to spare those who accept your rule and overthrow
the proud.”
Vergil’s inversion, in this famous passage from Aeneid 6, of Lucretius’s striking for
mulation of the Epicurean precept λάθε βιώσας (“live in obscurity”) points to a further
important way in which our poet adapts his philosophical sources. The imperialist man-
ifesto which Vergil places in the mouth of Aeneas’s father Anchises speaks to an impor-
tant facet of elite Roman ideology: the ideas of destiny and world-rule on display here
are readily paralleled in other literary texts, both earlier and later. The Vergilian echo,
then, calls attention to Lucretius’s powerfully antagonistic stance in relation to tradi-
tional Roman values, and the challenge that his version of Epicureanism presents to
conventional aristocratic ideals and codes of behavior.45
Though nothing is known for certain of the poet’s background or social status, it is
clear that the work presupposes an audience drawn from the upper echelons of Roman
society. Lucretius’s addressee, Memmius, is usually identified with the Gaius Memmius
who stood unsuccessfully for the consulship of 54 bce;46 the poet in any case makes it
clear that his pupil is both politically active and (as we have already noted) a beginner in
the study of Epicureanism. He is praised in the proem to Book 1 in terms suggestive of
elevated rank and political achievement (1.26–27), and Lucretius observes in the same
context that he cannot be expected to devote his full attention to philosophical study at a
time when his country requires his services (1.41–43). Again, the reader is admonished
in the proem to Book 2 (37–61) that neither wealth nor political/military office can offer
an effective defense against fear and anxiety: the language here seems tailored towards a
readership that might be expected to have such goals in view.
Whatever the nature of the relationship between the poet and the historical
Memmius, then, the latter can be understood as functioning within the poem as a repre-
sentative member of the Roman upper-classes. The encomiastic tone of the first proem
is soon abandoned, however, and Lucretius offers an increasingly negative analysis of
the motives that drive the politically engaged individual, and of the violence and social
conflict consequent on ambition and competition for power. In the context of the mid-
first century bce, these themes were highly topical: whether we accept the traditional
date of c. 55 bce, or adopt Hutchinson’s proposed re-dating to 49/48, the poem belongs
to a period of considerable political and social upheaval, if not (yet) outright hostility
between the rival warlords Caesar and Pompey.
45 Whether we read Vergil’s appropriation of the Lucretian phrase as a straightforward “correction,”

or as subtly calling into question the mission that Anchises proclaims (as Lyne attractively suggests:
Lyne, “Vergil’s Aeneid: Subversion by Intertextuality,” 194). On Lucretius’s Romanization of his
subject-matter, cf. now Gellar-Goad, Laughing Atoms, 185–210, who argues that the satiric coloring of,
especially, the finales to Books 2–6 “puts [the poem’s] message of Epicurean philosophy into direct
contact with contemporary Roman social and political problems” (208).
46 The identification is partly dependent on the dating of the poem, which remains uncertain: see,
most recently, Hutchinson, “The Date of De Rerum Natura,” with the response of Volk, “Lucretius’
Prayer for Peace and the Date of De Rerum Natura”; and Krebs, “Caesar, Lucretius and the Dates.”
Lucretius 447
Lucretius incorporates in the proem to Book 3 a powerful sketch of a society riven by

greed, ambition, and unbridled competition for power and influence (3.70–77):
sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque

conduplicant avidi, caedem caede accumulantes;
crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris
et consanguineum mensas odere timentque.
consimili ratione ab eodem saepe timore
macerat invidia ante oculos illum esse potentem,
illum aspectari, claro qui incedit honore,
ipsi se in tenebris volvi caenoque queruntur.
They acquire property through civil bloodshed and greedily double their wealth, heaping
slaughter on slaughter; they rejoice cruelly at a brother’s sad death, and hate and fear the
tables of their kin. In the same way, and owing to the same fear [sc. of death], envy often
torments them because that man’s power is plain to see, that man, who flaunts his glorious
honors, is conspicuous, while they themselves—they complain—are wallowing in darkness
and filth.
These lines resonate strikingly with the theme of moral decline and (consequent) socio-
political corruption prominent in the literature of the late Republic and early Augustan
period: certain poems of Catullus, and many passages scattered through the Ciceronian
corpus, attest to a strong sense of anxiety relating to the greed, luxury, and excessive per-
sonal ambition which are commonly held responsible for social breakdown and civil
strife.47 Sallust (in the opening chapters of the Catiline) and Livy (in his preface) are typ-
ical in attributing to the increased wealth and luxury, leisure (otium), and sophisticated
pleasures of their contemporary Rome a supposed decline from the virtuous competi-
tion for glory characteristic of the early republic.48 Cicero similarly connects civil con-
flict with financial greed and profiteering (Off. 2.27–29); elsewhere in the same work
(1.25–26), ambition and the accumulation of wealth are presented, more problemati-
cally, both as necessary to the aspiring politician and as tending to corrupt.
Against this background, Lucretius’s analysis of political competition and social
breakdown stands out for its originality. As we noted above, there is some disagreement
amongst scholars as to the extent to which Lucretius has elaborated on Epicurus’s theory
of unconscious motivation in the proem to Book 3; but, certainly, his application of
these ideas to the contemporary Roman context seems strikingly innovative.49 In the
47 Most obviously, Catullus 64.397–406, where the emphasis on violation of blood-ties has some
striking parallels in Lucretius (cf. DRN 3.72–73, 85–86); for poems with more obviously contemporary
reference, cf. esp. 29 and 52. For Cicero, see, e.g., Off. 2.26–29.
48 For a detailed comparison of the vocabulary of the Lucretian lines with passages in Sallust and
Cicero, see D. P. Fowler, “Lucretius and Politics,” 136–40.
49 McConnell, “Lucretius and Civil Strife” argues persuasively that the theory of civil strife as a
product of envy can be traced back through Epicurus to Democritus, but concedes that Lucretius has
adapted his Epicurean sources to suit the Roman milieu, in particular in the emphasis he lays on
ambition, the pursuit of prestige, and elite (as opposed to inter-class) rivalry.
448 MONICA R. GALE
prehistory of Book 5 (1113–35), Lucretius implicitly rejects the idea of decline from an
earlier period of moral purity and altruistic public service, tracing back the connection
between political activity and the desire for wealth and power to the most rudimentary
stages of social development; the very notion of moral degeneration is correspondingly
lampooned at the end of Book 2 (1157–74). Moreover, the Ciceronian (and traditional
Roman) ideal of virtuous competition for prestige and public office is itself called into
question: Lucretius suggests both in the proem to Book 3 and in Book 5 that the pursuit
of power can always be traced to, ultimately, selfish motives, arguing that it is rooted in a
desire for personal security and protection against others (5.1120–22; cf. 3.65–67). For
the Epicurean, this desire is not in itself unreasonable; but the equation of power with
security is fundamentally misconceived, since, in addition to the needless toil involved
(5.1131–32; cf. 2.9–13, 3.62–63) the wealthy and powerful in fact expose themselves to
envy and therefore greater danger than the obscure (5.1123–35). Furthermore, the
“empty” or unlimited nature of the desires in question means that they can never be ful-
filled; the pursuit of more and ever more will always eventuate, Lucretius suggests, in
violent conflict 5.1430–35:50
ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat

semper et <in> curis consumit inanibus aevum,
nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi
finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.
idque minutatim vitam provexit in altum
et belli magnos commovit funditus aestus.
Thus the human race toils ever in vain and for nothing and wears out its life with empty
anxieties, because, to be sure, they do not know what limit there is to ownership and in
general how far true pleasure can be increased. This, then, gradually launched life further
into the deep sea and stirred up a great swell of war from the depths.
The way out of this cycle, Lucretius insists, lies in withdrawal from the political rat-race
(5.1129–35), and—above all—in the study of Epicurean philosophy. As he explains in the
proem to Book 3, the desire for security is rooted ultimately in the fear of death, and it is
therefore this fear that in the last analysis motivates the unlimited desire for power.
(There is some dispute as to the logic of the argument at 3.59–71; as I read it, however, the
point here is essentially the same as at 5.1120–22, that is, poverty and obscurity seem to
“linger before the doors of death” owing to the—erroneous—belief that the wealthy and
powerful are in a better position to protect themselves against the assaults of fortune and
their fellow-citizens.)51 Once, then, we have truly learned that death is literally “nothing
50 Cf. 3.68–71. For the unsatisfying nature and ultimate futility of political office-holding, see also
3.995–1002 (the punishment of Sisyphus) and 5.1226–35 (the imperator defenseless against the might of
nature). The repeated phrase fascis saevasque securis (“the rods and cruel axes,” with reference to the
emblems of curule magistracy; 3.996, 5.1234) draws attention, provocatively, to the application of
Epicurean theory to a specifically Roman context; cf. also petit aequora campi (“makes for the level
plain,” 3.1002), which perhaps points to the Campus Martius as an electoral venue.
51 For a different interpretation, see Konstan, A Life Worthy of the Gods, 44–46.
Lucretius 449
to us” (3.830), the desire for power should cease to have any hold over us. In the ideal
Epicurean community, as Alessandro Schiesaro puts it, “there would be no political
activity in which to participate”: informal pacts of friendship, like those that governed
the early human communities described at 5.1019–27, should be all that is required to
ensure harmonious coexistence among the wise.52
Just how radical this position is in Roman terms can be illustrated, once again, by a
comparison with the line taken by Cicero in the De officiis. Here (1.69–73), contrasting
the life of retirement with the life of public service, Cicero concedes that it is easier to
maintain one’s equanimity in the former circumstances, but insists that suitably quali-
fied individuals nevertheless have a duty to stand for public office, “for in no other way
can the state be governed or greatness of spirit [magnitudo animi] be displayed” (1.72).53
For Cicero, both the exercise of virtue and the smooth running of the community are
dependent upon service to the state; for Lucretius, in contrast, we can best serve not only
our own interests but (paradoxically) those of the community as a whole by withdrawing
from public life and cultivating our ataraxia, since the empty desires which motivate
political engagement and political competition are also, on his analysis, the causes of
social conflict.
In addition to these passages, where (contemporary) social and political problems are
overtly at issue, Lucretius can be seen to “Romanize” his Epicurean material in more
subtle ways. Particularly striking is his use of what has been called “social metaphor,”54
touched on briefly at the end of the previous section: the metaphorical “society” of
atomic concilia and coetus mimics or shadows that of the human macrocosm. As Gail
Cabisius and others have shown, the vocabulary Lucretius employs in describing the
interaction of atoms and other non-human forces is in many places strongly reminis-
cent of the language of contemporary politics.
At 2.109–41 (a passage we have already considered from a different perspective), for
example, the random motion of dust-particles and the underlying movements of atoms
are described in terms strongly suggestive of the shifting political alliances of the period.
The temporary conjunctions and separations of the particles are “meetings” or “assem-
blies” (concilia, 120) and “disagreements” or “quarrels” (discidia, 120); these motions
betray “secret, clandestine activities” (motus . . . / . . . clandestinos caecosque, 127–28) at
the atomic level.55 Again, particles that are not part of compounds are “rejected from
52 Schiesaro, “Lucretius and Roman Politics and History,” 49. For a somewhat different analysis, see
Hammer, Roman Political Thought from Cicero to Augustine, 93–144, esp. 120–44, for whom Lucretius’s
central concern is with autonomy and self-determination, within the constraints (fines) of natural
“law”: Hammer argues that Epicurean enlightenment amounts to a capacity to liberate oneself from the
false authority and dominion of tradition and social institutions.
53 Cf. Rep. 1.1–12, where Cicero takes a less tolerant attitude towards the Epicurean preference for the
life of otium.
54 Cabisius, “Social Metaphor and the Atomic Cycle in Lucretius.”
55 Cabisius, “Social Metaphor and the Atomic Cycle in Lucretius,” 116 compares Cic. Cat. 2.26
(Catiline’s motus conatusque); cf. also, e.g., Rep. 6.13, Fin. 1.44 and 3.63 for concilium and discidium in
political contexts. For motus in the sense “revolt, uprising,” see OLD s.v. §9b. On the political
connotations of the vocabulary throughout this section, see also D. P. Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic
Motion, 199–208.
450 MONICA R. GALE
community” (conciliis rerum quae sunt reiecta nec usquam / consociare etiam motus
poetuere recepta, “those that are rejected from the assemblies of matter and have not
been able to gain admission and ally their movements,” 2.110–11) and left to roam the
void as stateless “outcasts” (per inane vagantur, “they roam the void,” 2.109), like the
(human) exiles of 3.48–54. The chaotic motion of the atoms, or the shifting balance of
the elements, is also figured, more drastically, as a (civil) war—an aeternum certamen
(“everlasting conflict,” 2.118) or pium nequaquam bellum (“impious [i.e. civil] war,”
5.381).56
This complex of metaphorical language confers a certain urgency on Lucretius’s
message, when considered in its immediate historical context. Violent upheaval at the
atomic level is never-ending and inescapable; at the same time, however, a full under-
standing of the conflict inherent in nature can, paradoxically, enable the individual—
and, ultimately, society as a whole—to avoid conflict on the human and political plane.
The cycle of growth and decay which—as we saw above—is a central organizing prin-
ciple of the poem also gains particular resonance when considered from this perspec-
tive. The language of socio-political alliance and conflict is prominent here too: the “civil
war” of the atoms and elements both contributed to the formation of our world (discor-
dia, “strife,” 5.437; proelia, “battles,” 439) and will lead to its final collapse (5.380–84);
both the world and the human body will cease to function and, ultimately, disintegrate
when they can no longer withstand the “assault” of atomic impacts from without
(2.1139–45, esp. expugnata, “taken by storm”). Here, the language of social collapse and
military defeat can be linked to the narrative of growth and decline which dominates the
end of the poem. The prehistory in the final section of Book 5 culminates at the peak
(cacumen, 5.1457) of technological progress; this is immediately followed in the proem
to Book 6 by lines in praise of Athens, as the birthplace of agriculture, law—and
Epicurus. But the plague-narrative at the end of the book portrays the same city in a
state of collapse, as social institutions break down under pressure of the disaster
(6.1272–86). The two books taken together hint at a generalized account of the rise and
fall of cities and civilizations—one that must by implication apply to Rome too.
Moreover, as Schiesaro has pointed out, some of the plague’s symptoms are reminiscent
of imagery used elsewhere in the poem of political ambition: the victims sweat blood
(6.1147–48; cf. 5.1131), cannot rest (6.1160–62, 1178–79; cf. 2.12–13 = 3.62–63), and violate
family ties (6.1239; cf. 3.83–84). There is perhaps a hint of contemporary Rome, then, in
the historical Athens of the plague’s finale: Lucretius’s own society is in danger of tearing
itself apart—unless the plague of false opinion should be healed by the “medicine” of
Epicurus’s philosophy (1.940–42 = 4.15–17; 6.24).57
Lucretius’s socio-political imagery, then, suggests that conflict both is and is not inev-
itable. The “war” of the atoms will, in the end, bring about the destruction of every indi-
56 For the terminology (bellum impium = civil war), see Costa, Lucretius: De Rerum Natura V,
ad loc.
57 Schiesaro, “Lucretius and Roman Politics and History,” 55–58; cf. Cabisius, “Social Metaphor and
the Atomic Cycle in Lucretius,” 118–20; P. G. Fowler, “Lucretian Conclusions”; Garani, Empedocles
Redivivus, 69–71; Gardner, Pestilence and the Body Politic, 97–108; Gellar-Goad, Laughing Atoms, 206.
Lucretius 451
vidual, every city, and the world as a whole; but on the human level, there is—uniquely—a
possibility of escape. Unlike atoms and natural forces, human beings have libera voluntas
(“free will,” 2.256–57; contrast 1.1021–23 = 5.419–21, of atomic motion) and
self-determination (cf. 2.1090–92). Peaceful coexistence, like that briefly experienced by
early human beings (5.1019–27) is possible, if only we accept the healing message of
Epicurus.
Epicurus himself is, tellingly, portrayed in terms which once again appropriate the
language of contemporary political discourse. In the proem to Book 1 (62–79), his path-
breaking discoveries are depicted as a mental “voyage” beyond the walls of the world,
culminating in a “victory” over religio: the language is strikingly reminiscent of encomia
of Alexander the Great, as well as suggesting the Roman institution of the triumph.
Again, in the proem to Book 5, his subjugation of the passions is favorably compared
with Hercules’s defeat of monsters (5.22–54), and his “gifts” to the human race with those
of Ceres and Bacchus (5.13–21); Bacchus and Hercules were, significantly, favored mod-
els both for Alexander and for the Roman dynasts of the late Republic (and, later, for
Augustus, at least as depicted by Vergil in Aeneid 6.801–805).58
Epicurus had advised his followers to keep out of politics (DL 10.119 = Usener 8),
while apparently making some allowance for special circumstances which might make
participation preferable to quietism (Cic. Rep. 1.10; Sen. De otio 3.2 = Usener 9). Lucretius
seems to go somewhat further, exploiting the social and political upheavals of his day as
an inducement to the reader. Passages such as the proem to Book 3, as well as—more
subtly—the socio-political imagery employed throughout the poem, suggest that the
problems of contemporary Rome could, ultimately, be cured through the rejection of
false values which Epicureanism teaches. In the meantime, and in spite of 1.41–43,
Memmius, and the reader-in-general, would perhaps best serve the communis salus—
the health of the community—not, as Cicero so vehemently argues, by public service,
but by withdrawal into a life of retirement and philosophical study.
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chapter 17
Hor ace a n d V ergil
Gregson Davis
Vergil and Horace—the two representative Augustan authors whose poetics are the
focus of this essay—were not only close associates within the literary circle of Maecenas,
but intimate friends, as Horace famously made clear in designating Vergil in his
propempticon marking the latter’s departure for Greece: “animae dimidium meae”
(“half of my soul”) (Odes 1.3.8). A crucial element in their psychic bonding was a shared
intellectual bildung in Hellenistic philosophy, most notably, in Epicurean thought.
Owing to the anachronistic decoupling of philosophy and poetry on the part of many
philological exegetes, the intellectual content of the works of these supreme artists of the
Augustan age has often been relegated to the margins of inquiry.
For the poets Vergil and Horace, in particular, the line between instruction and
pleasure was virtually indistinct. The most apt formulation of the notion of their deep
imbrication was made by none other than Horace himself in a passage from the Letter to
the Pisos (conventionally known as the Ars Poetica) (343–44):1
omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,

lectorem delectando pariterque monendo
He carries the day outright who mingles
the useful with the sweet, thereby delighting
and instructing the reader in like measure.
In the same epistolary tract, he prescribes an education in philosophy as the ideal

foundation for poetic bildung in a condensed sententia: “Good writing has its principal
source in philosophy” (scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons: 309). The prescrip-
tions regarding the acquisition of sapientia for aspiring poets (the young addressees, the
brothers Piso) corroborate what we learn elsewhere from Horace about his own
1 Horace is cited in the text of Klingner, Horatius Opera, with minor changes in punctuation. Unless
otherwise noted, English translations are mine.
Horace and Vergil 457
interpretative attitude and presuppositions in his study of the Greek canonic writers. In
regard to the Homeric epics, for instance, he unequivocally reads the poems as bearing
an ethical subtext—an assumption that he foregrounds in a passage where he speaks in
forthright terms about his educational foundations (Ep. 2.2.41–45):
Romae nutriri mihi contigit atque doceri,

iratus Grais quantum nocuisset Achilles.
adiecere bonae paulo plus artis Athenae,
scilicet ut vellem curvo dinoscere rectum
atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum.
At Rome I had the opportunity to be nourished in my
education on the extent to which the anger of
Achilles had harmed the Greeks. Excellent Athens
contributed a somewhat broader bildung [ars],
so that I was understandably keen to distinguish
between the straight and the crooked, and to seek
the truth within the groves of the Academy.
The interpretation of Homeric narrative as embodying ethical values is developed more

fully in Ep. 1.2.1–31, where episodes from both Iliad and Odyssey are brought into the
argument.
The omnipresent didactic stratum in the poetics of Vergil and Horace is most mani-
fest in the contested sphere of ethics, in which a “conversation” among these poets and
leading exponents of Greek philosophical schools is clearly discernible. At the center of
this conversation is the issue of identifying the mental obstacles to the attainment of
eudaimonia.2 Before delineating the ethical undercurrent that unites Vergilian and
Horatian poetic discourse, a brief socio-historical prelude is in order.
It is a truism widely accepted that higher education for the Roman elite in the Late
Republic consisted in the study of Greek philosophy. In Horace’s case, this meant, as we
have seen, an obligatory visit to Athens, where he would have been exposed to the teach-
ers and disciples of the regnant Hellenistic schools, in addition to the well-established
successors to the Academy and Peripatos. Among the former were the arch-rival Stoic
and Epicurean schools, both of whose central tenets are partly placed in contestation in
Horace’s earliest poetic collection, “Conversations” (Sermones).3
In respect to Vergil, the biographical tradition stemming from the Vitae, as well as
from the Catalepton, relates that he studied philosophy with the Epicurean teacher, Siro,
and he is reputed to have spent a substantial interval of half a decade or so in the region
of the Bay of Naples.4 The privileged status of the Campanian township of Herculaneum,
in particular, in the history of the dissemination of Epicurean thought has received
2 The topic of Horatian thought on eudaimonia is treated briefly by Deschamps, “eudemonismo.”

3 Sermones is Horace’s own name for the Satires and also of the Epistles.
4 On the subject of Vergil’s Campanian connections, see Gigante, Philodemus in Italy.
458 GREGSON DAVIS
documentation from the writings of Cicero and, more amply, in the lacunose treatises of
Philodemus that have been recovered from the carbonized papyrus rolls of the Villa of
the Papyri, the presumptive owner of which was the Roman aristocrat, Lucius
Calpurnius Piso. Fortunately, we no longer have to rely on the often unverifiable
biographical tradition to confirm Vergil’s extended contact with philosophical circles in
Campania, since recent scholarship on the library of the Villa has brought to light a
papyrus inscribed with the names of Vergil and Varus. Richard Janko’s succinct account
of this contact is worth quoting in full:
His [sc. Philodemus’s] friend, the philosopher Siro, ran at his house in Naples a
college, where Vergil and Varus studied Epicureanism from the late 50’s onward;
a papyrus confirms that Philodemus was a friend of Siro and spent time in
Herculaneum, and in 45 Cicero paid him and Siro a generous tribute (Fin. 2.119).
This association is confirmed by Philodemus’ dedication of at least three books of
his On Vices and Virtues to Vergil and three other young Roman poets,
P. Quinctilius Varus, L. Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, who were all friends of
Horace also (Sat. 1.5.39–42, 10.81).5
Prior to the discovery of direct papyrological evidence, we had indirect confirmation of

Horace’s contact with the Campanian Epicurean community through the significant
references in his poetry to a close-knit group of poets, including, most conspicuously,
Vergil. Among the most intriguing of these loci is the satire conventionally labeled the
“Journey to Brundisium,” in which the joyful reunion of the group of intimate friends/
poets is accorded pivotal prominence (Sat. 1.5.39–44):
postera lux oritur multo gratissima; namque

Plotius et Varius Sinuessae Vergiliusque
occurrunt, animae, qualis neque candidiores
terra tulit neque quis me sit devinctior alter.
o qui conplexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt!
nil ego contulerim iucundo sanus amico.
The next dawn was utterly delightful; for at Sinuessa
we were joined by Plotius, Varius and Vergil,
the purest souls the earth has ever produced,
to whom no one is more tightly bonded than I.
What joyful embraces then took place! As long as my
mind remains intact, there is no pleasure I would
compare to that of a dear friend.
The close friendship among this circle of fellow poets around Maecenas takes on a
distinctly Epicurean inflexion in another passage in the Sermones in which the speaker
names members of the group whose friendship and critical acumen he especially
5 Janko, Philodemus, 6.
cherished.6 An important aspect of the association that resonates with Epicurean norms
of friendship is the commitment of the participants to “frank criticism” of each other’s
work—a practice to which Philodemus devoted an entire treatise.7
The following overview of the main contours of Vergil’s engagement with Epicurean
values throughout his corpus begins with his earliest fully authenticated work, the
Bucolics (Eclogues). The inaugural, programmatic poem in the collection contains
several significant allusions to Epicurean thought, as mediated primarily, though by no
means exclusively, via Lucretius’s enormously influential poem, De rerum natura
(hereafter DRN). In the mellifluous song-exchange between the two poet-herdsmen,
Meliboeus and Tityrus, it is the voice of the latter that purveys the tone and substance of
certain key Epicurean values.
The poetic dialogue in Eclogues 1 has, as a core underlying concern, the ethical pre-
conditions for the successful attainment of felicity (eudaimonia). The eusebeia of the
fortunate poet-herdsman, Tityrus, is demonstrably framed within an ethical praxis that
is irrefutably Epicurean in flavor.8 This he articulates, in dialogue with his interlocutor,
Meliboeus, in terms of his own pietas, which takes the form of his unwavering devotion
to a beneficent, unnamed deus (lines 42–43; 59–63). In one of his rapturous prooemial
encomia of Epicurus, Lucretius had provided Vergil with a model for describing the
type of divinity whose claim to devotion rested on the scope of his benefactions to man-
kind. In the prologue to DRN 5, Lucretius compares the highly touted benefactions of a
selection of traditional divinities (e.g. Ceres, Dionysus) with those conferred by the
philosopher of the Garden, and concludes emphatically that the latter’s cognitive gifts
far outweigh the formers’ material contributions:9
confer enim divina aliorum antiqua reperta.

namque Ceres fertur fruges Liberque liquoris
vitigeni laticem mortalibus instituisse;
cum tamen his posset sine rebus vita manere,
ut fama est aliquas etiam nunc vivere gentis.
at bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi;
quo magis hic merito nobis deus esse videtur,
ex quo nunc etiam per magnas didita gentis
dulcia permulcent animos solacia vitae.
For set against this the heaven-sent discoveries of
others in the days of old. Ceres is fabled to have
taught to men the growing of corn, and Liber the
liquid of the vine-born juice; and yet life could have
6 Sat. 10.81–88.
7 Peri Parrrhēsias. This work is available, with accompanying English translation, in the edition of
Konstan et al., Philodemus on Frank Criticism.
8 For Epicurean eusebeia, see Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus” and Philodemus: On Piety. The
Eclogue is analyzed from this ethical standpoint in Davis, “Consolation in the Bucolic mode.”
9 DRN 5.13–21. Text and translation are from Bailey, Lucretius. Gale, Virgil on the Nature of Things
contains insightful remarks on Lucretian influence on the entire Georgics.
460 GREGSON DAVIS
gone on without these things, as tales tells us that

some races live even now. But a good life could
not be without a clean heart; wherefore more rightly
is he counted a god by us, thanks to whom now
sweet solaces for life soothe the mind, spread even
far and wide among great peoples.
Tityrus’s praise of his anonymous deus in Eclogues 1 recalls the lines of the Lucretian
intertext in a passage in which the latter makes the claim for the apotheosis of Epicurus:
1.6—cf. DRN 5.8: “He was a god, yea a god, noble Memmius” (deus ille fuit, deus, inclute
Memmi).10 Further details regarding the mode of Tityrus’s devotion to his deified bene-
factor are fully in tune with, if they do not mimic, the prescriptions laid down by
Epicurus in his will regarding the annual as well as monthly sacrifices to be performed
posthumously in his honor (Ecl. 1.43–44).11
Philosophical implications are also latent in Vergil’s portrayal of the world-view of
Tityrus’s benighted interlocutor, Meliboeus. The value system implied in the Epicurean
precept, nil admirari (“marvel at nothing”), acts as an ethical shadow over the dialogue
between the two herdsmen. The unenlightened stance (from an Epicurean perspective)
towards the contemplation of another’s eudaimonia is conspicuous in Meliboeus’s three-
fold repetition of the verb mirari (“to be amazed”) in the first person (and with emphatic
variation in tense inflection) (cf. miror: 11; mirabar: 36; mirabor: 69). Similarly impru-
dent is his decision to go into exile from his patria to the far corners of the world—a
reaction to severe misfortune that is not only firmly opposed by the older and wiser
Tityrus, but also reflects his failure to grasp the internal dimension of eudaimonia that
renders external circumstances fundamentally irrelevant. Horace enunciates this
philosophical insight with respect to the futility of “geographic flight” in terms that
make clear the idea that is implicit in the Vergilian text: in Odes 2.16 (Otium divos) he
deploys the striking gnome: patriae quis exul / se quoque fugit? (“what exile from his
country ever also escaped himself?”). He makes the same point, though with more than
a touch of sardonic humor, in the epistle to Bullatius (Ep. 1.11.27): “they change their
climate, not their mind, who run away across the ocean” (caelum non animum, mutant,
qui trans mare currunt).
The poem’s closing lines supply a graciously harmonious cadence to the Epicurean
notes of the Eclogue, with Tityrus inviting his interlocutor to share a plain and delecta-
ble feast with him, despite (cf. 69: tamen) the latter’s determination to go away into exile
(Ecl. 1.79–81):
hic tamen hanc mecum poteras requiescere noctem

fronde super viridi. sunt nobis mitia poma,
castaneae molles et pressi copia lactis.
10 Cf. also Ecl. 5.64 (Menalcas to Mopsus): deus, deus ille, Menalca.
11 See the excerpts of Epicurus’s will as transmitted in DL 10.18.
Here at least you could rest tonight with me

on a green couch of leaves: we have ripe
apples, soft chestnuts, and lots of freshly pressed
cheese.
Tityrus’s gracious invitation to a rustic cena, which is meant to console Meliboeus for his
extreme misfortune, closely follows the lines laid down by Epicurus in his Letter to
Menoeceus, in which he recommends simple fare as an antidote to the downturns of fate:
“Therefore becoming accustomed to simple, not extravagant, ways of life makes one
completely healthy . . . and makes us fearless in the face of chance [tyche].”12 It is by no
means fortuitous that “an abundance of cheese” (81: pressi copia lactis) is a conspicuous
item on the proffered menu, in the light of a famous text of Epicurus that lauds cheese
as amply sufficient for a delectable banquet: “Send me a little pot of cheese, that, when
I like, I may fare sumptuously” (DL 10.11).
Several of the Eclogues expose the perils incurred by a type of amor that was anath-
ema to Epicurean eudaimonist doctrine. Amor of the unhealthy variety (insanus) is best
embodied in the Gallus of Eclogues 10, whose unbridled infatuation for his puella is
proxy for the erotic pathology germane to the Latin elegiac genre.13 In the Epicurean
world-view, amatory passion is pernicious if it becomes fixated on the obsessive pursuit
of a unique amatus/amata, which condemns the lover to continual pain and inner inse-
curity. In the second Eclogue, Vergil points the way to a “therapeutic strategy” for this
species of illness in the course of the soliloquy of the love-sick Corydon, who, at a cli-
mactic juncture in his querela, experiences a moment of enlightenment about the nature
of his dementia and eventually vows to abandon his unsuccessful courtship of his
amatus.14 The fact that his self-diagnosis of dementia (69) constitutes a well-known
Theocritean tag to the words of the love-sick Polyphemus (Theocr. Id. 11) in no way
detracts from its therapeutic effect in the Vergilian adaptation.
Demented amor writ large is the major subtext of the mythographic program of verse
sketched by the embedded speaker, Silenus, in the sixth Eclogue. The longest episode in
Silenus’s catalogue of negative and mainly erotic exempla consists in a pathetic account
of Pasiphae’s unnatural longing to be sexually united with the Minoan bull. The song
delivered by the Silenus-persona is prefaced by a mini-cosmogony that clearly apes
Epicurean, as well as Empedoclean sources, and the framing narrator hints in the lines
preceding his effusion that the old seer himself engages in the kind of care-free enjoyment
12 Ep. Men. 131. The English rendition is from Inwood and Gerson, The Epicurean Reader, 30. On the
Epicurean cadence of the invitation see Davis, “Consolation in the Bucolic Mode.”
13 Cf. Ecl. 10.9–69. Vergil’s critique of amor insanus in the Eclogues is treated in Davis, “A, virgo
infelix.” It is typical of the author’s ethical discourse to show sympathy for victims of demented love,
such as Gallus, Orpheus, and Dido.
14 Ecl. 2.73. On Epicurean “therapeutic strategies” see Tsouna, “Epicurean Therapeutic Strategies.” It
is significant that the Idyll’s prologue, addressed to a physician-friend, foregrounds the very issue of a
successful remedy for eros.
462 GREGSON DAVIS
of sexual pleasure in the community of nymphs and satyrs that is the diametric opposite
of that highlighted in his embedded poem.15
The pietas of Tityrus and of his fellow Arcadians is manifested throughout the
Eclogue-book in their special devotion to the gods of the countryside. These divinities
are united in their denigration of the species of amatory infatuation represented by
Gallus, and as such they are portrayed as forming part of the procession of enlightened
visitors who undertake to counsel the love-sick Gallus in an effort to restore him to his
proper senses (Ecl. 10.24–30):16
venit et agresti capitis Silvanus honore,

florentis ferulas et grandia lilia quassans.
Pan deus Arcadiae venit, quem vidimus ipsi
sanguineis ebuli bacis minioque rubentem:
“ecquis erit modus?” inquit. “Amor non talia curat;
nec lacrimis crudelis Amor nec gramina rivis,
nec cytiso saturantur apes nec fronde capellae.”
Silvanus also came, his head adorned with
the glories of the field, shaking flowering
fennel and tall-stemmed lilies. Pan, Arcadia’s
god, whom we have seen ourselves, came,
ruddy with blood-red elderberries and vermilion.
“Will there ever be any end to this?” he said. “Amor
cares nothing for such matters; cruel Amor is
never sated with tears, nor grass with rivulets,
nor bees with clover, nor she-goats with leaves.”
Vergil’s critique of insanus amor on the grounds of its lack of limit (modus), a concept
that is prominent in all three of his major works, was shared by his friend Horace. Theirs
was not an unqualified antipathy to amor in general, but rather, in accordance with the
dualistic conception of Eros current in the Garden, to a particular type of decadent passion
deemed intrinsically insatiable, and hence counter-productive to the achievement of
unalloyed pleasure as counseled by Epicurus.17 Insatiability from this perspective
encompasses the overly prolonged yearning for a deceased lover. The mythological par-
adigm for this excess is the poet Orpheus’s inconsolable mourning for the dead
Eurydice, a narrative that forms the unforgettable conclusion of Vergil’s Georgics.
Orpheus’s behavior, though treated sympathetically by the poet, represents the antitype
of Epicurean wisdom on two fundamental counts: the musician’s utter refusal to accept
the limit of death for mortals, and the immoderate grief for his lost amata.
Horace alludes to the Vergilian version of the Orpheus myth in an ode offering coun-
sel to a member of their circle of close friends, the poet Valgius, who is unable to set a
15 The hint of erotic badinage between Silenus and a nymph occurs in lines 20–21.
16 Latin citations from the Eclogues are from the edition of Geymonat, Vergili Opera.
17 Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex deals extensively with the Lucretian account of Epicurean eros.
limit to his grief for a lost lover.18 The Ode, which addresses Valgius in sympathetic tones
(amice Valgi, 5), exhorts him to observe how each season in nature has its limits, and
gently chastises him for his failure to give up his elegiac obsession for his amatus, Mystes
(Hor. Odes 2.9.9–12):
tu semper urges flebilibus modis

Mysten ademptum, nec tibi vespero
surgente decedunt Amores
nec rapidum fugiente solem.
you without cease, however, carry on
over the death of Mystes in mournful
measures, nor do your Love Songs decline
either when Vesper rises or when he flees
the rapid sun’s approach.
The phraseology of the stanza echoes Vergil’s description of Orpheus’s unceasing

mourning in song for the deceased Eurydice (Georgics 4.464–66):
ipse cava solans aegrum testudine amorem

te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum
te veniente die te decedente canebat.
He himself [sc. Orpheus], consoling his love-sickness
with his hollow lyre, sang of you, sweet spouse,
of you by himself on the lonely shore, of you
as the day began, of you as the day declined.
It is not merely the vowel music and the diction, but the underlying philosophical
sentiment, above all, that brings the Horatian ode close to its sublime Vergilian intertext.
The indirect obloquy of the latter in regard to Orpheus’s ceaseless mourning is echoed in
the former’s frontal parainesis to the inconsolable lover, Valgius.
The role of religious devotion (pietas, eusebeia) in its potential contribution to human
flourishing is a topic that Vergil broaches, not only in the Eclogues, as we have seen, but
also at several junctures in the Georgics. Both ancient and modern scholars of Epicurean
thought have amply discussed the rationale behind the apparent paradox of the school’s
observance of traditional cult practices while maintaining that the gods do not involve
themselves in human affairs. Among the ancient sources, the biographer Diogenes
Laertius is unequivocal in his account of the founder’s hosiotēs (“religious devotion”).19
Lucretius points the way to a resolution of the ostensible contradiction between the-
ory and practice by identifying enlightened, as opposed to banal, norms of piety
18 On C. Valgius Rufus see Sat. 1.10.82–83, where Horace lists those whose literary judgment on his
own work he approves. Page, Horatii Libri IV, ad loc. discusses the relative chronology of the two
poems. An interpretation of the ode along ethical lines is to be found in Davis, Polyhymnia, 50–60.
19 DL 10.9.
464 GREGSON DAVIS
grounded in a prior cognitive grasp of the true nature of godhead, such that the
worshipper brings to the altar an attitude of emulation of divine beings, conceptualized
as models of ataxaria.20
The finale of Georgics 2 contains a famous articulation of the connection between the
philosophically informed cultivation of the gods, on the one hand, and the potential for
human flourishing (eudaimonia) reached by a more conventional route, on the other
(2.490–94):
felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum
subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari:
fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.
happy is the person who can gain knowledge of
the nature of things and trample underfoot all fear of
an ineluctable fate and the howling from insatiable Acheron.
Happy also is the person who knows the gods of the
countryside: Pan and Silvanus and the sister Nymphs.21
The second beatitude (493: fortunatus et ille . . . ) is synchronically juxtaposed with the
first, not by an adversative, but by the copula <et>, thereby effectively positing a parallel
route to eudaimonia. Notionally, the two proposed means of achieving felicity may be
co-present in the same individual. The common denominator of both paths to happi-
ness is the acquisition of knowledge (cf. cognoscere [490] with novit [493]).
Commentators have consistently recognized a palpable reference to specifically
Epicurean knowledge in the first beatitude (490: felix qui potuit . . .), which openly
annexes Lucretian diction, no less than ideational content, in a passage exalting the
blessings conferred on mankind by Epicurus. Vergil’s subtending of the bucolic deities,
Pan, Silvanus, and the Nymphs (494), has the additional effect of associating “knowl-
edge” of these minor numina with that precious strain of wisdom imparted via the
teachings of the Garden.
The association made explicit here is foreshadowed in an immediately preceding
“beatitude” passage in which Vergil compliments country folk in words that imply that
happiness is a function of true knowledge of the good (458–59):
fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,

agricolas!
Happy farmers! The more so, if they
came to know the nature of their blessings!
20 DRN 5.1194–1203 and 6.1298.

21 My English version treats the perfect tenses, potuit and novit, as gnomic, and the phrase, metus
omnis et inexorabile fatum, as hendiadys. See further Davis, Parthenope, 168–69.
Both loci on the necessity of knowledge to full happiness are followed by a demonstrably
Epicurean set of prescriptive norms (well summed up in the injunction, lathe biosas)
that advocate a disinterested attitude to socio-political and materialist striving (cf. lines
461–74 with 495–512).
A eudaimonist ethic forms the thematic substratum of Horace’s four books of lyric
poetry (Carmina), which match the Vergilian texts with respect to their occasional
foregrounding of major Epicurean tenets. A preponderant obsession of the supreme
poet of Carpe Diem discourse (hereafter CD) is the elimination of the fear of death as a
necessary foundation for the enjoyment of a happy life bereft of anxiety. This nexus of
ideas, which is commonly expressed in the motif cadre of the symposium, was endemic
to the philosophical outlook of Horace’s main literary models in the Archaic Greek
literary canon—the vates lyrici.22 In Horace’s Odes, however, the nexus acquires a
noticeable overlay of Epicurean thought as filtered through Lucretian verse, when not
directly derivative of the master’s ethical doctrines.
The perception that the happy life for mortals depends on a correct philosophical
stance is prominently highlighted in the priamel that structures the initial dedicatory
ode of the Carmina. Under the seemingly objective guise of listing the life-style prefer-
ences of others as foil to his own, Horace insinuates a biased description of the former
that implies their intrinsic incapacity to exclude insecurity and angst from the human
mind. At the same time, the motif of “adjunct pleasure,” as Shakespeare puts in a sonnet
on personal erotic choice, recurs throughout the rhetorical foil—most conspicuously in
the verbs iuvare (please) and gaudere (delight).23 Pleasure, regarded as the main objec-
tive of all human behavior, is a key premise of the Epicurean ethical system, but Horace
both obliquely and openly denigrates those many “others” who engage in misguided
and unenlightened pursuit of it. The negative example of the conduct of the merchant
sailor (mercator) is especially instructive from this angle of vision:
luctantem Icariis fluctibus Africum

mercator metuens otium et oppidi
laudat rura sui; mox reficit rates
quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati.
the merchant, while fearing the South Wind
battling with the Icarian waves, praises
the tranquility of the countryside near
his home town; soon he refits his battered
ships, a man unschooled in enduring
a modest life-style.
22 Odes.1.1.35. On the philosophical element in early Greek lyric the work of Fraenkel, Early Greek
Poetry remains fundamental. The motif structure of Horatian CD poetry is described in Davis,
Polyhymnia, 145–88.
23 See iuvat: 4 (repeated in ellipsis: 7); iuvant: 23; gaudere: 11. Cf. Shakespeare’s priamel on “adjunct
pleasures” in Sonnet 91.
466 GREGSON DAVIS
As is the case in the many odes on the CD theme, the fear of death—famously deval-
ued and vilified by Epicurus—is the unnamed specter that haunts the merchant sailor
during the storm. The schooling that might have ensured the happiness of the mercator
is typified by the inculcation of Epicurean doctrine concerning the removal of fear that
accompanies the prospect of premature death.24
The Epicurean roots of the Horatian conception of otium in the context of lyric
argument are at their most transparent in the poem that the commentators, Nisbet and
Hubbard, have appropriately labeled “Horace’s Ode to Tranquility” (Odes 2.16).25 The
authors take due note of the multiple connotations of the word otium in Latin literature,
but go on to maintain, correctly in my view, that the signification predominant in this
Ode is tantamount to the notion of mental tranquillitas, which they regard as coherent
with “the Epicurean character of the poem in general.” Their reading of the poem draws,
with due acknowledgment, upon the pioneering work of H. P. Syndikus, who provides
copious documentation in learned footnotes of the multifarious references in the Ode’s
diction and ideas, not only to familiar Epicurean texts, such as the Letter to Menoeceus
and the Key Doctrines, but also to salient passages in the DRN.26
In yet another utilization of the rhetorical form of the priamel, Horace provides the
reader with an abbreviated catalogue of popular life-styles, beginning with the example
of the merchant-sailor (mercator), which he earlier introduced, as we have seen, in the
inaugural ode addressed to his patron and close friend, Maecenas (Odes 2.16.1–8):
Otium divos rogat in patenti

prensus Aegaeo, simul atra nubes
condidit lunam neque certa fulgent
sidera nautis;
otium bello furiosa Thrace,
otium Medi pharetra decori,
Grosphe, non gemmis neque purpura ve-
nale neque auro.
for tranquility the merchant prays when
caught in a storm on the exposed Aegean sea,
the moment that dark clouds have hidden the moon
and the stars cease to shine clearly for sailors;
for tranquility prays Thrace, ferocious in battle,
for tranquility pray the Parthians dressed with
quivers, Grosphus—the kind that cannot be
bought with gems, with purple, or with gold.
24 On the complex nuances manifest in the fear of death, see Sanders, “Philodemus and the Fear of
Premature Death.”
25 Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary, 252.
26 Syndikus, Die Lyrik, 439–54. Among the most striking verbal imitations of Lucretius is the image
of cares flitting around richly paneled ceilings (cf. lines 9–12 with DRN 2.28).
The remainder of the Ode exfoliates its “Epicurean character” with more than one sig-
nificant echo of the well-known Lucretian proem to Book 2 of the DRN, in which the
invulnerable speaker/sapiens famously contemplates the spectacle of the turbulent
striving of the unschooled mass of mankind who have not absorbed the insights of the
Garden (DRN 2.1–6):27
suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis

e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,
sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suavest.
Sweet it is, when on the great sea the winds are
buffeting the waters, to gaze from the land on
another’s great struggles; not because it is pleasure
or joy that anyone should be distressed, but because
it is sweet to perceive from what misfortune you
yourself are free.
The tenor of the poem’s central celebration of the “adjunct pleasure” of partaking in
modest fare (mensa tenuis) is reminiscent of the passage in the Letter to Menoeceus
(131, quoted above) that lauds plain living, and aligns it with the otia dia described
by Lucretius in his sketch of an imagined Bucolic existence for primitive man, as well as
the otia enjoyed by Vergil’s Tityrus-persona of Eclogues 1 (Odes 2.16.13–16):28
vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum

splendet in mensa tenui salinum
nec levis somnos timor aut cupido
sordidus aufert.
that person flourishes on little, on whose
sparse table there shines an inherited salt dish,
and whose gentle bouts of sleep are not removed
by fear or shameful greed.
Horace is at his most robust in his interrogation of ethical values as propounded by rival
Hellenistic schools in the two books of Satires.29 His “Conversations” (Sermones) on the
topic are presented in a lively dramatic form, with the speaker challenging (and being
challenged by) an equally vigorous and opinionated interlocutor. A common rhetorical
strategy he employs in this genre is to set up Stoic mouthpieces as straw antagonists in
his version of philosophical diatribe. Several poems in the two collections stage the
author engaging in animated debates with Stoic personae who defend orthodox tenets
27 Text and translation are here cited from Bailey, Lucretius. On the issue of the invulnerability of the
sapiens, see Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory. The Epicurean disengagement from politics is ably treated
by Fish, “Not All Politicians.”
28 DRN 5.1387; Vergil Ecl. 1.6.
29 See Muecke, Horace: Satires, passim in regard to the satirical speaker of Book 2.
468 GREGSON DAVIS
of the school with inflexible dogmatism. Drawing on a repertoire of “Stoic Paradoxes”

such as we have on record in Cicero’s treatise by that name, the Horatian satirist pillories
relentlessly such well known Stoic doctrinal staples as, e.g., “all transgressions are equal”
(aequalia esse peccata, cf. 1.3.96: quis paria esse placuit peccata); “only the wise man is
rich” (solum sapientem esse divitem, cf. 1.3.124: si dives, qui sapiens est); “all fools are mad”
(omnem stultum insanire, cf. 2.3.32: insanis et tu stultique prope omnes).30 Other Stoic
ideals, such as that of the uniquely free and autonomous sage, also come under negative
scrutiny (cf. 2.7.83: quisnam igitur liber? sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus: “who then is free?
The wise man, who has mastery over himself ”).
Horace’s polemical method is to confront and debunk the fallacies of Stoic precepts
by contrasting them in dialogue with Epicurean values to which he himself is demon-
strably more sympathetic. For instance, in the third satire of Book 1, he interrogates a
nameless interlocutor of decidedly Stoic persuasion and berates him by citing Epicurean
doctrines based on Lucretian formulations, such as the utilitarian account of the social
contract (cf. 1.3.98 Utilitas, iusti prope mater et aequi: “Expedience, mother, so to speak,
of justice and right,” cf. DRN 5.1141–50). In two satires of Book 2 he choreographs
encounters with named Stoic opponents that take place during the dramatic setting of
the Saturnalia festival, a period of licensed social role reversal which permits slaves, in
particular, to dress down their masters for their ethical failures. The character
Damasippus in Sat. 2.3 is given leeway on center stage to spout the doctrine that all fools
are mad in an amusing exchange in which the author of the satire is accused of hypocrisy
and moral inconsistency; while in 2.7, a slave of Horace named Davus, who flaunts the
Stoic maxim that “only the wise are free” is ridiculed by his master.31
The recurrent critiques of Stoic positions relating to the sapiens share a common
premise that resonates with a fundamental Epicurean principle: the prudent observance
of limit (modus) in the fulfillment of the human appetite for pleasure. The ramifications
of this general prescription in the sphere of sexual fulfillment are graphically sketched in
Sat. 1.2.111–26 in a passage of unabashed utilitarianism. Horace poses the question
towards the end of a poem that, in the words of Sider, is “imbued with Epicurean
coloring”:32
nonne, cupidinibus statuat natura modum quem,

quid latura sibi, quid sit dolitura negatum,
quaerere plus prodeat et inane abscindere soldo?
surely it is more useful to ask what limit nature
imposes on desires, what fulfillment she will bring
to herself, what deprivation will cause her pain
and to separate the void from the solid?
30 In addition to these slogans reproduced in Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum, see Fin. 4.19.55.
31 For a judicious account of the philosophical and social issues at stake in this satire, see Muecke,
Horace: Satires, ad loc.; Mayer, “Sleeping with the Enemy.” Cf. Rudd, Satires, 1–35 on the diatribes of
Book 1 of the Satires. For a thorough treatment of Horatian Satire in relation to Epicurean values
(especially in the expositions of Philodemus) see Yona, Epicurean Ethics.
32 Sider, Epigrams, 230.
In arguing for a parabilis Venus (readily accessible sex) the satiric persona appeals to the
authority of the philosopher-poet Philodemus by citing a line from one his epigrams.33
Whereas in the generic context of the Satires Horace tends to concentrate his atten-
tion on the shortcomings and presumed absurdities of Stoic dogmas in the domain of
ethics, he deliberately adopts a much more nuanced view of the school’s popular teach-
ings in the Epistles, where he also refines his own pliant brand of Epicureanism. In an
appropriately mellower tone, the initial poem of Book 1 signals the poet’s turn (or rather
return) to the study of philosophy in terms that imply a dynamic shift to a more inclu-
sive approach (Ep. 1.1.10–19):
nunc itaque et uersus et cetera ludicra pono:

quid verum atque decens, curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum;
condo et compono quae mox depromere possim.
ac ne forte roges quo me duce, quo Lare tuter;
nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,
quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.
nunc agilis fio et mersor civilibus undis
virtutis verae custos rigidusque satelles;
nunc in Aristippi furtim praecepta relabor
et mihi res, non me rebus subiungere conor.
so now I set aside my verses and all other toys.
what is right and seemly is my study and pursuit,
and to that am I wholly given. I am putting by and
setting in order the stores on which I may someday
draw. Do you ask, perchance, who is my chief,
in what home I take shelter? I am not bound over
to swear as any master dictates; wherever the storm
drives me, I turn in for comfort. Now I become all
action, and plunge into the tide of civil life, stern
champion and follower of true Virtue; now I slip
back stealthily into the rules of Aristippus, and
would bend the world to myself, not myself to
the world.34
At a pivotal moment in his literary trajectory Horace portrays himself as eschewing

adherence to any of the regnant Hellenistic schools and he frames this eclecticism
within a bi-polar schema: at one extreme, he places the Stoics (16), at the other, the
Cyrenaics in the person of Aristippus (18). He claims that he habitually slides back and
forth between these two polar ethical systems. Where in this oscillation, we may ask,
does his presumptive affiliation with Epicurean precepts fit in? To comprehend the
33 Sider, Epigrams, 230.

34 Translations of passages from the Epistles are reproduced, with minor modifications, from
Fairclough, Horace.
470 GREGSON DAVIS
vantage-point of the somewhat slippery epistolary persona, it will prove useful to delin-
eate the main lines of his general refusal of orthodoxy in philosophical matters.
With regard to Epicurean doctrine pertaining to the merits of simple fare (discussed
above), Horace subjects his own praxis to candid self-examination. We can infer the
extent of his aberrations in the direction of over-indulgence in food and wine from the
famous conclusion to his epistle to the elegist, Albius Tibullus, where he dubs himself,
with obvious tongue-in-cheek, as “a hog from Epicurus’s herd” (Ep. 1.4.15–16):
me pinguem et nitidum bene curate cute vises,

cum ridere voles, Epicuri de grege porcum.
as for me, when you want a laugh, you will find
me in fine fettle, fat and sleek, a hog from Epicurus’s herd.
In ascribing a common stereotype of the Epicurean flock to himself, Horace is engaging

in playful repartee (“when you want a laugh”).35 The self-deprecating quip, which is typ-
ical of Horatian endings in satiric discourse, may have had its counterpart in the kind of
friendly critical banter on the part of a fellow-poet, who is described in the opening line
as “frank critic of my Conversations” (nostrorum Sermonum candide iudex). True to
form, Horace makes a facetious confession of his transgression of the norms regarding
over-consumption laid down by the founder.
Horace’s coy admission of weakness in this area of conduct is a reminder that, as
Woolf and others have shown, the Epicurean position on taking part in luxurious
banquets is far less rigid than is commonly assumed.36 Even in the locus classicus of the
Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus treats the occasional enjoyment of a luxurious feast as
permissible to the sophos. Inadmissible, by the orthodox account, would be indulgence
in an uncontrolled craving for such “natural but unnecessary” pleasures.
That Horace is cheerfully aware of his occasionally anomalous behavior in this regard
is evident in other epistolary passages, such as his appeal to a friend named Numonius
Vala, from whom he seeks advice on which resort in the Bay of Naples he should choose
(in regard to its gastronomic reputation!) for a doctor-prescribed therapeutic sojourn
with the words: “so that I may return home from there a fat [pinguis] Phaeacian” (Ep.
1.15.24). Similar facetious “revelations” occur in the epistles to Torquatus (1.5.12–15) and
to Celsus (1.8.3–4), which further attest to the writer’s nominal lapses from Epicurean
guidelines in relation to the pleasures of the table and the doctrine of the mensa tenuis.
In his involutional turn to a more relaxed ethical stance, Horace in the Epistles sets
aside an uncompromising denigration of the Stoics’ dogmas—such as we saw at work in
the Satires—for a qualified approval of some aspects of their ideal of Virtus. This move
is rendered less self-contradictory, however, by the observation that there exists a
35 Sider, The Library provides background on the stereotype, which is attested in visual, as well as
literary sources. For aspersions of over-indulgence directed against the followers of Epicurus, see
Cicero In Pis. 68–72.
36 Cf. Woolf, “Pleasure and Desire,” 160–61.
common, albeit restricted, ground where the two major Hellenistic philosophies may be
seen occasionally to converge.
The unwavering pursuit of virtus is the main theme of Ep. 1.6, addressed to Numicius,
which opens with the dictum, nil admirari (“marvel at nothing”), an injunction that has
conceptual parallels in both Epicurean ataraxia and Stoic apatheia.37 The epistle goes on
to advocate the single-minded pursuit of virtus in language that approximates both the
Stoic terminology in respect to the antitype of the insane stultus and the Epicurean
insistence on setting limits to all desires (9–16).38 The argument of the epistle to
Quinctius Hirpinus (1.16) evinces an equivalent acceptance of the Stoic doctrine of the
self-sufficiency of virtus in defining the ideal of the vir bonus.
Perhaps the stance that anchors Horatian moral philosophy in Epicureanist norms
over the course of his career is the one reaffirmed in the closing lines of his final Epistle
(2.2): pleasures (emblematized in the feast) are to be enjoyed in moderation, especially
as one approaches old age (213–16):
vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.

lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti
tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius aequo
rideat et pulset lasciva decentius aetas.
If you do not know how to live aright,
make way for those who do. You have played
enough, have eaten and drunk enough. It’s time
to quit the feast, lest when you have drunk
too freely, youth mock and jostle you, playing
the wanton with better grace.
It is entirely in keeping with the Epicurean signature of the sentiment that it is linguisti-
cally indebted to a Lucretian conceit delivered in the voice of a personified Nature
(DRN 3.938–39):
“cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis

aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem?”
“why not, like a banqueter satiated with life,
withdraw with tranquility and enjoy, you fool,
a repose liberated from care?”
The underlying philosophical concept of the mean, which depends on the judgment of
when to apply modus to one’s desires, plays a large role in Horatian lyric, no less than in
the Satires and Epistles, and imparts a thread of coherence to the poet’s deeply held
convictions on the pursuit of happiness.39
37 Fairclough, Horace, 284 extends the doctrinal horizon of this concept to include other schools of
thought, such as those of Pythagoras and Democritus.
38 Cf. Ep. 1.2.56: certum voto pete finem (“aim at a fixed term to desire”).
39 On the fundamental concept of the relative mean in the Odes see Davis, Polyhymnia, 167–72.
472 GREGSON DAVIS
The conversation with major Greek philosophers over the just observance of the
mean recurs with high visibility throughout the major episodes of Vergil’s epic narra-
tive, the Aeneid. The moral parameters of the epic are set forth in an elaborate prologue
in which the poet calls upon the Muse to enumerate the multiple motivations (causas)
that lie behind the persistent anger of the goddess Juno—anger directed against his pro-
tagonist, Aeneas, whose outstanding virtue of pietas shows it to be unwarranted (8–11):
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso,

quidve dolens, regina deum tot volvere casus
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
impulerit. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?
Muse, relate through me the causes: what feelings of
anger and lèse-majestė drove the queen of heaven to cause a man so renowned for
righteousness to go through so many troubles, to confront so many ordeals?
Can anger on this scale inhabit divine minds?
The most salient feature of the rhetorical question posed by the narrator (“Can anger on
this scale inhabit divine minds?”) is its indubitably Epicurean conceptual cast. Vergil
here prominently interrogates the nature of the divine in terms that are derived from a
central precept of the school: the total separation of the gods—both mentally and
physically—from all involvement in human affairs. In so far as it is representative of all
emotional disturbance, anger is ideally precluded from the Epicurean view of divine
ontology, as enshrined in the very first of the Key Doctrines: “What is blessed and inde-
structible has no troubles itself, nor does it give trouble to anyone else, so that is not
affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. For all such things are a sign of weakness.”40
Lucretius provides a notably incisive enunciation of the doctrine at DRN 1.44–49:
omnis enim per se divum natura necessest

immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur
semota ab nostris rebus seiunctaque longe;
nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis,
ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri,
nec bene promeritis capitur nec tangitur ira.
for the whole nature of the gods necessarily
enjoys immortal existence in perfect peace, far
removed and set apart from our affairs; for
relieved of all pain, relieved of all dangers,
potent by virtue of its own resources, without
need of us, it is neither affected by our devotions
nor touched by anger.
In foregrounding the theme of anger and its destructive repercussions in the very
prooemium to the Aeneid, Vergil is, of course, taking his ethical cue (if we go along with
40 DL 10.139; translation is from Inwood and Gerson, The Epicurean Reader.

Horace’s mode of reading as discussed above) from Homer’s Iliad, which is structured
on the emotional trajectory of the mēnis of Achilles. Literary convention and Epicurean
ethics are perfectly compatible in this Vergilian interrogation of ira, for the moral failure
of Achilles resides, by this account, not in the brute fact of giving vent to anger, but in the
hero’s reluctance to keep it within reasonable bounds.
Anger constitutes the macrocosmic thematic bookends, so to speak, of the Aeneid,
which concludes with a display of fury and vengeance on the part of the Trojan founder
of Rome. Aeneas’s execution of Turnus in the closing episode of the poem has elicited
controversy among philologists as regards its moral implications, and there exists an
impressive body of literature in support of the view that Aeneas’s rejection of Turnus’s
plea for mercy is reprehensible in its harshness. However, a non-superficial familiarity
with the extant Epicurean corpus on the subject of anger (orgē, thymos) furnishes a salu-
tary corrective to this reading.41 As Indelli, Asmis, and other leading scholars of
Epicurean thought have shown in erudite detail, the Epicureans’ position on the “neces-
sity of anger” was sophisticated and nuanced.42 In their complex ethical system, anger
was regarded as natural and acceptable under the right circumstances. The danger lay
in the over-stepping of reasonable limit.
The Vergilian epic narrative implicitly discriminates between the irrational ira of
Turnus (and his divine patron, Juno) and the justified ire of Aeneas. Thus when the latter
catches sight of the baldric of Pallas ornamenting the body of Turnus, he is rudely
recalled to his obligation of pietas vis-à-vis his role of surrogate father bestowed on him
by Evander. The execution of Turnus finds added ethical justification in the narrator’s
consistently negative characterization of Turnus as immoderate and intemperate. His
abrupt intervention on the conduct of the victorious Turnus after the slaying of Pallas is
ethically framed in generalizing terms (10.501–505):
nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae

et servare modum rebus sublata secundis!
Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum
intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista diemque
oderit.
The human mind is ignorant of its fate and future lot,
and of how to observe moderation when elated
with good fortune. The time will come when Turnus
will wish he could buy back an unscathed
Pallas, when he will hate those spoils and the day
he took them.
The intrusion of the authorial voice in this passage foreshadows the eventual execution
of Turnus, while providing the reader with a moral compass for judging the quality and
necessity of Aeneas’s explosion of righteous fury.
41 For a sophisticated exposition of this view of the closure of the Aeneid, see Putnam, Humanness.
42 See Indelli, “Vocabulary”; Asmis, “Necessity.” Cf. Galinsky, “How to Be”.
474 GREGSON DAVIS
To conclude this synopsis of the ethical subtexts immanent in the poetic discourse of
the two major Augustan poets: their relationship to Epicurean thought in all the various
genres in which they excelled (bucolic, didactic, and epic, in the case of Vergil; satiric,
epistolary, and lyric, in the case of Horace) is fundamentally elastic, rather than reverential
in the manner of Lucretius. Despite this important qualification, however, both authors
frequently and consistently utilized key Epicurean concepts pertaining to such human
passions as amor and ira as a framework for “conversations” on topical issues in ethics
surrounding eudaimonia and the achievement of mental tranquility. Ideas about the
danger of extreme passions to human flourishing were in no way unique to Epicurean
ethics. However, the terms in which these dangers were framed in the discursive
universe of the Garden and in their transmission to educated Romans via Lucretius and
influential Greek émigré teachers, such as Philodemus and Siro, were essential to
shaping the cognitive landscape of Vergilian and Horatian poetics.
References
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Tradition, edited by J. Fish and K. Sanders, 152–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011.
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Brown, E. Lucretius on Love and Sex. Leiden: Brill, 1987.
Davis, G. Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 1991.
————. “Consolation in the Bucolic mode: The Epicurean Cadence of Vergil’s First Eclogue.”
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M. Skinner, 63–74. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2004.
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in Vergil’s Sixth Eclogue.” Vergilius 57 (2011): 35–54.
————. Parthenope: The Interplay of Ideas in Vergilian Bucolic. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
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Fish, J. “Not All Politicians Are Sisyphus: What Roman Epicureans Were Taught about
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Philodemus, and the Augustans, edited by D. Armstrong, J. Fish, P. Johnston, and M. Skinner,
103–10. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2004.
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Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1994.
Janko, R. Philodemus on Poems: Book I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Klingner, F. Horatius: Opera. 3rd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1959.
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Ga.: Scholars Press, 1998.
Mayer, R. “Sleeping with the Enemy: Satire and Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Roman Satire, edited by K. Freudenburg, 146–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005.
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————, ed. Philodemus: On Piety Part I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
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2018.
chapter 18
Cicero
Carlos Lévy
Cicero has often been considered, not without reason, as among those principally
responsible for the negative image of Epicureanism in Western thought.1 This would
have us forget that he was educated in its doctrines at the feet of its greatest masters, as he
emphasizes himself, and that he maintained friendly relations throughout his life with a
great number of its followers. His first teacher—even before the Academician Philo of
Larissa, and thus before 88 bce—was the Epicurean Phaedrus, who succeeded Zeno of
Sidon as head of the Garden.2 During his journey to Athens and Asia Minor, between 79
and 77 bce, he also had occasion to hear Zeno of Sidon, the old scholarch whose subtlety
he later praised. Though stressing the depth of their philosophical differences, he main-
tained cordial relations with Phaedrus’s successor, Patro. It is Patro who, in a somewhat
paradoxical turn of events, asked Cicero to intervene on his behalf with Memmius, the
dedicatee of Lucretius’s De rerum natura, to prevent a villa from being constructed on
the site of Epicurus’s house (Cic. Fam. 13.1.2–3). As for Philodemus, the Campanian
master of Epicureanism, Cicero describes him along with Siron as “an excellent and very
wise man” (Fin. 2.119). Further, in the In Pisonem, and thus in an eminently polemical
context, Cicero contrasts the crudeness of Piso with the elegance of Philodemus, whose
refinement he upholds as a rarity (in his words) within the Epicurean milieu (In Pis. 70).
Generally speaking, therefore, his estimation of Epicureans as individuals is a
distinctly positive one. He doesn’t hesitate to note in the Lucullus that he counts many
friends among their school, that they are men of worth, and that they are very affection-
ate with one another—an observation not bereft of irony, but founded in reality
nonetheless (Luc. 115). How could these warm words for individual Epicureans coexist
with Cicero’s most vigorous condemnation of the doctrine they espoused? Such is the
central question of Cicero’s relationship with Epicureanism.
1 Maso, Capire e dissentire. Cicerone e la filosofia di Epicuro, 31.

2 Erler, Epikur-Die Schule Epikurs-Lukrez, 268–75.
Cicero 477
Cicero, Epicurus, and

Epicureanism
One imagines that Cicero was fully conscious of the problem posed by this dissymme-
try, judging by his letter to Cassius in mid-January 45.3 He begins by reproaching his
correspondent, who had converted to Epicureanism three years before, for having aban-
doned the camp of virtue for that of pleasure. He goes on to acknowledge, however, that
Cassius had always preserved his dignity and courage, and concludes on an almost apol-
ogetic note:
As for this school you call your own, I fear that there is more energy in it than I had
imagined if it has met with your approval.
As an adherent of the New Academy, and thereby seeking always to practice suspension
of judgment, Cicero made sure never to exclude Epicureanism definitively from the
ranks of the potentially true. His famous expression in the first Tusculan—“I would
rather be wrong with Plato than right with men like these” (Tusc. 1.39)—surely applies in
the first instance to the Epicureans; nevertheless, with regard to Epicurus himself,
beyond the facile rhetoric of Cicero’s wholesale condemnation one perceives an attitude
far more complex. For Cicero, Epicurus is a character of contradictions—at times a phil-
osophically ignorant enemy of culture or plagiarizing trickster, but also a man who
knew how to confront suffering and death with great courage. For instance, in the De
finibus, Cicero submits that the founder of the Garden had been, at least occasionally, a
likeable and good man, but seizes upon a clause in Epicurus’s will providing for a yearly
post-mortem banquet on his birthday (Fin. 2.103). How can one affirm that death is of
no consequence while at the same time showing such concern for the perpetuation of
one’s memory? Book 2 of the treatise ultimately presents Epicurus as a sect leader anx-
ious to protect his own cult of personality, evincing a mind confused to the point of dis-
honesty. At the same time, Cicero was aware that Epicureanism was not a bloc of
monolithic dogma, and he eventually discusses the different versions of the doctrine, for
example about friendship. One wonders if, instead of saying that he neither despises nor
accepts Epicureanism,4 it would not be better to say that he accepts it, like an unavoid-
able element of his intellectual and personal life, and despises it when it claims to reduce
the complexity of the world to the movement of atoms and to replace the beauties of
culture by the rudeness of materialistic physics. Rhetorical irony was a means of over-
coming this contradiction.
3 Sedley, “The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius.”

4 Michel, “L’ épicurisme et la dialectique de Cicéron.”
478 CARLOS LéVY
Refutation of Epicurean
Philosophy
Ethics
At the basis of Cicero’s criticism of Epicurean ethics lay a dissonance between the Greek
and Latin languages.5 In Greek, hēdonē was a word with a certain philosophical depth,
having been developed over many centuries by a wide range of philosophers. In Latin,
voluptas was a term to which the mos maiorum conferred a clearly negative sense, con-
sidering it as a sensualist, egoistic, and immoral emotion. Cicero, who was bilingual,
knew this conflict and was certainly able to understand all the nuances of Greek
philosophical hēdonē, but he did not want to alter the traditional meaning of voluptas,
which was for him connected, as a negative pole, with the positive pole of virtus, an
intuitive but fundamentally true perception of what was the ultimate aim of an ethical
life. From a conceptual point of view, the critique applied to Epicurus’s ethics in De fini-
bus 2 mirrors the critique of Stoicism in Book 4.6 It demonstrates, along Socratic lines,
that Epicureans and Stoics are incapable of correctly analyzing the concepts they employ
and that this error of language renders both systems incoherent. Epicurus had shown
little concern for the definitional problems so central to Plato’s dialogues, preferring to
identify sensations and ideas with physical realities. It is precisely at this point that
Cicero lays his attack. Taking up the mode of analysis Plato demonstrated in the Republic
and Philebus, he replies to Torquatus that the absence of pain, which in Epicureanism
represents the supreme form of pleasure, in fact constitutes an intermediate reality
between pleasure and pain.
Employing the dichotomy, a method dear to the Academy, he endeavors to show that
Epicureanism, as with Stoicism in a different context, claims to be a unique system while
in reality melding two distinct and opposing doctrines. The definition of pleasure in its
most common sense, as the first object of man’s natural urges, should logically lead the
Epicureans to admit that the ultimate end of existence resides in an existence which
accumulates the greatest number of sensual pleasures. Thus Epicurus is accused of evad-
ing this logically necessary choice for tactical reasons, or, put another way, for fear of
appearing to adhere to the most vulgar brand of hedonism. Epicurus is thus having it
both ways: he earns himself a large following with the thesis that every pleasure is worth
seeking, and with the claim that the absence of pain represents the final limit of pleasure
he grants himself pseudo-philosophical cover at little real cost. For Epicurus, there was
no difference of nature between the most common pleasure (a “kinetic” pleasure) and
the inner perfection of the sage (the “katastematic” pleasure).7 The absence of pain was
5 On the problem of translation in Cicero see Lambardi, Il Timaeus ciceroniano; Dubuisson, “Le grec
à Rome à l’ époque de Cicéron”; Powell, Cicero the Philosopher.
6 Lévy, Cicero Academicus. 7 On this question see Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, 11–58.
Cicero 479
from his point of view only the upper limit in the scale of pleasures—the perfect
pleasure, but not a different kind of pleasure. Cicero, by combining a kind of naïve
Roman realism with a fascination for the Platonic ontology of Forms, a fascination he
expressed especially at the beginning of the Orator, denies that the essence of reality
could be only the effect of a mere variation on limits.
Using for polemical ends the radicalism inherent in Chrysippus’s classification, which
held only three possible solutions—pleasure, moral beauty, and the combination of
these two8—Cicero argues that the question leads ultimately to the incompatibility of
pleasure with moral beauty. He then proceeds to reformulate his theories of virtue and
happiness while assuming the superiority of reason to the senses. In similar fashion, he
asserts that friendship cannot be based merely on selfishness. The book ends with a
reflection on pain, which in particular challenges the Epicurean notion that the memory
of happy moments can nullify the most intense suffering. In affirming that every pain is
evil, Epicurus has, according to Cicero, sapped strength from happiness by making it
dependent on externalities.
It is in the final book of the Tusculans, without a doubt, that the complexity of Cicero’s
position finds its greatest expression.9 Epicurus continues to be presented here as a con-
tradictory being: the same man who maintains, deservedly, that the sage is always happy,
does not hesitate to name suffering as the highest evil, such that if he has the shield of
philosophy, he cannot in reality be considered as a philosopher. However, this contra-
diction between appearance and reality, so glaring in his theory, is overshadowed by
Epicurus in practice, in his frugal life and heroic manner in death. Regardless of his own
personal foibles, Cicero never considered philosophy as merely a theoretical exercise.
He endeavored ceaselessly to put it into practice in the world, and above all in the forum.
With Epicurus, he thus found himself confronted with a singular situation: a philoso-
pher who, despite professing a doctrine founded on erroneous principles, had success-
fully articulated that philosophy in his own life, transcending thereby the incoherence
of his doctrine. In Cicero’s eyes, Epicurus had managed, despite all apparent paradoxes,
to take his place in the great community of philosophers, which Cicero characterized
by the perception, more or less complete, more or less clear, of the essential identity of
virtue and happiness.
Friendship, a subject closely intertwined with ethics,10 is at issue in one form or
another in each of Cicero’s moral treatises. In Cicero’s relationship with Epicureanism, it
assumes a critical place at the juncture of theory and practice, that is to say in the turbu-
lent zone responsible for the tension between Cicero’s anti-Epicurean convictions and
his empathy for certain Epicurean practices. From a structural point of view, Epicurean
friendship is characterized by a privileged society of fellow-feeling confidantes, a unique
and necessarily restricted circle. By contrast, the Stoics conceived of sociability accord-
ing to the famous concentric circles of oikeiōsis, which center upon the individual—which
8 Algra, “Chrysippus, Carneades, Cicero. The Ethical divisiones in Cicero’s Lucullus.”

9 Lévy, “Cicéron et l’épicurisme: la problématique de l’éloge paradoxal.”
10 Mitsis, “Epicurus on Friendship and Altruism,” 98–128 and Chapter 10.
480 CARLOS LéVY
Hierocles portrays as the first circle11—and proceed outward toward humanity as a

whole. In this social topology, the city finds itself both included and transcended; it is
possible, put another way, for the non-sage to concern himself with political matters,
leaving on a distant horizon the final circle, that of universal humanism—a Stoic notion
that Cicero could not ignore and to which there are allusions in De officiis.
Cicero had to endure a long intellectual maturation, as well as the experience of see-
ing Rome torn apart by civil war, to be able to move beyond the De re publica, a political
and historical treatise, to the ethical universalism of the De officiis.12 The Epicurean con-
ception of friendship was rooted in the concrete example of Epicurus’s own estate, full of
friends united by deep mutual affection, which constituted the idea’s incarnation in his-
tory. Cicero, without denying the importance of friendship—naming it without hesita-
tion as “the most precious thing in the world”—proceeds thoroughly to deconstruct the
version of friendship that Epicurus espouses:
• Friendship is individual, that of Scipio for Laelius, or that of Cicero for Atticus. On
this level friendship could flourish between an ex-consul and a bookish expatriate
who resided far away from the forum’s din. The society of friends, on the other
hand, could not be dissociated at Rome with political friendship; as Laelius
observes, “It is the business of everyday life which we must envision.” In this con-
text, therefore, it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish transactional friend-
ships, and thus ephemeral ones, from those intended to endure.
• Friendship cannot be considered as a harmonious refuge where the individual
search for pleasure is transmuted into care for others. It must be governed by the
“law of friendship,” which forbids keeping as friends those who have rebelled
against the nation. In other words, in the De amicitia,13 Cicero reintegrates friend-
ship within the social structure of oikeiōsis, transforming it into a circle not locat-
able geographically, and not defined by ties of kinship, but intermediary between
the individual and the city. As such, friendship too is subject to the law which
provides that the outer circle must always be ethically prior to those it
encompasses.
Physics
With regard to physics, the accusation of plagiarism is even more pointed. Epicurus
stands accused of having appropriated the atomist doctrine elaborated by Democritus.
In the Academica, Cicero delivers this cruel aside (Lib. Ac. 1.6): “If I gave approval to
Epicurus—that is, if I gave it to Democritus.” Elsewhere, in the first book of the De
11 For an enlightening synthesis of the problem of the concentric circles of sociability, see Radice,
Oikeiosis.
12 On Cicero’s itinerary between politics and philosophy, see Nicgorski, Cicero’s Practical Philosophy.
13 Bellincioni, Struttura e pensiero del Laelio ciceroniano.
Cicero 481
finibus, Cicero allows that Epicurus had introduced a very few modifications regarding
Democritus’s system, but adds immediately that these were just so many errors. Among
these errors was a trust in physical sensations pushed to the point of affirming that the
sun is as small as we perceive it, but also the clinamen,14 by which the founder of the
Garden sought to escape from Democritean determinism. For Cicero, the swerve of
atoms is merely a gambit by which Epicurus endeavored to escape from the determin-
ism caused by the vertical fall of his atoms, just as he had refused to accept the conse-
quences of his choice of pleasure as the main principle of his ethics. In Cicero’s eyes,
imagining a movement without cause is an absurdity all the more scandalous because
one could easily dispense with the explanation—Platonic in origin, though the De fato
makes no explicit mention of this—of an internal automotion within the soul, a force
Cicero dubs the motus voluntarius (Fat. 48).
Turning from the soul to the heavens, whereas the Epicurean gods are isolated in their
“interworlds” and unconcerned with human affairs, here as well Cicero—through the
voice of Cotta, also an adherent of the New Academy—tries to enclose Epicurus in an
intermediate space between illogic and dishonesty.15 He reviews the many contradic-
tions within the Epicurean concept of the divine, such as imagining the gods as happy,
though they do nothing and virtue herself is an active principle. He concludes the
refutation of Epicurean theology, in cauda venenum, by citing Posidonius, who asserted
that Epicurean theology was nothing but a subterfuge to disguise an atheism which
Epicurus feared would be unpopular (Cic. ND 1.123).
Cicero and Roman Epicureans

It is fitting now to specify the relationship of the orator-philosopher to the history of
Roman Epicureanism and to a certain number of his Epicurean contemporaries.16
Cicero’s representation of philosophy, as with his vision of society, is strongly
hierarchical,17 constructed according to a gradus dignitatis with Plato—in his eyes, a
man both philosophically and literarily incomparable—at its summit. In such a scheme,
Epicureanism sits undoubtedly on the plebeian rung. Cicero portrays the Epicureans as
minuti philosophi, “tiny philosophers,” a minuscule mob which has invaded all of Italy.18
Though unable to ignore the importance of Epicurean sects in places like Campania,
this “plebeian” aspect of Epicureanism served for Cicero as a hyperbolic shorthand. The
comparison of this doctrine’s implantation to a foreign invasion was his way of
emphasizing its incompatibility with mos maiorum. Cicero’s insistence on characterizing
14 Sharples, “Epicurus, Carneades and the Atomic Swerve”; Mitsis, L’Éthique d’Épicure.
15 Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus” and “Le livre I du De natura deorum de Cicéron et le De
pietate de Philodème.”
16 Benferhat, Ciues Epicurei. Les Épicuriens et l’idée de monarchie à Rome et en Italie de Sylla à
Octave.
17 Görler, Untersuchungen zu Cicero’s Philosophie.
18 Canfora, “La première réception de Lucrèce à Rome.”
482 CARLOS LéVY
Epicureanism’s Roman popularizers—men like Amafinius, Rabirius, and Catius—as

dreadful translators was another means of suggesting that the Garden’s habitual dis-
regard for traditional culture had been perpetuated in a Roman milieu. Such a third-
rate effort, Cicero implies, could only win Epicureanism the attention of
unsophisticated hicks.
Nevertheless, this metaphor has its limits. The philosophical plebeian, enthralled by
Epicurus just as the populares would have been by such and such a tribune, was never
presented by Cicero as politically threatening. Piso’s monstrosity was, in Cicero’s eyes,
the product only of his personal perversity. In the De legibus, it is the New Academy far
more than Epicureanism which appears, its spirit of criticism carried to an extreme, as
the real threat (at least intellectually) to the institutions and traditions of the Roman
mind (Leg. 1.39). Cicero could not ignore, of course, the attraction evidenced by Caesar
and certain Caesarians toward Epicureanism, yet he ascribes far more responsibility to
their personal characteristics than to the doctrine itself. As he asserts in the same
passage, Epicureans who, faithful to their founder’s example, keep to their hortuli, their
“little Gardens,” pose no threat to the state. Better to remain there, he implies, rather
than mix themselves up in matters which surpass their understanding.
A few words with regard to Lucretius,19 whom we know Cicero never invoked by
name apart from a single letter to his brother Quintus in 54 (Q. fr. 2.10.3), in which he
praises both the career and poetic talent of the De rerum natura’s author. Cicero has
been suspected of having thus voluntarily obscured the work of a brilliant rival in order
to present himself as Rome’s first true philosopher, and to bolster his argument that
Epicureans were simple-minded rubes, incapable of either coherent thought or elegant
expression. The willful eclipsing of Lucretius is a critical element in the darker portraits
made of Cicero by his critics. The truth was surely more complex, as we must reason
from the work’s reception in its own time. By way of example, Cassius, the tyrannicide
and nevertheless an Epicurean, expresses his regret in a letter of 45 that the Epicurean
doctrine had been diffused in Rome by the hands of poor translators, Catius and
Amafinius, each incapable of properly explaining it (Fam. 15.19.2). In this complaint
Cassius makes no mention of Lucretius. In his Libri Academici, moreover, Cicero attri-
butes a similar comment to Varro, which he would never have dared if Varro had been
an admirer of Lucretius. It may be added more generally that in his treatises Cicero does
not take up the debates of the philosophical present but rather those of his youth, when
he had known Phaedrus, Philo of Larissa, and Antiochus of Ascalon.20 He makes no
explicit mention of Aenesidemus, his contemporary, who nevertheless had founded
what we call “Neo-Pyrrhonian Scepticism.” Philodemus is no doubt present in the In
Pisonem, and he was probably an important source in his composition of the first book
of the De natura deorum, yet he is only cited once explicitly, in the De finibus (Fin. 2.119).
It would thus be at the least imprudent to attribute this famous Ciceronian silence solely
19 Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom.

20 Brittain, Philo of Larissa. The Last of the Academic Sceptics; Sedley, The Philosophy of Antiochus.
Cicero 483
to an authorial jealousy compounded by an animosity toward the doctrine Lucretius

had espoused.
We find an interesting example of Cicero’s relationship with the Epicurean scene in
his correspondence with Cassius, a subject of much recent scholarly attention. In his
letter (Fam. 15.16), Cicero alludes to the fact that Cassius’s latter-day conversion to
Epicureanism had been prompted by the defeat of the republican camp, at which point
he suggests that it was “the violence of armed men” which had prevailed upon Cassius to
give up the cause of virtue. It is very likely that Cassius had previously expressed a predi-
lection for Stoicism, evidenced in his citation of the maxim that moral beauty alone
must be sought. One notices that the justification advanced by Cassius touches upon the
difficulty in making Stoicism palatable to a wide audience. Presenting virtue as a means
of attaining pleasure and tranquility, he argues, is both true and probabile, meaning that
it can be both demonstrated and accepted. Reasoning thus, Cassius uses Cicero against
Cicero, since the orator had himself criticized Stoicism for being—in its opaque and eso-
teric terminology, but also in the radical nature of certain doctrines—incomprehensible
beyond a small circle of initiates. Far from serving as intellectual window-dressing, it is
thus clear that in this age philosophy could, at least for a certain group of Romans, be the
critical link between reflection and political action.
Why then did Cicero, schooled in Epicureanism in his youth, and surrounded by
Epicurean friends, show such clear aversion to this doctrine, a doctrine for which he is
nevertheless one of the best sources, both for the system itself and its reception by the
Roman ruling class? Ultimately, too much of Epicurean doctrine ran at cross-purposes
with the deepest currents of Cicero’s personality. Accepting Epicureanism, in the first
instance, would have required Cicero to admit that society and ethics had only the most
unstable foundation: the desire and quest for pleasure. In its explanation of human
behavior and the rules it fixed for governing that behavior, the Epicurean tendency to
base everything upon selfish interest appeared both to contradict reality and to deprive
axiology of any true foundation. However, Torquatus’s account in Book 1 of the De fini-
bus demonstrates that the acknowledgment of different faces of egoism could lead to
a legitimation of apparently altruistic behavior, such as that of the speaker’s ancestor,
who had thrown himself at an enemy during battle to recover his necklace. Elsewhere,
certain Epicureans had attempted to attenuate their Master’s position, claiming that
friendship was fundamentally based on a selfish calculation. Cicero could simply not
accept a system of ethics under which virtues were only the means to secure pleasure,
an idea he considered as contrary to man’s true nature: rationality, culminating in a
virtuous life as a social being. The idea that the fear of punishment alone sufficed to
prevent an individual from committing injustice was for Cicero an invitation to
dissimulate, not an exaltation of justice. What is more, for him who had placed such
importance on the concept of free will as a self-generated cause (Fat. 25), the connec-
tion fashioned by Epicureans, or at least by Lucretius, between voluntary action and
the clinamen (the swerve of atoms governed by mere chance) failed to provide a rea-
sonable explanation. Worse still, this idea would inevitably act to dilute individual
responsibility.
484 CARLOS LéVY
The Epicurean rejection of political affairs, moreover, though sometimes glossed over
or even defied by its followers, collided with Cicero’s aspiration to enroll himself in the
mos maiorum, Rome’s ancestral tradition, as demonstrated through service to the res
publica. Paradoxically, Cicero’s long public career was undoubtedly the source of many
bitter disappointments, to the point of what André called his “yearning for an impossi-
ble retirement.”21 Notwithstanding these failures, Cicero would never concede that the
Epicureans had been right about public service, nor would he ever cease to uphold the
models of statesmanship that had symbolized the Roman tradition at its best, men like
Scipio Aemilianus and Gaius Laelius. Cicero’s letters, so often critical of the men and
mores of his age, could well appear as an illustration of the Garden’s warnings against the
inherent disappointments of politics. For Epicureanism, the essential community was
that of a circle of friends. For Cicero, however, it was the res publica, which, thanks to the
imperium which Rome wielded over a greater and greater portion of the world, led him
naturally to the Stoic idea of the universal city, cosmopolis, which in Rome had seemed to
find its geographical expression. Brought up in the idea, already well developed in the
previous century by the poet Lucilius, that the Roman citizen must consider his own
personal interests as necessarily inferior to those of the state, Cicero could scarcely
admit a principle which placed absolute primacy on individual self-interest.
Furthermore, having found deep intellectual reserves within the practices of Roman
religion, he considered their preservation as an essential mission as well. It is this
ambiguity which he would transfer to another Academician, Cotta, in the De natura
deorum. Its first book comprises a critique of Epicurean theology, both harsh and well
documented, under which gods were models for mankind, and by no means active
participants in the life of the world.
By the same token, as the heir of a philhellenic tradition at Rome that had emerged in
the previous century, Cicero was brought up to honor the mos maiorum and admire
Greek culture simultaneously. The Epicurean devaluation of traditional Greek educa-
tion, the paideia; its rejection of the technai, and in particular of the arts of rhetoric and
dialectic; the often violent hostility of the Epicureans toward other philosophical
schools; the claim to have refounded culture from orthodox principles; and a physics
which even they considered to be conjectural: all this could appear as nothing more than
a mixture of naivety and arrogance. So too, as a homo novus, brought up in the thrall of
an aristocracy to which he did not belong, Cicero transposed into philosophical terms
his need to admire what he had valued for so long. In very significant fashion, he makes
the following confession to Lucullus: “As you well know, I have always had a deep fond-
ness for the aristocracy.” Intriguingly, the aristocracy and the philosophy to which he
refers in this passage are not those of Plato but those of Democritus. An atomist could
therefore be counted among the nobilitas of philosophy, inasmuch as he was venerable,
enjoyed an established place in the history of thought, and was accorded great respect
even by his philosophical adversaries. Epicurus, a philosopher of relatively recent
vintage, often presented as a plagiarist of Democritus, was clearly unworthy of a place
21 Nicgorski, Cicero’s Practical Philosophy.

Cicero 485
among this nobilitas. It is perhaps the same fascination for worlds inaccessible or nearly
so which explains why Cicero had been haunted by the idea of transcendence, to the
point of presenting himself for initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries during one of his
voyages to Greece and to which he intended to return in 44. Given such a perspective,
Plato could be nothing but the princeps of philosophers and Aristotle his brilliant
second-in-command. Stoicism, by the obscurity of its language, had still kept something
of its necessary mystery for Cicero. Epicureanism, which counted immediate sense
perceptions as necessarily true, rejected a philosophical language inaccessible to the
masses, made its gods far away yet all too visible, built an ethics so easy to grasp (and
caricature), claimed to illuminate everything with a shining light, advertised its distrust
for social and political hierarchies: all this was ultimately too distant, both intellectually
and emotionally, from the conception of the world that was Cicero’s own.
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chapter 19
Sen eca a n d Epicu rus
Margaret Graver
Within the history of Epicurus’s reception at Rome the figure of Seneca the Younger
occupies a position of particular interest. Though not himself an Epicurean, Seneca is
deeply engaged with Epicurean thought and Epicurean texts. In his prose writings he
refers to Epicurus or to his doctrines and members of his community more than eighty
times, giving over forty direct quotations from Epicurean works.1 Yet his overall attitude
is by no means easy to characterize. At times painstakingly accurate, he is also capable of
what seems like willful misrepresentation of Epicurus’s views; often antagonistic, he is
also on occasion strikingly appreciative of what Epicurus has to offer. On some points he
even takes over ideas which he knows to be Epicurean in origin, stating them as his own
opinion. More than that, he will sometimes modify and develop those ideas in ways that
make him a fascinating case of Epicurean influence outside the Garden.
The complexity of Seneca’s response at one time made him the central exhibit for that
older view of Roman philosophy that spoke of “eclecticism.” Indeed, Pierluigi Donini
has argued that the very notion of eclecticism as formulated by Eduard Zeller and Karl
Praechter was devised in part as a way of accounting for Seneca’s extraordinary attitude
toward the rival school.2 More recent scholarship has in general resisted the implication
that Seneca lacked a clear sense of doctrinal commitment. Following a seminal article by
John Rist in 1989, numerous careful studies have demonstrated the depth of Seneca’s
familiarity with the Stoic system and the thoroughness of his adherence to it.3 Yet this
1 A full list of references is provided in Ferguson, “Epicureanism under the Roman Empire,”
2280–82; most can also be found grouped by topic in Motto, Seneca Sourcebook. Lana, “Le ‘Lettere a
Lucilio’ nella letteratura epistolare,” 263–68 compares the citations from Epicurus with those from other
authors.
2 See Donini, “The History of the Concept of Eclecticism,” 204. Donini remarks further on how
exceptional it was for any major thinker of the Hellenistic period to be influenced by Epicurus: Seneca,
he says, was “a completely peculiar and isolated instance” (209).
3 Seneca’s orthodoxy on the main outlines of Stoic doctrine was established in Rist, “Seneca and
Stoic Orthodoxy”; the argument has been extended in Cooper, “Moral Theory and Moral
Improvement: Seneca”; Inwood, Reading Seneca, 23–64, 132–57; Wildberger, Seneca und die Stoa;
Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 125–32.
488 MARGARET GRAVER
reassessment of the Roman philosopher’s main doctrinal adherence has not as yet been
followed by any thorough re-examination of the role of Epicureanism in his works.4
A comprehensive review of the evidence is in order.
In what follows, I collect and study most of the relevant passages, not taking them
chronologically but rather grouping them loosely by topic. In so doing I hope to bring
out the thinking behind Seneca’s response, which is more consistent and principled than
has usually been recognized. Toward the core commitments of Epicurean philosophy—
its anti-teleological physics and cosmology, its hedonist ethics, and its utilitarian
approach to other-concern and friendship—Seneca is consistently hostile, as befits one
whose instincts are those of a Stoic. He is careful, though, to identify some de facto com-
mon ground between the two schools on the question of whether philosophers should
participate in politics or withdraw into a life of study and contemplation. Meanwhile he
willingly endorses a number of points made by Epicurus concerning the psychology of
the individual and the therapeutic strategies that are most likely to assist moral progress.
However, this agreement does not ever carry with it any general approval of the a priori
commitments of Epicureanism. It is rather a practical appreciation for Epicurus’s
sensitivity to the nuances of human behavior.
Extent and Provenance of

Seneca’s Knowledge
Seneca’s familiarity with the Epicurean school and its doctrine was extensive and
detailed. Although the nature of the evidence does not permit definitive identification of
his specific sources, there is reason to think that his information was often better than
our own and reliable enough to yield the basis for a sophisticated response.
Concerning Epicurus himself, Seneca knows that he lived in Athens and that his
personal habits were abstemious (Vita Beata 12.4; Ep. 18.9). He is able to quote from
Epicurus’s letters concerning the character of his friends Metrodorus, Polyaenus,
Idomeneus, Pythocles, and Hermarchus, and can give a date for at least one such letter.5
He knows, too, that these friends were philosophers in their own right, but he believes
that their views were so close to those of Epicurus as to justify some casualness in
4 The problem is scarcely mentioned, for instance, in the compendious Damschen and Heil, Brill’s
Companion to Seneca. Earlier comprehensive treatments include Setaioli, Seneca e i Greci, 172–248;
André, “Sénèque et l’Epicurisme: ultime position”; Schottländer, “Epikureisches bei Seneca”;
Mutschmann, “Seneca und Epikur.” Some aspects are usefully explored in Wildberger, “The Epicurus
Trope”; and also in Schiesaro, “Seneca and Epicurus: The Allure of the Other” (both of which appeared
after the project undertaken here was substantially complete). My own study published in 2015 (Graver,
“The Emotional Intelligence of Epicureans”) overlaps in part with my treatment here, but is less
comprehensive, concentrating on Epicurean elements in the Letters.
5 Ep. 18.9, 21.3–5, 21.7, 22.5, 52.3–4, 79.15–16. The date given in Ep. 18.9 to “the magistracy [i.e.
archonship] of Charinus” was probably copied from the superscription in his source.
Seneca and Epicurus 489
attribution.6 On the basis of a letter exchange with Metrodorus, he infers that Epicurus
was little known during his lifetime (Ep. 79.15–16). He knows of Epicurus’s deathbed
suffering from urinary blockage and dysentery and can quote his dying words
(Ep. 66.47, 92.25).
In matters of doctrine he shows a broad understanding of Epicurean ethics in particular
and refers often to such key elements as freedom from pain and anxiety, the classification
of desires, the basis of friendship, the preference for a retired life, and the inter-entailment
of virtue and pleasure. He can also state accurately many points from throughout the
Epicurean system, among them the intermingling of atoms and void, the downward
movement of atoms, arguments against the fear of death, the elimination of logic from
the curriculum, the effort to eliminate ambiguous terms, and the use of the term “rule”
(kanōn) for philosophical methodology.7
It is possible that some of this information came to him by oral transmission, for he
has some Epicurean friends, among them his kinsman Annaeus Serenus and the elderly
Aufidius Bassus of Ep. 30.8 But he also speaks of reading Epicurean books, and although
he does not mention the titles of these books, we can be confident that most of his
knowledge has a textual basis. Determining what specific works he had on hand is more
difficult, since many points of doctrine were stated in exactly the same words in more
than one Epicurean text or were quoted or paraphrased in handbooks and in works by
opponents of the school. In some cases the best we can do is to identify the works with
which Seneca appears to be familiar when the doctrines he reports are compared with
Epicurus’s extant writings. On this basis we can say that he appears to know the Letter to
Menoeceus, because he quotes a phrase from Ep. Men. 130 in one of his letters and in
another states Epicurus’s formula for the highest good in exactly the form that appears
in Ep. Men. 131.9 He also quotes the exact words that we know as the first, fourth, and
fifth of the Key Doctrines—although again, the Key Doctrines may themselves have been
excerpted from other Epicurean works, in which case Seneca may be quoting the
originals.10
Sometimes, too, Seneca quotes from Epicurean texts with which we are not otherwise
familiar. In the Epistulae Morales, especially, he is fond of quoting brief maxims from
Epicurus’s correspondence with friends, and many of these are from letters otherwise
unknown to us. Five of Epicurus’s letters are described at some length: the letter summa-
rized in Ep. 9, criticizing Stilpo’s view on friendship; the dated letter to Polyaenus cited in
6 Ep. 14.17, 33.4, 81.11–12, 98.9.

7 On downward movement see Ep. 72.9 (as a satiric comparison); on logic, ambiguity, and the
kanōn, Ep. 89.11 and see Atherton, “Epicurean Philosophy of Language,” 212. The other points are all
treated below.
8 Serenus’s allegiance seems clear in Const. sap. 3.2 and 15.4, but in Tranq. an. 1.10 he has abandoned
the school in favor of Stoicism: Griffin, Seneca, 316.
9 Ep. 14.17, 66.45. Note, however, that in Ep. 14.17 he claims not to know whether the words he
quotes are by Epicurus or by another of his school, evidence perhaps that his knowledge of the Letter to
Menoeceus comes only through a gnomologion: Setaioli, Seneca e i Greci, 184–88.
10 What look like exact quotations from the Key Doctrines are found at Apoc. 8 (KD 1), Ep. 30.14
(KD 4), and Vita beata 7.1 (KD 5).
490 MARGARET GRAVER
Ep. 18.9; the letter to Idomeneus on political participation quoted in 21 and 22; the one
on moral progress quoted in 52.3–4, and the one described in 79.15 concerning his
friendship with Metrodorus.11 Seneca also knows at least three letters by Metrodorus,
one of which he quotes at some length in Greek.12 Since he also describes what it is like
to select Epicurean maxims out of their original contexts (Ep. 33), it is likely that he pos-
sesses complete texts for other letters as well, and that at least some of the other short
sayings quoted in the Epistulae Morales derive from this source. But he also must have
access to some sort of gnomologion or maxim collection, for at one point he indicates
that he is quoting from “the less well-known, uncirculated sayings of Epicurus” (secre-
tior nec inter vulgata Epicuri dicta, Ep. 13.17).13
Could the wealthy Seneca have possessed a large collection of Epicurean writings?
His description of a work authored by his friend Lucilius seems relevant in this regard,
where he says “it seemed light to me, though its bulk would seem at first glance to be that
of Livy or Epicurus, not of your writings or mine” (Ep. 46.1). This remark suggests that
he at least knows Epicurus’s corpus to be of substantial length, comparable to Livy’s
multi-volume histories and certainly more extensive than Seneca’s own writings. If he
did have access to some substantial work—a long epitome or perhaps even On Nature
itself, then we have an explanation for an unexpected citation of Epicurus in his meteor
ological treatise, the Natural Questions. Explaining various theories for the causes of
earthquakes, Seneca quotes a long series of explanations in what he says are Epicurus’s
own words, explanations similar but by no means identical to the ones we find in Letter
to Pythocles 105.14 In addition, we might ask ourselves how he knows that the Epicurean
gods inhabit the spaces between the worlds, a view not to be found in Epicurus’s writings
as we know them, although Cicero, too, associates it with the school.15 Such information
could perhaps have come from On Nature (if the view was indeed Epicurus’s own), but
alternative explanations are certainly available, including that Seneca sometimes repeats
11 Setaioli, Seneca e i Greci, 171–82, effectively counters Usener’s assumption in Epicurea, iv–vii that
Seneca knew only a gnomologion.
12 Ep. 79.16, 81.11–12, 98.9, 99.25–26. In Ep. 81 Seneca does not say that the remarks of Metrodorus he
refers to were made in a letter, but it seems likely in view of the other passages. The material in Letters
98 and 99 is likely to be all from the same letter of Metrodorus. For the format of the citation in Ep.
99.25, compare the citation of Cicero in 97.3–4, and see, for all these matters, Setaioli, Seneca e i Greci,
249–56.
13 All translations from the Letters on Ethics are from Graver and Long, Seneca: Letters on Ethics.
14 NQ 6.20.5–7 (the passage is given in Usener, Epicurea, as fragment 151). In this context it is worth
noting that Seneca in the Natural Questions sometimes follows the principle of multiple explanations,
which we know as Epicurean; see further Inwood, Reading Seneca, 183. I am not convinced, however,
that this principle must have been derived solely from Epicurus. The meteorological tradition has its
own conventions, and Seneca’s use of it is rather different from what we find in Epicurus; see for
instance NQ 5.5.1, and see Graver, “Response to Inwood”; Hine, Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Natural
Questions, 3–7.
15 Seneca mentions the point a number of times: Ben. 4.19.1–2, 7.31.3; Ep. 90.35. For Cicero see De
natura deorum 1.18, but that passage is too oblique to have been Seneca’s source. Concerning Seneca’s
sources for On Benefits see Griffin, Seneca on Society, 15–25, as well as Griffin’s notes on particular
passages.
Epicurean doctrines or even entire quotations that he found in intervening works.

For the citation in Natural Questions, for instance, he may have drawn on criticisms of
Epicurus contained in the meteorological compendium by Posidonius.16
Well informed as Seneca may be on some points, there are also some aspects of
Epicureanism which he gives no indication of having studied. We find no mention in his
works of the conservation of matter, atomic shapes, or the atomic “swerve”; no specifics
on the composition of the soul; nothing on eidola, sense-perception, or the validity of
the senses; nothing on the origin of species, the development of civilization, or social
contracts. Yet his failure to mention these points does not necessarily indicate igno-
rance. All of them are treated by Lucretius, whom he seems to know well, since he quotes
him eight or nine times from widely scattered contexts. Perhaps Seneca regarded these
more abstract and theoretical dimensions of Epicureanism as too far distant from his
own concerns to be worth explaining to his readers.
Physics and Theology
Although his works contain no systematic treatment of Epicurean physics, Seneca does
state a definitive position on atomism in Natural Questions 2.6–7, speaking about the
physical properties of air. Before giving his own explanation of the causes of lightning
and thunder, he finds it necessary to establish that air is a unitary body, and in order to
do that, he must first dismiss the rival claim that air is composed “from discrete little
bodies” or “particles” mingled with void. Those who defend this claim believe that it is
proven by the ease with which motion occurs in air. But this is incorrect: motion in air,
like motion in water, is enabled by antiperistasis, the retrograde flow that closes in
behind a moving object.17 In fact observation tells us that air must be a unified substance,
since without unity and coherence it could not exhibit the “tension” (intentio) that is
manifested in the various phenomena of air pressure: inflated balls, windstorms,
trumpets, and the hydraulic organ. The operation of “breath in tension” (intenti spiritus)
explains a vast range of phenomena, from stone walls broken up by roots to the cohe-
sion and movement of the human body, and even the movements of the mind.
Without it, Seneca insists, there could be nothing strong, and its own strength surpasses
everything else.
Although Seneca does not name Epicurus specifically in the passage, the attitude he
takes toward particulate air is significant for his reception of Epicurean thought. His
own understanding of the world depends on there being a unified nexus of causality
effected through the medium of pneuma—for his “breath in tension” is manifestly the
same as the all-pervasive pneumatikē tonos that effects all causation in standard Stoic
physics. A view which dissolves physical nature into particles interspersed with void is
16 Inwood, Reading Seneca, 163–64.

17 Compare Lucr. DRN 1.370–97, but the debate is older than Epicurus; see Plato Timaeus 79a–80c.
492 MARGARET GRAVER
irreconcilably at odds with his and must be resisted at every turn. In a similar vein, he
consistently expresses strong objections to the Epicurean theology that denies god or
the gods any causal involvement with the world. For him as for other Stoics, god or Zeus
is identical with the causal principle: he is “the intellect of the universe . . . everything
you see, and everything you do not see,” who “maintains his creation both from within
and from without” (NQ 1 pref. 13). To place the gods outside the world makes them lazy
rather than blessed (Ben. 7.31.3, cf. 4.4.1), and leaves the world without a controlling
intelligence: events in it will come about “by some kind of random impulse or by a
nature that has no awareness of its own actions” (NQ 1 pref. 15).
Seneca recognizes that Epicurean theology is meant to remove the fear of divinities;
in fact he agrees with Epicurus that an important function of natural science is to rid
oneself of superstition (NQ 6.3). But he feels that freedom of anxiety comes at too high a
price when god’s beneficence is eliminated along the way.18 In De beneficiis 4.19, he sati-
rizes the Epicurean position on the divine nature:
For your part, Epicurus, you make god weaponless. You have taken away all his
thunderbolts, all his power, and to make sure that no one needs to fear him, you
have thrown him out of the world entirely. Hence you have no reason to fear this
deity, given that he is shut out by a huge and insuperable wall and barred from mor-
tal contact and mortal sight. He does not have the wherewithal to bless or to harm
us. Stranded in that space between this and another sky, with no living being, no
humans, no possessions, he is dodging the debris of worlds collapsing above and all
around him, and does not hear our prayers or care for us at all.19
Because this powerless Epicurean god has not conferred any benefits on human beings,
who according to Epicurus are only “a fortuitous conglomeration of atoms and those
motes you speak of,” there is no reason for anyone to feel gratitude or reverence toward
the divine. Seneca knows that Epicureans recommend such attitudes, mentioning god’s
“surpassing majesty and unique nature” (Ben. 4.19.4). But he argues that such
non-utilitarian worship would only make sense if it came from philosophers who
hold that honorable conduct is choiceworthy in its own right.
Virtue and Pleasure
Seneca’s response to the core positions of Epicurean ethics is of a piece with the
cosmological and theological postulates just described. In Book 4 of De beneficiis and
18 Also of interest here is the argument of On Benefits 4.4, which sets the Epicureans’ denial of
divine beneficence against their own argument from the agreement of all peoples (consensus omnium).
For the role of this argument in Epicurean theology see Obbink, “Atheism of Epicurus,” 190–94;
Konstan (2011) 61–69.
19 Ben. 4.19.1–3, reading extra mundum; compare 7.31.3, and see the parallels in Usener 1887, 242–43,
section 364.
also in the short essay De vita beata, he distinguishes sharply between his own views and
those of Epicurus, stating as usual his adherence to the Stoic position that virtue alone is
the human good. To the hedonist’s essential postulate that pleasure is the goal of all
rational behavior he is unremittingly hostile: it is “putting the highest good in the belly,”
“coupling things that are opposites,” i.e. virtue and pleasure, and “making virtue the
handmaid of pleasure” (Vita beata 7.1, 7.3, 13.5). On this point his tone tends to be sharply
polemical (Ben. 4.2.1):
Here we have a quarrel with the Epicureans, a pampered, shade-dwelling crowd of

party-time philosophers. For them, virtue is the instrument of their pleasures: it
obeys them, is their slave, is subject to them.
Likewise he complains, playing on the gender stereotypes of the Roman elite, that the
Epicurean notion of the highest good is “effeminate” and Epicurean sayings typically
unmanly (Ben. 4.2.4, Const. Sap. 14.5). All the same, he understands quite well that
Epicurus is not a mere devotee of pleasure as commonly understood. Although his criti-
cisms are sometimes aggressively phrased, he credits Epicurus with a serious position in
ethics, and his objections are properly philosophical ones. When he grants that the
“pleasure of Epicurus” is in reality “sober and austere,” he is referring in part to the per-
sonal habits of Epicurus himself, but also more generally to the style of life recom-
mended by Epicurean teaching, which is “chaste, upright, and if you look closely,
severe.”20
The problem he sees is that even if serious adherents of Epicurus’s teachings do main-
tain an austere style of life, there are many who will be led astray by their talk of pleasure
to believe that philosophy sometimes gives license to indiscriminate pleasure-seeking.
Concern over this perception motivates him to polemicize in spite of what he knows of
the actual style of living within the Garden. His real target is the licentiousness that
results from a mistaken impression of Epicurean ethics—an impression which he faults
the Epicureans themselves for creating. “This is why it is harmful to praise pleasure in
the way that you do,” he writes. “What is honorable in your teaching is kept hidden; what
corrupts is in plain sight” (Vita beata 12.5). In mocking tones, he satirizes the philoso-
pher who would attract converts in that way (Vita beata 13.3):
The very appearance of it gives credence to its reputation and rouses disreputable
expectations. You are like a strong man wearing a dress: your chastity is intact, your
manliness is unimpaired, your body is not exposed to any scandalous advances, but
in your hand is a tambourine! So let them choose a more honorable placard; let the
writing above their door arouse our courage. The one that is there has been an invi-
tation to the vices.
Elsewhere he imagines the discomfiture of one who enters the Garden after being
attracted by the sign above the door, “Here, Guest, will you be well entertained: here
20 Vita beata 12.4, 13.1; and for Epicurus’s personal habits see Ep. 18.9 and 33.2.
494 MARGARET GRAVER
pleasure is the highest good”—only to be received with “a plate of porridge and a

generous goblet of water” (Ep. 21.10). Again, the situation is comical; nonetheless the
sign ought to be changed.
At the theoretical level, Seneca is familiar with the basis of Epicurean asceticism in the
hedonic calculus and in Key Doctrine 5, of which he gives a Latin version (Vita beata 7.1):
It is not possible for pleasure to be separated from virtue . . . no one lives honorably
without living pleasurably, nor pleasurably without also living honorably.
He recognizes that this doctrine makes virtue a necessary condition for pleasure and
can cite at least two Epicurean arguments in support of this claim: that intelligent man-
agement (i.e. the virtue of prudence) is needed if one is to maximize one’s pleasure over
time, and that those who devote themselves unreservedly to the pleasures of the flesh
necessarily suffer mental turmoil (Vita beata 10.2, 12.1). Elsewhere he admits, again
apparently on the basis of Key Doctrine 5, that for Epicurus anyone who is virtuous will
also have pleasure (Ep. 85.18).21 He knows, too, that Epicureans emphasize mental pleas
ures, specifically those of memory and expectation (Vita beata 6.1, 10.2).
But from a Stoic perspective none of this is enough. Virtue cannot play an instrumen-
tal role, for the meaning of virtuous conduct changes if one behaves prudently or tem-
perately in order to gain some further reward. Nor is it satisfactory to say that virtue is
both necessary and sufficient for a pleasurable life. For the Stoic, virtue, not pleasure,
must be the very thing that makes life good. This is not to say that a life of virtue needs to
be disagreeable, since Seneca and his Epicurean interlocutor both hold that engaging in
virtuous conduct brings pleasure to oneself. For Seneca, however, as for the early Stoics,
such pleasure is not what motivates the virtuous person; instead, it is a by-product
(accessio), like the poppies that grow around the edges of a cultivated field.22 The true
reward for virtuous conduct is the fact that one is behaving virtuously. “The highest
good is in the capacity for judgment and in the character of the optimal mind” (Vita
beata 9.3). As for the Epicurean emphasis on mental pleasures, it is not specific enough
to identify the form of pleasure that a virtuous person can legitimately experience. For
mental pleasures can also consist in such discreditable feelings as “the thrill of being
superior to others” or “arrogance that delights in insults.”23
Seneca takes a similarly strong position on Epicurus’s general approach to justice and
other-concern. He does not accept the claim of KD 31 that the justice of nature is nothing
21 From what Seneca says in Ep. 85.18, it seems that Epicurus (who may use a different criterion for
sufficiency: see Inwood, Seneca, 229–30) holds that virtue always yields a pleasurable life and yet denies
that it is sufficient for a pleasurable life. But Seneca himself thinks Epicurus is committed to the
sufficiency thesis.
22 Vita beata 9.1–2; compare DL 7.86.
23 Vita beata 10.2. Except in Ep. 66.45 (for which see n. 26), Seneca does not seem to recognize the
Epicurean distinction emphasized by Cicero in Books 1 and 2 of De finibus between pleasures of
activity (kinetic or “in movement”) and pleasures of state (katastematic). Vita beata 7.4 treats all
pleasures as kinetic.
other than the pledge of reciprocal utility. As he understands it, Epicurus is merely deny-
ing that there is any such thing as what is just by nature (Ep. 97.15). He is aware that
Epicureans give consequentialist arguments to support some forms of service to others,
but he does not believe that a genuinely virtuous agent would be motivated in this way.
Just as the gods cannot truly confer benefits unless beneficence is choiceworthy in itself,
so human beings are not really behaving virtuously when they have ulterior motives
(Ben. 4.3). Naturally the Epicurean will deny that the gods are beneficent, but the
argument from common conceptions will refute him, for people of all nations feel
gratitude toward the gods (Ben. 4.4).24
He complains also about the Epicurean position on friendship. Unlike Cicero in De
finibus 1.69, Seneca does not recognize any basis in Epicureanism for disinterested
friendship. In his most extensive treatment of the subject in Ep. 9, he speaks only of ami-
cable behavior which promotes the agent’s material interests via reciprocity. On his
understanding the Epicurean values having friends merely “to have someone to sit
beside him in illness, or to assist him in imprisonment or in need” (Ep. 9.8). By contrast,
the Stoic wise person cherishes friends as a means of exercising the virtues (Ep. 9.10):
“Why make a friend?” To have someone I can die for, someone I can accompany
into exile, someone whose life I can save, even by laying down my own. What you
describe is a business deal, not a friendship, for it looks to its own advantage; it
thinks in terms of results.
Seneca would be “talking like an Epicurean” if he were to say that the interests of two
friends could ever be fundamentally at odds (Ep. 48.2). His own view is exactly the
opposite: friendship requires each of the friends to live for the other in everything, in a
commonalty (consortium rerum omnium) that is grounded in the bond shared among
all human beings. “For he who has much in common with a fellow human will have
everything in common with his friend” (Ep. 48.3).
On all these doctrinal points Seneca expresses sharp disagreement with Epicurean
views, and with good reason, for the theoretical commitments he adopts in calling him-
self a Stoic are indeed fundamentally opposed to the main assumptions of Epicurean
ethics. On those few occasions when he finds himself in agreement with Epicurus on a
philosophical doctrine with this kind of centrality, he draws attention to the point as an
a fortiori argument for the rightness of the Stoic view. If even Epicurus, who “indulged
the body the most,” believes that the blessedness of the wise is unimpaired by bodily
pain, then the Stoics are all the more likely to be correct on that point.25 In a more intri-
cate example, Epicurus is invoked in Ep. 66.45–46 to support a difficult Stoic case for the
equality of all goods. The Stoic position is that all goods must be of equal magnitude
because only virtues and virtuous activities are good, and virtue does not vary in degree.
24 Arguments from common conceptions (communis sensus) and from the agreement of all
(consensus omnium) play an important role in Epicurean theology: see Obbink, “The Atheism of
Epicurus,” 190–94; Konstan, “Epicurus on the Gods,” 61–69.
25 Const. sap. 16.1; cf. Ep. 66.47–48 and 92.25–6.
496 MARGARET GRAVER
The claim is counterintuitive, but it turns out that Epicurus too is committed to it, since
Epicurus’s “highest and happiest good” consists in freedom from pain in the body and
freedom from disturbance in the mind, and these conditions, once fulfilled, cannot be
increased in degree any more than the Stoic goods can.26 Evidently Seneca has in mind
Key Doctrines 18–20, concerning the limits of pleasure, as well as the famous deathbed
letter, which he goes on to discuss. But while he has reflected on these Epicurean texts,
his way of using them runs exactly counter to Epicurean hedonism (Const. Sap. 16.1,
Ep. 92.25–6).
Leisure and Contemplation
The value the Stoic finds in service to others can also be expressed as an admonition to
political involvement, in opposition to the Epicurean maxim “live unknown.” Seneca
regards quietism as a hallmark of the school (“to rest with Epicurus,” Brevitate vitae 14.2)
and in some contexts he expresses strong objections to it. In his view, Epicureans’ idea of
pleasure is “to give the body to sloth” and “hide out in the shade”; a typical Epicurean
“praises civic repose while living amid songs and parties”; living in retirement is “lower-
ing yourself to Epicurean maxims.”27 There is nothing inherently valuable in repose:
I will never call freedom from pain a good: a cicada has that, and so does a flea. I will
not even say that a quiet, untroubled existence is a good: what is more leisurely than
a worm?28
The issue of leisure is not straightforward, however, for Stoic philosophers, too, abandon
the rigors of political action in order to pursue the activities they like best, namely study,
discussion, and writing. Indeed it is not easy to see how one can be a philosopher at all
without secluding oneself to some extent from the demands of public service, and
Seneca, being a veteran of the imperial administration, fully appreciates what the bios
theōrētikos has to offer him.
In the brief essay De otio, he does what he can to resolve the tension in his own posi-
tion. He admits right away that advocating a life of study seems like “preaching the
doctrines of Epicureanism” (De otio 1.4). But while Stoics favor a life of action, they can
also supply various justifications for a philosophical retreat. For instance, one may have
some chronic illness, or one may live in a state that is too corrupt to benefit from one’s
endeavors. Essentially, the Stoic is obligated to serve the public “unless there is some
26 Seneca’s argument is interesting not only for its opportunism but because it suggests an awareness
on Seneca’s part of a difference in structure between kinetic and katastematic pleasure. Epicurus does
not maintain the equality of all goods; i.e. of all pleasures: kinetic pleasures differ in magnitude.
Seneca’s point, however, is that some Epicurean pleasures are defined by privation (kata sterēsin; cf. Ep.
87.39), and that privation is a non-scalar property in the same way as consistency is.
27 Ben. 4.13.1; Ep. 88.5; Ep. 68.10. 28 Ep. 87.19.
obstacle” (nisi si quid impedierit) while the Epicurean is encouraged to refrain “unless
some need arises” (nisi si quid intervenerit, De otio 3.2–3). The kinds of needs that would
impel an Epicurean into the public sphere would presumably be utilitarian ones, for
Seneca comments lower down that Epicurus’s hedonic calculus commits him to action
in some instances (De otio 7.2–4). He thus claims to find some common ground between
the schools. But this is without minimizing the differences between them. Epicureanism
is still subject to “the implacable hatred we have decreed toward those whose ends differ
from ours” (De otio 7.4, 7.1). If the positions overlap it is only because each side allows for
exceptions to its injunction.
We find a deeper exploration of the tensions concerning leisure and contemplation in
the Epistulae Morales. From the very beginning of the collection Seneca repeatedly urges
his friend to retire from his career in public service, withdraw from all society, and
devote himself to a life of study and reflection. In brief, Lucilius should imitate Seneca
himself and “spend life in obscurity” (vitam per obscurum transmittere, Ep. 19.3). Such
advice is admittedly at odds with the Stoic injunction to remain active throughout life
(Ep. 8.1, 68.2), and Seneca actually draws attention to the parallel with the Epicurean
λάθε βιῶσας (Ep. 22.5–6). Yet he also insists that a philosophical retirement is in accord
ance with Stoic ethics as a whole—provided one’s leisure is put to good use. In justifica-
tion he invokes an argument mentioned only briefly in De otio: that writing and study
may itself be a form of public service if it enables others to improve themselves. In such
cases, one is denying one’s services to the local community in order to provide them to
the greater community of humankind. Again, his view coincides only superficially with
that of Epicurus.
Maxims and Meditation
These same reflections provide a motivation for a remarkable form of interaction with
Epicurus and his school that takes place throughout the first three books of the Epistulae
Morales. Very near the beginning of the correspondence, Seneca instructs Lucilius in
the manner of reading that will best promote his progress toward wisdom. One should
not range widely through large numbers of books, he says, but instead concentrate on
just a few, extracting from them every day some useful precept to memorize and ponder
at length. To illustrate, he offers an extract from his own reading in an unspecified text
by Epicurus (Ep. 2.5–6):
Today it is this, which I found in Epicurus—for it is my custom to cross even into

the other camp, not as a deserter but as a spy: “Cheerful poverty is an honorable
thing.” Indeed, it is not poverty if it is cheerful . . . .
Several sentences of reflection follow, as Seneca ponders the implications of the phrase
“happy poverty” and the advantages of restricting one’s desires. Thus begins a regular
498 MARGARET GRAVER
practice of closing each letter with an excerpt “from today’s reading” (Ep. 4.10), taken
usually from the works of Epicurus, although Metrodorus is also mentioned as a source
(Ep. 14.17, 15.9), and other philosophers and poets occasionally play that role as well.
In giving Epicurus pride of place among his sources of memorable maxims, Seneca is
not declaring any new philosophical allegiance.29 On the contrary, he seems to savor the
irony of a Stoic author’s finding something of value in this unlikely source, crossing “into
the enemy camp.” When he cites Epicurus, he is taking “another’s material,” and if
anyone should challenge his right to use the material, he can reply that it is “public
property” (Ep. 14.17, 21.9; cf. Ep. 12.11). And indeed the extracts he chooses are never very
distinctive in terms of their philosophical content. Like the example above, they represent
the blandest sort of admonition to restrict desire, avoid the crowd, and overcome the
fear of death. Each is accompanied by a few sentences of interpretation aimed not so
much at divining the author’s original intent as at finding some worthwhile application
to ordinary lives.30
Nor can the preponderance of Epicurean authors be ascribed to Epicurean leanings
on the part of Lucilius, as has sometimes been inferred.31 Lucilius is never represented in
the Epistulae Morales or elsewhere as holding any Epicurean beliefs; his commitments
are rather to his career in government, to his literary projects and, increasingly as the let-
ters proceed, to Stoicism. The two remarks that give Lucilius a proprietary interest in
Epicurus (“you may complain” in Ep. 20.9 and “your Epicurus” in Ep. 23.9) should
instead be recognized as part of a pattern of playful utterance that Seneca develops in
connection with the excerpted maxims. Seneca begins early on to speak of the quota-
tions from Epicurus and others as a kind of commodity, a “payment” or “little gift”
enclosed with each letter, a “present from Greece.”32 Lucilius is soon coopted into the
game, represented reaching out his hand for the “daily dole” (Ep. 15.17) or demanding,
“Pay what you owe!” (18.14). To pay him, Seneca must “get a loan from Epicurus” (Ep.
17.11). Hence whatever Seneca might find in Epicurus’ writings is already by implication
owed to Lucilius: “you know whose money-box I use” (Ep. 26.8). When Seneca speaks of
29 Although many of the early letters are only general exhortations to practice philosophy, Letters 8,
9, 23, 24, and 29 all clearly adopt a Stoic perspective.
30 On occasion Seneca will carry the Epicurean thought in a new direction: Ep. 20.10–11, for
instance, argues against Epicurus’s emphasis on literal poverty. A more puzzling case is 22.13–16, where
Schmid, “Eine falsche Epikurdeutung Senecas” has argued that Seneca deliberately misconstrues SV 60.
31 This suggestion by Schottländer, “Epikureisches bei Seneca,” 136–37, rightly resisted by Mazzoli,
“Le Epistulae Morales,” has been defended by Miriam Griffin, “Seneca’s Pedagogic Strategy,” 91,
primarily on the basis of Epp. 20.9 and 23.9, but see below. It is not the case that Lucilius “is clearly
represented as speaking for Epicurus” in Ep. 20.11: the words seem to be addressed to Epicurus himself
(although the text is corrupt), but the objection is one that might be voiced by anyone. Griffin notes
that since Lucilius appears to be a Stoic in the Natural Questions and De providentia, the alleged
Epicurean Lucilius of the Epistulae Morales must be Seneca’s creation. He would then be a surrogate for
the popularity of Epicurean views within the wider audience that Seneca expects to reach with the
Letters. But it would surely be a strange gesture for a Stoic author to publicly assign Epicurean views to
a friend who did not actually hold such views.
32 Ep. 12.10 (peculium); Epp. 10.5 and 16.7 (munusculum); Ep. 15.9 (munus Graecum, accepting
Haase’s emendation).
“your Epicurus,” then, he is referring to his adherent’s expected “gift,” not to his
supposed philosophical adherence.33
The role given to Epicurus in the early books of the Epistulae Morales probably has
something to do with Seneca’s literary ambitions for his work, for the collected letters of
Epicurus were by this time a classic of philosophical writing which he might well wish to
emulate.34 In Letter 21, he draws a striking parallel between his own admonitions to
Lucilius and those of Epicurus to Idomeneus: in both cases, the addressee is to be made
famous not by his achievements in politics but by his role as addressee of a work of phil-
osophical literature. Comparisons are also made to the letters of Cicero and to Vergil’s
Aeneid—names that speak volumes about Seneca’s perception of Epicurus’s status as a
writer. As Brad Inwood has noted, the Epicurean letters known to Seneca may have been
different in style from the three letters we have extant today: more personal in tone, less
technical and less difficult to construe.35 Seneca may well have found in them an impor-
tant model for his own project in philosophical letter-writing.
For the specific association between Epicurus and philosophical maxims there is a
further explanation that can be offered. This was adumbrated already by Miriam
Griffin, who refers Seneca’s use and occasional misuse of Epicurus to the Epicureans’
own practice of memorizing and reflecting on brief summaries of doctrine.36 Seneca
recognizes in Epicurus a skillful handler of written texts as a vehicle for philosophical
training and seeks to appropriate some of those techniques for his own program
of written therapy. Epicurus’s interest in providing short, easily memorized texts
is explained in Ep. Hdt. 83 and evidenced especially in the Key Doctrines, which
whether or not they were compiled by Epicurus himself were certainly circulated as
his from an early date.37 The Letter to Menoeceus, in addition to its summary of ethical
teachings, offers explicit instruction on how one is to assimilate the material. One
is to memorize, but also to “reason out” and “accustom oneself to believing” each
point; then at the end, to “rehearse these and the related points day and night, with
yourself and with a person like yourself ” (Ep. Men. 135). To Seneca, who spent much
of his life as a teacher of oratory, the instruction to “rehearse” (μελετᾶν) would sug-
gest the process of rehearsing before delivering a speech—not memorization as we
33 Chrysippus apud Origen, Contra Celsum 8.51 (SVF 3.474), cited by Setaioli, Seneca e i Greci, 245 in
this connection, does not have any bearing on the question of Lucilius’s philosophical adherence. It does
show an openness on the part of Chrysippus to using arguments from a rival philosophical school in a
therapeutic context, but only in addressing persons in the immediate grip of strong emotions (see
further Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 196–201).
34 Articles by Inwood, “The Importance of Form in Seneca’s Philosophical Letters,” 141–46 and
Wildberger, “The Epicurus Trope,” develop in more detail the suggestions of Lana, “Le ‘Lettere a
Lucilio’ nella letteratura epistolare,” 268–74 and Rosati, “Seneca sulla lettera filosofica.”
35 Inwood, “The Importance of Form in Seneca’s Philosophical Letters,” 143.
36 Griffin, Seneca, 352; see also Schmid, “Eine falsche Epikurdeutung Senecas,” 130. The suggestion is
developed at some length in Graver, “Therapeutic Reading and Seneca’s Moral Epistles.”
37 It is worth noting that Philodemus, writing over a century before Seneca, treats the Key Doctrines
as a work of Epicurus’s own (De ira col. 43.20–1).
500 MARGARET GRAVER
think of it, but mulling over one point at a time so as to be ready to deliver them when
the time comes. Seneca’s frequent quotations from Epicurus may be meant to recall this
characteristically Epicurean way of reforming a person’s character through meditation
on brief ethical sententiae. Their significance is procedural, not doctrinal.
Seneca clarifies his intentions concerning the use of maxims in philosophical instruction
in Letter 33, after giving over his previous practice. Although in the preceding letters he
had sometimes provided excerpts from authors who were not Epicureans, he now
makes the philosophical maxim the basis of a contrast between Epicurean and Stoic
authors. While not voicing any objections to Epicurean texts in terms of content, he
remarks that they are more easily excerptable just because their mode of expression is
less tightly structured than Stoic texts (Ep. 33.3–5). He then aligns this difference of style
with a difference in attitude toward philosophical study. The Epicurean assumption, he
says, is that the learner will be subservient to the authority of Epicurus, while Stoic texts
require more intellectual independence. The latter are thus more suitable for advanced
students, the former only for beginners. However Seneca does not definitively reject the
model of therapeutic reading he has built up in relation to Epicurean texts; he does
promise to send “by the fistful” the extracts Lucilius requests (33.6), and he wants these
to be read with the kind of thoughtful intensity these early letters have demonstrated.
But he seeks now to dissociate that procedure from Epicureanism, and at the same to
add to it a new dimension of critical assessment and reasoning. The entire sequence,
from Letter 2 through Letter 33, thus becomes an exercise in creative adaptation at the
level of literary form. Seneca appreciates the psychological efficacy of the reading
method promoted by Epicurus and by the form of Epicurean texts, but he also means to
alter that method to suit his rather different therapeutic objectives.
Human Nature and the Tactics

of the Therapist
We have seen that Seneca’s usual hostility to the main principles of Epicurean thought
does not prevent him from showing appreciation for the brief, memorable maxims he
finds in Epicurean texts and for the practice of meditative reading Epicurus recom-
mends. I now consider a series of passages in which Seneca expresses respect for
Epicurus’s psychological insight and for the practical efficacy to some of his arguments
in managing desire, fear, anxiety, and grief. In some instances, he even goes so far as to
endorse an Epicurean claim, taking it on board for his own project in advancing Lucilius
and other readers toward Stoic wisdom. He can do this without conflict, since the points
in question are not core philosophical commitments so much as empirically developed
observations of how minds operate. In essence, he treats these Epicurean assertions as
describing real psychological phenomena that any philosophical system would need to
account for.
A particularly clear-cut example is his treatment of the fear of penalties in Letter 97.
Commenting that it is elegantly phrased, Seneca gives his endorsement to Epicurus’s
view that wrongdoers inevitably experience anxiety about possible punishment, even if
they have escaped thus far. However he does not agree with the role that wrongdoer
anxiety plays in Epicurean ethics as the principal penalty for unjust conduct. For him, an
intelligent agent does not refrain from harming others merely because he wants to avoid
subsequent anxiety, but rather because the act is inherently wrong: sceleris in scelere
supplicium est (Ep. 97.14). Still, the criminal’s anxiety can be a secondary penalty, and the
Stoic need not liberate him from that. Indeed, the persistence of this anxiety tells in favor
of the Stoic view that justice exists in nature (Ep. 97.16):
We should disagree with Epicurus when he says that there is nothing that is just by
nature, and that the reason one should refrain from misdeeds is that one cannot
avoid the anxiety resulting from them; we should agree with him, though, that the
wrongdoer is tormented by conscience and that his worst penalty is to bear the
hounding and the lash of constant worry, because he cannot trust those who guar-
antee him security. This is proof in itself, Epicurus, that we have a natural horror of
misdeeds: every criminal is afraid, even in a place of safety. Fortune exempts many
from punishment, but none from anxiety. Why, if not because we have an innate
aversion to what nature has condemned?38
Confident that the point is adaptable to a Stoic ethical framework, Seneca proceeds in
Letter 105 to repeat the Epicurean claim as an assertion by his own authorial voice (Ep.
105.7–8):
Anyone expecting punishment undergoes punishment, and anyone who deserves it

expects it. Safety is compatible with a bad conscience, but security is not. . . . The
wrongdoer sometimes has the chance of concealment, but never the confidence of it.
Given the similarity in wording, Seneca can hardly be unaware of Epicurus’s influence in
this second passage.39 Clearly, though, he is not committing himself to Epicurean conse-
quentialism. His borrowing is of the psychological observation only.
A similar progression can be observed in some of his remarks on the fear of death and
pain. While he cares nothing for the “Epicurean song” that is supposed to address fears
of eternal torment in Tartarus (Ep. 24.18), he does want to address the more elemental
fear of death, and for this he finds some efficacy in the usual Epicurean arguments. In
Letter 30, he recounts a conversation with an elderly Epicurean named Aufidius Bassus,
who he says is facing the approach of death with enviable tranquility. Giving his own
38 Ep. 97.16. It should perhaps be pointed out that the Latin word conscientia refers only to one’s
awareness of what has been done; it is not equivalent to “moral sense.”
39 Compare the last words of Letter 105, nocens habuit aliquando latendi fortunam, numquam
fiduciam, with the words quoted from Epicurus in 97.13: potest nocenti contingere ut lateat, latendi fides
non potest.
502 MARGARET GRAVER
version of Bassus’s words, he reports a series of arguments that run parallel to those in
the Letter to Menoeceus and in Book 3 of Lucretius: that it is foolish to fear what you will
not be present to experience, that nature reshuffles and reuses our components, though
without any continued consciousness on our part, that the sated diner is content to leave
the banquet.40 Bassus refers also to Epicurus’s principal defense against the fear of pain
in Key Doctrine 4 (Ep. 30.14):
In fact he used to say, in conformity with Epicurus’s teachings, “First of all, I hope
there will be no pain in that last breath; but if there is, it will be short, and that itself
is some comfort. For severe pain is never of long duration. But if there is torment in
the moment when mind separates from body, I will console myself thus: after that
pain, I can no longer experience pain.”
These are not the arguments given by Stoics against the fear of death; those are rather
that neither death nor pain makes any difference to the human good, which has to be
conceived of solely in terms of human excellence. But Seneca can reasonably claim that
the Epicurean arguments can be adopted by a Stoic without creating any complications
for his own doctrinal position. He does not himself hold any strong views on what hap-
pens to any given person’s soul at the time of death. He is not committed to the Epicurean
position on the extinction of consciousness, but he is open to it as one alternative.
“Death either consumes us or sets us free. If we are released, then better things await us
once our burden is removed; if we are consumed, then nothing is waiting for us at all:
both goods and evils are gone.”41 Consequently he is quite willing to state the Epicurean
arguments elsewhere as his own opinion. Shortly after the Bassus letter, we find him giv-
ing in his own voice the argument from Letter to Menoeceus 125: “Death holds no disad-
vantage, for a disadvantage must be that of some existing person.”42 Not long afterward,
in Ep. 54.4–5, he supplies a fairly exact version of Lucretius’s symmetry argument, apply-
ing it to his own situation. Similarly, he makes frequent use of Key Doctrine 4 on the
endurance of pain, quoting it as if it were part of Stoicism in Epp. 24.14, 78.17, and 94.7.
Concerning pain, he is also familiar with a second Epicurean claim: that in times of
bodily pain, one can maintain one’s state of blessedness by directing one’s attention away
from one’s present sufferings toward good things one has experienced in the past.
40 Ep. 30.5–6, 9–12; cf. KD 2; Ep. Men. 124–26; Lucr. DRN 3.830–42. Compare also the suicide of
Diodorus, in Vita beata 19.1 “an Epicurean philosopher,” who offers a version of the satiety argument,
although Seneca notes that there are those who question whether his suicide is consistent with
Epicurean doctrine. Of course the questioners are correct: see Ep. Men. 126–27 and the fragments
quoted by Seneca in Ep. 24.22–23, together with Warren, Facing Death, 205–12.
41 Ep. 24.18. In some contexts (e.g. at Ep. 79.12 and 92.30–34), Seneca takes the Stoic view that the
souls of the wise ascend to a dwelling-place in the upper air. But none of us can be certain whether this
inspiring prospect is what is in store for us. For those who fail to achieve wisdom in life, death means
“returning to the universe”; that is, dissolution (Epp. 71.16, 76.25).
42 Ep. 36.9; compare Ep. 4.3. It is worth pointing out that from an Epicurean perspective, Seneca’s
uncertainty about postmortem survival removes nearly all force from the argument. Ep. 36.9;
similarly 4.3.
Although this approach to pain is not directly attested in the extant writings of Epicurus,
Seneca’s version of it closely resembles a report by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations
3.32–33.43 We find Seneca’s version in Letter 78.18, immediately following a paraphrase
of Key Doctrine 4, where he says, “it will also be beneficial to depart mentally from the
pain and turn your mind toward other thoughts.” This should be compared with Cicero’s
report, where the Epicurean recommendation has the same two components: “distract-
ing the mind from the thought of suffering, and redirecting it to the contemplation of
pleasures.” At the same time, though, the specific ways Seneca suggests manipulating
one’s attention are distinctly different from what we know or can infer for Epicurus.
Epicurus, naturally, has in mind directing one’s thoughts toward remembered pleasures,
which might be mental pleasures such as the memory of philosophical discussions with
friends.44 Seneca’s suggestion is different (Ep. 78.18):
Think of honorable deeds, brave deeds you have performed; reflect on what is good
in your character. Let your memory range over everything you have most admired.
Then bring to mind some great example of courage and victory over pain.
Moreover, Epicurus specifically denies that one should try to anticipate future pain or
distress, and this is the position we should expect him to take, since doing so would
increase our psychological distress over time.45 Seneca, however, frequently recom-
mends such “pre-rehearsal of future ills” as a way of preparing oneself to face trials with
fortitude (Ep. 24.2):
Fix your mind on whatever it is that you are afraid might happen as a thing that defi-
nitely will happen. Whatever bad event that might be, take the measure of it men-
tally and so assess your fear.
Once again he is willing to take on an Epicurean technique that he believes can be effica-
cious, but is unconcerned with closely related elements in Epicurus’s system of thought.
Other examples can be given. Seneca agrees with Epicurus that it is beneficial to
remind the one making progress in philosophy that there is a natural limit to the pleas
ure that can be derived from eating and drinking (Ep. Men. 127–8, KD 21). The point
appears already among the maxims provided for Lucilius in the early letters and resur-
faces frequently thereafter, even as late as Ep. 119.5–7, where a direct quotation confirms
43 For the Epicurean material in Cicero, see Tsouna, “Epicurean Therapeutic Strategies,” 261; and in
more detail, Graver, “Managing Mental Pain.”
44 This is stated in Cicero’s account and is also present by implication in the deathbed letter to
Idomeneus. The emphasis on pleasures derived from past experience is found also in Ben. 3.4.1–2,
where Epicurus is named. See also Ep. 81.11–12 on the gratitude of the wise in Metrodorus.
45 Cic. Tusc. 3.32.
504 MARGARET GRAVER
that Seneca still has in mind the Epicurean origins of the thought.46 He also recommends
several of Epicurus’s practical expedients for improving one’s moral character, such as
restricting one’s diet on specified days (Ep. 18.9) or visualizing some good person as a
constant spectator for one’s actions (Epp. 11.8–9, 25.4–5). He also cites with approval
Epicurus’s classification of students into those who make good progress in philosophy
without aid, those like Metrodorus who easily follow where another leads, and those like
Hermarchus who need to be driven and compelled to do the right thing (Ep. 52.3–4). In
all these cases, he follows Epicurus out of respect for his sensitivity to the ins and outs of
human nature, believing that his observations are grounded in real phenomena of
human experience which a Stoic therapist ought likewise to consider.
Correspondingly, Seneca will sometimes reject an Epicurean claim on grounds that it
lacks a sound observational basis. Like Cicero in Tusculan Disputations 2.17, he
understands Epicurus to have said that a wise person under severe torture is able not
only to maintain a state of blessedness but actually to derive pleasure from the experi-
ence: when roasted in the bull of Phalaris, he will say “It is pleasant; it does not matter to
me at all” (Ep. 66.18).47 This claim he rejects indignantly; he finds it psychologically
implausible and philosophically problematic, since it suggests that wisdom not only
perfects but actually alters human nature. Similarly, in a discussion of grief and consola-
tion, he takes exception to a claim he finds in a letter of Metrodorus, “that there is a
pleasure which is akin to sorrow and that in situations like this one should try to catch
that pleasure” (Ep. 99.25).48 As Seneca understands it, the consolation Metrodorus offers
is not the usual Epicurean recommendation for neutralizing mental pain by diverting
one’s attention or by finding compensatory sources of pleasure. Rather it is a novel form
of pleasure derived from the experience of grief itself: it comes “in the very midst of
grief—indeed, through grief ” (in ipso luctu voluptatem, immo per luctum) and to pursue
it is “to try to snare a pleasure right in the midst of grief ” (voluptatem in ipso dolore
aucupari).49 Again, the Stoic author rejects the claim, not only because he finds it
morally reprehensible but because he denies its empirical basis: it is “hard to believe”
(Ep. 99.26). In both instances, reflection on the Epicurean inheritance proves valuable to
Seneca primarily in helping him clarify his formulation of the Stoic position on the
46 See Epp. 4.10, 16.7–8, 119.5–7, and compare Ep. Men. 127–28, KD 21. One can hardly suppose with
Lana, “Le ‘Lettere a Lucilio’ nella letteratura epistolare,” 285 that Seneca’s interest in Epicureanism
waned after Ep. 92. Clear references in fact continue practically to the end of the extant collection, at
123.10.
47 The utterance credited to Epicurus in Epp. 66.18 and 67.15 is recognizably the same as the one
reported a number of times in Cicero, but the wording in Latin is significantly different, as if
independently translated from the same Greek source. Usener, Epicurea, 338–39, §601, groups the Latin
passages together with DL 10.118, which however reports a different Epicurean claim, that the wise
person is eudaimōn while being twisted on the rack but will cry and groan.
48 I treat the passage in more detail in Graver, “The Emotional Intelligence of Epicureans”; and its
context in Graver, “The Weeping Wise.”
49 Pressing the validity of his attribution, Seneca quotes the passage in Greek as well as in his own
Latin translation. Clay, Paradosis and Survival, 66 connects the pleasure identified by Metrodorus with
the “peculiar form of pleasure” (ἰδιοτρόπῳ ἡδονῇ) mentioned in Plut. Non Posse 16.1097e.
impassivity of the wise person under conditions of physical pain or personal bereave-
ment. The aim is not strictly polemical; rather it is to make clear that Stoic apatheia does
not alter or eliminate any essential capacity of the human being.
Epicureanism is itself a complex body of doctrines, techniques, and practices, and
Seneca’s response to it over more than a decade of philosophical study and writing
necessarily takes many forms. Yet when we consider his reactions across the board, a
definite pattern does emerge. Seneca has thoroughly internalized the principles of
Stoicism, and wherever he deals with the main elements of Epicurus’s philosophy, he
finds himself in disagreement with them for reasons he can explain. At times, he takes a
strongly polemical tone, seeking to dissuade his contemporaries from the libertinism
and nihilism for which members of the Roman elite sometimes used Epicureanism as a
pretext. In so doing he speaks out of conviction, not out of partisanship, for just as he
will sometimes reject views offered by Stoic authors that he deems inconsistent with
Stoic foundations, so also he adopts certain elements of Epicurean thought as his own
when he thinks there is no inconsistency. That these adopted elements are invariably
matters of psychological insight and therapeutic practice will serve to indicate the level
at which he was impressed and inspired by Epicurus’s achievement.
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Press, 1976.
Griffin, M. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. 2nd ed. with postscript. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992.
————. Seneca on Society: A Guide to De Beneficiis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hine, H. M. Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Natural Questions. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus
Seneca. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Inwood, B. Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
————. “The Importance of Form in Seneca’s Philosophical Letters.” In Ancient Letters:
Classical and Late Antique Epistolography, edited by R. Morello and A. D. Morrison, 133–48.
————. Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Konstan, D. “Epicurus on the Gods.” In Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition, edited by J. Fish
and K. R. Sanders, 53–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Lana, I. “Le ‘Lettere a Lucilio’ nella letteratura epistolare.” In Sénèque et la prose Latine, edited
by P. Grimal, 253–89. Entretiens sur L’Antiquité Classique 36. Vandœuvres-Geneva,
Switzerland: Fondation Hardt, 1991.
Motto, A. L. and J. Clark. “Paradoxum Senecae: The Epicurean Stoic.” CW 62 (1968): 37–42.
Motto, A. L. Seneca Sourcebook: Guide to the Thought of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Amsterdam:
Hakkert, 1970.
Mutschmann, H. “Seneca und Epikur.” Hermes 50 (1915): 321–56.
Rist, J. M. “Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy.” ANRW II.36.3 (1989): 1993–2012.
Rosati, G. “Seneca sulla lettera filosofica: Un genere letterario nel cammino verso la saggenze.”
Maia 33 (1981): 3–15.
Schiesaro, A. “Seneca and Epicurus: The Allure of the Other.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Seneca, edited by S. Bartsch and A. Schiesaro, 239–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015.
Schmid, W. “Eine falsche Epikurdeutung Senecas und seine Praxis der erbauenden Lesung
(Epic. Gnom. Vat. 60).” In Ausgewählte philologische Schriften, edited by H. Erbse and
J. Küppers, 151–266. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984.
Schottländer, R. “Epikureisches bei Seneca.” Philologus 99 (1955): 133–48.
Setaioli, A. Seneca e i Greci. Bologna: Pàtron, 1988.
Tsouna, V. “Epicurean Therapeutic Strategies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism,
edited by James Warren, 249–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Warren, J. Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Wildberger, J. Seneca und die Stoa: der Platz des Menschen in der Welt. 2 vols. Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2006.
————. “The Epicurus Trope and the Construction of a ‘Letter Writer’ in Seneca’s Epistulae
Morales.” In Seneca Philosophus, edited by M. Colish and J. Wildberger, 431–65. Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2014.
chapter 20
Plu ta rch
Michael Erler
Introduction
Thus spoke the Epicurean, Quietus, and before anyone could answer, he
left, since we had reached the end of the colonnade.
(De sera 548)
Plutarch’s treatise De sera numinis vindicta begins with an exit, either by an Epicurean,
or by Epicurus himself.1 However, the philosophers’ theses regarding God and his
involvement with human affairs stimulate those present to such an extent that they want
to continue the discussion. Plutarch’s text covers the ensuing dialogue. On a literary
level, this scenario constitutes a reminiscence of the opening of Plato’s Philebus, which
begins with Philebus’s exit and goes on to cover the discussions provoked by his thesis
that Pleasure constitutes the ultimate Good. On a symbolical level, the beginning of
Plutarch’s dialogue reflects on the role Epicureanism played in the early Empire. At this
point in time, the Epicurean tradition had ceased to develop further, and Hellenistic
philosophy as a whole gradually ceded the center stage to Platonism. Nevertheless,
Epicurus’s precepts stayed on the contemporaries’ minds, were considered provocative,
and therefore remained alive in literature and education.2 Plutarch himself, a priest at
Delphi and an enthusiastic adherent of “divine” Plato,3 found himself diametrically
opposed to Epicurus’s teachings, yet granted considerable space to discussions of his
propositions. In doing so, Plutarch was apparently less concerned with a systematic
refutation of Epicurus. Rather, it seems that Plutarch used Epicurus as a welcome foil to
highlight his own, Platonist positions and to justify and underline his loyalty to Plato’s
teachings.
1 Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3377 n. 93; Einarson and De Lacy, Plutarch’s Moralia, 175.
2 Cf. Timpe, “Der Epikureismus in der römischen Gesellschaft der Kaiserzeit.”
3 Cf. Plut. De cap. ex inim. 90c; Per. 8.2.
508 MICHAEL ERLER
Sources
Plutarch devoted a considerable number of his writings entirely to discussions of

Epicurean doctrines. In these texts, he points out significant discrepancies between the
theory and practice of Epicurean teachings (Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum,
Lamprias catalogue nr. 82); discusses Epicurus’s deistic theology, e.g. the rejection of
providence (De sera numinis vindicta, Lamprias catalogue nr. 91); discusses Epicurus’s
thesis that parents’ love for their children is not natural (De amore prolis, not in the
Lamprias catalogue); criticizes Epicurus’s seemingly apolitical stance (De latenter
vivendo, Lamprias catalogue nr. 178); and in one treatise (Adversus Colotem, Lamprias
catalogue nr. 81) discusses a work by the Epicurean Colotes, who posited that it is
impossible to live according to the precepts of other philosophers (Περὶ τοῦ ὅτι κατὰ τὰ
τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων δόγματα οὐδὲ ζῆν ἔστιν). Other works that touch on Epicurean
subjects, but are known only by title, are listed in the Lamprias catalogue.4 All of this
indicates that Plutarch engaged deeply with the entire breadth of Epicurean doctrine.
After all, even those of Plutarch’s writings that do not deal directly or exclusively with
the subject do frequently bring up Epicurean teachings and, more often than not, refute
them.5 Helmbold and E. N. O’Neil detect more than 270 allusions to and quotations
from Epicurus and his students in Plutarch’s writings, which moves Epicurus into the
quantitative vicinity of writers like Chrysippus (384); it will hardly be surprising that
Plato and Aristotle lead the field.6 Even discussions that do not feature an Epicurean
interlocutor at times touch on Epicurus’s school or assume Epicurean teachings in the
background.7 Even the Lives show traces of Epicurean subjects, albeit only occasionally,
and—significantly—in polemical contexts. For example, the Comparatio Cimonis et
Luculli reproaches the Roman Lucullus for exchanging a life in politics for a life of
pleasure. In the Vita Pyrrhonis, Cineas explains Epicurus’s theology, political philosophy,
and teachings on pleasure to Fabricius, which makes the latter wish that Pyrrhus would
adopt such destructive precepts, at least while they remain enemies.8 Throughout,
Plutarch emerges as well-versed not only in texts by the school’s founder, Epicurus, but
also in the writings of such notable Epicurean disciples as Hermarchus, Metrodorus,
Colotes, or even Lucretius (see ch. 8). Plutarch’s Against Colotes (Adversus Colotem) and
its sequel, Non posse, grant insights into the ways in which Plutarch and his friends
engaged with Epicurean matters in a kind of seminar.9 They read an Epicurean text
4 Cf. Lamprias-Katalog nr. 80, 129, 133, 143, 148, 159; Roskam, Commentary on Plutarch’s De latenter
vivendo, 85 ff.
5 Cf. Plut. De sup. 164f.; De Is. et Os. 369a; De Pyth. or. 398a–c. 399e–f; De def. or. 420b–c, 434c–f; De
Stoic. rep. 1052b; on Quaest. conv. cf. Westman, “Unbeachteter epikureischer Bericht bei Plutarch, Qu.
conviv. 5,1.”
6 Cf. Helmbold and O’Neil, Plutarch’s Quotations; cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 14.
7 Cf., e.g., De def. or. 420a–e, 425c ff., 434d ff.
8 Cf. Plut. Comp. Cim. Luc. 1.3; Caes. 66; Brut. 37; Pyrrh. 20, esp. 5–7.
9 Cf. Plut. Adv. Col. 1107e–f.
Plutarch 509
together, in this case one authored by Epicurus’s student Colotes, critiqued it, and then
debated Epicurean theses in further discussions (Non posse).
Background
Plutarch’s remarkable interest in Epicureanism aligns with the doctrine’s persistent

importance throughout the first and second centuries ce, even amidst continued hostil-
ity and the rise of Platonism.10 In 176 ce, a chair for Epicureanism was established at
Athens. Platonists like Numenius were critical of Epicureanism, but nevertheless per-
ceived it as a formidable foe. Diogenes Laertius’s work on the history of philosophy
devoted one full book each to Plato and Epicurus. In Oenoanda, a man called Diogenes
dedicated a monumental inscription to Epicurus’s teachings, which was supposed to
benefit all.11 Epicurean teachings are reflected in a variety of contexts, in philosophical
discourse as much as in Greek and Roman literature. Most frequently, the perspective is
critical, but at times, the verdict is positive (e.g. in Seneca, Lucian, Diogenian, Celsus).
Even the Alexandrian Church Fathers engage with Epicurus’s doctrine and include it in
their discussion of pagan positions.12 Epicurus’s oft-praised lifestyle lent authority to his
ethics and impressed even critical opponents. Plutarch, for one, even respected
Epicurus’s character, his interactions with his friends, his ability to share everything
with them.13 If nothing else, so Plutarch, he inspired and influenced many (Plut. De frat.
amor 487d):
For even if they were mistaken in their opinion, yet since they were convinced and
constantly declared from their earliest childhood that there was no one wiser than
Epicurus, we may well admire both the man who inspired this devotion and also
those who felt it.14
The Epicurean understanding of philosophy as an improvement of life (philosophia

medicans) and Epicurus’s practical advice on life and learning certainly contributed to
this interest. Both of these aspects aligned well with the Romans’ practical approach to
philosophy and the early Imperial era’s tendency to focus on this world rather than on
the beyond.15 The same applies to Plutarch, who understood philosophy primarily as an
ars vitae16 and wrote with the express intention of assisting people, helping them get
oriented within society, and defining their relationship to God. In spite of all criticisms,
10 Cf. Erler, “Epicureanism in the Roman Empire.”

11 Cf. Frg. 2 III 1–5 Smith; on the chair in Epicureanism, see Timpe, “Der Epikureismus in der
römischen Gesellschaft der Kaiserzeit,” 56f.
12 Cf. the contributions in Erler, Epikureismus in der späten Republik und der Kaiserzeit; Fuhrer and
Erler, Zur Rezeption der hellenistischen Philosophie in der Spätantike.
13 Cf. Plut. Demetr. 34.1–3.
14 Trans. W. C. Helmbold in Helmbold and O’Neil, Plutarch’s Quotations.
15 Erler, “Philologia medicans.”
16 Cf. Plut. Quaest. conv. 613b.
510 MICHAEL ERLER
his writings at times betray an appreciation for the practical side of Epicurean doctrine,
and even methodological similarities.
Persona in Plutarch’s Writings
It is not solely on the level of content that the contemporary importance of Epicureanism
is reflected in Plutarch’s œuvre. In dedicating his Adversus Colotem to Lucius Herennius
Saturninus, proconsul of Achaia in 98/99, Plutarch apparently assumed that the highest
circles were interested in engaging with Epicurus’s teachings. Furthermore, Plutarch
frequently introduces people of high rank and friends from the aristocracy as interlocu-
tors with Epicurean tendencies. In spite of their philosophical position, he treats them
kindly and with respect;17 only rarely does he criticize them aggressively.18 Among these
interlocutors is Boethus, a friend from Plutarch’s student days, who—in the De Pythiae
oraculis—appears as an Epicurean partisan19 and adduces Epicurus’s critique of the ora-
cles; each of Boethus’s interventions in the dialogue marks a shift in the conversation’s
progress. His attitude toward divination corresponds to what other sources lead us to
believe about Epicurus’s doctrine.20 In the Quaestiones convivales Alexander, a sensible
and learned Epicurean, discusses Pythagorean dietetics (635e–636a); in the same text, the
Epicurean Xenocles mocks Plutarch’s brother Lamprias (635a–c), and the physician
Zophyrus, who is well acquainted with Epicurus’s Symposium (653b), explains, among
other things, Epicurus’s thesis that sexual intercourse is detrimental to a person’s health.21
Plutarch’s writings thus constitute a monument to friendly interactions with Epicureans.
However, Plutarch’s writings can, at times, also provide examples of less flexible dealings
with Epicurus’s followers.22 Yet overall, it is clear that Plutarch knew how to distinguish
between people and their philosophical positions, and that he cultivated a tolerant mode
of interaction that recalls Cicero’s approach to the Epicurean Velleius. This stylistic choice
suits both writers’ dialogues, which are set in country villae and replace a substantive
search for knowledge with conversation and a free exchange of thought.23
Continuity
It may be safe to say, then, that in Plutarch’s œuvre, Epicureanism constitutes a promi-
nent and consistent point of reference for discussions of philosophical positions.24
17 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3355f. On Saturninus, cf. Jones, Plutarch and Rome,
57; on other contemporaries, cf. FitzGibbon, “Boethus and Cassius,” 445–60.
18 Cf. Roskam, “Plutarch on Self and Others,” 271 ff. 19 Plut. De Pyth. or. 396d–e.
20 Cf. Ferrari, “La falsità delle asserzioni relative al futuro,” 152 ff.
21 Cf. Plut. Quaest. conviv. 635e–36a, 635a–c, 653b, 653c–54b. 22 Cf. Plut. Non posse 1086e ff.
23 Cf. Hösle, Der philosophische Dialog, 100.
24 Cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure.
Plutarch 511
Even though the absence of anti-Epicurean statements in theological writings like De dai-
monio Socratis, De Iside, or De amore has led some to posit a shift in Plutarch’s intellec-
tual development, these conclusions are problematic.25 After all, the chronology of
Plutarch’s writings is far from well-enough established to provide a reliable foundation
for such speculations. Furthermore, writings like Plutarch’s De amore prolis, which he
likely composed before the De superstitione, do criticize Epicurus.26 Finally, it is unclear
if Plutarch’s polemic in the De superstitione is targeted at an Epicurean source.27 The
position he here attributes to his opponents—that the gods do not exist—is, after all, not
Epicurean. And if Plutarch at times reveals positive estimations of Epicurean doctrine,28
the context shows that this tactic is meant to demean the position of such opponents as
the Stoics.29
Plutarch, an Expert on
Epicurean Doctrine
Plutarch’s writings thus create the impression that their author was excellently
acquainted with Epicurus’s teachings and the Epicurean tradition. We learn that he
owned a library (albeit a small one)30 and that he had access to books in Athens (De Ε
384e). There is much to suggest, then, that he had direct access to the works of Epicurus
and his students, such as Metrodorus and especially Colotes.31 At the very least, he has
such characters of his dialogues as Aristodemus claim that they read Epicurus’s letters.32
Plutarch offers up literal quotations from Epicurus and his disciples,33 as well as
Epicurus’s technical terminology and paraphrases that may at times be vague, but are
often quite close to the original (at least as far as we can tell).34 Occasionally, a text by
Epicurus (e.g. a letter) is adduced simply to discuss Epicurus’s language.35 The treatise
Adversus Colotem has us witness a group’s joint reading of one of Colotes’s works.
25 Cf. Flacelière, “Plutarque et l’épicurisme,” 200; contra Adam, Plutarchs Schrift, 3 n. 10; Boulogne,
Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 25.
26 Cf. Plut. De amore prolis 495a. 27 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3374.
28 Cf. Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux, 77 ff.; Roskam, “Plutarch as a Source for Epicurean
Philosophy” on De aud. poet. 37a.
29 Cf. Schmid, “Götter und Menschen in der Theologie Epikurs,” 97 n. 4.
30 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3356.
31 Cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure.
32 Cf. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 130 = “Plutarchos von Chaironeia,” 767.
33 Cf. for instance Plut. De aud. poet. 37a = Usener 548; Non posse 1090c–d = Usener 532; 1097c–d =
Usener 183; 1105e = Usener 213; Adv. Col. 1125c = Usener 554; 1127d = Usener 18; De lat. viv. 1128a =
Usener 551.
34 For terminology cf. Plut. De tuend. 135c–d = Usener 8; De Stoic. rep. 1033c = Usener 426.
Paraphrases include Plut. De tranqu. an. 465f–66a = Usener 555; Non posse 1095c–d = Usener 5; 1097a =
Usener 544; Non posse 1087b = Usener 552; Adv. Col. 1127d = Usener 134; Roskam, “Plutarch as a Source
for Epicurean Philosophy,” 70 ff.
35 Cf. Westman, Plutarch gegen Kolotes, 27–31; Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3357.
512 MICHAEL ERLER
We may also assume that Plutarch had additional second-hand knowledge, especially
since in his time Epicurus’s doctrine was part of the Koine.36 Plutarch was likely also
familiar with other authors’ critiques of Epicurus, be they of Sceptical/Academic or
Stoic provenance.37 It is particularly remarkable that Plutarch apparently was familiar
with more than just the Greek sources of Epicurean teachings. Although the author
admits to difficulties in mastering Latin, some passages in Plutarch’s œuvre create the
impression that he may have used Lucretius’s De rerum natura as a source.38 His expla-
nation of magnetism39 suggests this as much as a passage in De amore prolis (493–4) on
sexual attraction among animals in the spring, which recalls the Hymn to Venus.40
There can therefore be no doubt that Plutarch’s writings constitute an important step
in the reception of Epicureanism and a rich source for those attempting to restore
Epicurean writings and doctrines.
Plutarch as Source and Author
It is no coincidence, then, that Plutarch’s œuvre serves as a rich mine in any endeavor to
reconstruct Epicurean doctrine and texts. But of course, there is reason for caution.
After all, we have to account for the fact that Plutarch was not interested in providing a
systematic presentation of Epicurean dogma or statements, even where he did engage
directly with Epicurean thought. Nor are his polemics primarily interested in refuting
Epicurus. Rather, recent research has made it increasingly clear that Plutarch is much
more interested in a defense or legitimization of his own positions than in disproving
Epicurus’s. More than anything, he wants to cast his own convictions in a positive light;
in this context, Epicurus appears as a necessary and appropriate foil that helps Plutarch
build consensus. The strategic quality of his presentation is particularly apparent on
those rare occasions when Plutarch brings himself to pass positive judgment.41 A care-
ful analysis reveals that his positive verdict serves solely to undermine competing posi-
tions, such as those held by the Stoa, and to lend support to his own teachings (De aud.
poet. 37a). These biases require those attempting to learn about Epicurus from Plutarch
to tread carefully and to account for each passage’s immediate contexts, the text’s literary
genre, and Plutarch’s immediate motivation.42 Even where he cites Epicurean texts
verbatim or provides paraphrases that stick closely to the original, he is guided by his
own objectives, not by a wish to do justice to his sources. It is true, of course, that
Plutarch does reflect on the correct use of quotations, wherein he differs from Colotes,
36 Cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 17.

37 Cf. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 130 = “Plutarchos von Chaironeia,” 767.
38 Cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 15. 39 Cf. Lucr. 6.1002–64.
40 Cf. Plut. Sept. sap. conv. 159b–160c with Lucr. 3.703–704.
41 Cf. Plut. De frat. am. 487d = Usener 178.
42 Cf. Roskam, On the Path to Virtue, 354 ff.; Roskam, “Plutarch as a Source for Epicurean
Philosophy.”
Plutarch 513
for example. He claims that he is precise and that, unlike Colotes, he does not cite
material out of context (Non posse 1086c). Nevertheless, the fact that Plutarch feels
justified in following the ancient practice of adjusting quotations to new contexts “for
clarity’s sake,” and even of introducing straightforward changes, should sound a note to
caution. Even though he does at times reproduce Epicurea correctly,43 he frequently
cites Epicurean statements without providing their context—a practice that he in fact
holds against Colotes (Adv. Col. 1108d)—and exaggerates their content in a manner that
skews their original intention but aids his own polemic argument. For example, he pro-
vides a radical reading of Epicurus’s famous maxim “live in obscurity” that is as self-
serving as his treatment of the thesis, allegedly refuted by Epicurus, that parents’
concern for their children is a natural drive. In the process, he sacrifices a more sophisti-
cated understanding of these postulates, which is in fact attested in the Epicureans, to
the requirements of the case he is currently making. Plutarch thus emerges as using quo-
tations to refute and expose as untenable positions that he attributes to the Epicureans,
but that he has exaggerated or misrepresented. He frequently singles out terms for criti-
cism that would cause no offense in their original context, such as when he claims that
calling a gift “divine” contradicts Epicurus’s deistic theology (Non posse 1097c–d = Usener
183). Nor are such strategic considerations limited to places where Plutarch explicitly
adduces Epicurean thought. It is similarly interesting to note where Plutarch does not
mention Epicurean theses:44 for example, he does not grant space to Epicurus’s critique
of thirst for glory (δοξοκοπία), even where it would have supported his argument (Non
posse 1101b); nor does he mention Epicurus’s praise of friendship,45 or his praise of secu-
rity as a precondition for ataraxia. This illustrates once again that Plutarch seems not to
have been particularly interested in a nuanced appraisal of Epicurus. Accordingly, mod-
ern scholarship has gained much from focusing on a Plutarchean text’s literary genre
(such as the dialogue form), the author’s intention, as well as his rhetorical strategies and
the resultant distortions.46 It is no longer Plutarch as a source for Epicureanism, but
increasingly Plutarch’s role in the school’s reception that has moved to the foreground.
Of course, the mere fact that Plutarch’s own aims have shaped his critiques of
Epicureanism does not mean that they are necessarily and fundamentally flawed. Still,
we are within our rights to inquire to what extent context and generic rules have
impacted the presentation. This focus on the contexts of Plutarch’s Epicurean material
can also help us appreciate how he handled his sources, both in general and relating to
other schools. What is more, this kind of methodology can not only shed light on
Plutarch’s engagement with the Epicurean tradition and the early Imperial reception of
Epicurean thought, but it can also suggest comparisons to the practices of pagan and
Christian authors in the later Empire. There is rich potential here for further research
into the instrumentalization of Epicurean thought at different historical moments that
43 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3368.

44 Cf. Roskam, “Plutarch as a Source for Epicurean Philosophy,” 75.
45 Cf. Plut. Non posse 1105e = Usener 213; Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 199–213.
46 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism”; Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure;
Roskam, On the Path to Virtue.
514 MICHAEL ERLER
would focus, as in Plutarch’s case, less on gaining insights into Epicurus himself. Instead,
it would yield insights into the ways in which he was treated by later generations. If
Plutarch relies on traditional Epicurean thought in a manner that does not teach us
much about this doctrine, but that serves his polemical purposes, then this observation
contributes to our understanding both of Plutarch and of the role that Epicureanism
played in the author’s writings and in his day.
Plutarch the Anti-Epicurean:

Differences of Principle
Plutarch’s philosophical views are diametrically opposed to almost any aspect of

Epicurean doctrine. He considers Epicurus’s teachings a “confusion of self-contradictions”
(Αdv. Col. 1121e). As a Platonist, Plutarch decisively rejects Epicurus’s atomism,47
both with respect to the number of atoms being infinite and their moving the way he
posits. For Plutarch, atom and void are not the first principles, but God and the element
that brings about disorder (unlimited dualism).48 Most importantly, he critically
engages with the question of the origins of the qualities. Unlike Epicurus, Plutarch as a
Platonist believes in an eternal God as a driving, immaterial source and assumes a teleo-
logical perspective. He refutes that moving atoms can form a stable, unchanging
object,49 and asks how it is possible that atoms devoid of qualities can create qualities.
This latter question Plutarch answers from a Platonist-Aristotelian position, according
to which qualities are already observable in the atoms themselves. Of course, this
Plutarchean critique and its not inherently implausible alternative claim that atoms
either already have qualities to begin with, or receive them when they connect, is a direct
contradiction of Epicurean claims. After all, the Epicureans, as Plutarch was well aware,
thought that aggregates of quality-free atoms constituted more than the sum of their
parts (περιπλοκή). Even in matters of psychology Plutarch and Epicurus are worlds
apart.50 Plutarch assumes the existence of an immaterial, immortal, rational soul, while
Epicurus considers the soul a material conglomerate of atoms that dissolves in death.
Plutarch contrasts Epicurus’s claim that the soul is mortal51 with Plato’s doctrine of the
immortality of the soul, a soul that is expected to undergo metempsychosis and whose
existence in the beyond,52 just as in Plato’s myths, involves a threat of punishment. At the
same time, we should note that Plutarch, not unlike Epicurus, apparently does not
47 Cf., for instance, Plut. Adv. Col. 1110e–1113d.

48 On Plutarch’s place in Middle Platonism, cf. Donini, “L’eredità accademica e i fondamenti del
platonismo in Plutarco”; Ferrari, “Plutarco e lo scetticismo ellenistico.”
49 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3370 ff.
50 Cf. Boulogne, Plutarque dans le miroir d’Épicure, 123 ff.
51 Cf. Lucr. 3.417–829. 52 Cf. Plut. De facie 942c–945c.
Plutarch 515
consider these images of the beyond very realistic.53 An additional deficit in Epicurean
psychology as analyzed by Plutarch consists in the claim that the rational soul is considered
nameless.54 Plutarch considers this an admission of ignorance. In the field of epistemol-
ogy, Plutarch does not share Epicurus’s optimism that the senses provide unmediated
and unobstructed access to reality. Rather, he sides with the Sceptics of the Academy.55
While he does not demand abstention from all judgment, he doubts that secure under-
standing can ever be obtained and grants only God the capacity for reliable knowledge.
In ethics, finally, Plutarch agitates against hedonism: Epicurus’s thesis that pleasure is
the natural aim of all human activity contradicts Plutarch’s own conviction that virtue
(τὸ καλόν) is to be pursued (De lat. viv. 1129b). Rather than pursue pleasure, the ultimate
goal for him is to grow more similar to God by focusing on one’s immaterial soul and
rationality (De sera vind. 550d–e). In this polemic, Plutarch of course follows the tradi-
tional line of reducing the Epicurean idea of pleasure to a “pleasure of the belly” (Adv.
Col. 1108c; Non posse 1087d). He does, however, agree with Epicurus that people are
capable of moral improvement.56 It is for this reason that Plutarch hopes to contribute to
humanity’s ethical progress through his Moralia and the Lives.57 If Plutarch, in contem-
plating nature, praises God, justice, and providence (De lat. viv. 1129b), then there are
parallels to, but also fundamental discrepancies from, Epicurean theology. For Epicurus
too, the contemplation of nature is a necessary condition for philosophical and theological
insight,58 and in spite of all accusations to the contrary—Plutarch speaks of his atheism
(Adv. Col. 1119e)—neither does Epicurus ever question the existence of the gods.59
Nevertheless, Plutarch’s theology differs fundamentally from Epicurus’s, whose deistic
views do not allow for the kind of divine providence that the Platonist propagates as the
basis for human happiness. According to Epicurus, providence would not befit the exist
ence of the gods in the intermundia, which precludes all divine intervention (RS 1). For
Plutarch, by contrast, it is precisely providence that defines the eternal and unchange-
able God, who creates, steers, and directs everything (Non posse 1092b). Furthermore,
providence is helpful in that, according to Plutarch, a negative force works against God,
which he has to tame.60 Plutarch agrees with Epicurus that superstition constitutes a
main reason for low quality of life and needs to be eliminated. At the same time, Epicurus
considers it essential to the liberation from superstition that one recognize that the gods
are inactive and do not care for human beings. For Plutarch, on the other hand, provi-
dence makes a qualitative contribution to human life. It is for this reason that he accuses
the Epicureans of depriving themselves of one of the main sources of human
happiness—i.e., the awareness of divine care—by means of their deistic beliefs (Non
posse 1107b). After all, if cult and prayer are, according to Plutarch’s understanding,
meaningless to the Epicureans, or even constitute hypocrisy, then people find themselves
53 Cf. Plut. De lat. viv. 1130c; Berner, “Plutarch und Epikur,” 127. 54 Cf. Usener 315.
55 Cf. Plut. Adv. Col. 1121e–1124c.
56 Cf. Roskam, On the Path to Virtue; Erler, “Epicureanism in the Roman Empire.”
57 Cf. Pelling, “The Moralism of Plutarch’s Lives.” 58 Cf. Erler, “Epicurus as ‘deus mortalis.’ ”
59 Essler, Glückselig und unsterblich.
60 Cf. Plut. De def. or. 420b; De Is. et Os. 377f, 387f; Non posse 1092b; De Is. et. Os. 369e–372e.
516 MICHAEL ERLER
robbed of important mental pleasures, most notably the feeling of God’s presence and
mercy (Non posse 1102a–b). Plutarch is of the opinion that it is only the belief in divine
involvement in human affairs that can prevent evil (Non posse 1101d). Remove provi-
dence from the equation and you lose this leverage.
Method
Plutarch, then, is not interested in a systematic discussion and refutation of Epicurus’s

doctrine. There is no treatise in which he presents Epicurus’s arguments in a complete
and appropriate fashion and then refutes them by strictly outlining the untenability of
their content. Rather, his approach is selective.61 In the process, Plutarch is often guided
by the rules of rhetoric and comments on different themes in different treatises as is
dictated by the varying theses at hand. Here, different contexts and modes of
presentation—be it dialogue form, be it declamatio—factor into any evaluation of his
anti-Epicurean arguments.62 Plutarch has a preferred, rather traditional “toolkit” that
he employs consistently. His technique of refuting the opinions of one school (e.g.
Epicurus’s) by presenting those of another (e.g. the Stoa’s) as relatively preferable
arguably recalls Carneades (cf. Cic. ND 1.121).63 Plutarch employs argumentative
strategies that, at times, correspond to those of the Epicureans.64 He shares not only
Epicurus’s belief in philosophy’s therapeutic character.65 Plutarch also agrees with
Epicurus—and, significantly, Socrates—that philosophical convictions need to have
consequences for one’s life. Furthermore, he is convinced that such convictions in fact
only develop in action (De prof. virt. 79d–80a). The question of a possible discrepancy
between theory and the relevant life-practice is one of Plutarch’s main criteria in
assessing philosophical schools (Plut. De stoic. rep. 1033a–b):
In the first place I require that the consistency of men’s doctrines be observed in
their way of living, for it is even more necessary that the philosopher’s life be in
accord with his theory than that the orator’s language, as Aeschines says, be identi-
cal with that of the law. The reason is that the philosopher’s theory is a law freely
chosen for his own—at least it is if they believe philosophy to be not a game of ver-
bal ingenuity played for the sake of glory but, as it really is, an activity worthy of the
utmost earnestness.66
61 Cf. Roskam, “Arguments as Boxing Gloves,” 197 ff. For Plutarch’s zetetic philosophy, cf. Plut.
Quaest. Plat. 999c–1000e; and Opsomer, In Search of the Truth, 127–212. For Plutarch’s method of
teaching, cf. Roskam, “From Stick to Reasoning.”
62 Cf. Plut. Non posse 1086d; on intellectual honesty, cf. Plut. De prof. 80b–c; on dialogues, cf. Van
der Stockt, “Aspects of the Ethics and Poetics.”
63 Cf. Cic. ND 1.121. 64 Cf. Erler, “Epicurus as ‘deus mortalis.’ ”
65 Cf. Ep. SV 64; Usener 471 = Porph. Marc. 27. Roskam, Commentary on Plutarch’s De latenter
vivendo, 17 ff.
66 Cf. Roskam, Plutarch’s Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum, 65–6.
Plutarch 517
Accordingly, hints at inconsistencies between theory and practice serve as Plutarch’s

main argument in his confrontations with other schools, especially with Epicureanism,
but also with the Stoa.67 Possible contradictions, then, in argument and presentation
allow for conclusions concerning a theory’s worth. The close connection between life
and theory produces such methods as elenchus (ἔλεγχος), correction (ἐπανόρθωσις),
and challenge (νουθέτησις), which recall both Socratic and Epicurean testing tech-
niques. They are meant to promote correct insights and liberate from false assumptions.
Plutarch also employs a method called epilogismos in his analysis of the affects, by which
term he signifies the correct evaluation and assessment (krisis) of an affect with recourse
to empirical facts;68 this definition recalls a technique that the Epicureans also called
epilogismos.69 Its concern is to examine empirically observable behaviors in order to
evaluate the decision that led to said behaviors. Plutarch employs epilogismos in a man-
ner that Epicurus in the De natura recommends for the evaluation of pragmatic virtue
and that Philodemus uses in De ira. Plutarch is generally concerned with analyzing dis-
advantages and damages, and a standardized epilogismos is part of these inquiries. For
this, too, we find examples in Philodemus. Plutarch considers the epilogismos an impor-
tant part of krisis, just as Philodemus does in De ira (col. VII Indelli). Philodemus agrees
that it is only once the nature of the affect has been recognized, its consequences have
been understood, and the affect has been evaluated based on these consequences, that
actual treatment can proceed; hence the common demand to visualize certain phenom-
ena in order to reliably gauge opinions and feelings.70 The parallelism between this
method and Epicurus’s epilogismoi is most apparent in Plutarch’s De cohibenda ira.
There, Fundanus reports on damages resulting from the affect Anger and calls such
hints at empirical data epilogismos (456e). Like the Epicureans, Plutarch sees the benefits
of such epilogismoi in their ability to trigger reluctance and fear by pointing to empiri-
cally demonstrable consequences (455e–f). It has been suggested that this attitude harks
back to Plato (cf. Plat. Rep. 455e, 456b) and some have pointed to Plato’s discussion of the
cathartic effect of reluctance and fear in the Laws (cf., e.g., Lg. 646e–647a).71 These are
important points of reference, which can legitimize the method as Platonic. However,
one should also factor in the Epicurean method. An additional mode of argumentation
that Plutarch favored in confrontations with the Epicureans consists in taking an oppos-
ing position, i.e. Epicurus’s, as a starting point and in demonstrating that it does not in
fact lead to the posited conclusions.72 This method is common in Epicurean contexts
and forms the basis for the refutation strategy that Colotes employs in the treatise that
67 Cf. Roskam, Commentary on Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo, 95.

68 Cf. Plut. De garr. 510c ff.; Beardslee, “De garrulitate”; Plut. De vit. pud. 532c; Ingenkamp, Plutarchs
Schriften über die Heilung der Seele, 99 ff.; Ingenkamp, “Rhetorische und philosophische Mittel der
Seelenheilung.”
69 Cf. Ep. SV 35; Lucr. 3.14 ff.; Cic. Ac. 2.127; Erler, “Exempla amoris”; Essler, Glückselig und
unsterblich, 88 ff.
70 Cf. Tsouna, “ ‘Portare davanti agli occhi.’ ”
71 Cf. Ingenkamp, Plutarchs Schriften über die Heilung der Seele, 88 ff., 99 ff.
72 Cf. Castagnoli, Ancient Self-refutation.
518 MICHAEL ERLER
Plutarch’s interlocutors discuss in his seminar.73 Not only does he demonstrate that this
strategy does not provide the desired results in the philosophers whom Colotes attacks,
but he also shows in his own writings (Νon posse) that the method does work with
Epicurus. The two treatises (see below), then, reflect not only a competition of content,
but also one of methodology, between Plutarch and the Epicureans. That works like Non
posse can and should help in the teaching of methods as well, Plutarch highlights himself
(1086d):
If for no other reason, at least to show persons who undertake to set others right that
they must each study with care the arguments and books of the men they impugn,
and must not mislead the inexperienced by detaching expressions from different
contexts . . . .74
An additional feature of Plutarch’s polemic against Epicurus is his handling of quota-

tions from, and learned allusions to, non-philosophical literature and terminology. His
evident skill in employing poetry in his refutations of Epicurus may in fact be meant as
an indirect polemic against Epicurus’s alleged lack of Paideia (1092e–1096e). Of course,
a glance at Philodemus’s writings and comments on the use of paideia in propagating
Epicurean doctrine75 could teach us that Plutarch, like Cicero before him, was playing
up stereotypes. After all, Plutarch’s argumentative strategy lays claim to the prerogative
of changing quotations from Epicurus and the Epicureans with respect to their word
order, to replace words with synonyms, and to leave out or add words in order to clarify
the relevant passage’s meaning.
Case Studies
Adversus Colotem
One of Plutarch’s central concerns in his discussions of other philosophical positions is
to examine whether theory corresponds to practice. The treatise Against Colotes76 provides
an opportunity to study how Plutarch engages with his adversary, the Epicurean Colotes,
whose own attacks on numerous other schools employed quite similar strategies. Both
the work’s content, then, and its methodology are of great interest. Colotes, whom
73 Cf. Kechagia, Plutarch Against Colotes, 81 ff.

74 Plut. Non posse, trans. Einarson & De Lacy; cf. Plut. Non posse 1108d.
75 Cf. Philod. Ad cont. 1, col. XVI Angeli; Erler, “Orthodoxie und Anpassung,” 179 ff. On Plutarch’s
estimation of paideia, e.g., in the Lives, cf. Pelling, “Plutarch: Roman Heroes and Greek Culture” and
“Rhetoric, Paideia, and Psychology in Plutarch’s Lives.”
76 The full title reads: “Reply to Colotes in Defense of the Other Philosophers” (Πρὸς Κωλώτην ὑπὲρ
τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων). On this treatise, see most recently Kechagia, Plutarch against Colotes.
Plutarch 519
Diogenes Laertius numbers among Epicurus’s “esteemed” students,77 emerges as an

author prone to polemics, predominantly against Scepticism and especially the sceptical
Academy and its head, Arcesilaus (Plut. Adv. Col. 1120c). His attacks also targeted
Democritus as the school’s intellectual father. Remains of Colotes’s writings on Platonic
dialogues have been found on papyri in Herculaneum.78 Cicero and later Macrobius
and Proclus reacted directly or indirectly to his criticism of the Myth of Er in Plato’s
Republic.79 Plato appears to be a main target of his attacks. Furthermore, the monumental
inscription of Diogenes at Oenoanda demonstrates that Colotes remained influential.80
His book seems still to have circulated in Plutarch’s day. It is, therefore, far from surprising
that the Platonist Plutarch wrote a counter offensive against Colotes and especially
against the summary attacks he advanced in a treatise81 he seems to have dedicated to
Ptolemy Philadelphos (282–246 bce) and that bore the title “That It Is Not Even Possible
to Live According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers” (Ne vivi quidem posse
secundum aliorum philosophorum decreta, Περὶ τοῦ ὅτι κατὰ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων
δόγματα οὐδὲ ζῆν ἔστιν). In this work, the Epicurean engaged with numerous philo-
sophical predecessors and intended to show that their theories make it impossible to live
a philosophical life in accordance with their postulates.
In his treatise Against Colotes, dedicated to Saturninus (proconsul in Achaia
98–99 ce), Plutarch turns the methodological tables on the Epicurean and advances the
thesis that it is impossible to live happily in accordance with Epicurus’s doctrine. He con-
siders the work a sign of vulgarity, pomposity, and arrogance—an accusation com-
monly leveled against Epicureans.82 It is doubtful why Plutarch chose an older Epicurean
text as his target, but not Epicurus himself.83 Perhaps the work’s doxographical character
aroused his interest, or perhaps it was the opportunity to distinguish himself in a meth-
odological confrontation with an Epicurean whose text was still in circulation.
In the Adversus Colotem, Plutarch provides insights into one of his academy’s seminar
meetings. We learn that Colotes’s work has been read to Plutarch’s circle of friends and
triggered some protest (1107e–1108b). Plutarch attempts to show that it is impossible to
live in accordance with Epicurus’ doctrine by discussing—and refuting—what Colotes
adduced against specific philosophers. In the process, Plutarch discusses different phi-
losophers in order—Democritus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, (Melissos), Plato,
Stilpon, the Cyrenaics, and Arcesilaus—although he does make slight adjustments to
77 Cf. DL 10.25: ἐλλόγιμοι. On Colotes, cf. Erler, “Epikur,” 235–43; most recently Kechagia, Plutarch
against Colotes, 47–80.
78 Against the Lysis, P.Herc. 208; against the Euthydemus, P.Herc. 1032, edition in Crönert, Kolotes
und Menedemus, 163–70 and 5–7. Revised readings by A. Concolino Mancini, “Sulle opere polemiche di
Colote”; and Alesse, “La polemica di Colote”; Kechagia, Plutarch against Colotes, 55–68 focuses on
Menedemus.
79 Cf. Macr. Somn. 1.1.9–1.2.5; Procl. In R. II pp. 105.23–106.16, 109.11–12, 113.9, 116.19, 121.24 Kroll.
Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemus, 12 suspects the title was Πρὸς τοὺς Πλάτωνος μύθους or Περὶ τῶν
παρὰ Πλάτωνι μυθικῶς πεπλασμένων. Cf. Kechagia, Plutarch against Colotes, 68–79.
80 Cf. Clay, “Diogenes of Oenoanda,” 2527. 81 Cf. Plut. Adv. Col. 1107e.
82 Cf. Cic. ND 1.93. 83 Cf. Hershbell, “Plutarch and Epicureanism,” 3361 ff.
520 MICHAEL ERLER
Colotes’s original arrangement (1113e, 1116e). As a result, it is possible to use this refutation
not only to get an idea of Colotes’s treatise,84 but also to become familiar with Plutarch’s
method. After all, the discussion—and defense—of the individual positions that Colotes
attacks is the sole purpose of the work. It seems to be concerned with a general reckoning
of Epicureanism, which Plutarch wants to expose as inherently self-contradictory. In
this context, it is remarkable that Plutarch’s method occasionally corresponds to his
predecessor’s. On a content level, his accusations against Colotes and the Epicureans are
conventional: the Epicureans supposedly lead a rather ignoble life bound to their lower
drives (chh. 1, 2; 1107e–1108d); in addition, Colotes’s discussions are said to take opposing
positions out of context, to create contradictions with Epicurus’s positions in the
process, and to attack philosophers like Democritus, whom Epicurus himself admired
(ch. 3, 1108d–f). For example, when Colotes accuses Democritus of a relativism reminis-
cent of Protagoras, he supposedly profoundly misunderstood him (chh. 4–7,
1108f–1110e). Plutarch rejects Colotes’s charge against Democritus that qualities are
mere conventions and that only atoms and void truly exist as contradicting sense per-
ception and as generally inappropriate. After all, Democritus’s conclusion is consistent,
while Epicurus avoided it only through inconsistent arguments (ch. 8, 1110e–1111d).
According to Plutarch, the thesis advanced by Plato, Aristotle, and Xenocrates, accord-
ing to which the elements are endowed with qualities, is more plausible (ch. 9, 1111d–e).
In response to what he calls a Colotean misinterpretation of some verses of Empedocles,
Plutarch demonstrates that soul and life cannot be derived from atoms (chh. 10–12,
1111f–1113e). An analysis of Parmenides’s philosophy is meant to deflect Colotes’s
reproach that Parmenides’s tenet of the One negates the existence of the perceptible
world (ch. 13, 1113e–1114f). He adduces Colotes’s claim that Plato’s ontology was derived
from Aristotle, Theophrastus, and the Peripatetics as proof of his lack of philosophical
literacy (ch. 14, 1114f–1115c). In turn, Colotes’s polemic against Plato’s ontology serves as
evidence for his inability to understand Plato (ch. 15, 1115c–1116c). Finally, Epicurus’s
own concept of existence is portrayed as insufficient (ch. 16, 1116c–e). Plutarch counters
Colotes’s attacks on Socrates (ch. 17, 1116e–1117c) regarding the Delphic Oracle and his
actual lifestyle’s deviations from his teachings with similar accusations against Epicurus
(chh. 18–19, 1117c–1118b). It is, according to Plutarch, not Socrates’s inquiry into the
essence of man, but Epicurus’s prejudices and conceits that destroy the Good Life (chh.
20–21, 1118b–1119c). Following Plutarch’s reading, Colotes’s attacks against Stilpon and
the Cyrenaics do not in fact apply to their teachings or personality, but merely reveal
further misunderstandings on Colotes’s part (chh. 22–23, 1119c–1120b). The same applies
to his critique of the Cyrenaics (24–25, 1120b–1121e) and of Arcesilaus’s reticence in mat-
ters of knowledge (chh. 26–29, 1121e–1124c). Then, the insight that human activity
requires control is up for debate (ch. 30, 1124d–1125c). Finally, Colotes’s praise for social
institutions is said to overlook that only godliness can guarantee the social order, while
the Epicurean position reduces men to animals. What is more, the Epicurean turn away
from politics undermines the order of the state, which is founded on religion
84 Cf. Westman, Plutarch gegen Kolotes, 39 ff.

Plutarch 521
(ch. 31, 1125c–f) and was promoted precisely by the philosophers Colotes attacks
(ch. 32, 1126a–e). The Epicureans, by contrast, are said not to have advanced human com-
munity, to have attacked humanity’s benefactors, and to accept the laws only from fear
of punishment (chh. 33–34, 1126e–1127e).
All of these refutations, then, reverse Colotes’s critique of the other schools: not they,
but Epicurus’s teachings, stand in the way of a happy life and are inherently contradic-
tory. Apparently, Colotes’s text, in spite of all polemics, had a protreptic intention. The
basis of Colotes’s attacks, just as of Plutarch’s defense, is the suspicion of a discrepancy
between theoretical claims and the practice of everyday life. Especially for the
Epicureans, it was important to bring theory and practice into alignment.85 Colotes’s
argument that it is impossible to live in accordance with the other philosophers, Plutarch
counters in various manners: by showing that the relevant philosopher does hold the
alleged view, but that it does not stand in the way of a happy life; by showing that Colotes
misinterpreted the author in question;86 or by showing that the maligned philosopher
never advanced the questionable thesis in the first place. Plutarch thus shows Colotes’s
attacks to attest mainly to their author’s ignorance in philosophical matters or lack of
philosophical talent (1108d, 1109a, 1114f–1115a). It is, of course, not always certain that
Plutarch is correct. The general claim that Colotes’s attacks contradict some of Epicurus’s
own teachings is central to Plutarch’s strategy.87 It is only Colotes’s refutation of
Democritus’s claim that the qualities are merely conventional that Plutarch seems to
agree with (1110f), although there may be rhetorical reasons for this stance. The discus-
sion of the Cyrenaics he does not contradict either (1120c–e).
Whether or not Plutarch is right to allege that Colotes undermines his own philo-
sophical system has to remain an open question. Either way, the claim is programmatic
for the rest of his endeavor and relies on the well-established argumentative strategy of
the self-defeating argument.88 Occasionally, Plutarch points out that Colotes’s own the-
sis resembles the one he attacks, which is why his argumentation backfires. At the same
time, Plutarch accuses Colotes of methodological shortcomings (1108d), for example
because he quotes passages out of context, isolates them, and then criticizes them.
Plutarch counters with his own quotations (1108d), although of course his own methods
are not above reproach either.
To sum up, Plutarch’s Against Colotes engages with a protreptic, Epicurean text,
appropriates its method, and turns it against the Epicureans. In doing so, Plutarch
focuses not only on each individual criticism, but targets the entirety of Epicurean the-
ory. The result is a protreptic text of Plutarch’s own that is designed to pull readers over
to his own, Platonist position by demonstrating his superior command over method
and philosophical content.
85 Cf. Usener 219; Ep. Men. 122. 86 Westman, Plutarch gegen Kolotes, 115.
87 Cf. Westman, Plutarch gegen Kolotes, 112.
88 Cf. Plat. Tht. 170e–171b; Arist. Rh. 1398a3–4; Castagnoli, Ancient Self-refutation.
522 MICHAEL ERLER
Refutation of Epicurean Teachings on

Pleasure (Non posse)
The treatise “That It Is Impossible to Live Pleasantly in Accordance with Epicurus” (Non
posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum) is a dihegematic dialogue;89 Plutarch himself is
the narrator. The dialogue presents itself as the continuation of the meeting on which
Plutarch reported in the Against Colotes and of its discussion of Colotes’s “That It Is
Impossible to Live According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers” (1086d).
There (apparently in Chaironeia) the interlocutors go for a walk after they conclude
their seminar on Colotes’s “That It Is Impossible to Live According to the Doctrines of
the Other Philosophers.” Plutarch had defended the philosophers against Colotes’s
attacks in a lecture. Still, the group is so vexed by the discussion that Theon suggests they
prove that it is impossible to live a pleasurable life in accordance with Epicurus’s doc-
trine (1087a–b). In the treatise Non posse, Plutarch commits to writing what additional
arguments they produced against Epicurus. As his motivation, he mentions that it is
necessary to carefully examine the arguments he wants to refute (1186d), and that one
should not be deceived by those who take statements out of context, whereby he estab-
lishes a connection to a related accusation against Colotes (Adv. Col. 1108d). Apparently,
Plutarch wants to offer his treatise as a model of unpolemical and correct engagement
with opposing opinions, which he sees as an alternative to Colotes’s approach. Of course,
he does not completely live up to this challenge, as his treatment of Epicurean quota-
tions repeatedly demonstrates (cf. Non posse 1088d). On a content level, he makes the
argument, then, targeted specifically at Epicurus, that it is impossible to live a pleasur-
able life in accordance with this philosopher’s doctrine (1087a–b). As in the Against
Colotes, his use of traditional philosophical arguments is determined by the polemical
context. After all, Plutarch relies methodologically on Colotes’s attacks against the other
philosophers as well as on his own against Colotes, according to which the opponent’s
positions are to be turned against himself (περιτρέπων λόγος). In this respect, Plutarch
employs the Epicurean Colotes’s strategy against Epicurus. Whoever follows Epicurus’s
doctrine does not acquire what it promises. Therefore, Plutarch time and again begins
his reflections by referring back to Epicurean positions.90 He thereby engages in a meth-
odological competition with Colotes as well. Furthermore, he radicalizes the critique by
trying to show in direct engagement with Epicurus’s teachings that it is not only impos-
sible to live pleasantly but even to live in accordance with them, as the otherwise identi-
cal titles of the two treatises already demonstrate. The thesis that a discrepancy exists
between Epicurus’s philosophical theory and the practice of life forms the basis for this
polemic. In order to highlight this discrepancy further, Plutarch relies on other philoso-
phers as well, especially in the beginning, who apparently leveled similar accusations
against Epicurus (1086e–f). In doing so, Plutarch’s demonstration that the accusations
89 Zacher, Plutarchs Kritik an der Lustlehre Epikurs.

90 Cf. Plut. Non posse 1097a, 1099d, 1099f–1100a.
Plutarch 523
apply particularly well to Epicurus himself gains traction. The treatise, just as the Against
Colotes, evinces numerous rhetorical elements,91 such as praeteritio, arguments a forti-
ori, and rhetorical questions. It is presented as dialogue and thereby documents
Plutarch’s literary training. It is possible that this serves as an indirect polemic against
Epicurus’s alleged aversion to paideia (1092e–1096e). What is more, seventy-five literal
quotations from Epicurus and other Epicureans suggest that Plutarch was familiar with
their works, although one has to factor in the relevant citations’ contexts.
The treatise is structured by means of interjections.92 After an introduction (chh. 2, 3,
1086d–88d) two larger sections are discernible.93 Plutarch begins by refuting Epicurus’s
teachings on pleasure (chh. 3–20, 1087c–1101c). The discussion consists of three subsec-
tions, marked by citations, that correspond to the parts of Plato’s tripartite soul and
Aristotle’s three kinds of life:94 first, he suggests that Epicurean pleasure is connected to
corporeal lust (chh. 3–8, 1087c–1092d), then he points to the pleasure of the contempla-
tive life, e.g. science, music (chh. 9–14, 1092d–1096e) and the pleasure of the active life,
as well as the resultant valuations (chh. 15–19, 1096f–1100d), which the Epicureans do
not consider, but which Epicurus held in high esteem. The second segment, which is
marked by an intervening separate discussion (1110e) and contains an appreciation of
the Epicurean fight against superstition (1100f), addresses religious and theological
questions. Two sub-sections—the first speaker is Aristodemus, the second Theon—
highlight that Epicurus’s stance toward the gods (chh. 20–23, 1100e–1103e) and a life in
accordance with his doctrine in fact diminish pleasure; e.g., Platonic and Stoic views
provide greater pleasure. After all, the expectation of divine care, which the Epicureans
deny, provides gratification, as does the happy anticipation of a paradisiac state, which
outweighs the fear of punishment in normal people (chh. 25–30, 1104a–1107a). As a
result, Plutarch sees the Epicureans as depriving themselves of significant sources of
pleasure by limiting themselves to the corporeal realm, which excludes, e.g., the immor-
tality of the soul, divine care, love of learning, and honor (ch. 31, 1107b–c). The argu-
ments that Plutarch employs are largely conventional and inappropriate in reducing the
Epicureans to pursuing corporeal pleasures. But at the same time, they are determined
by the polemical context and fulfill their intended function. In applying the same
polemical line of argument, Plutarch proves a match for his opponent.
Epicurus’s Anti-politics (De latenter)

Plutarch’s philosophy is defined by a strong political component.95 This may be due to
his personal dedication as a politician, but also, and primarily, to his Platonism.
Philosophically, Plutarch defends Plato’s call for philosopher kings and supports the
91 Cf. Roskam, On the Path to Virtue, 361. 92 Cf. Adam, Plutarchs Schrift, 13–18.
93 Cf. Einarson and De Lacy, Plutarch’s Moralia, 4–6. 94 Cf. Arist. EN 1095b17–19.
95 Cf. Roskam, Commentary on Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo; Erler, “Utopie und Realität” and
“Epikur und politische Aktivität.”
524 MICHAEL ERLER
philosopher’s role as advisor to the mighty (Max. cum princ.).96 Here, too, he finds
himself diametrically opposed to Epicurus. According to Plutarch, man is political by
nature and generally strives toward action (Non posse 1107c). He bases this assumption
on the myth of autochthony in Plato’s Republic.97 Epicurus’s political convictions he
regards from different angles.98 His critique of Epicurean politics also plays a role in the
Lives: Plutarch scolds Lucullus,99 because he gave up a political career for a life of pleasure,
which runs counter to Platonist and Roman views. Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo is
particularly indicative of his attitude toward Epicurean conceptions of politics.100 Here,
we can see especially well how Plutarch polemicizes against Epicurean thought.
The main witness for Plutarch’s anti-Epicurean polemic regarding the question of
political dedication is the treatise Live in Obscurity (1128a–1130e). Here, Plutarch argues
in seven chapters that Epicurus’s saying, lathe biosas, is useless as a basis for a philosoph-
ical life. The treatise is obviously governed by rhetorical considerations. Plutarch hopes
to show that the philosopher should engage with politics. According to him, man tends
naturally toward politics, as well as generally toward action.101 In this context, Plutarch
rejects the so-called apragmosynē argument, according to which political activity is con-
sidered polypragmosynē and hence detrimental to ataraxia of the soul.102 As in De laten-
ter, he begins with a literal interpretation of a quote by Epicurus103 and uses Epicurus’s
opinion for a polemic against Democritus. Supposedly, Epicurus, who was considered a
follower of Democritus, granted those men who naturally strove for glory permission to
give in to this natural desire.104
Some admonitions as to how politicians are to reach their goals in the polis may be
based on Plutarch’s own experience as a politician. As in his other writings, he does not
undertake the attack on Epicurus’s position for its own sake, but to buttress the Platonist
position. Rhetoric, more than philosophy, determines this text’s line of argument.
Furthermore, Plutarch relies on a long-standing ancient hermeneutical method that
decontextualizes statements, then takes them literally, and proceeds to interpret and
criticize.105 Another basis for Plutarch’s line of argument is provided by the proof that
there is a contradiction between Epicurus’s theory and the practice of life. Finally,
Plutarch reveals his adversaries to be involved in self-contradictions (περιτρέπων
λόγος).106 In this text, Plutarch’s approach does not correspond to the demand he makes
elsewhere that an opponent’s quotations not be decontextualized. Plutarch is able to dis-
prove his adversary by taking the saying literally. His attack on the quote is based on an
96 Cf. Roskam, Plutarch’s Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum.

97 Cf. Plat. R. 415a–b.
98 Cf. Plut. De tranqu. anim. 465f–466a = Usener 555; De tuend. san. 135b–d; Roskam, “The
Displeasing Secrets of the Epicurean Life.”
99 Cf. Plut. Comp. Cim. Luc. 1.3.
100 Cf. Roskam, Commentary on Plutarch’s De latenter vivendo. 101 Cf. Plut. Non posse 1107c.
102 Cf. Plut. De tranq. anim. 465c = Democritus, 68B3 DK.
103 Cf. Roskam, On the Path to Virtue, 363.
104 Cf. Plut. De tranq. anim. 465f–466a = Usener 555.
105 Cf. Arrighetti, Poeti, eruditi e biografi, 139–228. 106 Cf. Plut. De prof. virt. 76a–b.
Plutarch 525
interpretation that may not correspond to Epicurus’s original intention. In several of his
writings, Plutarch intends to show that Epicurus himself did not follow his own maxims.
In the De latenter, then, Plutarch decontextualizes an Epicurean saying and interprets
it. The similarly famous demand to “abstain from politics” survives in Diogenes
Laertius’s quotation from Epicurus’s important, though sadly lost, ethical work De vitis
10, 119 = Usener 8.107 There, however, it does not refer to a disappointed reaction to a
specific event, but a way of life, comparable to Philodemus’s demand that man should
live his life aware of death and his life’s vanity.108 This is not a call for suicide, but an
incentive to live life while considering death unimportant. Furthermore, Plutarch seems
to know that Epicurus’s views are more complex and emphasizes, for example, that those
who are naturally inclined toward activity are allowed, according to Epicurus, to engage
in politics.109 This befits Plutarch’s polemical strategy, according to which undifferenti-
ated positions are easier to dismantle. What is more, careful differentiations do not meet
the treatise’s rhetorical demands. In De latenter vivendo, Plutarch argues against the rad-
ical reading.110 The saying “Live in Obscurity” is already a provocation, as is the mere
publication of the work, which demonstrates that Epicurus sought precisely the kind of
publicity he advised avoiding (1128a–c; 1128f–1129a). What is more, life is nothing
shameful and does not need to be hidden (1128c); nor is a life in obscurity especially con-
ducive either to the Good or the Bad of human life (1128d–e). After all, personal seclu-
sion will keep bad people from improving and good people from accomplishing great
things. A quick look at history demonstrates that public life provides capable people
with a place to realize their potential (1129b–d); it is precisely to activity and, therefore,
also to the public that man is inclined in accordance with God’s will. Only those who
obtain glory in this fashion receive a reward in the afterlife; all others are condemned to
darkness (1130c–e).
This treatise’s arguments, often described as declamatio or destructio,111 are well
arranged and recall the rhetorical strategies of diatribe. Plutarch is primarily concerned
with demonstrating the inherent contradiction between Epicurus’s theories and the
practice of life. In the process, he avails himself of a well-established method of ancient
polemics, namely to take an opponent’s statements—such as “live in obscurity”—out of
context, interpret them literally, and then criticize them without accounting for the con-
text, which could have revealed greater nuance on Epicurus’s part. In other words,
Plutarch’s critique of the “live in obscurity” formula is based on an interpretation that
need not at all have been Epicurus’s own. Indeed, as with all pithy sayings, it makes sense
to tread carefully: Epicurus’s call for political abstinence in no way precludes an interest
107 Cf. DL 10.119 = Usener 8; see also Erler, “Utopie und Realität,” 40.
108 Cf. Philod. Mort. 4, col. 38.16 ff. Henry: ἐντεταφιασμένος βίος; see also Erler, “Leben wie im
Leichentuch.”
109 Cf. Barigazzi, Studi su Plutarco, 115 ff.; Roskam, On the Path to Virtue, 351 ff.; Plut. De tranq.
anim. 465f–466a = Usener 555.
110 Cf. Roskam, On the Path to Virtue, 355.
111 Cf. Barigazzi, “Una declamazione di Plutarco contro Epicuro,” 45–64; Russell, Plutarch. Selected
Essays and Dialogues, 120.
526 MICHAEL ERLER
in, and active engagement with, the community.112 In fact, Epicurus calls for restraint
only when it comes to direct interactions with political institutions.113 The reason for
this attitude is everybody’s shared desire to be safe from other people,114 as Epicurus
clearly expresses at KD 6. To rule or to be king, then, can be a natural good for an
Epicurean, but only if it is no end in itself, but a means to guarantee calm and security.
We hear of numerous friends and students who served as court advisors. Epicurus him-
self may repeatedly warn against political activities,115 but in the works of his followers,
we find reflections on politics, forms of government, and their utility; we even hear of a
De monarchia authored by Epicurus. As is apparent from the final sections of the
Adversus Colotem, Colotes praises (Adv. Col. 1124d) those who gave laws, customs, mon-
archies, and magistracies to man. After all, they provided humanity with security and
calm. Without these forms of government, men lived like animals (1124e). This praise of
laws and forms of government provides Plutarch with an occasion for criticism, claim-
ing that it is unworthy of a philosopher. After all, the philosophies of real philosophers
such as Parmenides, Socrates, or Plato remain intact even without political institutions
and enable people to live a just life. After all, their philosophy leads to an esteem for jus-
tice for its own sake. The same is apparently not true of Epicurus’s philosophy, which
considers providence an old wives’ tale and finds the Good in customs (1125a). It is for
this self-serving reason alone that the Epicureans have to praise laws and forms of gov-
ernment. Thus, Plutarch creates a contrast between Epicurus’s teachings on pleasure and
the doctrine on the usefulness of government. He who advocates for pleasure needs gov-
ernmental control and laws. Yet according to the Epicureans, philosophy cannot exer-
cise control and is therefore incapable of providing what the Epicureans strive for:
security, calm, and hence pleasure. According to Plutarch, Plato differs in this respect.
He (1126b–c) may have composed important texts on laws and forms of government—
the Laws and the Republic—but true security stems from the kind of philosophy he
implants in his students’ souls.116 As presented by Plutarch, Epicurus’s thesis of an apo-
litical life as a guarantee for pleasure thus disproves itself. It is not according to the teach-
ings of other philosophers that a secure life is impossible, but according to Epicurus’s.
Furthermore, the Epicureans are inconsistent in that they praise law, politicians, and
rulers at the same time that they advise against politics (1125c–d) and any attempt to save
the Greek world in favor of food and drink. Of course, if Plutarch alleges (1127d) that
Epicurus would break any law if he felt sure he would not get caught—as Glaucon in
Plato’s Republic claims is true, according to the sophists, of Gyges and any ordinary
man117—then he ignores the fact that Epicurus, unlike the sophists or Glaucon in the
second book of the Republic, does not consider people naturally aggressive and simply
hungry for power, but takes as his starting point the natural wish to attain happiness,
security, and protection (KD 6) as well as peace.118 Here as elsewhere, Plutarch proves an
able scholar of Epicurean teachings who does not, however, shy away from modifying
these teachings to suit his own rhetorical purposes.
112 Cf. Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” esp. 294 ff. 113 Cf. Sen. Ep. 21.22.
114 Cf. Barigazzi, “Sul concetto epicureo della sicurezza esterna.”
115 Cf. Sen. Ep. 21.3 = Usener 132; Ep. 22.5–6 = Usener 133. 116 Cf. Plat. Phdr. 276e.
117 Plat. R. 359c–369d, 612b. 118 Cf. KD 6, 8, 40.
Plutarch 527
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chapter 21
Diogen es of Oenoa n da
Pamela Gordon
In or around the second century ce, Epicurean evangelism materialized in a spectacularly

unlikely form: a massive limestone inscription. The contents—including treatises on
Ethics, Physics, and Old Age—make the inscription unique, but its size is also unparal-
leled anywhere in the ancient world. Although only a fraction of the text has been recov-
ered, Smith estimates that the inscription may have originally been 80 meters or 260 feet
in length, with over 25,000 words spread across 260 square meters.1 Apparently the
project of a single person—the otherwise unknown Diogenes of Oenoanda—this mon-
ument contains Epicurean texts (all in Greek) that have no exact equivalents elsewhere.
But the inscription is even more significant to the history of Epicureanism, as it provides
glimpses of a lost Epicurean community, sheds light on the formation of Epicurean
texts, and attests to the diversity of the social and cultural contexts of Epicureanism.
The remains of this monument were first discovered in 1884, in the city of Oenoanda in
the hills of northern Lycia in Asia Minor (now Turkey, near the modern village of Incealiler).
Originally part of a stoa (perhaps an architectural pun) that apparently stood in a promi-
nent position at or near the center of what was a flourishing city, the stones were dismantled
in antiquity, sometimes to be reused with the inscribed side hidden from view. Smith’s dat-
ing of Diogenes’s inscription to around the 120s ce has become the convention, though
Clay places it in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80), and Hall tentatively in the late
second or early third century ce.2 Clay was persuaded largely by the possible mention in
the inscription of a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius as well as by his sense that Diogenes
would be at home in the world described in Lucian’s Alexander the False Prophet.3
1 Smith, “Excavations at Oinoanda 1997,” 125; and Diogenes of Oinoanda, 92–93.

2 Clay, “A Lost Epicurean Community”; Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda, 35–48; Hall, “Who Was
Diogenes of Oenoanda?”
3 Clay interprets the surviving four letters of a name (Ἀβει[ , fr. 70) as a possible reference to
L. Hedius Rufus Lolliaus Avitus, consul of 144 ce (Clay, “A Lost Epicurean Community”). In Alexander
the False Prophet, Lucian adopts the persona of an outraged Epicurean who exposes frauds committed
by an entrepreneurial oracle-monger. Smith, Supplement to Diogenes of Oinoanda, 113 suggests that the
name is indeed a Greek form of Avitus, but takes this person to be an otherwise unknown acquaintance
of Diogenes.
532 PAMELA GORDON
Smith compares the appearance of the lettering of Diogenes’s inscription to another,

securely dated monument, and posits that the same stone mason worked on both jobs.
This other inscription in Oenoanda announces an extravagant benefaction by one
C. Julius Demosthenes, and includes a letter from the emperor Hadrian dated August
29, 124 ce and other documents from the same era.4
Unconstrained by his improbable medium, Diogenes projects a distinctive voice,
“shouting” the Epicurean message “to all Greeks and non-Greeks” (fr. 32).5 Possessing
the properties of a billboard, an archive, a philosophical handbook, an imposing com-
memorative monument, and something akin to a shrine, the inscription includes epito-
mes on Physics and Ethics, a discourse on Old Age, a collection of the Epicurean Key
Doctrines (the Kyriai Doxai), a set of original Maxims, and Diogenes’s instructions to his
family and friends (perhaps to be understood as a will). In addition, there is a collection
of other writings that seems to include letters authored by Diogenes as well as some by
(or purportedly by) Epicurus. All of the texts except for the Key Doctrines are inscribed
in courses of narrow columns, as though displayed on unfurled papyrus rolls. Studied
imitation of Epicurus is apparent throughout, particularly in Diogenes’s selection of
philosophical genres favored by Epicurus: the epitome, the epistle, and the maxim.6 The
fragments of the Ethics epitome discovered thus far include discussions of dreams,
desire, fate, fear of the gods, pleasure, pain, the soul, the swerve of the atoms, and virtue.
The Physics fragments include criticisms of anthropocentric teleology, divination, and
rival schools; and discussions of astronomy, the atom, dreams, epistemology, theology,
vision, and the origins of civilization and language. Other texts contain information
about Diogenes’s life and Epicurean recruitment, and treat topics relevant to the Physics
and Ethics. Diogenes’s biography emerges from several fragments that tell of travels to
meet with Epicureans in Athens, Chalcis, and Boeotia; failing health and a diet of cur-
dled milk; a winter spent in Rhodes; and his likely imminent death. Diogenes’s persona
is intertwined with the Epicurean mission, as he reveals his friendships, his interest in
prospective adherents, his equanimity despite illness and old age, and his remarkably
altruistic outlook.7 The writing is clear but highly stylized, with rhythmical clauses and
frequent hyperbaton.
It is unclear whether the inscribed stoa provided a backdrop to daily life and com-
merce, or whether Diogenes conceived it as a resting place to which interested readers
would withdraw. Reading the entire wall(s) is likely to have been difficult, particularly if
Smith is correct to envision seven horizontal courses, with the top line of the highest
4 Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda, 40–43; and Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien,
19–43. Clay, Paradosis and Survival, 254 has also examined the various letter forms of the fragments and
is not convinced by Smith’s argument.
5 All fragment numbers (fr.) and New Fragment numbers (NF) refer to Smith’s editions.
6 The genre of the philosopher’s will may belong in this list. On Diogenes’s imitation of Epicurus, see
Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2526–32.
7 Imitation of Epicurus plays a role here. Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2529 notes that it is remarkable
that Epicurus and the first Epicureans “made the life and death of an individual bear the weight of so
much philosophy.”
Diogenes of Oenoanda 533
course around 3.25 meters above ground level.8 Nonetheless, Diogenes stresses the
intended efficacy of his inscription (frr. 2, 3, and 29), and asks his audience not to read
like passers-by, “in a patchy fashion” (fr. 30). Diogenes implies that not everyone can
receive his Epicurean wisdom when he writes that his help is offered to τοῖς εὐσυνκρίτοις
(frr. 2 and 3). Here Diogenes uses a previously unattested word that may indicate “people
who are discriminating.” But it is more likely that he is using Epicurean scientific vocab-
ulary to refer to people who have a “well-compounded” atomic structure.9
Motivation and Cultural Context
Some of Diogenes’s texts were composed for this particular context. This is clear from
Diogenes’s reference to his medium when he explains his motives: “I wished to use this
stoa to advertise publicly the [medicines] that bring salvation” (fr. 3). In an apparent epi-
logue (perhaps a coda to his set of Maxims rather than to the inscription as a whole), he
also writes that he has “turned so many letters . . . into stone” (τὰ τοσαῦτα ἐ̣λιθο.π̣οιήσαμεν
γράμματα, fr. 116 = NF 81). Unexpectedly expansive, he explains that he wants to share
Epicureanism now because he is at the end of his life. He adds (fr. 3):
Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number
you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should
address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice.
But the need is great: the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a
plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in
mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep, fr. 3). The medical
metaphor is well known from Epicurean sources, including Lucretius (DRN 4.11–25)
and the Epicurean tetrapharmakos, or “four-part cure” for human suffering.10 At this
point the text does not identify any particular “false notions about things” (τῇ περὶ τῶν
πραγμάτων ψευδοδοξίᾳ, fr. 3), and it is unclear whether Diogenes is referring to a new
development in his particular historical moment or to his perception of a more general
decline in understanding about the nature of the world. Other fragments yield several
indications that false notions about the relationship between the gods and humanity are
a particular concern.
8 Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda, 92. For reconstructions of the original layout, see Clay, “New
Discoveries,” 2477 and Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda, fig. 6 (both reprinted in Erler, “Epicureanism in
the Roman Empire,” 55–56).
9 Like Epicurus, Diogenes refers to atomic compounds as συνκρίσεις (fr. 13), and Plutarch may be
correct to claim that Epicurus wrote that his mother had the sort of atoms that would produce a sage
(Non posse 1100 a–b). See Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2458.
10 The Epicurean tetrapharmakos was an abbreviated version of the first four Key Doctrines: “The
gods do not concern us; death is nothing to us; what is good can be easily obtained; what is bad can be
avoided” (P.Herc. 1005.5.9–13; Angeli, “La scuola epicurea di Lampsaco”).
534 PAMELA GORDON
Diogenes’s inscription occupies a position that is at once firmly within and apart from
dominant currents in second-century culture. Expertise in traditional Greek culture—
and the elaborate public performance of such paideia—was highly valued throughout
Asia Minor during this era of Roman rule, and Epicurus was born just early enough to
represent the illustrious Hellenic and specifically Athenian past.11 Diogenes displays his
own Hellenic identity freely, and there may be an aspect of “cultural archaism” not just in
his admiration for Epicurus, but in his mentions of Homer, Alcman, Archilochus,
Thales, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, and the Olympic games.12 Despite the
unconventional subject matter, Diogenes’s choice of medium also befits the epigraphic
boom of the first to early third centuries ce. Even the monument’s immense size suits its
cultural milieu.13 Moreover, the type of building—whether Diogenes was responsible
for the stoa itself or just the inscription—was a highly favored benefaction, and a desir-
able urban amenity. In fact, euergetism and epigraphy went hand in glove in Oenoanda
and throughout Asia Minor. Displayed most likely in the near vicinity of Diogenes’s stoa
was the 117-line Hadrianic inscription that may have been carved by the same stone
mason(s). This inscription records the establishment of the Demostheneia, an elaborate
weeks-long musical and theatrical festival to take place every five years. The same stones
reveal that the eponymous benefactor had already provided three stoas and a market.14
Diogenes’s eagerness to do something “philanthropic” (φιλάνθρωπον, frr. 3 and 119)
establishes his connection with the euergetism that was so much a part of Greek urban
life in the eastern provinces.15 But there are radical differences between Diogenes’s
benefaction and his elite contemporaries’ offerings of baths, theaters, and stoas. Instead
of a festival or an urban structure, Diogenes offers the salve (φάρμακα, fr. 3) of philoso-
phy. The motivations for conventional euergetism were likely diverse, but included the
desire for social status, prestige, and the maintenance of elite political power.16
Diogenes’s stated altruistic goal and his traditionally Epicurean determination to abstain
from politics provide a stark contrast, as does his disparagement of the baths (and per-
haps theaters).17 The implied critique of conventional euergetism seems especially clear
when we note the valorization of public engagement in inscriptions that honor benefac-
tors, including the major inscription that commemorates Diogenes’s contemporary or
near-contemporary Opramoas of Rhodiapolis, who had made many benefactions
11 For an overview of the intense interest in the Greek past during what is often called the Second
Sophistic, and on the enthusiasm for public performance, see Anderson, The Second Sophistic; and
Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic. See Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 327–28 on the way Epicureanism is
presented as Hellenic paideia in Lucian’s Alexander the False Prophet.
12 Bowie, “Greeks and Their Past,” 205.
13 Warren, “Diogenes Epikourios”; Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World, 62.
14 Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien.
15 The word φιλάνθρωπος and its cognates are frequent in inscriptions that mention benefactions,
including the Demostheneia inscription.
16 Zuiderhoek, The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire stresses the latter.
17 All of these issues are treated in close proximity in frr. 2 and 3.
throughout Lycia, apparently including a bath building in Oenoanda.18 Diogenes’s con-

demnation of divination also undermines the contemporary practice of inscribing orac-
ular responses. As Warren writes:
Epigraphy is clearly the medium in which civic values were projected at this time, and so
Diogenes uses this very medium on a gargantuan scale to launch his counter-attack.19
For Clay, Diogenes’s “militantly philosophical” inscription secures his membership in a

second-century subculture that “distanced itself and defined itself against the dominant
civic, religious, and philosophical culture of its age.”20
Does Diogenes’s extravagant public display of Epicurean wisdom violate the tradi-
tionally Epicurean mottoes “live unknown” (λάθε βιώσας) and “do not participate in
public affairs” (μὴ πολιτεύεσθαι)?21 Roskam sees here a “puzzling paradox,” but con-
cludes that Diogenes’s establishment of a public monument does not undermine any
Epicurean commitment to quietism.22 In any case, Diogenes seems to have included the
following to avoid the impression of a contradiction (fr. 3):
In this way, [citizens,] even though I am not engaging in public affairs (καὶ οὐ πολ̣
[ει]τευ̣όμενος), I say these things through the inscription just as if I were taking action.
Methodology and Interpretation
Expectations about Epicurean positions frequently shape interpretation of the inscrip-

tion, and editors have often filled lacunae by referring to the texts of Epicurus or
Lucretius.23 Conversely, Diogenes sometimes serves as a source for otherwise lost doc-
trines of Epicurus. It is difficult to challenge these strategies, as secure proof of Diogenes’s
deviations from Epicurus’s original teachings can be elusive. Furthermore, in contrast to
Philodemus’s allegiance to the authority of οἱ ἄνδρες (“The Men,” the first-generation
leaders Epicurus, Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus), it appears that Diogenes
18 In the Opramoas inscription, πολιτεύεσθαι (“to engage in public affairs” or “to be politically
active”) and its cognates appear at least fourteen times (see index in Kokkinia, Die Opramoas-Inschrift
von Rhodiapolis). On the bath in Oenoanda, see Coulton, “The Buildings of Oinoanda.”
19 Warren, “Diogenes Epikourios,” 148. 20 Clay, Paradosis and Survival, 250–51.
21 Although the command “live unknown” (λάθε βιώσας) is not attested in Epicurean texts, Plutarch
associated it with Epicurus. See Roskam, Live Unnoticed. Cicero is apparently quoting an Epicurean
motto when he writes that Atticus tells him, “Do not take part in politics” (μὴ πολιτεύεσθαι, Cic. Att.
14.20.5). DL 10.119 confirms that this was Epicurus’s position.
22 Roskam, Live Unnoticed, 129 and 143.
23 Hammerstaedt and Smith remind readers that Smith’s restorations are merely suggestions. For
example, regarding Smith’s restoration of NF 156, they write: “Of course he does not claim to show how
the text went, only how it might have gone” (Epicurean Inscription, 59).
536 PAMELA GORDON
saw himself as a follower solely of Epicurus. So far, no other names of “The Men” appear
at Oenoanda, but Epicurus is named eight times if we count one certain and one uncer-
tain reference to “son of Neocles.”24
But if Lucretius is an Epicurean fundamentalist, Diogenes is not.25 That Diogenes is
not delivering wisdom straight from the books of Epicurus is clear at the very least from
Diogenes’s seven references to “the Stoics” and from his upbraiding of “Zeno and
Cleanthes and you, Chrysippus” in a fragment first published in 2011 (NF 192). Here
Diogenes asserts that the Epicurean telos is not the pleasures of “the masses,” as the Stoics
claim, but is like the Stoic telos, though the Stoics “hate the name of pleasure” (NF 192).
Extant texts by Epicurus do not engage his Stoic contemporaries, and Chrysippus, with-
out whom “there would have been no Stoa” (DL 7.183), was around ten years old when
Epicurus died in 270 bce. Thus, Diogenes’s polemics against rival views clearly included
updated information. Although Greek antisemitism can be traced back to Epicurus’s
era, Diogenes’s contempt for the Jewish people also fits a Roman imperial rather than
Hellenistic context (fr. 126). In addition, an innovative approach seems most likely to be
at play where Diogenes expresses his altruistic mission (frr. 2 and 3), and where he imag-
ines a world in which everyone has become an Epicurean (fr. 56).
The Fluidity of Epicurean Texts
But if we set aside questions regarding Diogenes’s doctrinal orthodoxy or heterodoxy,

what is clear is that Diogenes recasts Epicurean positions in unique reformulations. The
inscription is not a commentary on Epicurus’s writing, but a retelling and creative
endorsement of Epicurean theory. Centuries earlier, Epicurus had written that “it is bet-
ter for you to lie on a bed of straw and have no worries than to have a golden couch and
luxurious table.”26 He also advised Menoeceus (Ep. Men. 132):
It is neither continuous drinking parties nor physical enjoyment of boys and women,
or fish or other elements of a lavish banquet that produce a pleasant life, but sober
reasoning and searching out reasons for choice and avoidance.
Diogenes improvises idiosyncratic illustrations of these basic principles. For example,

after mentioning the Epicurean goal for happiness, he writes (fr. 29):
The identity of this goal, and how neither wealth can furnish it, nor political fame,
nor royal office, nor a life of luxury and sumptuous banquets, nor pleasures of choice
love-affairs, nor anything else, while philosophy [alone can secure it], we [shall now
explain . . .].
24 Hammerstaedt and Smith, Epicurean Inscription, 131. Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2543 suggests that
Diogenes includes a letter to Hermarchus.
25 On Lucretius as a fundamentalist, see Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom.
26 Arrighetti, Epicuro: Opere, 126.
Conjuring a Roman villa, a new fragment mentions “an elaborate house with fretted and
gold-spangled ceilings” as something to be avoided, recommending instead simple
clothing and food, particularly cabbage (NF 136). Also updating Epicurus’s instructions
to an imperial context, Diogenes contrasts the Epicurean pleasure of studying philoso-
phy with some pleasures offered by typical benefactions (fr. 2):
Joy [of real value is generated not by theaters] and [. . . and] baths [and perfumes]
and ointments [which we] have left to [the] masses, [but by natural science . . .].
Although Smith’s restoration is conjectural, the word “theater” is likely, and “masses”
and “baths” are certain. Bendlin suggests that Diogenes’s rejection of these conventional
imperial era benefactions may have been “truly subversive.”27
Similarly, Diogenes’s critique of anthropocentric teleology in the Physics also displays
his ability to illustrate an Epicurean premise with fresh variations. Among his proofs of
an inhospitable world are the saltiness of the sea “as if it had been purposely made like
this by the god to prevent men from drinking” (fr. 21); and the existence of “the so-called
Dead Sea, which is really and truly dead (for it is never sailed)” (fr. 21).28 In NF 182,
Diogenes questions the perfection of a world that has hostile weather and darkness: “Let
anyone say in what way a thunderbolt benefits life,” and “in what way night, when we can
[well rest throughout the] day.” He concludes: “For of these phenomena some are use-
less, others even harmful” (NF 182).
The Oenoanda inscription also provides insight into the nature and use of the Key
Doctrines. The monument displays the sayings conspicuously, in a nearly continuous,
single-line frieze that adds a fifteenth line to the Ethics, which is carved on the same stones
in smaller letters and organized in narrow fourteen-line columns. In this running fif-
teenth line, at least thirteen Key Doctrines are recognizable, despite departures from
Diogenes Laertius’s text that suggest simplification for memorization and recitation.29
However, at least seven of these Key Doctrines are unique to Oenoanda, and one resem-
bles a saying in the collection known as the Sententiae Vaticanae that is not preserved by
Diogenes Laertius. Nonetheless, all of these sayings are displayed uniformly, as though
they belong to a single text. This strongly supports Snyder’s view that Epicurean texts are
“a sinuous, evolving entity,” even when Epicurus was perceived as the ultimate source, as
was apparently the case with the Key Doctrines.30 Thus it seems reasonable to view the fif-
teenth line as an Oenoandan version of the Key Doctrines rather than a mash-up that
Diogenes and his Epicurean readers would have viewed as only partly canonical. The
possibility that Diogenes himself is not responsible for the expansion of the Key Doctrines
is suggested by his sequestering of his own Maxims in multi-line columns elsewhere.
Fragments of the inscription also demonstrate that the sayings in the fifteenth line of the
Ethics were sometimes relevant to the text above, thus strongly suggesting that Diogenes
used the Key Doctrines to validate or “underwrite” his own treatises.31
27 Bendlin, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of Divination,” 184.

28 The “Dead Sea” may be a part of the northern ocean, rather than the lake in Palestine.
29 Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2535. 30 Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World, 53.
31 Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2535–36.
538 PAMELA GORDON
Other Selected Fragments

and Recent Discoveries
Fragments 2, 3, 29, 30, 32, and 119 and NF 207:

Cosmopolitanism and an Epicurean Altruism
Faced with human suffering, Diogenes considers it the responsibility of any good man
(χρηστός τις ἀνήρ) to run to his contemporaries’ aid (an intervention he expresses with
the pun ἐπικουρεῖν) (fr. 2). His concern for others extends to the future (fr. 3):
[It is] right to help [also] generations to come (for they too belong to us, though
they are still unborn); and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the
foreigners who come here.
According to Clement of Alexandria, Epicurus had asserted that Greeks alone are
capable of philosophy (Strom. 1.15), but Diogenes hopes to reach “those who are
called foreigners, though they are not really so.” He continues: “The whole compass
of this world gives all people a single country, the entire earth, and a single home, the
world” (fr. 30). This “warm supranationalism”32 may be attributable to Cynic or Stoic
influence, but it accords well with the range of cosmopolitan values expressed by
(e.g.) Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, Lucian, and Philostratus. Diogenes’s unex-
pectedly altruistic outlook, and his concern not only for non-Greeks but also for
future generations, has no parallels in other Epicurean texts. At another point he
addresses his fellow citizens (ὦ πολεῖται), reminding them that he has established his
inscription not for his own sake, “but as a means of salvation (σωτήριον) for you”
(fr. 29 and NF 207). It is difficult to reconcile these fragments with a purely egoistic
hedonism, and they raise the question: Does Diogenes expand our understanding of
the utilitarian perspective in Epicurean ethics, or has Diogenes himself expanded
Epicureanism?
Fragments 9, 10, and 24: The Nature of Dreams

Here in the Physics Diogenes asserts that dreams “are not empty illusions of the mind,
as the Stoics hold” (fr. 10). Apparently arguing against Democritus’s view that dreams
are sent by the gods, Diogenes writes that Democritus “endows them with a power
which they do not have” (fr. 10). These fragments accord with Epicurus (Ep. Hdt. 51)
and Lucretius (DRN 4.26–44, 4.722–822, and 4.962–1036). Regarding the way dreams
32 Ferguson, “Epicureanism under the Roman Empire,” 2292.

seem real, Diogenes cites sexual pleasure derived from dreams, and the phenomenon
of a dreamer’s springing up when dreaming of falling from a precipice (fr. 10).
Diogenes criticizes Antiphon’s oneiromancy and his claim that the gods send ambigu-
ous dreams that require skilled interpreters (fr. 24).33 Bendlin suggests that a second-
century tendency to regard dreams as “a preferred medium of divine communication”
is the context for Diogenes’s scientific and anti-theological approach.34 There was
great enthusiasm for dream interpretation in the second century, as is clear from the
Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides, and from Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica, which col-
lected material from dream diviners around the world. Dreams are also treated in
frr. 125 and 126.
Fragment 13: On Alternative Explanations

In defense of the Epicurean practice of suggesting more than one explanation for natural
phenomena, Diogenes says that it is “reckless” to be dogmatic: “such a procedure is char-
acteristic of a seer rather than a wise man.”
Fragment 16: On Atheism

It is not the Epicureans who deny the existence of the gods, but other philosophers, such
as Diogoras and Pythagoras.35
Fragment 19: Images of the Gods

Diogenes offers a unique response to the traditional iconographies of the divinities.
Instead of representing a divinity with weapons, or attended by wild beasts, “we ought to
make statues of the gods genial and smiling, so that we may smile back at them rather
than be afraid of them.” He continues: “Well then . . . let us reverence the gods.” Clay
compares this fragment to Dio Chrysostom’s “exalted interpretation” of the effect on the
viewer of Pheidias’s cult statue of Zeus in his Olympian Oration of 97 ce (Or. 12).
Regarding Diogenes, Clay adds: “The philosopher’s smile before the statues of radiant
and joyous gods is a new feature of the Epicurean aspiration of coming to resemble the
Epicurean gods.”36
33 He is apparently referring to Antiphon the sophist (fifth century bce).

34 Bendlin, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of Divination,” 181. See also Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia.
35 Epicurus affirms that “the gods do exist” (Ep. Men. 123–24).
36 Clay, “Diogenes and His Gods,” 91–92.
540 PAMELA GORDON
Fragment 23 and New Fragment 143: Critiques

of Oracular Prophecy
In response to the story of Croesus’s querying of Delphi about his designs on the empire
of Cyrus (Ep. Hdt. 1.53), Diogenes asks (NF 143):
Why does he (Apollo) give oracles to any who want them against those who have
committed no sin, either big or small, against him? For this is incompatible with the
majesty of a god.
Diogenes adds that this traditional account, which says that Croesus dedicated large quan-
tities of gold to Delphi, portrays Apollo as a taker of bribes. Also in connection with tradi-
tional oracles recorded by Herodotus, Diogenes writes in a fragment that was probably
adjacent that people have suffered great misfortunes “on account of this ambiguity and
intricate obliqueness of oracles” (fr. 23). The second-century Cynic Oenomaus of Gadara
also uses the Herodotean locus classicus in his argument against oracular prophecy.
Diogenes Laertius records that Epicurus rejected all types of divination (DL 10.135), but
oracular prophecy in particular may not have concerned him, as Delphi and other oracu-
lar centers were comparatively inactive during the Hellenistic era (later remarked by
Cicero in De Divinatione 2.117). But epigraphical evidence and texts such as Lucian’s
Alexander the False Prophet indicate a sharp rise in oracular activity in Asia Minor during
the first centuries ce.37 Bendlin views the revival of the oracles at sites such as Claros as
indicative of a “rhetoric of tradition” and a “successful export of Greek culture” to Asia
Minor.38 Epigraphical evidence demonstrates that there was an oracle to Apollo in
Oenoanda.39 Thus Diogenes’s words are apparently his own Epicurean critique of contem-
porary practice, just as Lucretius’s deprecation of Roman or Etruscan augury (e.g. Lucr.
DRN 6.83–89) is a Romanized illustration of Epicurus’s general teachings about the gods.
These discussions of oracular prophecy were probably contiguous to Diogenes’s criticism
of Antiphon, who claimed that dreams were another type of god-sent message (fr. 24).
Fragment 54: The Swerve of the Atom

Diogenes is our only source for the Greek vocabulary for the swerve:
Do you [not] know, whoever you are, that there is actually a free movement in the
atoms, which Democritus failed to discover, but Epicurus brought to light—a swerving
(παρενκλιτικήν) movement, as he proves from phenomena?
37 Lucian’s account has fictional elements, but there is extensive evidence for the immense
popularity of the oracle invented by Alexander of Abonoteichus (c. 105–70 ce). See Robert, À travers
l’Asie Mineure, 393–421.
38 Bendlin, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of Divination,” 220–21; cf. Parke, The Oracles of Apollo
in Asia Minor; and Robert, À travers l’Asie Mineure, 393–421.
39 Milner, “Notes and Inscriptions on the Cult of Apollo at Oinoanda.”
As in Lucretius (DRN 2.216–93), the swerve prevents the existence of fate (εἱμαρμένη,
mentioned twice in fr. 54).
Fragment 56: An Epicurean Golden Age

An extraordinary fragment of the Ethics holds out the possibility of an Epicurean future
when humankind will take up the life of the gods. Perhaps not everyone is able to achieve
wisdom, but if we assume that it is possible, “then truly the life of the gods will pass to
men” (τότε ὡς ἀληθῶς ὁ τῶν θεῶν βίος εἰς ἀνθρώπους μεταβήσεται). People will have no
slaves, but will study philosophy and farm together. In that world, everything will be
“full of justice and mutual love (φιλαλληλίας),” and there will be no need of fortifications
or laws. Although striving toward the happiness of the gods was an Epicurean ideal, no
other text visualizes an Epicurean utopia. Clay notes that the fragment is especially
noteworthy considering its context in “a high mountain city whose most remarkable
monuments are its walls.”40 He notes also the sad irony that Diogenes’s inscription was
reused to build an apparently much-needed defensive wall, perhaps only a century later.
Fragments 62–67: The Infinity of the Worlds

These fragments from the Letter to Antipater combine two philosophical genres: the
epistle and the dialogue. In form, this letter recalls Epicurus’s Letter to Pythocles, in that
both texts respond to a request from an eager student for a natural science lesson. But
here the epistolarity is more overt than in any of the three Epicurean epistles preserved
by Diogenes Laertius, which offer no information about the disposition, future plans, or
geographical location of the writer. It has snowed in Oenoanda, and Diogenes is writing
from Rhodes. Although old age or a reversal of fortune may prevent him, he hopes to
meet with Antipater in the spring at Athens (or perhaps at Chalcis or Thebes). Antipater’s
request for information about an infinite number of worlds (τὰ περὶ ἀπειρίας κόσμων)
has come at an opportune time, as Diogenes has just discussed the topic with his friend
(ἑταῖρος) Theodoridas of Lindos, with whom Antipater is familiar (fr. 63). Theodoridas
has just begun his studies (ἀρχόμενος ἔτι τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν, fr. 63). Diogenes records the
gist of their dialogue, which began with “O Diogenes.” Most of the dialogue has not been
found, but we can see that Diogenes dismisses received opinion and laughs at rival
philosophies (καταγελῶ̣, fr. 65).
Fragment 117: To His Relatives, Family, and Friends

This fragment, in which Diogenes mentions his illness and the possibility of imminent
death, sounds like the opening to a will. The preservation of Epicurus’s own will by
40 Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2507.

542 PAMELA GORDON
Diogenes Laertius demonstrates its importance as a traditional Epicurean document, so

this would be in keeping with Diogenes’s imitation of Epicurus elsewhere (DL 10.16).
The reference to personal suffering also recalls Epicurus’s letter to Idomeneus (DL 10.22).
Fragments 125–26: The Letter to Mother

Addressing his mother (ὦ μῆτερ, twice), someone explains that the mechanics of dreams
are like the mechanics of sight: images of absent people have the same power as images
of those who are present (fr. 125). Here the context is the writer’s knowledge of his moth-
er’s disturbing dreams about her apparently distant son. Combating fear with a natural
science lesson is an essential Epicurean technique; the brief explanation accords with
the theory of dreams as explained in frr. 9 and 10. The writer assures her that he is enjoy-
ing a godlike happiness (ὁμοίως τοῖς θεοῖς χαίρο̣μ̣ε ν, fr. 125), and asks her to stop sending
supplies (χορηγιῶν); he does not want her to go without for his sake (fr. 126). He has
plenty, as “the friends” and his father often send money, and the latter has just sent nine
minas via Cleon.
Most scholars take this as a letter from Epicurus, but some posit that Diogenes could
be the author.41 A third possibility is that the letter is a pseudepigraphical text in the
voice of a young Epicurus.42 That Epicurus is the purported or actual author is sup-
ported by the characterization elsewhere of Epicurus’s mother as superstitious, the ref-
erence to minas rather than to denarii (which are mentioned in other inscriptions in
Oenoanda), and the mention of Cleon, who figures as the messenger mentioned in the
Letter to Pythocles (DL 10.84).43 In favor of Diogenes’s authorship, Hoffman argues that
the sentence structure and clausulae match Diogenes’s writings.44 But the letter has
attributes in common with pseudepigraphical epistolary texts attributed to other phi-
losophers and luminaries of the Greek past. Particularly relevant here is the letter collec-
tion attributed to Chion of Heraclea (future tyrannicide and a budding follower of
Platonism), which includes the young man’s assurance that he is engaged in the pursuit
of virtue, a plea that his father console his mother, and his demurring response to his
parents’ financial support.45 Modestly refused gifts are also a theme in letters attributed
to Solon, Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, and Crates (many of which are first- or second-
century ce creations).46
41 Arrighetti includes these fragments in his edition of Epicurus. See also Clay, “New Discoveries”;
and Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda, with bibliography.
42 Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia, 66–93; and Fletcher, “Epicurus’ Mistresses.”
43 Diogenes Laertius mentions a hostile story that Epicurus and his mother used to visit cottages to
read charms (10.4).
44 Hoffman, Diogenes of Oenoanda, 442.
45 Düring, Chion of Heraclea. 46 Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia, 73–78.
Fragments 137–79, and New Fragments 133, 211,

and 212: Old Age
Diogenes begins by chastising young men who criticize old age, the virtues of which
Diogenes defends. From the surviving words “βουλὴν δ[ ] μεγαθύμ̣[ ]ρόντων” (fr. 142), it
is clear that Diogenes quotes a Homeric line about the council of elders gathering by
Nestor’s ship (βουλὴν δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων, Iliad 2.53). He may also quote
a line about the Trojan elders (Il. 3.150). In Smith’s reconstruction of fr. 142, Diogenes
also quotes Agamemnon’s praise of Nestor at Il. 2.370. Diogenes expresses exasperation
with the way weakening eyesight is exaggerated into “blindness” (fr. 145). He also dis-
cusses coughing (fr. 144), hardness of hearing (NF 133), and loss of teeth, which can be
accommodated with liquid foods (NF 211). Clay posits that this treatise, whose topmost
lines were at least 3.25 meters above ground level, was broken into small fragments when
the stoa was dismantled: “the higher the course, the less survives.”47
New Fragments 126–27: On Jews and Egyptians

A crack in Diogenes’s otherwise charming persona emerged in 1997 with the discovery
of a fragment that identifies two peoples as the most superstitious, or, literally, “the most
fearful of divine power.” In accordance with the Epicurean view that fear of the gods is a
human failing, Diogenes writes (NF 126):
A clear indication of the complete inability of the gods to prevent wrong-doings is

provided by the nations of the Jews and Egyptians, who, as well as being the most
superstitious (δεισιδαιμονέστατοι) of all peoples, are the vilest (μιαρώτατοι) of all
peoples.
Diogenes may have in mind traditional lore about Jews and Christians such as their
alleged cannibalism.48 Or perhaps Diogenes’s sentiment is shaped by fresh memories of
the violent Jewish revolt of 115–18 or the second great revolt in Palestine in 132–35 ce.49
Also possibly relevant are the polemics against Epicureanism of the Jewish scholars
Philo (20 bce–50 ce) and Josephus (37–c. 100 ce). But why the association between Jews
and Egyptians? In Rome both groups were sometimes regarded as practitioners of par-
ticularly objectionable cults.50 It is also possible that Diogenes’s indictment of Jews and
Egyptians is “an Epicurean counter to the Stoic, and then Middle Platonist, tendency to
47 Clay, “New Discoveries,” 2519. There are now fifty-seven fragments of Old Age, some of which
reveal only a few letters.
48 See Smith, “Excavations at Oinoanda 1997,” 140–42, where Greek aversion to circumcision is also
considered.
49 Smith, “Excavations at Oinoanda 1997,” 142. 50 Gruen, Diaspora, 30–33 and 52–53.
544 PAMELA GORDON
regard precisely these two nations as exemplifying the claim that barbarian philosophies
contained elements of the true religion of primal times.”51
New Fragment 130: Death is Like a Frightening Mask

This is one of the monolithic Maxims, each of which was displayed as a single, discrete
column. Having asserted that life becomes sweet once the fear of death is removed, the
writer (probably Diogenes) continues: “Death is to be laughed at, being like a mask that
frightens small children; for indeed they believe that it will bite, but it does not bite.”
New Fragment 157: On Erotic Desire

First discovered in 2008, this nearly complete monolithic Maxim is relevant to any dis-
cussion of Epicurean attitudes toward sexuality. Here Diogenes says that lovers (“those
who are sick with the passion of love”) are unaware “that they derive pleasure to the
highest degree from looking even without copulation.” For Smith, Diogenes’s position
on sex is “generally orthodox.”52 But Hammerstaedt finds Diogenes’s “positive attitude
to the pleasure obtained from looking at an attractive person” at odds with Lucretius’s
exposé of the insalubrious connection between vision and desire in his polemic against
erotic love (Lucr. DRN 4.1037–1287).53 For Lucretius, images of the beloved are deceptive
and unsatisfying, but Diogenes presents the beholding of beauty as an untainted
pleasure.
New Fragment 186: Women as Epicurean

Students or Adherents
This fragment, apparently belonging to a letter, adds a small but significant piece of
evidence for the existence of female followers. Nearly a full column of NF 186 is well
preserved, and one feminine pronoun and one feminine participle are clearly legible:
. . . [I shall try to help them (?)] [in every] way, when I can. As you know, we do not
have better things to offer them (N.B. “them” is feminine) than our own good fare.
For indeed they happen already to have done some tasting of the doctrines of
Epicurus, but to be sure not in such a way that [the disturbances] that strike [them
have been removed].
51 Gordon and Reynolds, “Roman Inscriptions 1995–2000,” 289.

52 Hammerstaedt and Smith, Epicurean Inscription, 90.
53 Hammerstaedt and Smith, Epicurean Inscription, 90. Hammerstaedt speculates that Diogenes’s
stance may be closer to that of Epicurus.
The unnamed addressee seems likely to be an Epicurean, and “our own good fare” may
refer to Epicurean philosophy. Diogenes also refers to his convalescence under a wom-
an’s care in Rhodes, and it is tempting to identify her as a member of his circle of
Epicurean friends.
New Fragment 207: Usefulness of the Inscription

to People of All Ages
Here in the Ethics Diogenes says that he expects the inscription to be useful to: “Those of
you who are young, still at the beginning of your lives and as it were standing at a cross-
roads, being apprehensive about what kind of road they will travel” as well as to those
who are already old; and to those who are in between. Epicurus declares that philosophy
is beneficial to young and old alike in the Letter to Menoeceus (122).
New Fragment 209: A Letter about

Cheerfulness at Death
Addressed to a group, these closing lines from a letter assert that it is not possible to die
twice; so living twice is not possible either. It closes with: “We should be cheerful
(εὐθυμητέον) when we die, for we shall give up not only good things but also bad ones.
Farewell.” Smith notes that the dimensions and format of the lettering of this fragment
are unique, and its place in the inscription is unknown. Hammerstaedt and Smith con-
sider the possibility that Epicurus rather than Diogenes “is the (pseudepigraphic?)
author.”54
Stones, Texts, and Editions
Many of the known fragments are stored securely on site, but others remain scattered
around the environs, and a few have not been relocated since the inscription was first
discovered. In 2007, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institute, Istanbul, began a new
survey-project in Oenoanda. By 2017, eighty-three new fragments were discovered
(some of them quite substantial), bringing the total number of known fragments to 306.
Diogenes’s recent editors estimate that these represent “much less than half ” of the
inscription, and have expressed optimism that more fragments will soon be discov-
ered.55 All of the fragments discovered or re-deciphered since 2003 have been published

546 PAMELA GORDON
nearly annually by J. Hammerstaedt and/or M. F. Smith. Most are reprinted in

Hammerstaedt and Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda, but the
latest new fragments appear in the journal Epigraphica Anatolica The most up-to-date
book-length editions of Diogenes of Oenoanda are published by Smith (Diogenes of
Oinoanda and Supplement to Diogenes of Oinoanda). All of these editions include com-
mentary and English translation. Earlier editions and translations of Diogenes of
Oenoanda include the publication of the first discoveries in the nineteenth century
(Heberdey and Kalinka, “Die philosophische Inschrift von Oinoanda”), as well as
Chilton, Diogenes of Oenoanda, and Casanova, I frammenti di Diogene d’Enoanda.
Extensive restorations printed in some editions not infrequently generate “bracket
blindness,” which Tsouna describes as: “The tendency to overlook the brackets sur-
rounding editorial restorations of a word or passage and thus develop interpretations
based on slim or even non-existent evidence.”56
Recovering the fragments and reconstructing their original positions is like working
on a “massive jigsaw puzzle,” a task that is aided by the fact that they can be sorted
according to letter-size and column length.57 In addition, the often recognizable version
of the Epicurean Key Doctrines that runs in a frieze across the middle of the inscription
can sometimes be used to line up contiguous or nearly contiguous stones. Nonetheless,
the printed text cannot reproduce the layout of the inscription or capture its full impact
as experienced by readers in antiquity. The different numeration systems can also cause
confusion. Even the fragments that Smith first published in journals under New
Fragment (NF) numbers were re-numbered for Smith’s book-length editions, both of
which include helpful concordances. The practice since 1968 of giving to each new or
rediscovered stone a “philosophical inscription” inventory number (identified in
Turkish as yazı felsefi; abbreviated as YF in the publications) adds clarity, as some of the
numbered “fragments” of the inscription in editions such as Smith’s actually consist of
more than one stone.
There is good reason to believe that new work in Oenoanda will lead to dramatic
expansions of the known texts, to the discovery of entirely new content, to more infor-
mation about Diogenes, and to a better understanding of the approach to Epicureanism
taken by Diogenes and his community. Meanwhile, virtual reconstruction has begun,
assisted by the use of the global positioning system (GPS), terrestrial scanning, and
other technologies.58 Such reconstruction should also reveal more about the urban con-
text and visual impact of this uniquely monumental invitation to Epicureanism.
56 Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, 4 in reference to the texts of Philodemus. Tsouna attributes the
term to David Sedley.
58 Hammerstaedt and Smith, Epicurean Inscription, 2–3.
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chapter 22
Epicu rus a n d
Epicu r ea n ism i n
R a bbi n ic Liter at u r e ,
M aimon ides, a n d R a bbi
Nach m a n of Br e sl ov
Gabriel Danzig
The term Epicurus,1 or Apiqoros as it is more often pronounced,2 is alive and well in
contemporary Jewish culture. When used by members of the Orthodox Jewish commu-
nity, it means simply a heretic—a Jew who rejects the fundamental beliefs of the Jewish
religion. But not every non-religious Jew merits the title of Apiqoros. Some are merely
ignoramuses (ammei ha'aretsot or more sympathetically tinoqot she-nishbu). Those who
adopt another religion, including those who do so for purely pragmatic or social reasons
(e.g. Heinrich Heine), are defectors (meshumadim). An Apiqoros, on the other hand, is
someone who rejects the Jewish religion for ideological or philosophic reasons. For this
reason, he is more dangerous and arouses more anger than a mere am ha'aretsots; but by
the same token an Apiqoros may wear his badge with pride.
Some anecdotes may illustrate the positive connotation the term Apiqoros can have
among non-religious Jews. One was told to me by my father. When he studied architec-
ture at Columbia University he was asked to record his religious affiliation on the regis-
tration form. Since he was not a religious Jew, and since he was always a bit of a prankster,
he wrote that he was an Apiqoros. A few weeks later he received an invitation to services
at the Greek Orthodox church. This anecdote illustrates not only the positive connotation
1 I thank Ranon Katzoff, Roslyn Weiss, Steve Harvey, Chanah Kasher, Zvi Langerman, Yizhak
Brand, Adiel Zimran, Eliezer Shore, Ron Polansky, Craig Hanoch, Alan Smith, Daniel Glauberman,
and Adina Kopinsky for comments on various parts of this paper. None of them bears any
responsibility for its shortcomings.
2 This kind of change in pronunciation is frequent in Hebrew since vowels are not indicated in most
texts.
550 GABRIEL DANZIG
that the term can have for a secular Jew, but also the special place that it occupies in
Jewish culture: the non-Jewish registrar at Columbia could not make heads or tails of it.
A more famous anecdote is told about Berel Katsnelson, the well-known labor leader
from the early days of Israel. He is quoted as having complained about the new genera-
tion of Israelis:
We wanted to raise a generation of Apiqorsim, but all we got is a generation of

simpletons and ignoramuses.3
Here, an Apiqoros is not merely someone who rejects the Jewish religion for ideological
or philosophic reasons; it is someone who does so after having immersed himself deeply
in the sea of Torah study. It is a knowledgeable Jew, one who might have become a
learned scholar (talmid ḥacham), but who has gone wrong—or right, depending on
one’s point of view. Baruch Spinoza is probably our most famous Apiqoros in this sense.
This positive view of the Apiqoros arose within the world of traditional Orthodox
Judaism itself, as the following anecdote illustrates. A brilliant young student approaches
the head of a rabbinic academy and defiantly exclaims, “I must tell you the truth! I have
become an Apiqoros. I no longer believe in God.” “And how long,” asks the elder rabbi,
“have you been studying Talmud?” “Five years,” says the student. “Only five years,”
sighed the rabbi, “and you already call yourself an Apiqoros?! . . .” Here indulgence in
heretical thought is not merely the privilege of the learned, it is a sign of advanced
learning.4
Why is heresy permitted to some and forbidden to others? Is freedom of thought sim-
ply a privilege of the elite, or did the head of the academy understand that entertaining
such thoughts at an early stage in one’s training might interfere with the educational
process and lead to the results that Berel Katsnelson mourned? If so, the mistake is not
entertaining heretical opinions, but rather expecting students to devote themselves to
Jewish learning after entertaining them.
A fourth anecdote is pertinent here. It is said that the Minsker Apiqoros once met the
Pinsker Apiqoros. “I challenge you to a debate,” said the Minsker. “What makes you
think you are a real Apiqoros?” “Well, I’m not sure I believe in God,” said the Pinkser.
“I’m not sure I believe in God either,” replied the Minsker. “And I eat pork, I work on the
Sabbath, and I never go to shul.” “You aren’t an Apiqoros,” said the Pinsker. “You're a
gentile.”
This joke again reflects the high status that an Apiqoros can hold, at least when one is
joking or pretending to be joking: it is a huge let-down to be called a gentile rather than
3 Ratsinu legadel dor shel Apiqorsim, ve yatsah lanu dor shel burim ve ammei ha'aratsot. Apiqorsim is
the plural form of Apiqoros. The statement is sometimes attributed to Yaàkov Ḥ azan.
4 In another version of the story the head of the academy asks the student where his heretical ideas
come from. The student replies that he learned them from reading Maimonides, one of the most highly
respected and most deeply learned Jewish authorities of all times. The head of the academy takes him
aside and tells him: when you have as many merits as Maimonides you too may indulge in heretical
thoughts.
Epicurus and Epicureanism in Rabbinic Literature 551
an Apiqoros. By referring to the Apiqorsim by their city of sway, in imitation of the

practice of referring to Rabbis in this way, the joke presents them as caricatures of
Rabbinic figures. In another version of the joke the leading figure is called the great
Apiqoros of Vilna, reminiscent of the famous Vilna Gaon, and he is found praying and
studying like a pious Jew.5 These anecdotes make it clear that one can be an observant
Jew and still be an Apiqoros—or rather one must be an observant Jew in order to be an
Apiqoros. If one ceases to be an observant Jew one is not an Apiqoros at all, but merely a
member of the gentile nations. This message was particularly relevant in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries when secular learning was invading Jewish culture
and causing the abandonment of the practices of Judaism. Here, then, is another piece of
advice for Katsnelson: one may entertain heretical thoughts, but one can only raise a
generation of Apiqorsim if one insists on Jewish observance.
In this chapter I will not be able to trace all the paths by which the term developed
these contemporary or near-contemporary usages. Instead, I will attempt to describe
some of the more interesting moments of its history in the Mishnah and Tosefta, the
Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah (MT) and Guide of
the Perplexed, and Rav Nachman of Breslov’s Likutei Moharan.
Rabbinic Literature
Epicurus is a unique figure in Judaism—a Greek philosopher whose name has become a
legal category. An Apiqoros cannot give testimony in court (MT, Laws of Testimony
11.11); one may not return lost objects to Apiqorsim (MT, Laws of Robbery and Lost
Objects 11.3); one is even obligated to kill them (MT, Laws of Murder and the
Preservation of Life 4.14). But who exactly is an Apiqoros?
Even the derivation of the term is not simple. It probably derives ultimately from the
name of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, but Rabbinic literature displays no knowledge
of the existence of a Greek philosopher by that name. If it were a semitic term, it would
be derived from the root pqr, which by an apparently fortuitous coincidence means
licentious, dissolute, or rebellious. This derivation has been maintained by at least one
5 A young man from a small Lithuanian shtetl travelled to Vilna to meet the great Apiqoros of Vilna.
He came to a synagogue where an old man, wearing a yarmulke and tzitzis, was stooped over a heavy,
ancient tome. He waited patiently for the older man to finish praying, and then said, “Excuse me, Sir.
Do you know where I might find The Great Apiqoros of Vilna?” “Look no further,” came the measured
reply. The young man was astonished. “You’re the Great Apiqoros? But, you’re wearing a yarmulke!
And tzitzis! And you’re learning, and . . . praying! What kind of an Apiqoros are you? I came all the way
from Erzvilkas to meet you, only to find I’m already more of an Apiqoros than you are!” “And what
should I be doing?” “What I do—smoke on Shabbat and eat pork on Yom Kippur. I would never be
seen in shul and I certainly don’t learn Torah.” The Great Apiqoros nodded wisely. “Ah, that is the
confusion. You see, I am an Apiqoros. You, sir, are a gentile.”
552 GABRIEL DANZIG
eminent philologist.6 In general, the term is used in Tannaitic literature to refer to a

category or kind of person.7 But we do not know exactly what kind of person is meant.
Since the term can refer to Jews or non-Jews (see Sanhedrin 38b), it seems to indicate an
adherent of some belief or a member of some voluntary community, distinct from the
Jewish community. Does it refer to a member of the Epicurean community? To mem-
bers who espouse its doctrines? To anyone who espouses doctrines associated with that
school? To anyone who behaves in ways that are characteristic of members of such com-
munities, even if they are not members? Or has it lost all connection with the Epicurean
school?
According to a common view, the early Tannaitic sources (first century before Hillel)8
used the term Apiqoros to refer to one who espouses Epicurean philosophy. The term
appears in the Mishnah in a list of heretical opinions (Sanhedrin 10.1), and Rabbi Elazar
ben Arakh advises studying material that will enable one to respond to challenges posed
by Apiqorsim (Avot 2.14). On the surface, both of these references suggest a Rabbinic
awareness that an Apiqoros espouses definite philosophic doctrines that are at variance
with the Torah—even if we hear nothing about what those doctrines are. The later
sources, on the other hand, reveal no awareness that an Apiqoros might espouse specific
philosophic doctrines, and interpret the earlier sources as speaking not of a band of phi-
losophers but of individuals who display disrespect for the Torah. This divergence is
explained on the grounds that while Epicurean sects existed in the land of Israel through
the first century after Hillel, and had some contact with Rabbinic culture, they had
ceased to exist by the time of the later authorities, who therefore knew little about them.
While the Tannaim knew of the Epicureans as philosophers, the later Amoraim barely
knew what the term meant.9
However, the evidence we have also supports an alternative account almost the
reverse of this first one. There is no clear evidence that the early Tannaitic sources were
aware that the Apiqoros espouses specific philosophic doctrines, and there is evidence
that the later Amoraim had contact with Epicurean sects in the land of Israel as late as
the third or fourth century. The Amoraitic understanding of the term Apiqoros as refer-
ring to those who behave in a disrespectful way may reflect an accurate perception of the
contemporary Epicurean. Historically speaking, Epicureans did more than espouse a
system of beliefs, they also lived together in communities such as the Garden established
by Epicurus. Epicurean philosophy aimed at encouraging certain kinds of attitudes and
6 See Kohut, Aruch Completum, 1.241–2; Jacobs, Principles of the Jewish Faith, 11–13; Geiger,
“LeToldot HaMunacḥ Apiqoros,” 499–500. Jastrow, Dictionary, 104 argues that the term is derived from
the Aramaic root pqr, and speaks of a “phonetic coincidence with Epicurus the philosopher.” Sokoloff
derives the term from Epicurus: Dictionary, 156.
7 It is similar in use to Hebrew terms such as Yisrael, Edom, and Amaleq which can be used to refer
to an individual member of the community.
8 Rather than use Jewish dates, I will give dates in relation to the life of Rabbi Hillel, who flourished
at about the time of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The dates I offer are thus identical to those of the
Christian calendar.
9 For detailed arguments in support of this view, see Labendz, “ ‘Know What to Answer the
Epicurean,’ ” 175–214.
behaviors, not merely at propagating right beliefs, and it was sometimes said that
Epicureans neglected serious study altogether. The fact that individuals of all levels of
intellectual accomplishment were accepted as members of Epicurean communities
serves as a further warning against the assumption that Epicureanism was primarily an
intellectual matter. It would not be surprising, then, if the term Epicurean or Apiqoros
referred to characteristic behaviors associated with these groups and not to the espousal
of beliefs associated with them. This is exactly how Rabbinic literature uses the term.
Tannaim
Our evidence about the meaning of the term Apiqoros is extremely ambiguous. The
term Apiqoros appears four times in the earliest relevant Jewish sources. In the Mishnah,
we find the following (Sanhedrin 10.1):
And these are they who have no place in the world to come: He who says there is no
resurrection of the dead, that there is no Torah from Heaven, and an Apiqoros.10
While the placement of the term Apiqoros in a list of doctrinal heresies suggests that it
refers to someone who denies some unnamed doctrinal principle, the content of the
principle remains obscure. One might argue that the order of the statements suggests
progressively more serious heresies: he who denies the divinity of the Torah has rejected
a more fundamental principle than he who denies the resurrection of the dead. If this
progression continues, we would expect that the unnamed heresy is the denial of the
existence or providence of God, the latter of which, at least, was in fact characteristic of
Epicurean philosophy.11
But one may wonder why the Mishnah changes its pattern of speech by using a label
(Apiqoros) rather than a description (he who denies God’s existence or providence).
Possibly the author of the Mishnah used the label because the heresy in question is so
serious that he thought it would be improper to even speak of it openly in the Mishnah.
It is also possible that the term Apiqoros was simply a widespread and convenient short-
hand for some such heresy and was used for that reason. But the fact that the Mishnah
uses a label rather than a description may also suggest that this third element differs in
kind from the previous two. The term Apiqoros may be used because the Mishnah is
referring to a certain kind of person, not a person with some unspecified belief.
10 For the text of this Mishnah see the Kaufman manuscript. This and other translations from
Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin sources are my own.
11 Labendz argues that there is a further reason to think that the Epicurus is here imagined as a
denier of divine providence. Since Rabbinic punishments are often designed to fit the crime, it is fitting
that he who denies resurrection or providence should have no share of the world to come (182). But if
this were the principle at work here, we would need to explain why those who deny the divinity of the
Torah share the same punishment.
554 GABRIEL DANZIG
This interpretation gains strength from the continuation of the Mishnah (Sanhedrin
10.1):
Rabbi Akiva says: Also he that reads the external books, or that utters charms over
a wound and says “I will give you none of the diseases that I gave the Egyptians; for
I am the Lord your healer.” Abba Shaul says: also he who pronounces the Name with
its proper letters.
Rabbi Akiva and Abba Shaul expand the list of those denied a place in the world to come
by including unacceptable behaviors in addition to heretical beliefs. They may have felt
that these items belong here because they understood the term Apiqoros in the previous
statement not simply as a person with the wrong beliefs, but as a person who behaves
wrongly.12
The Apiqoros is placed in a similar context in the Tosefta (Sanhedrin 13.5):
But the minim, and the apostates, and the informers, and Apiqorsim,13 and those
who have denied the Torah, and those who separate from the ways of the
community, and those who have denied the resurrection of the dead, and anyone
who has sinned and caused the public to sin, such as Yerovoam and Ahav, and
those who have brought fear into the land of the living, and who put their hands on
the Temple—Gehinom is locked before them and they are tortured in it for all
generations.
Here the Apiqorsim are found on a mixed list: some of its elements may be interpreted as
ideological deviants, but most cannot be, and virtually all of them are those who cause
damage to the Jewish community or separate themselves from it. Thus the contexts in
which the term is found are at best ambiguous as to whether the term refers to a doctri-
nal heresy or an unacceptable behavioral or social quality.14
The next occurrence of the term in the Mishnah is also ambiguous. In most editions of
the Mishnah it is printed as follows (Avot 2.14):
Rabbi Elazar says: Be diligent in studying Torah, and know what to respond to an
Apiqoros, and know before whom you labor, and faithful is your taskmaster to pay
the reward of your labor.
12 All the elements in this passage of the Mishnah, including the uttering of a verse of Torah as a
medicinal charm over a wound, can be seen as expressions of disrespect towards the Torah.
13 In this early Tannaitic source the term Apiqorsim does not receive the definite article. This
suggests that they are not a sect in the rabbinic imagination, but merely a kind of person. On the other
hand see below on Sifre Numbers, 112.
14 Labendz acknowledges that this list suggests that the author of this passage “meant to refer not
only to the Epicurean denial of providence, but also to the hedonism, missionizing, or other aspects of
Epicurean philosophy that offended the Rabbis” (“ ‘Know What to Answer the Epicurean,’ ” 184).
However, this is not the original form in which the Mishnah was produced. In earlier
manuscripts the first two elements are combined into one, producing the usual tripartite
statement:
Rabbi Elazar says: Be diligent in studying what to respond to an Apiqoros, and know
before whom you labor and who is your taskmaster (baàl melachtecha).15
The demand that one learn what to respond to an Apiqoros implies that the Apiqoros
has challenging things to say, and this suggests some philosophic doctrines or argu-
ments. Whereas S. Lieberman thought that the Tannaim knew nothing more than “cur-
rent general phrases” and had a “general impression” of Epicureanism, J. Labendz,
basing herself on the work of J. Goldin,16 argues that the rabbis had clear ideas about
these doctrines, and may even have engaged in debates with them: “What is clear from
the mishnah is that Rabbi Elazar, and at the very least the colleagues among whom he
made this statement, were familiar with Epicureans and a basic tenet of their philoso-
phy: the lack of divine interest or intervention in this world.”17 This knowledge is alleg-
edly reflected in the fact that after speaking of the Apiqoros, Rabbi Elazar speaks of the
existence of God and holds forth an implicit promise of reward.18 Knowing that
Epicureans denied providence, Rabbi Elazar reminds his students, after advising them
to investigate Epicurean materials in order to refute them, that divine providence does
exist. This is Labendz’s clearest evidence that the Tannaim knew what doctrines
Epicureans espoused.
On this view, Rabbi Elazar recommends the study of materials—presumably Greek
philosophic materials—which could be used to refute Epicurean philosophy. At the
same time, recognizing the danger of such study, he warns the reader not to forget the
fundamental theological beliefs of Judaism that Epicureans denied. Jewish interpreters
such as Rabbeinu Yonah also understood the second two elements of the Mishnah as
qualifying the first (Commentary on Pirqei Avot):
When you discuss matters with the Apiqoros and respond to his words, be careful
that he does not seduce you secretly and you believe his words and follow his opinion.
Rather, know before whom you labor—before one who observes your inner
thoughts.
15 Some manuscripts read baàl beritcha (your ally). For the text of this Mishnah, see Strack, Pirqei
Avot. See also Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaitic Academy.” Most recently, see the
scientific edition of Avot produced by Shimon Sharvit, Mesechet Avot Le-Dorotheha. Sharvit attributes
this statement to Rabbi Eliezer rather than Rabbi Elazar.
16 See previous note. On the general Hellenistic setting of Avot, see Tropper, Wisdom, Politics and
Historiography.
17 180. See also Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaitic Academy,” 62: “He is speaking of
serious refutation of the Epicurean, and like a Stoic insists that there is a trustworthy God before whom
we engage in our toiling.”
18 The promise of a reward is more explicit in the printed version of the Mishnah, but even in the
original Mishnah it is arguably there by implication.
556 GABRIEL DANZIG
So too Maimonides:
Even though you learn the opinions of the nations to know how to respond to an
Apiqoros, be careful that nothing of these opinions enters into your heart.19
Although neither of these interpreters connected Rabbi Elazar’s affirmation of provi-

dence with the denial of it by Epicurean philosophers, both saw the second two elements
of the Mishnah as serving to counterbalance the admonition to know what to respond to
the Apiqoros.20
Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran, author of a commentary on Pirqei Avot entitled
Magen Avot, took a further step. He was deeply involved in theological disputations with
non-Jews, and he understood the Mishnah as offering permission to study the works of
non-Jewish thinkers and philosophers together with a warning against believing their
opinions.21 This opinion, which is essentially identical with that of J. Labendz, is exposed
to several objections. First of all, it does not seem like a very effective bit of advice. It is
hard to see how the mere reminder that the Rabbis affirm divine providence would pro-
vide an effective bulwark against the temptations of philosophic scepticism for a student
who has delved into Greek philosophy and found it compelling. It seems particularly
inappropriate as a reminder to a student who, ex hypothesi, has been sent in search of a
rigorous refutation of such scepticism. If he has failed to find a good refutation, how will
the warning of Rabbi Elazar serve in its place? On the other hand, if he has studied
Epicurean philosophy and its alternatives to the point where he knows how to refute an
Apiqoros, why would he need such a warning?
One may raise objections on philological grounds as well. All these interpretations
assume that the last two statements of the Mishnah affirm the existence and providence
of God (“know before whom you labor, and who is your taskmaster”) as a counter-balance
to the permission given to investigate heretical opinions. A more nuanced reading of the
Mishnah would note that the emphasis is not theological but practical. Rather than a
reminder of orthodox theological doctrines, these statements provide reassurance con-
cerning the sheqidah (diligence in study) that was demanded in the first part of the
Mishnah. Although one might imagine that one is wasting one’s time by putting so much
effort into studying materials which would only be of use in responding to a h ypothetical
19 Commentary on the Mishnah Avot 2.14. None of these commentators understood the Mishnah as
referring to the Apiqoros as a philosopher. Instead, he is a heretic who espouses the opinions of the
non-Jews. In consequence, they do not understand Rabbi Elazar as advising his students to read
philosophic literature, but as advising his students to delve deeply into the study of the Torah in order
to understand how to respond to heretical questions concerning the scriptures.
20 Rabbeinu Baḥiya (Commentary on Pirqei Avot) suggested that the second elements concern the
dangers of disputing theology with non-Jews, and constitute a warning that one must be willing to
argue forcefully even if a successful dispute may lead to death at the hands of the non-Jews.
21 See also Korman, Ha-Emunah HaYisraelit, 34: “The answer to the Apiqoros is to know that ‘your
taskmaster is faithful to pay,’ for this is the utter opposite of the Epicurean idea, which does not
recognize providence.” I am grateful to Tsvi Mauer for this reference.
Apiqoros, one should recall that there is a faithful taskmaster involved.22 Rather than
responding to any perceived doctrines put forward by Epicureans, the second part of the
Mishnah is responding to the concerns of students who may be reluctant to accept the
challenge of engaging the Apiqoros. Although this Mishnah, like many others, is perme-
ated with a belief in God’s existence and providence, it does not seem to be responding
to any particular doctrines espoused by Epicureans, and hence it provides no evidence
of Rabbi Elazar’s awareness of them. I will return to this point below.23
There is another reason for doubting this line of interpretation. If answering an
Apiqoros means refuting an Epicurean philosopher, then by advising the reader to be
diligent (shaqed) in learning how to respond to an Apiqoros, Rabbi Elazar is advising
students to devote themselves to the study of Epicurean philosophy. But it is difficult to
believe that Rabbi Elazar advised such study, or that if he had, the redactor of the
Mishnah would have mentioned it. This is not merely because such advice seems coun-
ter to the pietistic spirit of Rabbinic ideology, or because according to Rabbi Akivah
those who read outside texts have no part in the world to come, but also because there is
very little evidence that the study of Greek philosophic texts ever took place in Rabbinic
circles.24 Not only did no one else that we know of ever adopt Rabbi Elazar’s advice on
this point, there is no evidence in the voluminous Rabbinic literature that he himself
ever studied any Epicurean or Greek philosophy.25
Moreover, there is no tangible reason for such advice to have been given in the first
place. J. Labendz assumes that there were common debates on philosophic subjects
between Rabbinic figures and Epicurean missionaries that would have sparked Rabbi
22 This interpretation is noted as the apparent meaning of the Mishnah by Rabbi Shimon ben
Zemach Duran, but he rejects it in favor of the opinion of Rabbeinu Yonah and Maimonides on the
grounds that this interpretation would make the passage unified in its teaching, whereas he would have
expected three distinct teachings.
23 The affirmation of reward and punishment is a common motif in much Rabbinic literature, and
its presence in a Mishnah which speaks of the Apiqoros is not especially significant and does not need
to reflect any awareness of the teachings of Epicurus. The existence and providence of God are major
themes in Avot 2.1, 2.4, 2.6, 2.15, 2.16, 3.1, 3.15, 3.16, 4.16, 4.17, and one could hardly claim that all of these
are responses to Epicureanism. Even if we did interpret R. Elazar’s injunctions as directed specifically
against Epicureans, it would show only a superficial familiarity with their denial of providence.
24 But see Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy, who argues that the story of the
four who entered pardes refers to entry into the Epicurean school. Goldin has argued that the odd
manner of producing the negative for each of the positive traits in Avot 2.9 reflects Stoic manners of
speech. But the Stoic texts that Goldin cites are actually quite different from the Mishnah passage. They
do not offer two complementary suggestions (do x and don’t do non-x), but rather they describe the
nature of a virtue and then the nature of the corresponding vice. Nor do they contain the “go out and
see” element which resembles a folklore motif (I owe this observation to Prof. Alexander Kulik). The
Rabbinic passage is more closely paralleled in other Rabbinic passages, such as Avot 3.5, 3.9, 4.6, 4.9,
4.11, 4.13, 4.15, 4.20. Since it has no close parallels in Hellenistic literature, it should be recognized as a
Rabbinic mode of expression. It may be derived from the biblical text which sometimes formulates
commands in both positive and negative form: compare Deuteronomy 28:3 with Deuteronomy 28:16,
for example.
25 Nor do we have fragments of Greek philosophy in Hebrew or Aramaic script. I have argued
elsewhere, however, that a quotation from Aristotle is found in a Rabbinic compilation. See G. Danzig,
“What to say when you don’t have a good answer: Rabbi Hoshaya and the philosopher.”
558 GABRIEL DANZIG
Elazar’s comments.26 But there is no evidence of such debates. Even if there were con-
frontations with Epicureans, it is hard to imagine that the Epicureans challenged
Rabbinic figures on the issues of physics and metaphysics, since the Rabbis had no theo-
ries of physics and metaphysics to challenge. If no confrontations took place, or if they
focused on non-philosophic subjects, it would make little sense for Rabbi Elazar to
advise studying Epicurean philosophy in order to respond to them.
One may wonder, however, if he did not advise the study of Greek philosophy, what
did Rabbi Elazar mean by advising his students to study diligently how to respond to an
Apiqoros? The statement implies that challenges were posed by Apiqorsim, but what
were they? While we do not have any Tannaitic material that would answer this question
definitively, we do have a record in the Jerusalem Talmud of what later Rabbis thought
an Apiqoros would have asked. In this text, which is discussed below, the Apiqorsim are
presented not as asking questions about issues of physics or metaphysics dealt with by
Greek philosophy, but as ridiculing the laws of the Torah. There is some philosophic or
rhetorical acuity in the challenges that are attributed to the Apiqorsim, so it is reason-
able to see them as having received some philosophic training or at least training in logic
or rhetoric. But their questions concern the supposed irrationality of the laws of the
Torah, not Greek philosophy.27
If Epicurean challenges focused on the interpretation of scripture and its laws, we can
propose a more natural interpretation of Rabbi Elazar’s injunction in the Mishnah.
Rather than recommending the study of Greek philosophy in order to respond to the
Apiqoros, Rabbi Elazar is recommending redoubled study of the Torah. In addition to
studying the Torah in a spirit of serious learning, one must also spend time considering
how to respond to the ludicrous challenges that might be put by an Apiqoros.
This suggestion is supported by a consideration of the language used by Rabbi Elazar.
The words “be diligent” (heve shaqed) suggest a devotion to learning that is inappropri-
ate to the study of foreign heretical works or to any work other than the Torah. Perhaps
for this reason a later editor or editors altered the text of the Mishnah to read as follows:
Be diligent to study Torah and know what to respond to the Apiqoros.28
This editor may have been bothered by the thought that Rabbi Elazar could have recom-
mended the diligent study of Greek philosophy. If our interpretation is correct, he did
26 Labendz argues that the Epicureans initiated debates with the Rabbis, and that “the Rabbis in turn
apparently did not take these encounters lightly, and engaged in debate with Epicureans” (180). But
there is no evidence of such debates ever taking place in Tannaitic times, as Labendz acknowledges (n. 19).
27 In itself, this is not strong evidence concerning the character of the Epicurean challenges to
the Tannaim, since this material was compiled hundreds of years later and may well represent a
misunderstanding of what the Tannaim were referring to. But the portrait does make sense. Since
the Rabbis were involved in teaching Torah it stands to reason that attacks on them would concern
the subject matter they were teaching, not physics or metaphysics.
28 This change apparently occurred in two stages. The Kaufman codex of the Mishnah has the
original wording with the word Torah added in the margin. At a later stage the words “and know” were
added. (See Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaitic Academy,” 61 n. 24).
not alter the basic meaning of the Mishnah by his intervention. His fortuitous alteration
serves merely to clarify the intention of Rabbi Elazar: by advising diligence in study-
ing how to refute the Apiqoros, he was actually advising diligence in a form of
Torah-study.29
This interpretation helps unite the three elements of the Mishnah into a single intelli-
gible whole concerned with the study of Torah and its reward. Rather than asserting the
existence and providence of God as an ineffective reminder to those whose foreign stud-
ies have raised serious philosophic doubts, Rabbi Elazar is reminding his students that
they will have recompense for their efforts to pore over the texts of the Torah in order to
find refutations for every ludicrous challenge that an Apiqoros might bring.30
The fourth occurrence of the term Apiqoros in Tannaitic literature is the only one in
which it is used unambiguously, and here it refers not to holders of a particular doctrine
but to those who disobey Jewish legal authorities (Sifre Numbers 112):
Because he has spurned the word of the Lord. This is a Sadducee. And has broken his
commandment. This is an Apiqoros. Another interpretation: Because he has spurned
the word of the Lord. This is one who disparages the Torah. And has broken his com-
mandment. This is one who breaks the covenant of the flesh.
The aim here is not to define the Apiqoros, but to determine who Scripture is referring to
in speaking of one who has spurned the word of the Lord or broken his commandment.
The discussion is based on Numbers 15:30–31, a passage concerning the individual who
acts in a high-handed manner, violating the laws of the Torah not by mistake, but delib-
erately. The fact that the Rabbis identify the one who breaks the law as an Apiqoros
shows that it is behavior rather than doctrine that distinguishes him in their view.
Moreover, the parallel to the Sadducee suggests that the Apiqoros is viewed as a member
of some recognizable social grouping, and not simply as a disobedient or heterodox Jew.
In conclusion, we have found no evidence that Rabbi Elazar or any other Tannaitic
sage was aware of the philosophic doctrines of the Epicureans, and no good evidence
that they thought of an Apiqoros as someone who espouses particular doctrines.
Similarly, we found no good support for the opinion that Rabbi Elazar recommended
the study of philosophic texts as a means of responding to Apiqorsim. Neither Rabbi
Elazar nor any other Tannaitic sage seems to have been aware of anything more than the
generally anti-religious and authority-mocking outlook of Epicureans. This does not
mean that Epicureans of the Tannaitic period had no doctrines, or even that none of the
Tannaim was aware of them, but they certainly were not interested enough to mention
them in the voluminous Rabbinic literature.
29 Such poring over the Torah is recommended in other contexts as well, such as in the famous
saying of ben Bag Bag (Avot 5.22).
30 See the comments of Rabbeinu Yonah on this Mishnah; see also Midrash Shemuel. As my wife has
pointed out, since there is substantial evidence that Epicureans heaped scorn and ridicule on all kinds
of authoritative teachings (see below), the reminder that there is a taskmaster or ally may serve also to
restore a sense of gravity to any students who do come into contact with them.
560 GABRIEL DANZIG
Amoraim
In both the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds, Amoraitic authorities describe
Apiqorsim primarily in terms of the disrespect they showed to the Law and its
expositors:
The Apiqoros: Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Lazar. One said, Like one who said “That
scribe!” (or: book!). The other said, Like one who said “Those Rabbis!” (Jerusalem
Talmud, Sanhedrin 10:1, 27d).
Our Rabbis taught, For he has despised the word of the Lord, and broken his com-
mandment, he shall be cut off. This is the one who says there is no Torah from
Heaven. Another interpretation. For he has despised the word of the Lord. This is an
Apiqoros. Another interpretation. For he has despised the word of the Lord. This is
one who shows contempt for Torah (megaleh panim beTorah) and has broken his
commandment. This is the one who breaks the covenant of flesh (Babylonian Talmud,
Sanhedrin 99a).
Apiqoros: Rav and Rabbi Ḥ anina both say, This is one who insults a sage. Rabbi
Yohanan and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi say, This is one who insults his fellow in the
presence of a sage.
He who says an Apiqoros is one who humiliates his friend in front of a sage makes
sense. [In his view] one who insults a sage himself is [called] a megaleh panim beTo-
rah shelo kehalacha. But for one who says an Apiqoros is one who humiliates a sage
himself, who [is called] a megaleh panim beTorah? One who is like Menasheh ben
Ḥezkiah.
There are those who relate this discussion to the last phrase.
megaleh panim beTorah: Rav and Rabbi Ḥ anina both say, This is one who insults
a sage. Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi say, This is one who insults his
fellow in the presence of a sage.
He who says a megaleh panim beTorah is one who insults a sage himself makes
sense. [In his view] one who insults his fellow in the presence of a sage is [called] an
Apiqoros. But for one who says a megaleh panim beTorah is one who insults his
fellow in the presence of a sage, what sort of person is an Apiqoros?
[Answer:] Rav Yoseph said Like one who says, “How have the Rabbis benefited
us? They read for their own benefit, they teach for their own benefit.”
Abbaye said to him, “This too is contempt for the Torah, as it is written, If I have
not made a covenant with day and night and have not set the laws of heaven and
earth” (Jeremiah 33:25).
Rav Nacḥman said, “From here also you can learn this, as is said, And I will
forgive the entire place for their sakes.” Rather it is like one who sat before his
teacher and had an opportunity to explain a teaching he learned in another place,
and he said, “This is what we say there,” but he did not say, “This is what the
master said.”
Rava said, Like those of the house of Benjamin the physician who say, “How have
the rabbis benefited us? They have never permitted the raven or forbidden the dove.”
. . . Rav Papa said, Like one who said “Those Rabbis!”
Rav Papa slipped and said “Those Rabbis!” and he sat down and fasted. (Babylonian
Talmud, Sanhedrin, 99b–100a)31
J. Labendz has argued that these passages show that the Amoraim do not know what the
term Apiqoros means: hence the divergent efforts to define it.32 But the Amoraim men-
tioned here do have a clear general sense of what the term means. They know that an
Apiqoros is someone who treats the Torah, its scholars, or students with disrespect. They
are neither wondering about the typical behavior of an Apiqoros nor trying to define an
unknown quantity. Rather they are asking what kind of behavior is sufficient to place
one in the legal category of an Apiqoros. This is not a lexicographical discussion, but a
legal one. And despite the varying views on the legal issue, the fact that all the rabbis
share a basic conception of the character of the Apiqoros as someone who treats the
Torah and its scholars with contempt shows that this is a common and well-founded
conception, not something based on far-fetched speculation.
The testimony of classical Greek and Latin authors reflects a similar conception of the
Epicureans. The writings of Cicero and Plutarch are closer in time to the Tannaim than
to the Amoraim, but like the Amoraim they emphasize the fact that Epicurus himself
treated other intellectual leaders, including his own teachers, with bitter contempt:
He [Epicurus] says that he was a student of one Pamphilus, a disciple of Plato . . . yet
Epicurus treats this Platonic philosopher with extraordinary contempt, so fearful
was he that it should be thought he ever had any instruction. But he is caught in the
case of Nausiphanes, the follower of Democritus; and since he could not deny hav-
ing been his pupil, he assailed him with every kind of abuse (Cic. ND 1.72–73).
Relying on these dreams, not only did Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Hermarchus
speak against Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, but even that little harlot,
Leontium, dared to write against Theophrastus . . . . So much license was there in the
garden of Epicurus. . . .
Epicurus attacked Aristotle with great abuse. He foully slandered Phaedo, the dis-
ciple of Socrates. He attacked Timocrates, the brother of his companion Metrodorus,
with whole volumes, because he disagreed with him in some trifling point of philoso-
phy. He was ungrateful even to Democritus, whose follower he was; and his master
Nausiphanes, from whom he learned something, received similar bad treatment.
Zeno gave abuse not only to those who were then living, as Apollodorus, Syllus,
and the rest, but he called Socrates, who was the father of philosophy, the Attic buf-
foon, using the Latin word Scurra. . . . And you yourself a little before, when you
were counting the philosophers like members of the senate, said that the most emi-
nent men talked like foolish, delirious idiots (Cic. ND 1.93–94).
31 See also Nedarim 23a, where they are said to cause pain to the Rabbis (metsaàrei rabanan).
32 “Were apiqoros a clearly defined term, no definition would be needed or offered, as is the case in
the tannaitic sources about it” (Labendz, “ ‘Know What to Answer the Epicurean,’ ” 192; see also her
stronger claim on 188). The fact that the Amoraim derive the term Apiqoros from the Hebrew root pqr
(Sanhedrin 38b) provides some evidence that they were unaware of Epicureans at all. But on the other
hand it may only be an example of self-consciously creative homiletic Rabbinic exegesis.
562 GABRIEL DANZIG
If there is any substance at all to Cicero’s accusations,33 Epicurus promoted hostile

attitudes towards rival intellectual leaders, and in the Jewish context, that would include
Rabbinic figures.
Moreover, Epicurus and his followers exhibited a strong contempt for political
leaders, especially those who were reputed to have founded political communities or
provided divinely inspired laws. In his Against Colotes, Plutarch describes in detail
the unfair treatment that Colotes, pupil of Epicurus, accorded to a whole range of
non-Epicurean philosophers, and then goes on to criticize the Epicureans for their
unfavorable attitudes toward political and legal authorities:
No praise can ever do justice to the men who dealt with these brutish feelings by
establishing constitutions, governments, and a system of legislation. But who are the
men that destroy and dissolve these things, and utterly abolish them? Is it not those
who withdraw themselves and their companions from the state? Is it not those who
say that the crown of an untroubled spirit is beyond comparison to success in a great
command? Is it not those who say that to be a king is a fault and a failure? (Plut.
Against Colotes 31).
These men, if they write about such matters at all, write on government to deter us
from participating in it, and about rhetoric to deter us from public speaking, and
about kingship to make us shun the company of kings. They mention statesmen only to
deride them and belittle their fame, for instance Epameinondas, who they say had but
one good thing about him, and even that “smallish” (Plut. Against Colotes 33; 1125c).
. . . That they made war, moreover, not [merely] with lawgivers but with laws we
may learn from Epicurus who asks himself in Disputed Questions whether the sage
will do certain things that the laws forbid, if he knows he will escape notice. He
answers, “an unqualified accusation is not propitious”—that is, “I shall do it, but
I do not wish to admit it.” Again—in a letter to Idomeneus, I believe—he calls upon
him “not to live in servitude to laws and opinions, as long as they don’t make trou-
ble through blows from neighbors.” If, then, those who abolish laws and govern-
ments also abolish humane life, and if Epicurus and Metrodorus do just this when
they dissuade their companions from public service and quarrel with those engaged
in it, and again when they speak badly of the earliest and wisest lawgivers and recom-
mend contempt for law if there is no fear of a blow or punishment, I know of no
false charge directed by Colotes against the others so grave as his true accusation
against the words and teachings of Epicurus (Plut. Against Colotes 34; 1127a–e;
italics mine).
The attitudes described here are what were found in the educated circles of Greek and
Roman Epicureans. There is no reason to think that the Epicureans of Judea would have
behaved any better. Indeed, the evidence of the Amoraim strongly suggests that the
Epicureans of Judea exhibited the exact same kind of hostility to outside intellectual
authorities and lawgivers that is described in these Greek and Latin texts.
33 Although these reports may well be exaggerated, even partisans such as Dewitt acknowledge
Epicurus’s lack of respect for his own teachers (Epicurus and His Philosophy, 13–15).
The simplest explanation for the accuracy of the Amoraitic description of Epicureans
is that they had direct contact with them, and hence that Epicurean circles continued to
exist in the land of Israel after the Tannaitic period.34 Indeed, the Amoraitic material
provides a fuller and more accurate picture of Epicureans, at least as far as their social
character is concerned, than what we have in the Tannaitic material. The Amoraim
describe the Epicureans as disrespectful to Rabbinic authority, not merely disobedient
to it, which seems more consonant with the classical material.35 Their discussion is fuller
in that, as we will see, it also includes references to the egalitarian social principles that
characterized Epicurean society. But the fact that Cicero’s and Plutarch’s Epicureans
were contemporaries of the Tannaim suggests that these qualities would also have char-
acterized Epicureans of Judea in the time of the Tannaim. This reinforces our contention
that Rabbi Elazar was referring to Apiqorsim as members of a disobedient and disre-
spectful group rather than as members of a serious school of philosophy.36
Api-Korach
The Amoraim have a tendency to discover Apiqorsic qualities in biblical figures. R’

Yirmeyah ben Elazar37 declares that the snake in the Garden of Eden was an Apiqoros
(Genesis Rabbah 19). Another passage declares that Korach was an Apiqorsi (JT
34 Since in her view there was no possibility of contact between the Amoraim and the Epicureans
(“ ‘Know What to Answer the Epicurean,’ ” 175–76; 192), Labendz explains that the Amoraim reached
these accurate conclusions in part on the basis of a misinterpretation of the earlier Sifre passage. She
notes that the Sifre passage could not in itself serve as a good source for later rabbinic knowledge of
Epicurean attitude problems, since it only describes them as disobedient to the Law not as disrespectful
to the Rabbis (193 n. 44). She therefore postulates the existence of oral traditions handed down from
Tannaitic times (193). This is of course possible; but this knowledge may be better seen as reflecting the
continued existence of some Epicurean cult in the land of Israel. If there were oral traditions
descending from Tannaitic times, this would strongly suggest that the Tannaim, from whom such
traditions would have hypothetically derived, viewed the Apiqorsim as disrespectful to the Rabbis and
not merely as disobedient to the Law. Labendz argues that this feature would have been only one part
of the Tannaitic conception of the Apiqoros—in addition presumably to their philosophic doctrines—
although later it came to dominate (193). But we have not seen good evidence that the Tannaim knew
their philosophic doctrines.
35 This difference could be explained as an historical change in behavior on the part of Apiqorsim or
as resulting merely from the fuller discussions recorded in Amoraitic times. In any case, both groups
agree in focusing on the behavior or social characteristics of Apiqorsim rather than on their theoretical
doctrines.
36 As Labendz notes, the Amoraitic passages differ in the severity of the offense that renders one an
Apiqoros. In some cases, an Apiqoros is one who ridicules Rabbinic authority altogether. In other
cases, it is enough to make a mildly offensive statement, even unintentionally. This second
phenomenon could be explained as an historical change in the perception of the Apiqoros, but it could
also be explained as a homiletic device designed to persuade students to be careful with their tongues.
37 We have no way of knowing whether R’ Yirmeyah ben Elazar was related to R’ Elazar ben Arakh,
as his name suggests. If he was, it is possible that he preserves a family tradition concerning the
Apiqoros.
564 GABRIEL DANZIG
Sanhedrin 50a). The fact that these figures are identified as Apiqorsim is significant in
itself. The snake was the instigator of a rebellion against God (Genesis 3), and Korach was
the leader of a rebellion against Moses (Numbers 16). These references show that the
Amoraim had a clear conception of the Apiqoros as someone who rejects religious
authority.
Korach’s Apiqorsic character is displayed in a Midrashic exchange with Moses
described in the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 50a).38 Korach makes a garment of pure
techelet (light blue wool) and asks Moses whether or not it requires ritual fringes of tech-
elet as well. Moses replies that it does and quotes a passage to support his opinion.
Korach next asks whether a house that is full of scrolls requires a mezuzah (a ritual scroll
on the doorpost). And again, Moses replies in the affirmative quoting a relevant
passage.
These questions show two aspects of the Apiqoros. On the one hand, they are trivial
questions designed to show that the Law is an ass. Why should one need to put fringes of
techelet, which reflects the kingly or priestly status of the Jew, on a garment that is already
made completely of techelet? Why should one need to put on the doorpost a tiny portion
of a Torah scroll, which reminds one of the obligation to engage in study, when the
whole house is full of Torah scrolls? These questions display the Apiqoros as someone
who ridicules the Torah and its scholars.
Korach’s questions are not merely legalistic quibbles, they are also implicit chal-
lenges to the idea of a political hierarchy. In the biblical text, Korach begins his attack
on Moses by proclaiming that, “All the community is holy, every one, and God is among
them; why do you lord it over the community of God?” (Numbers 16:3). The Midrashic
parable expands on this challenge made in the name of egalitarianism by means of
analogies meant to represent the political community. Since techelet represents king-
ship or priesthood, the idea of a garment made completely of techelet suggests the pos-
sibility of a community all of whose members are kings. Such a community should not
need a kingly leader like Moses, just as such a garment should not need an additional
techelet fringe. The second question is similar. Since scrolls represent wisdom, a house
that is full of scrolls represents a community all of whose members are wise. Such a
community should not need a wise leader like Moses, just as such a house should not
need a scroll on the doorpost. The Apiqoros, then, is represented not merely as engag-
ing in destructive quibbling, he is also arguing against the very idea of political
authority.
Korach’s last question is more far-reaching. He questions Moses about the laws of
purity. What is the status of a person who has a small white spot on the skin? Moses
replies that the individual is rendered impure. Apparently knowing something of the
law, Korach asks what would be the ruling if the white spot spread to the entire body.
Moses responds that in such a case the body is pure. Paradoxically, the spread of a malig-
nant symptom throughout the entire body produces purity. What makes the body
38 I will not discuss the previous Talmudic passage concerning the house and the dome, since I am
not convinced that it is directly related to the Apiqoros. It does not mention the Apiqoros, and it may
have been inserted into its present location merely because it contains the motif “a house that is full” of
something.
impure is the differentiation of one small part from the rest. By implication, Moses’s
retention of a position of leadership serves to pollute the entire people. Thus once again
Korach’s question is designed to challenge the status of differentiation in the human
community and to deny the legitimacy of political authority. But this time, Moses has to
acknowledge the unfortunate results of differentiation even on the basis of the laws of
the Torah themselves.39
As we have seen, the opposition to foreign intellectual and political authorities was a
well-known trait of the Epicureans. But it is also appears that the Epicureans observed
an unusual degree of equality in their personal relations with each other. This is widely
recognized by contemporary scholars, who base themselves primarily on the fact that
both slaves and prostitutes were welcome in the Epicurean circle. As S. K. Stowers notes,
Epicurean friendship was set apart from normal friendship by its apolitical and egalitar-
ian characteristics.40 P. L. Bowditch has commented on “The Epicurean indifference to
distinction—whether of gender or political status—in its celebration of the horizontal
relation of friendship . . . ”.41 The depiction of Korach as an Epicurean who undermines
the legitimacy of hierarchy within the Jewish community fits well with this aspect of
Epicurean society.
After obtaining Moses’s answer to this last question, Korach responds with a grave dec-
laration, “The Torah is not from heaven, Moses is not a prophet, and Aaron is not a high
priest.” This conclusion follows in two ways. On the one hand, the replies that Moses has
made are so absurd that they show that the Torah he teaches is not from heaven. This in
turn implies that he himself is not a prophet, and that Aaron, whom he appointed as high
priest, is no high priest. On the other hand, if the interpretation that Moses offered in the
case of impurity is correct, then it still follows that egalitarianism is to be preferred to
authoritarianism, and hence that the system of authority that Moses has established, con-
sisting of the Torah, the prophet, and the high priest, should be abolished.
Here for the first time, in Korach’s declaration, we find an ideological position explic-
itly attributed to the Apiqoros: he denies the divinity and hence the legitimacy of the
Law and thereby seeks to undermine existing authority. Unlike the earlier Tannaitic
sources, this Amoraitic source does clearly attribute a doctrinal heresy to the Apiqoros
and draws out its anti-nomian implications.42 However, this doctrinal heresy does not
39 There may be an additional point to this last example. Here the quality under consideration is a
negative one—an infection with a disease known as zara'at. The fact that the winning example concerns
the spread of a malignancy to the entire body seems to suggest the likely results of a successful
revolution. Rather than creating a society of wise and kingly members, as his earlier examples suggest
he will do, the equality Korach preaches is destined merely to spread malignancy throughout the
Israelite body politic.
40 Stowers, Letter Writing in Ancient Greco-Roman Antiquity, 66.
41 Bowditch, Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage, 175. See also Bryant, Moral Codes and Social
Structure in Ancient Greece, 422.
42 We may note here that strictly speaking this source stands in contradiction to the Mishnah. While
the Mishnah distinguishes between the one who says there is no Torah from heaven and the Apiqoros,
the Talmudic passage identifies them. These two passages probably influenced Maimonides’s
formulation of the category of the Apiqoros, and may have led him to describe the category of the
Apiqoros as including more than just the denial of prophecy. See below.
566 GABRIEL DANZIG
provide a good reflection of historical Epicurean philosophy (see the discussion of

Mishneh Torah below).
Moses responds:
If a mouth was created for the earth in the six days of creation, it is well, and if not, may
it be created at this moment. “And if the Lord should create a [new] creation . . . .”
The request for the earth to use its mouth or be given one appears to be a request for
Korach and his followers to be swallowed up alive, as indeed occurs in the biblical text
(Numbers 16). However, the midrash has created a new context of debate in which the
request for the earth to use its mouth may be seen as a request for it to respond on
Moses’s behalf to the challenges of Korach. The earth of course responds with a deed
rather than an argument. The swallowing up of Korach and his followers may be
intended to show that, all argument aside, anarchic societies cannot survive. Thus inter-
preted, the passage offers a prediction that the Apiqorsim, while undefeated in argu-
ment, will be unable to survive historically.43
Maimonides and the Apiqoros
Knowledge of Epicurean philosophy is first found in the flourishing of Jewish philo-

sophic literature in the tenth to twelfth centuries within the Arabic-speaking Islamic
world. Abraham ibn Ezra opined that the Epicureans viewed pleasure as the aim of
human life (Commentary on Deuteronomy 21.18). Abraham ibn Daud called them
philosophic deniers.44 Yehudah Halevi described Epicurus as a Greek who believed
that the world came into being by chance and that pleasure is the final end of human
existence and the absolute good (sefer haKuzari 5.20; see also 5.8 in the Hebrew transla-
tions which retain this section lost in Arabic). In the Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides
speaks of Epicurus as a Greek philosopher who denied the existence of God, creation,
prophecy, and providence, while affirming the existence of atoms (1.73, 2.13, 2.32, 3.17).
We will discuss this below.
And yet, in his first major composition, the Commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides
does not seem to know that Epicurus was a Greek philosopher. He mentions the
43 A similar critique of Epicureanism is found in Plutarch, Against Colotes. For an alternative

interpretation of this episode see Becker, “ ‘Epicureer’ im Talmud Yerushalmi,” 397–421. Becker argues
that the swallowing up of Korach is an expression of divine providence, and hence a refutation of the
Epicurean position. But Korach did not challenge divine providence.
44 kophrei haphilosophim or kophrei haphilosophia (Emunah Ramah, Introduction to the second
treatise). It is not clear whether he means that they denied the teachings of the philosophers, or that
they were philosophers who denied religious teachings, either of which would be appropriate.
Talmud’s opinion that the Jewish Apiqoros is worse than his non-Jewish counterpart,
since he is more dissolute,45 and adds, in seeming contradiction to the view of Rabbi
Elazar, that one should refrain from disputing with Jewish Apiqorsim. He explains that
there is no cure for a Jewish Apiqoros, and quotes Jeremiah’s dictum, “All those who
enter her will not return.” This quotation will be important for Rav Nachman’s interpre-
tation of the Apiqoros. But he does not mention that Epicurus was a Greek philosopher,
instead interpreting the term Apiqoros in accordance with the Talmudic discussion as
derived from the Hebrew root pqr.
It has been suggested that at the time of composing this youthful work Maimonides
was not aware of the existence of a philosopher named Epicurus, and hence did not see
the term Apiqoros as related to him.46 If true, this implies that the young Maimonides
not only failed to read Arabic texts which mentioned Epicurus, such as the treatise by
Alexander on providence, but also failed to read Jewish authors such as Abraham ibn
Daud, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Yehudah Halevi. On the other hand, we cannot dismiss
the possibility that Maimonides deliberately ignored the Greek origin of the term in his
Commentary for didactic reasons, preferring to record the homiletic discussion found
in the Talmud. After all, he was writing a commentary on Talmudic literature and may
have preferred to record the view represented there. It is also worth bearing in mind that
the Talmudic etymology of the term may itself be a self-consciously homiletic effort
rather than a serious philological one.
The possibility that Maimonides is consciously ignoring the Greek philosopher draws
some support from a consideration of his treatment of the subject in Mishneh Torah
(MT). Here too Maimonides fails to mention the philosopher Epicurus or to draw a con-
nection between him and the Apiqoros of the Talmud; but signs that he was aware of the
connection can be found. The Mishneh Torah offers Maimonides scope to include mate-
rial that is not found in Talmudic literature, and in formulating his views on the
Apiqoros, Maimonides seems clearly to rely on extra-talmudic material about Epicurus.
In many places Maimonides uses the terms Apiqoros and Min more loosely,47 but when
he formally defines the Apiqoros in his list of heresies in the Laws of Repentance he treats
him as someone who holds false theological beliefs (3.8). This is perplexing when one
considers, as we have seen, that the Talmudic material on which Maimonides bases
himself defines the Apiqoros as someone who treats the Torah, its teachers, and its stu-
dents with disrespect. Only in the Aggadic passage on Korach—not the most likely place
to look for deriving normative legal rulings—is there an implication of doctrinal hetero-
doxy in the Apiqoros. Based on this passage, however, we would have expected
Maimonides to define the Apiqoros as someone who denies the validity of the Torah.
45 paqar tefei: Sanhedrin 38b. The fact that there can be non-Jewish Apiqorsim seems to show that
they constitute a coherent, independent group, and are not simply Jewish heretics.
46 He-aruch Hashalem, above, n. 3.
47 See Laws of Ritual Slaughter, 4.14; Laws of Robbery, 11.2; Laws of Murder, 4.10.
568 GABRIEL DANZIG
Instead, however, he attributes this characteristic to another figure, the Denier of the
Torah (3.8).48
Aside from the passage on Korach, the Talmud generally treats the Apiqoros as some-
one who treats the Torah and its scholars with disrespect. But Maimonides places such
people in a different category (3.14), and defines the Apiqoros as someone who main-
tains false theological opinions. And yet, as the Leḥem Mishneh points out (commentary
on Laws of Repentence 3.6), Maimonides’s formulation on those who treat the Torah and
its scholars with disrespect is clearly derived from the Talmudic discussion of the
Apiqoros.49 The Talmudic Apiqoros has been given a new name, and Maimonides’s
Apiqoros has been given a new crime. Why does Maimonides do this?
Maimonides’s treatment of the Apiqoros seems to be based in part on his own theo-
logical principles and in part on the extra-Talmudic philosophic material he read.
Maimonides attributes to the Apiqoros three distinct heresies: (1) denial of prophecy, (2)
denial of the prophecy of Moses, and (3) denial that God is aware of human actions (3.8).
These characteristics closely resemble Maimonides’s discussion of Epicurus the philoso-
pher in the Guide of the Perplexed. There he describes Epicurus as a philosopher who
denied the existence of God, and consequently denied creation, prophecy, and provi-
dence. The two descriptions agree in the denial of prophecy, and also in the denial of
providence, for God’s awareness of human actions is a crucial component of divine
providence. Since the description in the Guide is clearly based on extra-Talmudic philo-
sophic sources, it seems reasonable to assume that those same sources influenced
Maimonides’s discussion in the MT.
Still, the treatment in the MT does not correspond exactly to the treatment in the
Guide. In the Guide, Maimonides not only claims that Epicurus denies the existence of
prophecy and providence (as well as creation), he also claims that Epicurus denies the
existence of God (see, e.g., 2.13).50 In the MT, on the other hand, the Apiqoros does not
deny the existence of God (or creation); it is the Min who denies the existence of God
(and there is no figure who specifically denies creation). Thus the discussion in the MT
corresponds exactly neither to the Talmudic material nor to the philosophic material
48 This is someone who may accept the existence of God, the principle of prophecy, and even that
Moses was a prophet, but nonetheless, like some Muslim theologians, denies that the Torah is a valid
record of such prophecy. The Apiqoros, on the other hand, objects to all forms of prophecy, Jewish and
non-Jewish. Given Maimonides’s definition of a divine law in the Guide (2.40), it would be theoretically
possible for an Apiqoros to accept the divinity of the Torah even though he denies the prophecy of
Moses, since a divine law is defined by its attributes not its author.
49 The Leḥem Mishneh argues that in Maimonides’s view the term Apiqoros can be used in both
strict and loose senses. He argues further that since the Talmud orders death to the Apiqoros (Mesechet
Avodah Zarah, 26b: in Maimonides’s text the term Apiqoros appeared here), his crime must be more
serious than disrespect to the Torah. But while this may explain why Maimonides did not accept the
Talmudic definition of the Apiqoros, it does not explain how he reached his own definition (see
Abraham Yehoshua Heshel, Sanhedri Ketanah).
50 In fact, the historical Epicurus and his followers did believe in the existence of gods; but these
gods were so different from any biblical or even Aristotelian conception of god that in a sense
Maimonides is justified in claiming that they denied the existence of God. It was common in late
antiquity to accuse the Epicureans of atheism. See, e.g., Plutarch, Against Colotes.
reflected in the Guide. It seems to be derived instead from a combination of the two
sources. In the MT Maimonides attributes to the Apiqoros those heretical doctrines
espoused by the philosopher Epicurus for which some basis can be found in the Talmudic
material, even if this means stretching that material a little.
As we have seen, in the Jerusalem Talmud, Korach says explicitly that Torah is not
from Heaven and that Moses is not a prophet. This seems a likely source for Maimonides’s
definition of the Apiqoros as one who denies prophecy and the prophecy of Moses.
But without the philosophic background, Maimonides would not have reached such a
definition. Strictly speaking, Korach does not deny the validity of prophecy altogether,
but only the prophecy of Moses. His arguments with Moses are all based on the texts of
the Hebrew Bible, and his claim that the Torah is not from heaven seems to be aimed at
denying the validity of Jewish law in particular. He denies that Moses is a prophet, not
that prophecy is possible; and he denies that Aaron is a priest, but does not claim that the
priesthood is illegitimate. On its own, this material could more easily be used to justify
the claim that the Apiqoros is one who denies the validity of Jewish law—Maimonides’s
Denier of the Torah—rather than one who denies prophecy altogether. Why then did
Maimonides conclude that it actually encompasses a denial of the very possibility of
prophecy?
One might argue that the answer is to be found in the omission of the definite article
in the Jerusalem Talmud. Rather than saying “The Torah is not from heaven,” Korach
says “Torah is not from heaven.” Without the article, the word Torah does not necessar-
ily refer to the Jewish Law; it may also have a more general meaning of teaching or guid-
ance. So when Korach says Torah is not from heaven, Maimonides may have interpreted
him to mean that there is no teaching or guidance given to man by God, and hence that
there is no prophecy at all. But while this is a possible interpretation of the Jerusalem
Talmud, it is not the only or even the most natural interpretation. Korach’s arguments
only purport to show that the Jewish law is absurd, not that all prophecy is fraudulent,
and the omission of the definite article is by no means a decisive consideration. Why
then did Maimonides choose this interpretation?
There is an obvious relationship between Maimonides’s list of heresies in the Laws
of Repentance and his list of thirteen fundamental beliefs of Judaism which he formu-
lated in his Commentary on the Mishnah.51 These thirteen fundamental beliefs are
not based on any Talmudic discussion, but are the result of Maimonides’s own
philosophical-theological speculation.52 The first five heresies Maimonides lists here
(those of the Min) are nothing other than the denial of the first five principles of faith,
those relating to the existence and nature of God. In addition to these five principles,
Maimonides upholds eight more principles, including principles that relate to prophecy
and to divine providence. In order to categorize these false beliefs, Maimonides needs to
51 See his introduction to Pereq Ḥ eleq. See also the comment of Marc Shapiro, “For his own
conceptual reasons, which have no talmudic basis, Maimonides distinguishes between the epikoros, the
min, and the kofer batorah.” Shapiro, The Limits of Orthodox Theology, 8 n. 27.
52 Maimonides’s list of heretics in the MT thus provides a categorization of his own fundamental
principles that anticipates Joseph Albo’s later efforts.
570 GABRIEL DANZIG
appropriate numerous terms for heretics and to adapt Talmudic discussions to his own
philosophic purposes. Since the Apiqoros was treated in the Jerusalem Talmud as deny-
ing the prophecy of Moses, it is only a slight stretch to present him as one who denies
prophecy altogether. In making this stretch, Maimonides would have been helped by the
lack of the definite article in the Jerusalem Talmud.53 But the motive for making the
stretch in the first place is to be found in the knowledge, reflected in the Guide, that
Epicurus denied the possibility of prophecy altogether.
This approach also helps explain the most difficult problem in Maimonides’s discus-
sion of the Apiqoros. Why does he attribute to the Apiqoros the belief that God is igno-
rant of the actions of human beings? There is nothing in the Talmudic literature which
attributes such a belief to him. In the Guide, however, where Maimonides is relying on
philosophic sources, he recognizes that Epicurus denied the existence of divine provi-
dence. Divine providence is connected with knowledge of the actions of human beings,
and Maimonides makes an effort to demonstrate the possibility of such knowledge prior
to his discussion of providence in the Guide (3.16). In Maimonides’s view, then, Epicurus’s
denial of providence included a denial that God is aware of the actions of men. Again, the
philosophic sources that shaped Maimonides’s discussion of Epicurus in the Guide seem
to be responsible for shaping his discussion of the Apiqoros in MT as well.
But why does Maimonides omit the denial of God’s existence from the description of
the Apikoros?54 One could perhaps argue that his views changed between the composi-
tion of MT and the Guide: at the time of the composition of the MT he may not have
believed that Epicurus denied the existence of gods (strictly speaking he didn’t), while
later in the Guide he may have concluded that he did. But it seems likely that here it is the
Talmudic discussion which sets the limits. The Talmud offers another figure, the Min, to
whom Maimonides prefers to attribute the denial of God’s existence. And there is no
hint of the denial of God’s existence in the Talmudic discussion of the Apiqoros, and
hence nothing on which to base such a definition.55 Here again, the definition of the
Apiqoros results from an effort to include anything attributed to the historical Epicurus
which can be plausibly derived from the Talmudic discussion, even by a stretch. The fact
that Maimonides does not mention Epicurus in MT does not show that he was unaware
of him, and this conclusion may apply to the Commentary as well.
53 He may also have been helped by the fact that the Talmud refers to non-Jewish Apiqorsim. Such
Apiqorsim presumably would not be defined merely by their failure to respect Jewish law.
54 He also omits the denial of creation, both here and in his list of thirteen principles, at least in its
original formulation. Later, Maimonides revised this section of his thirteen principles in order to imply
creation.
55 It is also true that no denial of divine knowledge is attributed to the Apiqoros in the Talmud.
However, Maimonides considered prophecy to be closely connected with divine knowledge.
The Physical Theories of

Epicurus in Maimonides’s Guide
How much was actually known of Epicurean theories in Maimonides’s time? Certainly
the theory of atomism was widely known, even if it was not always attributed to
Epicurus. Such theories lay at the heart of the physical doctrine of the Islamic theolo-
gians known as the Mutakallimūn, and were known to Jewish writers such as Saàdia
Gaon and the Karaite thinkers Joseph al-Basīr and Jeshua ben Judah. The possibility that
these theories represent a continuation of Epicurean speculation within a religious con-
text has been discussed, but no scholarly consensus has emerged.56 A. Dhanani argues
that Kalām atomism derives from late-antique Epicurean accounts of atomism. But
while strong circumstantial evidence supports this account, it remains speculative
because we have few records of late-antique Epicurean theory, and because Kalām writ-
ers did not acknowledge such debts. Islamic writers rarely mentioned Epicurus at all,
even though they must have known about him from whatever sources brought him to
the attention of Arabic-reading Jews.57 Given the general silence on Epicurus in the
Islamic world, the failure to attribute atomism to Epicurus does not show either that he
was not its source or even that Islamic writers were unaware of that.58
But while Kalām thinkers did not draw the connection, two comments by
Maimonides show that he at least did consider Kalām atomism to be a continuation of
Epicureanism. In commenting on their theories he says (1.73):
These atoms, they believe, are not, as was supposed by Epicurus and other atomists,
limited in existence, but they say that God creates them always: their non-existence
is also possible.
By distinguishing Kalām atomism from Epicurean atomism in this one respect,

Maimonides implies that in other ways their theories closely resemble each other. In
fact, Maimonides says explicitly that the Kalām theologians adopted their theories,
56 See Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism; Wolfson, Philosophy of the Kalām; and Dhanani, The
Physical Theory of Kalām.
57 One source of information on Epicurus is Alexander of Aphrodisias’s work On Providence, a work
which is extant only in Arabic (see the recent Italian edition: edited by Fazzo and Zonta). Although
Maimonides mentions a text by this name as his source for some of his knowledge of Epicurean
speculation, the text we have today does not seem to have been his main source. While Alexander
attributes atomism in the first place to Leucippus and Democritus, Maimonides does not seem to have
been aware of these names. As Tzvi Langerman has shown, Galen’s writings were also an important
source of knowledge of Epicurean doctrines (Langerman, “Islamic Atomism and the Galenic Tradition”).
58 Possibly, Kalām writers were hesitant to mention Epicurus because so much of their own physical
doctrine resembled his and they may have been reluctant to acknowledge this ancestry of their
religious doctrines. Alternatively, Muslim writers may not have been as interested in Epicurus as Jews
were: since Epicurus is mentioned occasionally in Jewish Tannaitic and Amoraitic literature, Jewish
writers had a special reason to report information about him.
572 GABRIEL DANZIG
especially the existence of atoms and a void, from “the earlier philosophers”—a clear
reference to Epicurus (1.71, 1.78).
The exact significance of the distinction Maimonides draws between Kalām and
Epicurean atomism is not clear. Basing themselves on the Arabic text, most scholars
think that he is saying that for the Kalām the number of atoms is unlimited; but accord-
ing to ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation Maimonides says that the Kalām atoms are not
eternal. These views may well amount to the same thing: unlike Epicurean atoms, which
are eternal but not unlimited in number, the Kalām atoms are both unlimited in number
and limited in duration. This divergence is connected to the theological orientation of
the Kalām, and in particular to their affirmation of creation in time by God. Since
Epicurus believed that the world is eternal he was able to postulate that the atoms too are
eternal and indestructible and that a limited number of atoms is sufficient to ensure the
continuation of the universe for an infinite time in the future. But with a belief in the
temporal origin of the universe, the atoms have a beginning in time and therefore should
have an end in time. In order for the world to continue indefinitely into the future, the
Kalām would have to postulate that God can create new atoms at all times. This would
make them potentially unlimited in number. Indeed, according to the Kalām, God cre-
ates the accidents and the atoms at every instant (see Guide 1.73, sixth premise and 1.74,
fourth method). In this way the Kalām theologians altered a principle of Epicurean
atomism to fit the theory of creation and forged a new theory in which God creates a
world that functions (otherwise) on the principles of Epicurean physics.59
While sharing with the Kalām the aim of defending creation in time, and with it the
possibility of miracles, Maimonides had little sympathy with atomic physics. He
accepted the Aristotelian physics, which he describes in detail in Guide 1.72, emphasiz-
ing several times that “there is no vacuum whatever . . . but the whole space is filled up
with matter.” The emphatic character of this statement suggests a polemic aim of deny-
ing the speculations of those who posited a vacuum.60 Maimonides devoted significant
effort (1.71, 1.73–1.76) to describing and refuting the Kalām account of physics. Since he
viewed the Kalām as derived in part from Epicureanism, his description and critique of
the Kalām deserves to be treated in any discussion of the medieval reception of
Epicureanism. Here I can only offer a brief summary.
The Kalām theologians adopted their theories from Greeks and Syrians who wished
to disagree with the opinions of the (Aristotelian) philosophers in order to support
Christianity, which had gained political dominance (1.71, 177). They felt free to pick and
choose among theories that had been disproved, including atomism (1.71, 178). Their
aim was to support religious law by affirming temporal creation and the possibility of
miracles. They gave a great role to divine will by positing the continuous creation of
59 They also transformed the principle of chance into the principle of divine will. As we will see
below, Rav Nachman also suggests the creation of an Epicurean universe by the deity.
60 The Kabbalistic statement that there is no place that is empty of divinity (Tiqqunei Zohar, 57),
whether understood in a theological or a physical sense, may reflect a similar polemic. As we will see,
the existence of a void became a serious theological problem for Lurianic Kabbalah and Rabbi
Nachman of Breslov.
atoms and denying ordinary causation. However, they “did not base their arguments on
the appearance of that which exists, but considered how being ought to be in order that
it furnish a proof for a particular opinion” (1.71, 178). Thus they denied the existence of
nature, considering that what exists is merely customary and could be different (1.71,
179). Similarly, they did not distinguish between the imagination and the intellect (1.71,
179, 1.73, premise 10), and rejected the evidence of the senses (1.73, premise 12).61
Sometimes the Kalām thinkers were forced into absurdities. For example, in order to
defend their theory that time and space are made up of units, the Kalām theologians
were forced to posit that rotating objects are disassembled while rotating (1.73, third
premise, 197–98).
In addition to mentioning Epicurus in connection with Kalām atomism, Maimonides
mentions him on three other occasions. In chapter 2.13, Maimonides offers three theo-
ries of creation: the theory of the Torah, a Platonic theory, and an Aristotelian theory. He
says that it is useless to mention the theory of Epicurus and his followers, since they have
no knowledge of the existence of the deity, and God’s existence has been demonstrat-
ed.62 Nevertheless, he does tell us that they believe that things come into existence by
chance and that there is no one who governs the world.63 In chapter 2.32, Maimonides
mentions three theories of prophecy: a foolish popular theory, an Aristotelian theory,
and the theory of the Torah. He also mentions Epicurus, commenting again that there is
no need to mention him: since he did not believe in the deity, he certainly did not believe
in prophecy. In chapter 3.17, Maimonides discusses five theories of providence. Here
Maimonides does not say that it is useless to mention Epicurus, but rather includes him
in his list of five opinions, which includes two Kalām theories but omits Plato.
Scholars have wondered why the presentation of opinions on providence diverges in
these ways. One explanation is that Maimonides wishes to draw a parallel to the Book of
Job, where he identifies five opinions on providence.64 But one doubts that he would
have used the Book of Job and found five theories in it if he did not already believe that
61 Maimonides also draws a connection between the Kalām denial of the reliability of the senses,
and the theories of the Greek sophists: “You know that this theory is very ancient, and was the pride of
the sophists, who asserted that they themselves were its authors; this is stated by Galenus in his treatise
on natural forces; and you know well what he says of those who will not admit the evidence of the
senses” (1.73, in fine).
62 Since this proof was based on the eternity of the universe, however, it would not disprove a
modified Epicureanism which held, like Kalām, that the world has a temporal beginning. The Kalām
theory of creation thus asserts a form of Epicureanism which is invulnerable to Maimonides’s
Aristotelian demonstration of God’s existence, even if Maimonides has other objections to it.
63 Maimonides assumes that the existence of God contradicts Epicurean theory. He may not have
been aware that Epicurus posited the existence of gods—classical sources sometimes described
Epicureans as atheists. But since the Epicurean gods played no role in governing the world, his
statement that they denied the existence of a governor is correct. His statement that they do not believe
in God (2.32) is correct in the sense that they did not believe in a god who could be a source of
prophecy. In MT, on the other hand, as we have seen, he does not attribute atheism to the Apiqoros.
64 Strauss suggests that Maimonides uses Epicurus to create five opinions in Guide 3.17 in order to
provide a superficial parallel to the five opinions he lists in Guide 3.23 as occurring in the book of Job. See
Strauss, “Der Ort Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” 37; in the English translation, 544 n. 20.
574 GABRIEL DANZIG
they are five in number. Another path would be to examine the way Maimonides speaks
about these different doctrines. Whereas the Epicurean opinions on creation and proph-
ecy are said to be disproved because the existence of the deity has been demonstrated,
this is not said of the Epicurean opinion on providence. The Epicurean theory of provi-
dence may be worth mentioning because, unlike the other Epicurean doctrines, its refu-
tation is not implied by the demonstration of the existence of the deity. The Epicurean
denial of providence could be consistent with theism since it is not so much a denial of a
theological principle as it is a denial of a principle of natural science, the principle of an
orderly universe. The mere existence of God is not sufficient to demonstrate the
orderliness of the universe, since some theologians posited a world run by divine will
rather than natural necessity. In order to refute the Epicurean denial of providence,
therefore, the demonstration of the existence of God is not sufficient. One must also
demonstrate that the world is governed by natural laws and not by chance, and this is
what Maimonides attempts to do.
According to Maimonides, Epicurus argued that (464):
There is no providence at all with regard to anything whatsoever in all that exists;
that everything in it, the heavens and the things other than they, has happened by
chance and in accordance with the way things were predisposed; and that there is no
one who orders, governs, or is concerned with anything. This is the opinion of
Epicurus. He also professes that there are atoms, and holds that they mingle accord-
ing to chance and that what is generated out of them is generated by chance. Those
in Israel who were unbelievers also professed this opinion; they are those of whom
it is said: They have belied the lord and said: it is not He.
Maimonides continues:
Aristotle has demonstrated that this opinion is inadmissible;65 that it cannot be true
that all things should have been generated by chance; and that on the contrary there
is someone who orders and governs them. In what precedes we have already men-
tioned something of this.
Aristotle does not claim merely that the deity exists; rather he claims that there is a being
who orders and governs things. The demonstration of this claim, the proof that not all
things have been generated by chance, is offered in 2.20 (312–13). Quoting a passage
from Aristotle’s Physics, Maimonides argues that the regularity of the phenomena of the
universe shows that they do not come into being by chance or spontaneity, but that they
have a cause that renders it necessary for them to come into being.
But despite his support for Aristotle, Maimonides does not follow him completely in
this matter. The necessity of which Aristotle speaks differs fundamentally from the will
and purpose that he himself sees as underlying the generation of things. Maimonides is
65 Maimonides appears to have believed that Epicurus lived prior to Aristotle. He may have assumed
that Epicurus is the object of Aristotle’s arguments in Physics 2, and he does not seem to have been
aware of the existence of Leucippus and Democritus.
persuaded that necessity is not the whole story because of weaknesses he finds in the
Aristotelian account. In regard to the heavens in particular, there are numerous irregu-
larities which do not seem explainable on Aristotelian principles (2.19). Such irregulari-
ties might suggest that chance plays a role; but Maimonides does not contemplate a
return to the Epicurean view. He formulates a third view which improves on Aristotle
and Epicurus by combining the valid points of both and correcting the errors and
excesses of both.66 Just as the existence of some degree of irregularity contradicts
Aristotle’s theory of natural necessity, so too the existence of a large degree of regularity
contradicts the Epicurean affirmation of chance. Maimonides argues that this combina-
tion of orderliness and disorderliness is exactly what we would expect from the pur-
poseful acts of an intelligent being. He concludes that, “all this has been produced for an
object that we do not know and is not an aimless or fortuitous act” (2.19, 310).
Aside from its metaphysical merits, Maimonides’s theory offers valuable support for
his twin program of Torah and natural science. One cannot study natural science if there
is no order in the universe, and the truths one derives from such study cannot be eternal
truths unless the order of the universe is an eternal one. One cannot strive for union
with the active intellect if there is no active intellect guiding and influencing the sub-
lunar realm. One cannot reasonably uphold the laws of the Torah if there is no divine
lawgiver and no divine enforcer of the law; nor can one strive to resemble the divinity in
one’s actions if there is none. By affirming Aristotelian nature, Maimonides allows for
the study of natural science; by diverging from Aristotle, recognizing the marginal role
of disorder and attributing it to a purposeful divinity, Maimonides validates the Torah
and justifies its use in educating, instructing, and guiding the members of the religious
community towards their highest human potential. The validation of the law had
already been accomplished in principle by the Kalām theologians; but by rejecting
necessity and embracing a radical form of divine volition they had made natural science
untenable. Maimonides’s opposition to the Kalām thus has the same rationale as his
opposition to Epicurus: both destroy science by denying the manifest reality of a largely
ordered universe.67
Supporting the theological aims of Kalām,68 but rejecting their physics, Maimonides
found a way to affirm Aristotelian science as far as is justified while at the same time
allowing room for a deity who supports the divine law. Divine will remains free, but it is
the will of an intelligent being whose purposeful actions rarely diverge from the patterns
of behavior that wisdom and necessity demand. Perhaps this is the reason that
66 This is, incidentally, his regular method in resolving Talmudic disputes. See Levinger, Darchei
ha-maḥashavah ha-hilchatit shel ha-Rambam; meḥqar ʹal ha-methodah shel Mishneh Torah.
67 From the point of view of natural science, the doctrine of a capricious divine will is little more
than a religious version of the Epicurean doctrine of chance. The sole difference between them is a
subjective one: while those of religious faith attribute random events to an unfathomable deity, those
lacking in faith attribute them to chance.
68 “For I reach the goal that every Mutakallim desires, without abolishing the nature of existence
and without disagreeing with Aristotle with regard to any point that he has demonstrated” (1.71, 182).
576 GABRIEL DANZIG
Maimonides considers the Epicurean opinion on providence worth mentioning: ulti-

mately, in his emphasis on chance, Epicurus discovered important limitations to
Aristotelian science and paved the way for the recognition of a divine being who acts
both intelligently and purposefully.
There are however difficulties with Maimonides’s disproof of the Epicurean theory of
creation. After pointing out in Guide 2.20 that the natural things of the world do not
come into existence by chance, Maimonides says, “Now if the particular things of the
world are not due to chance, how can the whole of it be due to chance?” On the surface
this is an argument from the part to the whole and concerns things generated in time.
However, since it concerns the generation of the universe as a whole, it also concerns the
origin or creation of the world. But Maimonides has already argued (Guide 2.17) that no
inference can be drawn from the nature of things as they are after they have come into
existence to their nature when coming into being. Thus Maimonides’s own argument for
creation, which is based on the nature of things as they are, should not be valid. Indeed,
if no inference can be derived from the nature of things as they are, Maimonides’s dem-
onstration of the existence of God is also in doubt. Maimonides assumed that if the
world is temporal it must have a creator (1.71, 180–81). But the opinion that nothing can
come into being spontaneously seems to be a conclusion based on observation of the
world as it is, and therefore, by Maimonides’s principle, not applicable to the time of the
genesis of the world. It is not clear whether or not Maimonides was aware of this diffi-
culty. If he was, he may have had more sympathy for Epicureanism than he admits.
The recognition that Epicurus revealed weaknesses in Aristotelianism provides one
explanation for Maimonides’s mentioning Epicurus. On the other hand, Maimonides
may mention him simply in order to negate his theories forcefully, since heretical views
did exist in the Islamic environment and needed to be addressed.69 But there is a third
reason why Maimonides mentions Epicurus, even when saying it is superfluous to do so.
Maimonides seems to use Epicurus for the purpose of defending Aristotle. Many reli-
gious people of his time would have lumped the two Greek philosophers together as
examples of foreign sources of heretical ideas. By distinguishing Epicurus’s theories
from those of Aristotle, Maimonides implies that there are significant differences
between the two thinkers. An Aristotelian and an Epicurean, Maimonides makes clear,
are two completely different things. Indeed, it is striking how many of Maimonides’s
thirteen principles of Jewish theology (Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin, 10)
would be affirmed by Aristotle and how strongly his theory of providence resembles his
own account of Aristotle’s (Guide 3.17–18). By mentioning Epicurus, describing his theo-
ries in outline, and distinguishing them from those of Aristotle, Maimonides contrib-
utes to the rehabilitation of Aristotle.
69 See Stroumsa, “Elisha ben Abuyah and Muslim Heretics in Maimonides’ Writings.”
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Nachman was a Chassidic teacher, the grandson of the founder of the Chassidic
movement, Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer also known as “The Baàl Shem Tov.” Living in the
eighteenth century, he produced his work orally in the form of discourses that were
recorded and published by his disciple Rabbi Nathan. These discourses are character-
ized by rich and evocative imagery and word play as well as profound psychological
insight. Because of his unusual manner of expression it is not always possible to say
exactly what he meant. Certainly, he did not express himself with the rigorous terminol-
ogy usually associated with philosophers.
Rabbi Nachman’s discourses on apiqorsut (heresy or Epicureanism), like all of his dis-
courses, evolved from the contemplation of the Jewish sources, including the kabbalistic
literature. He would certainly have read of the concept of the empty space in his studies
of Lurianic kabbala,70 where it plays a key role in explaining the creation of the world.
But unlike previous Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Nachman drew a connection between this
empty space, which he calls the halal hapanui, and Epicureanism. It is not easy to know
how he knew that Epicurus postulated the existence of an empty space, since this is not
explicitly mentioned in any previous Jewish writing known to me. He may have inferred
this from Maimonides’s discussion of the atomic theories of the Kalām, who also
affirmed the void. Alternatively, he may have learned of Epicurean teachings through
his contact with the secular learning of his time.
Rabbi Nachman writes about apiqorsut in three of his discourses in Likutei Mohoran,
but I will focus on discourse 64 where he treats it at greatest length.71 This discourse
originated in speculation concerning statements found in Maimonides’s Commentary
on the Mishnah. On the Mishnaic statement, “Know what to respond (lehashiv) to the
Apiqoros,” Maimonides comments by quoting a biblical verse which in its original con-
text warns against associating with a loose woman: “Those who come to her will not
return (lo yeshuvun).” (Proverbs 2.19) He quotes this in order to support his opinion that
those who entertain heretical thoughts can never return to the Jewish faith and that
conversation with them is therefore forbidden. By a creative interpretation of the first
passage, Rabbi Nachman brought the two passages into apparent contradiction. The
word “to respond” (lehashiv) can also mean “to bring back” or “to cause to return.”
Interpreted homiletically, therefore, the Mishnah says, “Know how to cause the Apiqoros
to return,” a statement which seems to contradict Maimonides’s contention that those
who entertain heretical thoughts can never return. How can one cause them to return if
they cannot return? And especially if one is forbidden to speak to them?
Rabbi Nachman sharpens the question by positing two kinds of apiqorsut: one which
is based on being (the so-called shattered vessels of creation), and can therefore be
70 See Eitz Ḥ aim, heichal aleph kuf, anaf beit where it is called maqom panui or ḥalal reiqani.
71 For a useful review of the literature on the interpretation of this important discourse, see
Goshen-Gottstein, “Speech, Silence, Song,” 143–88.
578 GABRIEL DANZIG
reconciled with revealed truth, and one which is based on non-being (the empty space),
and therefore can never be reconciled with revealed truth—at least not before the last
days. The former are difficult questions which are raised in the non-Jewish sciences or
external wisdom. These questions are not insuperable for the human mind and do not
contradict revealed truth. Since they are based on being they can be understood and
explained in accordance with religious truth by the application of human intelligence.
The apiqorsut that stems from the empty space presents a more serious challenge
since the questions it spawns cannot be answered. It is not merely the limitation of the
human intellect that creates the difficulty. These questions are unanswerable because
they are based on some aspect of being—or non-being—that really is, as it were, incom-
patible with religious truth. Because there is a space in which the divine is really absent,
so to speak, there is a real basis for the heretical opinions that deny the presence of God.
Relying on the Kabbalistic concept of retraction, he explains that it was necessary for
God to create this empty space in order to allow the world to come into being. But
because this secular reality was created by God, it offers no real contradiction to the
belief in God. In effect, God has created an Epicurean universe within a larger divine
reality. In this way Rabbi Nachman creates a theoretical explanation for all possible con-
flicts between the principles of Judaism and science.
Since God made the empty space, it is a created entity. Prior to the retraction this
space was full, and even today the surrounding regions remain full of divinity. Using
pseudo-geographical terminology, Rabbi Nachman argues that a sphere of emptiness or
void surrounds our world, but beyond it is a realm of fullness. Since we are enclosed
within this sphere of emptiness, we cannot perceive the fullness beyond. We gain con-
tact with that divine realm only by means of faith. Faith enables us to cross the empty
space and come into contact with the divine. Because Judaism promotes this faith, Jews
are referred to in the Bible as Hebrews or “those who cross over.”
There is a parallel between this metaphysical discussion and classical religious discus-
sions of free will. God’s control of the universe has to be retracted to some degree in
order to allow human beings to make free choices. Although this retraction is regretta-
ble from one point of view, it is necessary for the creation of fully independent human
beings. So too, the empty space of Rabbi Nachman is not only a metaphysical reality, it
also has psychological and even sociological ramifications. The emptiness of our uni-
verse enables the possibility of contentions among Torah scholars, contentions that may
seem entirely regrettable since they create an area of uncertainty concerning observance
of the Torah and hence stimulate apiqorsut. As is clear from the manuscript version of
this discourse, written by Rabbi Nachman himself and reproduced in the back of some
editions of Likutei Mohoran, heretical questions stem both from the metaphysical empty
space and from the empty space created by contentions among the legal scholars. These
questions have some positive results, since they make room for creativity in human
society, just as the original empty space made room for the creation of the world. But
they also have negative results: individuals who become deeply involved in the ques-
tions that stem from the empty space are liable to become stuck forever in futile investi-
gations and never gain apprehension of God. These are those who are referred to in the
scriptural verse All those who enter her will not return. They will not return because they
will find no evidence of God in such a region. How then can one cause them to return?
Since questions that arise from this source cannot be answered by the human intel-
lect, Rabbi Nachman does not advise attempting to answer them. The proper response
to the empty space is not an answer but silence.72 Moses reached the highest level of
human intellectual apprehension, and yet, as Rabbi Nachman argues, he too was unable
to comprehend the empty space, and he therefore chose silence. Rabbi Nachman praises
Moses for this attribute, which is evident in his biblical attribute of being hard of speech
(Ex. 4) and in the Talmudic story in which God commands him to be silent in the face of
a challenge to theodicy (Menaḥ ot 29b). This accords with Maimonides’s injunction to
avoid conversation with the Apiqoros. This silence itself has some power. Once one rec-
ognizes that the absence of God is a result of God’s own retraction of his presence, one
will cease to be disturbed by the prospect of the empty space. The presence of righteous
individuals, who face the empty space without disturbance, can retrieve many lost souls.
In a sense, such individuals will have done what God could not do: they will have filled
some part of the empty space with their presence.
There are more means as well. As Zvi Mark has argued, Rabbi Nachman does not
completely deny the existence of divinity in the empty space.73 In fact, no place can be
completely empty of the divine presence, not even the ḥ alal hapanui. And just as there is
some trace of divinity in the empty space, so too silence is not the only appropriate
response to it. What is necessarily absent from the empty space is not divinity, or even
sound, but rather thought and speech. The silence that Rav Nachman demands is an
absence of thought and speech, but it does not mean complete silence. In addition to
their mere presence, the righteous have a special power to retrieve lost souls by the
power of song. Even apiqorsut has its own corresponding music, as is evident from the
story of Elisha ben Abuya who studied books of heresy and never ceased singing Greek
poetry (Ḥ agigah 15b). Although he is usually presented in Rabbinic literature as a heretic
who never returned to the fold, Rabbi Nachman seems to indicate that his singing
enabled him to escape the dangers of heresy, causing the books of the heretics to “fall”
from him. The connection between silence and song is indicated by the fact that Moses
himself, who was blessed by the attribute of silence, was also given the attribute of song
(Ex. 15). By means of the music of the righteous, Rabbi Nachman suggests, it is possible
to overcome the challenge posed by Maimonides’s stern warning that those who enter
apiqorsut can never return while maintaining his injunction against speaking with
them.
This discourse brings us back to the anecdotes about the Apiqoros that we started
with. Rabbi Nachman’s claim that there is a metaphysical basis for heretical opinions
grants them a legitimacy that helps explain the semi-honorable status of the Apiqoros in
72 In the manuscript version of this discourse, Rabbi Nachman explains that silence is appropriate
also because the empty space was created before the world. Speech however was used only in the
creation of the world, not in the creation of the empty space.
73 Mark, Mysticism and Madness in the Work of Rav Nachman of Breslov (Heb. 257–80; English trans.
ch. 4).
580 GABRIEL DANZIG
traditional orthodox society. Although the answers to which these questions naturally
lead are wrong there is no rational way to know that. Anyone who thinks that it is possi-
ble to reconcile science and religion by reason has not only failed to understand science,
he has also failed to consider the implications of the Lurianic kabbalah. For this reason,
the true Apiqoros would continue to observe the law despite his doubts. While acknowl-
edging the seeming reality of this secular realm, Rabbi Nachman places it within a larger
religious context of creationism. It is as if God has created a world in which divinity is
absent, so to speak. Within this seemingly contradictory metaphysical reality, the most
righteous individuals are allowed and commanded to enter the realm of the seemingly
secular. We asked above how Rabbi Nachman knew that Epicurus postulated the void.
The answer seems to be that he entered this realm himself, that he had studied some of
the secular sciences of his day, but that, like the wise head of a Rabbinic academy, he
would not recommend such study to others. By remaining philosophically silent while
discussing the nature of Epicureanism, in a form of literature that has affinities with
song, he maintained a presence in the realm of apiqorsut that would retrieve many lost
souls.
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Dhanani, A. The Physical Theory of Kalām. New York: Brill, 1994.
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shel Mishneh Torah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1965.
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chapter 23
Ea r ly Chr isti a n it y
Ilaria Ramelli
Many fragments and testimonies in Usener’s fundamental collection Epicurea1 come from
ancient Christian sources, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Abbot, from
Lactantius to Jerome to Theodoret, from Tertullian to Origen, from Hippolytus to
Augustine, from Theophilus to Nemesius, from Eusebius to John Chrysostom and Ps.
Chrysostom, from Ambrose to Salvianus of Marseilles and Boethius, from Justin Martyr to
Dionysius of Alexandria, to some Byzantine gnomologia and the Suda. Most of these come
from Clement, Origen, Eusebius, Lactantius, and Augustine, but other Fathers should be
added, such as Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. Even if Patristic interest in Epicureanism
is often critical, and sometimes imprecise or distorted, nevertheless it is tangible.2
Norman DeWitt argued that the teachings of Epicurus were well known to Paul, as
well as to many people in his day, and are reflected in Paul’s letters, from Galatians to
Philippians to 1 Corinthians, and Jack Hannah more recently argued for an Epicurean
interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas.3 The author of what became
the canonical Acts of the Apostles, toward the end of the first century (or perhaps, as
some critics contend, at the beginning of the second)4 depicted the Epicureans as
1 See Usener, Epicurea; translated and updated in Ramelli, Epicurea, in the edition of Hermann
Usener and Stoici romani minori, chapter on Manilius, and review by Gretchen Reydams-Schils; see
also Ramelli, “L’oeuvre d’Usener sur Épicure.” In his Index fontium appended to Usener, Epicurea,
421–39, which is also translated and integrated in my edition, Usener himself indicated the Patristic
passages that are useful as sources or testimonia on Epicurus and his doctrine.
2 Schmid, “Epikur”; Erler, “Epikuros,” 1138; Jungkuntz, “Christian Approval of Epicureanism” and
“Fathers, Heretics, and Epicureans.”
3 DeWitt, St. Paul and Epicurus, who, however, counted as authentically Pauline disputed Pauline
epistles such as Colossians and Ephesians; Hannah, You Will Not Taste Death.
4 For a second-century dating, see at least Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, esp. 185–229; and
Pervo, Dating Acts and Acts: A Commentary, who proposes a date around 115 ce. Alexander, “The
Gospel According to Celsus” finds it difficult to suppose such a positive portrait of the relationship
between Christianity and the Roman Empire under Trajan, and suggests a composition in the 90s of
the first century in Rome, “in a large and self-confident Jewish community with a strong Jewish-
Christian component.” Traditional dates are 60–64 ce, on the basis of the absence of any mention of
the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce and of the death of Paul. For other recent works that are sensitive to the
Early Christianity 583
a ttentive hearers of the Christian message at the very beginning of its being preached,
around 50 ce, in the key episode of the apostle Paul’s speech in Athens in Acts 17:18–34.
This is the grounding and inspiring text for Patristic philosophy: Paul expounds the
Christian doctrine before philosophers and (at least in the intention of the author of
Acts) in philosophical terms, in the city that was the heart of the Greek philosophical
tradition, the city not only of the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Stoa, but of Epicurus’s
Garden as well. Although most of Patristic philosophy will be Platonic, the author of
Acts, remarkably, does not speak of Platonists, but only of Epicureans and Stoics as the
Athenian philosophers interested in what Paul had to say about theology.5 The
Epicureans are even mentioned first. According to the account of Acts, some among
“the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” heard Paul preach in Athens and wondered
what that “babbler” who “picked up scraps of knowledge” (σπερμολόγος) had to say.
They noticed that he seemed to introduce “foreign deities” (ξένων δαιμονίων); this is
why they brought him onto the Areopagus, either for intellectual curiosity or, according
to some, for a trial with the accusation of introducing new divinities.6 They invited him
to expound his “new teaching” (καινὴ διδαχή) to them, with contents that to them were
strange (ξενίζοντα). Later anti-Christian polemics will be replete with the notion that
Christianity was something new and extraneous to the Greek tradition.7 But the author
of Acts, perhaps because he was already facing such accusations, depicts Paul as endeav-
oring to present the Christian message in terms that were familiar to the Greek philo-
sophical tradition, and not only the Stoic, as is usually remarked, but, as I shall point
out, also the Epicurean.8 Thus, he identified the “unknown god” to whom an altar was
dedicated in Athens with the Jewish-Christian divinity, who created all and continues
to vivify all, who needs nothing and does not abide in human handicrafts, but in
whom, rather, human beings “live, move, and exist.” At this point, a verse is even added
which is commonly considered to be a Stoic quotation, from Aratus Phaen. 5,9
historical question in relation to Acts see, e.g., Black, An Aramaic Approach; Tyson, Luke, Judaism, and
the Scholars; Heusler, Kapitalprozesse im Lukanischen Doppelwerk; Marguerat, The First Christian
Historian; Penner and Vander Stichele, Contextualizing Acts; Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins; and
Bovon, Luke the Theologian.
5 The silence of Acts on Platonists may well be due to the fact that the text actually reflects a
historical encounter of Paul with Athenian philosophers around 50 ce. For at that time indeed Middle
Platonism was not yet established in Athens. Ammonius of Alexandria, who was the teacher of
Plutarch, had not yet arrived at Athens. See Ramelli, “Alle radici della filosofia patristica,” 149–76 and
“Philosophen und Prediger.”
6 So Lestang, “À la louange du dieu inconnu,” 394–408.
7 See Ramelli, “Bardesane e la sua scuola”; “Ethos and Logos.”
8 This is a foundational episode in Christian reception of classical culture. See Ramelli, “Dieu et la
philosophie” and “Christianity and Classical Culture.”
9 Cf. Martin, Aratos, Phénomènes, 2.144–46, with parallels to Homer and references to the notion of
Zeus as father (on which see Ramelli, “Dio come padre nello Stoicismo romano,” 343–51 and
“L’interpretazione allegorica filosofica di Zeus,” 155–80). Kidd, Aratus, Phaenomena, 72–73, 166
hypothesizes that Aratus in turn quoted Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus v. 4; see, however, Martin, Aratos,
Phénomènes, 2.145 on the difficulties in the reconstruction of this verse. Pohlenz thought that Paul was
quoting Aratus; Schwabl and Wilamowitz that he was quoting Cleanthes; see also Euripides Hipp. 450.
Cf. Renehan, “Acts 17:28”; Zuntz, “Vers 4 des Kleanthes-Hymnus”; Giangrande, “Kleanthes’ Hymn to
584 ILARIA RAMELLI
perhaps indirectly,10 or even from Cleanthes: “We are also the offspring” of that divinity
(τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν).
In the account of Acts 17, Paul’s speech goes on with the announcement of the final
Judgment and of the resurrection of Jesus and the dead. Here Paul’s discourse broke,
since the notion of resurrection was incompatible with the thought of his hearers, both
Stoics and Epicureans alike. They said they would listen to Paul on another occasion on
this point.11 The Epicureans denied that one’s conscience can continue to exist after
death; this is also why they didn’t believe in punishments or rewards “in the other world”
(αἰώνια; cf., e.g., Epicurus Ep. Hdt. 81) and thought that the only eternally existing
(ἀΐδια) realities were atoms and void (see, for instance, Ep. Hdt. 44; Usener 317).12 Stoics
also regarded human souls as material and doomed to dissolve at a certain point. They
did admit of an apokatastasis or palingenesis, but at the end of a cosmic cycle. The term
ἀποκατάστασις is used by Eusebius, PE 15.19.1–3, referring to the Stoics’ cosmological
conception of the cyclical return of the universe to its original condition at the end of
every great year. Their use of this term was related to its astronomical meaning, one of
the many this noun had in antiquity. The noun ἀποκατάστασις in Stoic cosmology indi-
cates the repetition of a cosmic cycle (SV 2.599, 2.625),13 based on eons (αἰῶνες) or “great
years” that return always identical with one another, or almost identical,14 with the same
events and the same people, who have the same behaviors, forever and ever. These cycles
depend on periodical conflagrations (ἐκπυρώσεις) in which everything is dissolved into
fire, which is ether and the Logos, and then expands again, creating a new world. The
Stoics, in turn, were inspired by Heraclitus in respect to the conflagration,15 and by the
Zeus, line 4”; Appel, “Zur Interpretation des vierten Verses”; Ramelli, “Aspetti degli sviluppi”; Thom,
“Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus.”
10 So Edwards, “Quoting Aratus,” 268–69; v. 5 was already quoted in Hellenistic Judaism by
Aristobulus fr. 4. Balch, “The Areopagus Speech,” 52–79 points out parallels with Posidonius.
11 See Setzer, Resurrection of the Body and “Talking Their Way into Empire.”
12 See analysis in Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity, 34–35.
13 SV 2.599 = Eusebius PE 15.19.1–3: “The common logos, that is, the common nature, becomes more
and more abundant and in the end dries everything out and resolves everything into itself . . . returning
to the first logos and to that famous ‘resurrection’ that completes the ‘great year,’ when . . . universal
apokatastasis takes place.” 2.625 = Nemesius Nat. hom. 38: “The Stoics maintain that the planets will
return [ἀποκαθισταμένους] to the same constellation . . . universal apokatastasis takes place, not only
once, but many times, or more exactly the same things will keep returning [ἀποκαθίστασθαι] to the
infinite, without end.” It must be observed that the terms ἀποκατάστασις and ἀποκαθίστημι are attested
for the Stoics only by Christian sources. Marcus Aurelius (Ad se ipsum 11.1.3), Simplicius (In Ph.
886.12–13), and Alexander of Aphrodisias (In Ar. Gen. et corr. 314.13–15) have παλιγγενεσία and πάλιν
γίγνομαι. However, καθίστημι is attested in a Greek fragment of Chrysippus on apokatastasis,
preserved by Lactantius (Inst. 7.23 = SV 2.623): “It is evident that it is not at all impossible that we too,
after death, once certain cycles of time [περίοδοι χρόνου] have elapsed, are restored/reconstituted
[καταστήσασθαι] into the structure that we have now.” Translations in this essay are always mine. A
systematic study of apokatastasis in ancient philosophy, down to late Neoplatonism, with Proclus and
Damascius, is needed and in the works.
14 On differences in the attestations see Barnes, “La doctrine du retour éternel,” 9–12; Long, “The
Stoics on World-Conflagration and Everlasting Recurrence,” 26–31.
15 Gourinat, “Éternel retour et temps périodique” admits that the Stoics were inspired by Heraclitus
on this score, as was already postulated by Friedrich Nietzsche, but he considers the doctrine of the
Pythagoreans especially for the notion of the “Great Year.” They also seem to have drawn
from Empedocles the idea of cosmic cycles based on a swing in the prevalence of Philia
or Neikos.16 The Stoic apokatastasis doctrine, with its infinite sequence of eons, and its
necessitarianism, was criticized by Origen, who endeavored to establish a different,
Christian model (see, e.g., CC 4.12, 4.67–68, 5.20; Prin. 2.3).17
Epicureans and Stoics did not admit of a resurrection from the dead, but they did
admit of, and were interested in, a theological discourse. This is why Paul, according to
Acts 17, in Athens had in fact a partial success.18 Some of his hearers did not accept his
announcement of the resurrection, but he was not lampooned for the theological expo-
sition that preceded it. This was quite acceptable to both Epicureans and Stoics, and
indeed Paul attempted to adapt it, not only to Stoic theology, but also, as I shall argue, to
the Epicurean.
In Judaism, even if Judaism was Hellenized in Paul’s time,19 Epicureanism was exe-
crated not only for the denial of the resurrection—which was denied also by a Jewish
“sect” (αἵρεσις), notoriously that of the Sadducees—and of a personal survival in the
afterlife, but also for the denial of divine providence and of the creation of the world by
God. Therefore, the Epicureans were considered to be destined to damnation after
death. However, precisely in that they were no atheists in the least (Philo himself, at least
formally, did not accuse Epicurus of atheism), they were interested in listening to what
Paul had to say about God.20 Exactly in the time of Paul, the Roman Stoic Seneca much
valued Epicureanism and was concerned about the misunderstanding it suffered at the
hands of many.21 The same misunderstandings would surface again, sometimes even
intensified, among early Christian authors.
eternal return to be above all a Stoic doctrine. He sharply distinguishes the doctrine of Zeno, and
Chrysippus’s modifications of it, aimed at making it less necessitarian; though, some Stoics did not
profess it, such as Zeno of Tarsus and Diogenes of Babylonia, and especially Boethus and Panaetius.
See also Gourinat, “Nietzsche et les Grecs”; and, on the Stoic apokatastasis depicted by Dio of Prusa,
Ramelli, “Le origini della filosofia.”
16 Cf. Pierris, The Empedoclean Kosmos; and Primavesi, “Empedocle: il problema” and Empedokles
Physika I.
17 See Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis and Tempo ed eternità, introduction. For a
contextualization in all of patristic philosophy: see “Time and Eternity.”
18 P. J. Williams, The New Testament in Its First-Century Setting; Winter, Philo and Paul among the
Sophists, 13–14.
19 I do not list bibliography on Philo of Alexandria, as it would be endless. For the influence of Greek
thought on Judaism at the time of Paul I just cite: Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, The “Hellenisation” of
Judaea in the First Century after Christ, and Kleine Schriften; Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity;
Horst, Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity; and Hanhart, Studien zur LXX und zum hellenistischen Judentum.
20 On Epicureanism in the imperial age, besides bibliography on Diogenes of Oenoanda, see
Fornaro, “Dione Crisostomo, epicurei e Lucrezio”; Ferguson, “Epicureanism under the Roman Empire,”
esp. 2275–77 for a comparison with Paul; Criscuolo, “Aspetti della polemica antiepicurea nel
tardoantico,” with respect to Seneca, Numenius, and Clement of Alexandria.
21 See, e.g., Mutschmann, “Seneca und Epikur”; Sachelli, Lineamenti epicurei nello Stoicismo di
Seneca; Marchesi, Seneca, 383–89; Schottlaender, “Epikureisches bei Seneca”; Campese, Seneca e
l’epicureismo; Motto and Clark, “Paradoxum Senecae. The Epicurean Stoic”; André, “Sénèque et
l’Épicurisme”; Lo Moro, “Seneca ed Epicuro”; Maso, “Il problema dell’Epicureismo nell’Ep. 33 di
586 ILARIA RAMELLI
Indeed, the Epicureans could be interested in Paul’s theological discourse in that they
denied providence, but not the existence of deities. And the author of Acts, between the first
and the second century, seems to have been well aware of this, in spite of the accusations of
atheism that circulated against Epicurus and his followers, long before, and independently
of, Jewish and Christian accusations (see, for instance, Arrighetti frr. 177 and 179). Epicurus’s
and the Epicureans’ interest in theology and their admission of the existence of divinities is
indeed well attested in Epicurus’s own fragments22 and in Philodemus (On Gods 3, col.
10.34–38).23 Epicurus thinks that simulacra come to human beings from the divinities,
composed by finest and subtlest atoms, which constitute a “quasi-body,” endowed with a
“quasi-blood.”24 These simulacra come from the intermundia and can reach humans while
they are awake and while they are asleep;25 thence comes the human notion of the divinities,
a “clear” or “manifest” (ἐναργής) pre-notion. Due to the fineness of those simulacra, human
beings cannot grasp them by means of their sense-perception, but by a representative intu-
ition of their mind (ἐπιβολὴ φανταστικὴ τῆς διανοίας).26 Pre-notions of the gods are com-
mon to all human beings, independently of their culture and race. Epicurus even produces
a proof of the existence of the gods in Usener 352, preserved by Cicero ND 1.16.43, who
translates πρόληψις by anticipatio: the very universality of these pre-notions of the divinities
proves the existence of the gods. Another way to arrive at the deities, according to Epicurus,
is by inference: on the basis of the principle of isonomia or equivalence in the universe,
human beings in the world(s) must correspond to the same number of divinities in the
intermundia.27 The loss of atoms due to the continual emanation of simulacra is compen-
sated by an uninterrupted inflow; this is why the deities are never destroyed (Cic. ND
1.19.50, 39.109): they push away destructive atoms (Arrighetti fr. 183).28
Seneca”; Bringmann, “Seneca’s Apokolokyntosis,” 885–88; Setaioli, Seneca e I Greci; Freise, “Die
Bedeutung der Epikur-Zitate in den Schriften Senecas”; Mazzoli, “Le Epistulae morales ad Lucilium di
Seneca”; Rist, “Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy”; Criscuolo, “Aspetti della polemica antiepicurea nel
tardoantico,” 149–67; Gigante, “Seneca in partibus Epicuri,” “Conobbe Seneca l’opera di Filodemo?,” and
“Seneca filosofo e le scuole di pensiero”; Ramelli, “Nostra autem conversatio in caelis est;” Schiesaro,
“Seneca and Epicurus.”
22 Ep. Men. 123; Ep. Pyth. 77; Usener 255, 352–66; Arrighetti fr. 175.
23 On Epicurean theology I refer to Spinelli and Verde’s chapter in this volume and to the
bibliographical references in Ramelli, “Alle radici della filosofia patristica.”
24 Cf. Cic. ND 1.18.49; Hermarchus, Longo Auricchio frr. 32–33; Epicurus, Arrighetti fr. 19.1 and SV 24.
25 Usener 353, on which see Kleve, “Die Urbewegung,” 87–90; cf. Arrighetti fr. 72.
26 Cf. Arrighetti frr. 194–95; Cic. ND 1.39.109; Epicurus, Usener 352; Usener 355 = Arrighetti fr. 257;
Usener 357; Arrighetti fr. 39; Lucr. DRN 4.722–48. On mind in Epicureanism see Konstan and Verde,
“Mind in the Epicurean Tradition.”
27 Cf. Usener 352 = Arrighetti fr. 176; Merlan, “Zwei Fragen,” 196–217; Schmid, “Götter und
Menschen in der Theologie Epikurs,” 133–40; Frassinetti, “Cicerone e gli dèi di Epicuro,” 113–32;
Freymuth, “Eine Anwendung,” 101–15; Kleve, “Die Unvergänglichkeit”; Isnardi Parente, Opere di
Epicuro, 32–33, 374 n. 1; Giannantoni, “Epicuro e l’ateismo antico,” 25–26. See also Usener 358 and
Arrighetti fr. 179; and Demetr. Lac. De diis, De Falco col. 24.79–80.
28 Cf. Ep. Men. 124; Arrighetti fr. 33. Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, 538–40 adduces Usener 361 =
Arrighetti frr. 181–82. On the immortality of the divinities in Epicureanism, see Kleve, “Die
Unvergänglichkeit,” 55–62; Swoboda, Epicureae doctrinae, 273–80; on the pre-notions of the divinities
see also Kleve, “Die Urbewegung,” 25–30.
The gods not only exist, according to Epicurus, but they are also models of happiness,
and therefore they serve as ethical models for human beings.29 However, since their per-
fect happiness rests on their ataraxia (Arrighetti fr. 184),30 they cannot care for humans
and their vicissitudes. Hence the Epicurean doctrine of the absence of providence and of
teleology, as well as the denial of Fate and divination.31 The rejection of Fate surely
encountered Christian approval; Patristic authors such as (in chronological order)
Bardaisan, Origen, Diodore of Tarsus, and Gregory of Nyssa all engaged in refutations
of the doctrine of Fate, especially as based on astral and climatic determinism.32 On the
other hand, the denial of providence and of teleology caused a recurrent, as well as
undeserved, accusation of atheism to be leveled against Epicurus,33 to the point that his
name repeatedly appears in lists of ancient atheists—those which often were known,
directly or indirectly, to early Christian authors as well. Nevertheless, Philodemus attests
that Epicurus even observed traditional public worship, and recommended that his fol-
lowers do the same; his reverence for the divinities, “supremely good and happy natures,”
is confirmed by other attestations.34 Epicurus’s statement in Ep. Men. 124, that “the impi-
ous is not the person who eliminates the deities of the populace, but the one who ascribes
to the divinities the conceptions of the populace,” sounds like a reply to a charge of
29 See Arrighetti frr. 33 and 184; Bignone, Epicuro, 44 n. 7 and 45 n. 1; Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere,
539–40; Isnardi Parente, Opere di Epicuro, 272 n. 1; also 46–47 on the imitation of the divinity on the
part of the sage.
30 Cf. Usener 88 = Arrighetti fr. 28, which, along with Usener 41 (= Arrighetti fr. 19.5), is the only
testimony of Book 13 of On Nature, in which, just as in Book 12 of the same work and the Ep. Men., the
relationship between the divinities and the human beings was treated.
31 Cf. Usener 374 (to be connected with Sextus Empiricus P. 3.9–11) and Arrighetti frr. 27.1, 28, 33,
and 179; Ep. Men. 124; on the denial of providence, see Arrighetti frr. 178 and 180–82, Usener 364–83,
and Lucr. DRN 2.167–83; 1090–1104; Cic. ND 1.20 and 1.54–55 with the notes of Isnardi Parente, Opere
di Epicuro, 391–93; against divination and Stoic theodicy, see: Usener 395; Lucr. DRN 5.146–234;
Epicurus, Arrighetti fr. 179; and Cic. ND 1.20.53–56.
32 See Motta, Il Contra Fatum di Gregorio di Nissa, with my review; Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa;
“Origen, Bardaisan”; Bardaisan on Human Nature, Fate, and Free Will; “Bardaisan of Edessa, Origen,
and Imperial Philosophy”; “Bardaisan, Freewill, and Astrological Determinism” on Bardaisan, Origen,
Diodore, and Gregory.
33 On which see Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus.”
34 DL 10.10, in which his pietas erga deos is exalted; Cic. ND 1.20.56; Philodemus in Usener 85 =
Arrighetti fr. 135; Usener 142 = Arrighetti fr. 66; Usener 157 = Arrighetti fr. 86; Usener 169 = Arrighetti
fr. 93; Usener 386–87 (on which see Capasso, Margini ercolanesi, 30); Nestle, Griechische Religiosität,
394–95; Bignone, L’Aristotele perduto, 2.369; Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux, 65–66 and 86–90; Des
Places, La religion grecque, 262; Salem, La mort n’est rien pour nous, 42–55. Those are debated passages
concerning Epicurean worship, along with fr. 8 col. 1 of P.Herc. 1232 of Philodemus, On Epicurus
(omitted by Usener and Arrighetti, but partially included in Usener’s Glossarium Epicureum, s.v. φύσις),
in the restitution provided by Tepedino, “Nuove letture del fr. 8.” It would be a banquet, not for the
gods, but in memory of friends who had passed away and were heroized, according to Clay, “The Cults
of Epicurus.” On the cultic aspect of the Kepos, with bibliography, see also Capasso, Trattato etico
epicureo, 41–50. On the aforementioned passage from Philodemus, On Epicurus see also Bignone,
L’Aristotele perduto, 1.558–65; for Tepedino, “Nuove letture del fr. 8,” 226, Philodemus is relating how
Epicurus invited some disciples to a common banquet aimed at uniting friends in the recollection of
deceased friends, whose life is a model for all: see Bignone, L’Aristotele perduto, 2.518, 559 n. 314; Clay,
“Individual and Community,” 276–77.
588 ILARIA RAMELLI
impiety, obviously already circulating in Epicurus’s own day; a similar self-apologetic

aim might characterize Epicurus’s criticism of Prodicus, Diagoras, and Critias in Book
12 of his On Nature: “Just as he does in Book 12 as well, he blames Prodicus, Diagoras,
Critias, and the others [sc. atheists], saying that they are delirious and mad, and assimi-
lates them to Bacchae” (Usener 87 = Arrighetti fr.27.2).35 Plutarch (Non posse 21.1102B =
p. 103.7–22 Usener), a hostile source, avers that Epicurus pretended to worship the gods
publicly for fear. In Usener 384, Plutarch remarks that, in order to eliminate the fear of
the divinities, it is better to believe that they do not exist, rather than denying their prov-
idence. Indeed, the tradition concerning Epicurus’s atheism, which will prevail in
Christian authors, is already attested by Cicero (Arrighetti fr. 177), “Aetius” (Usener 393),
and Diogenes Laertius 2.97 (= Usener 391), according to whom Epicurus was inspired by
the atheist Theodore,36 as well as by Sextus Empiricus AM 9.58, omitted by both Usener
and Arrighetti: “According to some, Epicurus admits the existence of the divinity while
addressing the crowd, but he did not at all admit it while explaining the nature of
reality.”37
In Arrighetti fr. 180, Epicurus warns readers as follows: “Do not contaminate the
divine with fallacious human opinions.” This is in line with what he says in Ep. Men.
(123–24):
Maintain, first of all, that the divinity is an incorruptible and perfectly happy living
being, in accord with the common concept of the divinity, and do not attach to it
anything that is extraneous to incorruptibility or alien to beatitude, but entertain
about it notions that can preserve beatitude together with incorruptibility. For the
divinities do exist, since the cognition of them is manifest, but they are not as most
people consider them to be . . . . And impious are not those who deny the existence
of the deities worshipped by the people, but those who ascribe to the divinities the
opinions of the populace. For the assertions of most people concerning the divini-
ties are not pre-notions, but false assumptions.
Indeed, not only did Epicurus admit of the existence of the deities, but he also had a high
conception of them; he refused to regard them as envious or vengeful, in line with the
more popular opinion, or implacable, according to astral theology,38 or adulterous and
35 Apart from Usener 85–86, Usener 82–84 and 87, along with Arrighetti fr. 19.5 (= Usener 41) are
our only sources of information concerning Book 12 of Epicurus’s On Nature. Its themes are celestial
phenomena and the fact that the first human beings had concepts of incorruptible natures, plus the
polemic with Prodicus, Diagoras, and Critias, considered to be atheists. This book may have dealt with
the origin of civilization (cf. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2.151); cf. Usener 84. For the
probable union of theological and astronomical themes in this book, just as in the Ep. Pyth. and in a
part of the Ep. Hdt., see Steckel, “Epikuros,” 605; Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, 691–95, 728–29; Erler,
“Epikur,” 98.
36 See Reale, Ramelli, and Girgenti, Diogene Laerzio, with my commentary ad loc. (n. 382).
37 See Giannantoni, “Epicuro e l’ateismo antico,” 42; also Giannantoni, “L’ateismo.”
38 Just as mathematics, it was countered by Epicurus. See On Nature 11, and his Ep. Pyth. against
univocal explanations of celestial phenomena; cf. Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux, 988–97, who also
mentions (26–27 and 37) Menander, who was a fellow-ephebe of Epicurus. In his Arbitratus he has
the like, in accord with poetic and mythical representations of divinities, which Stoicism
explained away with recourse to allegory,39 but Epicureanism did not.
The most famous expression of Epicurus’s theology—and one of not many, after all,
because of the loss of his treatises On Gods, On Piety, and On Sanctity—is the first Key
Doctrine, which establishes both the existence of the divinities and the denial of divine
providence:
What is supremely happy and incorruptible neither has troubles itself nor causes
troubles to anyone else; thus, it is not prey to either anger or favor. For everything of
this kind is found in a weak subject.
It is remarkable that the very first of the Key Doctrines concerns the gods and the correct
notions one should have regarding them. Paul’s statement in Acts 17:25, which is repre-
sented as uttered before Epicureans and Stoics, that the divinity needs nothing, in fact
echoes the Epicurean notion of the divine.40 Usener 38, from Epicurus’s On Sanctity,
cited by Philodemus, describes the divinity exactly in this way: it “needs nothing” of
human things. This is repeated in a more circumstantial form in Usener 386, again pre-
served by Philodemus: the divine “needs no honor.” Likewise, in Usener 371, preserved
by a Christian author such as Lactantius, Inst. 7.5.3, Epicurus describes the divinity as
perfectly happy and such as to need absolutely nothing. In their autarkeia, the divinities
are also models of autarkeia for human beings (see, e.g., Ep. Men. 130–31; Usener 458–59,
466, 471, 476, 602; KD 21). Paul would seem to cite Epicurus’s words directly, when
depicting the divinity in his theological exposition at the Areopagus in Acts 17 as “need-
ing nothing” but rather providing its creatures with existence, life, and movement.
Indeed, in the very same years, Seneca, the “Epicurizing” Stoic, interestingly echoed, it
seems, Epicurus’s idea in passages in which his own criticism of traditional pagan cults
is expounded, especially in Ep. ad Luc. 95.47–50:
Onesimus express an Epicurean thought: to think that the gods take care of all people would mean to
oppress them with an infinity of problems and to ascribe to them a life unworthy of the gods. See also
Usener 84–85, from Epicurus On Nature 12, and Arrighetti fr. 27.1 from Philodemus: “the first human
beings received concepts of incorruptible natures,” etc. On the connection of this passage with the
denial that a relationship exists between the divinities and the laws that govern the movements of the
heavenly bodies see Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, 707 and n. * [sic]. Erler, “Epikur,” 98, following Usener,
includes Arrighetti fr. 135 (= Usener 85) among those from Book 12 of Epicurus’s On Nature due to a
thematic affinity: “möglicherweise ist wegen gleicher Thematik auch [135] Arr. mit Usener zu Buch 12
zu rechnen.” It treats of damages or salvation that can come to human beings from the divinity, on
which see also Ep. Men. 124: “The greatest factors of damage are sent by the gods to the wicked, while
the greatest factors of benefit are sent <to the good>.”
39 See Ramelli, Allegoria, vol. 1, with the review by F. Ferrari; Ramelli, Allegoristi dell’età classica,
“The Philosophical Stance of Allegory,” “Valuing Antiquity in Antiquity by Means of Allegoresis,” and
“Allegorizing and Philosophizing.”
40 The first Key Doctrine appears again in Lucr. DRN 1.44–49 = KD 2.646–51; cf. 6.58–79 and Cic. ND
1.17.75. Cf. Ep. Men. 123; Ep. Hdt. 76–77; Usener 13, 32, 33, 38–40, 183, 359, 360, 362–66, 368, 374, and 230;
Arrighetti frr. 192–95; Demetr. Lac. P.Herc. 1055 col. 26 Renna (see Capasso, Margini ercolanesi, 45). On
the anthropomorphism of the deities according to Epicurus see Usener 353.
590 ILARIA RAMELLI
The divinity is worshipped by those who know it. Let us forbid anyone to bring linens
and scrubbers to Jupiter and to bear the mirror for Juno; the divinity has no need of
people who serve it. Why not? It is rather the divinity itself who is of service to human-
ity . . . . The first act of worship rendered to the divinities is to believe that they exist;
then to recognize their majesty, and to recognize their goodness, in the absence of
which no majesty can exist . . . whoever imitates them worships them enough.41
That this notion of the divinity as needing nothing is more Epicurean than Stoic is also
proved by its absence from the fragments of the Old Stoics (SVF), where the opposite is
in fact indicated. Two fragments from Chrysippus, indeed, claim that the gods created
the human beings for their own advantage, thus implying that they needed them (SVF
2.1152, preserved by Porphyry, Abst. 3.20), and that the gods need food, therefore sug-
gesting that they need sacrifices from humans who worship them (SVF 2.1068, pre-
served by Plutarch Stoic. Rep. 39.1052b).
Indeed, as I shall also exemplify in a moment, Epicurus’s criticism of traditional pagan
religion and belief was appreciated by Christian authors, for the same reason for which
Seneca’s analogous criticism (which I think owed something to Epicureanism) was
appreciated by Christians,42 to the point that Tertullian labeled Seneca saepe noster
(“Seneca often speaks like a Christian,” De anima 20) and Lactantius declared that
Seneca “said so many things on God that are similar to Christian doctrines” (quam
multa . . . de Deo nostris similia locutus est; Inst. 1.5.28), so that he “could have been a wor-
shiper of the true God, if anyone had taught him who this God is” (potuit esse veri Dei
cultor, si quis illi monstrasset, Inst. 6.24.14).43
The second-century Platonizing apologist Justin Martyr, and perhaps, later on,
Origen, who called the “Middle Platonist” Celsus “Epicurean” (see below), like many
others, provide excellent examples of how the label “Epicurean” could assume a vague
meaning, endowed with an offensive hue, implying for instance materialism, hedonism,
or agnosticism, or even atheism, rather than referring to specific philosophical doc-
trines upheld by Epicurus or his followers. Justin associates Epicurus with hedonism
generally in his First Apology (7.3, 12.5, and 15.3). Yet, neither Justin nor, much less,
Origen were ignorant in fact of philosophy. But they were Platonists. Indeed, Justin has
been demonstrated to be using Platonizing motifs, of the kind attested in Plutarch and
elsewhere, against Epicureanism. This is something that Christian authors often did.
41 Deum colit qui novit: vetemus lintea et strigiles Iovi ferre et speculum tenere Iunoni: non quaerit
ministros deus. Quidni? Ipse humano generi ministrat . . . primus est deorum cultus deos credere, dein
reddere illis maiestatem suam, reddere bonitatem sine qua nulla maiestas est . . . satis illos coluit quisquis
imitatus est. See also Attridge, “Philosophical Critique of Religion,” 67–69; and Ramelli, “La concezione
di Giove” and “Sacer spiritus in Seneca.”
42 Notwithstanding his hostility to Judaism: see my “Seneca,” in Encyclopedia of Second-Temple
Judaism, and “Seneca the Younger,” in Encyclopaedia of Ancient History.
43 See Fürst et al., Der apokryphe Briefwechsel, with my review; Ramelli, “Aspetti linguistici
dell’epistolario Seneca-Paolo,” “Diogene Laerzio e Clemente Alessandrino nel contesto,” “Gregory of
Nyssa’s Exegesis,” “The Pseudepigraphic Correspondence between Seneca and Paul,” “Valuing Antiquity
in Antiquity by Means of Allegoresis,” and “A Pseudepigraphon inside a Pseudepigraphon.”
For Origen himself, Celsus was close to being a kind of prototype of the pagan who
combats divine revelation.
Epicureanism was even associated with Christian “heresies” as an object of denigra-
tion from the second century onward. Thus, Irenaeus describes the “Gnostics”44 as
“Epicureans” owing to their denial of divine providence (AH 3.24.2). Epicureanism was
construed as an enemy of Christianity, as the doctrine of pleasure and the refusal of
divine revelation, even if the Epicureans were not at all atheists; according to the author
of Acts, Epicureans and Stoics, not Platonists, were interested in Paul’s teaching in
Athens; and Paul, besides quoting a Stoic or Stoicizing verse, clearly alluded to an
Epicurean theological doctrine, as I argued above. This is perfectly in line with his public
on that occasion, among which the Epicureans are the very first to be mentioned by the
author of Acts.
Again in the second century, a non-Christian author like Lucian reflects an interest-
ing association between Christians and Epicureans, in that they were both considered to
be “atheists,” even though neither group, of course, was. But the accusation of “atheism”
was easy to level against adversaries, such as “pagans” against Christians, or Christians
and non-Epicurean “pagans” against Epicureans. In the case of the crowds described by
Lucian in his Alexander, both the Christians and the Epicureans are felt to be atheists in
that they refuse to practice the traditional worship. This is why only the Epicureans and
the Christians do not adhere to the new religion that Alexander has founded in Pontus.
This may suggest that for second-century Christian authors Epicureanism was still a
vital force to fight.
Bardaisan of Edessa (†222) was a Christian philosopher indebted to Middle
Platonism, who read the Genesis account of creation in the light of Plato’s Timaeus and
developed a conception of Christ-Logos as the cosmic Christ in the complex framework
of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm.45 At the same time, he
didn’t hesitate, as it seems, to take up atomism,46 even if not exactly in the form it had in
Epicurus. This is in line with his notion, which is suggested by the fragments from his
Domnus, of all creatures as diastematic and corporeal, only God being incorporeal (and
the Ideas in the Logos of God). He shared this theory, that only God is absolutely incor-
poreal and all creatures are material to different degrees, with his quasi-contemporary
44 The very category of “Gnosticism” has been criticized by scholars, such as M. A. Williams,
Re-Thinking Gnosticism; King, What is Gnosticism?, with my review; Marjanen, Was There a Gnostic
Religion?; and Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, who builds upon Williams’s and King’s arguments and
regards the term “Gnostic” as misleading in particular for Valentinianism, on which he focuses. Others,
such as Pleše, “Gnostic Literature” or Weiß, Frühes Christentum und Gnosis, prefer to keep this category
although they are aware of the complexity and diversity of Gnostic groups. See also Ramelli,
“Gnosticism”; Denzey, Introduction to “Gnosticism” and Cosmology and Fate, who corrects Jonas’s
description of “Gnosticism” as cosmologically pessimistic basing herself on the Apocryphon of John, the
Gospel of Judas, Trimorphic Protennoia, and Pistis Sophia; Sabau, “Le modèle soteriologique.”
45 See Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, 91–108 and passim; Eadem, Bardaisan on Human Nature, Fate,
and Free Will.
46 See Beck, “Bardaisan und seine Schule bei Ephräm,” 310–19; Possekel, Evidence of Greek
Philosophical Concepts, 113–26; Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, 21 and 176.
592 ILARIA RAMELLI
Origen of Alexandria.47 Bardaisan posited some “beings” (also corresponding to the

“elements,” plus darkness) that are creatures of God but existed prior to the constitution
of this world. According to Ephrem’s testimony, each of the beings which, together with
darkness, form the hwl’ (Syriac transliteration of Greek ὕλη, “matter”: see Ephrem Prose
Refutations 1 p. 141.9–17), is constituted by atoms endowed with a particular color, which
expresses their respective qualities: water is green, air/gust is blue, fire is red, and light is
white. Likewise, the atoms of each “being” have a particular sound, smell, taste, and
form (Ephrem Prose Refutations 2 pp. 214.24–215.12; 223.23–224.7; also the whole pas-
sage 214.46–220.34). It is not to be excluded, but I rather deem it probable, that Bardaisan
was also reminded of a doctrine of Plato in his Timaeus, a work by which, as I have
argued,48 Bardaisan was deeply inspired. I mean the doctrine that each element has spe-
cific qualities, which in turn are determined by the “mathematic entities.” The latter are
realities that are ontologically intermediate between the noetic sphere of the Ideas and
the sense-perceptible plane. If we are to believe Ephrem, Bardaisan joined with atomism
his penchant for Middle Platonism. Of course, his adherence to atomism does not mean
that he refuses the Christian ideas of God as the creator of the cosmos and of divine
providence. His faith in divine providence is clearly expressed especially at the end of
the Book of the Laws of Countries, a Platonic dialogue stemming from his school but
reflecting his own ideas,49 in which one of the very first attestations of the doctrine of
apokatastasis is also found.50 As for Bardaisan’s notion of creation, this is essentially
conceived as an ordination of the preexistent “beings” on the part of God’s Logos, who
intervened when the “beings,” assaulted by darkness, asked God for help. This account is
found in the so-called “cosmological traditions.”51 One detail therein may betray, I
think, the Epicurean notion of “chance” in the atomic movement: it is found in
Bardaisan’s description of the primordial accident which disrupted the original order of
the “beings” and had darkness mingle with them. This fact is said to have happened
“either by chance or by an event.” For instance, Moses Bar Kepha, one representative of
the so-called “first cosmological tradition,”52 reports as follows:
Chapter 14. Against those who maintain that this world was constituted from the mix-
ture of the five elements. Bardaisan thought as follows concerning this world, and has
told that it came into existence and was constituted on the basis of five beings, that
is, Fire, Wind, Water, Light, and darkness. Each of them was located in its own place:
the Light to the East, the Wind to the West, the Fire to the South, and the Water to
the North. Their Lord was in the heights and their enemy—that is, darkness—in the
47 See Ramelli, “Origen” in History of Mind and Body.

48 Especially in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa and “Bardaisan. . . and his Reading of Scripture in the
Light of Plato.”
49 See Ramelli, “Linee generali per una presentazione” and “Bardesane e la sua scuola,” with
documentation, and Bardaisan on Human Nature, Fate, and Free Will.
50 See Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaisan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation.”
51 See full analysis in Ramelli, Bardaisan of Edessa, 298–339.
52 First edition by F. Nau in Patrologia Syriaca 1.2.513–514 on the basis of Syr. Ms. Paris 241, fol. 17v;
critical edition now in Camplani, “Note bardesanitiche,” 18–21. Translation mine.
abyss. But at a certain moment—I quote—either by chance or for an event, they

crashed into one another/assaulted one another. And darkness had the impetus to
ascend, in order to mix with those and among those; then, those pure beings began
to be disturbed and to flee before darkness. And they sought refuge in the Most
High’s mercy, that he might liberate them from the sinister color that had mixed
with them, that is, from darkness.
Then—I quote—when this tumult resounded, the Word of Thought [sc. the
Logos] of the Most High, who is Christ, descended, and separated that darkness
from the pure beings, and darkness was expelled and fell into the abyss, which
becomes its nature. He gave each being its own region, in order, according to the
Mystery of the Cross. And from the mixture of these beings and their enemy, dark-
ness, he constituted this world.
The introduction of the notion of “chance” for the initial incident is confirmed by other
cosmological traditions as well, in particular by Barḥadbshabba. He also belongs to the
so-called “first cosmological tradition,” and in his testimony “chance” or “accident” is
posited as the sole possibility of explanation of the original incident, and this is even
repeated twice. Here is the most relevant part of his account:
The fifth heresy is that of the Daiṣanites. They speak of many beings, and—I quote—
the Lord and head of all them has made itself knowable to no one. And they call the
elements, too, “beings.” And they speak as follows: The world—I quote—originated
from an accident. How? In the beginning—I quote—Light was in the East, and the
Wind—I quote—was opposite to it, in the West; Fire was in the South, and Water
opposite to it, in the North. Their Lord was on high, and the enemy, that is, dark-
ness, in the depths. And because of an accident—I quote—the “beings” set them-
selves in motion. One of them—I quote—began to move and reached that which
was beside it, and the power that each of them individually possessed was thus
reduced. The heavy descended and the light ascended, and they mingled with one
another. And then all of them were upset, began to flee, and sought refuge in the
Most High’s mercy. Then a strong voice descended to the noise of that movement,
that is, the Logos, the Word of Thought. It separated darkness from the pure beings,
and the former was chased away and fell into its place down there, below. And the
Logos separated them and placed each of them, by itself, in its region, according to
the Mystery of the Cross. And from their mixture it built up this world.
Both accounts perfectly converge in attesting this concept of “chance” in Bardaisan’s

cosmology, which, along with his atomism, may represent a point of convergence
between Bardaisan’s thought and Epicureanism. Interestingly, while in the testimonia
there is evidence of Bardaisan’s polemics against “heretics” such as Marcionites and
Gnostics, there is no evidence of any polemic of his against Epicureanism, even though
Bardaisan (like Origen) did criticize atheism, especially at the beginning of the Book of
the Laws of Countries, and did not posit pleasure, of any kind, as an ethical ideal.53
53 Investigation in my “Rejection of the Epicurean Ideal of Pleasure.”

594 ILARIA RAMELLI
Clement of Alexandria, who might have been a disciple of Bardaisan,54 and who
certainly knew Philo of Alexandria’s criticism of Epicureanism, shows a relatively pro-
found and direct knowledge of Epicurean doctrines, although he does not seem to have
embraced any of them, as Bardaisan appears to have done. Indeed, he seems to have read
Epicurus himself. For instance, he quotes—and with approval, saying that it was well
written (καλῶς)—a large excerpt from Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus in Strom. 4.8.69.2.
In very close times, the whole text of this letter was available to, and cited by, Diogenes
Laertius, who devoted a whole book, the last of his masterpiece, to Epicureanism, and
entered a lively debate that involved his contemporary Christians as well, concerning
the origin of philosophy and the value of barbarian “philosophy.”55 In Strom. 6.2
Clement also preserves significant thoughts of Epicurus, which were incorporated in
Usener’s collection as frr. 519 and 476: “Ataraxia is the most important fruit of justice”
and “self-sufficiency is the greatest richness of all.” Clement also quotes KD 1 in Strom.
6.104.3, the same one that, along with other Epicurean statements, probably inspired
Paul’s Epicurean allusion in the Areopagus speech, as I have suggested above. Moreover,
Clement ascribes to Epicurus the definition of faith—clearly a core notion for a
Christian author56—as a pre-notion, a πρόληψις τῆς διανοίας, in Strom. 2.4: this too is
picked up by Usener as fr. 255. On the other hand, it is not alien to Clement to take up the
stereotype of Epicurus “the atheist,” which was already current in “pagan” authors them-
selves. Thus, he characterizes Epicurus as the initiator of atheism in Strom. 1.1.2.
Clement’s criticism of Epicurus in Strom. 1.11.50.6 opposes Epicureanism to the other
Greek philosophies and focuses on two points: hedonism, which Clement presents in
the hyperbolical terms of “deification of pleasure,” and the denial of divine providence,57
which is also criticized by him in Protr. 66.5. Indeed, these themes, along with the denial
of the immortality of the soul, will be the most common anti-Christian accusations
against Epicureanism.
In line with his own apologetic scheme according to which Greek philosophers were
inspired by the Logos and even by Scripture, which they misunderstood at times,
Clement in Strom. 5.14 suggests that Epicurus derived his doctrine of chance (τοῦ
αὐτομάτου)—the one that seems to have been partially taken over by Bardaisan—from
the sentence of Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanities, all things are vanity.” Indeed, Clement
does not exclude, but explicitly includes Epicureanism (along with Platonism, Stoicism,
and Aristotelianism) among the Greek philosophical movements that were inspired by
the Logos and therefore said “good things” (ὅσα εἴρηται καλῶς), teaching justice with
54 See Ramelli, “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism” and, for Philo’s influence,
“Philo as One of the Main Inspirers.”
55 See Ramelli, “Diogene Laerzio e Clemente Alessandrino nel contesto,” “Diogene Laerzio e i
Cristiani,” and my introductory essay in Reale, Ramelli, and Girgenti, Diogene Laerzio, xxxiii–cxxxviii;
Mensch and Miller, Diogenes Laertius, and supporting papers, including James Allen, “Epicurus in
Diogenes Laertius.”
56 See Ramelli, “Alcune osservazioni su credere” and Studi su Fides.
57 Clement explains that Col. 2:8 does not criticize every kind of philosophy, but only Epicureanism,
in that it denies divine providence and divinizes pleasure.
pious science (δικαιοσύνην μετὰ εὐσεβοῦς ἐπιστήμης ἐκδιδάσκοντα, Strom. 1.7.37.6).

Thus, Clement not only can praise Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus for its initial exhorta-
tion to philosophy extended to all in Strom. 4.8.69.2, but also quotes and praises
Metrodorus’s fragment (Koerte 37) saying that it was divinely inspired (ἐνθέως, Strom.
5.138.2). And he greatly availed himself of Epicurean polemic against traditional “pagan”
religion for his own refutation of the latter, especially in Protr. 2.30–32, which heavily
depends, directly or indirectly, on Philodemus’s On Piety, moreover with the very same
quotation from Euripides (Alc. 3) in both Clement and Philodemus. Besides distin-
guishing the theology of philosophers from that of mythographers and poets, which is
also done by other Christian polemicists, Clement here uses the same double argument
as Philodemus had employed against the gods of the poets: they are temporal and pass
away, and they have unworthy passions and commit unworthy deeds. The catalog of the
latter is, again, the same as Philodemus’s: woundings, bindings, enslavement, and fights
for power, besides unlawful couplings. Clement’s doctrine of the “seminal Logos” that
inspired Greek philosophers, including the Epicureans, and at the same time his rela-
tively good acquaintance with Epicurean texts, allowed his appreciation of several
aspects of Epicureanism.
A contemporary of Clement, Tertullian, is one of the first Christian Latin authors
who cites Epicurus. In the West, knowledge of Epicureanism was generally mediated by
Lucretius and Cicero (and in part by Seneca as well). Indeed, Tertullian was familiar
with Lucretius, besides availing himself of doxographical materials. His fundamental
reproach to Epicurus is that his denial of divine Providence and his casualism plunge the
whole world into utter chaos (De an. 46.2). Like Irenaeus, Tertullian too links Christian
heresies, in this case Marcionism, with Epicureanism, again mainly because of the
denial of divine providence (C. Marc. 1.25.3–5, 5.19.7).
Origen scores more than sixty occurrences of the name of Epicurus in his extant
work, vs. over 160 mentions of Plato, but in an extremely unbalanced way: almost all of
these come from his Contra Celsum; a few from the Philocalia, and only one from his
homilies (Hom. in Lev. 8.9, with the negative, stereotyped characterization of Epicurus
as a hedonist who identified pleasure with the highest good and was therefore an impure
person). In Contra Celsum, in which he confronts “pagan” philosophy and criticism of
the Bible, Origen criticizes Epicurean theology from the viewpoint of its atomistic struc-
ture (4.14). In particular, he argues that the atomic composition of the divinities pre-
cludes their eternity, since they are compounds, while only what is simple can be eternal
(this is also why Origen upheld God’s absolute simplicity and unity, ἁπλῶς ἕν).58
Compounds, on the contrary, come from aggregation and are necessarily subject to dis-
aggregation. From this perspective, Origen blames Epicurus’s thesis that the deities
must constantly defend themselves from destructive factors. It is to be noticed that
Bardaisan, who, as mentioned above, seems to have embraced atomism, did not apply it
to God; his was a “Christian atomism.”
58 See Ramelli, “The Logos/Nous One-Many between ‘Pagan’ and Christian Platonism.”
596 ILARIA RAMELLI
Origen’s criticism of Epicurus is consistent with his exclusion of atheistic philoso-

phers from his teaching in Caesarea, attested by his disciple Gregory Thaumaturgus,
especially if one considers that Origen included among the “atheists” those who denied
divine providence (“Those who claim that God or providence do not exist”: Greg.
Thaum. Or. paneg. 13; cf. Orig. De or. 5.1; CC 8.38), while he taught his disciples all other
philosophical currents.59 In the same way, Bardaisan in his school in Edessa refused to
teach atheists (as he says at the beginning of the Book of the Laws of Countries). Another
possible reason for Origen’s exclusion of Epicureanism from his interest and teaching is
that Epicurus rejected the encyclopedic disciplines as useless for philosophy, whereas
Origen integrated them in his program as preparatory: philosophy crowned the ency-
clopedic disciplines, and in turn theology crowned philosophy. Markschies is probably
right that Origen’s knowledge of Epicurean doctrines—unlike Clement’s and Philo’s, as
it seems—came, not from extensive and direct reading of Epicurus’s works and other
Epicurean texts, but from Stoic and Platonic lexica and handbooks with doxographical
material.60 I do not think this was because of a lack of sources, since these were available
to Clement in Alexandria, but rather because of a lack of interest. Origen was relatively
uninterested in, and critical of, “atheistic” philosophies.
When Origen represented Celsus, the author of the anti-Christian True Discourse or
True Logos, as an Epicurean (CC 1.2 and passim), while he was a “Middle Platonist,”61 he
may have simply mistaken “his” Celsus for an Epicurean namesake who lived under
Hadrian (CC 1.8),62 or better he may have purported to identify him thusly for the sake
of polemic. Eusebius, who ascribed the True Discourse to “Celsus the Epicurean” in HE
6.36.2, followed Origen, whether or not he understood his strategy. Origen is well aware,
and even states (CC 1.8; 5.3), that Celsus never professes himself an Epicurean in his True
Discourse; however, he says he read other writings of Celsus, and from these his
Epicurean belief is clearer (CC 1.8). Of course, we cannot know with certainty, but those
“other writings” may have been by another Celsus, really an Epicurean. On the other
hand, some ideas that are close to Epicureanism can be detected in the True Discourse,
especially a reference to the κεναὶ ἐλπίδες, “empty hopes” for immortality and life in the
beyond (CC 3.80), which sounds indeed closer to the Epicurean than to the Platonic, or
“Middle Platonic”, view. This is one reason why Origen deems Celsus an Epicurean, also
conflating this assertion of his with his criticism of the Gospel accounts of the resurrec-
tion of Jesus (even though this, i.e. the denial of the resurrection of the body, certainly
59 See Ramelli, “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism.”

60 Markschies, Origenes und sein Erbe, 139–141 and my review. He also observes that the ten passages
included by Usener in his Epicurea, all from Contra Celsum, are not direct quotations from works of
Epicurus or of Epicurean authors. Köckert, “The Use of Anti-Epicurean Polemics in Origen” offers a
very brief overview of Origen’s criticism of Epicurus.
61 Cataudella, “Celso e l’Epicureismo”; Ramelli, “Tracce di Montanismo nel Peregrinus di Luciano?”
both admit of the possibility that Lucian’s Celsus and Origen’s Celsus might have been the same person;
Markschies, Origenes und sein Erbe, 133–38 inclines to think that they were two distinct persons and
Origen and Eusebius were mistaken.
62 Galen wrote letters to “Celsus the Epicurean” (De libris suis 16). That Origen was simply mistaken
about his identity is surmised by Frede, “Celsus philosophus Platonicus.”
fits a “pagan” Platonist, unlike the denial of life in the beyond). For Origen, Celsus is an
Epicurean also due to his denial of divine providence (cf. CC 1.21, 2.13); indeed, in CC
1.10 and 1.13 Origen attacks the Epicureans for their rejection of divine providence, as
elsewhere. In fact, Celsus did not deny providence, and Origen was well aware that
Celsus upheld Platonic doctrines such as divine providence and God’s transcendence
(CC 1.8, 4.54, 4.83), and that Celsus admired Plato (CC 6.18, 47) and referred to Plato
throughout as an authority, but Origen, in order to construe him as an Epicurean, claims
that Celsus pretended to admit divine providence, while he actually did not (CC 4.4).
Indeed, Origen realizes that Celsus is a Platonist, but he does not want to concede this,
and rather maintains that Celsus “in many respects wishes or pretends to be a Platonist”
(ἐν πολλοῖς Πλατωνίζειν θέλει, CC 4.83). In this connection, Origen puts forward three
hypotheses: “Either Celsus is dissimulating his Epicurean view, or . . . he has changed his
opinion for a better one, or . . . he is but a homonym of the Epicurean philosopher,” that
is, he was indeed a Platonist (CC 4.54). The “better opinion” was of course Platonism, for
which Celsus changed his old Epicurean belief on one of Origen’s hypotheses. If Origen
was so reluctant to concede that Celsus, who taught so many Platonic tenets, was a
Platonist (which he finally admits only hypothetically in CC 4.54), it is because, I sus-
pect, Origen—a Platonist himself, committed to the creation of a Christian Platonism,
and possibly even the Neoplatonist of whom Porphyry in VP and later Neoplatonic
sources speak63—was much more at ease criticizing an “Epicurean” than criticizing a
Platonist. It was much easier and more congenial to Origen to refute an Epicurean, rep-
resented as a false Platonist, than a true Platonist. Because for Origen Christian
Platonism was legitimate Platonism, and Platonism was the true philosophy: Origen
stated squarely that “Plato was right” (Cels. 2.12). Indeed, when he criticizes Greek philo-
sophical doctrines in Comm. in Rom. 3.1.197–215 Origen cites some that he says are
deceptive and contrary to the truth. Now, these are all Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines,
but not Platonic. One Platonic doctrine is in fact rejected by Origen in all of his produc-
tion: metensomatosis, which, however, was expounded by Plato himself only in a mythi-
cal, and not in a theoretical, form, as instead later Platonists presented it. Origen’s
Platonism, thus, and the demands of polemical rhetoric, help explain his obstinate char-
acterization of his adversary as “Epicurean,” even if he himself was after all aware that
Celsus was rather a Platonist.
A personal disciple (according to Eusebius HE 6.24.9 and Jerome VI 69.1) and faithful
follower of Origen, the learned Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century composed
a treatise which has the same title as Epicurus’s masterpiece On Nature: Περὶ φύσεως.
This choice was probably not casual, since Dionysius’s treatise was precisely devoted to
the refutation of Epicurean atomism and denial of divine providence—two points that,
as I mentioned, were already in the focus of Origen’s criticism. For his refutation
Dionysius used Stoic doctrines. His work is lost, but Eusebius offers information on it
63 See Ramelli, “Origen, Patristic Philosophy, and Christian Platonism”; new arguments in “Origen
the Christian Middle/Neoplatonist,” “Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis,” “Ethos and Logos,” and
Origen of Alexandria.
598 ILARIA RAMELLI
and preserves fragments from it (PE 14.26–27); shortly afterwards, the Cappadocian
Fathers, too, seem to have relied on Dionysius’s treatise, besides other sources. Eusebius
himself, for all the information he offered on Epicureanism, especially in his Praeparatio
Evangelica, depended on a number of sources: not only Christian authors, such as
Dionysius and Clement, but also treatises, such as that of Atticus, besides doxographical
compendia. It is to be remarked, however, that in Dionysius’s treatise there are no direct
quotations from Epicurus; two come from Democritus. According to Christoph
Markschies, Dionysius too, like Origen, did not read the whole works of Epicurus and
the Epicureans, but more probably used handbooks.64
The Epicurean denial of providence was also criticized by Hilary of Poitiers, since in
his view it was tantamount to denying God’s very power: the Epicureans “take away
from God his care, his providence, his discretion, his power” (adimentes Deo curam,
providentiam, arbitrium, potestatem; in Ps. 119.10). For Hilary, the Epicureans’ denial of
divine providence goes along with their denial of the future judgment, as a way of giving
tranquility to a conscience tormented by sins (In Ps. 144.4):
Those who want to believe that they will have a king over them are few. For many
people prefer to deny that God concerns himself with human deeds, or they do not
want to admit that God’s judgment is established for the good and for the evil, and
therefore they invent the theory of the elimination of both soul and body, in order
to console their conscience, oppressed by the remorse of their impious deeds.65
Arnobius and especially Lactantius based themselves on Lucretius as a source of infor-

mation on Epicurean philosophy, for their own refutations, but also as a source of inspi-
ration for their own criticism of traditional “pagan” religion. In 1.39, in particular,
Arnobius was certainly inspired by Lucretius in his derision of the veneration of statues
and pictures of deities. Lactantius is more explicit than Arnobius in making clear that
Lucretius is his source for his polemic against traditional pagan cult, also with verbal
quotations of his verses (Inst. 2.3.10). Lactantius’s refutation of Epicurean doctrines
seems to have been the most articulated in Patristic literature, including, for instance, a
criticism of the Epicurean doctrine of the origin of humanity and of society, and a refu-
tation of the notion of the human being as a creature of a hostile nature (Inst. 2.11 and
6.10; Opificio Dei 3). Unlike Arnobius, Lactantius often cited and echoed Lucretius,
especially in his Institutiones; he was also acquainted with Cicero’s transmission of
Epicurean doctrines. For instance, his remark that Epicurus’s doctrine subverted reli-
gion, in De ira Dei 8.1 (dissolvitur autem religio, si credamus Epicuro), in reference to the
Epicurean tenet of the absence of divine providence, exactly reflects Cicero’s observa-
tion in ND 1.3:
64 Markschies, Origenes und sein Erbe, 144.

65 Pauci sunt qui regem sibi futurum volunt credere, dum aut curam negant humanorum operum Deo
esse, aut consolandam eorum quae impie egerunt conscientiam praesumpta animae et corporis abolitione
nolunt divinum in bonos et malos constitutum esse iudicium.
There are, and there were, philosophers who think that the gods do not concern
themselves in the least with human things. Now, if their opinion is true, what piety,
holiness, and religion there can ever exist?66
For his denial of divine providence, Lactantius contrasts Epicurus with all other philos-
ophers, from the Presocratics to Plato, accusing him of denying what is evident (Inst.
2.8.49). This is an argument that was already used by Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1122f–1123a.67
Lactantius also suggests that Epicurus refused to admit of the immortality of the soul
because he hoped for impunity for himself, since—according to a widespread stereotype
dependent on a misunderstanding of Epicurus’s doctrine of pleasure—he was a disso-
lute: “But perhaps he promised impunity for his own vices; for he was an assertor of the
most shameful pleasure” (Inst. 3.17.35).68 This, which reminds one of Hilary’s above-
mentioned remark about the Epicureans’ purportedly “impious deeds,” betrays not only
a misrepresentation of Epicurus’s hedonism, which moreover had katastematic pleasure
at its top,69 but also the interpretation of Epicurus himself as a dissolute, and not only as
a theorizer of dissolute pleasures.
However, beyond his rhetorical emphasis and distortion, Lactantius was also aware
that Epicurus was a supporter of frugality: “One who is even excessively frugal learns
[sc. from Epicurus] that life can be sustained by just water and polenta” (qui nimium par-
cus est discit [ab Epicuro] aqua et polenta vitam posse tolerari; Inst. 3.17.5, included in
Usener’s collection as fr. 467). Also, Lactantius praises Epicurus and the Stoics for giving
to anyone, independently of their gender, social or juridical status, or age, the possibility
of studying philosophy (Inst. 3.25).70 Lactantius is also the only source that ascribes to
Epicurus a famous argument related to theodicy (Usener 374, from De ira Dei 13.19),
which Epicurus may have used in order to deny divine providence and support the per-
fect ataraxia of the divinity. Here is the argument: if God wants to eliminate evil but he
cannot, he is impotent; if he can but does not, he is hostile; if he neither can nor wants,
he is both impotent and malign. The only alternative fitting the dignity of God is that he
both wants to and can, but in this case, what is the origin of evil, why does God not
eliminate it? Epicurus’s own answer is that the gods do not care for human vicissitudes,
in order to preserve their imperturbability. There is even one case in which Lactantius
prefers Epicurus’s (and Democritus’s) view to that of Plato and other philosophers: when
Epicurus contests the eternity of the world (Inst. 7.1.10).
Ambrose is the only one among the Latin Fathers in his time who shows a knowledge
of Epicurus that is based not only on the usual Latin sources, such as Lucretius, Cicero,
66 Sunt enim philosophi et fuerunt qui omnino nullam habere censerent rerum humanarum
procurationem deos. Quorum si vera sententia est, quae potest esse pietas, quae sanctitas, quae religio?
67 On Plutarch’s polemic against Epicureanism see Dorandi, “Gli scritti antiepicurei di Plutarco.”
68 Verum ille fortasse impunitatem vitiis suis spopondit: fuit enim turpissimae voluptatis assertor. The
very expression assertor voluptatis for Epicurus was already used by Ambrose, Ep. 63 (PL 16.1199A).
69 On kinetic and katastematic pleasure in Epicureanism, see Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek
Philosophy, ch. 7.
70 On the admission of both women and slaves at school by Epicureans and Stoics, and their
anti-Aristotelian tenets, see Ramelli, Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery, ch. 1.
600 ILARIA RAMELLI
and Seneca, but also on others, including Greek sources. In Ep. 63, stemming from 396
ce, he mentions “epitomes” of Philodemus in connection with Epicurus: “As
Philodemus, a follower of his [sc. Epicurus], argues in his epitomes” (sicut Philodemus
eius sectator in epitomis suis disputat). Soon after, Ambrose in the same letter quotes
twice from Epicurus Ep. Men. 132 and 130, but indicating Hermarchus as his source:
[Epicurus,] as Hermarchus says, claims that what makes life pleasant is not drink-
ing, eating, producing children, having intercourse with women, or having a great
deal of fish or other things of this kind that are prepared for the enjoyment of luxuri-
ous convivial occasions, but it is sober reasoning.71
It is probable that Ambrose was translating from Greek, which he knew well (thus, for
instance, he could read Origen’s original Greek texts as well, whereas an Augustine had
to rely on Latin translations). Indeed, Hermarchus probably quoted passages from
Epicurus’s letters. Ambrose might depend on Origen for these quotations, as in so much
else; however, in Origen’s extant Greek works there is no mention of either Hermarchus
or Philodemus. So much is lost of Origen’s work that an argumentum ex silentio cannot
be brought forward and a non liquet is more prudent. Clement of Alexandria might be a
candidate, as he quotes Philodemus. Ambrose, who is likely to have been acquainted
with a Middle and Neoplatonic reception of Epicurus, underlines that the latter was
already the object of sharp criticism on the part of Greek philosophers for his hedonistic
ethics (Ep. 63–69; Off. 1.13). Indeed, this polemic was old in philosophy, but still more
recently Plotinus, with whose work Ambrose was well acquainted, even accused
Epicureanism and Gnosticism of the same basic theoretical faults, essentially a ridi-
culing of providence and virtue (Enn. 2.9.15). Plotinus’s critique of Epicureanism paral-
lels that of Origen.72 Plotinus had available to him not only doxographical reports on
Epicurus and Epicureanism, but texts of Epicurus himself. It seems that in Athens and in
Alexandria, and perhaps elsewhere, Epicureanism still flourished during Plotinus’s
career.73 Now, sources on Epicureanism were available also to Clement and Origen. The
only passage in the Enneads, in which Plotinus explicitly mentions Epicurus, is 2.9.[33.]15,
containing Plotinus’s arguments against Epicurus’ rejection of providence. According
to Plotinus, the principal consequence of Epicurus’s error resides in his hedonism,
since, without divine providence, hedonism cannot be resisted (the same argument
will be put forward by Gregory of Nyssa, a knower of both Plotinus and Origen, on
whom more soon: if there is no divine providence which is manifest here and especially
71 Ambrose Ep. 63: Clamat ergo ille, ut Hermarchus [codd. Demarchus] adserit, quia non potatione
nec comissationes nec filiorum soboles nec feminarum copulae nec piscium copia aliorumque huiusmodi
quae splendido usui parantur convivii suavem vitam faciant, sed sobria disputatio. Cf. Epicurus Ep. Men.
132: “For it is not drinking and eating abundantly without interruption, not enjoying boys and women,
nor tasting fish and all other kinds of food which a rich table bears, that make a pleasant life, but sober
reasoning.”
72 Examination in my Origen of Alexandria’s Philosophical Theology, in preparation.
73 Dorandi, “The School and Texts of Epicurus in the Early Centuries of the Roman Empire.”
in life after death, then virtue will not prevail over hedonism, De An. 17-20). Likewise,
Origen rejected both Epicurean hedonism and Epicurean denial of providence. Finally,
Ambrose, like many other Patristic authors, sometimes uses “Epicurean” as a synonym
of “hedonist” and even a term of abuse, in reference to opponents who countered asceti-
cism (Ep. 63.8).
Another close follower of Origen who (like Dionysius) refuted Epicurean theses is
Gregory of Nyssa.74 In De an. 20–25, a dialogue that is the Christian remake of Plato’s
Phaedo,75 he is going to demonstrate the soul’s spiritual nature and its permanence after
death. This is in fact a refutation of Stoic and especially Epicurean materialistic objec-
tions to the thesis of the immortality of the soul:
“Could not those who argue for the opposite claim that the body, being a com-
pound, is completely dissolved into its constitutive elements? . . . all that which is
composite is necessarily also subject to dissolution, and dissolution is the destruc-
tion of the compound. Now, what is destroyed is not immortal.” . . . And my Teacher
[sc. Macrina, sister and teacher of Gregory of Nyssa], after sighing a little on what I
had said, remarked: “These considerations, and others similar to these, were prob-
ably opposed to the Apostle by the Stoics and the Epicureans who once gathered in
Athens. Indeed, I hear say that above all Epicurus was led by his suppositions to a
theory according to which the nature of things was considered to be casual and
operating by itself, as though no providence permeated the realities.
“This is also why he regarded human life as a bubble, as though our body were
swollen and kept in tension, in every point, by a certain breeze, as long as this breeze
remains contained by what surrounds it: at the moment of the disaggregation of the
corporeal mass, the breeze kept inside, too, would be extinguished along with it. For,
according to this philosopher, the boundary of nature was what appears, the phe-
nomenon. He made sense-perception the measure of the apprehension of all,
because the sense organs of his soul were completely closed, and he was unable to
turn his sight to any of the intelligible and incorporeal realities, like one who, being
shut in a small room, remains deprived of the wonderful spectacle of the sky, in that
the walls and the ceiling prevent him from seeing what is outside. Indeed, all the
sense-perceptible objects that are perceived in the universe are really a kind of walls
of earth, which, being in between, impede the contemplation of intelligible realities
to those who are endowed with a spirit that is too scarcely elevated. Such a man
limits himself to seeing earth, water, air, and fire, but, due to the insufficient loftiness
of his spirit, is unable to discern the provenance of each of these elements, in what
each is contained, or by what it is governed. And yet a person, seeing a garment, is
led by reasoning to postulate its weaver; thanks to the ship, one can have an intu-
ition of the existence of its builder, and, at the same time as the perception of the
architectonic building takes place, the idea of the hand of its builder is formed in the
mind of those who observe it. But these people, looking at the world, are unable to
see the One who is made manifest through it.”
74 For his following Origen as a Christian philosopher see Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima e la
resurrezione, “Christian Soteriology and Christian Platonism” and “Gregory of Nyssa’s Exegesis.”
75 See Ramelli, “Gregory on the Soul (and the Restoration).”
602 ILARIA RAMELLI
This is why those who in their doctrines teach the disappearance of the soul put
forward the following wise and bright theories: that the body is composed of ele-
ments; that the elements are corporeal; that the soul cannot subsist by itself unless it
either is one of these elements or dwells in them. Indeed, if our adversaries maintain
that the soul is found in no place simply because it does not have the same nature as
the elements, these people should first of all teach in their doctrines that life in the
flesh is inanimate as well. For the body is nothing but a concourse of elements.
Therefore, they should not say, either, that the soul is found in these in order to
vivify the compound thanks to itself, if it is the case that, after this, it is not possible,
as they believe, that the soul can subsist, too, in that the elements continue to sub-
sist. In this way, they end up demonstrating nothing else than that our life is dead.
Now, if they do not doubt that the soul dwells in the body, how can they teach the
doctrine of its dissolution into the elements?
Then let them dare maintain similar theses even regarding the divine nature!
For how could they ever claim that this nature, intelligible, immaterial, and invisi-
ble, which penetrates both humid and soft substances and hot and hard ones, keeps
the existing realities in cohesion in being, without having the same nature as the
things in which it dwells, and without being able to consist in them because of the
difference of nature? Therefore, let the divinity itself, which has all beings subsist, be
eliminated from their doctrines . . . . It would be more proper to keep our silence
before such statements, and not even respond to theses that are foolish and impious,
since also a divine saying forbids to reply to the fool according to his foolishness.
For, according to the Prophet, the man who “claims that God does not exist” is
utterly “foolish.”76
Epicurus is the prototype of the “materialist” who is closed to the divine and to the tran-
scendent dimension. Even the topic of Epicurus’s “madness” is present in this picture,
along with the denunciation of his denial of divine providence, his casualism, and the
concept of the divine as corporeal, which is declared to be tantamount to atheism.
Gregory’s older brother, Basil, who never cites Epicurus by name in his œuvre, never-
theless knew his ideas at the very least at the level of handbooks, if not even somewhat
better. Besides knowing Dionysius of Alexandria’s treatise, Basil may have read passages
from Epicurus more directly, and sometimes quotes or echoes them. One passage is
quoted at the beginning of his Ep. 11 from a letter of Epicurus, on the point of death, to
Idomeneus (ap. DL 10.22). In Ep. 9.4 Basil seems to echo Epicurus’s motto, λάθε βιώσας,
“live hidden,” in his own words: καὶ ἅμα τῷ λαθεῖν βιώσαντες. A probable reminiscence
of Epicurus is also found in Basil’s On Envy 5; when he states that virtuous people do not
deserve to be envied and vicious people would rather deserve to be pitied, he seems to be
reminiscent of Epicurus’s thought, as expressed in VS 53, which analogously remarks
that the virtuous do not deserve to be envied (and adds that the vicious, the luckier and
more prosperous they are, ruin themselves the more). Epicurean sentences, indeed,
were received in Christian florilegia, such as that of Nilus in PG 79. Nilus is even likely to
have handed down in the original Greek a sentence of Epicurus (ἀρχὴ σωτηρίας ἡ ἑαυτοῦ
76 This translation is based on the edition by Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima e la resurrezione.
κατάγνωσις, “the beginning of salvation is self-accusation”) that was known to Usener

only through Seneca’s Latin translation in Ep. 28.9 (initium est salutis notitia peccati) and
was included in his collection as fr. 522.
Gregory Nazianzen, the third great Cappadocian and a close friend of Basil, with
whom he studied philosophy and rhetoric in Athens, shows appreciation—remarkably
rare in early Christian authors—of both Epicurus’s life, which he describes as character-
ized by self-restraint (κοσμίως καὶ σωφρόνως ἔζην) and not by self-indulgence, and his
notion of pleasure, which is depicted as sober and as a prize for one’s labors: ἆθλον τῶν
ἐμοὶ πονουμένων (Carm. 1.2.10). Gregory further emphasizes the coherence between
Epicurus’s life and his philosophy (βοηθῶν ἐκ τρόπου τῷ δόγματι, “confirming his doc-
trine by means of his own way of life”). At other times, however, depending on his rhe-
torical necessities, Gregory returns to more stereotypical criticism of Epicurus’s
hedonism, atomism, and supposed atheism (Or. 27.10, 4.72).
Rufinus, the translator of Eusebius and Origen, also translated into Latin the so-called
Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones (Ἀναγνωρισμοί, Recognitions), which, besides incor-
porating passages from Bardaisan, in 8.16–19, include an argument against Epicurean
atomism:
if it is so clear that God is the creator of the world, what opportunity will Epicurus
have to introduce his atoms and to claim that not only sense-perceptible bodies, but
also intellectual and rational spirits derive from tiny corporeal particles, impossible
to perceive by one’s senses? But you will say, according to Epicurus’s opinion, that
solid bodies are formed by an uninterrupted flow of atoms that continually arrive
and mix with one another over enormous stretches of time without end, and consti-
tute an aggregate.77
The Syrian author of the Recognitiones may have intended to counter contemporary
thinkers, more than he countered Epicurus himself; I have already observed that
Bardaisan seems to have embraced a form of atomism, and the author of the
Recognitiones probably knew this. However, Bardaisan does not seem to have given an
atomistic account of God, as I pointed out earlier.
For Jerome, a contemporary of Rufinus and first a close friend of his, then his worst
enemy because of the Origenistic controversy, Epicurus is the stereotype of hedonism
and his follower is a man who is immersed in sins and denies the immortality of the
soul, thus adding blasphemy to sins (In Is. 7.22.12). This is why Jerome calls Jovinian, an
opponent of asceticism, “Epicurean” (C. Iov. 1.1). Jerome contrasted Pythagoras’s conti-
nence with Epicurus’s purported self-indulgence (C. Iov. 2.38), and repeats two of the
classic anti-Epicurean charges: abolition of divine providence and hedonistic ethics:
77 Rufinus: Si mundi conditor Deus esse tam evidenter ostenditur, qui erit Epicuro locus introducendi
atomos et adserendi quod ex corpusculis insensibilibus non solum sensibilia corpora, sed et mentes
intellectuales ac rationales fiant? Sed dices, ut Epicuro visum est, continuatione atomorum indesinenti
cursu venientium, per immensa et sine fine tempora miscentium se atque in unum conglobantium corpora
solida efficiuntur. Aiunt enim corpuscula ipsa, quae atomos appellant, diversis esse qualitatibus.
604 ILARIA RAMELLI
“Epicurus claims that providence does not exist and that pleasure is the supreme
good.”78 Jerome too, however, like Lactantius, was aware that Epicurus in fact preached
frugality rather than unbridled pleasure, so that “he filled all of his books with vegeta-
bles and fruit, and maintains that one must live on simple foods” (C. Iovin. 2.11). Like
Tertullian, Jerome too associates Marcionism and Epicureanism in the same passage in
In Is. 7.9, saying that Marcionites and Gnostics, who disparage the Old Testament, are
much worse than Epicurus, because, while accepting providence, they criticize the
Creator. Both Jerome and Augustine give voice to the old stereotype—already wide-
spread in “pagan” authors because of Epicurus’s denial of the importance of the encyclo-
pedic disciplines—of Epicurus as ignorant and Epicureanism as a philosophy for the
ignorant: qui cum Epicuro litteras non didicerunt, “those who, with Epicurus, did not
even learn literature/the alphabet” (Jerome Ep. 70.6); Epicurei apud indoctam multitudi-
nem . . . viguerunt, “Epicureans prospered among ignorant common people” (Augustine
Ep. 118.14). And both of them, unlike Ambrose, seem to depend on the usual Latin
sources for their knowledge of Epicureanism, although, while Augustine was almost
unacquainted with Greek—which heavily affected his exegesis and theological
views79—Jerome mastered it, like Ambrose himself. Therefore, it is not surprising that
even in Ep. 118 to Dioscorus, in which he ventures into an in-depth discussion of
Epicureanism, it seems impossible to demonstrate that Augustine went beyond Cicero
as a source. In Conf. 6.16, then, Epicurus is evoked only in a general sense, as a hedonist.
More interestingly, Augustine in 410 ce testifies to the disappearance of at least many
primary sources for Epicureanism (Ep. 118.21):
We clearly see that by our day they [sc. the Epicureans] have definitely ceased to
speak, to the point that by now their doctrines are mentioned practically only in the
schools of rhetoric, and even there rarely.80
Augustine for his part rejoiced in this disappearance, which meant less objections to
Christianity from the Epicurean side (Ep. 118.12). Indeed, it is significant that in his
rereading of the key episode of Paul’s discourse in Athens at the beginning of Sermo 150,
Augustine sees an opposition between Paul on the one side and Epicureans and Stoics
on the other, rather than a conciliation, and states that this passage of Acts should teach
the Christians which side to choose and which to reject, while some Christians,
Augustine remarks, are in fact “Epicureans.” It is also to be noticed that in the passage I
have quoted from Ep. 118 Augustine does not say that Epicurean doctrines are remem-
bered only in schools of philosophy, but he states that they are mentioned only in schools
of rhetoric. This clearly points to a non-technical and rather popularized transmission of
a few tenets of Epicureanism, clearly exposed to misinterpretation and distortion. The
situation had not improved by the time of Isidore of Seville, who depended on Lucretius
78 Dicit Epicurus non esse providentiam, et voluptatem maximum bonum (In Is. 7.9 on Isa. 18:1).
79 See Ramelli, “Origen and Augustine.”
80 Augustine Ep. 118.21: Quos iam certe nostra aetate sic obmutuisse conspicimus, ut vix iam in scholis
rhetorum commemoretur tantum quae fuerint illorum sententiae.
for his knowledge of Epicureanism, but on a second-hand Lucretius, arguably mediated

by Servius and Lactantius.
Therefore, as a very general remark, it is possible to see how the fading away of the
availability and use of good sources on Epicureanism, along with the disappearance
of the Epicurean school itself, brought about a progressive impoverishment and
hostility among Christian authors with respect to Epicurus and Epicureanism. A
comparison between the representation of Epicureanism in Acts or Clement, or still in
Gregory Nazianzen or Ambrose, on the one side, and, on the other, authors like Jerome
or even Isidore is telling. Not only did appreciation for at least some sides of
Epicureanism—present in the author of Acts, in Clement, in Bardaisan, and in
Nazianzen—disappear, but anti-Epicurean polemic even became more and more
stereotyped, crass hedonism and atheism being its main focuses, with scarce grounds
in Epicurean theory in both cases.
The distortions surrounding the charge of hedonism were still clear to Nazianzen; as
for the falsity of the charge of atheism, which was alive already in pre-Christian philo-
sophical debate, the certainly Hellenized author of Acts seems to me to have been well
aware of it. This is why he cites the Epicureans first among the philosophers who were
interested in Paul’s theological discourse, and moreover had Paul try hard to adapt his
Christian message not only to Stoic theology, with his quotation of Cleanthes/Aratus,
but also to Epicurean theology, with his quotation from Epicurus’s teaching that the
divinity needs nothing from human beings, but rather the latter need it. Shortly after
(supposing that Paul said so around 50 ce in Athens), or shortly before (supposing that
the Areopagus speech is entirely due to the author of Acts, even if I personally deem this
less probable), the same idea was expressed by Seneca, I suspect under the influence of
Epicurean theology as well.
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pa rt I I I
E A R LY MODE R N
A N D L AT E R
R E C E P T ION
chapter 24
H um a n ist
Dissemi nation of
Epicu r ea n ism
Ada Palmer
Coming across Epicurus’s Accepted Maxims . . . he brought it into the

middle of the market place, there burned it . . . and cast the ashes into
the sea. He issued an oracle on this occasion: “The dotard’s maxims to the
flames be given.” The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred
by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquility, and independence
of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms
and marvels, vain hopes and inordinate desires, of the judgement and
candour that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches
and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.
Lucian, c. 170 ce1
Renaissance scholars knew how controversial Epicureanism was—how glowingly

celebrated and how fiercely condemned—long before they knew what Epicureanism
was, at least in any detail. Fragments came first, references in ancients and Church
Fathers, mixtures of praise and blame, and partial descriptions of isolated doctrines,
some accurate, some slanderous, impossible to tell apart. Scholars also knew how to find
out more. At least three ninth-century manuscripts of Lucretius’s De rerum natura stood
ready on library shelves,2 while the letters and maxims of Epicurus preserved by
Diogenes Laertius circulated in the East, one sea voyage away. The celebrated
Renaissance rediscovery of ancient thought did not begin with excavating Rome’s ruins,
or following a coded riddle to some hidden library where X marked the spot. The first
archaeology was textual, born from the suggestion that the materials already available
from antiquity could be used in a new way, and that further materials which might be
1 “Alexander the Oracle Monger” in Fowler and Fowler, The Works of Lucian of Samosata.
2 Butterfield, “Lucretius in the Early Modern Period,” 45–68.
616 ADA PALMER
uncovered were worth the cost and danger. If in 1417 Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459)
risked life and fortune crossing the Alps to search monastery libraries for books that had
sat unopened for five hundred years, and if the future Pope Nicholas V (1397–1455)
funded a costly expedition to Constantinople so Giovanni Aurispa (1376–1459) could
bring back Greek classics including Diogenes Laertius, these celebrated moments in the
history of Epicureanism were part of a larger transformation in what Europe read, how
Europe read, and why Europe read.
The Renaissance Context
But, as the state of Things would then permit,

Men burn’d their Friends, nor look’d on just, and fit:
And Want, and Poverty did oft engage
A thousand acts of Violence and Rage;
Some, O imperious Want! A Carcass spoil,
And burn their Friend upon anothers Pile . . . .
Lucretius VI 1248–53, Thomas Creech translation, 16823
Renaissance readers felt all too vividly how well Lucretius’s horrific description of
the Athenian plague fit their own age. Italy was dying, this apocalyptic sense fires the
works of the fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century students of antiquity, whom we
would later call the first humanists. The Black Death was one apocalypse, but other
plagues—malaria, typhoid, the endemic pox—seemed to become more deadly too, their
body count growing apace with the increase of bloody faction fighting: wars of conquest,
wars of vendetta, “cruel wars for light causes,” as Petrarch (1304–74) wrote in his poem
“Italia Mia” (Canzoniere 128; 1344), a tearful, desperate plea for peace.
Progress, strangely, was the primary cause of the crisis. Prosperity made trade and
travel spread contagions faster, while dense, thriving cities were richer breeding grounds
for violence and disease, and wealthier powers, armed with the newest innovations,
could wage larger, deadlier wars. Within Italy, families made rich by trade and banking
had more money in their coffers than the fragile city-states which reared them, and
could hire mercenaries to topple precarious republics, shedding much blood in the tran-
sition. The vast ultramontane kingdoms were also growing in population and ambition:
France, Aragon, Castile, the Empire, all mammoths compared to Italy’s tiny city-states.
These kingdoms dominated Italy, some parts by conquest, but others through culture, as
French pub songs, fashions, and chivalric tales so saturated the Italian peninsula that—
from Petrarch’s perspective—they seemed to threaten to turn Italians into Frenchmen
without any troops crossing the Alps. Thus, in the Italian experience, the early
Renaissance was darker than the “Dark Ages” which it invented, a name more aspira-
tional than factual when its Florentine creator Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444) sought to
3 Creech, T. Lucretius Carus, of the Nature of Things, in Six Books, 819.

Humanist Dissemination of Epicureanism 617
build momentum and civic pride by portraying this difficult moment as the beginning
of an upward climb, with better things to come.
The desperate measure proposed for this desperate time was antiquity, to look back at
the golden age of Rome—even more golden in imagination than reality—when a united
Roman Italy had conquered upstart France and Spain, and paved safe roads from
London to Antioch. If fractured Italy could resurrect Rome’s lost arts, and above all the
lost educational system that had raised statesmen as valiant as Caesar, as eloquent as
Cicero, and as virtuous as Seneca, then a new generation of pseudo-Romans might put
an end to selfish civil broils, and new Virgils and Ovids might awe all Europe with their
immortal verses. It was an idealist’s dream but, in a desperate world that had no other
plan, it was a lifeline. Upstart families made powerful by merchant gold or mercenary
conquests could never compete in pedigree with descendants of Charlemagne, but they
could fill their palaces with busts of Caesars, hire humanist secretaries to intimidate
guests and correspondents with classicizing prose, and have tutors raise their sons and
daughters on Latin and, in time, on Greek, producing youths and maidens more princely
than princes. Soon ambassadors from France, arriving filled with scorn for the weakling
Italian city-states, found themselves gaping at impossibly massive bronze statues, dumb-
struck by ferociously ornate orations, and dazzled by bright, airy spaces ringed by
rounded arches reminiscent of the Roman ruins that still studded France’s countryside.
These things were not grander than the gothic cathedrals and chateaus of France, but
their novelty was powerful, more so since it echoed the cultural vocabulary of antiquity,
which had trickled forward through the Middle Ages. The basics of this ancient cultural
vocabulary were already largely legible to everyone, but had not before been wielded
with such systematic intentionality.
This humanist project was simultaneously propagandistic and sincere. Humanists
and their earliest patrons hoped and expected that youths steeped in classical virtue, and
rulers surrounded by virtuous courtiers, would rule more justly, more rationally, and
therefore more successfully. As James Hankins has argued, humanists redefined nobil-
ity, developing a “virtue politics” which claimed that true nobility lay in the exercise of
virtue.4 This merit-based claim relocated political legitimacy, separating it from blood
and chivalry, and locating it in moral education, character, and personal actions.
Legitimate power now equaled power well exercised. This appealed in an Italy full of
new powers, where traditional political legitimacy was virtually absent, so newborn
republics, freshly planted conquerors, and the subjects of both all needed an under-
standing of nobility which could exist in, explain, and shape their political reality.
Through humanism, Italy redefined nobility, which suddenly lay in classical education
and, on the surface level, in possessing the trappings of antiquity. By this definition,
Italian powers had—indeed excelled at—nobility and legitimacy, even if they had not a
drop of noble blood. And, on the surface level, most of Europe’s other powers consented
to this redefinition, racing to fill their courts with antique and Italian arts. Though it
4 Hankins, “The Virtue Politics of the Italian Humanists”; Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in
Renaissance Italy.
618 ADA PALMER
might seem disadvantageous for France and her peers to accept a new definition of
nobility which put Italy first, this new nobility gave ultramontane powers a valuable new
non-military axis on which to compete with each other, as diplomats could impress
courts with orations and antiquities as well as gems and armor, and weak princes could
awe their nobles and subjects with the imported trappings of ancient Caesars. Princes
now decorated and displayed their libraries as proudly as their armories, and as far away
as England royal princes—such as Duke Humphrey of Gloucester (1390–1447) and
Cardinal Beaufort (1375–1447), rivals for power during the minority of Henry VI—used
imported Italian humanism to vie for influence over court and people. Some of these
rulers—like Cosimo (1389–1464) and Lorenzo (1449–92) de Medici who had Marsilio
Ficino (1433–99) read Plato to them on their deathbeds—were sincerely touched and
shaped by the classical values humanists hoped would heal Europe. Others saw human-
ist courtiers as mere court furniture, tools of self-fashioning like fine horses or gold
tableware, yet even a halfhearted patron sustained sincere intellectuals, and enabled the
diffusion of knowledge in a world where a single manuscript might cost several years’
wages for a humble scholar.
Humanism’s great propaganda coup failed to defend Italy from plagues, feuds, and
invasions, but it did succeed in defending against the cultural conquest Petrarch had so
feared. Petrarchan sonnets and classical themes entered the pub songs and popular plays
in France and England, and Italian arts and culture were so treasured by Europe that
conquerors and invaders protected, nourished, and diffused them. If by the eighteenth
century there were humanist schools in the American colonies, and Roman porphyry in
the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the momentum which helped neoclassicism spread so
far began with Petrarch’s desperate hope. Lucretius reached Voltaire’s bookshelf, and
Epicurean materialism entered Hobbes’s thought, thanks to the same momentum. That
this momentum could successfully protect and disseminate Epicureanism, a system
fundamentally at odds with many of the hybrid classical and Christian virtues that
humanism celebrated, demonstrates how humanist scholarly practices ultimately
mined much more from Europe’s classical inheritance than the politically expedient vir-
tues which were their first object.
Epicureanism without Epicureans
Who would think that [Lucretius] had a brain when he said these things?
Lactantius, De ira dei X, c. 313 ce
Before any Renaissance humanist set eyes upon the works of Lucretius or Diogenes
Laertius, Epicureanism was known primarily as a form of hedonism, and discussed in
the context of heresy. Denunciations of Epicureanism as a pernicious sect which helped
sinners justify their wicked lifestyles survived in the works of Christian apologists
including Arnobius, Ambrose, and especially Lactantius, whose lengthy rebuttal of
Epicureanism in Divinae institutiones 3 provided more detail about Epicurean doctrine

than anything else in circulation after 900. While Epicurean physics, epistemology, and
sense theory were practically unknown, it was well known that Epicurus denied the
afterlife, divine judgment, and providence, and argued that pleasure was the highest
good. Epicureanism was often used as a general label for denial of the immortality of the
soul, as in Dante’s Inferno which reserves the sixth circle for “Epicurus and his followers”
(10.13–15), that is everyone who denied the afterlife. Most references to Epicureanism
before, and indeed after, the recovery of ancient primary sources were even vaguer than
Dante’s. “Epicurean” was employed as a generic term of abuse, linked to the assumption
that those who do not fear divine judgment will have no reason to refrain from sin and
criminality. Even through the Reformation, figures from Erasmus and Luther to unpop-
ular popes and their defenders were attacked with a palette of vaguely defined, inter-
changeable negative labels including atheist, sodomite, and Epicurean.5
The strongest antidotes to this negative use of Epicureanism available to Petrarch and
his contemporaries were discussions in Cicero’s philosophical works, and Seneca.
Seneca described the Epicurean ideal of pleasure, not as gluttony or debauchery whose
surfeit leads to illness and misery, but as sitting in a beautiful garden enjoying a modest
meal of healthy porridge and discussing philosophy with friends (Sen. Ep. 21.10).
Cicero’s philosophical works, particularly Academica, De natura deorum, De finibus,
Tusculanae quaestiones, De divinatione, and De fato, treated specific Epicurean doc-
trines coequally with Stoic and Platonic ones. Since Cicero considered Epicurus a seri-
ous philosopher, Cicero’s Renaissance readers came to view Epicureanism as one of the
puzzle pieces missing from their reconstruction of classical thought. These works of
Cicero had been available throughout the Middle Ages, but humanist readers used them
differently. Petrarch, his contemporary Boccaccio (1313–75), Poggio, and others also
knew of the existence of the De rerum natura of Lucretius through quotations in
Macrobius,6 while praise of Lucretius survived in the works of Ovid (Amores 1.15.23–24),
Cicero (Q. fr. 14.2.), the portion of Quintilian which was already in circulation before
1400 (10.1.87), and passing references in Donatus, Jerome’s translation of Eusebius, Pliny
the Younger, Aelius Donatus, Aulus Gellius, Servius, Priscian, and many grammarians.7
The information provided by these sources was neither systematic nor comprehen-
sive, but it was enough for humanist and master philologist Lorenzo Valla (1407–37) to
compose a dialogue, De voluptate or De summo bono, based on Seneca and Cicero. This
dialogue sets out an Epicurean ethics and philosophy of life, contrasted with Stoicism,
but invented by Valla based on the idea of pleasure as the highest good, without any
5 Hunter and Wootton, Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, esp. 25, 57; Palmer,
Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 28–32.
6 Passannante, The Lucretian Renaissance, 36–58.
7 Ovid Amores 1.15.23–24; Cicero Epist. ad Q. fr. 14.2.9; Quintilian 10.1.87; Donatus Vita Virg. 6;
Eusebius-Jerome Chronicon a. Abr. 1923–24, 149 Helm; cf. Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance;
Butterfield, The Early Textual History of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. See also Allen, “The Rehabilitation
of Epicurus and His Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance,” 1–15; Garin, “Ricerche
Sull’epicureanismo Del Quattrocento.”
620 ADA PALMER
trace of atomism, denial of the immortal soul, or anything to directly challenge Christian
orthodoxy.8 Valla’s imagined Epicurean is an Epicurean in ethics only, valorizing
pleasure and rejecting Stoic suicide, an exercise in moral philosophy without interest in
other branches of philosophy. Thus medieval and early Renaissance Epicureanism was
seen as a sophisticated hedonism—atomism, physics, and ontology followed in a
separate stage.
Recovery and Dissemination
You have revived so many illustrious men, and such wise men, who were
dead for eternity, through whose minds and teachings not only we but
our descendants will be able to live well and honorably. If our ancestors
decided that a triumph should be awarded to those who had captured
forts and cities . . . I should decree a triumph for you, since surely their
learning and their reasoning power could bring the human race more
benefit by far than the deeds of a few illustrious generals ever brought.
Francesco Barbaro to Poggio Bracciolini, July 6, 1417.9
New humanist reading practices quickly extracted what information about

Epicureanism was available in the works of Seneca and Cicero, and mined Epicurean
fragments from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Plutarch, and many others, but system-
atic understanding of Epicureanism, particularly of its physics, was possible only with
the recovery of Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius.
Lucretius’s rediscoverer Poggio Bracciolini was one of the central figures of the first
generation of humanists raised after Petrarch. He was born to a minor family in a minor
Tuscan town, but his father, hoping his son’s penchant for languages might be shaped
toward a profitable career, sent the boy to study Latin with one of Petrarch’s few surviv-
ing friends, Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna (c. 1346–1417). That Florence’s rhetoric
professor at the time came from as far afield as Ravenna is a reminder that Petrarch’s
primacy as a founder of classicizing humanism is due, not only to his excellent work and
self-promotion, but to his survival while so many of his friends, co-founders of the
movement, perished from the very real dangers Petrarch described, many in the Black
Death itself and, one, in a bandit attack during its lawless aftermath;10 even Malpaghino’s
teaching at Florence was interrupted by a recurrence of plague which shut down the studio
from 1405–1411. As for young Poggio, his career would become typical of humanists,
8 While the De rerum natura had returned to Italy as early as 1417, Valla did not have access to it,
since Poggio and other humanists in Florence had exclusive access to the manuscript until the death of
Niccolò Niccoli in 1437; Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 17–20; Valla, On Pleasure = De
Voluptate.
9 Gordan, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, 201–202.
10 See Familiares VIII.7 (on the plague) and VIII.9 (on the bandit attack).
beginning as a copyist and notary, then a secretary, then entering the Roman Curia and
rising through the ranks from scribe to papal secretary. Poggio undertook his celebrated
book-hunting expedition in 1415–17 because he was left abruptly unemployed. At the
Council of Constance, as part of the efforts to resolve the Western Schism, Poggio’s
patron Pope John XXIII (1370–1419) was deposed and declared an antipope, leaving
Poggio in Switzerland, far from anyone willing to take on the courtier of a deposed pope,
but close to many monasteries where he might find relics of antiquity. In his letter of July
6, 1417, Venetian humanist and politician Francesco Barbaro (1390–1454) lauded Poggio
as a new Asclepius, who had resurrected Tertullian, Quintilian, Asconius Pedianus,
Silius Italicus, Marcellinus, Marcus Manilius, Lucius Septimus, Valerius Flaccus,
Caprus, Eutychius, Probus, and Lucretius.11
Poggio’s letters do not tell us where precisely he found the Lucretius manuscript,
which was likely a tenth-century copy of the Codex Oblongus.12 He could not obtain the
original, but transcribed it and sent his transcription to his friend Niccolò Niccoli
(1364–1437), the most celebrated book-collector of his day, and a central figure in the
social world of Florentine humanism. Increasingly plaintive letters from Poggio to
Niccolò composed over seventeen years—some of which Poggio spent in the service of
Cardinal Beaufort, who tapped Poggio’s humanist learning as a tool for his political
ambitions in the English Court—testify to Poggio’s unsuccessful efforts to secure the
return of his Lucretius, or even extract a copy, and Niccolò retained sole control of the
manuscript until his death in 1437. Thus, even though the poem reached Florence in
1417, it did not circulate in Italy for another twenty years.
As Lucretius waited in Niccolò’s jealous guard, other new Epicurean sources surfaced.
The same travels on which Poggio recovered the De rerum natura also uncovered other
authors who discussed Lucretius, including Statius (Silvae 2.7.76), Cornelius Nepos
(Atticus 12.4), the remainder of Quintilian (1.4.4–5), and Tertullian, with his ferocious,
and informative, attacks on Epicureanism. The same period saw the arrival of Diogenes
Laertius. Some of the biographical content of Diogenes Laertius’s Lives was already
available through the popular medieval compendium On the Lives and Mores of the
Philosophers, erroneously attributed to Walter Burley (c. 1275–1344/5), which survives in
over 270 manuscripts, and was printed as early as 1470.13 But pseudo-Burley did not
contain the invaluable letters of Epicurus, which became available for the first time
thanks to a complete Diogenes Laertius manuscript retrieved by Giovanni Aurispa in
the 1420s, on the expedition to Constantinople funded by Tommaso Parentucelli (Pope
Nicholas V). Aurispa brought the Greek manuscript to Florence, where Cosimo de
Medici (1389–1464) commissioned the humanist-theologian and Camaldolese monk
Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) to undertake a Latin translation, which he completed
in 1433. The translation circulated immediately, and remained popular well into the sev-
enteenth century. Four years after its completion Niccolò Niccoli died, and Cosimo de
11 Gordan, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, 196–7.

12 Butterfield, “Lucretius in the Early Modern Period.”
13 Hankins and Palmer, The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance, 62–3.
622 ADA PALMER
Medici volunteered to pay the book collector’s substantial posthumous debts in return
for his library of some eight hundred manuscripts, including the De rerum natura. Thus
it was Cosimo who finally allowed Lucretius to multiply.
The fifty-four surviving Renaissance manuscripts of Lucretius, produced between
1417 and the 1520s, map out the poem’s initial dissemination, and those responsible for
it.14 Half the surviving manuscripts are luxurious volumes on vellum, usually substan-
tial quarto-sized volumes with illuminated decoration; the princely cost of such vol-
umes vividly demonstrates fifteenth-century humanism’s deep dependence upon
wealthy patrons. The other half of the manuscripts are comparatively inexpensive paper
copies, often smaller and more heavily annotated, thus created for and used by scholars,
though many scholars left notes and corrections in the margins of the opulent copies
owned by their patrons as well.
Medicean Florence was the epicenter of the poem’s dissemination. A lavish illumi-
nated copy (now Laurenziana Laur. 35.27) was produced for Cosimo’s grandsons
Lorenzo and Giuliano (1453–78), another (Laur. 35.25) for Lorenzo’s son Piero (1472–1503),
and a third (Laur. 35.36) bears Medici arms. Another illuminated copy was created in
Florence for the Medici’s foes the Pazzi family (Abbey manuscript 3236; presumably pre-
dating 1478), another (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbib. Cod. lat. mon. 816a) for Piero
Vettori (1499–1585), and a third (Laur. 35.28) for Francesco Sassetti (1421–90), general
manager of the Medici bank. Sassetti’s manuscript was transcribed by Bartolomeo
Fonzio (c. 1445–1513), who also helped King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–90)
assemble his celebrated humanist library, so Fonzio was likely involved in the produc-
tion of Corvinus’s lavishly illuminated Lucretius (Vienna Vind. Pal. 170). At least six
paper manuscripts were also produced in Florence, of which the oldest (Laur. 35.30) is
Niccolò Niccoli’s transcription of Poggio’s copy—the version in Poggio’s hand does not
survive. Other inexpensive Florentine manuscripts include Laur. 35.39, annotated by the
poet and Medici courtier Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), and Laur. 35.32 with notes associ-
ated with Poliziano’s successor at the Studio Fiorentino Marcello Adriani (1464–1521).15
The most celebrated Lucretius scholar of the later fifteenth century was the Greek Neo-
Latin poet Michele Tarcaniota Marullo (c. 1458–1500), associated with the Medici
through his marriage to the poetess and Greek scholar Alessandra Scala (1475–1506),
daughter of the Medici partisan and statesman Bartolomeo Scala (1430–97), who also
drew on Lucretius in his own works. Marullo’s much-lamented death by drowning en
route to battle Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) in 1500 prevented the publication of his cor-
rected Lucretius, but his emendations circulated widely and were used by most editors
of sixteenth-century print editions. They were also used by Machiavelli (1469–1527),
who incorporated them into his own Lucretius manuscript (BAV Ross. Lat. 884),
improving the text which he copied from the woefully defective 1495 print edition.
Florentine enthusiasm for the De rerum natura is also evidenced by Lucretian imagery
in the paintings of Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522), such as The Forest Fire, and of Botticelli
14 On the transmission of Lucretius, see Reeve, “The Italian Tradition of Lucretius Revisited.”
15 See Brown, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence.
(1445–1510), such as Venus and Mars and the Primavera.16 Of the eighteen manuscripts
with unclear provenance, five have the white vine decoration typical of Florence and
northern Italy, or of manuscripts consciously imitating northern-Italian models.
Padua and Venetian territories were another early center of interest in Lucretius.17
Two manuscripts (Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare C.76 and C.75) belonged to Venetian
patrician bishops of Padua, Jacopo Zeno (1417–81) and Pietro Barozzi (1441–1507), and
the first Lucretius manuscript to enter England (Bodleian Auct. F 1 13) was created in
Padua for John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester (1427–70). Venetian territories also pro-
duced all four incunabular print editions of Lucretius: Brescia c. 1473, Verona 1486,
Venice 1495, and Venice 1500.
In Rome, Lorenzo Valla’s student and successor Pomponio Leto (1428–98) and his
many students left extensive annotations in two manuscripts (BAV Ottob. Lat. 2834 and
Naples BN IV E 51), and in a copy of the 1486 print edition, which also contains Leto’s
short life of Lucretius, and a commentary on the opening dedication to Venus (1486,
Utrecht Universiteitsbib. Litt. Lat. X fol. 82 rar).18 Leto’s student Giovanni Sulpizio da
Veroli (Verolano; active c. 1470–90) transcribed two complete Lucretius manuscripts.19
Like Marullo, Leto did not publish his work on Lucretius, but its fame is proved by a
manuscript (Basel, OBU F.VIII.14) from the library of the Swiss jurist Bonifacius
Amerbach (1495–1562), which contains transcriptions of Leto’s corrections and mar-
ginal commentary, and even boasts of Leto’s contributions on its tooled leather cover.
Other Italian manuscripts belonged to Francesco Marescalchi of Ferrara (Paris BN Lat.
10,306)—a correspondent of Poggio and Lorenzo Valla—and to Popes Pius II (Enea
Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini 1405–64; owner of Ambros. Ms. E 125 sup.), and Sixtus
IV (Francesco della Rovere, 1414–84; owner of BAV Vat. Lat. 1569), while another bears
Milanese arms (New York, Pierpont Morgan MS 482). A copy now in Piacenza
(Passerini-Landi, Landi Cod. 33) was written by Francesco Bernardino Cipelli (1481–c.
1540), and another fifteenth-century manuscript (BAV Vat. Lat. 3275) later entered the
library of Fulvio Orsini (1529–1600).
Aragon was the first major center of interest in Lucretius outside Italy. Aragon’s strong
ties with Naples provided steady access to Italian scholarship, and interest in the poet
was likely strengthened by the long tradition of Iberian interest in Epicureanism.20 The
manuscript (BAV Vat. Lat. 3276, dated 1442) annotated by Panormita (Antonio
Beccadeli; 1394–1471) was created while he was in Naples in the service of Alfonso V
(1396–1458). Alfonso V was also the patron of Panormita’s protégé Giovanni Pontano
(1426–1503), whose work on Lucretius survives in annotations in a copy of the 1500 print
16 On Lucretius and art see Dempsey, “Mercurius Ver,” 251–73; Campbell, “Giorgione’s ‘Tempest,’
‘Studiolo’ Culture, and the Renaissance Lucretius,” 299–332; Prosperi, Di Soavi Licor Gli Orli Del Vaso;
Lane-Spollen, Under the Guise of Spring.
17 Davidson, “Lucretius, Atheism and Irreligion in Renaissance and Early Modern Venice.”
18 BAV Ottob. Lat. 2834, Naples BN IV E 51, and 1486, Utrecht Universiteitsbib. Litt. Lat. X fol. 82
rar. See Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 142–6.
19 BAV Ottob. Lat. 1954, and Baltimore Walters W.383 (De Ricci 434).
20 Vera, “Lucrecio En España.”
624 ADA PALMER
edition made in Naples by his student Girolamo Borgia (1475–1550), who also produced
the second Renaissance vita of Lucretius.21 It was through the circle of Pontano and
Panormita that the astronomer Lorenzo Bonincontri (1410–91) encountered the De
rerum natura, which influenced his scientific poems Rerum naturalium (1469), Rerum
naturalium et divinis ad Laurentium Medicem (1475), and De rebus coelestibus (pub-
lished 1526) dedicated to Ferdinand II of Aragon.22 Other Neapolitan manuscripts
include one (València, Univ. 733) with the arms of Alfonso V’s son Ferrante (Ferdinand
I) of Naples (1423–94); a second (BL MS 11912) transcribed by Gianrinaldo Mennio of
Sorrento (c. 1465–94), a favored calligrapher at the royal court of Naples; a third (BAV
Barb. Lat. 154.1 (IX.23)) created for the Neapolitan condottiero and celebrated patron of
humanism Andrea Matteo Acquaviva (c. 1458–1529); and a fourth (BL Harl. 2694) tran-
scribed by Clemens Salernitanus of Salerno. Two other manuscripts, now in Madrid
(BNE ms. 2885) and Zaragoza (BC Ms. 11–36), and another with Aragonese arms
(Cambridge, Nn.2.40) testify to further Iberian-Neapolitan interest in Lucretius. Even
the copy commissioned by Matthias Corvinus of Hungary is part of this Aragonese fam-
ily, since the Raven King’s celebrated library-building and humanist activities were facil-
itated by his connections with Aragonese Naples via his wife and political partner,
Beatrice of Naples Twice Queen of Hungary (1457–1508).
The printing of the classics first flourished in Italy from the 1470s on. In the 1450s and
1460s, Gutenberg and his immediate successors had found printing distressingly
unprofitable, since, without established distribution mechanisms, it was difficult to find
a market for hundreds of copies of the same text among the comparatively small cities of
landlocked Germany. Italy contained wealthy patrons delighted to pay the costs of print-
ing works edited by their humanist courtiers in return for seeing their names and virtues
celebrated on the title page. Italy also contained the great trade hub of Venice, whence a
few hundred books could be exported on a hundred ships to a hundred cities.
Traversari’s Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius was first printed in Rome c. 1472,
and Lucretius in Brescia c. 1473. Like many incunabular classics, the first three Lucretius
editions contained extremely corrupt texts, and were superseded in the last decade of
the 1400s when the celebrated Aldus Manutius (1449–1515) moved from Rome to Venice
and revolutionized the printing of literature with his project to print all the Greek and
Latin classics in affordable, corrected editions overseen by the finest scholars of his day.
In 1500 Aldus issued a quarto Lucretius, edited by Hieronymus Avancius, and in 1515 a
pocket-sized octavo edited by his son-in-law Andrea Navagero (1483–1529). Johannes
Baptista Pius (1460–1540) produced the first annotated edition of Lucretius in Bologna
in 1511. Aldus also printed Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Aristotle and Theophrastus with
his Greek Aristotle in 1497, but Traversari’s Latin version, frequently reprinted and
emended, remained the main access point for Diogenes Laertius’s discussions of
Epicureanism even after the complete Greek text was printed for the first time in Basel in
21 Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 147–53; Solaro, Lucrezio.

22 Bonincontri worked in Naples (1450–75), Florence (1475–78), and Rome (1483–91), all hubs of
Lucretian activity.
1533 by Johann Froben (1460–1527), great printer and friend of Erasmus (1466–1536).
A more enduring version was printed by Henri II Estienne (1528–98) in Lyon in 1570,
reprinted in Geneva in 1593 with notes by Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614).
The prominence of these northern printers in the circulation of Diogenes Laertius
reflects a general migration of printing out of Italy over the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. The proliferation of small, inexpensive pocket and classroom editions, and the
maturation of book fairs and other distribution methods, made French, Swiss, German,
and Netherlandish printers increasingly prosperous, leading to the rise of such great
printing centers as Paris, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam. After the 1512 Guintine and 1515
Aldine octavos no Lucretius editions were printed in Italy for 132 years. This abrupt end
to Italian Lucretius printing coincided with a ban on teaching Lucretius and other
“licentious” literature issued by Florence in 1517, but also matched larger printing trends.
Production of Lucretius reached its peak with a flurry of pocket and classroom editions
in the 1540s, mainly produced in France, followed by the massive 1563 annotated edition
by Parisian Aristotelian Denys Lambin (1520–72), and the deluxe but practical 1565–66
classroom edition produced by Lambin’s rival Gifanius (Hubert van Giffen, 1534–1604),
which supplemented Lucretius’s poem with excerpts from Cicero treating Epicureanism,
Thucydides’s description of the plague, a robust vocabulary list, and other reading aids.
By 1600, thirty printed editions had spread thirty thousand copies to every corner of
Europe.
These transformations of Lucretius’s text over time reflect a change in what kind of
reader had access to his Epicurean ideas. Initially only a narrow audience of philological
experts was capable of wading through corrupt manuscripts, but by the 1510s printed
and corrected editions opened the text up to a broader audience of predominantly
Italian, literary readers, and in the second half of the sixteenth century annotations, sup-
plements, and further corrections opened Lucretius to an even broader audience of stu-
dents and casual scholars across Europe.
Vernacular translations broadened audiences even more, aided by digests and para-
phrases. Both Cicero and Diogenes Laertius enjoyed comparatively unrestricted circu-
lation in Latin and vernaculars. Cicero’s philosophical works were printed in
overwhelming quantities as soon as the press was created, and the dialogues with
Epicurean content had already been printed at least ten times in Latin in the incunabu-
lar period. Some of Cicero’s dialogues were translated into English and German before
1500 as well, but vernacular printing of the Tusculanae quaestiones and others began in
Italian and German in the 1520s, followed quickly by English and French. Diogenes
Laertius’s vernacular circulation began with a 1545 Italian translation by Bartolomeo,
Lodovico, and Pietro Rositini. Giosefo Salviati’s Italian paraphrase of the Lives followed
in 1589, a French translation by François de Fougerolles in 1602, and another French
translation by Gilles Boileau in 1658. Comments and annotations on Diogenes Laertius,
primarily philological in nature, were published by Stephanus (1570), Isaac and Meric
Casaubon (1583, 1593), and Gilles Ménage (1664, 1690).23
23 Hankins and Palmer, The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance, 62–63.
626 ADA PALMER
While Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius were first printed in Latin at about the same
time—1472 and 1473—a century passed between the first vernacular Diogenes Laertius,
printed in 1545 and the first vernacular Lucretius, the 1650 French translation by the
abbot and avid translator, Michel de Marolles (1600–81). His translation was explosively
popular in England, and likely inspired the two unpublished English translations in the
early 1650s, one by Lucy Hutchinson (1620–81), and an anonymous manuscript now at
the Bodleian.24 These were followed by the printed 1656 English John Evelyn (1620–1706)
translation of Book 1, a project Evelyn abandoned in outrage after the first book’s publi-
cation was disastrously mishandled by the publisher. The first complete English transla-
tion was published by the cleric Thomas Creech in 1682 and remained popular well after
his suicide in 1700, so much so that his notes on the text were translated into Latin for
later Latin editions. De Wit’s Dutch edition followed in 1701, a German version in 1784,
and other vernaculars in the nineteenth century. Italian—often the earliest vernacular—
is conspicuously absent. In 1669 Alessandro Marchetti (1633–1714), professor of mathe-
matics at Pisa, had completed an Italian verse translation, but was denied permission
to publish it in 1670 by the newly crowned Grand Duke Cosimo III of Florence
(1642–1723). Even when Marchetti petitioned a second time, promising to mark all
Epicurean “errors” in the margin with asterisks, permission was still denied. This cen-
sorship, and the century of delay between the vernacular Diogenes Laertius and the first
vernacular Lucretius, reflect the greater tension which surrounded the circulation of a
text focused primarily on Epicureanism, in contrast with Diogenes Laertius who treated
Epicureanism as one of many topics. It also reveals the asset which helped secure a kind
of amnesty for the Latin De rerum natura which translations did not enjoy: Lucretius’s
original Latin verses.
Lucretian Language and Evolving

Scholarly Reading Practices
When a single exemplar of Lucretius came into my hands I hesitated to

print it, because it was difficult to correct from one copy those [verses]
that had been neglected and ignored by scribes, but when I could not find
another [copy], moved by that very difficulty, I wanted to make such an
extremely rare book available, even if from only one exemplar.
Tomasso Ferrando, on his 1473 editio princeps of the De rerum natura25
24 Norbrook, Harrison, and Hardie, Lucretius and the Early Modern; De Quehen, Lucy Hutchinson’s
Translation of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura.
25 Brescia, 1473 f. 106. See Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 192, 325 n. 1; Beretta, De
Rerum Natura. Editio Princeps (1472–73).
The first humanists to read Lucretius had already seen him praised by Cicero, Ovid, and
Quintilian, and, once they had the text in hand, their expectations of greatness were
confirmed when they discovered that the inestimable Virgil had seen fit to copy lines
from the De rerum natura. This poem was good Latin, and as humanists plunged enthu-
siastically into its depths, they left annotations in their manuscripts which reveal how
humanist reading practices, especially attitudes toward language and the value of lan-
guage, facilitated and filtered their interaction with ideas, including Epicureanism.26
Annotating as one read remained the default reading practice well into the print period,
and it was not until the last decades of the sixteenth century that the portion of books
which contain marginal annotations dropped below 50 per cent.27 Out of fifty-two man-
uscripts of Lucretius produced between 1417 and c. 1520, all but three contain annota-
tion, and more than a third of them contain at least one note on almost every page.28
Dividing this annotation into categories, the most common form of humanist anno-
tation is philological correction, identifying errors in the Latin and suggesting alterna-
tives.29 This form of interaction with the text is common to all Renaissance manuscripts
of the classics, and shows scholars’ attempts to repair the damaged legacy of antiquity.
Every Lucretius manuscript that contains any annotation at all contains philological
corrections, with the sole exception of Machiavelli’s copy, which he corrected as he tran-
scribed it. Several manuscripts, including Niccolò Niccoli’s copy and one likely used by
Poliziano, contain no other types of notes, demonstrating a kind of reading focused pri-
marily on textual correction.30 Repair then, the actual healing of a mangled text, was one
of the primary purposes of humanist reading.
The second most common form of annotation in the margins of Lucretius relates to
the poem’s language: 44 per cent of annotators transcribed rare vocabulary into the mar-
gins, such as the archaic and ambiguous verb cluere (to be named/acclaimed), or the
unique Lucretian word parvissima. In the Neapolitanus manuscript, Pomponio Leto
even composed an index on a flyleaf, listing by folio unusual vocabulary, neologisms,
archaic forms, unusual uses of temporal adverbs, gerunds, and other points of grammar
and vocabulary. Annotators also often marked lines which were imitated by Virgil or
Ovid, writing “Virg” or “Ovid’ in the margins—the fact that both poets saw fit to read
and imitate Lucretius was discussed by later editors as a powerful endorsement of the
poem’s value.31 Other annotators marked lines with unusual or defective scansion, or
reduplicated verses. Such readers were clearly using Lucretius to expand their own
knowledge of the Latin language itself, a priority connected more with the poem’s form
than with its content. One-third of manuscripts also contain annotation in Greek,
26 Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 43–96.

27 Sherman, “What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books?,” 119–37.
28 Fifty-four Renaissance manuscripts of Lucretius are known, but two are in private collections and
could not be included in this survey. See Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 49–50.
29 For an extended treatment of this data, see Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 47–91
especially 74, table 2.4.
30 Laur. 35.30 and 35.31.
628 ADA PALMER
usually supplying the original Greek term when Lucretius uses transliterated Greek or
newly crafted Latin substitutes for Greek technical terms.
A third form of annotation, common in all Renaissance manuscripts of the classics
and present in half of the surviving Lucretius manuscripts, is notes on classical notabilia,
that is points where Lucretius mentions famous people such as Iphianassa (1.85),
Empedocles (1.716), or Scipio (3.1034), places, such as Sicily (1.717), Mount Etna (1.722),
the mountain of Helicon (1.118), or the Avernian lakes (6.738–39), and other features of
classical belief and culture, such as Charybdis (1.772), or the rites of Cybele (2.600). Such
notes reflect interest in the poem’s philosophical content when they focus on other
ancient thinkers such as Heraclitus (1.635), Anaxagoras (1.830), or Democritus (3.371),
but often reflect general interest in reconstructing the world of antiquity.
In manuscripts, and the incunables which are their contemporaries, notes on the
philosophical content of the poem concentrate primarily on moral philosophy, espe-
cially Lucretius’s exhortations toward tranquility, and his advice in Book 4 on how to
avoid the snares of love. Most of these annotations are simply brackets or manicula, or
single-word labels such as Amor. This demonstrates that Valla’s interest in exploring an
Epicurean ethics separated from the broader Epicurean system was not uncommon.
The earliest Renaissance students of Epicureanism were substantially less interested in
Epicurean materialism and scientific elements than in Epicurean ethics, and especially
eudemonism—a focus similar to the Renaissance interest in Stoic moral philosophy
divorced from Stoic ontology, and, indeed similar to ancient Roman interest in Stoicism
as well.32 Epicurean ethics, far more than its physics or ontology, was compatible with
the syncretic hybrids of classical and Christian thought undertaken by so many fifteenth-
century humanists. Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) are the
best known of many scholars who thought that the classical virtues which Petrarch
hoped could heal war-torn Europe lay hidden, not in the works of one thinker, but scat-
tered through all the ancient sages. This expectation was shaped by Boethius’s image of a
tattered Lady Philosophy, from whom scraps of truth had been snatched and carried off
by many zealous philosophical schools. To reconstruct the shredded whole, one needed
to seek those scraps of philosophy within all schools—even the infamous Epicureans—
that were compatible, both with each other and with Christianity. Thus, while the obvi-
ous “errors” of atomism or denial of the immortal soul were to be ignored or—in Ficino’s
case—refuted,33 ethical messages could still be valuable to the larger healing process of
humanist virtue politics.
While more than half of the surviving Lucretius manuscripts have annotation treat-
ing moral philosophy, fewer than a third of them have as much as one bracket or com-
ment on any passage treating the details of atomism or materialism, and many have
fewer corrections and philological notes in the sections of Book 2 and Book 3 where
Lucretius focuses on the technical details of Epicurean physical theory, as if readers
tended to skim quickly through those passages to return to the more comfortable
32 See Palmer, “The Recovery of Stoicism in the Renaissance,” 117–32.

33 Hankins, “Ficino’s Critique of Lucretius.”
astoral vignettes and historical details. In fact, the fifty-two manuscripts together con-
p
tain more notes on the verb cluere than on Lucretius’s arguments about the swerve, free
will, vacuum, the creation of the world, and the mortality of the soul combined. Those
few notes which do treat them are often negative or critical. Pomponio Leto carefully
marked Lucretius’s arguments against other ancient philosophers (Anaxagoras,
Heraclitus), and his attacks on the immortality of the soul, which Leto labeled opinio
non christiana (unchristian opinion)—a note which another reader transcribed into a
copy transcribed from Leto’s.34 Two volumes—the manuscript once owned by Piero
Vettori and an incunable now in Paris—contain the comment absurditas in sententia
(absurd to consider) next to Lucretius’s description of the famous random “swerve” of
atoms, which is the Epicurean explanation of how free will can exist in a materialist cos-
mos.35 The manuscript now in Piacenza contains diagrams illustrating Lucretius’s dis-
cussions of winds and planetary conjunctions, but even these do not accurately reflect
Lucretius’s Epicurean physics, falling back on the default four elements theory.36 Other
manuscripts contain annotation focused on medical topics—the treatment of sex and
fertility in Book 4, descriptions of drunkenness, epilepsy, and especially the account of
the Athenian plague in Book 6, which was also sometimes excerpted for use as a medical
text, but in which atomism and Epicurean details are barely present.
Only two of the fifty-two manuscripts contain non-critical comments on core princi-
ples of Epicurean physics, both Florentine copies. One is associated with the humanist
statesman and lecturer Marcello Adriani, who demonstrates Lucretian interests in sev-
eral of his surviving works.37 The other is Machiavelli’s, whose annotation defies all the
patterns of his peers. Machiavelli left no corrections or notes on vocabulary, and few
notes of any kind except in Book 2, in the same detailed discussions of how atoms func-
tion which most readers marked sparsely if at all. Machiavelli’s headings focus on the
very details of atomism which were most disruptive to Christian and Aristotelian ortho-
doxies, noting “nothing comes about by intention” (nil fieri consilio, 2.165), the Epicurean
thesis opposing providence and intelligent design; “nothing is carried upward by nature”
(nil sursum ferri propria natura, 2.128), against the idea that air, fire, and souls rise
upward by nature; and “the gods do not care about mortal things” (deos non curare mor-
talia, 2.647), Epicurus’s rejection of prayer and divine governance of human life and his-
tory. Pomponio Leto had also marked some of Lucretius’s rejections of divine action in
nature, but Leto’s comments concentrate on the apparent paradox of Lucretius’s praying
to Venus in the poem’s opening passage while rejecting prayer later on, wrestling with
rather than simply observing this particularly unchristian position.38 Machiavelli also
commented three times on Lucretius’s discussion of the swerve; what other readers
34 Naples Naz. IV 51 f. 66r (III 417); Bodleian Cann. Lat. 32, f. 54r.
35 Munich Clm. 816a f. 27r, and Paris PN M YC 397, V95 f. d1v; see Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the
Renaissance, fig. 22.
36 Piacenza Landi Cod. 33; Piacenza Landi Cod. 61–5 and figs. 5–14.
37 Brown, “Reinterpreting Renaissance Humanism”; The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence.
38 See Palmer, “The Use and Defense of the Classical Canon in Pomponio Leto’s Biography of
Lucretius,” 87–106.
630 ADA PALMER
ismissed as “absurd” Machiavelli unpacked: “that motion is variable, and from this we
d
have free will” (motum varium esse et ex eo nos liberam habere mentem, 2.252).39 Of
course, Machiavelli’s own revolutionary consequentialist ethics would soon be the first
moral system since Epicureanism to evaluate human action by itself, as if there were no
divinity or larger order to factor into the moral equation. While Machiavelli’s own works
do not employ Epicurean specifics such as atoms or the swerve, his unique way of read-
ing and annotating Lucretius shows how the De rerum natura, which his contempo-
raries used primarily as an exercise in Latin language and a sourcebook of classical
trivia, was for Machiavelli valuable above all as a chance to explore an ethics which, like
his, was divorced from divinity.
Machiavelli’s notes, while radically different from those of his peers, are remarkably
similar to those produced by readers fifty years later, in the margins of the numerous
printed editions rushed out in the 1540s and later, primarily in France. These later, cor-
rected texts, many equipped with vocabulary lists and explanatory glosses, no longer
required the hours of philological correction which dominated fifteenth-century
encounters with the De rerum natura. In such editions, the majority of marginal notes
comment on the poem’s content, especially on questions of science or medicine, often
drawing comparisons to other authorities such as Democritus or Aristotle.40 These
notes show how humanist efforts transformed the reading process over time. In the fif-
teenth and early sixteenth centuries, the act of reading focused on textual repair and
gleaning details about Latin and antiquity. By the late sixteenth century, reading focused
more on content, and was open to students, scientists, doctors, and a wide variety of
scholars with enough Latin to make it through the corrected texts bequeathed to them
by the earlier generations of hard-working expert philologists. In fact, when Montaigne
annotated his Lucretius in the 1560s, and devoted half his annotations to Lucretian lan-
guage and the other half to substantive and controversial elements of Epicurean thought,
his notes were substantially more philological in their focus than those left in similar
volumes by many of his anonymous peers, whose annotations focus almost exclusively
on the poem’s philosophical content.41
This is not to say that fifteenth-century humanists were oblivious to the poem’s
Epicurean content, only that, before the 1540s, atoms, vacuum, soul, and swerve were
not the poem’s primary appeal, or the focus of most readers’ energies. Rather, the poetry
itself, and the text’s value as a sourcebook of general knowledge about antiquity and
Roman ethics, drew many more Renaissance scholars to give their hours and efforts to
the text than would have done so solely for its Epicurean messages. This guaranteed the
survival and dissemination of the De rerum natura, even in a period when most readers
considered its Epicurean content to be absurd at best, or deadly heresy at worst.
Lucretius himself said that he chose to wrap his Epicureanism in beautiful Latin verses
39 See Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 81–88.

41 Screech, Montaigne’s Annotated Copy of Lucretius, 212–21; Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the
Renaissance.
to trick the reader into reading it, as a doctor smears honey around the lip of a cup of bit-
ter medicine to lure a child to drinking—for the Renaissance, at least, he could not have
chosen a more effective bait.42
Censorship and Persecution
In this book Lucretius reasons of many Things excellently well, but has
miscarry’d in his main Design, and does not so much as stagger the Belief
of divine Providence, which he attacks with his utmost Force.
Thomas Creech, 168243
In popular discourse, Renaissance Epicureanism is often invoked in narratives of secu-

larization or modernization, which depict humanism as a prototype of Enlightenment
rationalism, and the Renaissance as a heroic battle between revolutionary freethinkers
and an oppressive and closed-minded Church. In such narratives, the recovered De
rerum natura is often presented as a sudden weapon in the hands of revolutionaries, or a
light in the darkness of superstition. Such narratives lead one to expect Lucretius to be
prominent on the Inquisition’s Index of forbidden authors, yet the De rerum natura was
never burned—quite the contrary: in 1557 one of the great architects of the Roman
Inquisition, Michele Ghislieri (1504–72)—the future Pope Pius V—warned in a letter
that those compiling the Index must be careful not to target works such as Lucretius,
Orlando Furioso, and the Decameron which, Ghislieri said, may have some disreputable
content but are harmless because everyone knows to read them as mere fables.44 The
actual history of Epicureanism’s encounters with censorship in the Renaissance reveals
an apparatus of information control very different from the popular image of closet
atheists hiding from zealots and bonfires, one in which intellectual clashes were more
between rival theisms than between the Church and anything one could call seculariza-
tion, and in which the most prominent opponents of Epicureanism were not top-down
censoring bodies, but the very scholars—many extremely heterodox—who stood at the
heart of intellectual and even scientific innovation.
Many of the most prominent scholars of Epicureanism might also be called anti-
Epicureans. The earliest known act of Renaissance censorship of Epicureanism was one
of self-censorship, when, in 1492, the undeniably heterodox yet ardently religious
Platonist and priest Marsilio Ficino burned his youthful notes on Lucretius, and thereaf-
ter dedicated long sections of his Platonic Theology to defending the Christian and
Platonic model of the immortal soul against Lucretius’s Epicurean attacks. Scipione
Capece (1480–1551), one of Pontano’s successors as the head of the Neapolitan
42 1.936–50; see Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 70–78.

43 Creech, T. Lucretius Carus, of the Nature of Things, 821.
44 Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, 37, 274–5 n. 108.
632 ADA PALMER
Accademia Pontaniana, imitated Lucretius’s style in his 1535 didactic poem against
materialism, De principiis rerum. A year later Aonio Paleario (1503–70), a scholar of
Greek and Hebrew and courtier of Leo X, published his anti-Lucretian De immortalitate
animorum (1536) defending the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, again
written in recognizably Lucretian verses. Denys Lambin’s massive 1563 commentary on
Lucretius supplied the “correct” Aristotelian answers for every point at which Lambin
felt that Lucretius erred by following Epicurus. In 1589 philosopher and poet Girolamo
Frachetta (1558–1619), known for his 1581 dialogue on scholars’ melancholy, published
the first vernacular Italian treatment of Lucretius, his Breva Spositione di Tutta l’Opera di
Lucretio, which, as Frachetta described it, aimed to reveal where Lucretius agrees with
Aristotle and where he errs by disagreeing with Aristotle. Frachetta also included exten-
sive defenses of the immortality of the soul, and devoted a quarter of his lengthy index to
listing Lucretius’s “errors,” including denial of providence, and belief in vacuum. In the
1650s Lucy Hutchinson stated that she undertook her private project to translate
Lucretius into English for the express purpose of understanding him clearly enough to
feel she could firmly refute and defeat him.45 As late as 1745 Cardinal Melchior de
Polignac (1661–1742) published a Latin verse epic Anti-Lucretius, detailing, explaining,
and rebutting what the cardinal saw as Lucretius’s central errors. Though hostile to
Epicureanism, these anti-Lucretian authors nonetheless brought Epicurean ideas and
arguments before the eyes of thousands of readers, disseminating Epicureanism to
many more people than Lucretius’s three great editors—Pius, Lambin, and Gifanius—
had ever reached with their exhaustive commentaries.46
Even Epicureanism’s more sympathetic readers, those who positioned themselves as
students rather than critics, consistently rejected those elements we associate with secu-
larization, modernity, or atheism, such as the rejection of creation, providence, divine
action, and the immortal soul. Lorenzo Valla’s pre-Lucretian Epicureanism, which
Christianized the Epicurean thesis that pleasure is the highest good, had many succes-
sors. The scientist and mathematician Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) styled himself a
Christian Epicurean, and defended atomism and an Epicurean form of empiricism
against Aristotle while also writing works of mysticism and proofs of the existence of
God and the afterlife. Jean-François Sarasin, in his 1656 Discours de Morale sur Épicure,
stated that pious Christians were the best Epicureans because, through austerity and
refraining from sin, they will be rewarded with eternal happiness after death—here
pleasure as the highest good is redefined as Christian heavenly pleasure.
Of course, such authors’ professions of orthodoxy might be insincere, cautious dis-
simulation intended to deflect criticism or persecution.47 Such a reading is plausible in
some cases. In 1504 in Bologna, for example, the Florentine philosophy professor
Raffaelle Franceschi published his Lucretium Paraphrasis cum Appendice de Animi
45 Lucy Hutchinson, The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, Vol. I.

46 On similar cases in which orthodox scholars inadvertently spread the very ideas they seek to
attack, see Kors, Atheism in France, 1650–1729.
47 On reading pre-modern protestations of orthodoxy as “innocent dissimulation,” and the uses and
pitfalls of such a method, see David Wootton, “New Histories of Atheism,” 20.
Immortalitate, and his choice to treat only the first three books in his paraphrase may
reflect reluctance, on the part of an author already notorious for sodomy, to approach
the lengthy treatment of sexual intercourse in Book 4.48 Franceschi also added an
appendix with an elaborate anti-Epicurean defense of the immortality of the soul, which
could be a sincere rebuttal of Lucretius, or a cautious attempt to avoid charges of heresy
and atheism, so often associated with sodomy. Yet few cases present clear signs of autho-
rial caution, and some demonstrate positive lack of caution, as in Ficino’s efforts to refute
Epicurean heterodoxy by using equally if not more controversial heterodox content
from other ancients.
The strongest evidence against the hypothesis that most of these anti-Epicurean or
Christianized Epicurean texts are dissimulation concealing more radical Epicurean sen-
timents lies in the fact that so many of their authors were, in fact, investigated or perse-
cuted for radical ideas or activities unrelated to, or even incompatible with,
Epicureanism. In 1466 Pomponio Leto, who annotated Lucretius so thoroughly, was
imprisoned in Venice on charges of sodomy, a crime often associated with Epicureanism
and classical study, yet his Lucretius work was not mentioned in any documents related
to his arrest. In 1468, when Leto was sent to Rome to face imprisonment and torture
along with other members of his Academy, the accusation levied by Pope Paul II was
that Leto and his friends had conspired to assassinate the pope and practiced pagan
worship—charges distinctly at odds with Epicurean denial of prayer and political
detachment. Records suggest that Pope Paul’s suspicions were aroused more by the
Academy’s enthusiasm for Cicero’s republican and anti-monarchal orations than any
other author. Marsilio Ficino too was investigated by the Inquisition, but for his work on
astrological magic, the De triplici vita (1489), not anything touching Epicureanism, or
even his broader radical project to hybridize ancient and Christian theologies. Politics,
not doctrine, caused Machiavelli’s torture and exile. In 1516, the infamous materialist
Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) awoke the Inquisition’s wrath with his De immortalite
animi, which argued that the immortality of the soul cannot be proved with logic, but
critics consistently discussed Pomponazzi’s radical use of Aristotle and Averroes, rather
than his experiments with materialism or empiricism. As the Reformation heated up,
Scipione Capece, author of the Lucretian anti-materialist De principiis rerum, was per-
secuted in Naples for Lutheran sympathies, and went into voluntary exile. Aonio
Paleario, who had defended the immortal soul against Lucretius in his De immortalitate
animorum, was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1570 for holding Protestant positions,
above all for the classic Protestant move of criticizing the Roman Church for valuing
tradition over Scripture. Neither the Capece nor Paleario prosecution documents men-
tioned Epicureanism, despite how frequently it was used as a synonym for Lutheranism
in Counterreformation pamphlets.49 Sperone Speroni (1500–88), who studied in Padua
with Pomponazzi, was denounced to the Inquisition in 1575 partly because of his Dialogo
d’amore, which used Lucretian sexual imagery, but neither atomism nor attacks on the
48 See Butterfield, “Contempta Relinquas,” 98.

634 ADA PALMER
soul featured in the case.50 And when Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was burned at the
stake for his heretical beliefs, which included Epicurean-influenced atomism and belief
in multiple Earth-like worlds, his trial records indicate that Inquisitors consistently
associated his heresies with Aristotle, and never brought up Epicureanism, while Bruno
himself, at one point in the interrogation, brought up Lucretius explicitly in order to dis-
agree with him.51
Licentiousness, sodomy, magic, Averroism, Lutheranism, radical Aristotelianism,
Ciceronian republicanism—scholars of Lucretius and Epicureanism were certainly tan-
gled with many controversial and persecuted activities, but Epicureanism itself was con-
sistently absent from listed accusations. It is not plausible that so many scholars would
employ artful dissimulation to deny Epicurean sympathies while taking less care to con-
ceal their other far more dangerous views. Rather, Epicureanism was never high on the
Inquisition’s list of fears when it examined scholarly activity. The revolutionary
Epicurean ideas available in Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius were indeed avidly studied
by radicals, a few in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and more in the later six-
teenth and seventeenth, but these radicals had a wide variety of interests, the majority of
them orthogonal to, or even opposed to, anything we might call rationalism or secular-
ization, and more aligned with theist or even mystical radicalisms of the day, such as
syncretism, Protestantism, or early deism. We do these freethinkers a disservice if we
dismiss the diverse and original ideas expressed in their Christian Epicurean and anti-
Epicurean works as mere veils over a comfortably proto-modern rationalism. Rather
than taking a step forward on a triumphant path leading inevitably toward modernity,
these Renaissance radicals took many steps in many directions, breaking new and fruit-
ful ground in philosophy and theology. Epicureanism galvanized their explorations, but
the majority of them treated Epicurus more as an antagonist or gadfly than a teacher,
with results just as fruitful as if they had embraced him.
Church authorities’ primary concerns when policing intellectuals continued to
be misuse of magic, Aristotle, Averroes, and, after 1517, a palette of multiplying
Protestantisms, but authorities did see Epicureanism as a threat to a very different kind
of reader: the lay vernacular public. As early as 1512 Albertus Pius, in the first annotated
Lucretius, had warned that he wanted the work to be read only by the learned and those
who seek learning, not by youths, or lovers of sex and revelry, who would find in
Lucretius “only a weight.”52 In one sense this is a warning to his audience that Lucretius’s
difficult verses, with his own bulky commentary, will disappoint anyone who expects an
Epicurean poet to provide hedonist delights, but the word weight also implies sin, and
the danger of dragging down the soul. Later sixteenth-century editors repeatedly affirm
that the Epicurean “errors” in the De rerum natura pose no danger to the learned reader,
who will see through their obvious falseness, but might confuse and entangle the
unlearned reader, with dangerous results. Hubert van Giffen, in marketing his 1564–65
50 Valentina Prosperi, “Lucretius in the Italian Renaissance,” 214–26.

51 Nicholas Davidson, “Lucretius, Irreligion, and Atheism in Early Modern Venice,” 123–34.
52 Butterfield, “Contempta Relinquas,” 98–99.
edition intended for classroom use, argued that it is important to teach Lucretius for-
mally so that youths encounter Epicurean ideas for the first time with a teacher to help
them see their falseness, rather than alone where they might be misled.53 The Florentine
Council’s 1517 ban on teaching Lucretius focused on danger to the youth, not criticizing
any theological content of the poem but lumping Lucretius in with “licentious” works
likely to corrupt young readers—an anxiety which reflects the sexual content of Book 4,
the broad association of Epicureanism and heterodoxy with sodomy and hedonism,
and, possibly, the notorious sexual reputation of Francheschi, whose 1505 Latin para-
phrases had threatened, for the first time, to make Lucretian ideas easy for even a begin-
ner Latinist to access.
As the Roman Inquisition’s activities ramped up in the sixteenth century, in
response to the Reformation and the exponentially multiplying printing press, its pol-
icies consistently differentiated the regulation of elites from that of broader readers.
The work of Hannah Marcus on the Inquisitional licensing process has demonstrated
that doctors, scholars, monks, and other learned readers could apply for and regularly
receive permission to read a variety of banned authors, especially works like Pliny’s
Natural Histories, which were favorite sources on medicine and natural philosophy
but banned from public circulation lest their comments on the soul confuse the
unwary.54 Such policies show that the Roman Inquisition did not aim to destroy infor-
mation. Rather it aimed to curate access, creating concentric circles of readers, in
which increasingly select elites were trusted with increasingly feared works. This drive
to curate access explains why the vernacular circulation of Lucretius started so late.
The first Italian translation of the De rerum natura—now lost—was undertaken by
Gianfrancesco Muscettola in 1530, but he did not even endeavor to publish it.55 When
Alessandro Marchetti completed his 1669 Italian verse translation, Duke Cosimo III
of Florence (1642–1723) denied him permission to publish it, even though twenty-
three years earlier the 1647 Latin edition by physician Giovanni Nardi (1585–1654),
Paraphrastica explanatio, accompanied by supplementary discussions of the plague
and Egyptian burial practices, had been printed in 1647 in Florence with Ducal per-
mission—the first Lucretius printed in Italy since the 1517 Florentine ban. A Latin edi-
tion for learned doctors was acceptable, but not the vernacular. Manuscripts of
Marchetti’s verse translation nonetheless circulated widely, and in 1717, three years
after Marchetti’s death, his translation appeared in a printed edition with Londra
(London) as the publication location listed on the title page, certainly a clandestine
Italian product. When a printed version of Marchetti’s translation threatened to place
Epicurean ideas in the hands of hundreds of unsupervised vernacular readers,
Inquisitors finally added Lucretius to the Index of prohibited authors. Epicurean
denial of soul, prayer, and providence had been allowed to circulate freely for three

54 See Hannah Marcus’s dissertation, Banned Books: Medicine, Readers, and Censors in Early Modern
Italy, 1559–1664; monograph forthcoming.
55 Butterfield, “Contempta Relinquas,” 99.
636 ADA PALMER
full centuries so long as they remained in the hands of Latin-readers, whose education
would inoculate them against error, but a vernacular Lucretius was too dangerous.56
Conclusion
But Lucretius and Epicurus were impious. What of it? Does it then follow
that we, who read them, are impious? First, how many things are there in
this poem, especially the ideas and theorems of other philosophers,
which are delightful? How many plausible? How many outstanding, and
almost divine? These let us claim, these let us take hold of, these let us
appropriate for ourselves.
Denys Lambin, introduction to De rerum natura f. ã3v, 1563
The diffusion of Epicureanism in the Renaissance was much like the diffusion of the
printing press: exponential and therefore, in its early stages, slow. It is easy to think of
Aurispa and Poggio returning from their travels and rushing copies of Diogenes
Laertius and Lucretius to every library, just as it is easy to think of Gutenberg pulling the
first printed sheet off of his press and booksellers immediately opening their doors in
London and Amsterdam. Instead, the diffusion of ideas and technologies required time,
and adaptation. Gutenberg printed a few texts, the neighbors and apprentices who cop-
ied his press printed a few more, those who copied theirs a few more, so production
doubled and quadrupled, not overnight, but over years, slowed by such challenges as
paper shortages and lack of distribution mechanisms for the new mass-produced com-
modity. Cicero’s dialogues might find thousands of eager buyers across Europe, but very
few in any given town. The old exponential-growth puzzle, in which one places a penny
on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the
fourth and so on does amount to quadrillions by the final squares, but by half-way across
the board the dollar amounts are still in the modest millions. Similarly, presses had satu-
rated Europe by 1700, but even in 1600 the print industry was still young and transform-
ing, developing new ways—book fairs, newssheets, subscriptions—to reach new
audiences.
Just so the texts themselves. The Epicureanism which the Renaissance bequeathed to
later centuries was clear, easy to digest, ubiquitous on the shelves of every library and
wealthy reader. But it had only reached that state through the lifetimes of loving labor
which had made garbled manuscripts legible, broken verses complete, unknown vocab-
ulary interpretable, transformed dense Greek into easy Latin and vernaculars, and
glossed alien ideas in the light of orthodox and Aristotelian corrections. In the early
56 Especially in response to rising anxieties about atheism in the wake of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),
see Sheppard, Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England 1580–1720; for broader philosophical impact, see
the masterful study by Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity.
1400s it had been the desperate humanist hope that peace and political safety lay in the
lost pages of the ancients which sent Poggio trekking to distant libraries, and financed
Aurispa’s voyage to Constantinople. Thus the first audience of recovered Epicureanism
was a tiny community of expert philologists and their elite patrons, invested in the proj-
ect of virtue politics. They welcomed Epicurean moral philosophy as a missing puzzle
piece of the Roman virtue which had made antiquity so golden, but had very little inter-
est in atomism or other more radical Epicurean ideas, and looted texts primarily for
biographical and cultural information and Latin eloquence. Yet their manuscripts, cor-
rections, and translations out of Greek preserved and opened up texts, which printers
and commentators further opened up by making them penetrable, first to less-expert
Latinists, then even to vernacular audiences. As scholars began to publish responses to
Epicurus, most of them were attacks, or extreme modifications seeking to make the
desirable parts of Epicureanism compatible with orthodox science and religion. Thus
radical Epicurean ideas were multiplied by scholars who were not interested in them,
further propagated by others who actively opposed them, and even protected by censors
who felt that dangerous ideas should be shared with scholars, not banned completely,
since that would only make their circulation unsupervised and dangerous. Sympathetic
audiences, those excited by Epicurean materialism, atomism, and ethics independent of
divinity, were always present but comprised only a sliver of the whole, a sliver which
expanded as the whole expanded in the late sixteenth century, as easy classroom edi-
tions increased Epicurean readership exponentially.
Yet even in the later Renaissance, for every scholar who welcomed and fruitfully inte-
grated Epicurean ideas, there were many others who opposed them just as fruitfully.
Scientific poets like Maurice Scève (c. 1500–c. 1560) and Robert Burton (1577–1640) imi-
tated Lucretius’s form by writing scientific verses while rejecting atomism wholesale.
Seventeenth-century French libertines such as Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–55) adapted
Epicurean pleasure-centered ethics into precisely the sort of hedonism Lucretius and
Epicurus rejected. Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Walter Raleigh (c. 1554–1618), Margaret
Cavendish (1623–73), Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632) and his associ-
ates such as Thomas Hariot (1560–1621) and Robert Hues (1553–1632), even Giordano
Bruno’s defender Nicholas Hill (1570–c. 1610), who published his Philosophia Epicurea
in 1601, and the atomist physician Walter Charleton (1619–1707), who translated
Gassendi and published his own Epicurus’ Morals in 1656—all these interlocutors repur-
posed pieces of Epicureanism in increasingly disparate contexts, sometimes political,
sometimes scientific, sometimes moral, sometimes fiercely theological. When eighteenth-
century philosophes such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Baron d’Holbach (1723–89) stud-
ied Epicureanism, their Enlightenment rationalism was not the sole, triumphant
outcome of Epicurus’s return, but one of many dozens of fruits born from the tree that
patient humanists had nurtured in the courts of Italy.57
Humanists had hoped their efforts would yield crops of Ciceros and Senecas, Trajans
and Hadrians, to drive back War who raged, alongside Death, Famine, and Pestilence,
57 Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650–1729.

638 ADA PALMER
with such apocalyptic vigor through the teetering city-states of Petrarch’s Italy. They failed.
The French Invasion, the Italian Wars, the Reformation—War grew stronger. But
humanist labors yielded other fruits, among them the physician Girolamo Fracastoro
(c. 1476–1553) whose epic poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (1530) used atomism, materi-
alism, and Lucretian language to advance, for the first time, the revolutionary contagion
theory of disease. Pestilence was not the foe Petrarch—who lost so many friends to it—had
expected to battle, nor had Lucretius hoped to battle it, only the fear of it, but both would
have been overjoyed, if also surprised, to see such a powerful weapon for the defense of
human happiness arise from their contributions to the commixing seeds of things.
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chapter 25
M ater i a lism a n d
the Ea r ly Moder n
“Natu r a l History
of M a n ”
Ann Thomson
Introduction
The eighteenth century saw the emergence of openly atheistic and materialistic philoso-
phies denying the existence of immaterial substance, notably in France, where the publi-
cation of Paul Thiry d’Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770) is often accorded particular
importance. The undoubted impact of this work of propaganda, which was part of a
political campaign, should not however be allowed to obscure the more long-standing
reflections on the nature of humans, contributing to the elaboration of a “natural history
of man.” This was the attempt to explain human faculties in purely material terms with-
out recourse to an immaterial or immortal soul to distinguish them from other animals.
Such materialism, while it rejected religious teaching, was not necessarily atheistic. The
inspiration for such naturalistic views of humans was diverse, and different authors pro-
claimed allegiance to different predecessors. Julien Offray de La Mettrie, by the very title
of his work L’Homme machine, linked his philosophy to that of Descartes, while Claude-
Andrien Helvétius is usually placed in the tradition of Lockean sensualism. In fact, all
these writers built on debates conducted in a large number of philosophical, theological,
and scientific works over a long period, and drawing on diverse inspirations. Attention
has frequently been drawn to the contribution of Epicureanism to this debate.1
1 See, for example, Bloch, Matière à histoires, Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France.
642 ANN THOMSON
This chapter will look at this contribution, mainly in Britain and France where the dis-
cussion was arguably the most extensive and important.2
In the early modern period, Epicureanism was frequently seen to be the philosophy
behind all heterodox opinions concerning God and the human soul. The essence of the
Epicurean system in this perspective was of course its materialism: the claim that there
is nothing beyond eternally existing matter composed of moving atoms, the accidental
meeting of which produced the world. All phenomena, including sensitivity and human
intelligence, can therefore be explained in terms of the movement of atoms with no pre-
siding intelligence or plan. Hence the accusation most frequently made against early
modern systems that appeared to run the risk of favoring materialism, whether or not
they denied the existence of God, was that of Epicureanism. The Cambridge Platonist
Ralph Cudworth lumped together Epicureanism with the “mongrel philosophy” of
Leucippus, Democritus, and Protagoras as the only “entire and coherent” atheistic
system,3 and it is interesting to note that Spinoza was rapidly labeled an Epicurean athe-
ist by several critics.4 Epicureanism became a blanket term of abuse for all those who
questioned doctrines such as the existence of an immortal, immaterial soul specific to
humans, whether or not they favored Epicurean doctrines. One might even say that
atheistic Epicureanism was the ghost haunting attempts to explain the human being in
the early modern period. Catherine Wilson claims that it was Epicureanism that dis-
mantled the Christian-Aristotelian synthesis, and that “were it not for the revival of
Epicureanism, materialism could not have had the force it did amongst the philosophes.”5
However, several historians of philosophy have contradicted the view that
Epicureanism was considered offensive in the seventeenth century6 and have insisted on
the generally positive reception of Epicureanism.7 Margaret Osler has argued that the
mechanical philosophers hoped, by banishing all activity from matter, to guarantee the
place of God as the provider of the necessary motive force and thus to constitute a bul-
wark against atheism.8 Partly for this reason, the precise role of Epicureanism in early
modern materialistic theories of humans, or what in the eighteenth century came to be
called “the natural history of man,” is relatively complex, and the role of Epicurean
reflections on the nature of humans and their relation to animals in this period has been
the subject of varying interpretations. On the one hand, there were attempts to elaborate
a Christianized atomism, whose role in this process is difficult to evaluate precisely;
there are, in particular, conflicting interpretations of the philosophy of Pierre Gassendi,
who played a crucial role in the revival of atomism. On the other, the status of
2 The moral and political implications of these naturalistic arguments and the role played by
Epicureanism in those discussions are outside the scope of this chapter.
3 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 61–62.
4 See Lagrée, “Spinoza ‘athée et épicurien.’ ”
5 Wilson, “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy,” 91.
6 Brundell, Pierre Gassendi, 137–38. For a nuanced discussion, see Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in
France, 5–48.
7 Wilson, “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy,” 111.
8 Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy, 175–76.
Early Modern “Natural History of Man” 643
Epicureanism in openly materialistic explanations of humans is complex, as those who

had recourse to aspects of Epicurean philosophy usually incorporated extraneous
elements in order to produce a convincing hypothesis, and these elements changed over
the period and from author to author. Epicureanism continued to be an important
presence in the eighteenth century, when it combined with “Spinozism” and other
traditions.
In what follows, we shall look first at the main vectors of Epicurean materialism and
the difficulties entailed by attempts to provide a convincing naturalistic explanation of
human beings on Epicurean principles. This will lead on to a study of the principal
attempts to solve these problems made by the most significant thinkers in the early
modern period, who looked to the Epicurean tradition when attempting to account for
human activity in purely material terms. As we shall see, the main issue concerned the
activity of matter, which was linked to discussions of human and animal souls and theo-
ries of animal generation.
The Properties of Atoms
The revival of interest in ancient atomism in the early modern period has been well doc-
umented and discussed. However, several scholars have also emphasized the continuity
of a scientific tradition of atomism9 as well as of an irreligious tradition drawing on
Epicurean and other themes. This irreligious tradition contributed to the thought of the
seventeenth-century writers generally grouped under the label of “libertins,”10 charac-
terized by a naturalism in which there was no place for an immortal soul.11 While the
writings of Lucilio Vanini, Pierre Charon, or François La Mothe Le Vayer played a role in
irreligious works well into the following century, in discussions of human nature, the
relations of humans to other animals, and the existence of the soul, the works of
Gassendi were more crucial. His Christianized adaptation of Epicureanism and the
popularization of his philosophy by François Bernier’s exposition in French12 played an
important role in such debates. According to Margaret Osler, Gassendi introduced
Epicurean philosophy into the mainstream of European thought.13 The precise convic-
tions of Gassendi himself have led to disagreement amongst scholars. While his desire
to reconcile ancient atomism with Christian doctrine is clear, there is no consensus con-
cerning his real piety and the extent to which his defense of religion might have been
merely a cover for hidden irreligious tendencies. For some, his complex philosophy
retains a tension between materialistic conclusions and Christian belief, while for
9 For example Mabilleau, Histoire de la philosophie atomistique.

10 For the “libertins” (a word with a meaning much wider than “libertine”), see in particular Pintard,
Le libertinage érudit; and Charles-Daubert, Les libertins érudits en France au XVIIe siècle.
11 Gregory, “Il libertinismo della prima méta del seicento,” 18.
12 Bernier,Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi. 13 Osler, “Fortune, Fate and Divination,” 155.
644 ANN THOMSON
others his system did indeed Christianize atomism. Margaret Osler, who sees his
theological views as underlying his philosophy, has criticized a tradition following René
Pintard, which viewed him as a “libertin” and Alan Kors quotes several contemporaries
who emphasized Gassendi’s piety.14 For Olivier Bloch, Gassendi developed the two
incompatible aspects of his philosophy without reconciling them, and while not doubt-
ing his sincere faith Bloch sees it as less important and believes that, despite himself, the
main thrust of Gassendi’s philosophy was materialist.15 In connection with this contro-
versy it is interesting to note a published letter written by Gassendi’s follower François
Bernier, dated from Persia in 1668. In this letter to his friend La Chapelle, in which
Bernier discusses the main tenets of atomism, he insists that matter cannot account for
human intelligence, and emphasizes the need for divine intervention and the existence
of an immaterial soul.16
Whatever position one adopts on this point, there is no doubt of Gassendi’s impor-
tance in popularizing aspects of Epicurean philosophy, including amongst those who
did not share his religious position. The main aspects of Gassendi’s philosophy that
played a role in materialistic accounts of humans were, on the one hand, his conception
of animal soul and the identification of the corporeal soul with the principle of life, and
on the other, his discussion of the properties of the atom. Scholars have pointed out the
importance of the question of the faculties of the material corporeal soul, on which as
we shall see several thinkers adopted Gassendi’s view. One should not however overlook
the importance of his suggestion that atoms possess an inherent impulse or inclination
to motion, and his discussion of the problem of how to account for the mobility of atoms
of matter.17 There is disagreement among scholars concerning Gassendi’s view of the
properties of the atom, and the extent to which he does indeed posit the activity of mat-
ter and thus runs the danger of providing support for materialism. Antonia Lolordo has
argued, contrary to Margaret Osler, that active matter was necessary for Gassendi in
order to preserve religion and that at the period when he was writing there appears to
have been no fear that allowing activity to creation would lead to atheism. According to
Lolordo, the dangers of such a position only appeared acutely later in the century.18
Certainly by the 1650s Boyle’s criticism of Epicurean atomism centered on the rejection
of the activity of matter.19
Gassendi’s account of the properties of atoms played a role in his discussion of animal
reproduction, which attempts to provide what has been called a broadly materialistic
atomistic account of generation, involving the seminal principle that directs embryonic
14 Margaret J. Osler reviews some of the different opinions in “When Did Pierre Gassendi Become a
Libertine?,” 168–92, but she tends to caricature the position of Olivier Bloch, who does not share
Pintard’s view of Gassendi’s dissimulation, and specifically writes that he sees no reason to doubt
Gassendi’s professions of faith. See rather Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, 87
and Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650–1729, 50–60.
15 Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi, 151, 474–81. 16 Bernier, Voyages, 1.169–205.
17 See Fisher, Pierre Gassendi’s Philosophy and Science, 247–63.
18 Lolordo, Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy, 142–44.
19 See Clericuzio, “Gassendi, Charleton and Boyle on Matter and Motion.”
development.20 His theory of “semina” (seed) posits a particular type of molecule or

group of atoms endowed with formative power formed from all parts of the bodies of
both men and women, containing a small soul or flame. It is used to explain the genera-
tion of minerals as well as animals and plants, to explain apparent spontaneous genera-
tion, and also to provide a naturalistic account of the transmission of characteristics
from parents to children. However the origin of this power is not clear and Gassendi
insists on the limits of our knowledge of God’s operations. His theory has received dif-
fering interpretations from scholars, for example concerning the extent to which
Gassendi adopts preformation. François Duchesneau has emphasized the tensions and
ambiguities in Gassendi’s theory, which he sees as containing two distinct mechanical
models, one based on Epicurean materialism, the other reducing the role of chance by
frequent recourse to teleology.21 As we shall see, reproduction continued to pose prob-
lems for materialistic accounts of humans within a mechanistic Epicurean framework,
and these problems were linked to the question of the properties of the eternally moving
atoms, on which interpretations differed.
The importance of Gassendi’s writings in contributing to the spread of Epicurean phi-
losophy has already been mentioned. His own contacts with the exiled English royalist
circle around the Cavendishes in Paris played a role in this influence. In particular, the
meeting in 1641 between Hobbes and Gassendi had an impact on the philosophy of both
men, as has been shown.22 It was probably through this circle that Epicureanism came to
play an important role in England in the seventeenth century, although Stephen Clucas
has criticized the emphasis on Gassendi’s influence. He claims instead that there was a
separate tradition of English atomism which differed in several ways from Gassendi’s
views and incorporated other elements. As he shows, atomistic matter theory is fre-
quently combined with non-mechanical elements and it is rare to find Epicureanism
unmixed with other traditions.23
One should also not forget the important role played by Ralph Cudworth in defend-
ing ancient atomism. He rehabilitated it by distinguishing it from atheistic mechanism,
represented among the ancients by Protagoras in particular and by Hobbes among the
moderns.24 To claim that the chance collisions of atoms could produce everything that
exists led in his view to atheism. For Cudworth, on the contrary, anyone who under-
stands correctly “Atomick Physiology” “must acknowledge Incorporeal Substances;
which is the Absolute Overthrow of Atheism.”25 Thus, while defending what he saw as
20 Fisher, Pierre Gassendi’s Philosophy and Science, 299 and “The Soul as Vehicle for Genetic
Information,” 122–23. See also Bloch, Matière à histoires, 167–73; Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de
Descartes à Leibniz, 86–115; Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles, 63–71; and Lolordo, Pierre
Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy, 183–97.
21 Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, 114.
22 See, for example, Sarasohn, “Motion and Morality.”
23 Clucas, “The Atomism of the Cavendish Circle: A Reappraisal”; see also Clucas, “Corpuscular
Matter Theory in the Northumberland Circle.”
24 See Hutton, “Some Thoughts Concerning Ralph Cudworth,” 149; Gregory, “Studi sull’atomismo
del seicento III Cudworth e l’atomismo.”
25 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 10.
646 ANN THOMSON
Descartes’s revival of ancient atomism, he condemned “that monstrous dotage and sot-
tishness of Epicurus, and some other spurious pretenders to this atomical philosophy,”
who made the absurd and contradictory claim that mere corporeal atoms could produce
thought.26 He also distinguished the atomist from the atheistic “Hylozoick Corporealist,”
who believed that matter has life and that nothing else exists. For Cudworth a hylozoist,
unlike an atomist, is necessarily an atheist, and hylozoism is closely linked to corporeal-
ism, because if matter possesses self-active power and sensibility, it can also possess rea-
son and understanding. This will remove the need “either of an Incorporeal Immortal
Soul in Men, or a Deity in the Universe.”27 Cudworth’s discussion of atomism and his
solution to the question of how to account for feeling and intelligence, in the form of
plastic natures, were to play a role in the following century in France, mainly thanks to
the extensive summary in French of the True Intellectual System of the Universe pub-
lished by the Arminian theologian Jean Le Clerc in the first issues of his periodical
Bibliothèque choisie in 1703–1704.28
Cudworth’s main target in his attack on atheistic Epicureanism was of course
Hobbes,29 who could in many ways be said to be the figure haunting the Cambridge
Platonists’ writings and contemporary fears of atheism.30 Henry More’s 1659 work The
Immortality of the Soul was directed against Hobbes, whose corporeal mechanism was
given the label of materialist by Henry More, a term possibly invented by More for the
purpose.31 Similarly, in the late seventeenth century the first Boyle lecturer, Richard
Bentley, directed his refutation of atheism against the arch-Epicurean, Thomas
Hobbes.32 Subsequent lecturers in this series, set up in accordance with the terms of
Robert Boyle’s will to defend Christian doctrines, particularly targeted Epicureans and
“Hobbists.” The presentation of Hobbes’s philosophy as Epicurean is in many ways a dis-
tortion, as has been frequently pointed out, but despite Hobbes’s refusal of the void and
lack of recourse to atomistic explanations, an affinity with certain Epicurean themes,
mediated through Lucretius, cannot be denied. His basic materialistic outlook is shared
with Epicureanism, whatever the undoubted differences in specific theories or science.33
Indeed, it is in many ways particularly appropriate to take Hobbes’s explanations in
terms of matter and motion as a starting-point for the question of Epicurean material-
ism. The basic criticisms made of Epicurean philosophy, as of Hobbism, continued to
center on the question of how matter and motion could account for thought, and led to
attempts to introduce other explanatory mechanisms which could be combined to pro-
vide a naturalistic explanation of humans in material terms.
26 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 151–52.

27 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 105.
28 See Simonutti, “Bayle and Le Clerc as Readers of Cudworth” and Kors, Naturalism and Unbelief in
France, 272–79.
29 Zarka, “Critique de Hobbes,” 39–40.
30 See, for example, Charles Wolseley’s “Atheists’ Catechism” (1666), which attributed to Hobbes
atheistic principles based on Epicurean philosophy, quoted by Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan, 39–40.
31 See Bloch, Matière à histoires, 21–35. 32 Bentley, The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism.
33 See in particular Pacchi, “Hobbes e l’epicureismo.”
The case of Margaret Cavendish is here particularly interesting. She developed a

materialistic system initially based on Epicurean philosophy, which she expounded in
the texts she wrote in 1653; indeed it has been claimed that this was what pushed Walter
Charleton and others to develop a Christianized form of Epicureanism.34 However, in
her later writings she rejected certain basic Epicurean tenets including atoms and the
chance origin of the universe, and insisted that matter possessed life and feeling. She
wrote:
I shall never be able to conceive how, senseless and irrational atoms can produce
sense and reason, or a sensible and rational body, such as the soul is: although he
[Epicurus] affirms it to be possible.35
The problem for those who opposed Aristotelian theories of human beings was indeed
how to provide a convincing alternative account of life, feeling, and in particular
thought. As Pierre Bayle wrote: “man is the most difficult morsel to digest for all sys-
tems. He is the stumbling-block of truth and falsehood . . . .”36 Margaret Osler has
pointed out that the abandoning of Aristotelian forms meant that matter was seen as
free-standing, which entailed the problem of how to explain phenomena.37 Thus the
nonconformist English divine Richard Baxter criticized Epicurus and Descartes for
reducing all phenomena to matter and local motion. In the Appendix to The Reasons of
Christian Religion (1667), in which he defended the immortality of the soul against “the
Somatists or Epicureans, and other Pseudo-Philosophers,” with frequent recourse to
Gassendi, Baxter particularly condemned the Epicurean hypothesis (which he equated
with that of Descartes) for reducing everything to matter and motion. He pointed out
that those who adopted this philosophy needed a God as the first cause.38 He even went
as far, in his later dispute with Henry More, as to claim that there was no contradiction
in the notion of perceptive matter and that God could make “perceptive living matter.”39
The difficulty of accounting for feeling and thought was explored in detail by Pierre
Bayle in his influential writings on atomistic philosophy. He argued on several occasions
that the main objection to which such theories were open was in relation to the soul, as it
was difficult to imagine how the soul could be explained on the basis of a system of
insensitive atoms. As he emphasized in various articles in his Dictionary, the only solu-
tion open to atomists was to suppose each atom endowed with life and feeling, as they
would not then be vulnerable to the objection made against endowing matter with
thought, namely that it is divisible: “if every atom had a soul and sensation, we might
34 See Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton, 73–76.

35 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, 264.
36 Bayle, Œuvres diverses, 3.343.
37 Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy, 178–79. See also Wilson, Epicureanism at the
Origins of Modernity, 82–85.
38 Baxter, The Reasons of the Christian Religion, 498–506.
39 Baxter, Of the Nature of Spirits, 9. On More and Baxter, see Crocker, Henry More, 1614–1687,
170–76 and Reid, The Metaphysics of Henry More, 192–197.
648 ANN THOMSON
easily conceive how a combination of atoms should make a compound capable of cer-
tain particular modifications, as well with respect to consciousness and sensation, as
with respect to motion.”40 After all, he remarked, it is no more difficult to conceive of
atoms as sensitive than it is to conceive of them as possessing innate motion as the
Epicureans claim. Both claims were of course inconceivable for Bayle. He pointed out
that this was Democritus’s position, abandoned by Epicurus despite the fact that it
allowed atomists to explain how different arrangements of atoms could form “divers
sorts of creatures, divers senses, and divers thoughts,” and thus avoid being exposed to
the “thundering objection” of those critics who argued that if one atom could not feel,
then no juxtaposition of several atoms would be able to.41 Here Bayle, as so often, put his
finger on one of the basic problems for the elaboration of a coherent materialistic view of
humans in the early modern period, one which, as we shall see, continued to dog
thinkers.
Gianni Paganini has discussed this question at some length, and pointed out the
importance of Bayle’s discussions for the development of eighteenth-century material-
ism. He shows that Bayle moved from an emphasis on the Epicurean as the representa-
tive of a coherent materialist philosophy, for the reasons expounded in the article on
“Epicure,” to a concentration on the Stratonist atheist, whose dynamic view of matter
could account for the creation of animals and sentient beings without divine interven-
tion.42 This emphasis on the atheistic philosophy of Strato of Lampsacus, who attributed
life to matter, is in evidence in the Continuation des pensées diverses. This work includes
Bayle’s dispute with the Arminian theologian and journalist Jean Le Clerc over “plastick
natures.” This increasingly virulent dispute followed from Le Clerc’s favorable discus-
sion of Cudworth’s philosophy in the first issues of his Bibliothèque choisie. One of the
vital issues here was the question of how to account for feeling and intelligence.43 For
Bayle, Cudworth’s theory removed a potent argument against the atheists, whether
Epicurean or Stratonist, concerning the need for an immaterial intelligent creator in
order to account for the formation of animals. Only the Cartesian system, which posited
the need for God to accord motive force to matter, could answer the atheists, because
once one admitted such a force in any type of matter, or in Cudworth’s “plastick nature,”
the argument in favor of a divine creator was fatally undermined. He seems to be liken-
ing Cudworth’s philosophy to Stratonism.44 Of course the precise interpretation of
Bayle’s aim is, as always, open to dispute, but there is no doubt of his importance in
pointing out the problems; this also shows the role played by seventeenth-century
English theological reflection in the importance accorded to atomistic arguments.
40 Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary, 3.1924.

41 Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary, 2.1189.
42 See, for example, Paganini, “Tra Epicureo e Stratone,” 86.
43 For a discussion of the larger theological context, see Brogi, “Nature plastiche e disegni divini.”
44 In particular Bayle, Œuvres diverses, 3.216–17. See also Simonutti, “Bayle and Le Clerc as Readers
of Cudworth,” 156–58.
Bayle’s solution of according sentience to atoms removed the problem of making

divisible matter the subject of thought.45 He compared this sentient atom to the monads
of Leibniz, who developed his theory during the same years. Indeed several critics have
pointed out the connection between Bayle’s discussion and the way Leibniz reworked
Cudworth.46 In some ways, indeed, Leibniz’s monads could be compared to the sentient
atoms proposed by Bayle, and Catherine Wilson has characterized Leibniz’s philosophy
as “an alter-Epicurean system.”47 Leibniz’s abandoning of his youthful sympathy for
atomism was linked to his rejection of the void and his conviction that there could be no
material atoms, as all material things were infinitely divisible. Stuart Brown quotes his
reply to Bayle who had compared monads to Epicurean atoms, in which Leibniz claimed
to regard monads as “atoms of substance.”48 Bayle’s remarks and Leibniz’s reaction show
the limitations of Epicurean mechanical philosophy for the development of a coherent
materialistic theory of animate beings in an age of new discoveries in biology and medi-
cine. They help to explain why Epicurean mechanism alone was insufficient to provide a
view of matter that could form the basis for an account of humans and other animals.
In this process of adapting Epicurean atomism with the addition of extraneous ele-
ments, the role of medical thought was important, and here too the influence of
Gassendi was significant. In England, where his works circulated rapidly among
scientists,49 physician Walter Charleton played a notable role in the diffusion of
Gassendi’s thought. Charleton had studied with William Harvey in Oxford in the mid-
1640s and later adopted Gassendi’s Epicurean philosophy under the influence of the
Cavendish circle. He expounded what was essentially Gassendi’s philosophy in his
Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana in 1654. Among the atheistic “dross” of
Epicureanism that must be rejected according to him was the claim “that Atoms were
Eternally existent in the infinite space” and “that their Motive Faculty was eternally
inhaerent in them, and not derived by impression from any External Principle.”50 Like
Gassendi, he claimed there was no problem in endowing atoms with their own innate
motive power, provided one stipulated that it was communicated to them by God at
their first creation. Thus, according to one critic, he “was constrained to admit some
vitalistic elements into his system.”51 For Charleton, as for Harvey, the blood, while
material, does seem to possess innate vital qualities and the precise status of the incor-
poreal substance of the soul seems unclear.52 Indeed, in The Natural History of Nutrition,
45 See, for example, Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary, 3.1924.

46 Paganini, “Tra Epicureo e Stratone,” 88–89, who also cites Bayle’s comparison in “Rorarius,” note
L; and Robinet, “Les différentes lectures du System de Cudworth par G. W. Leibniz,” 192–95.
47 Wilson, “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy,” 94. For a more detailed discussion of
Leibniz’s criticism of atomism, see Wilson, “Leibniz and Atomism.”
48 Brown, “The Proto-Monadology of the De Summa Rerum,” 271. See also Paganini, Analisi della
fede, 421. Konrad Moll has emphasized the influence of Gassendi on Leibniz, with whom he shared the
aim of opposing atheism: Moll, “L’atomisme Gassendien et la genèse du système de Leibniz,” 275–79.
49 Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists, 90–93.
50 Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana, 126.
51 Gelbart, “The Intellectual Development of Walter Charleton,” 157.
52 Charleton, The Immortality of the Human Soul, 184–85.
650 ANN THOMSON
of Life and Voluntary Motion (1659), in which Charleton adopted Gassendi’s account of
animal generation, he attributed both activity and sensation to matter, claiming that “all
parts of the body have a certain Naturall sense or feeling, distinct from the Animal, and
wholly independent upon the brain.”53 Such views probably betray the earlier influence
of Van Helmont as well as that of the writings of the Cambridge physician Francis
Glisson, whose descriptions of “energetic” matter played an important role in vitalistic
medical theories.54 They indicate the type of thinking that was frequently combined
with Epicurean mechanism and, as we shall see, was often later used to elaborate a mate-
rialistic view of humans.
Debates on the Soul
Charleton draws in some of his later works on the writings of another Christian
Epicurean medical doctor, who had apparently in turn used Charleton’s account of the
sensitive soul drawn from Gassendi.55 Thomas Willis, appointed professor of Natural
philosophy at Oxford at the Restoration, defended the new science against the
Aristotelian tradition, and adopted Gassendi’s atomism, combining Epicureanism with
aspects of chemical doctrine.56 The influence of Gassendi is evident in De anima bruto-
rum (1672),57 which discusses the nature and function of the animal spirits distributed
by the nerves (generally called the sensitive soul but which Willis called the “Lucid or
Etherial soul”),58 and the separate vital soul. This dual material soul explains all animal
functions except human reason, produced by the immaterial rational soul. The corpo-
real soul, distributed throughout the body and capable of perceiving, learning, and
forming certain judgments,59 is transmitted in the seminal fluid and creates a new being,
by “kindling” the matter to form the body. For Willis, the atoms composing all material
objects are active, self-moving, and capable of sensation, and the only difference
between an insensitive and a sensitive body is that which is between “a thing unkindled,
and a thing kindled.”60 The dangers inherent in thus according activity, life, and sensitiv-
ity to matter were increasingly obvious, and Willis’s appeal to those who wished to dis-
pense with an immaterial soul altogether and provide a purely material explanation of
human functions was reinforced by his work on the brain. The results of his research
program on the brain, which constituted his primary contribution to medical history,
53 Charleton, A Natural History of Nutrition, 116–25. See Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and
Corpuscles, 97–100.
54 On Glisson, see Giglioni, “Anatomist Atheist?” 55 See Blank, “Atoms and Minds,” 137.
56 See King, The Philosophy of Medicine, 82.
57 The use of Gassendi in Willis’s discussion of the soul is indicated in more detail in King, The
Philosophy of Medicine, 141.
58 Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, 23.
59 See Wright, “Locke, Willis and the Seventeenth-century Epicurean Soul”; Duchesneau, Les
modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, 85–117.
60 Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, 33.
were first published in Cerebri anatome (1664) and further developed in De anima bru-
torum.61 Here he explained in detail sensation, perception, imagination, and memory,
attempting to localize these functions in different parts of the brain.62 Willis also insisted
on the similarity of human and animal brains and did seem at times to be saying that the
different capacities of humans were accounted for by a different organization.63 Thus his
writings could be used by those materialists who wished to explain intellectual func-
tions of humans by the workings of the brain,64 whether or not they adopted the
Epicurean view of a material soul derived from Gassendi. Roselyne Rey has shown how
Gassendi’s influence reached the vitalistic medical school associated in the eighteenth
century with Montpellier University—which played a role in Diderot’s materialism—
through English writers such as Willis.65
Another medical writer who was a vector for Epicurean materialism in the same
period was the French physician Guillaume Lamy. Although a member of the Paris
Medical Faculty, he is a minor figure in medical history compared to the distinguished
Willis, but he did take part in several high-profile medical disputes.66 His works subor-
dinate medical explanations to philosophical principles, namely the refusal of any but
mechanical explanations, rejecting what he considered to be hypotheses unsupported
by evidence. In De principiis rerum. Liber tres (1669) he discussed different systems,
coming down firmly on the side of the Epicurean system and, despite denying it to be
contrary to Christian faith, he espoused the irreligious aspects of this philosophy that
others did not, namely anti-finalism and the explanation of the world’s origin by chance
encounters of atoms.67 Lamy described human anatomy and the functioning of the
brain in two works. In the public anatomy lectures published as Discours anatomiques
(1675), he claimed that the different parts of the body are produced purely by matter and
motion, without intentionality or purpose, due to a necessity inherent in the nature of
the atoms composing them, and that their functions follow from their existence.68
While Lamy generally adopts Cartesian physiology, particularly in his description of the
circulation of the blood, Willis’s influence is evident in the description of the brain in the
sixth lecture, which largely follows Cerebri anatome. However, while adopting Willis’s
view that the animal spirits or material animal soul are responsible for movement and
sensibility, Lamy clearly implies that the animal spirits (which, like Willis, he compares
to rays of light in the nerves)69 are the same as the human soul. He also adopts the Stoic
view concerning a material soul of the world, described as a very subtle spirit or a fine
and always mobile matter whose source is in the sun, a fire without flame which, when
associated with a particular organization of organs and mixture of humors, feels and
61 See Crignon, “How Animals may help us understand Men”.

62 Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, 24–29.
63 Bynum, “Anatomical Method,” 447. 64 Jeannerod, Le cerveau-machine, 19.
65 Rey, “Gassendi et les sciences de la vie au XVIIIe siècle.”
66 See Metzger, Les doctrines chimiques, 223–26.
67 On this work, see Kubbinga, L’Histoire du concept de “molécule,” 266–69 and Kors, Epicureans and
Atheists in France, 81–90.
68 See Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 122–38. 69 Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 174.
652 ANN THOMSON
perceives.70 Lamy’s works show how mechanistic physiology linked to Epicurean

philosophy could draw on the writings of both Descartes and Willis in order to provide
a materialistic explanation of humans. But although his works did not contribute greatly
to organicist explanations, their influence on certain irreligious French eighteenth-
century texts is well documented, despite disagreement among scholars as to his true
beliefs.71 His passage concerning the material soul is reproduced in several of such irre-
ligious works, which combine Epicurean and Stoic conceptions of the soul.72
A similar combination of Epicurean and Stoic conceptions of a material soul is found
in the late seventeenth-century works of Charles Blount, the first “English deist,” infa-
mous both for his radical ideas and denunciation of “priestcraft” and for his suicide. In
Anima mundi, first published in 1679, he reviews ancient opinions on the soul, a favorite
tactic of irreligious thinkers.73 He expounds the theories of both the Epicurean material
soul and the Stoic “soul of the world” positing the existence of two eternal substances,
mind and body. While he does not come down clearly in favor of one particular opinion,
his presentation of the reasons for belief in the soul’s immortality is continually under-
mined by emphasis on the different opinions of those who doubted it and on the diffi-
culty of deciding.74 The main themes developed in Blount’s works are Epicurean and
Stoic and, despite a strong influence of both Hobbes and Spinoza, Epicureanism is
described as the chief philosophy denying the existence of an immaterial, immortal
soul.75 This is certainly how it continued to be viewed in Britain, as can be seen from the
continuing polemic on the nature of the soul in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-
century England.76
Despite the large number of attacks on Epicurean and Hobbesian atheists and the
probable existence of heterodox opinions on the soul, the number of those who openly
denied the existence of an immaterial soul in print was relatively small. Nevertheless,
their works caused a major polemic which seems to have outstripped their real influ-
ence, while at the same time indicating the extent of heterodox speculation. The refusal
of an immaterial soul was part of a long-standing Christian tradition, which claimed
that the doctrine of a separate immaterial and immortal soul was a pagan import into
Christian doctrine and that to deny that it was possible for matter to think was to under-
mine divine omnipotence. Such heretical Christians believed either that the soul died
with the body, to be resurrected at the Last Judgment, or that it slept until then. Those
who defended such positions (generally called mortalist) in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries were immediately accused of adopting Epicurean philosophy.
When the aged Henry Layton wrote a pamphlet arguing against the existence of an
immaterial soul in reply to Richard Bentley’s 1691 Boyle Lecture on the theme that mat-
ter and motion cannot think, he was naturally seen to be adopting Hobbesian and
70 Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 104. 71 See Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 78—81.
72 See Thomson, “Guillaume Lamy et l’âme matérielle.”
73 See Bonanate, “Cultura classica e critica libertina in Inghilterra”; and Iofrida, “La presenza della
cultura libertina in Inghilterra alla fine del ‘600.”
74 Blount, The Oracles of Reason, 119–27. 75 Sergio, “Filosofia, natura e pensiero libertino.”
76 See Thomson, “Epicurisme et matérialisme en Angleterre au début du 18e siècle”.
Epicurean philosophy. One of the most consistent critics of the Christian mortalists
commented on Layton’s work: “you have here such a medly of Epicurean dreams and
Christian doctrines mixt together, as is not commonly met with,” and went on to refer to
Epicurean views of a material soul by quoting from Diogenes Laertius, Gassendi, and
Hobbes.77 Layton, who was by all accounts a very devout man with no thoughts of
undermining religion, had to some extent encouraged such criticisms by comparing the
human soul to Gassendi’s fiery animal soul and referring to the material Epicurean
soul.78 It is interesting to note that Layton’s espousal of such theories was at least in part
the result of reading Willis’s De anima brutorum.
The most determined onslaught on doctrine of the immaterial soul in the early years
of the eighteenth century came from a medical doctor, William Coward, in a series of
works drawing on both theological and medical arguments, beginning in 1702 with
Second Thoughts on Human Soul.79 He was likewise accused of Epicurean atheism,80 and
in 1704 two of his works were condemned by the House of Commons to be burnt by the
common hangman. One author claimed that any attempt to explain the workings of the
soul by matter and movement constituted “a direct road to atheism or at least to enter-
tain such gross conceptions of a deity as the Epicureans have, and conclude with them
that the world was made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms . . . .”81 In reply to such accu-
sations, Coward denied that he had taken any notions from “Epicurus, Gassendus or
Mr Hobbs” and claimed to have only a passing and ancient acquaintance with Hobbes’s
works.82 His materialism was clearly influenced by his medical studies and by the
chemical works of Willis, and he seems to prefer the “atomical philosophy” to
Aristotelianism.83 He did not however adopt the idea of a material soul, preferring to
explain thought in terms of the workings of the brain. He was apparently more con-
cerned with the question of vital matter, in which connection he refers to the theories of
Glisson concerning sentient matter.84 It is perhaps significant that he did not draw on
Willis’s works on the brain or animal soul.
The other high-profile participant in this debate was John Toland, who gave it a more
clearly irreligious tonality in his Letters to Serena (1704). Despite certain Epicurean
overtones, in this work he specifically rejected the Epicurean doctrines of the vacuum
and the chance origin of the world.85 Crucially, he claimed that motion was essential to
matter, insisting that he meant not merely local motion but inherent motive force or
internal energy.86 Those who most openly denied a separate immaterial soul and
attempted to provide a material explanation of humans in England in the late seven-
77 Manlove, The Immortality of the Soul, 6.

78 Layton, A Second Part of a Treatise, 61–63. See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 98–104.
79 See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 104–17.
80 See, for example, Broughton, Psychologia, xiii; Assheton, A Vindication of the Immortality of the
Soul, 2.
81 Hole, An Antidote against Infidelity, 43. 82 Coward, Farther Thoughts, 108.
83 Coward, Second Thoughts on Human Soul, 348. 84 Coward, The Grand Essay, 153–54.
85 Lurbe, “John Toland et l’épicurisme,” 573. See also Cherchi, Pantheisticon; Iofrida, La filosofia di
John Toland; Giuntini, Panteismo e ideologia repubblicana.
86 Toland, Letters to Serena, 193–94.
654 ANN THOMSON
teenth and early eighteenth centuries were thus far from claiming that the chance
encounters of atoms could produce thought, and instead were particularly concerned
with the question of matter and its inherent life and with reducing the radical distinc-
tion between humans and other animals.87 The crucial step was to go beyond the affi rm
ation of an eternally mobile matter to the claim that matter is living and sentient. But it is
also clear that despite this, the very denial of an immaterial soul was considered to be
part of an Epicurean tradition.
From this point of view it is interesting to note the reaction of the Newtonian mathe-
matician Joseph Raphson, whose assimilation of God to space was analyzed by Toland
in the fifth of his Letters to Serena. In De Deo, published in 1710, Raphson included a
series of letters, the first of which provides a detailed comparison of William Coward’s
theories with those of Lucretius, reproducing in parallel columns passages from the two
writers concerning mainly matter’s power to move itself and the way the material animal
spirits produce thought. Raphson even quotes approvingly Coward’s claim that an
immaterial and unextended soul is incomprehensible and is a philosophical impos-
ture.88 Such remarks indicate that unorthodox views of the soul were probably quite
common (and those holding them included Locke), but do not necessarily provide
proof of an espousal of Epicurean philosophy. It has been suggested that Newton him-
self adopted the ancient atomic “vulgate” of the inherent movement of atoms and that
his treatment of attraction provided ammunition for materialists such as Toland and
others in their defense of active and even sentient matter.89 B. J. T. Dobbs claims that
Newton’s final position was a combination of Epicurean atomism with a Stoic concep-
tion of divine substance which replaced the void and accounted for the active principle
of gravity.90
The influence of English thinking, including to some extent the continuation of the
Protestant tradition of mortalism, combined with Epicurean elements, is to be found in
the works of the Italian exile Alberto Radicati di Passerano, who left his native Piedmont
because of his conversion to Protestantism and spent the rest of his life conducting a
nomadic existence.91 During his stay in England in the 1730s, before his lonely death in
Holland, he published a work called in its English translation A Philosophical
Dissertation on Death, considered to be so shocking that Radicati was arrested, together
with his publisher and translator.92 In this work, specifically aimed at removing the
fear of death, Radicati develops the Epicurean themes that death is nothing, to the extent
that he defends suicide. His argument is based on a materialistic conception of the world
and of humans, in which death is simply the dissolution of atoms which are re-combined
to form other bodies. He begins his work by positing the eternal existence of atoms and
the void and stating that the atoms are necessarily in permanent motion, but his claim
87 Thomson, “Animals, Humans, Machines.” 88 Raphson, Demonstratio de Deo, 53–61.

89 Casini, “Newton, Diderot et la vulgate de l’atomisme.”
90 Dobbs, “Stoic and Epicurean Doctrines.”
91 See Cavallo, “’Atheists or Deists more charitable than superstitious Zealots’: Alberto Radicati’s
Intellectual Parabola”
92 See Venturi, Saggi sull’Europa illuminista.
that “motion is to matter as essential as heat is to fire”93 probably betrays the influence of
Toland. He also claims that the particular modifications of matter are always the same
and cannot vary although individuals are in perpetual change.94 While Radicati was
more interested in the ill effects on society of religious beliefs and in attacking “priest-
craft” than in providing a natural history of man, his works, which seem to have circu-
lated, help to show the use of Epicurean themes and the way that they could be combined
with aspects of other traditions to encourage a naturalistic view of humans.
Indeed, a certain number of irreligious works that circulated clandestinely in
eighteenth-century France seem to be calling on the Epicurean tradition when develop-
ing arguments against an immaterial and/or immortal soul which distinguished
humans from animals. An example is the long, atheistic, seventeenth-century Latin
work called Theophrastus Redivivus, which calls on a variety of philosophical traditions;
while rejecting atomism and the void, the anonymous author quotes frequently from
Lucretius and accords particular importance to Epicurean themes, concerning notably
death or the material soul.95 As has been pointed out by several scholars, we find in early
eighteenth-century French irreligious works two different models for explaining intel-
lectual functions without recourse to an immaterial soul, one positing a material soul
and the other seeing it as simply the result of a particular structure of the brain and
nerves.96 While the former has Epicurean antecedents, it derives mainly from the pas-
sage by Guillaume Lamy that we have already mentioned, and thus has clear Stoic over-
tones. Nevertheless, the notion of a material soul composed of subtle matter similar to
the animal soul, in the Epicurean tradition, is the favorite solution to the problem of
providing a materialistic explanation for human intellectual faculties in many early
works. For example the most famous and widely distributed of these irreligious works
which circulated in various forms under the names of Traité des trois imposteurs and
Esprit de Spinosa and was published several times, reproduces Lamy’s passage on the
material soul.97 A much less widely circulated manuscript work called L’âme matérielle
develops arguments against the soul’s immortality and the existence of immaterial sub-
stance derived from a variety of sources, including Lucretius, and also quotes Gassendi
and Lamy.98 However the hypothesis of a material soul gradually lost its appeal in favor
of emergentist theories, attempting to explain how the brain thinks and drawing on
medical investigations, which is where the question of vital matter comes to the fore. It is
interesting that the manuscript called Parité de la vie et de la mort, which insists that
movement is an essential property of matter, is the re-working of a book published by a
medical doctor called Abraham Gaultier, who was influenced by Lamy’s works. Gaultier
referred to Bayle’s discussion of the attribution of feeling to atoms in the article “Epicure,”
93 Radicati di Passerano, A Philosophical Dissertation on Death, 8.

94 Radicati di Passerano, A Philosophical Dissertation on Death, 9–10.
95 Canziani and Paganini, Theophrastus redivivus; see also Donis, “Nature, plaisir et mort dans le
Theophrastus Redivivus.”
96 Vartanian, “Quelques réflexions,” 149.
97 See Charles-Daubert, Le “Traité des trois imposteurs” et “L’Esprit de Spinosa,” 358–61.
98 Niderst, L’Ame matérielle, 53–54, 169.
656 ANN THOMSON
quoted above.99 According to Miguel Benitez, these clandestine treatises only very
rarely adopted atoms and the void, drawing instead on various traditions of vital matter.
He claims that for their authors atomism was incapable of solving the problems associ-
ated with living matter and was even incompatible with materialism.100
The Eighteenth Century
One should not however conclude that Epicureanism played no role in the naturalistic
explanations of humans that were elaborated in eighteenth-century France. In England
naturalistic interpretations of humans remained in the Christian mortalist tradition.
The discussion of the soul added to Bernard Mandeville’s Treatise of the Hypochondriack
and Hysterick Diseases in 1730 stuck to theological arguments for thinking matter,101
and in the mid-1750s a debate on whether life and thought could be connected to matter
was sparked off by the Bishop of Carlyle Edmund Law’s defense of mortalism.102 In the
1770s Joseph Priestley developed what he called a materialistic system that according to
him corresponded to the true Christian doctrine.103 But the openly irreligious material-
ism developed in France in this period clearly drew in part on Epicureanism, which was
combined with other influences in order to elaborate a coherent materialistic explana-
tion of humans. We need, therefore, to moderate Schmidt’s claims that “wherever, dur-
ing that time, atheism comes to the fore, it is nearly always in the form of Epicurean
forms or doctrines.” It is difficult to agree that “Epicureanism is, in essence, the scien-
tific, doctrinal, and ethical expression of atheism,” and that through Lucretius it emerged
more openly and recovered its lost vigor in the middle of the eighteenth century.104
We can usefully begin a consideration of eighteenth-century Epicurean materialism
by looking at the way Epicureanism was presented in the Encyclopédie. The Encyclopédie
article “Epicuréisme ou Epicurisme,” written by Diderot, provides a clear exposition of
the main tenets of this philosophy taken from Jakob Brucker’s History of Philosophy, tak-
ing care to ask the reader to remember that it is Epicurus who is speaking, not the author
of the article. Diderot brings out clearly the eternity of the universe, the chance creation
of the world, the eternal movements of atoms, and the materiality of the soul. While it is
obvious that Diderot’s philosophy does not correspond in all particulars with what he
expounds here, it is notable that after the exposition, he writes:
99 Bloch, Parité de la vie et de la mort, 157–58. For an interpretation of this work which differs from
that of Bloch, see Kors, Epicureans and Atheists in France, 149–58.
100 Benitez, “Naturalisme et atomisme.”
101 Mandeville, Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases, 50–53. This interpretation
differs from that of Hundert, The Enlightenment’s Fable, 43–45, 58.
102 See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 217.
103 Priestley, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit. See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 233–34;
and for a slightly different approach Niblett, “Man, Morals and Matter.”
104 Schmidt, “Diderot and Lucretius,” 187, 191.
Those are the fundamental points of the doctrine of Epicurus, the only one of all the
classical philosophers who was able to reconcile his ethics with what he could take
to be true human happiness and his precepts with the appetites and needs of nature;
hence he has always had and will always have a large number of disciples. One can
turn oneself into a Stoic but one is born an Epicurean.105
Indeed, the theological critics of the Encyclopédie accused Diderot of using Epicurus as
a screen to develop his own materialism.106
However, the article “Atomisme,” written by Abbé Yvon, while summarizing the main
tenets as laid out by Lucretius, in particular the chance origin of the world and the
refusal of finalism, precisely denies accusations of atheism, and refers the reader to
Cudworth’s demonstration that atomism is entirely compatible with belief in immaterial
substances.107 Much of this article was taken from one written by the Berlin-based
Protestant pastor J. H. S. Formey, who developed the arguments further in the
Encyclopédie article “Corpusculaire” where we read, for example:
Far from leading to atheism, corpuscular philosophy brings us to recognize the

existence of beings distinct from matter. Corpuscular physics only attributes to bod-
ies what is included in the idea of something impenetrable and extended and what
can be conceived as one of its modifications, like size, divisibility, figure, situation,
movement and rest, and everything resulting from their different combinations;
thus this physics cannot accept that life and thought are modifications of the body.
From which it follows that they are properties of another substance distinct from
the body.108
The Encyclopédie thus reflects the differing views on this subject in the period, ranging
from implied approval of the basic Epicurean tenets which undermined religion to the
defense of a Christianized form of Epicureanism. There was however little support for
the chance creation of the world by the encounters of insensitive atoms, as can be seen in
the anonymous article “Hazard,” which is mainly a translation of the article published in
Chambers’s Cyclopaedia. It reproduces Richard Bentley’s criticism of the chance cre-
ation of the world in his Boyle lectures, in order to demonstrate the need for a creator
behind the laws governing the world. Bentley showed that what we take to be a chance
occurrence corresponds simply to the workings of the divinely ordained laws of nature.
But in the Encyclopédie article a sentence is added specifying: “We would say as much
about the universe if all the properties of matter were properly known to us.”109 This
addition implies that matter possesses properties which suffice to explain the universe
in material terms. It shows once again that the fundamental question revolves
around the properties of matter. In Système de la Nature, d’Holbach devotes several
chapters to a similar criticism of chance; he writes for example that in dust storms or
105 Encyclopédie, 5.784. On this article, see Holley, “The Poison and the Spider’s Web,” 1118–22.
106 See Proust, Diderot et l’Encyclopédie, 260–63. 107 Encyclopédie, 1.823.
108 Encyclopédie, 4.269–70. 109 Encyclopédie, 8.74.
658 ANN THOMSON
tempests, “there is not a single molecule of dust or water which is where it is by chance,
without a sufficient cause to be in the place it is, and which does not act rigorously in the
way it should.” Thus knowledge of the different forces and the properties of the mole-
cules concerned would enable one to demonstrate that each molecule is acting exactly as
it should and could not act otherwise.110
However despite the ambivalent nature of the Epicurean legacy in the eighteenth cen-
tury evident in the Encyclopédie, it would probably be accurate to say that the irreligious
facet of atomism came to the fore in this period. The publication in 1749 of the French
translation of Cardinal de Polignac’s poem L’Anti-Lucrèce, originally published in Latin
in 1745 and directed against all materialists, insisted on the importance for materialistic
arguments of Epicureanism, especially as expounded in Lucretius’s poem. The preface
claims that “the materialists recognize Epicurus as their leader” and provides a sum-
mary of “Epicurus’s System.”111 This work defending the divine creation of the universe
may well have encouraged recourse to the “Epicurean system” expounded in Lucretius’s
poem by those who aimed at undermining religious arguments. Among such authors
was probably Dr. Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the notorious atheist and materialist, who
published soon afterwards a short work called, in its final version, Système d’Epicure.
There are numerous references to Epicureanism in La Mettrie’s philosophical writings, a
series of short treatises published mainly between 1745 and his death in 1751, the most
notorious of which was L’Homme machine (1747). Together they constituted what he
called his “natural history of man.” While usually citing Lucretius, he also often took
Epicurean themes from the seventeenth-century libertins or from Montaigne, whom he
called “the first Frenchman who dared to think.”112
La Mettrie’s Epicureanism can be seen in certain aspects of his naturalism, notably his
anti-finalism and refusal of an immaterial and immortal soul.113 Indeed, so keen was he
to enroll illustrious names under his banner that he attributed a rejection of finalism to
Gassendi, citing him in L’Histoire naturelle de l’âme together with Doctor Guillaume
Lamy as two modern Epicureans “who would not believe that the human body’s tools
were made in order to produce certain fixed movements as soon as there was a motive
force.”114 Lamy was a particular favorite of La Mettrie who writes in L’Homme machine
that it is possible:
that Lucretius, Dr Lamy and all past and present Epicureans might well be right
when they claim that the eye sees only because it happens to be organized and
placed as it is.115
110 D’Holbach, Système de la Nature, 51. 111 Polignac, L’Anti-Lucrèce, 1.iv, x.

112 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 129.
113 I have discussed the more general question of his Epicureanism in Thomson, “La Mettrie et
l’épicurisme.” See also Comte-Sponville, “La Mettrie et le ‘Système d’Epicure.’ ”
114 Abrégé des systèmes, §VI, in La Mettrie, Œuvres philosophiques, 1.259.
115 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 25.
Similarly, in L’Histoire naturelle de l’âme (1745), he quotes favorably Lamy’s description of

the material soul that as we have seen was incorporated into several irreligious works. In
his main work L’Homme machine, however, La Mettrie does not adopt the theory of a
material soul, claiming instead that what thinks in our brains is a particular organiza-
tion of matter.116 But he still refers sympathetically to those doctors who did adopt an
Epicurean conception of a material soul present throughout the body, seeing them as
allies in his campaign to promote a material conception of humans.117
In Système d’Epicure La Mettrie outlined Lucretius’s account of the origin of life and
animals, including the theory that the earth had formed the uterus for the first
humans.118 He described the chance formation of all animals, including humans, and
the creation of imperfect individuals before the production of the most suitable type.119
But this work contains a certain number of contradictory and puzzling aspects, and it
seems that his aim in using Lucretius was more to reject divine creation and final causes
than to provide a coherent explanation of the origin of things.120 La Mettrie did not in
general follow Epicurean physics, did not espouse the theory of the chance origin of the
world, and had little recourse to atomism. He too was particularly concerned with dem-
onstrating the capacity of matter to feel and to think, for which he called on medical
examples and the comparative anatomy of humans and animals. Thus, while he can be
called Epicurean in a general sense and while he knew and frequently quoted Lucretius,
his Epicureanism had its limits and its ambiguities, as did that of his contemporaries.121
Among the most distinguished of those contemporaries was Buffon, the first three
volumes of whose influential Histoire naturelle were published after a certain amount of
delay in 1749; La Mettrie devotes a footnote to his “new and ingenious hypothesis” in
Système d’Epicure (§XLI). In Volume II Buffon developed his theory of reproduction in
terms of organic molecules122 and interior molds. This theory owes a lot to the ideas of
his friend the scientist Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin
Academy of Sciences. Maupertuis’s explanation of reproduction was based on a system
of attraction of the smallest particles of matter, which according to him possess some-
thing like “desire, aversion, memory.”123 Despite the support that his system could pro-
vide for a materialistic conception of living beings, Maupertuis presented his hypothesis,
inspired by Newtonianism, as a counter to the impious Epicurean system of the creation
of the world by the chance meeting of eternal atoms without feeling or intelligence. He
emphasized the need for a creator, describing his system as an alternative both to that of
Lucretius and to doctrines defending the direct intervention of the creator or some sort
of spiritual principle or plastic nature like that of Cudworth in the formation of
116 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 26. 117 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 32.
118 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 93. 119 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 94.
120 See Thomson, “La Mettrie, Diderot et Lucrèce”.
121 For a different interpretation see Wolfe, “A Happiness Fit for Organic Bodies.”
122 On the molecule, a word which derives from Gassendi, see Kubbinga, L’Histoire du concept de
“molécule.”
123 Maupertuis, Essai sur la formation, 14.
660 ANN THOMSON
bodies.124 While Buffon saw matter as living and thus recognized forces contained in the
molecule, he did not go as far as Maupertuis and thus, whatever may have been his pri-
vate beliefs, he escaped the accusation of defending materialism. Jacques Roger however
considered that Buffon was closer to the Epicurean atheists and linked him to the
seventeenth-century Epicurean biologists, pointing to his atomism, hostility towards
final causes, and sympathy for something like spontaneous generation.125
These different strands of thought and reflections come together in the work of Denis
Diderot, who spent many years pondering philosophical and scientific questions before
developing his mature thoughts in a fundamentally materialistic view of humans, in
which there is a clear Epicurean slant. In his early deistic Pensées philosophiques (1745),
despite his admiration for Lucretius,126 Diderot attempted to counter atheistic argu-
ments based on Epicurean principles and defended divine creation against the chance
collision of atoms. In his discussion of the crucial question of whether sentient beings
could be formed by matter alone, Diderot may have been influenced by the Swiss scien-
tist Louis Bourguet’s discussion of the exchange between Pierre Bayle and Jean Le Clerc
on the subject of Cudworth’s “plastick natures.” Bourguet insisted that combinations of
molecules of matter could never form organized beings:
that is why all those who have not been blinded by Stratonism or Epicureanism have
recourse to some superior principle which can dispose all these materials and make
them into bodies whose shape and parts are infinitely distant from the simplicity of
those of these corpuscles and the perfection of their activity.127
Bourguet’s “organic mechanism” claimed to provide a scientific explanation for organ

ized beings and may well have appealed to Diderot in his search for arguments against
the atheists.128
Three years later in Lettre sur les aveugles, which landed its author in prison, Diderot
had moved closer to an openly atheistic position and put into the mouth of the dying,
blind, English mathematician Saunderson an inspired view of the universe clearly taken
from the fifth book of Lucretius’s De rerum natura.129 The change of attitude may be due
to the influence of Buffon,130 or possibly to La Mettrie, who may in turn have been influ-
enced by it in Système d’Epicure in view of similarities between the two works. Diderot
may also have been struck by Tremblay’s discovery of the regenerative powers of the
freshwater polyp, which La Mettrie cited in his criticism of the deism Diderot had
expounded in Pensées philosophiques. La Mettrie claimed it showed that nature
124 Maupertuis, Essai sur la formation, 62–64. 125 Roger, Les sciences de la vie, 549–50.
126 Casini, “Lucretius,” 296–97.
127 Bourguet, Lettres philosophiques, 116. See Duchesneau, Leibniz, 249–94.
128 See Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 2.25–26. For a different interpretation of this work, see Stenger,
“L’atomisme dans les Pensées philosophiques,” who sees the direct influence of Gassendi on Diderot’s use
of “molecule.”
129 Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles, 60–63. 130 Roger, Les sciences de la vie, 598.
c ontained the powers necessary to produce the world.131 Although Saunderson’s dia-
tribe only refers to the origin of life, in subsequent works Diderot frequently returned to
the nature of matter. This is the case for his Encyclopédie article “Animal” in which, while
borrowing largely from Buffon’s work, he goes much further in insinuating the capacity
of matter to feel and even to think.132
In subsequent works Diderot returned continually to the question of the properties of
what he usually called the molecule, which seems to be the equivalent of the Epicurean
atom. He discussed the molecule in 1753 in Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature, a
work which also contained a strong attack on final causes.133 In this work he claimed
that Maupertuis’s theory of generation led to “most seductive materialism” or Spinozism,
and stated a preference for Buffon’s organic molecule.134 But Diderot himself accorded
these molecules a sort of “obtuse and dull sense of touch,”135 which as Maupertuis
retorted, came more or less to the same thing as his own claim and was open to the same
accusations of favoring materialism.136
In general Diderot accorded activity and sensibility to molecules while generally
refusing them thought. As he explained in a private letter in 1759, he did not see how a
merely different arrangement of insensitive molecules could produce thought.137 He
here seems clearly to be rejecting the Epicurean hypothesis, using arguments similar to
those of Bayle.138 The solution he finally adopted was probably the one expressed in a
later letter written in 1765. Here he wrote that thought results from the innate but inert
sensitivity of matter, which is activated in living organisms,139 an idea which is found in
Rêve de d’Alembert.140 Nevertheless he continued to be worried by the questions of
whether all molecules possess sensitivity or whether this property is the result of a par-
ticular organization, and of how intelligence is then produced. In his 1773 comments on
Helvétius’s De l’homme, he stated that the hypothesis of the general sensitivity of mate-
rial molecules is not a reliable postulate, but simply a “supposition whose force comes
from the difficulties it removes, which is not enough in good philosophy.”141 The hesita-
tion seems to subsist to some extent in Le Rêve de d’Alembert, which presents his mature
reflection on the theme.142 Here the sensitivity of the molecules of matter, which corre-
sponds to their life, forms the basis for his attempt to account for life and human intelli-
gence. But if Diderot’s conception of the molecule differs from the Epicurean description
of the atom, he does consistently, like Lucretius, affirm the necessary heterogeneity of
131 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 24. See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 187.
132 Encyclopédie, 1.468–74. 133 Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, 235–37.
134 Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, 230; see Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 196–97.
135 Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, 231. 136 Maupertuis, Œuvres, 2.212.
137 Diderot, Correspondance, 2.282.
138 Paganini, “Tra Epicureo e Stratone,” 108–109 claims that Diderot took from Bayle the necessary
animation of atoms.
139 Diderot, Correspondance, 5.141.
140 Michel Delon sees here the influence of Gassendi’s “nisus” (Introduction to Principes
philosophiques in Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 17.6–7).
141 Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 11.492. 142 See Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 17.105.
662 ANN THOMSON
these molecules.143 In brief thoughts set down in Principes philosophiques sur la matière
et le mouvement, he insists that it is because each molecule has its own nature and action
that matter is never at rest, and later in the same little text he refers to the atom which has
its own force.144
When we study in detail Diderot’s philosophy of humans as expounded notably in
Rêve de d’Alembert, it is clear that while we find a certain number of Epicurean elements,
he cannot adopt all of Epicurean philosophy due to problems concerning in particular
the properties of atoms (which he tends to call molecules) and the explanation of feeling
and thought.145 As we have already seen, this was the fundamental difficulty for those
who wished to base a naturalistic explanation of humans on Epicurean philosophy.
Diderot’s solution has been called vitalistic, and his thought was clearly influenced by
the Montpellier medical tradition.
This question is closely linked to that of spontaneous generation, which is generally
seen as a characteristic of Epicurean materialism in this period. The belief in spontane-
ous generation which had long been widespread had been discredited by the late seven-
teenth century with the rise of theories of preformation, which seemed to be backed
up by scientific observation.146 According to Jacques Roger, spontaneous generation
seemed to demonstrate the creative potentiality of matter and remove the need for a cre-
ator, which is why it appealed to Diderot and to some extent to Buffon.147 Contrary to
what has been claimed, however, La Mettrie did not espouse it and in a little work called
L’Homme-plante he defended preformation against the claim made by John Turberville
Needham on the basis of observations that living beings were generated by the decom-
position of matter.148 Diderot, on the contrary, in a long passage in the Rêve propound-
ing a Lucretian vision of the universe which he puts in the mouth of the dreaming
D’Alembert, defends “the passage from the state of inertia to that of sensitivity” together
with spontaneous generation, referring specifically to Needham.149 The same experi-
ments and Needham’s observation are likewise quoted favorably in d’Holbach’s Système
de la Nature, the main campaigning work in favor of atheistic materialism.150 The refer-
ence to Needham serves the same purpose for d’Holbach as it does for Diderot, namely
to demonstrate the energy of matter, although d’Holbach’s main reference is John
Toland’s Letters to Serena, which d’Holbach had translated in 1768. Système de la Nature
contains much that is of Epicurean or perhaps more specifically Lucretian tonality in its
insistence on the formation of the world by the combination of eternal, uncreated, inde-
structible, and eternally moving elements, but unlike Diderot, d’Holbach does not
143 See Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, 300. 144 Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 17.14, 17.16.
145 See Gigandet, “Lucrèce vu en songe” and Thomson, “La Mettrie, Diderot et Lucrèce”.
146 Mazzolini and Roe, Science against the Unbelievers, 21–22.
147 Roger, Les sciences de la vie, 527–84.
148 La Mettrie, Machine Man, 80–81. Needham, An Account of Some New Microscopical Discoveries.
See Roe, “John Turberville Needham and the Generation of Living Organisms.”
149 Diderot, Œuvres philosophiques, 299–303. 150 D’Holbach, Système de la Nature, 23, 18.
develop a reflection on these elements, sometimes called molecules, and both the terms
used and the model are imprecise.151
The works of these eighteenth-century materialists La Mettrie, Diderot, and
d’Holbach show the complex nature of their debt to Epicureanism which is often more
visible in a general attitude than in faithfulness to Epicurean teaching. In addition, the
aspects of Epicureanism used in their naturalistic presentation of humans varied from
author to author. This process can also be seen in the group of thinkers known as the
Idéologues in late eighteenth-century France. Dr. Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis devel-
oped an openly materialistic view of humans, insisting that the study of the vital phe-
nomena and physical organization is the basis of the science of man and claiming that
thought was produced by the brain. In the Preface to his 1802 Rapports du physique et du
moral, the first of which were originally delivered to the Institut in 1796–97, he began by
placing himself in the tradition of Epicurus, the “restorer” of Democritus, which contin-
ued through Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Helvétius.152 As Saad has shown, Cabanis
emphasized the close link between medicine and philosophy, insisting on the medical
investigations carried out by Democritus.153 Cabanis writes that Democritus’s philoso-
phy was revived by Epicurus, who developed its principles, widened its scope, and
“founded morals on man’s physical nature.”154 There are also some clear reminiscences
of Lucretius’s poem; for example, in the tenth “Mémoire” there is a section devoted to
the appearance of animal life with a discussion of spontaneous generation which has
obvious Lucretian overtones. Here Cabanis continues speculations on living matter in
the tradition of those we have seen, with a criticism of Buffon’s distinction between dead
and living matter and the claim that “given certain conditions, inanimate matter is capa-
ble of organizing itself, living and feeling.”155 However, in the development of his materi-
alistic system based on the study of sensitivity there is little reference to Epicurean
philosophy, which seems to be used mainly as an example of a materialistic philosophy,
in the well-established eighteenth-century tradition. In general, in the development of
his anthropology, Cabanis is far from faithful to the Epicurean tradition.156
It is curious to note that well into the following century a medical doctor professing
materialism still placed himself under the banner of Epicurean philosophy and looked
back to Gassendi. Dr. Jean André Rochoux published several works defending a materi-
alistic or what he called “unitarian” (but not atheistic) view of humans similar to that of
the eighteenth-century thinkers we have seen, based on Epicurean philosophy and sci-
entific research. Rochoux, like his predecessors, insisted on the vital properties of mat-
ter. He wrote at the beginning of his refutation of Cartesian philosophy that “a single
principle, the atom endowed with movement, or active matter, is enough to explain all
the phenomena of nature.” Hence anyone who recognizes the activity that is eternally
151 On this subject, and the differences with Toland, see Lurbe, “Matière, nature, mouvement.”
152 Cabanis, Œuvres philosophiques, 1.111–12.
153 See Saad, “Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Volney.” 154 Cabanis, Œuvres philosophiques, 1.138.
155 Cabanis, Œuvres philosophiques, 1.515–20. See Saad, Cabanis, 245.
156 Saad, “Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Volney,” 112.
664 ANN THOMSON
inseparable from the atom is an Epicurean.157 He thus annexed Leibniz and Newton,
claiming that despite appearances they in fact accepted that hypothesis, “the only one
which is not forced to retreat in the face of the demands of science.”158 For him the activ-
ity of matter was demonstrated by the findings of modern science, in particular by
microscopic observations.
Conclusion
This final example provides further evidence that the role played by Epicureanism in the
elaboration of a natural history of man in the early modern period was ambiguous and
contradictory. Epicurean philosophy, often as expounded in De rerum natura, was
undoubtedly a presence, but its importance is often difficult to judge in view of its use as
a label to attack heterodox views and of the fact that few of those who had recourse to it
adopted it as a whole. For this reason, contrary to what has been claimed, Epicureanism
or recourse to Lucretius did not necessarily mean a backward-looking stance rejecting
the findings of contemporary science.159 It was possible to be attentive to scientific
developments while at the same time proclaiming an allegiance to Epicureanism.
Epicurean philosophy, in particular as expounded in Lucretius’s poem, was a permanent
presence in naturalistic theories, but was normally part of a more eclectic framework.
On the crucial question of how to account for feeling and in particular thought without
recourse to immaterial substance, it was necessary to look to other hypotheses. Thinkers
therefore took those aspects which corresponded to their aim and combined them with
different scientific theories, without apparently feeling the need to subscribe to even
central tenets of Epicureanism. As time went on, reference to Epicureanism seems to
have functioned mainly as a symbol of the rejection of central Christian doctrines and
as a way of proclaiming one’s materialism.
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chapter 26
Ea r ly Moder n
Epicu r ea n ism
Gassendi and Hobbes in Dialogue on
Psychology, Ethics, and Politics
Gianni Paganini
Ancient and “Modern”

Epicureanism
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries almost all the principal founders of modern
political thought, except Grotius, were accused of “Epicureanism” by theologians,
Christian apologists,1 and now and then by original philosophical thinkers like Vico.2
This was the case with Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, and Bayle, and later with Hume.
Sometimes these charges were baseless or only polemical. Sometimes the accusation of
Epicureanism did not refer to any clear doctrinal relationship, but just to philosophical
positions incompatible with the Stoic-Christian orthodoxy that dominated early mod-
ern thinking about natural law. Harsh realism about the “state of nature,” strictly secular
versions of the origin of humanity, lack of reference to providence and divine law,
and materialistic or mortalist views of human nature all provoked accusations of
“Epicureanism.”3 The ancient objections to Epicureanism had mostly been ethical or
political, for example, disapproval of the sage’s withdrawal from politics and his limita-
tion to a merely private and individual pursuit of wisdom. The “moderns” saw in the
teaching of the Garden also a direct threat to the metaphysical and religious foundations
1 For an overview: Moreau and Deneys-Tunney, L’Épicurisme des Lumières; Paganini and Tortarolo,
Der Garten und die Moderne; Bloch, “L’héritage moderne de l’épicurisme antique”; Wilson,
Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity; Leddy and Lifschitz, Epicurus in the Enlightenment.
2 For Vico see Paganini, “Vico et Gassendi: de la prudence à la politique.”
3 For a general picture see Rossi, I segni del tempo.
672 GIANNI PAGANINI
of Christian society. Leibniz held that Epicurus’s influence, paired with Spinoza’s, had
caused an outbreak of an “epidemic of spiritual disease” that might have resulted in “that
general revolution that had threatened all Europe.”4 For the most part these polemics
both ancient and modern were misunderstandings of the real Epicurean doctrine of law
and politics.
This distortion came to affect scholarship. The contribution of Epicureanism to mod-
ern political thought seems almost programmatically excluded from the mainstream of
recent scholarship. Lines of descent from Stoicism are well traced, thanks to the copious
literature devoted to Grotius. The role of scholasticism has been revalued, probably
beyond its deserts. But there are only a few studies of the role played by Epicureanism,
and those have appeared just in the last twenty years.5 Only then did scholars begin to
look at Hobbes in the light of direct influence by the Epicurean tradition, and to study
the central figure in seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism, Pierre Gassendi.6 Interest
in Gassendi’s physics and epistemology has always been lively, but only recently has
4 Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain IV, 443–44.

5 Guyau, La Morale d’Épicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines contemporaines, 193–97, though he
recognizes the importance of Gassendi, gives a summary treatment and commits the anachronism of
making Epicureanism a proto-Benthamite movement. Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” 316–19
develops useful points on the impact of Epicureanism on Hobbes’s critique of religion, but fails to grasp
its importance for his account of political philosophy, which relies on the confrontation with Aristotle.
Cf. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Gassendi are passed over in the
study of Tuck, Natural Right Theories, which gives pride of place to the scholastics and Grotius. Tuck,
Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, 31–64 gives a whole chapter to “Scepticism, Stoicism and raison
d’état” but fails to consider the contribution of Epicureanism; he gives a few pages to the relations
between Hobbes and Gassendi, but only deals with physics and epistemology (284-95). Gassendi is
vividly present in Schuhmann’s studies, but there is only sporadic treatment of his political philosophy:
Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes, 1–72, 171–260. The
same may be said of scholars who have given great attention to classical and humanistic influences in
Hobbes: Reik, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes, 77-78 does not mention Epicurus and treats
Gassendi mostly as an opponent of Descartes; Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
refers neither to Epicurus nor Gassendi; Skinner, Visions of Politics, 38–65, 308–23. Epicureanism is
totally unmentioned in the vast reconstruction of Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, which
concentrates on the Aristotelian tradition and ends with a chapter on Grotius; so also the important
study of Brett emphasizes the scholastic legacy, bringing out the line of descent from Thomism to
Vasquez and ending with a chapter on Hobbes: Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature, 205–35. No allusion to
Epicurean sources is found in two classic studies that bring out in their different ways the importance
of selfish psychological motivations in Hobbes’s theory: von Leyden, Hobbes and Locke; McNeilly, The
Anatomy of Leviathan. A good survey of Epicureanism’s role in Hobbes’s thought is Pacchi, “Hobbes e
l’epicureismo,” which however does not include Gassendi.
6 See Sarasohn, “Motion and Morality”; Bloch, “Gassendi et la théorie politique de Hobbes”;
Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics, 119–25; Ludwig, Die Wiederentdeckung des Epikureischen Naturrechts;
Paganini, “Épicurisme et philosophie au XVIIe siècle,” “Hobbes, Gassendi et le De cive,” “Hobbes,
Gassendi and the Tradition of Political Epicureanism,” “Hobbes, Gassendi und die Hypothese der
Weltvernichtung,” and “Il piacere dell’amicizia.” More generally, Schuhmann, “Hobbes und Gassendi.”
Sarasohn, “The Ethical and Political Philosophy of Pierre Gassendi” thought that the chronological
priority was Gassendi’s, who therefore influenced Hobbes; but she erred in dating Gassendi’s texts, as
Bloch showed, “Gassendi et la politique,” 68, 75. On Hobbes’s relation to Gassendi in matters of “first
philosophy” and epistemology see Paganini, “Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity,” “Hobbes, Gassendi und
die Hypothese der Weltvernichtung,” and “Le néant et le vide.”
Gassendi and Hobbes on Psychology, Ethics, and Politics 673
s imilar attention been given his ethics and politics, and the transformation of Epicurean
views they introduced.7
Here we will examine principally Gassendi and the complex interplay with Hobbes
characteristic of his thought. However, before studying the contribution of each, and
their influence on each other, it will be useful to summarize briefly the five key points on
which Epicureanism made a decisive contribution to the birth of “human rights” and of
modern political thought.
(a) The Epicurean approach favored the abandonment of a metaphysical view of the
political order in favor of the adoption of an empirical theory of law; moreover,
it claimed to offer a realistic view of the faculties and capacities of man taken as
an individual and considered apart from preordained communal bonds.
Similarly, it denied any transcendent idea of justice. This was fundamental both
for the definition of modern subjective rights (conceived as something distinct
from prescriptive law) as well as for a conception of political association based
on individuals, not on the merely communal. In the arena of political thought,
three aspects reappear that were also found in ancient Epicureanism: hedonism
centered on the “pleasure” of the individual and understood as the aim of human
conduct; the view of the political state as merely the provider of external condi-
tions necessary for the “safety” (asphaleia) of the citizens, without the ethical
significance given these conditions by Aristotelian theories of the virtues, or
Platonic metaphysics, or a Stoic belief in the rational order of the universe. The
individualism and utilitarianism of the “moderns” was deeply rooted in the
Garden of Epicurus.
(b) The empirical method peculiar to Epicurean legal theory went against doctrines
like those of the scholastics and the Stoics, who believed the principles of natural
law to be innate, by means of “emanation” (irradiatio) from the norms of a tran-
scendent authority and by their “inscription” (inscriptio) on the human mind.
The Epicurean approach to the subject of political order was ascending not
descending, constructive not deductive. It was made to depend on the use of
reason and on individual assent, and no longer on any source of superior legiti-
macy, be it natural or divine. The idea of a rational calculus not only in ethics
(the pleasure-pain calculus), but also in politics (the “utilitarian calculus”
suggested by legislators and practiced by citizens), was at the base of a conception
7 See Bloch, La Philosophie de Gassendi, “Gassendi et la politique”; Paganini, “Épicurisme et

philosophie au XVIIe siècle” and “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo.” Sarasohn,
Gassendi’s Ethics, 142–67 looks mostly at the posthumous text Syntagma philosophicum and neglects the
Animadversiones and the commentary on KD, the principal source for Epicurean legal theory. General
studies of Gassendi and the revival of Epicureanism: Gregory, Scetticismo e empirismo; and more
recently Lennon, “The Epicurean New Way of Ideas: Gassendi, Locke, and Berkeley”; Bloch, “L’héritage
libertin dans la pensée des Lumières”; Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy; Lolordo, Pierre
Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy; Fisher, Pierre Gassendi’s Philosophy and Science; but
these do not deal with ethics and politics.
674 GIANNI PAGANINI
of political association founded on self-interest (rightly understood) that

reappeared in many schools of modern thought.
(c) The idea of natural law was rethought in an Epicurean context as the “natural
right” (physikon dikaion) or the “just according to Nature” (physei dikaion). This
is no longer conceived as human participation in a perfect natural order, but as
a way of regulating action by “rationality” or “prudence” that disciplines social
life. Here also, in place of an obligation imposed from on high and already
inscribed in human nature or in the nature of things generally, legal prescription
was based on the agreement of individuals and appealed to reason.
(d) Thus, the rigid opposition nomos/physis, prescriptive law/natural right, was
overridden. In Epicurean contexts “natural law” was the positive recognition of
a norm corresponding to natural needs and to the “utility” (to chrēsimon) of
living in society. True and proper law takes its full form and gains its binding
force, only thanks to the recognition of positive norms that come from an explicit
consent corresponding ultimately to the “nature” of human capacities. It is no
accident that both Hobbes and Gassendi, in their different ways, emphasized the
close connection between natural and prescriptive law. Hobbes assigned to civil
law the task of giving real content and greater efficacy to natural law. Gassendi,
as we shall see, was led by his Epicurean studies to hold that a law properly so
called is only that which is accompanied by a real power of sanction.
(e) Two fundamental notions of Epicureanism took new life in modern political
thought: that of the social contract, the agreed and consensual basis of law and
authority, and that of the “state of nature” that precedes it. However one tries to
limit the value of the idea of contract, synthēkē, in early Epicureanism, or to
assert its differences with the “modern” contractarianism of a Hobbes or a
Rousseau,8 there is still no question that among all ancient traditions the Garden
was one of very few to base law and politics on the contract and consent of the
contracting parties.9 Yet, by contrast with the Sophists, who emphasized the
conventional aspects so far as to be open to the charge of pure relativism,
Epicureans looked for a “weak” but “natural” foundation of the social contract,
deducing it from an idea or mental anticipation (prolēpsis) of justice based on
utility—a fixed criterion, however variable and adaptable according to the cir-
cumstances, in which the useful takes shape. Again, it was in Epicureanism that
8 Comparisons of Hobbes and Epicureanism: Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Épicure et le droit, 123,

245–47; more sceptical are Nichols, Epicurean Political Philosophy, 183-90; Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical
Theory, 67, 77, 87. Gassendi is not mentioned in these but see Ludwig, Die Wiederentdeckung des
Epikureischen Naturrechts, 401–30. This book argues for the elimination of the right to self-preservation
from Hobbes’s mature work (Leviathan) except as a residuum of the “theistic” natural law theory of the
earlier work: Ludwig, Die Wiederentdeckung des Epikureischen Naturrechts, 347–50. On the contrary,
this right is found at the opening of Leviathan ch. 14. Ludwig interprets Epicurean doctrine on right as
utterly conventionalist, which is most controversial for classical Epicureanism and invalid for Gassendi,
as I show here.
9 Even in a classic study of contractarianism like Gough, The Social Contract, ch. 2, Epicurus is
barely mentioned, and then only as a parallel to the sophistic theory he intended instead to challenge.
the “moderns” could read a reconstruction (real or fictive) of the way in which
men came to form voluntary associations by negotiating the conditions (laws) of
their union with a view to shared ends (utility). The other traditions stressed the
organic and natural formation of the state from original communities (the fam-
ily, the village, etc.), or ascribed its origins to a more or less deceitful and violent
imposition by myths and impostures, as in the French “libertine” writers of the
seventeenth century. Furthermore, the “state of nature,” as the Epicureans saw it,
was no original authority for ideal prescriptive law, no criterion for spontaneous
regulation of one’s appetites. It was an original condition without law, always at
the mercy of the self-interested actions of individuals.
But beside these continuities, there were also differences and discontinuities with the
ancient paradigm. The “reception” of Epicureanism also included reactions to its ideas
and transformations of them. That is why we should more properly speak of “Neo-
Epicureanism,” to be able to make an effective comparison with Hobbes, beginning with
Gassendi’s own positions and not solely from the ancient sources. The most important
five innovations of the modern or Neo-Epicureans—primarily Gassendi’s—are these:
(a) Classical Epicurean political theory assumed that free and equal individuals
were capable of making rational calculations about pleasures, pains, and their
consequences. However, in the ancient polis, the rank of “free citizen” was
restricted to a limited number of the population qualified by birth, family, and
property. And even if the founder of the Garden did not hesitate to admit mar-
ginal people like women, and perhaps slaves, to his school, neither he nor his
disciples ever denounced discrimination against them in the public world of the
polis. By contrast the “moderns” generalized the principles of equality, freedom,
and the rationality of the individuals which the ancient Epicureans had limited
to an elite of the wise, accepting as a given that women, slaves, and resident
aliens would be in an inferior position in the polis. The political theory of authors
like Hobbes and Gassendi made the equality and reciprocity of the parties con-
senting to the social contract explicitly its fundamental condition, essential to its
validity. In their world, political union took a higher place than the narrower—
but in the Epicureans’ view even more important—association of friendship.
“Security,” “utility,” and “contract” became the conditions for a general social life,
to which the “moderns” attributed a far greater importance than the narrow
association of circles of philosophic friendship.
(b) To develop the modern doctrine of human rights, seventeenth-century authors
had also to deal with the elaborations of the Roman imperial jurists, the medi-
eval canonists, and the Renaissance theorists of law. Generally speaking, the
classical sources were relatively reticent on the concept of individual rights,10
10 See Miller, “Origins of Rights in Ancient Political Thought,” who however does not mention
Epicureanism.
676 GIANNI PAGANINI
and even Epicureanism had emphasized their consequences in real life rather
than their theoretical basis.11 Gassendi and Hobbes not only distinguished
between rights as freedom, and prescriptive laws as obligations, but in doing this
were also obliged to make a synthesis of different sources, ancient and medieval.
However, that does not make the interplay between the two authors less signifi-
cant historically.
(c) Classical Epicureanism changed in the “moderns” from wisdom reserved for the
few, and at a distance from the occupations (negotia) of public life, to a philoso-
phy for the many. Thus, in the new conditions of European statehood, it could
help found a politics of the common man. The example of Gassendi is instruc-
tive. In ethics, he stays close to Epicurean moral ideas, distinguishing between
different kinds of pleasure and holding that the highest of them are the absence
of pain (aponia) and tranquility of mind (ataraxia), just as in the classical
sources. Yet in politics, he adopted a more concrete approach, one that took
account of realistic descriptions of human conduct that were emerging from the
mechanistic psychology of his age. As we will see, on this subject his views are
involved with Hobbes’s and part decisively from the Epicurean sources to
embrace the new theory of “mind as machine.” In this context, and for both writ-
ers, the idea of “self-preservation” rose to a primary role. Starting from a psycho-
logical description of the working of the appetites, and centered on the cardinal
role of philēdonia, love of pleasure, and philautia, self-love, Gassendi postulated
that the behavior of the common man in social life should be dominated by the
impulse to self-preservation and well-being.
(d) This motive (self-preservation)—whose importance to Hobbes is well known—
had had no great role in the psychological model of classical Epicureanism,
which even taught that “death is nothing to us,” and that the value of pleasure is
not measured by duration or intensity. We shall see that this was a profound
change in moral psychology, and it is as evident in a writer who presented him-
self as a Neo-Epicurean like Gassendi as in the more independent Hobbes. Along
with “utility” and “security,” amply present already in Epicurean doctrine,
“self-preservation” and well-being thus rose to a central position in the politics
of society.
(e) Furthermore, Gassendi opened the way to a more dynamic and extended view
both of the pleasure-principle and the concept of self-preservation. Epicurus
had been more interested in setting limits to the enjoyment of pleasures, in view
of their possible negative consequences, and in conquering the fear of death by
the resources of philosophy. The “moderns” wanted rather to prolong life in prac-
tical terms and intensify its dynamics in terms of well-being, appealing decisively
to the protective function of the state, along with the power of science, rather
than to the emancipating power of philosophy. To the supposed invulnerability
11 Dikaion in Epicureanism is ambiguous between “right” (as a faculty) and “justice” (as a norm).
Here we shall translate it mostly by “right,” or in some contexts as “justice.”
of the sage, understood as the independence of his happiness from external

circumstances, there succeeded a more concrete value: protection furnished
by the state in return for obedience given it by its subjects. The fear of death—
particularly of violent death at the hands of aggressors—is now seen as an emo-
tion not so much to be exorcised with the resources of philosophical wisdom,
but a natural feeling that can be appealed to in justifying the construction of the
state. As we know, for Hobbes, fear can induce humanity to make a “rational
calculation” (another Epicurean topos), yet not in order for individuals to free
themselves from fear, but to produce a collective agreement by which submis-
sion to authority and obedience to the laws free citizens from the danger of vio-
lence. For the “moderns,” as opposed to the ancients, it is law and politics, not
philosophy and ethics, which constitute the appropriate therapeia for defeating
the fear of death. Death itself, from an individual problem which the sage must
solve (“not to fear death” takes second place in the famous tetrapharmakon),
becomes a collective problem, with which the authority of the state must deal in
order to help evade it, at least in the case of violent death.12 As for mortality
considered simply in itself, both Hobbes and Gassendi had recourse to the idea
of an afterlife. Both accepted the idea of resurrection, though here Hobbes,
unlike Gassendi, indulged himself in a long theologico-political reinterpretation
of “the world to come” as a new terrestrial kingdom of the Messiah on the cho-
sen, with the annihilation of the damned.13
Gassendi and Hobbes in Paris:

The Elaboration of the New
“Mechanistic” Psychology
During the greater part of the 1640s Hobbes and Gassendi both lived in Paris and were
in close personal contact. From 1641 to 1648, Gassendi was professor of mathematics
(after 1646) and astronomy (1645–1646), till his return to Provence (1648). Hobbes was
in Paris from his departure from England in December 1640 till the end of December
1651, except for brief sojourns in the countryside. In this period, Hobbes also was
appointed tutor in mathematics to the future king, Charles II, who resided at Saint-
Germain-en-Laye with his court in exile. We know of the two authors’ close relations
and their mutual esteem, and that they followed each other’s works in progress.
12 Cf. Paganini, “Il piacere dell’amicizia.”

13 For Gassendi, cf. Osler, “Baptizing Epicurean Atomism”; for Hobbes (and an interesting
comparison with Epicureanism), Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” 316–22 is still useful,
though he sees the Epicurean theory (“die Epikureische Gesinnung”) in too general terms as “the
natural interest of man” or “a desire to rid oneself of the fear of the divine.”
678 GIANNI PAGANINI
The preparation of Neo-Epicurean texts by Gassendi had begun in 1626 with the
decision to write an “Apologia for Epicurus,” which he worked on until 1629, and then
decided to enlarge into a defense not only of Epicurus himself but also his philosophy.
The strictly biographical part was published in 1647 as De vita et moribus Epicuri. The
doctrinal part Gassendi worked on from 1629 to 1633 (preliminary studies) and from
1633 to 1646 (as De vita et doctrina Epicuri). Mersenne, during the creation of this work,
aimed at giving earlier notice for it by inserting a fragment of it into his Préludes de
l’Harmonie Universelle of 1634 along with a flattering review of Gassendi’s philosophical
work, comparing it both with the ancients and the “moderns.” In 1644 Charles
Cavendish stated that Hobbes had read the manuscript of Gassendi’s “philosophy,”
almost certainly the manuscript form of De vita et doctrina Epicuri. A reworking of the
material, reorganized in the form of a philological and philosophical commentary on
Diogenes Laertius 10, and dealing entirely with Epicurus and his school, was published
in 1649 as Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii, together with a synthe-
sis of Epicurean philosophical doctrine (Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma). The text of
1649 was reused in a work meant to constitute the true and proper “system” of Gassendi
and this time without “Epicurus” in the title. It was published only after Gassendi’s death
as Syntagma philosophicum, the first two volumes of the Opera omnia (1658), while the
commentary was rewritten and shortened as Notae in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii,
Volume 5 of the Opera. Thus the manuscript that became the Syntagma philosophicum
was intended by Gassendi to be taken as original work, though Epicureanism is always
given a high rank in it. Besides the many systematic comparisons with other philoso-
phies (mostly classical, for contemporaries are only indirectly taken into account),
Gassendi did not hesitate to distance himself from Epicurus’s views whenever he
thought it necessary. According to Cavendish, in 1644 Hobbes was already following
this work in manuscript and was so favorable to Gassendi’s project that he paid it this
compliment: “that it is as big as Aristotle’s philosophie, but much truer and excellent
Latin.”14
Indeed, the whole career of both philosophers was marked by mutual compliments.
When Hobbes published the second edition of De cive in 1647, Sorbière, a friend of both,
inserted in the front pages a fine letter of praise from Gassendi. Hobbes did the honors
in his turn in De corpore (1655), in the great dedication letter where he constructs an
ideal genealogy of the “new philosophy.” Here Gassendi, beside Kepler and Mersenne
and just after Copernicus and Galileo, is given a place of the utmost prominence for
his contributions to the progress of astronomy and cosmology, and Descartes is not
even named.
The 1640s were for both Gassendi and Hobbes the decisive years for the construction
of their greatest works. We have already reviewed the “Epicurean” works of Gassendi.
14 Cf. Bloch, “L’héritage libertin dans la pensée des Lumières,” xxvi–xxx; Paganini, “Hobbes,
Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo,” 354–57. The letter is Charles Cavendish to John Pell,
October 10, 1644: “Mr. Hobbes writes Gassendes his philosophy is not yet printed but he hath reade it,
and that it is big as Aristotle’s philosophie, but much truer and excellent Latin”: Halliwell, A Collection
of Letters, 85.
We should add that between the middle of 1644 and the end of 1645 there came the
redaction of the section of De vita et doctrina Epicuri on the “physics” of living and ani-
mate beings in which he discussed the treatment of psychological conceptions.15 In 1645
and 1646 Gassendi wrote the section “Ethica,” whose second book, on the virtues, ends
with a chapter on the political virtue par excellence, justice (“De iustitia, iure ac legibus”).16
In general Gassendi’s “Neo-Epicurean” system is no mere recapitulation of ancient
material, but takes account both of the new scientific philosophy of the seventeenth cen-
tury and of Christian doctrine. Thus, in the section on “physics,” notions extraneous to
Epicureanism appear: the doctrine of the One God, divine providence and creation, the
immortality of the spiritual intellect, and so on, while in the psychological and ethical
sections Gassendi’s original contributions are more in rapport with contemporary views
of psychological mechanism and new ideas about ethics, law, and politics.17
Hobbes, in the same decade, the 1640s, put himself into the limelight as a published
author of philosophy by works written all or in part after his arrival in France. When he
arrived in France he was the author of only one important work, the Elements of Law
Natural and Politic, which had only circulated in England in manuscript. Thus it was in
France that Hobbes composed the works which made him famous as a published author:
the Objectiones to Descartes’s Meditationes (1641), the first edition (semi-anonymous
and from a private press) of De cive (1642) and the second edition, this time acknowl-
edged (1647)—both were published in Holland with the help of Sorbière—and finally
the English version of Leviathan (written in France, but published in London in 1651).
Another important work written in this period remained unpublished: De motu, loco et
tempore, a long polemic against Thomas White and in defence of Copernicus and
Galileo, giving at the same time the first full formulation of his own “first philosophy” (a
work written between winter 1642 and mid-1643). Mersenne probably suggested this
work and had it edited for possible publication, for the text, copied accurately by two dif-
ferent scribes, was ready for the press and shows minor corrections and additions in
Mersenne’s hand. He also undertook its partial publication by the insertion of parts of it
(especially the long chapter on “psychology”) in the preface to the Ballistica included in
Mersenne’s own Cogitata physico-mathematica (1644).18 This text (De motu, loco et tem-
pore) was of crucial importance to the formation of the new “mechanistic” approach to
psychology. In presenting it, Mersenne stated that Hobbes had tried to explain every
aspect of reality, including “the operations of our faculties,” by appealing solely to “local
motion” (per motum localem).
15 In De sensu universe (IV), De sensibus speciatim (VII), De phantasia seu imaginatione (VIII), De
intellectu (IX), De appetitu et affectibus animæ (X).
16 Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo,” 414 correcting the dating of
Pintard and Sarasohn.
17 On Gassendi’s revisions of Epicureanism see Bloch, “L’héritage moderne de l’épicurisme antique,”
202–205, on the basis of the brief appendixes added to the more “thorny” chapters of the Philosophiae
Epicuri Syntagma.
18 De motu, loco et tempore XXX, §§3–26: Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 350–61. See the full
introduction by Paganini to the recent Italian edition: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, 9–126. For
Mersenne’s role, see the Praefatio in Mersenne, Ballistica et Acontismologia.
680 GIANNI PAGANINI
Again, in the 1640s their common war against Cartesian metaphysics must have
strengthened the bonds between Hobbes and Gassendi. Both opposed crucial aspects of
Descartes’ philosophy—the dualism of substances, the recourse to hyperbolic doubt,
the appeal to intuition, his intellectualistic methodology—though their points of
view were different: monistic materialism in Hobbes’s case, a more empirical view in
Gassendi’s that did not everywhere insist on materialist ontology and even left the door
open to an immaterial intellectus. Nonetheless we know Hobbes very much approved of
the Disquisitio metaphysica (1644) in which Gassendi collected his objections to
Descartes as a series of “Instantiae” (“points of disagreement”). According to Sorbière’s
perhaps too-colorful account, Hobbes thought Gassendi had revealed himself by this
polemic as a courageous “hero” who could “chase out the phantoms” that were the more
insidious the less they could be grasped. This is a transparent allusion to the incorporeal
and immaterial entities of Cartesian metaphysics, which Hobbes throughout his work
also argued were good for nothing except ridicule.19
If we tally the dates of their respective intellectual biographies with an analysis of their
contents, we can see that there is a remarkable convergence between Hobbes and
Gassendi on the prerequisite of all their political ideas and the psychological model at
the base of law and society. In the same decade and city, both were working out a mecha-
nistic psychology that had a specific practical projection that we shall analyze as a psy-
chology of self-preservation. On this subject Gassendi went far beyond the limits of
classical Epicureanism to produce what, indeed, should be called a “Neo-Epicurean”
version. He took account of novelties introduced into the scientific conceptions of the
seventeenth century, by Hobbes above all, and discussed mind-body interaction from a
point of view militantly anti-Cartesian. Considering the date of composition of the sec-
tions on psychology of De vita et doctrina Epicuri (1644–45), to explain this convergence
one need only posit Gassendi’s knowledge of writings he certainly or probably knew—
certainly De cive and probably the extracts from De motu, loco et tempore published by
their mutual friend Mersenne in the Ballistica.20
Later, in what was to become the Syntagma philosophicum, Gassendi carved out an
exceptional status for the intellectus, admitting what he had refused to concede to
Descartes in the Disquisitio, namely the possibility of pure intellection free of material
and imaginative admixture and fixed only on universals, therefore incorporeal.21
However, with respect to all the “inferior” faculties, from sense perception to memory,
from imagination to the most elementary faculty of thought, he created a psychology
not just empirical but wholly materialistic, and in no need of mens to account for com-
mon psychological phenomena not attaching to pure intellectus. Further, despite his
19 Samuelis Sorberii Praefatio, in qua de vita et moribus Petri Gassendi disseritur in Gassendi, Opera
omnia I (pages not numbered).
20 Bloch, “Gassendi et la politique,” 75 thought Gassendi knew the Elements—written in English, and
still in MS—but this is improbable.
21 On Gassendi’s psychology, cf. Michael and Michael, “Gassendi on Sensation and Reflection,”
“Corporeal Ideas in Seventeenth-century Psychology,” “Two Early Modern Concepts of Mind:
Reflecting Substance vs. Thinking Substance,” and “The Theory of Ideas in Gassendi and Locke.”
general prejudices in favor of atomism, in his psychology Gassendi abandoned, along

with the scholastic doctrine of species so often held up to scorn by his friend Hobbes,22
even the specifically Epicurean tenet of the propagation of eidola or simulacra by the
objects of perception. After citing the opinion of Epicurus that “images or qualities”
borne by the tiny atoms of simulacra emitted by objects of perception would penetrate
into the sense-organs and from them into the internal faculties of the soul (composed
themselves of atoms), Gassendi set this theory aside, and resolved the whole process of
sensation into the result of the propagation of motion, transmitted by direct contact or
through a medium to the organs of perception, and from there, through the animal spir-
its in the nerves, to the brain.23 The Epicurean model, based on the dynamics of atomic
compounds (eidola) and their impact on the internal organs, along with the doctrine
that the soul is diffused throughout the body, was simply abandoned by Gassendi. He
affirmed instead the more “modern” model that relied solely on transmitted motion,
canalized into the organs of an anatomical-physiological “machine” typical of the “new
science” of the seventeenth century.24 For this aspect, there is little difference between
Hobbes’s model and Gassendi’s. For both of them, sensation comes from the mechanical
action of an object upon sense, consisting solely in motion, with no transport of matter
from object to subject. Transport regards only the movement of the animal spirits that
run along the nerves of the percipient subject.25
By the same token, we find in Gassendi’s psychology of material faculties many motifs
that also characterize the “cognitive powers” in Hobbes. We can outline these briefly in
five points.
(a) Both hold that the faculty of perception resides in a material organ—the brain—
and not the relevant sense organ. There is no place in their psychology for per-
ception by an incorporeal faculty or for the action of sensory or intellectual
forms that act apart from matter. The whole process of sensation is produced by
contact and consists in the movement of the animal spirits and its action on the
brain. When Gassendi speaks of “the faculty of perception located in the brain”
it is clear from the whole context of his discourse that that “faculty” is no differ-
ent from the “power” of which Hobbes speaks, meaning a capacity of movement
22 On Gassendi’s polemic against the scholastic theory of species cf. Syntagma philosophicum
(hereafter SP) Physica, sectio III, Membrum II, lib. VI, “De sensu universe”, ch. 1 “De organis sensus”, in
Gassendi, Opera omnia, 3.337b–338a. Hobbes’s attack on species is a constant in all of his works. Cf.
Elements of law (hereafter El). I, II, 4: 3–4; Leviathan I, 5; II, 9; XLVI, 27.
23 Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.335–38 (SP Physica, sectio III, Membrum II, lib. VI, “De sensu
universe,” ch. 1 “De organis sensus”).
24 SP, Physica III, II, lib. VII, ch. V “De visu et visione,” Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.371-77. See also SP
Physica III, II, lib. VI, ch. II “De sensuum percipiendi modo ac de sensibili,” Gassendi, Opera omnia,
2.339.
25 Cf. El. I, I–4, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 1–17; De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 3–8, Hobbes,
Critique du De mundo, 349–52.
682 GIANNI PAGANINI
proper to particles of matter in the organs of sense, and in the internal parts of
the sentient being.26
(b) Hobbes’s idea that the process of sensation is completed with a reaction
(“rebound”) toward the outside—which would explain the apparent external
origin of sensory “phantasms”—has a parallel in Gassendi’s psychology. He
points out the fact that in the act of perception there is no “immission” into the
brain, but rather a “remission” from it. In other words, there is a movement of
reaction in the brain—literally, it leaps back (resilit)—and this in turn produces
a “leap back” (resultus) of the spirits toward the outer part of the circuit of the
nerves. That would explain why the local facultas of the brain places the origin
of the sensation not interius, where in fact it occurs, but exterius, where the sen-
sation comes from.27 Hobbes’s physiological account is less detailed, following
the principle that “the minute and distinct anatomy of the body” is unnecessary
to the explanation of a mechanistic psychology.28 Gassendi instead undertakes
such an explanation, both anatomical and more precise, of the mechanics of the
resultus.29
(c) In Gassendi we find one of the most characteristic notions of Hobbesian physics
and psychology: conatus (“endeavor”). This appears in Gassendi’s theory of mat-
ter to explain why the atoms are in perpetuo conatu sese veluti extricando, “in
perpetual endeavor to get loose from each other,” so that “from this internal
agitation, though imperceptible, effects at length arise that are perceptible,” such
as the motion or dissolution of the whole. In Gassendi this account is strictly
atomistic and looks particularly to the “weight” of the atoms, the cause of “their
intrinsic and internal mobility.” In Hobbes the conatus refers to the infinitesimal
nature of the movement itself and explains how movement is initiated. Aside
from differences due to the presence or absence of an atomistic framework, the
concept of conatus in both authors has a direct psychological application because
it explains the direction of appetite to the thing desired. “This solicitation is the
endeavour, or internal beginning of animal motion,” Hobbes writes. Gassendi,
always interested in the anatomical and physiological substratum of psychologi-
cal facts, identifies in the animal spirits and their conatus the motive power man-
ifest in living beings. In fact, the conatus proper to these spirits is far more intense
than anything found in the denser and more inert parts of the body.30
26 SP Physica III, II, lib. VI, ch. I, Gassendi, Opera omnia 2.329a.
27 SP Physica III, II, VI in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.336a–b; El. I, II, 8, Hobbes, The Elements of Law,
6; De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 3, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 350.
28 El. I, I, 6, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 2.
29 Gassendi, however, does not accept that the heart is the seat of sensation, as well as desire, as
Hobbes does in De motu and De corpore: Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del
meccanicismo,” 370–72 (SP Physica III, II, VI, in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.331b–336b). He, however,
gives a faithful account of Epicurus’s views at Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma, IX in Gassendi, Opera
omnia, 3.39b–41a.
30 El. I, VII, 2, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 28; SP Physica I, VI, IV, Gassendi, Opera omnia,
1.384a–385b; Epistolae quatuor de apparente magnitudine solis (1640-41), Gassendi, Opera omnia, 3.466b.
(d) Both Hobbes and Gassendi reduce the entire realm of the faculties—from
perception to memory, from imagination or phantasia to mental discourse—to
an effect of the conservation and interrelation of motions, in which all of these
faculties must in the final analysis consist. The associationist model of psychol-
ogy for both of them is based on a material substrate characterized by the bal-
ance or imbalance of the movements in which perceptions, appetites, and
imaginations really consist. For Gassendi as for Hobbes the “dominant phan-
tasm” is the result of the combination between the different movements that
agitate the material spirits.31
(e) Even more clearly in Gassendi, this materialist approach to psychology (with the
exception of pure intellectus) leads to a mechanistic model of mind wholly
founded on the material functioning of the brain. In Hobbes, there is a leap from
the movement of the animal spirits to the psychological description of mental
events, even though he claims that all our representations (“imaginations”) are
but motion. In Gassendi, this lack is filled with an embryonic physical represen-
tation of the brain, described as a “paper capable of showing innumerable folds
perfectly distinguished in order and succession.” Because for every “fold” there
is a corresponding trace left by an idea or an image, i.e., by the material motion
of spirits of which the image consists when the motion of the animal spirits runs
in sequence over the traces left in the brain, it derives from these an association
of phantasms regulated in the sequence ordained by memory. But when their
motion is chaotic because of the effects of emotions, a confused and unbalanced
sequence of images results.32 By means of this neurophysiology of cerebral
“traces” (similarly found also in the Cartesian theory of the brain) Gassendi
traced anatomical support for the materialist doctrine of perception. It is the
result of these motions of spirits, of which Hobbes had formulated only general
principles.33
All convergence of the two authors stops for Gassendi at the threshold of the
intellectus, which for him, unlike for Hobbes, is immaterial. Furthermore, even if
Gassendi’s reference point is still the atom, the whole process of perception, memory,
and imagination is put in “modern” terms, and breaks both with Epicurus’s and
Lucretius’s views. To explain the coincidence between Hobbes’s account and
Gassendi’s we need not resort to an (improbable) acquaintance with the Elements of
Law, but to his more probable acquaintance with the summary of Hobbesian
31 El. I, III, 1, 3–4, Hobbes The Elements of Law, 8–10; De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 4, 7–8, Hobbes,
Critique du De mundo, 35,052; Gassendi: SP Physica III, II, X, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.476a.
32 Thus giving an anatomical explanation of what in Hobbes is orderly vs. disorderly discourse: De
motu, loco et tempore XXX, 8, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 352.
33 SP Physica III, II, ii (Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.403a, 405a). For the “succession of conceptions in
the mind, their series or consequences of one after another,” which is the “discourse of the mind,” El. I,
IV, 1–6 (Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 13–15); De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 8–10 (Hobbes, Critique du
De mundo, 351–53).
684 GIANNI PAGANINI
sychology printed by Mersenne in the Ballistica of 1644, which in turn corresponds

p
to the MS text of De motu, loco et tempore of 1642–3.
Cardiocentrism and
Self-preservation
In the psychology of appetite (in Hobbes’s terminology, the “motive powers”), the heart
takes the dominant role for both authors. Obviously Harvey’s De motu cordis (1628)
influenced both, and drove Gassendi, for example, to repudiate the Cartesian theory of
internal heat as the source of the movement of the heart and to adopt instead a picture of
the heart “in the form of a self-driving machine” (machinalis automatis instar).34 For
Gassendi the heart is “the center of life, the governing machine whose task it is to protect
the whole body, and thus to sense in advance everything that concerns it for good or ill.”
The animal spirits whose motion is activated by sensation or imagination converge on
the heart, and that is where the motion of reaction occurs in which appetite consists.
Desire is “a kind of expansion produced by the imagination of a good, and the contrac-
tion by an imagination of evil.” It is literally the expansion of the heart that produces
one’s tendency to draw near the good, and its contraction the opposite tendency, to flee
or distance oneself from evil.35
In adopting this materialist model of emotion, and in the choice of dilation-contraction
to explain the movements of pleasure-pain, desire-fear, appetite-avoidance, Gassendi
was able to base himself on concepts from the Epicurean tradition: e.g. Torquatus in
Cicero, who explains the concept of hēdonē by playing on the assonance of the Latin
word laetitia with elatio, exaltation or pleasant expansion of the spirit.36 Chapter 19 of
the Philosophiae Epicuri syntagma, on the “affections or passions of the soul,” after clas-
sifying the four general affects in the soul, pleasure-pain, avoidance-desire, identifies
“pleasure with enjoyment of good, pain in the suffering of evil.” It then immediately
gives a strictly mechanical and materialistic explanation (remember that for Epicurus
the soul is literally a “texture” of atoms running through the whole body): “pleasure
occurs together with an expansion/effusion of the soul, pain occurs but not without a
contraction or abatement of it; so it is not surprising that the soul should dilate itself as
far as possible to receive the good into itself and compress itself so as not to receive what
is bad.”37 The basic difference with the Epicurean tradition is that in Gassendi (as already
in Hobbes) these motions of pleasure and pain are localized in the heart. By contrast, in
Lucretius they occur over the whole extent of the anima diffused through the body. Even
if they eventually touch the heart, because the animus has its refuge there as “a center or
34 SP Physica III, II, V, iii, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1.315a, but this chapter was first published in the
Animadversiones of 1649: Gassendi, Animadversiones, 1.354–64.
35 SP Physica III, II, X, i, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.474a. 36 Cic. Fin. 3.35.
37 Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma, XIX, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 3.48b.
root,” their primary locus is the anima. In Gassendi this diffusio sive dilatatio is produced
by the atoms of the simulacra of good things, which like tiny chains attract and pull the
soul and turn it towards the object of its attraction.38 The new neurophysiological model
that includes a role for the brain, nerves, and animal spirits, and also for the explanation
of the emotions by the activity of the heart, abandons as archaic the notion of an anima
diffusa per corpus. It adopts a more definite theory based on the central role of the heart,
made necessary by Harvey and explicitly recognized as such by Hobbes.
This new mechanistic account of appetite has important effects for the structure of
Gassendi’s ethics and politics. Formally, at the beginning of his book De appetitu et affec-
tibus animae, Gassendi distinguishes between rational appetite, or will, and animal
(brutus) or irrational appetite. But he adds that in fact “since the soul is bound to the
body, just as one’s imagination most often distracts one’s intellect from its true judgment
of things, so also the agitations of appetite stir up the imagination and by such means
drag the will along together with one’s judgment, while reason and will can achieve
nothing, or act much less forcibly.”39
The Gassendian psychology of appetition has little in common with Aristotelian
doctrine, and pays scarce attention to the key concept of dianoētikē orexis, intelligent
appetite, which is central to the Nicomachean Ethics. The explanation of appetitus in De
vita et doctrina Epicuri is mechanistic, and more like Hobbes’s own. Though Gassendi is
concerned to reserve a place for immaterial mind, it is especially in emotional life, when
mind acts together with body, that they form a single principle. Phantasia, wholly mate-
rial in Gassendi’s view, dominates the entire dynamic of the emotions.40 Spurred by the
imagination, the power of desire is such as to “succeed in pulling along both intellect
and reason together with the will and triumph almost by itself.”41
Even if he did not formally adopt the distinction that was drawn by Hobbes between
vital and animal movement, the French philosopher adhered to the cardiocentric
approach to emotion that was one of the salient characteristics of Elements and De motu,
loco et tempore. For Gassendi, every appetite results in a movement that impacts the
mechanical functioning of the “machina primaria” which is the heart. The general defi-
nition of affect (“affect is nothing but an agitated movement of the soul produced in the
chest or in another part and aroused by the opinion or sensation of good or evil”) is very
similar to that found in Hobbes and on which the English philosopher based his impor-
tant distinction between voluptas and molestia, both being identified in physical form:
the first being “a dilation or expansion of the soul,” and the second “an abatement or
contraction.” For Hobbes as for Gassendi this model has at its center the heart: the phan-
tasia of things either pleasing or distressing is imprinted on the brain, from where it
spreads to the heart with the motion of the spirits, producing there the effects of
“dilation” or “contraction.”
38 Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma, XIX, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 3.48b; Lucr. DRN 3.136–417.
39 SP Physica III, II, X, i, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.471b.
40 SP Physica III, II, X, i, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 4.488b.
41 SP Physica, III, II, X, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.474b.
686 GIANNI PAGANINI
For Hobbes, also, the distinction iucunda/molesta is relative to the “vital motion”42
that resides in the heart. The motion of pleasure, delectatio, is the principle of animal
motion directed to the object and so is called appetitus, while unpleasantness starts a
motion of flight from the object and is thus called “aversio & fuga.”43 On this basis,
shared with Gassendi, Hobbes arrived at the more radical conclusion that there was no
such thing as an “incorporeal mover” or a spiritual soul.44
Gassendi was more cautious in his metaphysics.45 But for him too the role of the heart
is not merely corporeal; it has a more general controlling function. “The heart was not
intended solely to be, by its unceasing systole and diastole, the primary cause and prin-
ciple of all the motions that occur in the body, but is so disposed as to be agitated by
opinions of all the good and evil that can happen to the body, and to push it toward the
gathering of good and the rejection of the evil.” Therefore, there is a relation of “conver-
gence” between the heart and the motions that arrive there. The heart is the “primary
machine” that “animates all the other mechanisms and keeps them stable in their
motions.” And thus it is tasked with overseeing the preservation and well-being of the
body, “getting what is good and distancing from it what is bad, because its role is to be
affected by sensations of good and evil.”46 The heart is “the principle itself of life and the
ruling mechanism whose function is to protect the body as a whole and all its parts.”47
On this basis Gassendi founded an ostensible psychology of self-preservation, like that
of Hobbes,48 but still a novelty in Epicurean tradition. The centrality of self-preservation
directly affects the concepts of pleasure and pain, on which, for both, human emotion
hinges, and thus the motive values to which human beings attend in all their choices.
Ethics, Happiness, and

Self-preservation
Usually Hobbes is taken to contradict the Epicureans on two cardinal points. First, (a)
with respect to the fear of death. Epicurean philosophy tries to secure for the sage a
42 El. I, VII, 1, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 28: “Every motion propagated as far as the heart by the
action of objects either aids or impedes the vital motion.”
43 De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 23, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 359. In the Elements the
movement that helps or favours vital movement is called “DELIGHT, contentment, or pleasure,” but “is
nothing really but motion about the heart” (El. I, VII, 1, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 28).
44 De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 3; XXXVIII, 12, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 349, 421.
45 In the Syntagma, by leaving a place for an immaterial intellectus, this helps establish Gassendi’s
epistemology and bolster free will, in opposition to what he calls a “democritean” strong
determinism—which Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics, 128–30 sees rightly as a polemical depiction of
Hobbes’s stance; she also sees that Gassendi’s view of appetitus is itself wholly materialist.
46 SP Physica X, III, II, ii: Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.480a.
47 SP Physica X, III, II, ii: Gassendi, Opera omnia, 1.474a, and the whole chapter, Gassendi, Opera
omnia, 2.469–74.
48 Cf. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan; Lott, “The Psychology of Self-preservation in Hobbes.”
mental invulnerability that makes him immune to overvaluing the mere duration of
pleasure, and thus also of life. Thus, the idea of self-preservation is marginal, though
hardly alien, to Epicureanism, but not in Hobbes; as Mitsis writes “self-preservation, not
inner peace, is in [Hobbes’s] view our most fundamental goal.”49 Second, (b) the con-
ception of happiness in Hobbes is dynamic and markedly competitive, always oriented
to a seeking for “power”: this promises not just present happiness but future happiness,
in a continual series of efforts that ends only with death. Hobbesian “happiness” marks a
break with all classical, including Epicurean, ethics, because it is identified not with the
enjoyment of a state of mind, but with continuous desire directed toward goals not yet
attained. This is clearly to be seen in the famous metaphor of life as a race in which hap-
piness is defined as “always getting ahead of those in front of you.” There is no “final
goal;” if it existed it would be the “end” indeed, and the end of desire is only in death
(“abandoning the track”).50 For Hobbes there is no summum bonum or absolute good:
for Cicero’s Torquatus pleasure is without question the summum bonum. Though he
recognizes the superiority of mental to sensual pleasures, as Epicurus did, Hobbes no
longer identifies them with mental tranquility or with leisure, as in classical Epicureanism,
but with the concept of power.51
Both points are right as comparisons with classical Epicureanism, but they only
compare Hobbes with ancient Epicureanism, not modern—e.g. Gassendi’s—where the
distance is not great. Furthermore, (a) does insufficient justice to the importance of
asphaleia, security, in Epicurus as the preliminary and indispensable condition for wis-
dom. For (b), Gassendi’s general account is much more faithful to Epicurean orthodoxy.
He follows the distinction of natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and unnat-
ural and unnecessary desires, and the doctrine of the Garden that happiness consists in
the absence of bodily pain and in mental tranquility. He agrees with Epicurus against the
Cyrenaics that the most important pleasure is not kinetic, but static. He defends
Epicurus against those who blamed him for valuing only bodily pleasure, which is not
true because of the emphasis he put on peace of mind. Gassendi accepts that there is a
summum bonum. It is voluptas, which is “the restitution of our natural state,” a return to
equilibrium, to an atomic cohesion that pain had interrupted.52
The distance from Hobbes looks striking. And yet it was precisely during his exile in
France that Hobbes abandoned his mono-causal account of the passions, centered on
the desire for power, in the Elements, for a wider and more balanced view of happiness.53
In the Elements the attractions of power and pre-eminence were so strong that Hobbes
49 Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, 67.

50 El. I, VII, 7, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 30: “FELICITY, therefore (by which we mean continual
delight), consisteth not in having prospered, but in prospering.”
51 Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, 87.
52 Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo,” 400-31; Sarasohn, Gassendi’s
Ethics, 51–75.
53 Pacchi, Scritti hobbesiani (1987–1990), 79–95: from Elements to Leviathan the reference to power
remains, but no longer precedes the treatment of the passions, which therefore gains greater autonomy
and amplitude. De motu, loco et tempore represents an intermediate stage in this development.
688 GIANNI PAGANINI
compared life to a “race” which “we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other
garland, than being foremost.”54 In the De motu, loco et tempore, written in France,
Hobbes claims that felicity consists in the desire for good to come,55 anticipating the
definition of it in Leviathan, but with certain details that suggest a move towards the
views of Gassendi. In De motu, loco et tempore Hobbes claims that “felicity” consists in
“passing one’s life with maximum pleasure, that is, joyousness,” cum voluptate, id est
iucunditate maxima.56 However, he thinks that voluptas must be further defined, and
gives three converging definitions. “It consists in the progress of desire from one good
already had to another still to be had.” So happiness is “a continual progression of appe-
tite and hope, from less power to more power” of getting and keeping some desired
good. And the most comprehensive definition:
Thus happiness is the pleasure, iucunditas, felt in the continual and tranquil p
rogress
of desire from power to further power; and the moral tranquility of which ethical
philosophers talk is not inertia, or lack of desire, but a tranquil progress from one
good already had to another still to be had.57
It is notable that in De motu, loco et tempore the idea of life as a “race” has completely
disappeared in favor of “tranquil progress.” Still, in contrast with the static and ascetic
classical definitions, including Epicurus’s “katastematic” pleasure, Hobbes accents the
dynamic and progressive view of happiness while, at the same time, emphasizing the
“tranquility” of this progress in contrast to the more agonizing and competitive view
displayed in the Elements. The ethical philosophers Hobbes has in mind are most prob-
ably the “moderns,” rather than the ancients, and it is significant that Gassendi too had
departed from the static version of happiness praised by the “orthodox” Epicureans.
Gassendi was well aware that Epicurus had equated pleasure with stabilitas, but in his
usual eclectic way takes up again Aristotle’s definition of pleasure as the perceptible
motion of soul and body; he rejects the Stoics’ disdain for the bona corporis; and he
warns that if the sage’s life is no “impetuous torrent” neither is it a “dead and stagnant
pond.” No, it is like “the waters of a river that flow silently and calmly;” or a ship has
smooth sailing not by “standing immobile in mid-sea,” but when “it travels quickly,
calmly, and gently.” Metaphors aside,
Epicurus did not mean by tranquility and the absence of pain merely torpor but
rather a state in which all the actions of life are achieved in order and with
pleasure.58
54 El. I, IX, §21, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 47.

55 De motu, loco et tempore XXXVIII, 5, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 415: “itaque manet verum
rationem boni, ideoque foelicitatis, consistere in appetitione.”
56 De motu, loco et tempore XXXVIII, 8, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 418.
57 De motu, loco et tempore XXXVIII, Hobbes, Critique du De mundo, 416; cf. Leviathan XI.
58 SP Ethica I, I, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.664b and SP Ethica I, V, Gassendi, Opera omnia,
2.717a–718a.
Gassendi’s eudemonism is not as competitive as in Hobbes’s Elements, but shares with

him the progressive character of a continual quest for goods to come. They also share the
identification of good with pleasure, and both relate the good above all to self-preservation
and its extensions into well-being: the bonum is always a bonum sibi, “good-for-oneself.”59
And, on the other hand, as we have seen, Hobbes tempers the more agonistic represen-
tation of life typical of the Elements by transforming it into a “tranquil progress.”
Briefly in the Elements and Mersenne’s excerptum, at more length in De motu, loco et
tempore, Hobbes described “this motion, in which consisteth pleasure or pain” as “a
solicitation or provocation either to draw near to the thing that pleaseth, or to retire
back from the thing that displeaseth.” In itself, desire is nothing other than “the endeavor
or internal beginning of an animal motion” intended to draw near to or retreat from the
object, as its image strengthens or impedes the vital movement in the heart.60 A few
years later Gassendi’s treatment is marked by an attempt to accommodate all the scat-
tered physiological details that one can find in Hobbes, especially the cardiocentric
account of appetition, in a more definite organic theory equally materialistic and
dependent on the movement of the “primary machine.” “It appears that in general pleas
ures (voluptates) and pains (molestiae) arise in the heart, soul, and the affected organs,”
because “in every living being and in all its senses there is an innate tendency to reach
out toward the object appropriate to nourish, delight, and sustain it.” This propensity:
connotes the movement with which the heart, the moment it is struck by the spirits
which arise from the thought of pleasure of which the object is cause, expands (so
to speak) in that direction and warming the entire bosom reaches out toward the
object as if it silently stretched out its arms to draw that to itself.61
As usual, Gassendi’s prose is much more colorful and metaphorical, but the meaning is
almost identical with Hobbes’s.
This mechanistic psychology is at the base of the concept of self-preservation and the
human rights that follow on it.62 Significantly, the idea of self-preservation first appears
in Hobbes when he discusses the “right of nature” in the Elements, “that every man may
preserve his own life and limbs, with all the power he hath,” for every man seeks and
desires the bonum sibi and avoids that which is “hurtful” to him, which means primarily
59 El. I, VII, §3, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 29; SP Physica III, II, X, iii Gassendi, Opera omnia,
2.481b; cf. Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.488a–b, 487b.
60 El. I, vii, 2, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 28; Praefatio in Mersenni Ballisticam (Thomæ Hobbes
Malmesburiensis Opera Latina 5.317); De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 23, Hobbes, Critique du De
mundo, 359; XXXVII, 4, Critique du De mundo, 404.
61 SP Physica III, II, X, iii, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.482b–483a.
62 Epicurus’s emphasis on personal contentment as opposed to self-preservation (Mitsis, Epicurus’
Ethical Theory, 68 n.) would be wrong for Gassendi. Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics, 134 argues that for
Gassendi “self-preservation” is opposed to “pleasure,” but the commentary of Gassendi on KD (which
she doesn’t discuss) makes self-preservation central to Neo-Epicureanism.
690 GIANNI PAGANINI
that he shuns “most of all that terrible enemy of nature, death.”63 This doctrine is
constantly reaffirmed in the Elements as a limit to the ethical subjectivism implied by the
Hobbesian theory of the good as that which pleases the individual. In fact, however
much the emotions push man to identify as good “that which pleaseth him for the
moment,”64 i.e. an extreme subjective value dependent on the individual and the
moment, the perspective of self-preservation introduces, by contrast, a more general
and stable criterion. It must provide for the future, with the series of means on which
this self-preservation depends, and this is the one and only rational parameter to which
moral choice should look:
And therefore he that foreseeth the whole way to his preservation (which is the end
that every one by nature aimeth at) must also call this good, and the contrary evil.
And this is that good and evil, which not every man in passion calleth so, but all
men by reason. And therefore the fulfilling of all these laws is good in reason, and
the breaking of them evil.65
De cive is yet more explicit in drawing the juridical consequences of “self-preservation.”

Here also Hobbes holds that everyone must desire the “good for himself,” and shun the
“bad for himself ” and especially the ultimate evil (maximum malorum naturalium),
death. Men shun this with a “natural necessity not less than that which bears a rock
downwards,” necessitate quadam naturae, non minore quam qua fertur lapis deorsum. It
is implied that while there is no sense to the words “highest good”—since each under-
stands and feels that in his own way—the meaning of the summum malum is clear and
the same for all. Thus, he goes on, it is not contrary to “right reason,” non contra rectam
rationem, to attempt to defend and preserve oneself in body and limb, ut a morte et dolo-
ribus proprium corpus et membra defendet, conservetque. It is here that Hobbes brings in
the right to self-preservation, as in the Elements, but in De cive he underlines that this
right must be exercised according to the “right reason.”66 The right to the true end is
reflected in a right to the means that achieve this end and it is up to reason to calculate
these means.67
If we look at the development of this political doctrine in Gassendi’s “De iustitia,”
written three or four years after the first edition of De cive, or in the commentary on
Epicurus’s Kyriai Doxai, it is easy to show that here Gassendi is closer to Hobbes’s ethics
than to Epicurean “orthodoxy.” For Gassendi, self-preservation overrides the moral
hierarchy of desires and goods in Epicurean ethics. There, factors like the impulse to
63 El. I, xiv, 6, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 71; De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 24, Hobbes, Critique
du De mundo, 360.
64 El. I, xvii, 14, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 93–94; De motu, loco et tempore XXX, 23, Hobbes,
Critique du De mundo, 359.
65 El. I, xvii, 14, Hobbes, The Elements of Law, 94.
66 De cive, Libertas, I, 7, Hobbes, De cive, 94.
67 De cive Libertas I, 8, Hobbes, De cive, 94: « Neque enim iuris nomine aliud significatur, quam
libertas quam quisque habet facultatibus naturalibus secundem rectam rationeme utendi » ; English
version, Hobbes, De cive, 47.
self-preservation and the acquisitive impulse that leads to private property were
preliminary and to some extent neutral, if not altogether negative, with respect to the
ethical distinctions between pleasures which were vital to Epicurean “wisdom.” By con-
trast, Gassendi assigns the dominant role even in social life to self-interest (philautia)
and the search for pleasure in general (philēdonia)—two perfectly “natural” motives,
because “there is no one who would do anything except for himself or his own pleasure.”
Even behavior apparently dictated by altruistic considerations—for example self-sacrifice
for family, group, or homeland—implies a purpose, however mediated, that is finally
dictated by self-love.68 Self-interest is always a given, and includes both egoistic behav-
ior proper, and also that which appears altruistic, being in reality dictated by a peculiar
form of self-love that enjoys being praised by others for “generous” actions. “The nature
of the good consists in directing the appetites to love oneself and care for oneself.”69
Christian love of God, according to Gassendi, also normally proceeds from interest in
reward and retribution; disinterested love is “above nature.”70 The reduction of human
affections to philautia is even more evident in the field of law and politics, where volup-
tas is rather replaced by the useful (utile, commodum) and security (securitas). So also in
De cive, according to Hobbes: in statu naturae mensuram iuris esse utilitatem, “in the
state of nature the measure of law (right) is utility.”71
In politics, self-preservation is so important to Gassendi that he makes it not just a
right, but also a duty. In defining ius naturae primarium, primary natural law, which is
for the human being quasi solitarius et in purae naturae statu, by himself and before any
social contract has been made, Gassendi’s formulation rephrases that of De cive with its
precise formulation of right-to-end and right-to-means. “From man’s existence he
derives the power of self-defense and self-preservation, and therefore of availing himself
of all necessary means suitable to those ends.” Other clearly Hobbesian formulas are
those which explain the consequences of this right to self-preservation in the state of
nature, where all have the “right” to all: no “primal injustice” exists before the contracts
have been made, and have established this or that right as capable of being legally sanc-
tioned. The final result of the state of nature for Gassendi, as for Hobbes, was a situation
of unending conflict, actual or potential. To the free dynamic of appetitiones, there cor-
responds a state of absolute insecurity.72 Furthermore, in considering ius naturale as lex
naturae, Gassendi reduces the four primal precepts of “natural law” to three different
articulations of the duty of self-preservation, plus an obligation to sociality. (a) The first
law is a reinstatement of the definition of the good: “that each should pursue what is
good, useful, and pleasant and shun what is bad, harmful, and unpleasant.” (b) The sec-
ond is explained as purely selfish, and takes the priority of self-preservation as a given:
“that each should love himself more than all others, that he should prefer the good for
68 SP Physica III, II, X, ii, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.486b.

69 SP Ethica I, iii, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.695a.
70 SP Ethica I, iv, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.709a–710b.
71 De cive Libertas I, x, Hobbes, De cive, 95. The similarity to KD 31, as translated by Gassendi is
obvious (see below note 77).
72 SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.794b–795b.
692 GIANNI PAGANINI
himself to the good of another.”73 (c) The third law even more explicitly inculcates the
imperative of self-preservation: “that each should strive for the protection of life and the
free use of his members, his senses, and all his faculties.” (d) The fourth “natural law”
introduces a different dimension, the obligation to social life (“and finally, that they
should be disposed to associate with each other and to maintain their society”), but, as
we shall see, this axiom too originates in considerations of self-interest and utility, both
personal and collective.74
Gassendi and the Neo-Epicurean

Theory of Right: Justice, Utility,
and Contract
On the basis of these axioms, Gassendi worked out a Neo-Epicurean theory of law and
justice that had two principal aims. (1) To free classical Epicureanism of the accusation,
common already in antiquity, of being apolitical or, worse, anti-political in that its pre-
occupation with pleasure or tranquility of mind would remove its adherents from par-
ticipation in public life. (2) To integrate Epicurean legal theory into the history of natural
law, by showing how the principle of “utility” could be an acceptable basis for modern
politics. In pursuing these aims Gassendi took account of parallel developments in
Hobbes who reacted to these adaptations and compromises, with the result that on some
points Hobbes himself came closer (though without saying so) to the original spirit of
Epicurean legal theory than Gassendi himself.
Gassendi’s principal sources were three: above all, KD 31–38; the long excerpt from
Hermarchus reported by Porphyry in De abstinentia 1.7–12; and finally Lucretius,
Book 5. The translation and commentary on the Kyriai Doxai were published as an
appendix to the Animadversiones and not repeated, unfortunately, in the definitive
edition of the Syntagma philosophicum:75 this accident too contributed to the limited
impact of Neo-Epicurean juridical and political theory, as compared to the impact of its
physics on s eventeenth-century atomism.
As for KD 31–38, central to Epicurus’s text and Gassendi’s interpretation are three
fundamental notions: (a) the dikaion (right or just), (b) the sympheron (useful), and (c)
synthēkē (the contract).
(a) Dikaion. The general principle of Epicurean legal thought is established in KD 31.
Gassendi in his translation adds interpolations (here given in italics) that are already a
first attempt at interpretation:
73 At this point Gassendi goes even beyond Hobbes, who had assumed as a norm of equity the
Gospel precept (Mt. 22:36, 40) “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Cf. De cive Libertas IV, xii, Hobbes, De
cive, 126.
74 SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.799a–801b.
75 Most contemporary writers base their account on SP, without looking at Animadversiones.
The right (ius) or the just (iustum) by nature is the countersign of the useful (tessera
utilitatis) or of that utility which men propose to themselves by common agreement, to
not damage each other nor be damaged, so as to live in security: something everyone
wishes to do, following nature as their guide.76
Epicurus’s original formulation is shorter: “nature’s justice (τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιον) is a
token of benefit (σύμβολον τοῦ συμφέροντος) toward not harming each other and not
being harmed.”
The concision of this passage has given rise to conflicting opinions between scholars,
ranging between two extremes represented by Robert Philippson and Reimar Müller.
Philippson held that Epicurean nomos existed by nature; Müller, that Epicurus had risen
above the antithesis nomos-physis, nature/convention, and that Epicurean justice would
indeed depend on human nature, but could not be part of human life eo ipso, since it also
needs, to enter into use, the artificial stipulation of a contract.77
It appears Gassendi noticed the ambiguity of this text, which could be read either as
favoring naturalism or conventionalism. His interpolations refer to “nature as guide” to
show that law is the product of a convention which is not arbitrary but instituted accord-
ing to nature, yet not something given, tout court, by nature. Furthermore, against the
classical and medieval tradition of natural law, which insisted on its normative and leg-
islative character, Gassendi interprets ius, insofar as it is ius naturale, as simply subjective
right for the contracting parties and limited to expressing “ownership and power over
something in particular,” dominium et facultas in aliquid. For Gassendi, as for Hobbes,
this reflects the right of all to all in the state of nature, before the mine/thine distinction
came about.
Though this was already at least implicit in Epicurean sources, a notion of subjective
rights had not been given birth in classical times, thus the moderns much deepened the
concept of individual rights. It is Gassendi’s great achievement to have grafted onto the
“natural right” or “right according to nature” of Epicurus a representation of the original
rights of persons in which the doctrine of the Roman jurists is mixed together with an
image of the state of nature much like Hobbes’s. In this picture, the function of right is
important. It assists self-preservation by instituting a reciprocal prohibition against
mutual harm, and Gassendi is quick to put into sight the value of security (securitas).78
The “just” is thus divested of any connection with normative values and is put, rather,
into the perspective of utilitarian means. Now it is no longer tasked with realizing an
ethical paradigm of “the common good,” but only with contributing to external
76 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.299b. In italic the additions made by Gassendi.

77 Philippson, “Studien zu Epikur and den Epikureern,” 29; Müller, “Sur le concept de Physis dans la
philosophie épicurienne du droit,” 305 and Die Epikureische Gesellschaftstheorie, 92–93. See also
Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Épicure et le droit, 25, 40, 79, 141, 160–62, 171, 239–44, and among more
recent studies Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility”; Alberti, “The Epicurean Theory of Law and Justice.”
78 Gassendi classes Ἕνεκα τοῦ θαρρεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων = securitatem ex hominibus adipisci (KD 6) and
asphaleia (KD 7), status securus, as essentials for the enjoyment of the “good of nature.”
Animadversiones II, p. 279a. On the politics of self-preservation, and defense against aggression without
which “we would all devour each other” he adds Plut. Adv. Col. 30, 1124 d. Cf. SP, Gassendi, Opera
omnia, 2.755b.
694 GIANNI PAGANINI
c onditions indispensable to sociability: above all, preservation of life and security. Thus
the political order loses the connotations of communal ethics that characterized it in
Aristotle, the scholastics, and also in the Stoic view revived by Grotius.
(b) Sympheron. Judged by its content, Epicurean right is defined by what is “useful.” This
constitutes the main rule for recognizing the general nature of the right, its prolēpsis or
praenotio (as Gassendi calls it). But since utility varies by place, time, and circumstance,
it follows that the just is equally mutable. KD 36 makes clear that, although there is in
theory a justice “common and equal for all” to the extent it represents “the useful in
reciprocal relations,” this represents only a form of theoretical reasoning whose actual
results vary according to “the characteristics of various places and the variety of causal
principles from which they come.” It follows that “one and the same thing is not just for
all men.”79 As Gassendi also sees, this Epicurean teaching is incompatible with the uni-
versalism typical of the Stoic-Christian tradition of theory of right. As Victor
Goldschmidt said, according to Epicurus “it belongs to the nature (to the essence) of law
to be positive;”80 and as Gassendi put it in his commentary on KD 31:
Only the right of society, that is, what is called civil law by the citizens, is right in the
true sense, as it expressed in the covenants, namely in laws in the proper sense of the
word, to whose prescriptions they that belong to the same society give obedience,
because they are directed to the common good and common utility of all the con-
tracting parties.81
(c) Synthēkē. In spite of the reference to “natural right” in KD 31 (or, more correctly
translated, “right by nature”), Epicurean legal thinking is conventionalist. There exists
no right antecedent to, or independent of, the conventions to which the makers of the
social contract accede. Therefore, there can be no relationships involving justice
between animals, between men and animals, or with savage peoples, as they have no
language in common to covenant. In all these cases there has never been any social con-
tract, as KD 32 puts it, and thus no “rights” are in force. Gassendi is so aware of this con-
ventionalist nucleus of Epicurean theory that, when he tries to explain the notion of
tessera utilitatis in KD 31, he admits he feels tempted to translate the Greek σύμβολον τοῦ
συμφέροντος in conventionalist terms as “a contract agreed to concerning utility,” in false
analogy with similar meanings of σύμβολον in Demosthenes, Isaeus, and Aristotle who
used this word to mean “contract.”82 It is just because of this connection with the social
contract that the iustum naturale for Gassendi is rather a “right according to nature”
79 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.304a–b. Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.300b.

80 Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Épicure et le droit, 141. Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma, III, XXV “De
Iure, seu Iusto, a quo Iustitia dicta” (Gassendi, Opera omnia, 3.87a–b) makes this point quite clear.
81 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.300b.
82 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.299b: “if the phrase had allowed it” he writes, “I would have
translated ‘the rule of utility’ as ‘the contract established with a view to utility.’ ” All that held him back
was probably a philological scruple—unlike, we might add, many a modern scholar, like Gigon,
Boyancé, Guyau, Ernout, and Diano, who in their translations all chose that way.
than a “right of nature” in the sense current in natural law theories. Ius in the strict sense
is limited to furnishing the premises for agreement (aspiration to self-preservation,
equality in the reciprocal claims, free exercise of one’s own faculties) which translate into
the actual terms of the social contract.83 Right and the contract have as their sole purpose
the subjective interests of individuals—their “utility,” their “not being harmed,” etc.
Also, simply “exercising the power to do or make use of something” is not yet a right in
the full sense until it is limited, defined, and guaranteed by means of an explicit and rati-
fied law.84 Though Gassendi had relied on the authority of the Roman jurists to soften
the impact of this linking of “natural right” to utility and convention, he could not conceal
the explosive effects of Epicurean theory. The text of the KD would not let him. A series
of terse doxai draws out all the consequences of equating conventionalist utilitarianism
with the theory of justice. KD 32: “there is neither justice not injustice” for animals that
have no language and cannot “draw up contracts” and the same is true “for all those
peoples who did not wish and were unable to make contracts neither to harm nor be
harmed.”85 KD 33 infers from this that justice “is not something existent in itself ” but
only “in reciprocal relations” and—Gassendi adds—cannot be found “in man taken in
isolation” but only in “the mutual associations of mankind.”86
Major Innovations of
Gassendi’s Political Theory
The break with the Stoic-Christian tradition was obvious. Many seventeenth-century
writers held it to be tantamount to a sceptical denial of the universality of natural law,
even of its very existence. Grotius had already classed, along with a sceptic like
Carneades, the Epicurean poet Horace and his famous assertion (S. 1.3.96) that “Utilitas
is as if the ‘mother’ of justice and equity.” Grotius held that the origin of society could not
depend on its utility to the contracting parties, but on an innate and rational norm. By
oikeiōsis (fellow-feeling, as if the partner was quasi-familial) all men severally are united
to the whole race, and that “nature” led us to create society, even where that was neither
necessary nor useful to the needs of individuals.87 Later on, the sceptical libertin érudit
La Mothe Le Vayer pointed as a matter of course to Epicurus in doubting the existence of
a moral standard or an objective politics.88
83 On this basis Goldschmidt, La doctrine d’Épicure et le droit, 123 compares Hobbes to Epicurus.
84 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.299b–300b. 85 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.300b.
86 In his translation of KD 33: Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.302a.
87 Grotius, “Prolegomena,” §5 and 16, Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis libri tres, iv, xi.
88 La Mothe Le Vayer, Quatre Dialogues faits à l’imitation des anciens par Orasius Tubero, 42.
696 GIANNI PAGANINI
Now, there is clearly an echo of these discussions in Gassendi’s commentary on the

KD, and in the chapter of the Syntagma “De iustitia” written concurrently with it.
Gassendi defends three crucial points.
(a) Utilitarianism. Gassendi is the first thinker since Valla—and long before Helvétius
and Bentham—to found law on “utility,” reviving for modern ethical and political
thought a key notion of classical Epicureanism (though not in the same way as his eight
eenth- and nineteenth-century successors). In the commentary on KD 31, Gassendi
finds in “utility” the universal goal of the ius gentium insofar as that coincides with “the
dictate of Nature as to what is useful—that is convenient and good.”89 In “De iustitia”
Gassendi undertakes an explicit deduction of right from “utility,” deducere [ius] ab utili-
tate, by which he demonstrates the coherence between Epicurean doctrine and the prin-
ciples of natural right. In his reading, Epicurus would have been concerned not to
separate right from, but to conjoin it with, human nature. That was exactly why he made
use “of utility, the binding force most in agreement with nature.” Thus the Epicurean
criterion, utility, lends itself—Gassendi argues—to a unification of the three distinct
categories, ius naturale, ius gentium, ius civile, into which right had been divided ever
since Roman times.90 This insistence on the fundamental value of utility instead of
mutual benevolence, whether altruistic or social, sets Gassendi off from Aristotelian,
scholastic, and Neo-Stoic theorists.
It is also notable that, against the recurring criticism of Epicurean self-love, philautia,
as mere pettiness and egoism, Gassendi holds that one should measure utility not by the
sheer good of the individual, but by the public good—populi utilitas, communis utili-
tas—at least once the civitas has been set up. Of course the fact remains that, when a
Neo-Epicurean like Gassendi talks of “public good,” he is merely thinking of it as the
sum of the good done to people one by one, given that pleasure is defined as a strictly
individual good.91 He never approaches the solution of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Utilitarianism—the greater happiness of, or usefulness to, the greatest number of
people. His focus is always centered on the individual, even when it is included in a
community.
(b) Blending naturalism with conventionalism. It has been much discussed then and
now whether Epicurean right was completely conventionalist. Certainly Gassendi’s was
not (maybe Hobbes’s was, despite his appeal to natural law).92 Already the commentary on
KD 32 is open to a theory by which, even where there is no explicit contract, there would
still be a minimum of obligations which would exist above and beyond the stipulations
of convention, and lead a man to “seek out what would or would not befit him as a
human being,” for example in dealing with animals or savages. That would make it
89 Commentary on KD 31, Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.300a.

90 SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.796b–797b.
91 SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.803a–805b.
92 Cf. Villey, Les Leçons d’histoire de la philosophie du droit, 246–49.
ossible to discover a rational norm wherever prescriptive law is not in force. To the
p
objection that this norm would not be a law properly so-called, lex perfecta, because
sanctioned by no penalty, Gassendi answers that even in the absence of coercive power
(vis cogens), the obligation dictated by law would at least be “in accord with nature,”
secundum naturam, insofar as it would interpret “the dictate of reason,” rationis dictamen.93
For this attempt to reconcile Epicureanism with natural law, Gassendi gets leverage
from Epicurus’s having himself set limits to his own juridical conventionalism. For even
to him a contract is artificial, but not arbitrary: it always corresponds to the prolēpsis of
justice as to the reciprocal advantage of the contractors. As Eric Brown says:
Epicurus recognizes limitations on the substance on the convention, however it is

formed: no agreement about right and wrong that fails to benefit reciprocal com-
munity defines what is just. So, justice must have some reality independent of what
any community has agreed.94
Therefore, while the form of the contract is conventional, its content is rational and
corresponds to utile dictated by reason, and therefore also to human nature.
Conventionalism and utilitarian naturalism correct and limit each other mutually.
Doubts have been expressed about whether it is possible to reconcile the Epicurean
idea of synthēkē with that of the social contract found in Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
It seems Epicurus envisaged “a formal or abstract agreement, presupposed by legislative
action, and not a personal act that each of the parties, and eventually every citizen, must
consciously ratify.”95 Gassendi introduces the idea of an “implicit” contract, founded on
rational consensus, or at least on “the silent consent of all men who obey their own rea-
soning.” However, he maintains an idea that will be typical of the “moderns” even while
it is close to Epicurean tradition: juridical and political regulation is not the instinctive
and immediate product of physis. It requires further reflection on the utility of the rules
that guarantee self-preservation: the “utilitarian calculus,” epilogismos tou chrēsimou.
What Müller has said of Epicurus is true also of Gassendi: “law is conformable to Nature
to the extent it expresses utility”96 and this utility corresponds to the natural structure of
human needs. These, however, must be “calculated” by reason, and directed, by means of
the contract, to the constituting of a society.
(c) Recovering law of nature. The concept of “law of nature” that Gassendi utilizes in
dealing with “self-preservation” is rather extraneous to classical Epicurean legal thought
and derives from medieval and later theory. It is interesting, however, that it is formu-
lated in terms that make it an exercise of the Epicurean virtue of “prudence”—that is, the
long-term evaluation of “pleasures” and their consequences in terms of utility or harm.
As we have seen, to the three primal precepts of natural law that express in the imperative
93 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.303a. 94 Brown, “Politics and Society,” 195.

95 Morel, “Les communautés humaines,” 180.
96 Müller. “Sur le concept de Physis dans la philosophie épicurienne du droit,” 311.
698 GIANNI PAGANINI
what the Epicurean lexicon of justice (dikaion) had expressed permissively, there is
added by Gassendi a fourth, explicitly political prescription: it recommends social
relations between mankind that supply the needs of each. This opens the way for con-
tracts, obligations, and laws without which social and political life cannot exist. For
Gassendi, there is no solution in continuity between the selfish interests of individuals
and their entrance into community. Because the laws create utility for each, it follows
“that it is according to nature for everyone to respect and keep inviolate the laws of soci-
ety, and to love the common good, where, it is understood, also one’s personal good is
included.” In the final analysis, the law of nature is founded on the self-interested princi-
ple of reciprocity, and can be summarized in the commandment “do not do that to oth-
ers which you would not have others do to you,” to which all social norms can be
reduced. “Put yourself in another’s place” is the best way to understand “what one ought
and ought not to do.”97 By appealing to reciprocity, Gassendi supports an optimistic
approach which encourages convergence between individual and collective “utility.” In
the Syntagma he refuses to admit that the interests of the individual, if well understood,
can be taken apart from those of the society, or that the community can compromise the
interests of the individual. His optimism is thoroughly “naturalistic” even when it is
expressed with mechanistic metaphors:
Man is created by nature a sociable animal . . . and to render him more loving and
observant of society, nature has contrived (machinata natura est) a reciprocal need
of help, such that when one asked from another the help he needed, he obtained it
the more easily because in his turn he could offer it back to that other.98
Elsewhere Gassendi attributes directly to God as artifex naturae the farsightedness of

having created by pleasure every operatio necessary to the propagation and preservation
of life.99
In this way Gassendi believes he has reconciled the physeōs dikaion of KD 31 with
the tradition of natural law. For this reason he reacts against Epicurus’s clear denial in
KD 33 that “justice exists by itself,” and claims this is unacceptable because “the same
dictate of reason” establishes between men “an obligation in accord with nature,” even
though it is limited to a few norms only (like the rule of “attack no one unless
attacked”) and in the end to one single rule, that of reciprocity (“do not unto
others . . .”).100
97 SP Ethica, II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.800b–802a. Cf. on KD 33 and 34, Gassendi,
Animadversiones, 2.303a, 303b. On lex naturalis, Gassendi’s views are very unlike those of the
contemporary Jesuits, pace Borkenau, Der Uebergang vom feudalen zum bürgelichen Weltbild, ch. 6; cf.
Paganini, “Épicurisme et philosophie au XVIIe siècle.” On the lex naturæ in Gassendi, cf. Tamagnini,
Filosofia del diritto come teoria dell’utile, 120–25.
98 SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.795a.
99 SP Ethica I, iii, Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.701. Cf. Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics, 63–64.
100 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.302.
Three Stages in the Dialogue

between Hobbes and Gassendi: Is Man
Meant from Birth for Society?
However tempered by the key role accorded to friendship101 (sometimes, even, with still
much debated touches of altruism), and though it emphasized the fact that a life of
pleasure ought also to be a virtuous life, that is, temperate, brave, prudent, and just,102
the foundation of society by Epicurus on a self-interested utilitarian calculus, not on a
metaphysical idea of justice like Plato’s, or on a deeper human affinity (Stoic oikeiōsis), or
on the political nature of man (like in Aristotle), was a scandal to all the other ancient
philosophies. It was aggravated by Epicurus’s commendation of abstention from active
political life, and his praise of a life private and hidden from notice, except for the bonds
of “friendship,” which were patently not those of the polis or res publica. There arose the
portrait of an Epicurus who was the enemy of natural sociability: as Lactantius summed
it up, dicit Epicurus . . . nullam esse humanam societatem, sibique quemque consulere.103
This denial of natural sociability as essential or spontaneous to man reappeared with
force in the seventeenth century in the work of Hobbes, and provoked Gassendi to
rethink his Epicurean “politics.”104 Hobbes replied—at least implicitly—to Gassendi’s
objections on this key point. We may reconstruct their dialogue in three stages:
(a) In the first edition of De cive (1642) Hobbes attacked the Aristotelian doctrine of
man as a political animal (zōion politikon) by nature, explicitly referring to
Aristotle.105 But two long passages106 can be read as reflections, positive and nega-
tive, on themes of the Epicurean tradition. This relationship with Epicureanism
can be summarized in three main points.
First, while it is typically Epicurean to hold that consent to the contract is a suf-
ficient foundation for living in society, so that laws are equated with private
101 Cf. Paganini, “Il piacere dell’amicizia.” 102 Men. 132; Fin. 1.42–54.
103 Lactantius, Divin. Instit. 3.17, 42 (Usener 523). Epictetus attributed a radical negation to Epicurus:
“there exists no community of nature” (Arr. Epict. 1.23.1 = Usener fr. 525). And yet he also attributed to
Epicurus the statement that men are naturally communal. For both statements cf. SP (Opera omnia)
2.753b–754a. Cf. Salem, Tel un Dieu parmi les hommes, 165.
104 I have written elsewhere other studies of aspects of the relationship Gassendi-Hobbes via
Epicurus, on the state of nature, the artificiality of norms, and the role of synthēkai vis à vis sovereign
authority: Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi et le ‘De cive” and “Hobbes, Gassendi and the Tradition of
Political Epicureanism.”
105 The formula “men are said to be sociable by nature” appears also in El. I, ix, 16 in Hobbes, The
Elements of Law, 43, referring however to private affections, such as love and friendship.
106 De cive “Libertas” I, 2 in Hobbes, De cive, 90; English version Hobbes, De cive, 42, which
concludes: “We must therefore resolve, that the Originall of all great, and lasting Societies, consisted
not in the mutuall good will men had towards each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other
[non a mutua hominum beneuolentia, sed a mutuo metu].”
700 GIANNI PAGANINI
contracts, Hobbes considers both notions errors.107 He could have seen them
currently in Gassendi’s commentary on the KD, or in “De iustitia.”108
Second, while he rejects the doctrine of natural sociability, Hobbes seems to approve
a more realistic form of association based on considerations of self-interest. He lists
these under two heads: honor and power on the one side, utility and reciprocal need
on the other. Now the second pair is as typically Epicurean as the first is typically
Hobbesian. Again, his opposition of self-love to the love of one’s fellows is in line
with Gassendi’s and Epicurus’s view of philautia. Hobbes could well have seen it
made into a positive value by Gassendi in circulating manuscripts.
Third, Hobbes argues that, however considerable the accumulated force of recip-
rocal need and however much the Epicureans had insisted on the utility of social
feelings, these were never sufficient to quench the temptation to abuse power
because the “increase of things useful to life” can be made easier to obtain “by
dominion over others rather than by entering into society with them.” Hobbes
began a debate with Gassendi over the basic assumptions I have here outlined in
summary form.
(b) It is significant that this is precisely the argument Gassendi takes up in writings
datable to 1646—“De iustitia” and the commentary on the KD—four years after
the first edition of De cive. This is stage two of the dialogue. In fact, Gassendi re-
elaborated his Neo-Epicurean doctrine in view of Hobbes’s objection. Struck by
the power of Hobbes’s realism, Gassendi introduced into his text a vision of the
state of nature that gives full place to aggression between human beings, never
quite so fully acknowledged in classical Epicureanism.109 At the same time,
Gassendi reacted both to the “anti-political” reading of classical Epicureanism
and to Hobbes’s thesis (in De cive) that in the state of nature there could be no
“natural justice” in the true sense, because there was as yet no contract.110
Gassendi’s Neo-Epicureanism thus became a sort of via media between the true
Epicurus and Hobbes. In “De iustitia” Gassendi distinguishes between ius
primarium, primary right, which belongs to the isolated individual, and ius
secundarium, secondary right, belonging to man in society. Under primary
right, the condition of man—“solitary and in the state of pure nature”—is much
like Hobbes’s account of it. Gassendi quotes Lucretius Book 5 in support: the
fundamental norm of secondary right was inter se nec laedere nec violari, neither
to harm nor be harmed among one another, a literal translation from KD 31.
Appealing next to the fragment of Hermarchus on the origins of right, he traces
107 Cf. Ludwig, Die Wiederentdeckung des Epikureischen Naturrechts, 304, 421.
108 SP Ethica II, v in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2. 795b: quippe nihil aliud sunt leges, quam pacta.
109 Cf. Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi and the Tradition of Political Epicureanism”; Bloch, “Gassendi
et la théorie politique de Hobbes,” 343 noted a reference of Gassendi’s (ut non multo ante observatum
est, in SP Ethica, II, ii in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.755a) that is almost certainly to Hobbes’s description
of the state of nature in the first edition of De cive.
110 Cf. Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi et le ‘De cive.’ ”
a “genealogy” of political institutions by which the renunciation of aggression

between individuals is the first rule instituted by the “legislators” for the primary
utility of society. The “calculus” or reckoning of utility induced them to forbid
homicide and persuade their peoples of the profitability of obeying this rule.
“Secondary” right looks to the human condition “insofar as man is sociable and finds
himself in a modified state of nature.” At that level sociality is essential to man, who “is
part of society and wishes to be so.” Social union is now an indispensable convenience to
supply the needs of individuals. In that context Gassendi did not hesitate to re-use the
Aristotelian formula zōion politikon. “Thus man is created by nature a sociable animal,
so that he might enjoy goods useful to lift him out of need, thanks to this [secondary]
right.”111 That is also the origin of “contracts,” without which “there can be no safe asso-
ciation.” The laws of association are to be called “secondary,” as depending on the first
contracts, but, he adds, can also be called “natural,” since, as they appeal to a natural
need, “they originate from nature and are conformable to its intentions.” Returning to
his exegesis of KD 31, he argues that “primary right” is like a “faculty,” facultas:
This is apparently what Epicurus had in mind when he said that natural right con-
sists just in the contracts, or rather in that faculty [of association] they render pos-
sible. Indeed, it seems he might have agreed that one ought to call a “faculty,” not a
right, that right which we have called primary.112
In the light of “secondary right” the condition of primal man appears to be more like “a
supposition or fiction” than a reality, since “the society of mankind is as ancient as their
origin.” Sociality corresponds to their nature as intelligent beings who understand “that
there can be among them no safe association that is not consolidated by contract and
reciprocal convention.”113
Though characterized not by altruism but self-interest and the calculus of reciprocal
convenience, this sociability that comes about “under the guidance of nature” is thus not
“accidental” as in Hobbes, but can be called “natural,” if only in the Epicurean and not
the Aristotelian sense. As if to defend against any accusation of too superficial a view of
human nature, Gassendi collects all the testimonia—especially Epicurean—that speak
for an authentic “community of nature” among mankind. However, there is nothing of
Stoic oikeiōsis there: that is too elevated and abstract. Rather, we find the “natural com-
munity” of man with man produced by “likeness of body and soul.”114 Hermarchus had
appealed to this likeness, in the fragment in Porphyry, to explain as absolute the prohibi-
tion against killing another man introduced by the primal lawgivers. Of course, in the
text of Hermarchus, even this is explained immediately by the statement that, in fact,
“the principal reason” for indignation against homicide is its not being “useful for the
111 SP Ethica II, v in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.794–95.

112 SP Ethica II, v in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.795b.
113 SP Ethica II, v in Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.795a.
114 Gassendi, Animadversiones, 2.302a (on Porph. Abst. 1.7.1).
702 GIANNI PAGANINI
general arrangement (systasis) of life.” The long passage of Hermarchus is taken up in

“De iustitia” again from a utilitarian point of view with pride of place belonging in social
life to the calculus of utility, epilogismos tou chrēsimou (Gassendi: ad considerandum
quid utile foret). This by itself would have sufficed to regulate behavior, without laws
(Hermarchus claimed), “had all been able to see and to remember what was useful.”115
Gassendi wishes to distinguish his own views on “reciprocal natural community,
which it seems Epicurus denied was general among mankind,” also from the oppo-
site radical view taken by De cive of the immediate distrust and hostility supposedly
characterizing human relations. Gassendi refutes this latter idea, and maintains that
even for Epicureans there is a kind of human common share which is not abstract but
rooted in facts of ordinary experience: the use of reason, the quest for utility, and the
need to avoid or suffer aggressive behavior, on which this sort of limited “community of
nature” is based.
This revival of the notion of man as a “sociable animal” in an Epicurean context is not
the same as a simple re-working of the politikon zōion of Aristotelian tradition. It
attempts to realize a synthesis in political theory of egoistic and utilitarian aspects with
communitarian aspects. Gassendi uses the naturalism of Epicureanism itself, which had
its own way of overcoming the physis-nomos antithesis, both in refuting Hobbesian arti-
ficialism, and as a corrective to Aristotelian political theory.
(c) We have arrived at stage three of the dialogue between Hobbes and Gassendi. The
latter’s response (not yet printed) to the first edition of De cive could not pass unnoticed
by Hobbes and we have a clear evidence of this. As the second edition of De cive (1647)
was going to press, and shortly after the composition of Gassendi’s “De iustitia,” Hobbes
added a series of “annotationes.” Clearly, those to “Libertas” I 2 mentioned above116 deal
with Gassendi’s arguments against Hobbes’s claim that “man is not born for society by
birth.” Hobbes took special note of arguments set out in “De iustitia”: that we live in a
society already set up to the point that the “state of nature” appears a “fiction”; that all
men “desire association and to share converse” (appetere congressum et colloquia mutua).
In acknowledging the “natural” desire of association, Hobbes goes so far as to echo the
formulas with which Gassendi had described ius humanum and its powerful tendency
to favor sociability. As if echoing the appetitus societatis of Gassendi, Hobbes says:
That it is true indeed, that to Man, by nature, or as Man, that is, as soone as he is
born, Solitude is an enemy . . . wherefore I deny not that men (even nature
compelling) desire to come together.117
115 Gassendi gives the whole passage of Hermarchus in Greek and Latin at SP Ethica II, v, Gassendi,
Opera omnia, 1.791–94.
116 Hobbes, De cive, 6–8 of 1647 edition.
117 De cive Libertas I 2 in Hobbes, De cive, Lat., 92; Engl. 44: Verum quidem esse homini per naturam,
sive quatenus est homo, id est, statim atque est natus solitudinem perpetuam molestam esse [. . .] Itaque
homines alterum alterius congressum natura cogente appetere non nego.
Association is necessary both for life, ad vivendum, and for living well, ad bene vivendum.
So that instead of starting from a denial of natural sociability (as he had done in the first
edition of De cive) Hobbes says such a denial might be judged “a wonderful kind of
stupidity,” mira stupiditas, “a stumbling block before the reader.” In acknowledging this
fact, Hobbes seems to concede to Gassendi a more positive view of human sociality.
For Hobbes, nonetheless, what is at stake is not the concession to matters of fact, but
the understanding of what political unions should really be. For him, “civil societies,”
societates civiles, are not “mere meetings,” congressus, but “Bonds,” foedera, that require
“faiths and Compacts,” whose power (vis) remains unknown to “children” and “fooles.”
He therefore argues “civil society” is not a gift of birth. Even among adults the “profit,”
utilitas, of “compacts” is unknown to those without experience of the damage caused by
lack of them. Thus, not even the concession—to Gassendi—that in fact, societies always
pre-exist individuals, could be a disproof of the thesis that political bonds are non-natural.
Whether children or non-reflective adults, all or most of mankind prove Hobbes’s axiom
Hominem ad Societatem aptum non esse natum. Infants “are born unapt for Society,” ad
societatem inepti nati, since they have to learn to live politically. As for adults the great
majority remain in this state of political ineptitude “either through defect of mind, or
want of education,” vel morbo animi vel defectu disciplinae. Since both infants and adults
possess “a human nature,” there is the proof that having one does not per se make one fit
for society. At most, one can say that the appetite for human connection belongs to
nature, as Gassendi argued, but a good outcome of this desire depends not on nature but
disciplina, “education.” So, it is the result of an artifice that goes beyond any natural
given.118
The second annotation by Hobbes follows logically from the first. The 1642 text had
said that “the original of all great, and lasting Societies, consisted not in the mutual good
will men had towards each other,” non a mutua hominum beneuolentia, “but in the
mutual fear,” a mutuo metu, “they had of each other.”119 In the 1647 annotation Hobbes
118 De cive Libertas I, ii in Hobbes, De cive, Engl. 44–5: “although Man were born in such a
condition as to desire it, it followes not, that he therefore were born fit to enter into it; for it is one thing
to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire; for even they, who through their pride, will
not stoop to equall conditions, without which there can be no Society, do yet desire it”; Lat. 92: Porro
tametsi ea conditione natus esset homo ut societatem appeteret, non sequitur eundem ita natum esse ut
societati ineundae sit idoneus. Alia res est appetere, alia capacem esse. Appetunt enim illi qui tamen
conditiones aequas, sine quibus societas esse non potest, accipere per superbiam non dignantur. Appetere
is also the verb in Gassendi: [homo] pars quaedam est, esseve appetit societatis” (SP Ethica II, v in
Gassendi, Opera omnia, 2.794a).
119 De cive, Libertas I, ii in Hobbes, De cive, Engl., 44: “But though the benefits [commoda] of this
life may be much farthered by mutuall help, since yet those may be better attain’d to by Dominion, then
by the society of others: I hope no body will doubt but that man would much more greedily be carryed
by Nature [natura sua], if all fear [metus] were removed, to obtain Dominion, then to gaine Society [ad
dominationem quam ad societatem]. We must therefore resolve, that the Originall of all great, and
lasting Societies, consisted not in the mutuall good will men had towards each other [non a mutua
hominum beneuolentia], but in the mutuall fear [a mutuo metu] they had of each other.” The
formulation in De cive, I, ii, Lat., 92 is striking: Quamquam autem commoda huius vitae augeri mutua
ope possunt, cum autem id fieri multo magis Dominio possit, quam societate aliorum, nemini dubium esse
debet quin auidius ferrentur homines natura sua, si metus abesset, ad dominationem quam ad societatem.
704 GIANNI PAGANINI
explains what this mutuus metus means. It is not to be understood as “terror” or

“flight”—that would render association impossible—but rather as “foresight of future
evil,” which might generate “flight,” but principally makes human beings “to distrust,
suspect, take heed.” They think both that men aim at bonum sibi, yet Gassendi’s eude-
monistic utilitarianism is less competitive and more optimistic about human spontane-
ous cooperation. To drive men towards peace and contract, Hobbes uses the lever of a
“sad” passion: fear. This is certainly a cause of distrust that can break out into preventive
aggression; yet the same passion can actually induce mankind to perform a rational cal-
culus regarding the dangers and harms of aggression, which, in turn, opens a way to
peace by mutual agreement. For Gassendi, by contrast, metus is not the primary or sole
motive that acts in social life. It is equalled in importance by spes, hope.
Conclusion: Utility vs.

Sovereignty
The two thinkers differ even more on the role of utilitas. Though he recognizes the value
of utility in the creation of social bonds, Hobbes does not share Gassendi’s optimism
about a purely utilitarian conception of social norms. He holds, as we saw, that if the use-
ful, commoda, can be augmented by mutual aid, mutua ope, this is not sufficient in itself
to make cooperation stable and permanent. In fact, the vainglorious (men who delude
themselves by their supposed superiority) or the arrogant (who are indisposed to admit
equality with others) can imagine themselves winning any conflict, and appropriating
the greater part of the benefits, by recourse to being high-handed, which would be more
efficacious and advantageous (for them) than cooperation and promise-keeping. For
Hobbes the coercive role of sovereignty ought logically to prevail over the immediate,
short term utilitarian calculus. Sovereign power does not rest on that calculus, even
though it opens the way for it to work effectively. So, the calculus presupposes the exist
ence of sovereign power, unlike what Gassendi could read in the Hermarchus fragment.
There the calculus is on the same plane as the penalties inflicted by the lawgiver that
enforce it, and these penalties would themselves be needless in a state of ideal human
rationality.
The authority of the “legislators of old” in Hermarchus and Gassendi not only comes
from below, but in every aspect of its action rests on the direct utilitarian advantage of
those who make a contract. It is supported solely by the recognition of its own “utility”
by those subject to it, who are moreover encouraged to revise at any time their “calculus”
of utilities—for KD 38 lays it down that the “justice” of the laws varies, as the “circum-
stances” (in time and place) that impinge on their “utility” vary. Hobbesian sovereignty,
though it too originates in the utilitarian calculus and the voluntary decision of the
citizens through the social contract, once established, no longer depends for its exercise
on any further calculation by them. To Hobbes this sort of continuous utilitarian
c alculation, encouraged by Hermarchus and Gassendi even after the institution of

sovereignty, would in the end be classed with the changeable, self-interested, and
emotional judgments of individuals, and would make a basis too unstable and precarious
for the holding of sovereign authority. If there is, as Hobbes also believes, a “calculus” of
the chances of survival when leaving the state of nature and contracting the political
covenant, the basic utility of self-preservation comes first and before the particular
norms that establish merely contingent kinds of utility. It regards subjects’ primary con-
dition. It is a calculus of the utility of obedience for self-preservation, that is the utility of
submitting oneself to the sovereign to get safety and peace. After this basic decision that
is “useful” to self-preservation, it is authority, not the individual, that determines the
ways of “living” and “living well,” thus fixing the contingent “utilities” of common life
according to the laws established by the sovereign. Of course, it is essential to Leviathan
that the supreme utility, peace and self-preservation, for which the state was instituted,
be protected. However, in the actual practice of government, the modalities in which
commodum and its consequences take form are to be calculated and established not by
individuals, but by the sovereign. Obviously, utility and its consideration are present in
the basic exchange that occurs before the birth of the Commonwealth, i.e. the exchange
between protection and obedience; yet, after the pact is made, it is the authority of the
sovereign that decides the utility of single norms and acts.
The utility of peace and social life falls under individual judgment only in two cases:
in founding, and in terminating, the State. At the moment of founding, union and
submission are created. At the moment of dissolving, when the sovereign is shown to
be incapable of protecting its subjects, the subjects return to the state of nature, where
each is judge of the means of his own self-preservation. As long as the State is there,
the sovereign assumes the judgment of what is useful or harmful to the “life” of the
Commonwealth, and thus to the existence and well-being of its subjects. For Hobbes,
the sovereign reserves to himself the functions of securing the dieta (resources) of the
State, establishing “where, with whom and in what commerce can occur,” laying down
the laws of institution and transfer of property, marriage and family regulations, and
so on. Therefore, for its concrete exercise to be effective, sovereign power is founded
in Leviathan on a logic of authority that goes beyond mere consensio, consensus, or
the “conspiration of many wills to one end,” conspiratio plurium voluntatum ad
eundem finem.120
Thus, the power of the holder of sovereignty must extend, for Hobbes, far beyond the
limits that the subjects of an Epicurean lawgiver would have given, as described by
120 Cf. De cive, V, v–vi, 133: Consensio itaque, siue societas contracta, sine potestate aliqua communi,
per quam metu poenae singuli regantur, non sufficit ad securitatem quae requiritur ad exercitium iustitiae
naturalis . . . Quoniam igitur conspiratio plurium voluntatum ad eundem finem non sufficit ad
conseruationem pacis, & defensionem stabilem, requiritur ut circa ea quae ad pacem & defensionem sunt
necessaria, una omnium sit voluntas. Hoc autem fieri non potest, nisi unusquisque voluntatem suam,
alterius unius, nimirum unius Hominis, vel unius Concilij, voluntati, ita subiiciat, ut pro voluntate
omnium & singulorum, habendum sit, quicquid de iis rebus quae necessariae sunt ad pacem communem,
ille voluerit.
706 GIANNI PAGANINI
Hermarchus or Gassendi.121 The theory of “authorization” in Leviathan is at the extreme

end of such a tendency in Hobbes, and is his ultimate response to the merely utilitarian
view of authority in Gassendi’s Neo-Epicureanism.
Though Gassendi tried to take into account many aspects newly brought to the fore
by the revolutions and crises of European states—self-interest, aggression, the impor-
tance of juridical and political regulation—his Neo-Epicureanism, at least in Hobbes’s
view, offered too mild and consensual a solution to the problem of authority, a solution
unable to face the conflicts of the time. In turn, Hobbes’s solution must have seemed
unbalanced and excessive to Gassendi, undervaluing the human instinct of cooperation
and the utilitarian, not solely authoritarian and protective, function of the State. It is no
accident that Locke, who read Gassendi, taught a more optimistic liberalism than
Hobbes’s, in which the pursuit of happiness and the instinct for social life play a role
similar to the one that they were given by Gassendi.122
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chapter 27
Epicu rus i n
Eighteen th- a n d
N i n eteen th- Cen tu ry
Fr ench Thought
A “Freedom of Pleasures”?
Thomas M. Kavanagh
The expression “freedom of pleasures” is somewhat jarring. In the original French, la

liberté des plaisirs is quite rare. The database of the Trésor de la Langue Française offers
only a single example. It dates back to 1586 and is drawn from the Memoirs of Marguerite
de Valois, that is to say of Marguerite of France, better known—thanks to Alexandre
Dumas—as “La Reine Margot” who would become the spouse of Henri IV. The expres-
sion occurs as the young Marguerite recalls a day when she happened to overhear an
exchange between her mother, Catherine de Médicis and her dame de compagnie,
madame de Dampierre. The mother, suddenly realizing that her daughter is listening to
her exchange, turns toward her daughter and abruptly declares: “You have been born in
terrible times,” offering as proof of that claim the reign of constant rumors that now
besiege all the members of the court of her husband, King Henri II. Looking back to the
very different and happier times of her own youth, Catherine de Médicis—Marguerite
tells us—“launched into a description for madame de Dampierre of the very genuine
liberté des plaisirs that prevailed because people like themselves were not subjects of
constant scandalmongering.”1
More than two centuries later, on March 18, 1800, the expression appears again—this
time not in the intimate recollections of a personal memoir, but in an official govern-
ment document. The Paris Préfet de police, a certain Dubois recently named to his post
by First Consul Bonaparte, publicly announced that, as concerned the policing of the
1 Valois, Mémoires, 55.

712 THOMAS M. KAVANAGH
capital, a new age had dawned: “All those practices that once provoked your complaints
will be my first concern.” Speaking as someone who appreciates nuance and necessary
distinctions, he continues:
In our jails and prisons, I will separate the accused from the guilty, the trouble
maker from the careless, and the vagabond from the unfortunate.
The Préfet’s real goal, however, was to proclaim liberty—in all its forms—as the most
eloquent proof of the new relation between government and the governed:
This freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and freedom of pleasures [liberté des
plaisirs] will demonstrate to everyone that the government’s only intention is to
treat you as free men.2
What the Préfet means when he invokes freedom of religion and freedom of thought is
readily understood. All religions and all individual opinions will be respected. His third
freedom, however, that of pleasures, remains startlingly opaque.
The term pleasure itself was hardly innocent. Throughout the Enlightenment pleasure
had been a central theme of philosophical reflection within that century’s Epicurean
tradition. Its major figures, novelists and artists, philosophes as well as libertins, set out to
describe, analyze, and multiply the resolutely subjective experience of pleasure. Pleasure
was the elixir to be found not only in a glass, but in an intimate encounter, a novel, an
opera, or a painting. During the three-quarters of a century between 1715 and the early
1790s pleasure was consecrated as a force driving individual action and constituting the
essence of existence. The ability to take pleasure and to multiply pleasure as a gift shared
with one’s companion, reader, or public became a signature of the century’s conviviality.
Pleasure was the shared endeavor of individuals savoring what their senses perceived as
well as of a larger community knitted together by the expression and communication
of its pleasures. The optimism of the French Enlightenment flowed from its faith in
pleasure as a universal currency whose endless exchange could bind together all
sentient beings.3
Both as an experience of the senses and as the foundation of a new social contract,
Enlightenment pleasure emerged from the minatory shadow of Christian asceticism.
The trauma of France’s wars of religion, resurrected by Louis XIV’s revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685 and in the religious cleansing that would continue until the
Revolution, led an ever-growing number to see the conflict between Catholic and
Protestant as proof of their shared absurdity. The scandal of a Christianity at war with
itself established agnosticism and atheism as intellectually responsible options for those
who rejected religion’s twinned intolerances. At the same time, the body’s senses, rele-
gated by both religious camps to the realm of the dangerous and the sinful, became the
2 Journal des débats, 27 Ventôse, An VIII [March 17, 1800] 4.

3 On this subject, see Kavanagh, Enlightened Pleasures.
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Thought 713
touchstone of a new empiricism that looked to the data of the senses as the bedrock of all
knowledge. By mid-century, the philosophes, reversing the Cartesian primacy of mind,
insisted that sensation not only preceded thought, but that only the data of the senses
could be truly clear and distinct. This Enlightenment Epicureanism was defined by a
dynamic tension between pleasure as idiolect and pleasure as lingua franca. To invoke
pleasure was to speak of sensations in the key of the individual, of experience as some-
thing always personal. Yet representing that pleasure, making it real for others, involved
not so much an objectification of those sensations, but their pan-subjectification—an
enticing seduction of all who make up one’s audience. The sometimes naïve optimism of
the French Enlightenment sought to parlay the always individual pleasure of the one
into the exuberance of the many.
It is against this background that we can best understand how puzzling the Préfet’s
reference to a freedom of pleasure must have seemed. In the Enlightenment’s reflections
on that subject the accent was on questions of what might be pleasure’s intensity and
duration. Anchored within the sentient person, within individual subjectivity, pleasure
either was—or it was not. Because it occurred as an epiphany of the bodily senses, pleasure
invoked the world outside the self as an invitation extended to others to join in that
experience. At no point, however, was pleasure’s sparking of the senses and the imagina-
tion conceived of as dependent upon approval by some outside authority. Far more fre-
quently, pleasure was an outlaw neither soliciting nor depending on any authorization
beyond the sentient self.
The strangeness of this expression provoked a number of contentious responses. Scarcely
three months after the Préfet’s proclamation, the liberal Swiss anti-Bonapartist, Francis
d’Ivernois, writing from London, offered what was perhaps the most facetious gloss on the
expression: “This freedom of pleasures, perhaps intended to compensate Parisians for the
muzzling of the press, meant allowing the re-opening of what were called temples of folly
(les temples de la folie), and this certainly brought just as much joy to the inhabitants of the
city as did the re-opening of the Churches to the inhabitants of the countryside.”4 D’Ivernois
even goes so far as to imagine in these temples of folly an almost Sadian spirit of universal
and obligatory sexual availability: “saturnalias where proper conduct allows victims neither
ill humor nor violence against their persecutors.” This mocking vision of a France appeased
in its capital by sexual license and in its villages by the reopening of churches was quickly
contested by Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac who capped his much tamer version of what went
on with a sharp swipe at reactionary imaginations:
D’Ivernois is even offended by our masked balls, referring to them as temples de la

folie and there is no doubt that, like his irenic masters, he much prefers the calami-
ties of civil war.5
This controversy around what the expression “freedom of pleasures” might mean is
understandable. These two interpretations from the first years of the nineteenth century
4 D’Ivernois, Des causes, 203. 5 Vieuzac, Réponse, 27.

underline how thoroughly the tumults of Revolution, Terror, and Consulat had inflected
the ways one might imagine the relation between pleasure and politics, be those politics
personal or public. If the eighteenth century’s Epicurean materialism could so easily
invoke pleasure as the goal and driving force of its many utopias, it was because that con-
cept was too easily conflated with what religion condemned as sinful. The fact that, in
the post-Revolutionary context, the expression “freedom of pleasures” could be inter-
preted as suggesting anything from a masked ball to generalized prostitution says much
about how fraught had become the invocation of the Epicurean’s key concept.
The three meanings for the word “Epicure” offered by the current edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary stand almost as a mini-lesson in social history. The first
meaning, the word with a capital E, designates “a disciple of Epicurus, one who disbe-
lieves in the divine government of the world.” The second meaning, eliding philosophi-
cal reference in favor of moral judgment, is “one who gives himself up to sensual
pleasure, to eating; a glutton, a sybarite.” The third, contemporary meaning tempers the
stricture attached to the term and speaks instead of “one who cultivates a refined taste
for the pleasures of the table; one who is choice and dainty in eating and drinking.”6
Over the last few years, however, a new appreciation of the Epicure’s grounding in a long
but broken classical tradition has emerged. Stephen Greenblatt’s Pulitzer Prize and
National Book Award-winning The Swerve7 of 2011 purports to tell us the story of noth-
ing less than “how the world became modern.” As Greenblatt sees it, the answer to that
question has everything to do with the fortunes of the didactic poem written by Epicurus’s
most devoted and most eloquent disciple. As concerns the French Enlightenment, that
poem, Lucretius’s De rerum natura, On the Nature of Things, uncannily anticipates, even
in its brief title, the two concepts that would become the twin motors of Enlightenment
philosophy. “Nature”—the code word for a new attention to a reality set free from the
strictures of metaphysical principles—challenged humankind to understand the world
not as a creation but as a given. At the same time, the all-encompassing sweep of the
term “things”—rerum—proposes that world as a continuum challenging all artificial
boundaries between the physical and the spiritual, between the material and the human.
To concern oneself with “the nature of things” was already to embrace the principal
tenets of the Enlightenment’s subversive agenda.
If Greenblatt’s underlining of modernity’s debt to Lucretius strikes us as both novel
and overdue, this has to do with the fact, as we saw in the OED, the term “Epicurean”
broadened its reference at the price of being stripped of its philosophical underpin-
nings. The term “Epicurean” comes readily to our lips, while the term “Lucretian”—at
least for non-classicists—seems scholarly and obscure. The fact is, however, that when
the eighteenth century spoke of “the Epicurean” its implicit point of reference was
Lucretius’s often translated poem. If the Epicurean had far greater currency than the
Lucretian, it was because the Epicurean had long been linked with a Stoicism under-
stood as its enemy twin. Throughout the early modern period, and especially for the
6 “epicure, n.,” OED Online. 7 Greenblatt, The Swerve.

eighteenth-century philosophes, the opposition of the Epicurean to the Stoic provided a

shorthand for the two major variants of a newly secular humanism. The Epicurean
evoked an anti-metaphysical individualism centered on a practice of life that sought to
maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. The Stoic reconfigured the same materialist
principles in the service of a new sociability anchored in a demanding practice of
classical virtue. In his entry on Epicureanism in the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot
made it clear, even as he tempered the Church’s systematic vilification of Epicurus as
an apostle of bestial self-indulgence, that his importance lay finally in his preparing
the way for the higher ideal of Stoicism—“We are born Epicureans,” Diderot put it,
“but we become Stoics.”8
Less than three decades after Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the Revolution and the Republic
defined themselves as the antithesis of a monarchy and an aristocracy denounced not
only as Epicureans but for having appropriated only to themselves all the pleasures of
life. The Epicurean care of the self and cultivation of pleasure became the designated
enemy of the new order. Embracing the muscular Stoicism of a republican virtue that
was both proscriptive and punitive, the Revolution denounced Enlightenment
Epicureanism as an abuse so nefarious that it could be imagined only as that that must
no longer be—as the “ancien régime.” The Republican embrace of Stoic virtue not only
rejected any continuity with practices redolent of Epicureanism, but proposed a new
deontology of nature: a new understanding of that foundational concept in whose name
the Republic purported to act and to govern. Scholars such as Dan Edelstein in his The
Terror of Natural Right9 and Mary Ashburn Miller in her Natural History of Revolution10
have shown how the term “nature”—once the benevolent cornerstone of the Epicurean
argument that life’s pleasures must be embraced without fear of punishment by imagi-
nary gods—took on a very different connotation within the turmoil of the Revolution.
The terrifying destruction wrought by such natural phenomena as calcifying lightning
and fulminating volcanoes—forces unmasked by Lucretius as the favored tools of fear-
mongering priests—became, as Miller puts it, “sacralized” during the Terror as emblems
of the necessity that an entirely natural and regenerative popular violence be unleashed
against all who would impede the General Will as the expression of Republican Virtue.
How, given the Revolution’s self-definition as the obliteration of an aristocracy
defined by its exclusive franchise on pleasure, could the Epicurean vision of society as an
economy of pleasures exchanged and multiplied ever again achieve any cultural pur-
chase? It was, I will argue, around what could be termed a new politics of the table that
the Epicurean foregrounding of the sentient and pleasured body came to resurface. The
harbingers of this new politics can be read in the history of two words: gourmand and
gastronomy. “Gourmand,” along with its derivative of “gourmandise,” lost their earlier
negative connotations aligning them with the indiscriminate over-indulgence of the
glutton. In a number of early nineteenth-century works, the term “gourmand” came
instead to designate a person concerned with the refinement and intensity of the
8 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 1.1196. 9 Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right.
10 Miller, A Natural History of Revolution.
leasures to be experienced within the rituals of the table. Parallel to this newly positive
p
sense of gourmand there emerged during the same period a neologism designating a
quasi-scientific concern with the protocols of food preparation and service: “gastronomy”
understood as a body of knowledge governing the care and delight of the stomach.
I highlight these two terms because they are part of an important mutation that
allowed the Epicurean tradition of the eighteenth century to re-emerge in a distinctly
different form and with a distinctly different politics. Prior to the Revolution,
Enlightenment Epicureanism took its most aggressive form in the ideology of libertinage.
That practice of pleasure posited sexuality as the royal road to a true understanding of
nature and its ultimately philosophical challenge to religion’s repressive condemnation
of the flesh. Works as different as d’Argens’s Thérèse philosophe, Diderot’s Supplement to
Bougainville, and Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons proposed for an enlightened elite a
practice in private of sexual pleasures at the antipodes of Christian asceticism. After the
Revolution, the gourmand and the new science of gastronomy shifted the Epicurean
focus away from private sexual pleasure and toward the publicly shared delights of
taste and table. In so doing, they reconfigured an Epicureanism still rooted in sensual
materialism, but whose praxis of pleasure displaced the libertine’s emphasis on the sweet
voice of our sexual natures toward an appreciation of the table not only as a locus of
pleasuring objects but as the inauguration of a new form of sociability. The table as a
confluence of gustatory delights extended the practice of pleasure beyond the closed
circle of sexual initiates to a larger community defined by its appreciation of the
gourmand’s new science of gastronomy. Gastronomy was posited as a connoisseurship
so potent in its seductions that it promised to multiply and extend an ever-growing
community of the cognoscenti.
A fascinating example of how a transmuted post-Revolutionary Epicureanism would
emerge around a new politics of the table can be found in the one-act play, L’École des
Gourmands by René Chazet. A comedy in fourteen scenes first staged in August of 1804,
The School for Refined Eaters, as one might translate the title, appeared ten years after the
height of the Terror, four years after Bonaparte’s coup of 18 Brumaire, and just a few
months before the First Counsel would proclaim himself Emperor. As the title indicates,
this comedy is very much in the French neoclassical tradition. Harking back to Molière’s
L’École des femmes of 1662, it stages the story of an older man, Gourmandin, who is set
on marrying his young ward, Élise. She, of course, is also being courted by a much
younger suitor named Dorval. Although Gourmandin is not aware of it, Dorval is in fact
his nephew, the son of his long-absent sister, Caramel, who lives in the provinces. The
dynamics of the traditional love triangle pitting age against youth is complicated by the
fact that, as his name indicates, Gourmandin’s greatest passion is for the delicious dishes
that Dorval, disguised as his maître d’hôtel and cook, has delighted him with ever since
he entered his household. As the play opens, Gourmandin is savoring the prospect of
the moment that should provide the perfect synthesis of his two passions: the wedding
feast Dorval will prepare for his marriage to Élise. Gourmandin’s high hopes for this
meal lead him to insist that Dorval achieve within it new and more delicious heights of
culinary accomplishment. While certainly good, Gourmandin insists, Dorval has begun
to let his work become routine while, like all true artists, Dorval should instead strive
“pour la gloire”: “All your plates are carefully prepared and wholesome, but you are not
inventing anything.”11 Never suspecting the irony of his metaphors, Gourmandin insists
that Dorval should approach the upcoming wedding dinner as his chance to become a
true creator (10):
Think, my friend, of your honor. Forget the standard fare and distinguish yourself
with dishes that astound. Become the father of some truly new delight and you will
be my cook forever.
This light comedy is particularly interesting for the way it draws into its intrigue quad-
rants of the material and economic world that extend well beyond the ironies of obses-
sion and self-deception that define the standard Molièresque monomaniacs of The
Miser or The Imaginary Invalid. Gourmandin’s passion for all the finest delicacies opens
the play to forces beyond the individual mania of the lovers’ triangle. The link to that
larger world is the character Piquassiette (Meal-Beggar). True to his name, Piquassiette
can be counted on to arrive at just the right moment to insure his being invited to a meal.
As the play opens, this shady character is trying to enlist Dorval in his scheme to swindle
the wealthy Gourmandin. Knowing exactly how to bait his hook, he plans to invite
Gourmandin to become the principal investor in an enterprise that, for a mere twenty
thousand francs, will make him the owner of Paris’s most refined food emporium.
Anticipating today’s Fauchon or Hédiard, that enterprise will be “a treasure house of the
rarest and most curious foodstuffs” (12). With the rigors of the Terror and famine forgot-
ten, Piquassiette presents himself as a savvy marketer who understands that, in the new
world of the Empire, captivating the always hungry eye is what sells product. The entire
shop will be a locus of pure display (12):
All the walls will be transparent, and, through panes of Bavarian glass, our custom-
ers will discover, arranged with perfect taste and symmetry, everything that can
kindle the desires of even the most blasé for the delicacies we offer.
In the tradition of Molière’s devious schemers, Piquassiette’s take-over of Gourmandin’s

life is ultimately comic. When he insists that Gourmandin hire a master-of-arms named
Plastron as his exercise coach, the idea is that strenuous training with saber and sword
will solve Gourmandin’s problem of an expanding waist line. He does not, of course,
mention that such work-outs will also have the collateral benefit of insuring that
Gourmandin be ravenously hungry for Piquassiette’s well-timed arrivals. Comically
staging the trope of the trickster tricked, Chazet transforms the master-of-arm’s critique
of Gourmandin’s fencing performance into a not so sotto voce commentary on
Piquassiette’s investment scheme. When Piquassiette mentions that many other
11 Chazet, L’École des gourmands, 9. The title page includes as authors Lafortelle and Francis in
addition to Chazet. All subsequent quotations from this work are followed by parentheses enclosing
the page number according to this edition. The translations are my own.
investors would love to get in on the deal he is proposing, Plastron cautions “It’s a feint;
don’t be drawn forward!” (11). Gourmandin’s demurral that he is short of ready cash pro-
vokes Plastron’s “Well done!”. When Piquassiette insists that culinary delicacies would
be the perfect sector for Gourmandin’s investment, Plastron critiques his footwork with
“You’re leaving yourself open . . . . Back off, back off ” (11).
As the play moves forward, the nexus of fine eating and hard cash produces a
veritable bidding war for Dorval’s services as a cook. When Gourmandin’s sister,
Caramel, arrives in Paris to convince her brother that the marriage to his young ward
would be ridiculous, she not only goes along with her son’s masquerade but quickly
hits on a strategy that will attack Gourmandin where he is most vulnerable. At the
very moment Gourmandin fantasizes about the superb meal Dorval will prepare for
the wedding, she delivers her coup de théâtre: “It’s too late for all that, brother dear,
Monsieur now works for me” (23). Stunned at this unexpected turn of events,
Gourmandin first tries to warn Dorval as to what he risks should he enter the service
of someone whose tastes are as pedestrian as the hyper-sweet-toothed Caramel: “You
have no idea of what you’re getting yourself into! You’ll be a man forever lost to your
sacred arts. One month of working for her and your skills will be gone forever. A lean
stew or some pedestrian pot roast will be the limit of your work, and in no time you
will have lost all the talents that make a truly great chef ” (23). When Caramel replies
that she has already hired Dorval with wages of five hundred francs, the bidding war
is on. When the rising numbers reach a thousand francs, Dorval spurs Gourmandin
on with a full inventory of his talents. “A thousand francs, going once, going twice, do
I hear more? I’m a master of the rolling pin as well as the roasting spit; and I can glaze
fruits as well as I roast a capon” (24). As Gourmandin’s bid reaches fourteen hundred
francs, Caramel closes him out with “Let’s get this over with. I’ll add two hundred
francs to whatever price my brother puts on your talents. So just come along” (25).
This comic bidding war adds an unwelcome irony to Gourmandin’s earlier optimistic
observation that (18):
A well-furnished table makes money circulate, brings the people you need to your
home, and knits new bonds of friendship—that is a proven fact.
L’École des gourmands finally resolves its conflicts not with a lost cook or swindled suitor
but within a comic reflection on what Gourmandin’s marriage will mean for the plea-
sures of his table. “What, my dear sir, just think about it,” warns Dorval (25):
A gourmand who marries is taking a wife who will annoy you about everything: her
frying the fish when you want it poached; her putting the pigeons in a mixed stew
when you want them roasted.
Gourmandin may think he can handle a new bride, but he has no answer for a graver
danger: “Your better half in everything, she will also be eating half the dinner” (25). That
sobering thought leads Gourmandin to see his marriage from a new perspective (26):
I have to admit, not marrying might be the best course; life should be a great feast
and marriage is only an hors-d’oeuvre.
The play’s final scene is a vaudeville, a ditty made up of aphorisms sung by each character
to the music of a popular air titled “The Dance of the Petits Pâtés.” Recalling the finale of
Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro where a collective hymn of reconciliation proclaims
the equality of all before the sweet and the bitter of life, Chazet readjusts that message to
the metaphorics of the happy eater (26–27):
Rich and poor, wise men and fools, we all share the same tastes. And all here below
are guests at a great feast. Life’s banquet serves us love, gaiety, and folly each in their
turn. But soon they are gone and we regret their loss. Then it is that friendship
comes, and serves a delightful dessert.
How are we to understand this play’s affirmation of friendship around a well-furnished

table as a pleasure preferable to sexuality? The traditional moraliste might hear in
Chazet’s closing scene a resignation to aging and its attendant calming of the passions.
Throughout the play, however, the connotations associated with the table of friendship
turn less on any passage through time than they do on the period’s larger society and its
history. We saw how Gourmandin’s optimism summarizes itself in the three functions
he attributes to his “well-furnished table”: an economic function (“makes money circu-
late”); a political function (“brings the people you need to your home”); and a fraternal
function (“knits new bonds of friendship”). As though anticipating the huge political
banquets that would play so important a role later in the nineteenth century, this con-
figuration linking the pleasures of the table with a resolution of conflicts and reaffirma-
tion of social bonds takes on a resonance establishing it as much more than a comic
alternative to amorous rivalry.
The word “gastronomy,” the other early nineteenth-century neologism signaling the
new importance of the pleasures of the table, appeared for the first time in 1800 as the
title for a poem by Joseph Berchoux, La Gastronomie, ou l’homme des champs à table.
Re-edited in 1803 and translated into the major European languages, this poem is divided
into four chants. The first offers a thumbnail history of what it sees as the uninspired and
primitive culinary practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The remaining three,
celebrating the pleasures of present day dining, draw their titles from the components of
a well-served meal: First Service, Second Service, and Dessert. The chants devoted to
contemporary gastronomy are, however, firmly anchored in history: in both the per-
sonal history of Berchoux’s conflicted military service as a soldier of the Republic, and a
more philosophical reflection on how pleasure has been redefined by ten years of intense
social, political, and military tumult. Berchoux recalls how:
Naguères, dans ce temps de mémoire fatale,

Où le crime planait sur ma terre natale,
Effrayé, menacé par un monstre cruel,
Forcé d’abandonner le banquet paternel,
Je cherchai mon salut dans ces rangs militaires

Formés par la terreur, et pourtant volontaires;
Je m’armai tristement d’un fusil inhumain
Qui jamais, grâce au ciel, n’a fait feu dans ma main.12
Before, during those times of deadly memory, / when crime flowed across my native land, /
afraid and threatened by a cruel monster, / forced to leave the paternal banquet, / I sought my
safety in military ranks / informed by terror but nonetheless voluntary. / I armed myself
sadly with an inhumane rifle / that never, thanks be to heaven, was fired by my hand.
As concerns what the soldat-gastronome ate during his time as a soldier, each day
brought only the antithesis of any feast (81):
Que de tristes festins nous attendaient le soir!

Le pain du fournisseur était-il assez noir?
Son bouillon assez clair et son vin assez rude?
What sad feasts awaited us each evening! / Was the quartermaster’s bread tough enough? /
His broth tasteless enough, and his wine rough enough?
Ultimately, the question posed by this poem composed some years after Berchoux’s
military experience is that of pleasure’s very possibility in the wake of near civil war. In a
world still reeling from the violent acts perpetrated by revolutionaries and reactionaries
alike, the only remedy would seem to lie in an amnesty bordering on amnesia (91):
Abstenez-vous surtout de remettre en mémoire

Les crimes désastreux qui souillent notre histoire:
Déplorable sujet d’un fatal entretien,
Qui rappelle le mal sans ramener le bien.
C’est assez que Clio noircisses ses chroniques
Du récit douloureux des misères publiques.
Above all refrain from bringing back to memory / the disastrous crimes that pollute our
history. / The deplorable subject of a fatal exchange / that recalls evil while bringing nothing
good. / It is enough that Clio must darken her chronicles / with the painful story of our
public miseries.
If this forgetting must abstain from all judgment, it is because every vector of
v iolence, in whatever name it was inflicted, sprang from an equally culpable thirst for
power (92):
De l’éclat du pouvoir ne soyez pas tenté:

L’ambition détruit l’appétit, la santé.
12 Berchoux, La gastronomie, 80–81. All subsequent quotations from this work are followed by
parentheses enclosing the page number according to this edition. The translations are my own.
Assez d’infortunés, dans le siècle où nous sommes,

Ont recherché le soin de commander aux hommes.
Leurs désastres récents nous peuvent témoigner
Quels maux sont attachés à l’honneur de régner.
Do not be tempted by the splendor of power. / Ambition destroys appetite and health. /
Enough unfortunates, in this century that is ours, / have sought to command mankind. /
Their recent disasters can testify / to the evils that accompany the honor of reigning.
The very possibility of any genuine conviviality as a sharing of pleasures depends

instead on a self-distancing, a stepping outside of one’s personal situation and
sufferings (91):
Sachez rire de tout sans offenser personne.

N’allez pas discourir, par l’exemple emporté,
Sur les grands intérêts de la société;
Faire au moment de boire un cours de politique;
Lier les droits du peuple à la métaphysique.
Learn to laugh at everything while offending no one. / Refrain from running on, carried
away by an example, / as to the great interests of society. / Never make the moment of a
shared drink a course in politics, / grounding the rights of man in some metaphysics.
Berchoux’s warning as to the dangers of what he calls “metaphysics” recalls Voltaire’s

use of that term to designate the divisive absurdity of religious doctrines that served
only to set one group against another. His warning is that political ideologies, like the
old metaphysics of theology, ultimately propose visions equally as nefarious as those of
the churchmen. Promising earthly justice rather than eternal salvation, political pro-
nouncements share with religious intolerance a radical incapacity to provide what they
promise (89):
Cette froide raison, dont vous êtes si vains,

Qu’a-t-elle fait encor pour changer vos destins?
Où sont les heureux fruits des devoirs qu’elle impose?
That cold reason you so vainly deploy, / what has it done to change our destinies? / Where are
the happy fruit of the duties it would impose.
As a reflection on how pleasure might be found again around the well-stocked table,
La Gastronomie both acknowledges the painful reality of recent history and suggests
that true conviviality involves an equality of shared pleasures possible only through a
foreshortening of political theorizing (66):
Ah! si l’égalité doit régner dans le monde,

C’est autour d’une table abondante et féconde;
Là, sous le même empire et sous les même lois,

Les enfants de Comus ont tous les mêmes droits.
Ah! If equality is to reign in our world, / it is around an abundant and fruitful table. / There,
under the same empire and the same laws, / the children of Comus all have the same rights.
An equally strong echo of history’s recent tribulations can be heard in the signature
work of the most eminent and influential of the nineteenth century’s new Epicureans of
the table: Grimod de La Reynière. In a less personal and more bitingly ironic style, La
Reynière brings the political and the culinary together within a shared metaphorics:
“The Jacobins and the Directory put us on a diet for three years, and it was hardly their
fault if it fell short of becoming a full-blown famine.”13 It was in the same year as Chazet’s
L’École des gourmands, 1804, that La Reynière began publishing his Almanach des gour-
mands, an annual that would continue to appear each year until 1812. The son of a rich
tax collector (who could well have served as a model for Chazet’s Gourmandin), La
Reynière developed within his disquisitions on food a style that was neither poetic nor
theatrical. Aggressive and comprehensive, the Almanach adopts a learned tone that
reads almost as a parody of the encyclopedic style of the Enlightenment philosophers.
Speaking almost as an anthropologist, La Reynière describes his project as an attempt to
understand the social function of life’s most frequent—but also most overlooked—
source of pleasure:
I am astounded that no writer has treated this matter with the seriousness it deserves
and that there exists no truly philosophical analysis of dining. Yet how much there
is to say about this memorable act that repeats itself three hundred sixty-five times
each year.14
La Reynière defines his culinary reflections as a response to what he sees as the indisput-
able fact that French society in the opening years of the nineteenth century has been
profoundly and irreversibly transformed by the Revolution and its sequels. The masters
of today are no longer those of yesterday. The aristocracy’s criteria of blood and lineage
have yielded to the new forces of wealth and influence. Given this radical New Deal, the
question becomes: can the eighteenth century’s Epicureanism transform itself in such a
way as to re-establish pleasure as a social value? In terms of its material life, the France of
1808 is no longer impoverished; she is no longer at war with herself. In the preface to
his Manuel des Amphitryons—a compilation drawn from the first five years of his
Almanach—La Reynière sets out to draw the portrait of this France reborn. Sustained by
the return of prosperity, guided by imperial order, a nature entirely reanimated is ready
to orchestrate all its elements toward a re-establishment of the table as the new locus of
pleasure:
13 La Reynière, Manuel, xxix. All subsequent quotations from this work are followed by parentheses
enclosing the page number according to this edition. The translations are my own.
14 La Reynière, Variétés Gourmandes, 62.
The return of a solid currency has slowly restored confidence and we have seen our
markets come alive to the sounds of gold and silver. Those superb blocks of Gournay
and Isigny butter, which we thought forever melted away, reappeared more ample
and more brilliant than ever. Cattle from Auvergne and from Normandy pressed
their ponderous pace to present themselves more quickly to the knives of butchers
who marveled at their sight. Sheep from Beauvais, from Cotentin, and from the
Ardennes ran as quickly as they could toward their metamorphosis into chops and
legs of lamb.15
The mock-enthusiasm of this fantastical imagining of a nature and society joyously

reinvigorated by the return of the table’s pleasures sets La Reynière in clear opposition to
the positions of his stylistic model: the eighteenth-century philosophers who contrib-
uted to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. For those guiding philosophes, food and
its preparation were considered from a uniformly utilitarian and even moralistic point
of view. All the refinements that would come to be associated with the gourmet and
gastronomy were for them milestones on the road toward cultural decadence and indi-
vidual deviance.16 The Encyclopédie article titled “Gourmandise” succinctly dismisses it
as “a refined and inordinate liking for good cooking . . . prized in countries given over to
luxury and vanity where vices are saluted as virtues. It is the fruit of opulent indolence.”17
Food preparation in general is relegated to the inferior status of a mechanical art lacking
any esthetic dimension. The article “Cuisine” sets the simple and utilitarian practices it
recommends in opposition to what it calls “gastrology” defined as “a system of hidden
tricks meant to induce people to eat far more than necessary.” True cuisine, the article
cautions, must concern itself only with “those everyday ways of preparing food that sat-
isfies the needs of life.” Any deviation from the simply nourishing toward refinements
intended to add some dimension of pleasure to the experience of eating evoke the
decadence of imperial Rome or oriental despotism as societies whose food degenerated
into “a kind of poison” totally unlike the “useful and simple foods fostering sustenance
and health.”18
The intended audience for La Reynière’s Manuel des Amphitryons is designated by a
name borrowed from Greek mythology and French comedy. Setting aside any connota-
tion of cuckoldry, La Reynière embraces Molière’s succinct description of that character:
“The real Amphitryon is the one who gives us dinner.”19 As a would-be perfect host, La
Reynière’s intended reader is presumed to be of sufficient means to entertain his guests
lavishly. As we are in the first decade of the nineteenth century, this means the newly
rich in a post-revolutionary France that had expelled or impoverished the aristocracy of
15 La Reynière, Manuel, xxix.

16 It is for this reason that Jean-Claude Bonnet qualifies the Encyclopédie as pre-gastronomic: “[For
the encyclopédistes,] the art of cooking must not be a sybaritic, corrupting luxury, but an honest and
innocent art that gives sustenance and wholesome pleasure.” See his “The Culinary System in the
Encyclopédie,” 155. On the treatment of food in the Encyclopédie, see also Sprang, The Invention of the
Restaurant, 50–63; and Spary, “Making a Science of Taste,” 170–82.
17 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 2.209.
18 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 1.849. 19 Molière, L’Amphitryon, III, 5 [1668].
the ancien régime. If these new masters need a manual, it is because, for most, modest
origins and limited educations have hardly prepared them for the fine art of presiding
over receptions devoted to fine dining. The Manuel makes clear that the art of “receiv-
ing” must first and foremost be understood as an art of “giving.” For La Reynière, the gift
offered to another in the form of a refined dinner is a fundamental and even sacred duty
incumbent upon those who, thanks to the accidents of history, find themselves able to
do so. La Reynière describes his book as “a kind of catechism to be studied carefully as
the source of a knowledge initiating them to the art of living well and making others live
well [l’art de bien vivre et de bien faire vivre les autres]. These are the twin modalities of
being happy and making others happy” (xxxv). Governed by a “code of reciprocal
duties,” the dinner orchestrated by a true Amphitryon must become an exchange of his
own careful “intentions” toward the others and a “reciprocal kindness” [complaisance]
toward him on the part of his guests. Taken together, these duties constitute what La
Reynière calls “la politesse gourmande” (xxxiv). Given this goal of schooling his readers
in a new form of politesse, his Manuel should be read as “having far more to do with mor-
als and the ways of the world than with cooking” (xxxv).
The attentive host must make of his shared dinner a ceremony during which the plea-
sures of the table, offered by him and received by his guests, have as their effect the cre-
ation of a new and enchanted conviviality. In the chapter titled Des Propos de Table, La
Reynière makes clear that this new mini-society achieves its high point less by reason of
what is tasted than within a “douce hilarité” consisting of (236):
friendly effusions born of a redoubled gratitude toward the host as he who has taken
as much care to showcase his guests’ wit as to offering them a fine meal; and all the
guests will strive to offer as their tribute to the host’s gifts the full fruit of their verve
and eloquence.
In a later chapter, La Reynière enumerates what he sees as “the respective duties of guests
and host.” For him, the “politesse gourmande” to which he would initiate his readers
becomes a code of conduct animating what amounts to a new social contract. All that
happens at the host’s table, the conversations he orchestrates as well as the dishes he
offers, come together within a fundamentally Epicurean reciprocity of pleasures seen as
the animating principle of any true society (243, 249–50):
Reciprocity is the law of all life, and a society must sustain itself as a concatenation
of respective duties joining the inferior to the superior, the benefactor to the recipi-
ent, and the Amphitryon to his guest . . . . As it is reciprocal needs that bind men
together most tightly, and as a dinner must have guests as well as a host, all involved
have a real interest in accommodating one another and in living well together.
The finesse and delicate attentiveness toward the other at the heart of this “politesse gour-
mande” are clear from the Manuel’s very organization. The entire first section, making
up a full third of the work, brings together articles drawn from the earlier Almanachs to
which La Reynière gave the collective title “The Art of Carving.” Proper carving—be it
of such meats as beef, lamb, pork, and rabbit; of some eighteen varieties of fowl; or of five
kinds of fish—is so crucial a propaedeutic to the host’s role that to imagine him ignorant
of that art, would be, as La Reynière puts it, as absurd as imagining a bibliophile who is
unable to read. The true artistry of carving is less a response to the anatomical irregulari-
ties of bone, tendon, and muscle than it is a careful attention to assuring that an appear-
ance of equality characterizes all the individual portions that the host will place on the
serving plate. The real art of carving allows the host to dissect whatever is being served
in such a way that each guest’s individual choice will take place from an array of options
defying any obvious division into more and less desirable morsels. Reciprocally, it is the
duty of each guest, when making his choice from the serving plate, to take whichever
portion happens to be closest to him. Should it happen that a guest prefers a specific cut,
he may take it—but on the condition that, in so doing, he refrain from demonstrating
any personal preference endangering the appearance of equality (215):
If a guest presumes to choose, that choice must be executed with a skill and agility
making it appear to all that he is taking the portion that happened to be offered him.
The delicate reciprocity at the core of la politesse gourmande is meant to address what La
Reynière sees as an all too prevalent ignorance of the liabilities incumbent upon any
host who forgets the larger social implications of his status as someone who happens to
have been favored by the vicissitudes of fortune (262):
The more one’s rank is elevated, the more one’s wealth is considerable . . . the more
one is obliged to be solicitous, affectionate, and polite. It is only by reason of
these qualities, combined with an amenity that today so rarely accompanies
higher station, that one has any chance of being pardoned one’s titles and one’s
wealth.
Behind his careful attention to the details of culinary procedure, one finds also in La
Reynière a realism that brooks no illusions. If, behind every gesture properly executed
by the host, there is an implicit request to be pardoned, it is because, as he puts it, “all
men are inclined toward envy” (263). More than anything else, it is its status as a response
to this ubiquitous but unspoken envy that makes the art of hosting, la politesse gour-
mande, so nuanced and demanding (263):
The benefactor must make his gifts pleasing by offering them with a graciousness
without which they would be of no value in the eyes of a sensitive man. It is by lifting
the person he is gratifying up to his own level, by closing the distance between them,
and by treating his guest as his equal, that the host acquires a real right to his guest’s
gratitude.
It is within the motivating dynamics of his politesse gourmande that we see how pro-
foundly La Reynière’s Epicureanism differs from its Enlightenment version. Behind the
attention to culinary detail, La Reynière enumerates careful protocols that establish the
table as the venue for an exchange of pleasures that invoke far more than the pure present
of delighted sensation. To the contrary, the true Amphitryon is the conjurer of a magic
intended to create at his table an exchange of pleasures cognizant of, yet at the same time
able to suspend within their confected conviviality, the resentments born within the
helter-skelter vicissitudes of history. This focus of early nineteenth-century Epicureanism
on the pleasures of the table sets it distinctly apart from its eighteenth-century variant
and the algebra of conflicted subjectivities informing its epics of sexual seduction.
Within the resolutely tactical Epicureanism of libertinage, other persons might well be
one’s partners in pleasure, but that pleasure never involved any utopia of forgotten
inequalities and injustices. To the contrary, the lesson to be learned from traditional lib-
ertinage turned on achieving a protective distance of the self from passion’s illusions and
their power to subjugate one partner to the other.
In his Traité de la Vie Élégante of 1830, Balzac takes up the question of how much the
Revolution has changed French society. Trying to capture in a brief formulation the
cumulative effects of its wrenching upheavals, he speaks of a world now dominated by “a
metaphysics of things.”20 In their different ways, Chazet, Berchoux, and La Reynière
help us to understand why Balzac would choose that unstable oxymoron to describe the
spirit of his age. The three works considered here speak of a complex interplay between
the proclaimed and the hidden, between a confected metaphysics and an elided historicity.
And it is the weight of this tension that gives so different a coloration to post-revolutionary
and proto-democratic Epicureanism. In the new society of elegance Balzac would
describe, value, distinction, and pleasure are no longer grounded in the practices of any
undisputed elite or recognized aristocracy. Elegance is generated not as a congruence
with recognized paragons, but by an array of coveted objects, of precious things promising
status and pleasure. Within this changed dynamic of pleasure, the richly furnished table
became the favored site of a politics based on the sharing of promised delights as
emblems of desire, value, and elegance. Around the Epicure’s table, the sentient subject
may find himself enchanted by its myriad delicacies, but that enchantment served also
to exorcise an unspoken but very real history of winners and losers. The careful protocols
of the table are centered on and strive to confirm the seductive power of things. Within
this new Epicureanism, shared pleasures must above all maintain the illusion that they
derive their value and power from qualities seen as inherent to things themselves as
hallmarks of distinction, refinement, and elegance. Chazet, Berchoux, and La Reynière
speak to us, each in their different way, of the challenges and subterfuges involved in
fashioning, within society’s cauldron of universal envy, a redemptive conviviality of
gustatory delights, a “metaphysics of things.”
Above all, Balzac’s pithy formulation brings into focus how different the nineteenth-
century Epicurean is from his ancien régime ancestor. If anything, Enlightenment
Epicureanism insisted, as we saw with Voltaire, not on a “metaphysics of things,” but on
what might be termed a “thingification of metaphysics.” More than anything else, the
Epicurean materialism of the eighteenth century challenged the existence of any realm
20 Balzac, Traité de la vie élégante, 12.226.

beyond matter—the very notion that there is any difference in kind between the inanimate
and the animate. The same complex interplay of ever-swerving atoms presided over
both things and the sensations, pulsions, and thoughts of men and animals. This refusal
of the metaphysical was profoundly subversive. Echoing the Lucretian challenge to all
gods, Gassendi and his disciples denounced as illusions all the tenets of an established
Church whose metaphysics provided the philosophical foundation for a monarchy of
divine right.
Given this past, it is ironic that, refashioned by the upheavals of the Revolution, the
Epicurean password of “pleasure,” shifting from the sexual to the culinary, should come
to be associated with an alchemy of the table promising a reconciliation of equality and
refinement outside the memory of history. Looked at in this way, Préfet Dubois’s star-
tling invocation of a newly imagined “freedom of pleasures” signals the fact that during
the nineteenth century the heritage of eighteenth-century Epicureanism would take two
very divergent paths. One path, the one I have tried to describe here, leads to a consumer
society in which an ever-broadening celebration of seductive objects, freely available to
all, provide the foundations of a new sense of identity, elegance, and pleasure. The other
path, extending to History itself the materialism of pre-Revolutionary Epicureanism,
would set out to stand Hegel on his head within a dialectical materialism proposing class
struggle as the essential dynamic of capitalist societies. That, of course, is a very different
story. But, even without telling it, Chazet, Berchoux, and La Reynière help us to under-
stand why, although Karl Marx may have titled his doctoral thesis “The Difference
Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,” neither he nor his
disciples would be associated with Epicureanism as it evolved over the course of the
nineteenth century.
References
Balzac, H. “Traité de la vie élégante.” In La Comédie humaine, edited by P.-G. Castex, 12.212–57.
Paris: Gallimard, 1981.
Berchoux, J. La gastronomie, ou l’homme des champs à table, pour servir de suite à l’Homme des
champs par J. Delille. Paris: Giguet et Michaud, 1803.
Bonnet, J.-C. “The Culinary System in the Encyclopédie.” In Food and Drink in History, edited
by R. Forster and O. Ranum, 139–65. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
de Chazet, R. L’École des gourmands. Paris: Chez Mad. Cavanagh, 1804.
Diderot, D. and J. d’Alembert. Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers. New York: Readex Microprint, [1751–57] 1969.
D’Ivernois, F. Des causes qui ont amené l’usurpation du Général Bonaparte, et qui préparent sa
chute. London: Baylis, 1800.
Edelstein, D. The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French
Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Greenblatt, S. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: Norton, 2011.
Journal des débats, 27 Ventôse, An VIII [March 17, 1800].
Kavanagh, T. M. Enlightened Pleasures: Eighteenth-Century France and the New Epicureanism.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
de La Reynière, G. Manuel des Amphitryons, edited by M. Godard. Paris: Éditions

A. M. Métailié, 1983.
———. Variétés Gourmandes, edited by C. Brécourt-Villars. Paris: La Table Ronde, 2011.
Miller, M. A. A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary
Imagination, 1789–1794. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011.
Molière, J. B. P. L’Amphitryon, [1668] 3.5.
Spary, E. “Making a Science of Taste: The Revolution, the Learned Life and the Invention of
‘gastronomie.’ ” In Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650–1850, edited by
M. Berg and H. Clifford, 170–82. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.
Sprang, R. L. The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
de Valois, M. Mémoires de Marguerite de Valois, edited by F. Guessard. Toulouse: Éditions
Ombres, 1994.
de Vieuzac, B. B. Réponse d’un républicain français au libelle de sir Francis d’Yvernois. Paris:
n.p., 1800.
chapter 28
Thom as J efferson
Carl J. Richard
Thomas Jefferson combined elements of Epicureanism with components of

Stoicism and Christianity to form a unique philosophy. While Jefferson derived from
the Stoics and from Cicero the belief in an innate moral sense and from Christianity the
concepts of a creator, a resurrection, and an afterlife, as well as a system of ethics based
on positive benevolence, Epicureanism provided him with other essential features of his
philosophy, such as a materialist metaphysics and consequent rejection of miracles, an
emphasis on the role played by reason (logic) acting on experience in uncovering truth,
and a belief in free will.
Although on one occasion, when in a radical empiricist mood, Thomas Jefferson
accused one of his favorite British authors, Lord Kames, of being “too metaphysical” and
on another called theology “charlatanry of the mind,” he did not lack metaphysical or
theological views. Jefferson considered the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers the two
best guides for metaphysics, Jesus the best guide for ethics. In 1803 Jefferson wrote
regarding the classical philosophers:
Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the government of those passions
which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquility of mind. In this branch of phi-
losophy they were really great. In developing our duties to others, they were short
and defective.
Similarly, he declared in 1819:
Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the
duties and charities we owe to others.1
1 Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Peter Carr, June 22, 1792, 8.384; Jefferson to Thomas
Cooper, October 7, 1814, 14.200; Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, 10.381–84; Jefferson to
William Short, October 31, 1819, 15.220.
730 CARL J. RICHARD
Often citing the Stoics and Cicero, Jefferson spoke of the existence of a “moral sense,” a
term for intuition popularized by eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers. Having
read and copied the Stoics long before he became familiar with Scottish moral philoso-
phy, Jefferson believed that everyone possessed a moral sense that God had implanted in
humans to ensure the preservation of the race. Not everyone listened to his moral sense;
a plowman might decide a moral case better than a professor, if the professor were “led
astray by artificial rules.” But if people listened to their moral sense, they would find that
it revealed the same things to each of them. Thus, Jefferson wrote that ethics should be
taught at the University of Virginia as “moral obligations . . . in which all sects agree,” and
praised the Quakers for rallying around their common ethics, rather than fragmenting
over theological points.2
Like the Stoics and Cicero, but unlike Plato, Jefferson envisioned the moral sense as a
mere instinct for virtue that required training (reason acting on experience) to develop
into full-blown virtue, rather than as a collection of innate ideas. When witnessing
examples of virtue in their daily lives, children instinctively sought to reproduce it.
Conversely, children who rarely experienced virtuous behavior could not develop their
moral sense to its full potential. Jefferson used an enlightening analogy to explain this
concept of the moral sense:
The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of a man as his leg or arm. It may
be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body . . . . In this
branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage as well as direct
your feelings.
Jefferson identified such books as Cicero’s philosophical writings, the Stoic emperor Marcus
Aurelius’s Meditations, and the essays of the Stoic philosopher and statesman Seneca.3
Yet, despite Jefferson’s un-Epicurean belief in the existence of a moral sense, he identified
Epicurus, the Athenian whom John Stuart Mill would later acknowledge as the founder of
Utilitarianism, as his favorite philosopher. In 1800 Jefferson compiled “A Syllabus of the
Doctrines of Epicurus.” In 1816 he termed Epicurean philosophy “the most rational system
remaining of the philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and fruitful of
virtue as the hyperbolic extravagancies of rival sects.” In an 1819 letter, having stated that the
doctrines of Epicurus contained “everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece
and Rome have left us,” Jefferson summarized these doctrines:
The Universe eternal . . . . Matter and Void alone . . . . Gods, an order of beings next
superior to man, enjoying in their sphere, their own felicities, but not meddling with
the concerns of the scale of beings below them . . . . Happiness the aim of life. Virtue
the foundation of happiness. Utility the test of virtue . . . . The summum bonum
2 Boyd et al., Papers, Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787, 12.15; Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John
Adams, September 14, 1813, 2.374; May 3, 1816, 2.471; October 14, 1816, 2.492; Bergh and Lipscomb,
Writings, Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822, 15.385; Padover, The Complete Jefferson, 1104.
3 Kimball, Jefferson, 115.
Thomas Jefferson 731
[ultimate good] is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind. . . . . To procure

tranquility of mind we must avoid desire and fear, the two principal diseases of the
mind. Man is a free agent. Virtue consists in: 1. Prudence. 2. Temperance. 3. Fortitude.
4. Justice. To which are opposed, 1. Folly. 2. Desire. 3. Fear. 4. Deceit.4
There is evidence that Jefferson embraced some aspects of Epicureanism long before he
compiled the syllabus of Epicurean doctrines in 1800. As early as the 1750s Jefferson had
copied into his literary commonplace book two materialist passages from Cicero. The
first passage declared (Tusc. Disp. 1.11):
For if the soul is the heart or blood or brain, then assuredly, since it is material, it will
perish with the rest of the body; if it is breath it will perhaps be dispersed in space;
if fire it will be quenched.
The second exclaimed (1.16):
And such was the extent of deception . . . that though they knew that the bodies of
the dead were consumed with fire, yet they imagined that events took place in the
lower world which cannot take place without bodies.
In 1786 Jefferson’s library contained the first-century Roman Epicurean Lucretius’s De

rerum natura, one of the few surviving ancient summaries of Epicurean doctrines. In
that year Jefferson wrote an anguished letter to his love interest, Maria Cosway, from
whom he had just parted. Jefferson included in the letter a dialogue between his head
and his heart. His head contended:
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain . . . . The most effectual means of being secure
against pain is to retire within ourselves . . . . For nothing is ours which another may
deprive us of. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Ever in our
power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride sublime above
the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter and
motion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that eternal being who made
and bound them up by these laws.
Except for the significant reference to a creator in place of Epicurus’s eternal universe,
this was an Epicurean manifesto.5
4 Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, 7; Adams, Extracts, Jefferson to

Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816, 365; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to William Short,
October 31, 1819, 15.219, 15.223–24.
5 Wilson, Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book, 1.56–57; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to
Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786, 10.448. Jefferson received the doctrines of Epicurus from Lucretius,
Diogenes Laertius, and Pierre Gassendi. For reference to the presence of Lucretius’s DRN in Jefferson’s
library see MacKendrick, “This Rich Source of Delight,” 101. In an 1816 letter Jefferson praised the
third-century Greek historian Diogenes Laertius, whose famous Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
included a discussion of the life and opinions of Epicurus, including fragments from his letters
732 CARL J. RICHARD
Although Jefferson adopted the Stoic concept of the moral sense and found comfort
in the Stoic emphasis on the patient endurance of misfortune, he denounced certain
aspects of Stoicism. He rejected the Stoics’ doctrine of a separable soul and their fatalism
and was angered by their misrepresentation of the Epicurean philosophy as mere hedon
ism. In 1819 Jefferson argued:
Epictetus, indeed, has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their dog-
mas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of
Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines, in which we lament to see the
candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice . . . . Seneca is indeed a fine
moralist, disfiguring his work at times with some Stoicisms.6
Jefferson applauded the Epicurean emphasis on reason acting on experience. He consid-

ered reason and intuition the two chief guides that God had implanted in humans for
the preservation of the race. While both reason and intuition were ethical guides, reason
alone was the guide for metaphysics. In 1814 Jefferson claimed:
Dispute as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide,
as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine between what really comes
from Him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination.
Although reason had to act on information provided by the senses, Jefferson was equally
convinced of their reliability. In 1820 he declared, “A single sense may sometimes be
deceived, but rarely, and never all our senses together.” Hence Jefferson regarded reli-
gious liberty as crucial; for if men were free to think as they chose, reason would surely
lead them in the same direction. In 1813 he asserted:
If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what
they think, it would be found that they do not differ in religious opinions as much
as is supposed.
What would such “thinking men” believe? They would believe in a creator, not on the
basis of a superstitious acceptance of revelation but on the basis of the intricate design of
the universe. Furthermore, they would adopt a particular brand of Christianity. In 1812
Jefferson made a prediction regarding the future religion of his free country:
I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an
Unitarian.
unavailable elsewhere. See Adams, Extracts, Jefferson to Francis Van der Kamp, April 25, 1816, 369. In
the same year Jefferson also praised Gassendi’s Syntagma Epicuri Philosophiae, a seventeenth-century
volume advancing a Christian version of Epicureanism. See Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to
Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816, 15.33.
6 Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771, 1.80; Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 19,
1785, 8.407; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819, 15.219–20.
Just as free inquiry in the Roman Empire had produced Christianity (a rather odd view,
given Roman persecution of early Christians), free inquiry in America would produce
a form of Christian Epicureanism. Thinking men freely using their reason would be
Thomas Jefferson.7
Although Jefferson’s chief guide for ethics was Jesus, it was Jesus viewed through an
Epicurean lens. Taking his cue from a book called Jesus and Socrates Compared, written
by his friend Joseph Priestley, Jefferson frequently made the same comparison. He con-
tended that the doctrines of both Socrates and Jesus had been corrupted. Plato had used
“the name of Socrates to cover the whimsies of his own brain,” and his dialogues were
“libels on Socrates.” Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates was the only source for the
unadulterated philosophy of the Athenian.8
The doctrines of Jesus, on the other hand, had been corrupted by three groups: his
inept and superstitious biographers, conniving Platonists, and illogical Calvinists. This
corruption was tragic, Jefferson lamented, because:
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips,
the whole civilized world would now have been Christian.
Jefferson contended that “fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us muti-
lated, misstated, and often unintelligible,” and complained of “the follies, the falsehoods,
and the charlatanisms” that Jesus’s biographers foisted upon him. Jefferson trusted,
however, that “the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States” would
tear down “the artificial scaffolding” set up by these biographers. He concluded, “And
the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his
father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva
in the brain of Jupiter.”9
Worse yet, Platonists, intent on establishing and maintaining power for a dissolute
class of priests, had afterwards engrafted onto Christianity the “sophisms” of that perni-
cious philosopher. After reading Plato’s Republic in 1814, Jefferson subjected John Adams
to this diatribe:
While wading thro’ the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this
work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should
7 Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Miles King, September 26, 1814, 14.197; Jefferson to
John Adams, August 22, 1813, 13.349; Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822, 15.385; Peden,
Notes on the State of Virginia, 159; Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820, 2.569;
April 8, 1816, 2.468; April 11, 1823, 2.592.
8 Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, April 9, 1803, 10.374; Jefferson to
Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, 10.383; Jefferson to John Brazier, August 24, 1819, 15.210; Jefferson to
William Short, October 31, 1819, 15.220; Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771, 1.80;
Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814, 2.433.
9 Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, 10.384; Jefferson to
William Short, August 4, 1820, 15.257; Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822, 15.385; Cappon,
Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823, 2.594.
734 CARL J. RICHARD
have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? In truth, he [Plato]
is one of the race of the genuine Sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren,
first by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly by the adoption and incorporation of his
whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is forever presenting
the semblances of objects which, half seen thro’ a mist, can be defined neither in form
or dimension. Yet this which should have consigned him to early oblivion really pro-
cured him immortality of fame and reverence. The Christian priesthood, finding the
doctrines of Jesus leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation,
saw in the mysticisms of Plato materials with which they might build an artificial
system which might, from its indistinctiveness, admit everlasting controversy, give
employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The
doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of
a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on
them; and for the obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained . . . . It is fortu-
nate for us that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the same favor as Platonic
Christianity, or we should now have been all living, men, women, and children, pell
mell together, like beasts of the field or forest.
Jefferson concluded that it was such Platonists, appealing to mystical and absurd doc-
trines like that of the Holy Trinity in their effort to establish their individual sects as the
national religions of the United States and Great Britain, who were slandering him and
his friend Priestley for their religious opinions. But Jefferson hoped that Christians
would not, in the end, “give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato.”10
Jefferson believed that Calvinists had further obscured matters by adding the absurd
doctrine of predestination to the Christian baggage. In his beloved Bill for Establishing
Religious Freedom (1779) Jefferson emphasized the Epicurean doctrine of free will,
writing, “Almighty God hath created the mind free . . . [and] being lord of both body and
mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power
to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone.” (The Virginia Senate deleted the
italicized words.) In a clearer attack on Calvinism in 1823, Jefferson wrote to John Adams:
I can never join Calvin in addressing his god . . . . If ever man worshipped a false god,
he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknolege
and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of
malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all than to
blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.
In the previous year Jefferson had caricatured the “5 points of Calvin” as:
1. That there are three Gods. 2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are
nothing. 3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the proposition,
10 Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814, 2.432–33; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings,
Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800, 10.175; Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, March 21, 1801,
10.228; Jefferson to William Canby, September 18, 1813, 13.378; Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse,
June 26, 1822, 15.385.
the more merit in its faith. 4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use. 5. That God,
from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to
be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them, no virtues of the
latter save.
Unfortunately, Jefferson substituted such ridicule and distortion of Calvinist theology

for a rational explanation of the sense in which the human will could be free.11
In short, Jefferson concluded that both Jesus and Socrates had been Epicureans like
himself. In 1820 he wrote dogmatically: “To speak of an immaterial soul is to say there is
no soul or god; it is to be an atheist. Jesus taught none of it.” Jesus had been a materialist:
He told us indeed that “God is a spirit,” but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor
said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers, generally, if not universally, held it
to be matter.
Similarly, in 1824, Jefferson contended that Jesus had taught that the sole afterlife was
that experienced by the body after resurrection at the end of the age, not that experi-
enced by a separable soul upon death. On this point Jefferson was only partially
Epicurean: although Epicurus, like Jefferson, denied the existence of a separable soul, he
also denied the existence of an afterlife, maintaining that death was nothingness (Lucr.
DRN 3.323–58, 417–58). This is one of the significant areas in which Jefferson’s
Christianity got the better of his Epicureanism. Jefferson also rejected the view that Jesus
had ever held any pretensions to supernatural powers. In 1803 Jefferson declared:
I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely
attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every
human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.
The logos (“the Word”) that had been with God from the beginning, as related in the first
chapter of John, did not refer to the Holy Trinity but to reason. In the same fashion
Jefferson speculated that the daemon (divine entity) that Socrates claimed spoke to him
was also reason:
He was too wise to believe, and too honest to pretend, that he had real and
familiar converse with a superior and invisible being. He probably considered
the suggestions of his conscience, or reason, as revelations, or inspirations from
the Supreme mind, bestowed, on important occasions, by a special superintending
providence.12
11 Boyd, Papers, A Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, 1779, 2.545; Cappon, Letters,
Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823, 2.591; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Benjamin
Waterhouse, June 26, 1822, 15.384–85.
12 Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, October 12, 1813, 2.385; August 15, 1820, 2.568–69;
April 11, 1823, 2.594; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Augustus B. Woodward, March 24,
1824, 16.18; Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, 10.380.
736 CARL J. RICHARD
How was Jefferson able to extract the true Epicurean meaning of the doctrines of Jesus
and Socrates from their corrupt texts—to separate the diamonds from the dung hill, as
he put it? Through the use of “reason,” of course. In 1813 Jefferson explained how he had
compiled his famous Bible:
We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the
very words of Jesus, paring off the Amphibologisms into which they had been led by
forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their
own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they
had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime
and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.
In 1820 Jefferson contended that he was trying to “rescue His [Jesus’s] character.” He
wrote regarding Jesus’s perfect morals (as manifested in “humility, innocence, and sim-
plicity of manners, neglect of riches, [and] absence of worldly ambition and honors”):
“These could not be the invention of the groveling authors who relate them. They are far
beyond the powers of their feeble minds.” True, even after completing the distillation
process, one was left with some objectionable passages, but these might be explained by
Jesus’s need to escape the clutches of bloodthirsty priests. Jefferson then performed the
same operation on Socrates, paring away the same fatty tissue with the same scalpel
(reason) to reach the same Epicurean heart: “When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth
such paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms as a schoolboy would be
ashamed of, we conclude that they are the whimsies of Plato’s own foggy brain and
acquit Socrates of puerilities so unlike his character.”13
Jefferson ignored conflicting evidence. John clearly intended the logos to signify Jesus.
He concluded the discussion of the logos with, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us,” and followed this with a narrative of Jesus’s life. In addition, both Plato and
Xenophon related prominent instances in which Socrates demonstrated faith in the ora-
cle of Delphi. In Plato’s Apology (20d–21b) Socrates stated that it was faith in the oracle
that had launched him on his mission to examine others, leading ultimately to his trial.
When the oracle, a priestess who served as the voice of Apollo, had declared that
Socrates was the wisest man in the world, the statement had seemed so odd to the phi-
losopher that he had been determined to discover what the god really meant. The
Athenian did not doubt for a moment that Apollo spoke through the oracle. “What does
the god mean, and what riddle does he pose?” Socrates asked himself:
For I am not conscious of being wise, either in great or in small things. What does
he mean, then, in saying that I am the wisest? For he certainly does not lie.
In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, a work Jefferson highly recommended as the most accurate

source on Socrates,14 Socrates urged Xenophon to seek the oracle’s advice before
13 Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, October 12, 1813, 2.384; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings,
Jefferson to William Short, August 4, 1820, 15.257–60; October 31, 1819, 15.220.
14 Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 17, 1785, 8.407.
embarking on his ill-fated Persian expedition. Socrates’s faith in the oracle proves that
he believed in divine intervention in human affairs, contrary to the doctrines of Epicurus,
and that he may well have believed that a god spoke directly to him. Central to the works
that contain them, these famous passages could hardly have escaped Jefferson’s notice.
Why did Jefferson ignore these conspicuous passages? The answer seems to lie in his
desire to “rescue Jesus’s character”—and Socrates’s as well. Enamored of their ethics
(particularly Jesus’s), which possessed a warmth and sense of benevolence absent from
utilitarian calculus, Jefferson was determined that their metaphysics should also match
his own Epicurean metaphysics. In this way alone could he feel comfortable in defend-
ing their ethics against the onslaughts of materialist detractors. In Jefferson’s dialogue
between his Epicurean head and his Christian heart, the heart informed the head that
happiness was not “the mere absence of pain” and that the warmth of friendship was a
necessary comfort in life. Here we catch a glimpse of why Jefferson’s Christianity, with its
emphasis on loving others, was as necessary to his emotional health as Greek philoso-
phy, which merely taught the avoidance of self-injury and injury to others. But Jefferson
was too much the rationalist to surrender complete control of his head to his heart.
Instead, he twisted and contorted the two to make them compatible. Jefferson was a true
“heretic” in the original sense of the Greek word: “one who picks and chooses” those ele-
ments of a philosophical system he likes, discarding the others. Ironically, Jefferson’s
reconciliation of Epicureanism and Christianity required an immense leap of faith from
this leading figure of the Age of Reason.15
Jefferson also departed from Epicureanism in another important sense: he rejected its
teaching that the gods did not intervene in the universe. In 1823 Jefferson was emphatic
in refuting the doctrine of divine noninterference. He wrote to John Adams regarding
the universe:
It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this,
design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from mat-
ter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their pres-
ent forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.
Jefferson then elaborated on this reference to the need for a Regulator and Regenerator
as well as a Creator:
We see too evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain

the Universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared; new ones
have come into view; comets, in their incalculable courses, may run afoul of suns
and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are
become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish
successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.16
15 Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786, 10.449–51.

16 Cappon, Letters, Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823, 2.592.
738 CARL J. RICHARD
This letter was no aberration. Throughout his life Jefferson often expressed confidence
in what was then called “divine Providence.” Like nearly all of the other founders,
Jefferson believed that God was a partisan on behalf of human liberty. In 1795 he wrote
regarding the success of Dutch republicans, with the help of the French, in driving out
the stadtholder William IV and establishing a more democratic system:
It proves there is a god in heaven, and he will not slumber without end on the iniqui-
ties of [such] tyrants, or would-be tyrants, as their Stadtholder.
In 1800 Jefferson claimed that God often brought about good through misfortune, writing:
When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise
from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order
of things as that most evils are the means of producing some good.
Jefferson often closed his letters with promises to pray for the recipient and his nation,
promises that implied belief in an intervening God who answered prayers.17
But while Jefferson generally perceived God’s role as a defender of human freedom as
a current source of blessing for the United States, he sometimes feared it could become a
future source of disaster. In Notes on the State of Virginia (1782) Jefferson expressed his
anxiety that slavery would bring down God’s wrath on the United States. In a famous
passage later engraved on a panel at the Jefferson Memorial he wrote:
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of
God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that
considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become
probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can
take side with us in such a contest.
Note that Jefferson’s anxiety was not for himself as a slaveholder but for the nation as a
whole, and that he fully expected divine retribution to come through natural means.
Not generally known for dispensing jeremiads, Jefferson added a hopeful postscript
more in line with his optimistic disposition:
The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condi-
tion mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total
17 Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Tench Coxe, June 1, 1795, 28.373; Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, September
23, 1800, 32.167. For just a couple of the many letters in which Jefferson promised to pray for the
recipient and/or his nation see Jefferson to the Marquis de Lafayette, November 21, 1791, 22.313;
Jefferson to the Executive Directory of the Batavian Republic, May 30, 1801, 34.209.
emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the c onsent
of the masters rather than by their extirpation.
Yet Jefferson clearly saw “total emancipation” as the inevitable result of the divine will.
The only question was whether it would come by peaceful means or by slaughter. A few
years later he wrote:
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure

toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindication of his own liberty
and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him
through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage one hour of which is
fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But
we must await with patience the workings of an overruling Providence and hope
that it is preparing the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren. When the meas
ure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in
darkness, doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by suffusing
light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length, by His exterminating thun-
der, manifest His attention to the things of this world, and they are not left to the
guidance of a blind fatality.
Jefferson again presented the possibility that divine intervention might take the form of
enlightenment rather than destruction, though the latter was still possible.18
Although Jefferson’s Epicureanism did not lead him to reject the doctrine of divine
Providence commonly held in his day, it contributed greatly to his belief that God
worked solely through natural causes to achieve his ends. There is no record of Jefferson’s
ever having expressed a belief in any miracle. On the contrary, when compiling his own
famous Bible, he excluded all biblical accounts of them.19
While the intricacies of Jefferson’s theology were unique, some of the other leading
founders of the United States shared its most essential elements: a fondness for Jesus’s
ethics combined with a rejection of his divinity. Benjamin Franklin stated that while he
did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, he did not mind others so believing, since it
would make them more likely to follow Jesus’s moral teachings, which he regarded as
superior to all others. While some of the founders, such as Patrick Henry and Benjamin
Rush, were fairly orthodox Christians, others, like Jefferson and Franklin, interwove
Christianity and classical philosophy. Under the shadow of new scientific theories that
had reduced the universe to a set of natural laws, these founders could no longer accept
the traditional Christian belief in miracles. They now required rational “proofs” for the
existence of God and the afterlife, as well as earthly rewards for virtue, in case the after-
life proved an illusion.20
18 Peden, Notes on the State of Virginia, 163; Bergh and Lipscomb, Writings, Jefferson to Jean
Nicholas Demeunier, January 24, 1786, 17.103.
19 Adams, Extracts, 106–297.
20 Lemisch, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790, 337.
740 CARL J. RICHARD
But the psychological need to retain some elements of Christianity proved as strong,
for three reasons. First, like the early Christian converts of the Roman Empire, the
founders preferred the warmth and benevolence of Christianity to the cold obligations
of classical philosophy. After reminding his Epicurean head of the numerous times in
which the head had chosen safety over aiding those in need, Thomas Jefferson’s Christian
heart concluded:
In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did
a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it.
After expressing admiration for The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, with its maxims on the
sanctity of oaths, the respect due to parents, affection for friends, and connection to
mankind, John Adams nevertheless added:
How dark, mean, and meagre are these Golden Verses, however celebrated and
really curious, in comparison with the Sermon on the Mount and the Psalms of
David or the Decalogue!
Second, the doctrine of the Resurrection and the afterlife provided tremendous
comfort in an age of lower life expectancies. Epicureanism rejected the concept of the
afterlife, and the Stoic afterlife was too abstract for most people’s taste. By reinterpreting
Christianity in a classical light, some of the founders could expect to have their cake
of earthly progress and eat it in heaven. Finally, the reconciliation of Christianity
with classical philosophy served a vital emotional function: it saved the unorthodox
founders from the painful necessity of abandoning the religion of their ancestors and
of their countrymen.21
The founders responded to unprecedented philosophical needs as they responded to
unprecedented political needs: by returning to the same font of classical wisdom that
had quenched their thirst in youth. The historian Joyce Appleby was only half right
when she wrote concerning the founders:
Science became the lodestar for those who thought they were at the dawn of a new
age; modern scientists, not ancient philosophers, guided them into the future.
Both modern scientists and ancient philosophers guided the founders, and it is precisely
this fact that reveals so much about them. Isaac Newton’s success in employing the sci-
entific method, which employed both hypothesis and experimentation, had proved that
reason and experience were partners in the quest for truth. To the founders, reason and
tradition need not be opposed. The two were joined in the classical heritage, a tradition
formed by rational men, whose wisdom had stood the test of time. How else can one
21 Boyd, Papers, Jefferson to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786, 10.451; Haraszti, John Adams and the
Prophets of Progress, 302.
account for the paradoxical fact that when the designers of the Great Seal of the United
States proudly proclaimed the year 1776 the beginning of a “new order of the ages,” they
engraved the date in Roman numerals and inscribed the phrase in Latin, without the
slightest sense of irony?22
References
Adams, D. W., ed. Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1983.
Appleby, J. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992.
Bergh, A. E. and A. A. Lipscomb, ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Washington, D.C.:
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903.
Boyd, J. P. et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1950–.
Cappon, L. J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas
Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.
Haraszti, Z. John Adams and the Prophets of Progress. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1952.
Kimball, M. Jefferson: The Road to Glory, 1743–1776. New York: Coward-McCann, 1943.
Lemisch, L. J., ed. Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings. New York:
Penguin Books, 1961.
MacKendrick, P. “This Rich Source of Delight: The Classics and the Founding Fathers.” CJ 72
(1976): 101.
Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government. New York: Dutton, 1951.
Padover, S. K., ed. The Complete Jefferson: Containing His Writings, Published and Unpublished,
Except His Letters. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1943.
Peden, W., ed. Notes on the State of Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.
Rahe, P. A. Republics, Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American
Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Wilson, D. L., ed. Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
22 Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination, 337; Rahe, Republics, Ancient
and Modern, 336.
chapter 29
Epicu r ea n ism a n d
U tilita r i a n ism1
A. A. Long
The academic attention paid to Epicurus during the past hundred years has been in
inverse ratio to his diffused influence on science and society in general. For scholars,
Aristotle tends to dominate the field of ancient philosophy, followed by Plato and
Stoicism, with Epicurus bringing up the rear. There has, of course, been extensive
research on Epicurus and the Epicurean tradition, as this large volume amply attests.
But, viewed in the context of the larger culture, there is little evidence that modern
moral philosophers are turning to Epicurus, as they have been recently turning to
Aristotle (from an interest in virtue ethics) or even to Stoicism (from an interest in natu
ral law and the ethics of personhood). From 1800–1900 in Britain, by contrast, the
ancient philosopher who dominated the field of ethics was Epicurus and what was taken
to be Epicurean hedonism. Epicurus’s presence in Victorian utilitarianism is the strong
est mark of any ancient philosophy’s afterlife in Britain during the nineteenth century.2
And given the continuing vitality of utilitarianism since that time, Epicurus can still be
regarded as the theory’s hoariest forerunner.3
1 This chapter is a much expanded version of the paper I contributed to Philosophie der Lust. Studien
zum Hedonismus, “Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick on Epicurean Hedonism.” I am grateful to Schwabe
Verlag for allowing me to reprint the gist of that paper here, and to the editors of the Schwabe volume
for inviting me to participate in their third international colloquium on Epicurus and the Epicurean
tradition, which took place at the University of Würzburg in April 2010.
2 Nor should we forget Karl Marx’s accolade to Epicurus in his doctoral dissertation. See Marx,
“Draft of New Preface to Doctoral Dissertation”: “Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in
its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the
cry of Epicurus: ‘Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of
the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious’ ” [= Ep. Men. 123]. During the Soviet
era, Epicureanism was the ancient philosophy chiefly studied in Russia and East European universities.
3 See Scarre, “Epicurus as a Forerunner of Utilitarianism,” 219: “On Mill’s reading of history,
utilitarianism and Epicureanism were in essential respects the same.” Scarre, Utilitarianism, 40 restates
this position in his general study of utilitarianism: “On Mill’s reading of history, Benthamite
utilitarianism and Epicureanism were essentially identical in their theory of value.”
Epicureanism and Utilitarianism 743
My theme in this chapter is the presence of Epicurus and Epicureanism in the

hedonistic and utilitarian ethics of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), John Stuart Mill
(1806–73), and Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900). I will preface this discussion with a few
words about the preceding cultural context in Britain.
Traces of Epicurean social theory and moral psychology are evident in the writings of
such major philosophers as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume.4 Chiefly through Cicero’s work
De finibus bonorum et malorum Epicurus’s ethical ideas reached many educated people
in Britain, but these ideas were rarely acknowledged as Epicurean explicitly and posi
tively. This reticence was due to the widespread belief that the hedonism and virtual
atheism of Epicurean philosophy were inimical to piety, morality, and social well-being.5
Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), one of the first thinkers to speak of the greatest happi
ness of the greatest number, was an important precursor of the Victorian utilitarians and
also, by virtue of his hedonism, an implicit follower of Epicurus.6 At the end of the eight
eenth century, however, hedonism as the basis of ethics was being challenged by forms
of rationalism and intuitionism, represented especially by the Scots philosopher Thomas
Reid (1710–96).7
The general tenor of Reid’s ethics can be seen in the following excerpt:
The happy man . . . is not he whose happiness is his only care, but he who, with per
fect resignation, leaves the care of his happiness to him who made him, while he
pursues with ardor the road of his duty . . . And as no man can be indifferent about
his happiness, the good man has the consolation to know, that he consults his
happiness most effectually when . . . he does his duty.8
Reid was particularly resistant to Hume’s notion that moral distinctions are reducible
to feelings of approval or disapproval, and subjective in essence, with reason having
the purely instrumental role of serving the passions.9 For Reid happiness and duty
are equally “comprehended under the name of reason.”10 Yet, since conflict between
these ends regularly arises, how could intuitionist ethics, as so construed, resolve
inevitable clashes between them?
4 See Wilson, “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy,” 276–80.

5 Even today in the United States Epicurus continues to be demonized by adherents of the Intelligent
Design movement, along with Darwin, Marx, and Freud: see Foster, Clark, and York, Critique of
Intelligent Design, 27–30.
6 See Hruschka, “The Greatest Happiness Principle”; Scarre, Utilitarianism, 55; and Dorsey,
“Hutcheson’s Deceptive Hedonism.”
7 See Haakonssen and Harris’s introduction to Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, on Reid’s
“polemics against Epicureanism, both ancient and modern,” xv, where they observe that “Reid saw
contemporary moral sensationalism, associationism and necessitarianism as the direct extensions of
ancient Epicureanism and its revival in the seventeenth century.” On Reid’s philosophy in general, see
Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, 63–74.
8 Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, 168.
744 A. A. LONG
It was the ambition of utilitarianism, viewed in its theoretical context, to establish a

set of purely secular principles that would firmly reconcile duty (right action), the com
mon good, and individual happiness construed in terms of maximizing pleasure and
minimizing pain. Viewed practically, with its goal of generating the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, utilitarianism underwrote the burgeoning interest in social poli
cies and laws for general welfare, and it also activated egalitarian pressures for universal
emancipation.
Both Mill and Sidgwick looked back to the pioneering work of Jeremy Bentham, as
set out in his treatise: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.11
Bentham was not, or not primarily, an original philosopher. His historical importance is
due primarily to his zeal and influence as a great legal and social reformer. Nevertheless,
the aforementioned treatise, where Bentham starts from what he calls “the principle of
utility,” set the tone for the ethical theory we have ever since called utilitarianism, glossed
by Mill with the famous phrase “the greatest happiness principle.”12 According to Mill,
Bentham derived his social and ethical ideas from the French philosopher Claude
Helvétius (1715–71). However, in the modern history of philosophy Bentham is regularly
viewed as the founder of utilitarianism.13
It is not in Bentham’s manner to cite the names of other thinkers, but he was clearly
familiar with the general thrust of Epicurean ethics and social theory. In the treatise
mentioned above, he identifies “moralists” and “religionists” as united in hostility to:
The common enemy, the partisan of the principle of utility, whom they joined in
branding with the odious name of Epicurean.14
This sentence concludes a passage in which Bentham draws a caustic contrast between his
own “happiness augmenting” principle of utility and “the principle of asceticism.” He takes
the advocates of the latter to be motivated either by “fear of future punishment at the
hands of a splenetic and revengeful Deity,” or by “the hope of honor and reputation at
the hands of men.” Bentham views each of his contrasting targets as equally opposed to
hedonism. In this respect, as in his emphatic hostility to religious fear and competitive
ambition for fame and status, Bentham echoes the authentic voice of Epicurus himself.
Both Mill and Sidgwick were fully conversant with Greek and Latin, and familiar with
Cicero’s treatment of Epicureanism as mentioned above. It is not evident, or at least not
known to me, whether they read any of the surviving words of Epicurus himself. But
their explicit references to Epicurus do engage with some of the specifics of his ethical
theory. Mill sometimes criticizes Bentham, but Sidgwick sometimes defends Bentham
against Mill, as we shall see.
11 First printed in 1780 but not published before 1789: see the edition of Burns and Hart, An
Introduction to the Principles, xxxvii–xxxix. I cite Bentham’s work by page numbers from this edition.
12 For Bentham’s coinage of the term utilitarianism, see Scarre, Utilitarianism, 3–4.
13 See Mill, Bentham, 90. I cite Mill by page numbers of Warnock’s edition. For Helvétius’s role in
the history of utilitarianism, see Scarre, Utilitarianism, 50–53.
14 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 19.
Mill was a major public figure in Victorian Britain. Sidgwick, who served as
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge University from 1872 up to
his death in 1900, was also well known beyond his immediate university circles. The
work of his that I will generally refer to here from its first edition (1874), The Methods of
Ethics, is one of the greatest British books of moral philosophy.15
Some thirty-five years ago I published a paper entitled “Pleasure and Social Utility:
The Virtues of Being Epicurean.”16 There I made a case, with brief reference to Bentham
and Mill, for seeing Epicurus as the precursor of these utilitarians. The basis of my argu
ment was not only the shared endorsement of hedonism and the removal of cultural
impediments to happiness, but also the philanthropic and uncompetitive thrust of
Epicurus’s social theory. In that earlier study I made no mention of Sidgwick, who is
regularly acknowledged to be the most profound of the Victorian utilitarians. What
I want to do here is to conduct a conversation, as it were, between Epicurus and these
three British thinkers, with a view to asking where all four of them stand on the follow
ing three questions: (1) Are they separately or collectively to be viewed as psychological
or as normative hedonists: i.e. do they hold that hedonism is the only possible basis for
human motivation and for viable ethical theory, or instead, do they hold that it is the
only sound basis or the best basis? (2) How do they construe the relation between active
pleasure or agreeable sensation and absence of pain? (3) Do they provide a means of
showing how Epicurus could coherently combine the egoistic foundations of his ethics
with an interest in the general happiness?
Psychological vs. Normative

Hedonism
According to his own words Epicurus was a psychological hedonist:
We recognize pleasure as the good that is primary and congenital; from it we begin
every choice and avoidance, and we come back to it, using the feeling (pathos) as the
yardstick for judging every good thing.17
15 Sidgwick revised the work repeatedly throughout his later life; its latest edition (the seventh)
appeared posthumously in 1907. I draw largely on the first edition because it contains more explicit
references to Epicurus than do the later editions.
16 Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility.” Mitsis, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory also compares Epicurus with
Mill. Scarre, Utilitarianism, 39–47, without reference to Mitsis or myself, finds “the best utilitarian
theories an improvement upon Epicureanism because they preserve its virtues but avoid its key defect”
(46), which Scarre identifies with “self-absorbedness” as distinct from “an impulse to promote the
general good.” I return to Scarre’s criticism at the end of this study.
17 Epicurus: Ep. Men. 129, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 21B.
746 A. A. LONG
For Epicurus human motivations are inevitably hedonistic. That naturalistic doctrine
is confirmed as the school’s position by Cicero’s testimony, according to which all
creatures from the moment of birth pursue pleasure and avoid pain “on the innocent
and sound judgment of nature herself.”18 Accordingly, an Epicurean will think that
persons who deny that pleasure is the only intrinsic good or the only intrinsic desir
able, or who deny that “we” are ultimately motivated by desire for pleasure and desire
to avoid pain, are simply deceiving themselves.19 However, as a moral philosopher,
Epicurus was also a normative hedonist.20 This is because Epicurus thinks that when
non-Epicureans pursue pleasure and seek to avoid pain (as they must do, by virtue of
psychological hedonism), they fail to achieve the happiness they are seeking as a result
of miscalculating the quantities of pleasure and pain obtainable from their actions.
Epicurus thinks that only his recommended lifestyle (with its ban on fulfilling “empty”
desires) can consistently activate the pleasure sources he deems essential to long-term
happiness and avoid the pains he deems inimical to this ideal.21
Many details of Epicurus’s account of pleasure are controversial, but for my present
purpose I will simply assume that he regarded all pleasures, whether sensory or mental,
whether active (kinetic) or static (katastematic), whether stimulated by the senses or
consisting simply in freedom from pain, as agreeable states of consciousness, enjoyable
experiences, immediate feelings or sensations. Consistently with his psychological
hedonism, Epicurus thinks that any pleasure as such is good and any pain as such is bad,
but, as an ethical theorist, he also thinks that pleasures vary in their probable contribu
tion to his long-term goal of tranquility or complete absence of pain, so that it will often
be rational to accept a present pain in the interests of achieving a greater forthcoming
pleasure.22 His official measure of value for pleasures and pains seems to be entirely
quantitative with quantity construed in terms of duration, persistence, and uniformity.
Where do the early utilitarians stand on the issue of psychological and normative
hedonism? The case of Bentham is the simplest. Here are the ringing sentences with
which he opens his treatise: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure [Bentham’s italics]. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to
do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right
18 Cicero Fin. 1.30: Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 20A. See Brunschwig, “The Cradle
Argument,” 115–22.
19 Cooper, “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus” argues that the “we” in Epicurus’s quoted text pertains
only to “us Epicureans” rather than human beings as such. I share the majority view that Epicurus
was a psychological hedonist: see Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 62–63; Erler, “Epicurean Ethics,” 649;
Woolf, “What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?”; and Tsouna in this volume.
20 As Cooper, “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus” (see n. 19) proposes.
21 Ep. Men, 127; KD 18, 25, 30 (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 21E). Cf. Sidgwick,
The Methods of Ethics, 3: “No one maintains that the actions of all men are such as a scientific
Hedonist would approve. Even in the view of Pure Epicureanism, action aimed at the true end, directed
towards the attainment of that which is truly good, is an ideal to which actual human conduct only
approximates.”
22 Ep. Men. 129–32.
and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.
They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make
to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a
man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all
the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the
foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the
hands of reasons and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds
instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.23
From what Bentham says elsewhere, we can infer that he was an unqualified psychological
hedonist, as exemplified by his notorious observation that:
Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences
of music and poetry.24
On this view, Bentham was not disposed to specify general rules for discriminating
between pleasure sources, as Epicurus had done with his distinction between neces
sary, natural, and empty (or vain) desires. In a context criticizing Bentham’s psycho
logical hedonism, Sidgwick carefully distinguishes that notion from the position
he himself calls Egoistic Hedonism.25 The basis for Sidgwick’s distinction is that an
Egoistic Hedonist, unlike a psychological hedonist, is not necessarily committed to the
view that everyone always acts on the basis of what they happen to think will maximize
their pleasures or minimize their pains. An egoistic hedonist, in Sidgwick’s terms,
holds not that his is the only ethical theory, but rather that it is the best theory. In
Sidgwick’s terms (though he does not say so explicitly) Epicurus starts from a position
of psychological hedonism; but in light of his fully developed ethics he ought rather
to be called an egoistic hedonist because of the importance he assigns to reason in
discriminating between desires, as I have already remarked concerning Epicurus’s
normative hedonism.
Bentham calls pleasures and pains in general “interesting perceptions,”26 and he regu
larly substitutes the word happiness or utility for pleasure. This practice is in line with
English usage where happiness is frequently used equivalently to pleasure. By contrast,
while most ancient theories of ethics were eudemonist in making the agent’s happiness
23 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 11. The affinity to Helvétius is striking, where
Helvétius, Treatise on Man, 146, writing of pleasure and pain, says: “These two are, and always will be,
the only principles of action in man.”
24 Bentham, The Rationale of Reward, 206.
25 I cite Sidgwick here from the seventh edition (1907) of The Methods of Ethics (41–42): “There is no
necessary connexion between the psychological proposition that pleasure or absence of pain to myself
is always the actual ultimate end of my action, and the ethical proposition that my own greatest
happiness or pleasure is for me the right ultimate end. . . . A psychological law invariably realized in my
conduct does not admit of being conceived as ‘a precept’ or ‘dictate of reason’ . . . . Egoistic Hedonism
becomes a possible ethical ideal to which psychological hedonism seems to point.”
26 Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles, 42.
748 A. A. LONG
(eudaimonia) their end, it was only the Epicureans who identified happiness with the
maximum of pleasure and the absence of pain.
Bentham’s criterion for distinguishing between pleasures is entirely quantitative.
From a philosophical perspective, one would like him to have been more rigorous than
he was in defending his statement that “immunity from pain comes to the same thing”
as pleasure.27 But Bentham’s principal objective was not to justify hedonism, but to
develop his brand of its universalist utilitarian implications.
Sidgwick aligns Epicurus with Bentham in the following comment, which once again
emphasizes Bentham’s psychological hedonism:
Though ethically Epicureanism and Benthamism may be viewed as standing in

polar opposition [i.e., because the former is egoistic and the latter universalistic]
psychologically Bentham is in fundamental agreement with Epicureans. He holds
that a man ought to aim at the maximum felicity of men in general; but he holds,
also, that he always does aim at what appears to him his own maximum felicity—
that he cannot help doing this—that this is the way his volition inevitably acts.28
Notwithstanding this passage, Sidgwick, in his more considered view, takes Epicurus to
have practiced the ethical method he himself calls egoism, or more fully egoistic hedon
ism, meaning: the system that fixes as the reasonable ultimate end of each individual’s
action his own greatest happiness: i.e., a life so arranged that the excess in it of pleasur
able over painful consciousness shall be the greatest possible.29 Hence, Sidgwick writes:
It may sometimes be convenient to call it (i.e., egoistic hedonism) Epicureanism: for

though this name more properly denotes a particular historical system it has come
to be commonly used in the wider sense in which I wish to employ it.30
Where does Mill stand on the question of psychological versus normative hedonism?
Mill begins his account by aligning Epicurus with Bentham:
Those who know anything about the matter [i.e., the relation of utility to pleasure,
as proposed by utilitarian philosophers] are aware that every writer, from Epicurus
to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be
contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption
from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental,
have always declared that the useful means these, among other things.31
Mill then proceeds as follows:
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest
Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to
27 Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles, 34. 28 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 67.

29 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 109. 30 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 10.
31 Mill, Utilitarianism, 256.
romote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By hap-
p
piness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness pain, and the
privation of pleasure [my italics here and later]. To give a clear view of the moral
standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what
things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an
open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life
on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure, and freedom
from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which
are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the
pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the
prevention of pain. . . . The ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which
all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that
of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as
possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality.32
Here, in introducing utilitarianism, Mill says categorically that pleasure and freedom
from pain are the only inherent desirables. Later he amplifies his position in the
following words:
Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful,

are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon;
in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the same psychological
fact: that to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences),
and to think of it as pleasant are one and the same thing; and that to desire anything,
except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical
impossibility.33
Thus, like Bentham, Mill presents himself as an unqualified psychological hedonist.

Sidgwick took him severely to task, observing:
It is a matter of common experience that the resultant or prevailing desire in men is

often directed towards what (even in the moment of yielding to the desire) they
think likely to cause more pain than pleasure on the whole. “Video meliora proboque,
deteriora sequor” [I see and approve of what is better but I follow what is worse] is
as applicable to the Epicurean as it is to anyone else.34
In the penultimate citation, Mill does not distinguish between the hedonistic happiness
of individuals and that of society at large, but immediately before that, he had written:
The [utilitarian] standard is not the agent’s own greatest happiness but the greatest
amount of happiness altogether.35
32 Mill, Utilitarianism, 257, 262. 33 Mill, Utilitarianism, 293.

34 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 31. Sidgwick, without acknowledgment, cites Ovid Metamorphoses
7.20, which is Ovid’s Latin adaptation of Euripides Medea 1078–79.
750 A. A. LONG
and later:
The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people
do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were
not, in theory and in practice acknowledged to be an end, nothing could convince
any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desir
able, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own
happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case
admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each
person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore a
good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one [Mill’s
italics] of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.36
Many commentators since Sidgwick have observed how Mill slides from the inevitable
egoistic motivations posited by Epicurus and Bentham, with their psychological
hedonism, to his own utilitarian or altruistic postulate concerning the desirability of
the general happiness.37 As Sidgwick himself trenchantly stated:
[Mill has] tried to establish a logical connexion between the psychological and
ethical principles, which he holds in common with Bentham, and to convince his
readers that because each man naturally seeks his own happiness, therefore he
ought to seek the happiness of other people.38
Mill seems to start out as a psychological hedonist, but he transitions without clear indi
cation not only to universalistic hedonism, but even considers that to be only one of the
possible ends of conduct.39
Mill’s confusions in this regard are compounded by his asserting rather than proving
that “higher pleasures” (as assessed by those who are “competent judges”) are intrinsi
cally superior to sensual ones, and that the pleasures most germane to his utilitarianism
can be distinguished in terms of quality rather than quantity. At this point he defends
the Epicureans from the charge of commending a beast’s pleasures:
There is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures
of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a
much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. . . . It is better to be
36 Mill, Utilitarianism, 288. 37 See especially Moore, Principia Ethica, 64–72.

38 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 68. See also Sidgwick, A Supplement to the Second Edition of the
Methods of Ethics, 151–52.
39 Sidgwick exonerates Bentham from the confusion he attributes to Mill, observing (68): “If he
[Bentham] is asked . . . ‘When you concern yourself about the public good and call it the right and
proper end of action, do not you recognize a principle of duty, obedience to which you prefer to your
own pleasure?’ he answers unhesitatingly, ‘No, I concern myself about the public good because in me
selfishness has taken the form of public spirit [Sidgwick’s italics], and when I call it the proper end,
I mean that I wish all other men to take it for such, with a view to its attainment, with which the
attainment of my own greatest happiness is bound up.’ ”
a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied

than a fool satisfied.40
Actually Mill is incorrect to attribute to Epicurus a distinction between higher and lower
pleasures. Epicurus takes mental pleasures and pains to be greater than bodily pleasures
and pains, but not intrinsically or ethically better or worse respectively: the greater mag
nitude of the former is due to the fact that bodily pleasures and pains are limited in time
to the duration of the things that cause them, whereas mental pleasures and corresponding
pains are greater because they extend beyond the present by reason of recollection and
anticipation.41
On the basis of what I have said so far, it should be evident that Epicurus was more
rigorous than Mill in advancing the claims of his own version of hedonism. If Mill had
read Epicurus himself, rather than Cicero, he would hardly have made the following
negative comment in his book Utilitarianism:
To refer, for instance, to the Epicurean philosophy, according to the most complete
view we have of the moral part of it, by the most accomplished scholar of antiquity,
Cicero; we ask anyone who has read his philosophical writings, the “De finibus” for
instance, whether the arguments of the Epicureans do not, just as much as those of
the Stoics or Platonists, consist of mere rhetorical appeals to common notions, to
εἰκότα and σημεῖα instead of τεκμήρια, notions picked up as it were casually, and
when true at all, never so narrowly looked into as to ascertain in what sense and
under what limitations they are true. The application of a real inductive philosophy
to the problems of ethics, is as unknown to the Epicurean moralists as to any of the
other schools; they never take a question to pieces, and join issue on a definite point.
Bentham certainly did not learn his sifting and anatomizing method from them.42
I will return to Mill at the end of this study, but for now I pass on to Sidgwick. The
main part of Sidgwick’s massive work on ethics is an analysis and evaluation of three
ethical methods: Egoism (which I have already discussed), Intuitionism (the supposedly
self-evident rightness of moral principles, irrespective of their consequences), and
Universalistic Hedonism or Utilitarianism.43 As construed by Sidgwick, an ethical
method seeks to obtain:
reasoned convictions as to what ought to be done which are found—either explicit

or implicit—in the moral consciousness of mankind generally: and which, from
40 Mill, Utilitarianism, 258–60.

41 See Epicurus: KD 3, 4, 18; Diogenes of Oenoanda 38.1.8–38.3.14 (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 21C, E, V). Once complete freedom from pain is attained, the ancient Epicurean’s
pleasures can vary but not increase.
42 Mill on Bentham in Utilitarianism, 90. Mill’s essay on Bentham was first published in London and
Westminster Review, August 1838.
43 Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics is a comprehensive study of Sidgwick. For a more recent account
see Irwin, Development of Ethics, chh. 8–13.
752 A. A. LONG
time to time, have been developed, either singly or in combination, by individual

thinkers, and worked up into the systems now historical.44
Sidgwick thinks that Common Sense finds some plausibility in all three methods, but
the one he ultimately plumps for himself is utilitarianism, the method most akin to
Common Sense, which he even calls “unconscious Utilitarianism.” He follows Bentham
in characterizing this theory as stating that:
the conduct which, under any given circumstances, is externally or objectively right,
is that which will produce the greatest amount of happiness to all whose interests are
affected . . . by Greatest Happiness is meant the greatest possible surplus of pleasure
over pain, the pain being conceived as balanced against an equal amount of pleasure,
so that the two mutually annihilate each other for purpose of ethical calculation.45
Unlike Bentham and Mill, Sidgwick completely rejects psychological hedonism, on the
plausible grounds that human beings are not exclusively motivated by a desire for
“agreeable sensations,”46 and may love virtue for its own sake. At the same time, how
ever, he writes:
A man’s predominant desire is, I think, most commonly not a conscious impulse
towards pleasure; but where there is a strong desire in any direction, there is com
monly keen susceptibility to the corresponding pleasures.47
When it comes to justifying utilitarianism against intuitionism, Sidgwick emphasizes

the appeal of hedonism. One of its most attractive features for him is its making good
(pleasure) and bad (pain) commensurable, and therefore, in principle, calculable. He
was well aware that a hedonistic calculus could generally be no more than approxi
mate, but it did hold, so he thought, a greater prospect of rational judgment than mere
intuition, and was thus the best, albeit fallible, guide for identifying the individual’s
greatest happiness. He granted that human beings have a primary interest in their own
happiness which, as he puts it, “Has a legitimate authority over all particular appetites
and passions, which as reasonable beings we are bound to recognize.”48 This principle
accords with Common Sense, but Common Sense does not recognize the utilitarian
obligation to take the happiness of others as an ultimate end. How can this obligation
be shown?
Sidgwick acknowledged that nothing can directly turn an egoistic hedonist into a
utilitarian if the egoist simply maintains that he ought to make his own happiness or
pleasure his ultimate end. In order to prove the validity of universalistic hedonism
or utilitarianism, we need the egoist to maintain that his happiness or pleasure is
“objectively good.” In that case:
44 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (Preface to the First Edition, v.).

45 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 381 and 384. 46 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 41.
47 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 40. 48 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 389.
We can then point out to him that his [Sidgwick’s italics] happiness cannot be more
objectively desirable or more a good than the similar happiness of any other person:
the mere fact (if I may so put it) that he is he can have nothing to do with its objective
desirability or goodness. Hence, starting with his own principle, he must accept
the wider notion of Universal happiness or pleasure as representing the real end of
Reason, the absolutely Good or Desirable: as the end to which the action of a
reasonable agent as such ought to be directed.49
In light of Sidgwick’s trenchant criticism of Mill’s slide from egoistic hedonism to utili
tarianism, this proof is surprisingly weak. Sidgwick revised his formulation of it in later
editions of his work, but in the end he found himself forced to acknowledge the logical
priority of one’s own good to the general good and to admit his inability to present the
determined egoist with a sufficient reason to accept the utilitarian principle “unless ego
ism and utilitarianism can be shown to coincide.”50 Bentham had proposed that the bridge
between the individual’s pleasure and his acting for the common good can be found in
feelings of sympathy and antipathy, backed up by external sanctions. Unlike Bentham or
Mill, Sidgwick emphasizes “the obvious and glaring difference between the propositions
that each ought to seek his own happiness, and that each ought to seek the happiness of
all.”51 In spite of his official endorsement of utilitarianism, Sidgwick finally concludes
that neither argument nor external sanctions can convince a rational egoist to prefer the
common good to his own.52 He nowhere suggests, as far as I can see, that the happiness
or pleasure of all, or at least that of one’s immediate associates, might have a constitutive
relation to the happiness or pleasure of the individual. By contrast, Epicurus’s doctrine that
friendships can become desirable for their own sake looks a promising move, provided it
can be made consistent with his egoistic starting point. I will take up this point at the con
clusion of the paper. For now I pass to my second main question.
The Relation between Pleasure

and Absence of Pain
Both Bentham and Mill, as we have seen, include absence of pain, as well as pleasure,
among the only things desirable as ends. Neither of them seems to have asked whether
absence of pain is itself a pleasure, or instead, an entirely neutral condition of neither
pleasure nor pain. Epicurus, of course, denied that there is such a neutral condition.
According to his doctrine, pain and pleasure are simply mutually exclusive. On this view
these experiences are contradictories, not contraries, and so the removal of all pain
49 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 391. 50 See Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, 370.

51 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 382.
52 See Rogers, Self-Interest, 174 in discussion of Sidgwick: “It is both rational for an individual to
pursue the universal good and rational for him to hold his own happiness as an end which he will not
sacrifice to any other.”
754 A. A. LONG
c onstitutes the maximum of pleasure.53 Precisely what Epicurus meant by this latter
claim is controversial. I will simply say here that it cannot mean, in my opinion, that
absence of pain entails absence of agreeable feeling or affect. On the contrary, I think
Epicurus must mean that when, in waking states, we have no painful sensations, no anx
ieties, and no unfulfilled desires, our condition is, precisely for those reasons, supremely
agreeable and enjoyable, and hence the very essence of complete pleasure.54
Sidgwick discusses Epicurus’s doctrine in his chapter entitled “Empirical Hedonism.”
His context is the commensurability of pleasures and pains:
Pain must be reckoned as the negative quantity of pleasure, to be balanced against

and subtracted from the positive: there must therefore be a point of transition in
consciousness at which we pass from the positive to the negative. That is, this strictly
indifferent or neutral consciousness is at least ideally possible. It is not absolutely
necessary to assume that such a state ever actually occurs. Still experience seems to
shew that a state very nearly approximating to this is common: and we certainly
experience continual transitions from pleasure to pain and vice versa and thus
(unless we conceive all such transitions to be abrupt) we must exist at least momen
tarily in this neutral state.55
Sidgwick assumes that the measurement of pleasures “involves the assumption of a

hedonistic zero . . . as a point from which pleasures may be measured.” What does he
mean? Let us assign the values +1, +2, and +4 to three different pleasures. And let us
assign the values –1, –2, and –4 to three corresponding pains. Since +1–1, or +2–2 or
+4–4 all equal zero and are therefore commensurable, Sidgwick seems to assume that
such values can only be computed accordingly by presuming a hedonistic zero. But if, as
he allows to be possible, we never actually experience hedonistic zero, there is no need
to think that in passing from +1 to –1, or –1 to +1, there is a non-experienced 0 through
which we pass from one state to the other. When a pain disrupts a pleasure, or vice versa,
the transition is typically abrupt or instantaneous and does not transition even momen
tarily through a neutral state.
Actually Epicurus would do the arithmetic differently. Suppose we assign the units +1,
+2, and +4 to three pleasures of the same type (say drinking when thirsty, and thus in
corresponding need/or in pain), and let +4 be the maximum pleasure, which must
then equal complete absence of pain (when thirst is entirely quenched). It follows for
Epicurus, then, that pleasure +1 is accompanied by 3 units of pain, and pleasure +2 is
accompanied by 2 units of pain, and pleasure +4 is accompanied by 0 units of pain.
In this way too we achieve commensurability of pleasures and pains, but without
passing through zero, or a neutral intermediate condition.
53 For the evidence and discussion, see Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, ch. 21.
54 See Woolf, “Pleasure and Desire,” 173–74: “What is valuable about the state of freedom from pain
and distress that the conscious Epicurean subject is in is that it is experienced as having a positive
character . . . a relaxed freshness, let us say, that feels wonderful.”
55 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 113.
After positing his hedonistic zero, Sidgwick continues:
Here we may notice the paradox of Epicurus,56 that painlessness is equivalent to the
highest possible pleasure: so that if we can attain absolute freedom from pain, the
goal of Hedonism is reached: after that we may vary, but cannot increase our pleas
ure. The paradox was probably due in some measure to an unavowed desire in the
mind of Epicurus to mitigate the sharp provocation which unmixed Hedonism
naturally gives to the moral sense of mankind. It is, however, merely the exaggera
tion of a truth that it is important to notice: namely, that this neutral feeling—
hedonistic zero, as I have called it—is not (as might vaguely be thought) the normal
condition of our consciousness, out of which we occasionally sink into pain, and
occasionally rise into pleasure. Nature has not been so niggardly to man as this: so
long as health is retained, and pain and irksome toil banished, the mere sense of
living, the mere performance of the ordinary habitual functions of life, is itself a
pleasure of a certain degree.57
We do not need to follow Sidgwick in thinking that Epicurus had scruples about
advancing “unmixed Hedonism.” What is interesting are two points. First, Sidgwick’s
correct observation concerning Epicurus’s doctrine that, once complete absence of
pain is reached, pleasure can be varied but not increased, and second, his virtual
defense of Epicurus’s denial of a neutral condition between pleasure and pain for reasons
that Epicurus actually did endorse—the sheer pleasure of living with good health and
without toil or anxiety.
I turn finally to my third question.
Egoistic Hedonism and

the General Happiness
Bentham’s move from psychological hedonism to utilitarianism, apart from appeals to

sympathy and legal sanctions, is a postulate rather than a proof. Because Bentham takes
the only intrinsic good to be happiness construed as pleasure and absence of pain, the
more of such good the better, or in the dictum Mill attributed to Bentham: “Everybody
to count for one, nobody for more than one,” a principle that Sidgwick finds “the simplest,
and the only one which does not need a special justification.”58
Sidgwick, as we have seen, is scrupulously frank in conceding that egoistic motiva
tions, taken by themselves, can be just as rational as altruistic ones. Both Bentham and
Sidgwick, in my judgment, hold consistently to their view that the utilitarian can never
banish self-interest, construed hedonistically, from consciousness or motivation, and
56 Sidgwick refers to Cic. Fin. Book 1. 57 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 113.

58 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 387. See Mill, Utilitarianism, 319.
756 A. A. LONG
therefore, in spite of the preferential status of the general good there can be no assurance
that the happiness of individuals will actually coincide with the happiness of the greatest
number. As we have seen, Sidgwick criticized Mill for the latter’s view that there is a con
ceptual tie between the individual’s desire for his own well-being and the desirability of
the general happiness.
Sidgwick’s criticism is cogent, and needs no further comment here. What I want to do
now is to compare some of Mill’s other ideas with those of Epicurus, and then conclude
with an assessment of how well Epicurus measures up alongside the Victorian
utilitarians.
The Epicurean propositions to be compared are the following:
(1) The virtues are desirable solely as means to happiness, but not as ends in them
selves (Diogenes of Oenoanda 26.1.2–3.8; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 21P).
(2) The virtues are naturally linked with living pleasurably, and living pleasurably is
inseparable from them (Epicurus, Ep. Men. 132; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 21B6).
(3) Friendship is per se desirable, but it originates from utility (SV 23; Long and
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 22F1).59
(4) Friendship is an immortal good (SV 78; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, 22F7).
Propositions 1 and 2 have been thought to be inconsistent, but that need not be so.
In fact all we need do to make them explicitly consistent is to add “necessary” or “natural”
before “means to happiness” in proposition 1. That the virtues are the necessary or
natural means for living pleasurably makes the virtues no more intrinsically desirable
than saying that an adequate provision of subsistence and security is such. The focus
of proposition 2 is on the inter-entailment between virtue and living (i.e. organizing
one’s life) pleasurably; it does not imply that pleasures as such, meaning every agree
able feeling or mental state, have anything to do with virtue. Propositions 3 and 4 com
mit Epicurus to supposing that friendship as such is a pleasure, but that proposition
seems to me entirely consistent with his hedonism provided we take it to mean that
friendship is intrinsically pleasurable or gratifying, rather than being only instrumen
tally desirable.
However, the point I want to focus on here is the notion that friendship comes to be
upgraded from being desirable for its utility or consequences (construed as means of
assistance and security) to becoming a pleasure as such.60
Let us now review two of Mill’s ideas:
59 “Desirable” is an emendation of the MSS reading “virtue,” which I have defended in the past: see
Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” reprint, 192. For my argument in this study, it is not necessary to
prefer one word to the other.
60 I sidestep debates about the criteria for desiring friendship that Cicero attributes to later
Epicureans, Cic. Fin. 1.65–70, on which see Mitsis in this volume.
[The utilitarian doctrine] maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it
is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself . . . Virtue, according to the utilitarian doc
trine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so;
and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cher
ished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.61
And now:
There was no original desire of it [virtue], or motive to it, save its conduciveness to
pleasure, and especially its protection from pain. But through the association thus
formed, it may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as
any other good. . . . Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because
the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without
it is a pain, or for both reasons united.62
Mill’s notion that virtue can become a part of the end, though not being such originally,
clearly recalls Epicurus’s third proposition (as cited above) concerning friendship. To
make Epicurus consistent, I had to propose that upgraded friendship signifies not pre
cisely a particular human relationship, taken to be desirable just for its own sake, but the
pleasurable sentiments that such a relationship brings about in the befriending agent. To
desire friendship for its own sake will then mean desiring it, not as a means to pleasure,
but as being itself a pleasure.63
That seems to be similar to Mill’s move in the last quotation where he associates
pleasurable consciousness with virtue. But, as Mill’s critics were ready to point out,
desiring virtue because it generates pleasurable consciousness does not fit his claims
in the earlier passage about the desire for virtue becoming disinterested or desired for
its own sake. I think Epicurus’s move is hedonistically coherent whereas Mill’s move is
not. We do take pleasure in our friends, and we may find friendship, as Epicurus says
(KD 27; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 22E1), the greatest of life’s blessings.
That is a far cry from Mill’s notion that virtue as such [justice and another’s good] can
form the content of pleasure, as it must do if Mill is to be consistent on the hedonistic
foundation of utilitarianism.
Conclusion
Epicurean hedonism measures up quite well for consistency and ethical interest,
when compared with the work of Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick. How is it with Epicurean
utilitarianism? The expression, and hence the question, may seem inappropriate on the
grounds that, unlike the Victorians, Epicurus did not specify the general happiness as
61 Mill, Utilitarianism, 289–90. 62 Mill, Utilitarianism, 291–92.

63 So I have already argued in Long, “Pleasure and Social Utility,” 192.
758 A. A. LONG
the ethical goal that his followers should seek to promote. Like all mainstream ancient
philosophers, one may go on to observe, Epicurus was a eudemonist who took it as his
task to propose a rational and naturalistic foundation for the happiness of individuals as
individuals. The good of others, one may continue, is never the starting point or prime
desideratum of ancient ethics, but emerges, when and where it does emerge, as some
thing derived from the social implications of the conditions necessary for the individual’s
happiness and the role assigned to virtue and friendship.
These observations concerning ancient ethics are sound enough. But I strongly resist
the notion that their soundness is a sufficient reason to detach Epicurus’s ethical outlook
from a form of utilitarianism that has some clear affinities to its modern founders.
As I noted earlier (n. 3 above), Geoffrey Scarre recognizes Epicurus, without special
pleading, as a forerunner of nineteenth-century utilitarianism. Here is how he states
the point:
Common to both is a distinctive habit of mind and outlook on life that is anti-
mystical, empirical, unpuritanical, and informed by a sense that human existence is
to be justified internally, by the richness of its constituent experiences, and not
externally by its relation to God, or the cosmos, or some transcendental purpose.64
This is well said. Scarre continues his account of the common ground by mentioning
the “consequentialist line on the standard of right and wrong,” the “denial of intrinsic
value to the virtues,” and the “pleasure-centered theories of value.” There is, however,
according to Scarre, a profound difference between Epicurean ethics and that of his
utilitarian successors, to Epicurus’s detriment. This is the latter’s “placing the pursuit of
personal ataraxia centre-stage in one’s life” making it “difficult to sustain a lively con
cern for the interests of other people.”65 Scarre fully acknowledges Epicurus’s “warm
regard for friendship,” but, notwithstanding, he calls “the Epicurean disengagement
from public affairs profoundly immoral from the utilitarian point of view” and “an
appalling self-absorbedness.”66
Such charges have been brought against Epicureanism ever since the foundation of
the Garden. Yet, apart from Epicurus’s extraordinarily liberating attack on superstition,
irrational fears, and aggressive self-aggrandizement, everything we know about the
actual conduct of the founder and his followers, and thus the application and scope of
his influence, speaks volumes against both the “moral solipsism” that troubles Scarre
and the alleged lack of interest on the part of Epicureans in the general well-being. Were
such charges well grounded, we could make no sense of Epicurus’s educational mission
and celebrated philanthropy, Lucretius’s masterly epic with its eulogy of the school’s
founder as the savior of mankind, Seneca’s frequent citations of Epicurean maxims,
addressed to “everyone,” as he says (Ep. 14.18), the great Epicurean inscription erected by
64 Scarre, “Epicurus as a Forerunner of Utilitarianism,” 225.

Diogenes of Oenoanda, for the benefit of his fellow citizens, and much more.67 Today,
when organized politics throughout the world are so often marred by corruption and
special interests, we should be in a better position to see that public service can be
very effectively, if not more effectively, conducted through an exemplary private life, of
teaching or publishing (as it was, in the lives of Mill and Sidgwick). As these figures
recognized, Epicurus starts out, as they do, from a position of self-interested hedonism.
In light of the conceptual connections he establishes between pleasure and friendship,
Epicurus ends up as a virtual utilitarian like themselves because, without friends and
without promoting the happiness of friends (many of whom will be fellow citizens), we
cannot maximize happiness. Indeed, Mill himself issued the following caveat concerning
utilitarianism and the greatest happiness principle:
It is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as implying

that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or society
at large. The great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the
world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the
thoughts of the most virtuous person need not on these occasions travel beyond the
particular persons concerned, except, so far as is necessary to assure himself that in
benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate expectations of
anyone else. The multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics,
the object of virtue; the occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand)
has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words, to be a public
benefactor, are but exceptional.68
I can think of few greater multipliers of happiness, taking the long view of history, than
Epicurus himself.
References
Bentham, J. The Rationale of Reward. London: John and H. L. Hunt, 1830.
————. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, edited by J. H. Burns and
H. L. A. Hart. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Brunschwig, J. “The Cradle Argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism.” In The Norms of Nature:
Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, edited by M. Schofield and G. Striker, 113–44. Cambridge:
Cooper, J. “Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus.” In Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral
Psychology and Ethical Theory, edited by J. Cooper, 485–514. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Dorsey, D. “Hutcheson’s Deceptive Hedonism.” Journal of Philosophy 48 (2010): 445–67.
67 For further rebuttal of such charges as those made by Scarre, see Long, “Pleasure and Social
Utility,” and also Lucian’s account of Epicurean resistance to persecution in his work Alexander, which
treats the career of a fraudulent magician and religious rabble rouser.
760 A. A. LONG
Erler, M. “Epicurean Ethics.” In The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by

K. Algra et al., 642–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Foster, B. F., B. Clark, and R. York. Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism
from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008.
Helvétius, C. A. Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties and Education. Translated by
W. Hooper. London: Albion Press, 1810.
Hruschka, J. “The Greatest Happiness Principle and Other Early German Anticipations of
Utilitarian Theory.” Utilitas 3 (1991): 165–77.
Irwin, T. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford
Philosophie Hellénistique, edited by H. Flashar and O. Gigon, 283–316. Vandœuvres/
Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1986. (Repr. with revisions in A. A. Long, From Epicurus to
Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy, 178–201. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.)
————. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Sceptics, Epicureans. 2nd ed. Berkeley, Calif.: University
of California Press, 1986.
Long, A. A. and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Marx, K. “Draft of New Preface to Doctoral Dissertation.” In Differenz der demokratischen und
epicureischen Naturphilosophie. Karl Marx Internet Archive. Berlin: Jena, 1841.
Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Essay on Bentham, edited by M. Warnock. London:
Collins, 1962.
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903.
Reid, T. Essays on the Active Powers of Man, edited by K. Haakonssen and J. A. Harris.
University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
Rogers, K., ed. Self-Interest. London: Routledge, 1997.
Scarre, G. “Epicurus as a Forerunner of Utilitarianism.” Utilitas 6 (1994): 219–31.
————. Utilitarianism. London: Routledge, 1996.
Schneewind, J. B. Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977.
Sidgwick, H. The Methods of Ethics. London: Macmillan, 1874–1907.
Warren, J. W., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism. Cambridge: Cambridge
Wilson, C. “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Epicureanism, edited by J. W. Warren, 266–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009.
Woolf, R. “What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?” Phronesis 49 (2004): 303–22.
Woolf, R. “Pleasure and Desire.” In The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, edited by
J. W. Warren, 158–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
chapter 30
Epicu rus i n
N i n eteen th- Cen tu ry
Ger m a n y
Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche
James I. Porter
The attention that Epicurus received among German Romantic philosophers from
Kant to Nietzsche is remarkable. This is partly to be explained by the French Revolution,
which elevated ancient atomism to a new level of prominence. The worldly materialism
of this ancient doctrine, and its amenability to atheism, secularism, science, humanist
ethics, and communal values, were obvious attractions. But the ground had been pre-
pared earlier with the rediscovery of ancient materialism by the natural philosophers of
the seventeenth century and with the increased focus on Epicureanism that was inaugu-
rated by Gassendi. Earlier still, Renaissance scholars had laid the foundations for this
dramatic shift with their renewed philological attention to the principal texts.1 Being
better preserved than the first-generation Greek atomists (Democritus and Leucippus),
not least of all thanks to the poem On the Nature of Things by his Roman spokesperson
Lucretius, Epicurus naturally moved into the limelight. The reception of Epicurus was,
however, not all positive, and not even his well-wishers were faithful exegetes of his phi-
losophy. Consequently, the third-century atomist lent himself to various appropriations
and misappropriations even as he was pilloried from different quarters. As a result, his
name continued to flourish amongst his enemies and his allies alike. A case in point is
Kant, who in his youth was a card-carrying Lucretian, and in his sager period could not
help working Epicurean concepts into the foundations of his critical philosophy
(prolēpsis; pleasure, pain, and the feeling of life; the sublime by way of Lucretius), while
never missing an opportunity to attack the atomist as inimical to his projects.2
1 See Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity.

2 Kant, Universal Natural History (1755) = AA 1.212, 226; Critique of Pure Reason B208–25, esp.
B208 = AA 4.206–24; 4.208 (prolēpsis; Epicurus); Critique of Judgment §29 = AA 5.277–78 (Epicurus;
feeling; life; pleasure). On Kant and Lucretius, see Porter, “Lucretius and the Sublime.”
762 JAMES I. PORTER
Perhaps it is only the iconic status of Epicurus that can explain the fascination that he
exercised over Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche in the next century. The coincidence of these
three towering figures all training their sights on Epicurus is of some interest to scholars
of antiquity, though anyone looking for illumination of Epicurean doctrine here is
bound to come away disappointed. In one sense, though, it was hardly an accident that
three such prominent if dissimilar philosophical figures should have taken so great an
interest in Epicurus. All three were reared in the same classical traditions of Greek and
Roman literature, history, and philosophy. And ancient atomism was fashionable again.
But if their philology united them, their philosophies divided them.
In his dissertation, Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie
nebst einem Anhange (“Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean
Philosophies of Nature, with an Appendix”), which he submitted for a doctoral degree
in philosophy at Jena in 1841, Karl Marx (1818–83) set out to reclaim Epicurus from the
opprobrium that had attached to the ancient philosopher starting with antiquity (Stoics
mocked him for the absurdity of his physical hypotheses), then amongst the Christian
Fathers (for his atheism), and finally in Marx’s own lifetime, not least in the published
lectures of G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the most influential German thinker since Kant,
whose lofty idealism, nourished by a strong preference for spiritual concepts and a dis-
dain for all things material, had little patience for Epicurean naïveté. Hegel had briefly
discussed Epicurus in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and Marx, intrigued by
materialism and dissatisfied with Hegel, decided to take issue with his great predecessor
(abetted by his mentor, Bruno Bauer, a member of the dissenting Young Hegelians).
Where Hegel had contrasted Epicurus with Democritus (to Epicurus’s discredit), Marx
went the other way. The dissertation might as well have been called “Difference between
Marx and Hegel,” so polemical a reading of Hegel’s Lectures does it represent. Like Hegel,
Nietzsche (1840–1900) contemplated penning a work on The History of Philosophy, in
which Epicurus would have featured prominently.3 And, like Marx, Nietzsche was
deeply attracted to materialism. But Nietzsche and Marx were famously incompatible
thinkers, perhaps as incompatible as Nietzsche and Hegel. Nowhere do their differences
crystalize more sharply than in their respective views of Epicurus.4 On the other hand,
any comparison is bound to be skewed. Hegel’s mentions of Epicurus are pretty much
confined to his Lectures. Marx’s encounter was brief, lasting only two years, and he
would effectively ignore Epicurus in his later writings. Nietzsche, on the other hand,
spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Epicurus, and he had ample opportunity to
revise his views.
In what follows, which will be no more than a preliminary first sketch, Marx
and Nietzsche will be of primary interest, as they have the most to say about Epicurus.
3 12[1]; 1888. Citations in this form are to Nietzsche’s notebooks, cited after the KSA edition
(Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke). Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
4 It is unlikely that Nietzsche knew of Marx’s dissertation on Epicurus, which appeared in print for
the first time in 1902, or that he cared to read Hegel either.
Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche 763
But because Marx’s dissertation cannot be understood without reference to Hegel, it will
be essential to look back to him before examining Marx’s own writings.
Hegel
Hegel’s most extensive encounter with Epicurus occurs in a brief section of the Lectures
on the History of Philosophy, the first comprehensive edition of which appeared in 1833–36,
immediately before Marx set to work on the subject. (The lectures had been delivered in
Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin between 1805 and 1831.)5 As one might suspect of the author
of The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel finds the metaphysical postulates of
atomism to be philosophically bankrupt, starting with Leucippus and Democritus,
whose theory Hegel declares impoverished (dürftig).6 In the wake of the early atomists,
Epicureanism appears as a mindless victim of sensation, overwhelmed with particulars
and incapable of higher orders of thought, concepts (Begriffe), and understanding (das
Begreifen)—and utterly unmoored from rational teleology. In Hegel’s eyes, the whole of
Epicurus’s system is afflicted with uncertainty, from its metaphysical constituents to its
divinities. Atoms collide in random patterns. They represent sheer events and nothing
more, conditioned as they are by causes outside themselves. With nature so constructed,
it can only ever fail to add up to a unified totality.7 Can nature on the atomistic hypothe-
sis even be conceived as such? At best, one can try to grasp the truth of nature by way of
roundabout analogies, but these are mere metaphors and sensuous images that are
based on hypothetical similarities, all pure speculation and fantasy—sheer poetic fi ction
(Dichtung).8 As a consequence, Epicurus’s philosophy is a trafficking in “unknowns” by
way of further unknowns.9 Then there is the materialist premise, utterly objectionable to
the idealist Hegel. The notion that the soul should “consist of individual atoms and [that]
the atoms are separated by void” is a non-starter: “Let’s not waste our time with such
nonsense any longer; these are empty words. We cannot have any respect for Epicurus’s
philosophical ideas; better yet, they are not even ideas to begin with.”10
Not content with this estimation, Hegel must prove it: he goes on to insure that con-
cepts will only come to naught in Epicurus’s system. Where Epicurus laid the founda-
tions of empirical knowledge in the senses and sought to derive concepts on this basis,
Hegel builds uncertainty into the very process of concept-formation. He does so by a
peculiar sleight of hand that involves a substitution of a bad idea for a good one and a
forced translation in the bargain. In a nutshell, Hegel will seek to tar Epicurus’s notion of
concepts (or thought) with the brush of atomistic void, literally emptying concepts of all
5 For general background on Hegel’s Lectures, see Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1–42;
De Laurentiis, Subjects in the Ancient and Modern World.
6 Hegel, Werke, 18.353–68. References by volume are to this edition, which reproduces the text of the
1833–36 edition that Marx would have used. The Lectures span vols. 18 and 19. Translations are mine.
7 19.314. 8 19.317, 314, 312. 9 19.314. 10 19.322.
764 JAMES I. PORTER
meaning by reducing them to a hapless process that appears to have no explanation and
no certain contact with outer reality as Epicurus claimed and required. All this will lay
the groundwork for Marx, who will come to Epicurus’s rescue with his dissertation. But
first, let us turn to Hegel’s demolition, which begins, appropriately enough, in an analy-
sis of conceptual and epistemological error.
Error results, in Epicurean epistemology (Hegel summarizes), when the sensation
that we have is impure and the representation that works its way into our minds pro-
duces a change such that the internal representation no longer corresponds to (no
longer attests to) the object. At this point, another, different motion occurs within, dis-
tinct from that which flows from the sensation of the object. This “interruption”—or
“break” or “rupture” (Unterbrechung)—is the cause of the error.11 Hegel puts consider-
able stock in this notion of interruption, which in itself is a slightly tendentious render-
ing of the original Greek term dialēpsis (διάληψις). Dialēpsis means something like
mental “separation” or “distinction” (cf. Ep. Hdt. 58, 69; Arrighetti [31.16].23; [34.22].10;
[35.12].7),12 though in the present context Epicurus does appear to have in mind some-
thing like a break or rupture between an atomic process and its product, whether this
product is ontological, conceptual, or implies property emergence (the whole question
is hotly debated today).13 As Diogenes reports, error results from “some other move-
ment in ourselves [sc. other than the one conforming to the sensation], conjoined with,
but distinct from (διάληψιν δὲ ἔχουσαν), the perception of what is presented” (Ep. Hdt.
51).14 By this is meant that the possibility of error is introduced when an opinion is
formed about a sense perception: the opinion may be true or false, depending on
whether the opinion is subsequently confirmed by sensory evidence (enargeia) or not.
Hegel continues: “This movement of our own is what Epicurus calls an interruption
(Unterbrechung). . . . The entire Epicurean theory of knowledge is reducible to these
impoverished passages, which are in part either obscurely presented by Diogenes
[Laertius] or else badly excerpted by him; a more impoverished theory is not possible to
imagine.”15
The poor quality of the ancient report hardly prevents Hegel from embroidering on
its implications to his satisfaction. In fact, he has already done so by claiming for the pas-
sage an emblematic status. What the passage probably describes is the formation, from
within the mind, of an opinion about the truth or falsity of a sensation. This judgment,
which is an internal movement of thought, is linked to the sensation but added to it as an
independent process. Presumably, what the mind does is sort through its memory of
similar sensations and then compare and evaluate them in order to produce a judgment
of the veracity or falsity of the sensation.16 Some kind of interruption must be involved
11 19.308.
12 This last fragment was emended by Laursen, “The Early Parts of Epicurus”; see Masi, Epicuro e la
filosofia della mente, 76 for the text with discussion.
13 See Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia della mente, 76–78 and passim for discussion. For the descriptive
possibility, see Atherton, “Reductionism, Rationality and Responsibility,” 214.
14 Trans. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius, adapted. 15 19.309.
16 See Asmis, “Epicurean Empiricism,” 89–95.
that allows the mind to redirect itself from the immediate outer sensation to a memory
bank of like sensations and then back again to the immediate sensation. Whether the
swerve is involved in this process depends upon how one dates the invention of the con-
cept, which may not have been available to Epicurus at the time of The Letter to
Herodotus.17 And though Hegel does not invoke the swerve directly as the cause of the
interruption, he acknowledges that the swerve pervades Epicurus’s system and condi-
tions all atomic events, imparting to them a fundamental contingency (Zufall) of motion
and combination.18 Hegel’s idea of an interruption, then, is prima facie plausible, at least
in some form or other. The way he goes on to expand the concept is another story.
Hegel continues:
Knowledge qua thought is determined entirely as a movement of its own [i.e., one
not caused from without] that produces an interruption (die eine Unterbrechung
macht) . . .
which is to say, constitutes a rupture or break in the reception of sensory input.19 So far
so good, except that Hegel wants to fill in the meaning of Unterbrechung in a peculiar
way, one that will be to Epicurus’s detriment. First, he attempts to render Epicurus’s con-
cept of thought impotent at the very moment that it seems to assert itself against the
outer sensory environment, and he does this by associating thought with the idea of the
void (how he does this remains to be shown). Then he empties this concept of knowl-
edge further by rendering it into an unknown and unknowable process of its own—as is
everything else, he believes, in Epicurus’s system. Hegel does all of this through a series
of peculiar associations that are possible only on his own speculative dialectic, and on a
rather chary account of atomism. Let’s have a look.
Thought, Hegel writes, is to be regarded as an interruption (in the sense of a hiatus),
and is in this way to be associated with void and with negation (for void is the negation, or
interruption, of Being): “Since the stream of atoms is interrupted by the void, it is possible
to stem this flood” through the action of thought.20 The statement is in some sense true as
it stands: void is the condition both of the possibility of motion and of motion’s interrup-
tion. But void is not the sufficient condition for a change of motion. Hegel ignores this for
the time being. To complete his reading he must equate void with interruption in the
most general of terms: “The dialectical other of the atom is the void, the interruption
(Unterbrechung), [the] poros [pore, opening, passage-way].”21 At a stroke, thought can
now be assimilated to void as an agent (or site) of interruption, even if the causes of this
interruption are left utterly unexplained. Epicurus offered one such causal explanation:
the exceedingly light and mobile nature of atoms that make up thought, and which allows
for their redirection. But though Hegel is familiar with this account, he is unimpressed by
it: “—utterly vacuous [lit., thoughtless] notion” (ganz gedankenlose Vorstellung).22
17 See Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action, 144–51. See Masi, Epicuro e la filosofia
della mente, ch. 6; also Englert in this volume.
18 19.312–13. 19 19.309. 20 19.309, emphasis added. 21 19.309. 22 19.322.
766 JAMES I. PORTER
Why thought should be any more susceptible to interruption, any more “afflicted
(behaftet) by a negative principle, the moment of interruption (Unterbrechung),”23 than
the streaming of sense data or any other atomic motion is left obscure on Hegel’s
reading. More than this kind of rupturing is needed to account for thought as a true
interruption, to be sure: required on Epicurus’s account are, at a minimum, the unpre-
dictability of the swerve, which breaks the chains of necessity that otherwise determine
the course of the atoms, and some volitional factor that takes over once determinism has
been breached. What is particularly offensive to Hegel is not so much the process of
atomic rupture as its location in thought. But none of this matters in the end, for with his
analogies in place, or rather his equations of thought with interruption, rupture, void,
and the principle of negation or negativity, Hegel can now go on to reduce Epicurus’s
canonic to a failed Hegelian dialectic, while literally voiding atomistic thought in the
process. Hegel’s reductio ad absurdum is really just an impatient argument, and not a
very good one at that.
As Hegel views things, Epicurus hits, somehow and almost by chance, upon the
notion of a freely formed thought, one that interrupts the influx of sensation. This is
something that Hegel is happy to applaud, since it represents an incipient triumph of the
mind over the empirical world and the body and hence a speculative movement and
determination of sorts.24 Hegel implicitly links this virtual “swerve” of thought to
Epicurus’s invention of the arbitrary atomic swerve and its rupturing of the chains of
physical determinism. But true to form, Hegel will never allow Epicurus to savor his vic-
tories. Epicurus stumbles onto a good thing, but fails to grasp what it is that he has
found. He lacks, precisely, the conceptual power, and above all the respect for the power
of conceptuality, that would allow him to do so in the first place. Thus, Hegel goes on:
but what this interruptive motion is, now understood in an objective sense (für sich),
Epicurus hasn’t got a clue.25
Worse, the interruption of atomic motion is in fact the distinguishing mark of all atomic
motion.26 The mind is mired in its atomistic composition. It is not entitled to celebrate a
liberation from matter.
Hegel’s final verdict on Epicurus is that his system is riddled with unwitting inconsist
ency. On the one hand, Epicurus wants to make reality essentially contingent (“chance
rules everything”), but he also wants to “banish” thought as a form of Being-in-Itself
(Ansichseiendes), which is to say that he makes thought into an absolute that, reducible
neither to the “concept” nor to the “universal,” is identical to the form of being that char-
acterizes atoms and void, albeit in a way that works against nature through the act of
interruption. On the other hand, Epicurus fails to recognize that his “atoms have the
very same nature as thought has.” By this Hegel does not mean that thought is made up
23 19.311.
24 As does interruption in general (understood as void), which permits motion, from which other
developments can and do ensue (Hegel, Werke, 5.185, in his Science of Logic).
25 19.309. 26 19.313.
of atoms, which would be a perfectly unobjectionable restatement of Epicurus, but

rather that thought is “a kind of Being that is not unmediated, since it is essentially the
result of mediation, and hence is negative or universal.”27 Translated into plain English,
what Hegel means is that atoms are the product of thought, being conceptual devices for
making sense of the world, rather than being preexisting material objects in the world,
despite whatever Epicurus might claim to the contrary.
In this way, Hegel has managed to accomplish three things with his destructive analy-
sis of Epicurus. He has made error and truth indistinguishable (for there is no criterion
available to atomism for distinguishing truth from falsity).28 He has driven a conceptual
uncertainty into the heart of Epicurus’s theory of knowledge (for, at bottom, Epicurus’s
theory acts out the motions, so to speak, of a theory, while being at a loss to explain its
own foundations). And he has built a fruitless—interrupted—dialectic into the theory
so that atomism in its Epicurean form will be guaranteed to be still-born and will never
evolve, as it in fact never does, though for different reasons from those that Hegel
ascribes to Epicurus’s disciples. Epicureans remained resolutely loyal to their master’s
teachings, which stood above all challenges or corrections. But in Hegel’s view,
Epicurus’s philosophy, to survive, must remain unreflective lest it notice its own
absurdities:
[The evolution of the school] would have involved precisely a collapsing into under-
standing (ein Verfallen ins Begreifen), which would only have thrown the Epicurean
system into a confusion[!]; for . . . it was just this vacuity of thought (Gedankenlosigkeit)
that was made into a principle [of the school].29
Hegel is merciless. In his assessment, Epicurus’s theory is not merely unthinking, but it
also represents the very interruption of thought.30
Having located the core issues of Epicurus’s physics and metaphysics to his satisfac-
tion, Hegel turns to Epicurus’s morals and ethics. But this area of Epicurus’s theory fares
little better. The victim of arbitrary sensation and of mere particulars, moral thought can
27 19.313.
28 So close are the two processes, one might easily mistake Hegel’s account of “error” for an account
of the way in which Epicurus arrives at truth. This is how Hegel was understood by his editor and
pupil, Michelet, who believed that with “interruption” Hegel was referring to erroneous thought pure
and simple, rather than to judgments of truth and error: “We know the objective world when its atoms
flow in just as they are. Error arises out of the void, out of an interruption of the influx of the atoms,
whereby the atoms come to be dislocated and changed, and in this way they produce our imaginings
and our dreams” (Michelet, “Ueber Idealismus und Realismus,” 3–4, emphasis added).
29 19.334.
30 There is an additional destructive consequence of Hegel’s reading of Epicurus, namely the
impression he gives that Epicureanism is ridden with interruption, when in fact it appears to have
presupposed a great deal of natural regularity at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. See
Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover the Free Will Problem?,” esp. 337: “The swerve . . . was meant to . . .
mak[e] the mental dispositions of adult human beings non-necessary [i.e., non-necessitated]. . . . This
is possible without great interruptions and ‘out-of-character’ developments, if one assumes a certain
frequency of the swerves [and] a generally stable atomic structure of the mind.”
768 JAMES I. PORTER
never rise above itself to discover its own justifications: “in this way morality is actually
eliminated (aufgehoben), or [rather] the moral principle is in reality an immoral one.”31
But this is nothing new. It is just an extension of Epicurus’s general habit of turning
thought against itself: “thought is used precisely in order to inhibit thought; it acts in a
negative fashion against itself.”32 Gods, by virtue of existing in the intermundia, under-
stood (as Hegel understands them) as empty space and (therefore) as the realm of pure
thought, are the final and highest expression of this Epicurean paradox. Their truest
essence cannot be pressed to its logical conclusion on pain of utter contradiction: Are
gods real or not? Are they “concretions” of atoms in compound structures or autono-
mous beings that exist in and of themselves (as an In-itself)? In some sense, they display
the full force of the negation of sensation, “and this negation is thought.” All this:
appears ridiculous, but it is coherent with the above-mentioned Unterbrechungen

and the relationship of the empty to its realization as full (the atom).33
And yet, in the end such questions are of little import, since even atoms are no more
than creatures of thought, mere figments of the mind (nur Gedankendinge), or rather of
Geist and the Concept, as both lurch forward into modernity34—well past Epicurus,
who turns out to have been not only mindless and thoughtless (gedankenlos),35 but
decidedly inimical to thought, to abstraction, to universality, and to the notion of the
In-itself as a necessary feature of the Being of the Concept. The irony is that “Epicurus
banished thought in the form of Being-in-itself,” or rather what he understood this to
be, by reducing reality to atoms (and void), but not to the Concept, “without noticing
(ohne . . . zu denken) that his atoms themselves had the nature of thought,” because they
were generated by thought and in no other way. In other words, Epicurus was an idealist
who mistook himself for a realist. Alas, “such is the inconsequential reasoning of all
empiricists.”36
Marx
Marx, already in his posthumously published dissertation, sets out to stand Hegel on his
head, and he does so by making a case for the coherence and significance of Epicurus’s
thought in the history of philosophy in a way that Hegel could never have countenanced.
Behind this reversal of Hegel lies an equally powerful move: a rejection of the classiciz-
ing bias that jaundices Hegel’s account of all philosophy after Plato and Aristotle. Marx
sets the tone with his very first sentence:
Greek philosophy appears to have run up against something that a good tragedy
should never encounter, namely a dull ending . . . Epicureans, Stoics, and sceptics
31 19.323. 32 19.334. 33 19.330. 34 19.335. 35 19.322, 334. 36 19.313.

are viewed as an almost unseemly postscript that bears no relationship to its power-
ful premises.37
The very notions of birth, flowering, and decline, which are the actual premises of this
kind of view, Marx adds, are themselves “vague” notions, capable of encompassing
much but of comprehending nothing, while “decline is presaged in the living,” and it is
just as specific and valuable a characteristic as “the very shape of life.”38
Marx then turns to Democritus, whose philosophical positions, as the early co-
founder of atomism, he will measure against those of Epicurus, the school’s later repre-
sentative. On Marx’s view, it is Democritus, not Epicurus, who harbors uncertainty,
self-contradiction, and confusion. Is he a materialist or a sceptic? Is truth something
that can be known or does it lie forever hidden “in the depths”?39 Are atoms real, while
all else is mere subjective appearance? Or are sensual appearances real, being an inelim-
inable part of the physical world?40 Caught on both horns of this dilemma (Marx calls it
an “antinomy”), Democritus is unable to escape the consequences: his system is fatally
at odds with itself in its conceptual foundations. Objectivity and subjectivity are forever
“at war.” By contrast, Epicurus resolves the antinomy by adopting a dogmatic, not scepti-
cal, view of reality: appearances are real and irrefutable, as real as the atoms that consti-
tute them: they have an objective and no longer subjective value. In accepting atomism’s
first principles, but in refusing to grant appearances a “merely intentional” (Nur-
Gemeinten), subjective value, Epicurus asserts his freedom from Democritus’s epistemic
hardships.41
A good deal follows from this principled decision. In Epicurus’s wake, Democritus
now appears as a pseudo-empiricist. Insecure in his foundations, he is “driven” into
empirical observation, in search of evidence that would resolve his intellectual dilem-
mas, but never able to satisfy this desire, which is structurally built into his theoretical
position.42 Epicurus, on the other hand, is a philosopher characterized by lassitude and
“boundless nonchalance”:43 he is “satisfied and blissful in philosophy.”44 He experiences
true freedom, which rests on a freedom from a desire to know empirically anything in
particular. Hence, he “despises the positive sciences,” for they can contribute nothing to
“genuine perfection.”45 This latter is given immediately in sensation, in pleasure, and in a
general indifference towards Being. Where Democritus must seek out iron-clad laws of
physical necessity and determinism, Epicurus is content to let the world unwind accord-
ing to the whims of contingency and the caprices of the human will. In conceding so
37 Marx, “Differenz,” 21; all translations mine. (For an English translation, albeit one not based on
the critical German edition, see Marx and Engels, Collected Works, 1.23–107.) Sannwald, Marx und die
Antike on Marx and antiquity is fundamental, and has some good pages on the dissertation. The early
piece by Bailey, “Karl Marx on Greek Atomism” is a rare study by a classicist, one who remains puzzled
if respectful. Gabaude, Le jeune Marx et le materialisme antique, the only book-length treatment, is
energetic but flawed. The best essay known to me is McIvor, “The Young Marx and German Idealism.”
See below.
38 “Differenz,” 22. 39 “Differenz,” 25. 40 “Differenz,” 25–26. 41 “Differenz,” 26.
42 “Differenz,” 27. 43 “Differenz,” 30. 44 “Differenz,” 27. 45 “Differenz,” 28.
770 JAMES I. PORTER
much independent and as it were discretionary reality to Being, Epicurus can adopt a
corresponding independence from its demands: this is the source of ataraxia, or free-
dom from mental disturbance, which Marx describes as a kind of contingency of
thought (Zufall des Denkens), corresponding to Epicurus’s free embrace of contingency
in the physical world.46
Rather than devolving into a passive spectator sport or a dereliction of the mind’s
rational duties, such a stance permits Epicurus to develop his philosophy into a highly
engaged theory and practice of perceptual and conceptual reflection. In fact, one of the
virtues of his philosophy, in Marx’s view, is that the functions of sensual perception and
mental conceptualization are mutually involved at every level and work themselves out
in tandem. They are not stymied and confused, stuck in a stalled dialectic as Hegel felt
they were. On the contrary, they demonstrate a sophisticated and seemingly logical
advance over earlier philosophical speculation. The contrast with Democritus in partic-
ular is designed to bring out this philosophical evolution. Side-glances at Epicurus’s
contemporaries and rivals, the Stoics and the Sceptics, provide a further contrast.
Epicurus’s first step towards a radical break with Democritus occurs in his reconcep-
tion of the atom. For Democritus, the atom exists as a purely material postulate or sub-
strate (stoicheion: “element”). Inaccessible to appearances, “it sinks down to the material
basis,” where “it exists only in the void,” in a kind of formal death, embodying, qua
“abstract particularity,” “freedom from existence, not freedom in existence.”47 So con-
ceived, it illuminates nothing, and least of all itself. From this perspective, Democritus’s
epistemological despair is easily understood. Truth truly does lie in the depths—invisibly
and irretrievably so. On the other hand, Marx declares the very concept of the atom to
be a formal contradiction, as it requires the ascription of phenomenal qualities (shape,
form, and weight) to what is in essence a brute material quantity; owing to this contra-
diction, the atom is “alienated (entfremdet) from its concept” (which Marx also calls its
“form”).48 Hegel had noted a similar difficulty in his critique of Epicurus, whose account
of atomic qualities he labeled a “gratuitous fiction.”49 The problem, lurking within the
concept of the atom and hidden from view, is for Marx the actual source of Democritus’s
epistemological anxieties.
Democritus evaded the problem; Epicurus confronts it head on.50 He does so by seiz-
ing on this contradiction within the Democritean system, which is the contradiction
between matter and form, or between existence and essence, and then by transforming
this into the positive condition of a newly reconceived atomism. Alienation (the alien-
ated concept of the atom) is redeemed. A repressed or unwitting dilemma is made into a
46 “Differenz,” 31.
47 “Differenz,” 47. This verdict is typically taken as a condemnation by Marx of Epicurus (see n. 95),
but this is to overlook the fact that the position being described by Marx is held by Democritus, not by
Epicurus, who surmounts it (see below).
48 “Differenz,” 48. Strictly, Marx says this: “the world as it appears can arise only out of the qualified
[as opposed to purely quantitative] atom, [viz., an atom] that has been perfected and alienated from its
concept.”
49 “Differenz,” 312. 50 “Differenz,” 39–43.
principle (archē) of consciousness—phenomenal and conceptual consciousness. And

consciousness is raised to a new degree of self-consciousness. This, in a nutshell, is the
sum and substance of Epicurus’s advances over Democritus. In targeting Epicurus,
Marx’s implicit lesson is that philosophy could only advance by thinking its way, not
past (as Hegel impatiently would have liked) but through the complexities of matter and
materialism. The ways in which Marx works out Epicurus’s solutions to the dilemmas of
atomism are therefore all the more revealing of Marx’s own attitudes towards material-
ism, at least at this early phase of his evolving thought.51
Epicurus’s first move, according to Marx, is to reconceive the atom as a dynamic prin-
ciple rather than the inert bit of matter that Democritus had conceived it to be. And to do
this he has to view the atom as asserting itself in a radical fashion, by negating its sur-
roundings (space), in much the same way as time is a negation of space.52 The association
of time and atomism will become increasingly relevant in Marx’s analysis. This conquest
of space through self-assertion occurs when the atom swerves without cause: by means of
the swerve the atom lays claim to its “pure formal determination,” its “individuality,” and
its freedom from physical necessity.53 In this new-found independence, the atom resem-
bles a celestial body,54 a point that will also come to dominate Marx’s analysis. The swerve
represents the “soul” of the atom, its conceptual identity, and the idea of its abstract par-
ticularity55—something that Democritus’s atoms lacked. In this way, Democritean atoms,
conceived as Beings in-themselves (as potential, inert, and material)—become distinc-
tively Epicurean atoms, conceived as Beings for-themselves (actual, dynamic, ideal, and
abstract). This, too, is an honor that Hegel had denied to Epicurean atoms, as we saw.56
Marx’s interpretation of the swerve is without a doubt the most famous element of his
dissertation. It allows for radical contingency in nature and for subjective freedom, a
point that Marx reiterates in his notebooks to the dissertation.57 As such, it makes for a
poignant allegory of the incipient bourgeois subject en route to its self-realization and
ultimate emancipation from the clutches of external determinants, one that is easily
overstated.58 But the value of the swerve goes far beyond this charming political a llegory.
In making atoms into dynamic principles, the swerve permits them to engage in a
51 A raging question in the literature is how much of a materialist Marx shows himself to be in his
dissertation. The proposals, which range all over the map, are neatly summarized by McIvor, “The
Young Marx and German Idealism,” 398–99 (his own view appears on p. 404). Marx’s vivid interest in
materialism is, I believe, indiscussible, and equal only to his desire to fuse it with Hegelian idealism.
See below.
52 “Differenz,” 35. 53 “Differenz,” 35, 36. 54 “Differenz,” 36. 55 “Differenz,” 37.
56 Here, Hegel was siding with Kant, who found Epicurus to be “outrageous” (unverschämt) for
having introduced the unnatural perversion of this deviant motion (the swerve) into nature (Kant,
Gesammelte Schriften, 1.227).
57 “Differenz,” 26; MEGA 4.1 contains the seven notebooks, or “Hefte”, that led up to the Dissertation
(translations mine; published translation available in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, 1.405–509,
though not based on the more recent critical German edition). These notebooks date roughly from
early 1839 to February 1840.
58 As, for example, by Gabaude, Le jeune Marx et le materialisme antique, 60: “Atomes égaux entre
eux et dieux équivalents expriment l’individualisme et le refus de l’autorité” (with nothing in Marx to
back up this paraphrase).
772 JAMES I. PORTER
f ruitful dialectic with nature and the mind. It does this first by “realizing” the internal
contradiction of atomism, and then by redeeming its largest ethical implications.
Marx’s logic, in its most general outlines, runs as follows: the aim of individual action,
exemplified by the atom, is to swerve, to abstract itself, to avoid (ausbeugen) pain and
confusion;59 existence as a whole is the object of a universal avoidance; “and therefore the
gods avoid the world (beugen die Götter der Welt aus), cease to care about it, and live out-
side of it.”60 In paving the way for a distantiated apprehension of the world by a subject,
the swerve’s ultimate function is ethical: its implications bear on voluntarism (self-
determination) and on a vitalist embrace of subjective life, which on Marx’s view cap-
tures the ultimate thrust of Epicurus’s hedonism. And the ethical stance of Epicureanism,
conceived as directing us to “a form of life,” lies at the very heart of Marx’s appreciation
of the ancient atomist. Explaining how all this works will take a bit more unpacking.
On Marx’s reading the swerve is central to atomism for a few different reasons. First, it
is through its declension, the movement away from a direct free-fall, that the atom
“abstracts [itself] from existence, which stands over and against it, and withdraws from
the same.” This is a moment of “negation,” in which the atom asserts its relative differ-
ence against other atoms, which must in turn be redeemed by another, positive
moment—the moment of self-affirmation, in which the atom, so to speak, declares its
own existence. Self-affirmation is only possible, Marx claims, through such an act of
alienation, and more specifically through the mutual repulsion, via physical contact, of
atoms. This is how atoms “realize” their identities, by achieving a formal abstraction
from their material existence and by entering into dynamic configurations.61 Here,
Marx is giving Epicurus an insight into the subjective process that Hegel would not—or
rather, he is allowing atoms to enter into dynamic relations that permit, or simply prefig-
ure, higher and more interesting levels of organization.62 The leap to social relations is
59 See Lucr. DRN 2.251–60 with Bobzien, “Did Epicurus Discover the Free Will Problem?,” 310.
60 “Differenz,” 37; emphasis in original. A curious term, ausbeugen (lit. “bending out of the way,” as if
by swerving) is cognate with ausbiegen, and is equivalent to ausweichen, “to withdraw from,” “stand back
from.” Nietzsche writes in a similar vein (but without the connotations of “swerve”) when he defines
Epicurus’s “pessimism”: “das ‘Ausweichen’ als ‘göttlich’ empfunden,” “ ‘withdrawal’ [from the world] was
viewed [by Epicurus] as ‘divine’ ” (8[15]; 1883). Hegel’s term for “swerve” was “abweichen” (19.313).
61 “Differenz,” 38. “For the atoms are themselves their sole object, and they can be related to one
another—in spatial terms, [can] come into mutual contact—only when any relative existence of these
same atoms that might put them in relation to other entities is negated. And this relative existence is
their original movement, that of falling in a straight line, as we have seen. Thus, atoms first make
mutual contact through their declension from the [straight line].” Emphasis in original.
62 Fenves, “Marx’s Doctoral Thesis,” 441 finds it “strange” that Marx should fail to attribute (“never
mentions”) attraction to Epicurean atoms, which would complete their speculative Aufhebung as
entities existing for-themselves and endowed with an essential qualitative unity, as Hegel would argue
in his Science of Logic (Hegel, Werke, 5.186–208; cf. Encyclopedia §262 in Werke 9.60–63). But why
should we expect Marx to do so? Epicurean physics knows only repulsion, while Hegel is describing
modern Newtonian physics, which has fundamentally different properties and laws. As it happens, “ein
System der Repulsion und Attraction” is in fact attributed by Marx to atoms by way of their analogy to
celestial bodies, which he calls “die wirklich gewordenen Atome” (55). But Marx makes little of this
mistaken attribution, and rightly so. He finds more interesting ways to redeem Epicurean matter, along
the lines described in this essay.
easily made: “And in truth . . . a person ceases to be a product of nature” when she goes
through an identical process and encounters her peers in “material relationships.”63 In
this way, the lex atomi translates directly into a lex individui: “repulsion is the first form
of self-consciousness.”64 Material encounters are sublated into ideal ones, and relation-
ship are spiritualized, or at least put on the road to spiritual realization—which is to say,
idealization. How atoms can know all this is another question,65 but we are in the milieu
of German speculative philosophy at its finest hour, and not witnessing the history of
philosophy as it is conducted today. But we should at least note that even as Marx assim-
ilates atomism to speculative philosophy, at the very moment of the atoms’ abstraction
and idealization, he will never entirely let go of its materialist premises. Atoms remain
caught up in a web of material relations with one another, and this characterization will
run through the whole of Marx’s reconstruction of Epicurus’s system.
Having accounted for the atom’s affirmative negation of space, Epicurus’s next inno-
vation is to redeem time. Where Democritus banished time as unreal, Epicurus rein-
states time as “the absolute [and ‘pure’] form of appearance.”66 This is a powerful reading
by Marx, as it permits him to read Epicurus’s theory of appearances as a phenomenology
of matter, albeit one that inserts the dimension of time into the very perception of the
world. On this view, sensation just is the perception of change and of bodies as acci-
dents. Time is the perception of this perception—of change as change and accidence as
accidence. Combining these thoughts, Marx arrives at the following account of
Epicurean sensation: “Human sensation is thus embodied time, the existing reflection
of the world of the senses within itself.”67
One key term here is the word “reflection.” Marx’s point is that Epicurus marks an
advance over Democritus, and indeed over all of his predecessors, in achieving for
the very first time in the history of philosophy a notion of “appearance as appear-
ance” (Erscheinung als Erscheinung),68 which is to say a degree of reflection on
appearances that was never available before. It is worth noting that Hegel in his
Phenomenology of Spirit had reserved the same distinction to account for the arrival
of “truth” in one of its highest forms, namely as the “supersensual realm Beyond.”69
So this is a very high, and a very un-Hegelian, compliment to Epicureanism being
awarded here by Marx.
The second crucial term in Marx’s statement is “embodied.” The reflection on and of
the world that is won by sensation is achieved in the very act of sensation itself. It is sen-
sation, reflecting on itself in the act, that gives rise to the sense, and the concept, of
63 “Differenz,” 38–39. 64 “Differenz,” 39.

65 Anthropomorphism is rampant. Cf. “Differenz,” 36 where the swerve practically endows atoms
with “consciousness.”
66 “Differenz,” 48, 49. 67 “Differenz,” 50. 68 “Differenz,” 49.
69 “Das Innere oder das übersinnliche Jenseits . . . kommt aus der Erscheinung her, und sie ist seine
Vermittlung; oder die Erscheinung ist sein Wesen und in der Tat seine Erfüllung. . . . Das Übersinnliche
ist also die Erscheinung als Erscheinung” (Werke 3.118). A famous phrase, this appears to be its only
occurrence in Hegel.
774 JAMES I. PORTER
time:70 time is the time of sensation and the time it takes to notice the distance that sen-
sation has traveled. A union or synthesis of man and nature takes place:
human sensation (Sinnlichkeit) is thus the medium in which, as in a focusing device,

the processes of nature reflect on themselves and ignite into [viz., are transformed
into] the light of appearance.71
A corollary of this view is that things, insofar as they are phenomenal, are endowed with
an intrinsic and mortal temporality (Marx speaks of “die Zeitlichkeit der Dinge”), while
their sensation is the perception of this temporality (this is what is meant by the “embod-
ied temporality” of perception and sensation). In other words, when we take in the
world, what we take in is not only its appearance, but also its dissolution and passing
away (Diremtion; sich auflösen; vergehen).72 Time in effect consumes matter. Only, it
does so not in a material way, but in a formal way, as we shall see.
Marx can add this dimension of temporality to the Epicurean world and can
applaud it as an advance over the Democritean conception of reality because of his
conviction that time conveys a sense of the intrinsic contradiction between the mat-
ter and the form of reality—a distinction that was lost on Democritus. With the advent
of time, matter becomes abstract, or rather it is abstracted from its materiality: all
determinate existence (Dasein) is destroyed, annulled, and led back to a state of
Being-for-itself.73 This is the speculative moment that moves the dialectic of form
and matter forward. Thus:
Time is the fire of essence (das Feuer des Wesens), which eternally consumes appear-
ances and imprints upon them a seal of dependency and non-essentiality
(Wesenlosigkeit).74
As a result, two things happen to matter simultaneously: through reflection, it enters

into the dialectic of self-consciousness and nature (which is to say, it is elevated to a new
philosophical plateau of the ideal); and through sensation, it enters into concrete experi-
ence and practice as a humanly consumable entity. The contrast is again with
Democritean atoms, which, we should remember, were purely material things, inacces-
sible to the senses, and (as eternal beings) immune to the ravages of time, but also, para-
doxically, occupying a kind of eternal death;75 they were truly “atomistic” entities,
standing in relation neither to themselves76 nor to anything else.77 In sum, they repre-
sented a kind of anomie in nature, one that Marx found abhorrent.
70 “Differenz,” 50. 71 “Differenz,” 50. 72 “Differenz,” 50 73 “Differenz,” 49.

74 “Differenz,” 49. 75 “Differenz,” 47. 76 “Differenz,” 49.
77 Hegel would have concurred with some of these assessments (see his Science of Logic: Hegel,
Werke, 5.185), but Marx adds drama.
From here, Marx passes to an unexpected quadrant in Epicurus, his theory of celestial
phenomena (die Meteore, τὰ μετέωρα).78 It is here that Epicurus makes his boldest and
most radical moves, turning his face not only against Democritus, but also “against the
entire Greek race.”79 The heavens, the traditional seat of ever-lasting divinity, presented
Epicurus with the greatest challenge to his notion of ataraxy. Nature cannot be permit-
ted to include anything eternal, anything not subject to change or diminution, apart
from the atoms themselves. How could he find a way round this obstacle? Marx’s solu-
tion to Epicurus’s problem, or rather to what he perceives to be Epicurus’s problem, is
strained but intriguing. It is to concentrate, in effect, all the antinomies of matter into the
concept of the heavenly bodies, which (Marx claims) are the same antinomies as those
that afflict atoms but which now are instantiated in a highly visible way.80 The response
of the Epicurean, meanwhile, is to stand back and allow these problems to play them-
selves out on their own, while observing them with an attitude of complete indifference.
In effect, the antinomies do not so much resolve as they dissolve in the ataraxic mindset
of the Epicurean philosopher, for whom all such problems are now a matter of indiffer-
ence. But much in fact happens behind the scenes.
If atoms are “matter in the form of independence and particularity, [and] are so to
speak weight made visible (die vorgestellte Schwere),” then celestial bodies, Marx rea-
sons, are “the highest reality of weight,” and therefore are “atoms made real”:81 they are
the highest and most profound concretization of the atomic principle. And yet here, in
Epicurus’s theory of matter at its pinnacle, in his theory of heavenly bodies, a rupture
occurs in his system. For Epicurus’s single goal is to degrade the matter of the heavenly
bodies and “to draw them down into mundane impermanence.”82 And to do so would
be to ruin the hypothesis of atomism: atoms cannot be anything but permanent. Faced
with this impasse, Epicurus lights upon another way to achieve his aim. He does so
through a speculative turn, which Marx describes in this way: “The whole of Epicurean
natural philosophy is pervaded by the conflict between essence and existence, between
form and matter . . . but in the heavenly bodies this contradiction is extinguished, the
78 Meteore is misleadingly rendered as “meteors” in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, and
commentators unwittingly follow suit. In Greek scientific writing after Aristotle, ta meteōra (τὰ
μετέωρα), which Marx is rendering with die Meteore, means “lofty things,” literally “things on high.”
The natural referent of ta meteōra includes all celestial phenomena, from the appearance and behavior
of heavenly bodies (rising, falling, shining, eclipsing, etc.) to atmospheric events (wind, weather,
lightning, rainbows, etc.). But the extended meaning of “meteorology” includes terrestrial phenomena,
such as earthquakes and subterranean winds. All of these physical phenomena are on display in
Epicurus’s Letter to Pythocles, from which Marx is quoting, although Marx is interested only in
Epicurus’s treatment of celestial bodies as they appear to us.
80 It is tempting to include time itself amongst these higher-level antinomies, given how the
heavenly bodies are one of the more visible ways in which time is calculated (the sun and moon, and
the movement of the planets).
81 “Differenz,” 55. 82 “Differenz,” 56.
776 JAMES I. PORTER
conflicting moments are reconciled (versöhnt).”83 They are reconciled because a dialec-
tical process has ensued:
In the celestial system matter received form into itself and subsumed particularity
into itself, and in this way achieved independence.84
It achieved a kind of independence that not even the world of atoms could achieve, exist-
ing as they do in a barren material world, locked in an endless conflict with form, each
side canceling out the other. But celestial matter is a different kind of matter: it is matter
that, thanks to its internalization of form, has “become concrete particularity, [which is
to say] universality,” which must mean that celestial matter constitutes a particulariza-
tion of universality in the form of a concrete universal. And, “at this point [matter] ceases
to be [the] affirmation of abstract self-consciousness.”85
That is to say, in this stand-off between the desire for ataraxy and for the transcend
ence of matter on the one hand and the unshakeable reality of matter on the other, a
transformation occurs on both sides. Matter and consciousness diverge, once and for
all, in the visible gap between the heavenly bodies and their perception by a subject here
on earth. Self-consciousness emerges, like a chrysalis, as an entity distinct from matter,
“and declares itself to be the true principle [of Epicurus’s philosophy], and [as such] is
hostile to the newly independent nature . . . its brilliantly gleaming refutation [and]
mortal enemy.”86 Self-consciousness, we can only say, arises out of the ashes of nature,
which it negates in the very act of conceiving nature as (abstractly) possible—“for what
is possible can also be different.”87 The principle of atoms—their concept (their archē)—
negates their eternal character (as material element, or stoicheion); matter is vanquished
in the process of being reconciled to a higher purpose. The next phase, one that Epicurus
never attained,88 would be to convert abstract possibility into real possibility and real
actuality, and then both into real necessity. This would once again mark an advance over
Democritus, who knew only empirical real possibility and “relative necessity” in the
form of determinism.89 A higher form of realized possibility and actuality would be
these same things conceived as reflectively determined necessity.90 But one would have
to wait for Hegel to complete this circuit of logic.91
There is much drama to this speculative logic à la Hegel. But there is also much at
stake in Marx’s reading. One issue, still alive amongst Marx’s commentators, is whether
Marx in his dissertation is endorsing or criticizing Epicurus, and whether Marx is either
knowingly or unknowingly sacrificing the possibility of empirical science. The question
is fairly intricate, and also potentially controversial: I happen to believe that most if not
all these interpretations hinge on a misconstrual of Marx’s argument. A quick look at the
relevant parts of Marx’s exposition will help us arrive at a clearer view of the problem.
83 “Differenz,” 56; emphasis in original. 84 “Differenz,” 56 85 “Differenz,” 56.

86 “Differenz,” 56. 87 “Differenz,” 56. 88 “Differenz,” 30, 31. 89 “Differenz,” 30.
90 See Science of Logic, in Hegel, Werke, 6.202–13.
91 For a lucid explanation of this modal logic, see Longuenesse, Hegel’s Critique, ch. 4.
The heavenly bodies represent the greatest challenge to atomism not simply because
they are the conventional seat of divinity, fate, providence, and all that surpasses human
control, but also because in their vast unknowability, be this physical or metaphysical,
they present a palpable stumbling block to the human intellect, which in the normal
course of things responds by resorting to instinctual fear, most commonly in the guise of
superstition and the more unsettling forms of religion. In order to dispel this fear,
Epicurus takes a different route from the reductionism of Democritus, according to
whom the heavens were conglomerations of atoms and void. The price Democritus paid
for this move was to displace anxieties about nature onto the mind of the natural scien-
tist, as Marx claimed to show, and as Epicurus knows very well, for instance in a passage
from The Letter to Herodotus that is not cited by Marx but is doubtless in his sights.
Knowledge of celestial events contributes nothing to happiness, and if anything it
detracts from happiness. For:
Those who are well-informed about such matters and yet are ignorant what the heav-
enly bodies really are, and what are the most important causes of phenomena, feel
quite as much fear as those who have no such special information—nay, perhaps even
greater fear, when the curiosity excited by this additional knowledge cannot find a solu-
tion or understand the subordination of these phenomena to the highest causes.92
For Marx, Democritus’s view of the celestial realm also meant a reification of science.
Science, as pursued by Democritus, could progress no further than its own hypotheses
allowed: it could never overcome itself and, consequently, could never achieve
self-consciousness.93 Epicurus, meanwhile, demonstrated how the ultimate forms of
pleasure and tranquility could be sought out in the contemplation of the greatest menace
to mankind, the starry heavens—by staring these in the face, not with fear or desire but
with complete indifference. His solution was not to seek out the ultimate causes of celestial
phenomena, but simply not to care what they were. In Marxese, “nothing that the ataraxy
of individual self-consciousness destroys can be eternal”94—nature above all.
This does not spell the end of science, as most readers of Marx have assumed, but only
its first beginnings, which Marx locates in the discovery of the universal and the applica-
tion of the Concept to nature.95 One of the difficulties standing in the way of this reading
lies in making sense of a key text:
If abstract individual self-consciousness is posited as an absolute principle, then

indeed all true and real science is eliminated and preserved (aufgehoben), to the
extent that (in so weit . . . als) individuality does not predominate in the nature of
things themselves.96
92 Ep. Hdt. 79; trans. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius, 2.609. 93 “Differenz,” 57.
95 Differently, McCarthy, Marx and the Ancients, ch. 1 (esp. 39–40); Stanley, “The Marxism of Marx’s
Doctoral Dissertation”; Shafer, “The Young Marx on Epicurus”; McIvor, “The Young Marx and German
Idealism,” 409–10.
778 JAMES I. PORTER
On Marx’s view, Epicurus affirms this form of self-consciousness. But this does not
entail that Epicurus undermines science. Science is eliminated to one extent—to the
extent that Epicurus forfeits on, say, discovering the singular cause of a phenomenon.
But science is by no means utterly negated (as the qualifier, in so weit aufgehoben . . . als,
universally ignored, suggests alone). Quite the contrary, Epicurean physics rests on
securing a sound scientific method.97 Nor is it correct to claim for Epicurus, or for
Marx’s version of him, that “tout est possible.”98 You cannot live forever; nothing can
come from nothing; fish do not spring from the ground and cows do not grow in trees
(Lucr. DRN 1.159–73). If Epicurus is not interested in “knowledge of nature in and for
itself ” but only in “the ataraxy of self-consciousness,”99 this again is not a sign of episte
mic failure. In the place of “knowledge of nature in and for itself,” Epicurus would have
endorsed, rather, a project in (the satisfactions of) self-consciousness, which would
have entailed a sublated and elevated (aufgehoben), which is to say, a refined and
preserved, form of science.
There have been further misconstruals of Marx. The Epicurean atom, qua principle, is
not abstractly universal;100 it is concretely individual and universal.101 The statement,
“this is his greatest contradiction” (“Dies ist sein größter Widerspruch”),102 is not Marx’s
accusation of Epicurus (pace several of his readers). The statement should be under-
stood in the following way: “This is the greatest contradiction that Epicurus faced”
before he hit upon a solution to the problem. That is, it refers to a moment that precedes
Epicurus’s recourse to a new method, which entails the “dissolution” of atomism as its
final realization and its “conscious opposition to the universal.”103 Entailed is nothing
more than the resolution of atomism as a praxis founded on the self-conscious principle
that was guiding Epicureanism all along. The shift in accent between the two forms of
atomism, Democriteanism and Epicureanism, is indeed monumental. Whether it mer-
its awarding to Epicurus the praise of being “the greatest Greek figure of enlightenment
(der größte griechische Aufklärer)”104 may be discussible. But there is no disputing Marx’s
admiration for the man and his achievements.
Marx’s dissertation as we have it is incomplete. He also left behind seven sizeable
notebooks from the years leading up to 1841, all pertaining to the dissertation. These
occasionally cast more light on his thoughts, especially on one area which needs to be
further underscored: the ethical thrust of Epicureanism, which will help to clarify what
Marx may have meant when he thought of Epicurus as a great figure of enlightenment.
Surely one of the traits he had in mind was Epicurus’s generous optimism towards the
world—something that might appear counterintuitive given Epicurus’s physical postu-
lates and his presumptive indifference towards reality, death, contingency, and so on.
But Marx is right. There is nothing indifferent in the claim that subjective appearances
are real, therefore meaningful; that pleasure is the highest good; that life is the implied
97 Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method.

98 Gabaude, Le jeune Marx et le materialisme antique, 68. 99 “Differenz,” 31.
100 Stanley, “The Marxism of Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation,” 141, 151. 101 “Differenz,” 56, 47.
102 “Differenz,” 56. 103 “Differenz,” 58. 104 “Differenz,” 57.
locus in which human happiness is to be sought; that the world is a place of possibilities,
not of blank nihilism.105 As Marx writes in his first notebook, and in direct opposition to
Hegel:
The principle of philosophy for Epicurus is to show the world and thought as
conceivable, as possible.106
And this is, indeed, the general tenor of Epicurus’s philosophy. The trick, of course, is
that (at least in Marx’s view) the world is possible only to the extent that it is conceivable;
thought and possibility go hand in hand: securing a place for the subject in the world is
the ultimate goal of Epicureanism, even if that means rendering the world an ultimately
insecure, contingent, and uncertain place. But underlying this wish to secure a place for
the subject in nature is a kind of universal desire that Marx feels he can see running
through all the major philosophical systems in antiquity: “We are told that a desire for
Being (der Wunsch des Seins) is the oldest form of love.” “Indeed,” Marx continues, “the
most abstract and therefore the oldest love is the love for one’s self (die Selbstliebe), the
love of one’s particular Being.”107 How does Epicureanism satisfy either desideratum?
It does, quite beautifully, if strangely, on Marx’s reconstruction, by assuring individu-
als that they will persist qua Being even when they exist no longer as individuals after
death: for they will, at that point, continue to exist in the form of imperishable and
immortal atoms: “what is ensouled returns to the atomistic form,” and “death is at the
same time the vehicle of vitality.”108 Subjects are thus forever guaranteed a surrogate
eternality in their very own physical make-up, which is to say, in their constitutional
universal being (their Grundform): “eternality prevails over transience.”109 The world is
in this way positively affirmed, and subjects have a secure place in it. The desire for
immortality in any other form is a destructive illusion and is in fact a disparagement of
life itself, whereas to value life is to desire the very good that atomism offers, the fact of
atomistic eternal being.110
Thus, in Epicureanism, “life is not sublated (aufgehoben) into some higher sphere.”111
It is returned to itself in its elemental, physical nature, which is to say, to its essential uni-
versality. Grasp this and you will realize how in Epicureanism “the individual is emptied
of its extraneous determinations; it is determined as such in [an act of] celebration” as it
“cries out for joy” at its release from anxiety.112 But isn’t it a contradiction to reinvest
atoms with imperishability again? Not at all, Marx reassures us, because everything in
nature transpires at the level of universality and consciousness. All that is “eternally ful-
filled” are the requirements of the interaction of these two ingredients, which guaran-
tees first “that the eternal prevails over the ephemeral,”113 and second that the universal
(the atom) will forever assume “the form of individuality as consciousness” and not the
105 See Porter, “Epicurean Attachments.” 106 Marx, “Hefte,” 21, emphasis added; cf. 26.
107 “Hefte,” 60. 108 “Hefte,” 62, 106. 109 “Hefte,” 61; cf. 60. 110 “Hefte,” 63.
111 “Hefte,” 63. 112 “Hefte,” 57. 113 “Hefte,” 61.
780 JAMES I. PORTER
form of empirical matter itself.114 Following the same logic, divinity is not a separate
kind of pleasure, but almost the formal condition of this subjective release, the subject’s
own internal awareness of its own condition of joy and pleasure (Freude):
That which is divinized and celebrated here [in the Epicurean concept of the gods]
is divinized individuality as such . . . in its ataraxia. What is worshipped as god is the
non-existence of god, but [god understood] as the existence of the joy of the
individual.
This worship of the divinity of being, so to speak, takes the form of sensuous pleasure
(voluptas).115 Such is the “negative dialectic”116 of atomism, which weaves a path
between “a de-divinized nature” (eine entgötterte Natur) and “an unworlded divinity”
(einer entweltete Gott)117 and which discovers, in the wreckage of its own mortal divi-
sions and diremptions, “the vehicle of vitality” and the “ecstasy” of life itself.118 For in
the final analysis, Epicurus’s philosophy is a philosophy of life and an affirmative
ethics of vitality. Materialism has been redeemed—as a vibrant phenomenology of
sensuous spirit.119
Marx never returned to Epicurus, not because he had refuted him in his dissertation,
as some wrongly still imagine, but for other reasons that we can only speculate about.
The most plausible explanation is that as Marx moved away from Hegel and more deeply
into politics it was only natural that he should distance himself from Epicurus, whose
political philosophy was premised on the negation of politics, and whose salvaging in
the dissertation was merely a first stage in a more radical break with Hegel.120
Nietzsche
Like Marx before him, and even more so than Hegel, Nietzsche found it productive to
gauge an understanding of Epicurus by setting him against his atomistic predecessor
Democritus, at least some of the time—the more so since Nietzsche had begun a disser-
tation of his own on Democritus during his university days, one that he never c ompleted,
114 “Hefte,” 63. 115 “Hefte,” 57. 116 “Hefte,” 106.

117 “Hefte,” 87. 118 “Hefte,” 106.
119 See Porter, “Epicurean Attachments” on this aspect of Epicurus’s philosophy, and the final
chapter of Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, aptly titled “The Sweetness of Life,” on the
attractions that this aspect of Epicureanism held for the moderns.
120 Yet even here Epicurus paved the way for a further recuperation. See “Hefte,” 38 which
commences with another reference to heavenly bodies (Meteore), and then continues: “The premise of
the ancients is the deed of nature, that of the moderns is the deed of Spirit. The struggle of the ancients
could come to an end only once the visible heavens, the substantial ties of life, and the gravity of
political and religious existence were shattered. For nature had to be broken in two so that Spirit could
become unified within itself.” Epicurus’s appeal to these same heavenly bodies has its final raison d’être
in this logic, which is all Marx’s.
nor did he ever intend it to fulfill any formal requirements.121 But Nietzsche’s views are
quite unlike those of Hegel and Marx. For starters, he had a much stronger affinity for
Democritus than for Epicurus, and he never fully relinquished this bias. His Democritea
project, as he called it, was a multi-faceted research program on which he spent two to
three years of intensive activity from mid-1867 to mid-1869, and again in 1870, though
traces of it persist in his notebooks until 1877, shortly before he abandoned university
life. Over the course of this time, Nietzsche matured as a scholar, a philologist, and a phi-
losopher. Epicurus was never the center of his attention during this period, but he was
an important if occasional foil, as the following two notebook entries well illustrate:
One must not overlook the idealist in Democritus. His motto remains, “the thing in
itself is unknowable,” and that separates him from all realists for ever. But he believed
in its existence.
The deliverances of the senses, according to Epicurus, give us the truth itself. Cf.,
e.g., <Cic.> De fin. 1.19 [sic; read: “1.64”]. This wasn’t the view of Democritus.
Epicurus passed from atomism to realism. According to Democritus we have abso-
lutely no knowledge of truth. Sext. Emp. Adv. math. 7.135 [sic; read: “7.135 + 7.136”]:
“Democritus demolishes what appears to the senses and says that none of them
appears as it truly is, but only as it is thought to be. The truth concerning what exists
is that there are atoms and void—‘for we do not know how each thing is or isn’t in
reality.’ ”122
The resemblances to Marx are striking. Both confront the exact same issues, at least ini-
tially. And both are happy to transpose the disagreements between the two ancient
atomists in terms of a modern contrast between idealism and realism, understood in a
typically German and speculative way.123 And yet, for all these similarities, their judg-
ments come out exactly reversed. On Marx’s reading, Epicurus is the idealist (with his
heady endorsement of self-conscious reflection) and Democritus the realist (driven as
he is to empiricism out of his search for an ultimate reality that forever eludes his grasp).
What is more, Nietzsche plainly favors the earlier atomist, whom he finds by far the
more attractive figure in his complexly baffled stance towards reality. The simpler,
coarser realism of his descendant who is readily satisfied with sensuous immediacy
holds few attractions for Nietzsche at this early date, and this stance will more or less
dictate his responses to Epicurus over the next two decades.
As Nietzsche’s thinking evolved, Epicurus increasingly came to the fore as a kind of
permanent touchstone and an emblem of historical depth, with a far greater frequency
than even Democritus—not the Epicurus who invented the swerve (the swerve is
121 See Porter, The Invention of Dionysus. The literature on Nietzsche and Epicurus is even more
sparse than that on Marx and Epicurus, but richer than in the case of Hegel. See esp. Bornmann,
“Nietzsches Epikur”; Vincenzo “Nietzsche and Epicurus”; Caygill, “Under the Epicurean Skies”;
Ansell-Pearson, “Attachment to Life, Understanding Death” and “Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing.”
122 Nietzsche, BAW, 3.328.
123 Compare Hegel’s assessment of atomism as idealist in its early (Hegel, Werke, 18.358) and late
forms (see above).
782 JAMES I. PORTER
c onspicuously absent in Nietzsche’s writings), but the philosopher whose views hold a
variety of implications for ethics and for life. And though Epicurus is nowhere as fre-
quent in Nietzsche’s repertoire of ancient names as Socrates or Plato, he is surprisingly
common, and probably comes out somewhere near the top of the list of ancient authors
named by Nietzsche. His name occurs well over 150 times in hundreds of passages, twice
as often as Democritus’s. In a word, Epicurus is a frequent, almost obsessive presence in
Nietzsche’s published and unpublished writings after 1872. What is most surprising in
Nietzsche’s recourse to Epicurus after The Birth of Tragedy, however, is not the abun-
dance of mentions that Epicurus earns, but the variety of hues in which he appears.
Nietzsche can adore him in places and he can vilify him in others. His virtues and vices
are sometimes identical, and sometimes discreetly different. One might conclude that
Nietzsche is simply being inconsistent in his views of this Greek thinker. A better solu-
tion to the problem is to acknowledge that there is no one Epicurus in Nietzsche’s think-
ing. He is more like a figure of thought and a literary device, capable of taking on
different colors according to the requirements of the moment. And, unlike the
Hegelians, who treated Epicurus as a passing moment in the forward march of Spirit,
Nietzsche reads Epicurus into a much wider cultural and historical landscape, where he
is made to stand, symbolically, for any number of forces, tendencies, and potentials
within the complex psyche of evolving Western culture. The end result is a fascinating
kaleidoscopic portrait, one that is doubtless distortive in its details but true of Epicurus’s
various receptions up through the nineteenth century. The contrast with Marx or Hegel
could not be any more striking.
This is also why Nietzsche can claim with tongue-in-cheek hyperbole that Epicurus
has lived on “eternally” and anonymously:
“Eternal Epicurus”—Epicurus has been alive at all times and is living now, unknown
to those who have called and call themselves Epicureans, and enjoying no reputa-
tion amongst philosophers. He has, moreover, himself forgotten his own name: it
was the heaviest pack he ever threw off.124
No such creature existed in the Hegelian tradition, Marx included, which left Epicurus
behind in the dust, a casualty of history and of progress. For Nietzsche, Epicurus is cru-
cially and permanently alive.125 Nietzsche’s aphorism points to Epicurus’s unending
capacity to signify, and it does so by playing off of two conceits, the indestructibility of
atoms and the Epicurean saying, “Live unnoticed” (lathe biōsas). Only now the life in
question is one of an afterlife and an anonymous dispersal: Epicurus lives on as a
spiritual essence and a dispersed presence, very like atoms whirling through the void,
whether amongst those who would inherit his mantle (while forgetting who Epicurus
124 Human, All Too Human, 2.2.227; 1880; trans. Hollingdale.

125 Neatly amending a notebook entry from 1867–68: “Democritus is the only philosopher who is
still alive today” (BAW 4.84).
was) or amongst those who have adopted his ways unbeknownst to themselves.126 All of
Nietzsche’s mentions of Epicurus attest to the validity of this claim. His reading of
Epicurus is a reading of this reception, which is to say of the ways in which Epicurus
successfully managed to insinuate himself into his posterity and into Nietzsche’s own
historical present.
Nietzsche felt that he had a unique insight into Epicurus, one that was partly grounded
in his training as a classicist and partly rooted in a peculiar affinity he had with the
philosopher—or perhaps we should say, in an insight that arose from what Nietzsche
learned (or else feigned) to cultivate as an affinity, whether for reasons of convenience or
utility (more on this in a moment).
Thus we read in The Gay Science from 1882:
Epicurus—Yes, I am proud to experience Epicurus’s character in a way unlike per-

haps anyone else and to enjoy, in everything I hear or read of him, the happiness of
the afternoon of antiquity: I see his eyes gaze at a wide whitish sea, across shoreline
rocks bathed in the sun, as large and small creatures play in its light, secure and calm
like the light and his eye itself. Only someone who is continually suffering could
invent such happiness—the happiness of an eye before which the sea of existence
has grown still and which now cannot get enough of seeing the surface and this
colourful, tender, quivering skin of the sea: never before has voluptuousness been so
modest.127
This is an extraordinary claim, coming from the mouth of someone who until recently
had modeled his scholarship and much of his thought on Democritus, and who had
shown a clear preference for Democritus over Epicurus.128 Evidently, somewhere along
the line Nietzsche found it essential, or useful, to reappraise Epicurus. One can only
speculate about the reasons for this volte face, though several spring to mind. Epicurus’s
position in world history must have appeared to be more interesting and discussable
than that of Democritus. A Hellenistic philosopher who was basking in the warm glow
of the decline of Greece and facing towards the advent of modernity, and who was tanta-
lizingly pitched on the edges between religion, philosophy, and science, Epicurus was a
pivotal figure, and an irresistible one at that.129
Being a transitional figure, Epicurus was also rather chameleon-like, or at least he
could be made to seem so depending upon how the light was allowed to reflect off his
portrait. Simultaneously turned towards the world and away from it, a hedonist and an
ascetic, an atomist and a moralist, a combatant of godly superstitions and a fashioner of
superhuman gods of his own, Epicurus could be made out to be, at different turns, a pes-
simist, an optimist, a sceptic, an indifferentist, and a believer, a forerunner of
126 Cf. Nietzsche, KSA 10.654–55, 15[59]; 1881 on the way ancient philosophical life-practices have
quietly filtered into the habits of later culture, foremost amongst them Epicureanism.
127 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1.45; trans. J. Nauckhoff.
128 See Porter, The Invention of Dionysus, 26, 29, 34–126.
129 Cf. KSA 8.566, 33[9]; 1878.
784 JAMES I. PORTER
c ontemporary science or a harbinger of Christianity, naïve or calculating, Apollonian or

Dionysian, a figure for classical Greek cheerfulness and thus healthy, heroic, and idyllic
(“one of the greatest of men”), or else a symptom of degraded decadence.130 For the most
part, however, Epicurus proved to be some unstable combination of these features in
Nietzsche’s writings, rarely just one or the other, as the passage just quoted from The Gay
Science illustrates. There, the sunny superficiality of Epicureanism is, like Democritus’s
empiricism according to Marx, the sign of an urgent need rather than a stable state. It is a
voluptas (divine thrill of pleasure) that is lined with abyssal depths of darkness and
despair (horror) (Lucr. DRN 3.28–30). And indeed, pleasure and pain map out the full
range of the Epicurean sensorium in equal measure. As Nietzsche writes in his preface
to the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy: “Was Epicurus an optimist—precisely
because he was suffering?”131 In many ways, Epicurus in passages like that from the Gay
Science above (and there are several of its kind) has taken over the role of Apollo in The
Birth of Tragedy, whose function there, as the god of the surface and of appearances, was
to screen the self from deeper-lying metaphysical truths, the ultimate consequences of
which could be fatal. But this convergence of Epicurus and Apollo, though striking,
should not really be all that surprising: the traces of their collusion are already palpable
in the opening pages of Nietzsche’s first book.132
Nietzsche’s reading of this last aspect of Epicurus and of Epicureanism, portrayed as a
kind of tragic cheerfulness towards reality, occasions some of his most deeply moving
passages on Epicurus—perhaps because they are finally not about Epicurus at all.
Another text, this time from a notebook from 1885, is a good example, as it develops the
same thought a little further:
There is a misunderstanding of cheerfulness, which cannot be eliminated: but who-

ever shares it should ultimately be satisfied with it—those of us who take refuge in
happiness: we who need every kind of south and boundless sunshine and need to
take a place on the street where life waltzes by like a drunken masquerade, as some-
thing that takes away your senses and makes you mad; we, who precisely demand of
happiness that it should “take away our senses”: doesn’t it appear that we have a
knowledge that we fear? With which we do not want to be alone? A knowledge
whose pressure causes us to tremble, whose whispering makes us grow pale? This
stubborn aversion to tragic performances, this harsh stuffing of the ears before every
source of suffering, this bold, derisive superficiality, this willful Epicureanism of the
heart, which wants to have nothing warm and whole and worships the mask as its
ultimate divinity and savior: this scorn for the melancholic of taste, in whom we
always suspect a lack of depth, isn’t this all merely a hatred of life? It seems that we
130 Caygill, “The Consolation of Philosophy,” 47 calls these shifts “bewildering.” These shifts are,
however, the hallmark of Nietzsche’s portrayals of Epicurus from his earliest philological studies (see
Porter, The Invention of Dionysus, 26, 29, 59, 305–306 nn. 90–91, etc.; Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology
of the Future, 133–34).
131 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, 8: (“An Attempt at Self-Criticism,” §4).
132 See The Birth of Tragedy §1 on the Lucretian character of Apolline dreams, with discussion on the
Epicurean background to this in Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, 36–40.
know ourselves as all too fragile, perhaps as broken and beyond healing already; it
appears that we fear this hand of life, that it must break us, and so we take refuge in
its appearances, in its falsehood, its superficiality and dappled deceptiveness; it
appears that we are cheerful, because we are tremendously sad. We are serious, we
know the abyss; for this reason we defend ourselves against all manner of
seriousness.133
The beauty of passages like these is the depth of feeling they evoke. Epicureanism is clearly
being made to stand for a whole complex of emotions, some of them historically verifiable
in the philosophy of the atomist, others freely generalized so as to take in a larger body
of individuals whom Nietzsche stylizes as latter-day Epicureans—“Epicureans of the
heart”—amongst whom, one is tempted to say, Nietzsche numbers himself. Or does he?
Identifications are risky and fluid attractions in Nietzsche’s writings—fleeting, mask-like,
uncertain, and functioning as virtual lures and traps for a reader.
Nevertheless, the notion that serenity is wrung from the depths of suffering is more or
less a constant in Nietzsche’s writings from The Birth of Tragedy into his final works.
Epicureanism can signal either this deeper form of wisdom or its aversion. Wherever
the latter occurs, wherever a subject remains willfully obtuse to her own suffering,
Nietzsche can be a stern critic of Epicurus or Epicureanism, which he finds too readily
“accepts suffering” and therefore “resists everything sad and profound.”134 In such cases,
Epicureans, because they cannot truly suffer, can experience no orders of difference in
the world, no pathos of difference, no distinctions of rank, and no “spiritual
arrogance”;135 they are therefore morally confused.136 This leveling of affections, this
equanimity of the passions, and the spiritual indifference that results, naturally inclines
Epicureanism towards a certain democratization of the soul, a weakening of the
instincts, a turn towards goodness and sociability (Gemütlichkeit), decadence, the satis-
factions of the earthly paradise (the garden), a lassitude and quiescence of the will, and
the absence of any urgency in life, any sense of a “task” or project worth undertaking.137
The very “concept of future” is lacking in Epicureanism, Nietzsche observes. In its place,
the view forward extends as though over a flat plane: to be an Epicurean is to entertain
“no wish, not even any velleity, no desire to make plans, no desire for change.”138 For the
Epicurean, whom Nietzsche facetiously ventriloquizes in this same passage:
There are really no surprises in life; the reason for this is because I do not like to busy
myself with what might be possible. This proves how much I live in thought . . . An
accident (Zufall) brought this to my awareness (Bewußtsein) a couple of days ago.139
133 KSA 12.79, 2[33]; 1885; emphasis in original.

134 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 270; trans. Norman.
135 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 270; trans. Norman. 136 KSA 10.285–86, 7[129]; 1883.
137 KSA 11.456, 34[108]; 1885; 13.162, 11[365]; 1887.
138 KSA 13.510, 16[44]; 1888; cf. Human, All Too Human, 2.295; 1880.
139 KSA 13.510, 16[44]; 1888.
786 JAMES I. PORTER
Nietzsche is parodying the intellectualism and the ineffectuality of Epicurus’s

Lebensphilophie here, which he elsewhere correctly notes is staked not on discovering
truth, but on cultivating “the art of living.”140 He is also parodying the role of chance and
contingency (Zufall) in Epicurus’s philosophy, and the Sage’s capacity to conform to the
hazards of the unknown, even those of thought itself, on a day-to-day basis with com-
plete nonchalance. Nietzsche’s ruthless depiction of the Epicurean attitude here could
not be any more unlike Marx’s if he tried (though the convergences are strictly acciden-
tal, so to speak—or else uncannily inevitable).141 As if in a point-for-point rebuttal,
Nietzsche is turning upside down every positive item in Marx’s reading of Epicurus,
from his applauding of contingency to his extolling the power of self-consciousness, the
primacy of thought, and the virtues of possibility (“the principle of philosophy for
Epicurus,” Marx had written, “is to show the world and thought as conceivable, as
possible”).142 Both may concur in the fact of Epicurus’s “boundless nonchalance” (the
phrase is Marx’s). But their assessments are strikingly different.
Nietzsche’s assessments can, however, be self-discrepant, as we have seen. Though
Epicurus’s lifestyle can in places be described as a form of asceticism that involves the
rigors of self-control143 and “a life full of pain and renunciations”144 elsewhere the com-
parison breaks down: “ascetics acquire an enormous feeling of power” when they carry
out their self-abnegations and their denials of the world.145 But not so the Epicureans:
They find happiness in . . . fearlessness before gods and nature; their happiness is
negative (as is pleasure, according to Epicurus) . . .
while their feelings are “neutral and weak,” not powerful.146 Ascetics are creatures whom
Nietzsche normally both fears and loathes (as a glance at the Third Essay of On the
Genealogy of Morals will confirm). Epicureans, under the present description, are too
weakly to register even a single hit on Nietzsche’s “dynamometer.” They are more like
Buddhists than priests, just as their modern avatars are “a sort of European
Chinadom.”147 Schopenhauer is one more latter-day Epicurean and European Buddhist:
he is the extrapolation of the ancient philosophy of quiescence in its modern, nihilistic
form, and so too the exponent of “the hypnotic sense of nothingness, the repose of deep-
est sleep, in short absence of suffering.”148 Nietzsche here is in fact quoting from
Schopenhauer, who himself had linked Epicurus’s highest form of pleasure to the stilling
140 KSA 12.363, 9[57]; 1887.

141 It is unlikely that Nietzsche knew anything about Marx’s dissertation on Epicurus, which
appeared in print for the first time in 1902.
142 Cf. KSA 7.456, 19[114]; 1872–73: “The Epicureans tarnished the rigorous principles of Democritus
with mushy ideas (possibilities).”
143 KSA 9.62, 3[53]; 1880; cf. The Gay Science, 375. 144 KSA 8.575, 38[1]; 1878, and so on.
145 KSA 9.151, 4[204]; 1880. 146 KSA 9.151, 4[204]; 1880.
147 KSA 11.72, 25[222]; 1884; cf. Beyond Good and Evil 61.
148 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals 3.6, 3.17; trans. Kaufmann.
of the Will’s desires in The World as Will and Representation.149 Drawn in this light,
Epicurus and his allies are beginning to look like a sorry lot indeed. But worse is to come.
Perhaps Nietzsche’s deepest insult to Epicureanism is his assimilation of the philoso-
phy to Christianity. Democritus could not be accommodated to Christianity,150 unlike
Epicurus, who could. The reason was quite simple: in a marked departure from earlier
atomism, Epicurus condoned religiosity. Even as he vanquished ancient superstitions
and paved the way for modern science,151 he nevertheless erected a defense of conven-
tional divinities and religious piety on the foundation of his physical and ethical princi-
ples. This did entail a bold reconception of the gods—as remote, eternally cheerful,
immense in size, beautiful, quasi-material and quasi-immaterial, possibly consisting of
no more than the streaming of atomic films (eidōla or simulacra) or even less if they are
mere projections of human preconceptions of divinity. Nietzsche’s response to
Epicurus’s views on religion and the divine is mixed. On the one hand, he can praise the
Epicurean gods as the pinnacle of the Greek creative achievement, as the finest product
of that “artists’ nation” (Künstlervolk), not least because they embody “the triumph of
existence and an abundance of vitality (Lebensgefühl).”152 At his most enthusiastic,
Nietzsche will even go so far as to identify the Epicurean gods with his own conceptual
gods, the Overman153 and Dionysus154—though at other moments he will just as quickly
deny them this distinction.155 But while Epicurus is in places acknowledged to have
combatted Christianity in its latent or preexisting forms,156 elsewhere and for the most
part he is said to be uniquely compatible with Christianity and consequently to be a
decadent spirit, no better than any other modern or Romantic.157
To say that Nietzsche’s view of Epicurus is multi-faceted would be an understatement.
Nietzsche thinks both with and against Epicurus in his own inimitable fashion, allowing
his own writings and voicings run through every imaginable register and scale in the
process. His portrait of Epicurus is about as similar to those by Marx and Hegel as a
Jackson Pollock is similar to a Rembrandt. Unlike the Hegelians before him, Nietzsche
fastens on to no one feature of Epicurus’s thought in order to grasp it, be this the idea of
“interruption,” the swerve, alienation, chance, or the dialectical rupture that Epicurus
achieved or failed to achieve in his own system. This is not simply because Nietzsche’s
149 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1.3.38.

150 Cf. KSA 11.151, 26[3]; 1884; 11.553–54, 36[11]; 1885.
151 Daybreak 1.72 (1881); The Gay Science 375.
152 “The Dionysian Worldview,” 2 = KSA 1.559–60; 1870; cf. KSA 9.660, 16[8]; 1881–82.
153 KSA 10.244, 7[21]; 1883; 10.529, 16[85]; 1883; 11.541, 35[73]; 1885. The first hint of this comes in The
Birth of Tragedy §1; see Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, 37 with 180 n. 10.
154 KSA 11.541, 35[73]; 1885.
155 KSA 11.646, 40[35]; 1885; cf. KSA 11.33, 25[95]; 1884. The comparison could easily be an analogy
without any real substance to it.
156 Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 58; KSA 13.486, 16[15]; 1888.
157 “Epicureanism in Christianity,” in KSA 13.265, 14[87]; 1888; cf. KSA 10.477, 14[3]; 1883; The
Anti-Christ, 30: Epicurus “the typical decadent,” espousing a “religion of love”; Beyond Good and Evil, 61;
Nietzsche Contra Wagner, “We Antipodes”; 1889; KSA 13.324–25, 14[141]; 1888; Gay Science, 370. The
basic thesis of Caygill, “Under the Epicurean Skies,” that Epicurus “exceeds” Dionysianism and
Christianity, cannot be supported.
788 JAMES I. PORTER
Epicurus is less interested in physics than in ethics,158 but also and primarily because his
Epicurus is not a single entity. Rather, he is a figure for cultural variety and a symptom of
cultural change. Had Nietzsche known anything about the Hegelians’ readings of
Epicurus, he would doubtless have incorporated them into his analysis. But he did not,
and so we can only speak of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche on Epicurus as one of the many
happy coincidences of nineteenth-century thought.159
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———. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1825–6. Edited by R. F. Brown. Translated by
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158 So too Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 27 whose history of philosophical materialism
greatly impressed Nietzsche, and whose predilection for Democritus Nietzsche likewise shares. See
Porter, The Invention of Dionysus, 306 n. 91, 319 n. 5, 403 n. 151.
159 A version of this essay was presented at the Philosophy Department at Emory University in
February 2011 and at the Philosophy Department at McGill University in 2014. My thanks to both
audiences for helpful feedback, and to Phil Mitsis, Phoebe Garrett, and Simone Stirner for editorial and
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790 JAMES I. PORTER
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chapter 31
postmoder n ism
Eva Marie Noller and W. H. Shearin
In discussing their philosophical position on anger, the well-known classicist and

scholar of Epicureanism Don Fowler once referred to the Epicureans as “perhaps the
least postmodern thinkers the world has ever seen.”1 Such a remark, coming from a
scholar who was not only well-disposed toward postmodern thought but in fact known
above all for his postmodern, theoretical readings of the classical canon, seems to mark
out “postmodern Epicureanism” and “postmodern Epicurus” as unlikely terms.2 And it
is easy to see what Fowler means: postmodernism, though a protean concept, is often
associated with scepticism of various kinds—scepticism about grand narratives, scepti-
cism about the reliability of language3—whereas Epicureanism eschews a sceptical epis
temology, generally viewing such a stance as “inherently self-defeating.”4 Yet even if
“postmodern Epicureanism” has a whiff of the paradoxical about it, as the present chap-
ter discusses, there are nonetheless a variety of reasons for investigating the term—and a
variety ways in which it may be apt.
In the first instance, Fowler clearly employs “postmodern” as something other than a
mere chronological descriptor. (There could be but little point in the obvious assertion
that the Epicureans are not postmodern simply because they belong to the ancient
world.) Yet “postmodern” is often deployed precisely in a chronological fashion, to
1 Fowler, “Epicurean Anger,” 35. Fowler produced many valuable essays on Epicurean thought,
yet—even among these—Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion (a work whose origins date back to the
early 1980s) stands out as an invaluable resource for coming to grips with Lucretius’s position on the
clinamen, or atomic swerve.
2 Inter alia, Fowler, Roman Constructions makes its engagement with postmodern thought explicit:
its subtitle is Readings in Postmodern Latin.
3 The bibliography discussing, defining, and problematizing postmodernism is vast, but two central
texts, by any measure, are Lyotard, La condition postmoderne (translated into English as The
Postmodern Condition) and Jameson, Postmodernism. For a link to scepticism, at least in a limited
sense, see, e.g., Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxiv: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define
postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”
4 Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.83. See, inter alia, Lucr. 4.469–77 for a standard
Epicurean attack on scepticism (with regard to the reliability of sense perception).
792 EVA MARIE NOLLER AND W. H. SHEARIN
denote an intellectual and cultural movement that followed upon, and drew impetus
from, modernism.5 In other words, one can (and—to a large extent—this chapter will)
consider “postmodern Epicureanism” by investigating the fate of Epicureanism in the
postmodern age, meaning roughly the philosophical understanding and reception of
Epicurean thought in the latter part of the twentieth century. In the second place, how-
ever, one may also speak of “postmodern Epicureanism” (taking “postmodern” in a
sense much closer to Fowler’s) and mean that there are at least certain postmodern
elements or strands—that is, thematic features such as a distrust of grand explanatory
narratives or a focus upon the unreliability of language—either in the work of Epicurus
himself or at least legible in the writings of his ancient followers. This second, stronger
sense, while it would not be an apt descriptor for all the material considered in this chap-
ter, is nonetheless an idea that hovers as something of a persistent question throughout
its pages. How, in other words, does a philosophy that seems, at least on its face, resistant
to postmodernism nonetheless become incorporated into that body of thought?
In what follows, we consider three prominent philosophical figures of the postmod-
ern age—Hans Blumenberg, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Serres—who all engage with
Epicureanism in detail.6 Yet—and this observation is perhaps telling for the fate of
Epicureanism in the latter portions of the twentieth century—with the exception of
Derrida, it would be difficult to assert that these figures belong without reservation to
any canon of postmodernism. We shall return in our conclusion to a fuller consider-
ation of the ways in which this grouping offers us a properly postmodern Epicurus (if
there may be such a thing), but—even at the outset—the mere density of references to
Epicurus and Lucretius found in these three authors may allow us the minimal suspi-
cion that postmodernism and Epicureanism have something meaningful to say to one
another, even if their voices do not always speak in concert.
Hans Blumenberg
Throughout his work, Hans Blumenberg (1920–96) draws extensively on Epicurus and
Epicureanism. Yet apart from the well-known Shipwreck with Spectator (“Schiffbruch
mit Zuschauer” (1979)),7 Blumenberg’s overall reception of Epicureanism has been
5 See, for example, Jameson, Postmodernism, ix–xii, which repeatedly defines postmodernism by
contrast with modernism, as of course the very term “postmodernism” does itself.
6 It is worth pointing out that these three figures in no way exhaust the philosophically significant
engagements with Epicurus in the second half of the twentieth century. Among others, Gilles Deleuze
was clearly fascinated by Lucretius and deserves to be included in any list of postmodern thinkers of
Epicureanism. For a detailed study of Deleuze’s engagement with Lucretius, see Holmes, “Deleuze,
Lucretius, and the Simulacrum of Naturalism.”
7 Trans. Rendall, Shipwreck with Spectator.
postmodernism 793
largely neglected, and it still awaits a properly detailed scholarly analysis.8 While the
present brief survey in no way provides the full consideration needed—in hopes of
offering a somewhat closer inspection of the modes and functions of Epicureanism in
Blumenberg’s œuvre—it takes, in addition to some moments in Shipwreck, Blumenberg’s
Legitimacy of the Modern Age (“Die Legitimität der Neuzeit” (1966/1988))9 and Cave
Exits (“Höhlenausgänge” (1989))10 as points of reference.11 As indicated above, although
these works were written and published during the period commonly called postmod-
ern, Blumenberg is not obviously a postmodern philosopher in the strongest, thematic
sense of that term. Of course, aspects of his work—especially his metaphorology, which
will receive treatment below—can be linked to more canonically postmodern thinkers
such as Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida,12 yet his philosophy as a whole, which
bleeds across the fields of anthropology, phenomenology, history of science, and meta-
phorology, is distinct from these other figures and as such deserves fuller attention.
Moreover, while Blumenberg is rightly considered a philosophical thinker, his works are
often understood as imposing, monolithic tomes within the domain of intellectual his-
tory, and this historical orientation colors many aspects of his reception of
Epicureanism.13
In Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence
(“Daseinsmetapher”), the picture of the spectator depicted in the proem of the second
book of Lucretius’s De rerum natura (2.1–2: Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ven-
tis / e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem)14 is followed through its reception history
and Wirkungsgeschichte.15 The Lucretian spectator stands aloof and secure, looking on
as another toils amidst the hostility of the sea, in what is generally taken by classical
scholars as a paradigm for how the Epicurean philosopher views the suffering of others
8 More generally, the presence of antiquity in Blumenberg’s œuvre has earned only limited
attention before recent times. But see now Möller, Prometheus gibt nicht auf, who for the first time tries
to decipher systematically Blumenberg’s Antikebild.
9 Trans. Wallace, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age.
10 Not translated into English; translations are by Eva Marie Noller.
11 It is surprising, though, that in Blumenberg’s Work on Myth (“Arbeit am Mythos”), Epicurus is not
of pivotal importance. For a study of Blumenberg’s theory of myth, see now Nicholls, Myth and the
Human Sciences.
12 See Haverkamp, “Paradigma Metapher, Metapher Paradigma.”
13 In their introduction to a glossary to Blumenberg, Robert Buch and Daniel Weidner, Blumenberg
lesen, 15 call Blumenberg’s books “Meilensteine, aber auch Monolithe” (“milestones but monoliths at
the same time”). On the imposing nature of Blumenberg’s works, see, too, Odo Marquard’s remark
(“Hans Blumenberg,” 25): “[L]ife is short. Yet Hans Blumenberg’s books are generally long, and at times
extremely long.”
14 The text of Lucretius is cited here according to the edition of Munro, Lucreti Cari De Rerum
Natura Libri Sex. A literal rendering of the lines runs: “Sweet it is, when winds buffet the waters upon
the great sea, to look upon the great toil of another from the shore.”
15 For a comprehensive and subtle analysis of Blumenberg’s reading of the Lucretian proem, see
Möller, “Schiffbruch ohne Zuschauer?,” 125–40.
with serenity.16 Yet Blumenberg gives this proem an altogether different interpretation.
On his understanding, the pleasure, or sweetness (suave), experienced by the spectator:
has nothing to do with a relationship among men, between those who suffer and
those who do not; it has rather to do with the relationship between philosophers
and reality; it has to do with the advantage gained through Epicurus’ philosophy, the
possession of an inviolable, solid ground for one’s view of the world (Weltansicht).17
Thus, according to Blumenberg, Lucretius does not present a portrait of perverse

pleasure, showing an observer taking delight and self-assurance from the sufferings of
another person.18 Rather, on Blumenberg’s reading, the Lucretian proem points to a
pleasure and self-assurance (which could be linked to the Epicurean concept of
ataraxia) based in knowledge. Hence, Epicureanism offers a central point of reference
not for Schadenfreude but for an epistemology that enables man to deal with the world
around him.
This analysis is also connected to a central, anthropological question present through-
out Blumenberg’s œuvre: how does one orient oneself in a non- or post-metaphysical
era in which the order of the world disintegrates (Ordnungsschwund) more and more?
And how does one assert oneself (Selbstbehauptung) amidst the doubt arising from a
more and more uncertain human reality? In the Legitimacy of the Modern Age, in which
Blumenberg discusses the conditions of the formation of the Modern Age (Neuzeit) he
addresses these questions in great detail under the programmatic heading “Theological
Absolutism and Human Self-Assertion” (Theologischer Absolutismus und humane
Selbstbehauptung).19 In his detailed overview of how human self-assertion arose, he sys-
tematically compares Epochenkrisen (“crises of [different] eras”) from antiquity and the
Middle Ages. In this analysis, Epicurean atomism and its reception in the early modern
period is of pivotal importance for Blumenberg’s argument. According to him, there is a
“structural connection between nominalism as a late-medieval phenomenon and atom-
ism as an early modern one.”20 By reformulating atomistic principles and comparing
them to nominalism, Blumenberg makes clear why Epicureanism in this context is of
such great importance: Epicurean atomism must be understood as a system arising
from and representing an Epochenkrise in antiquity, and it thereby helps to outline the
structure of the modern Epochenkrise between the Middle Ages and the modern age.
16 For discussion of this passage and its import for Epicurean psychology, see Konstan, A Life
Worthy of the Gods, 29–35.
17 Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator, 26.
18 On the importance of gazing in this context and in Blumenberg’s philosophy in general, see
Möller, “Schiffbruch ohne Zuschauer?,” 125‒40 and “Zuschauer.” On gazing in Lucretius, see De Lacy,
“Distant Views”; and Hardie, “Lucretian Visions in Virgil.”
19 Cf. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 125‒203. Interestingly, Blumenberg thereby
refers extensively to Marx’s dissertation on the Differenz der demokritischen und epikuräischen
Naturphilosophie nebst einem Anhange. For Marx’s reception of Epicureanism see Porter in this volume.
20 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 151.
postmodernism 795
Epicureanism in the Legitimacy of the Modern Age also serves to establish a key
feature of Blumenberg’s philosophy, namely “theoretical curiosity” (theoretische
Neugierde).21 In his historical summary of the concept of curiosity from antiquity to the
early modern period (which also contains shorter references to Platonism22 and
Stoicism), Blumenberg deals extensively with the “Indifference of Epicurus’s Gods” (Die
Gleichgültigkeit der Götter Epikurs), contending that in Epicureanism any kind of curi-
osity which predisposes one toward negative emotions like fear or hope, was removed
by the Epicureans’ multiple explanations of natural phenomena:23
The appetite for knowledge (Wissbegierde) restricts itself, by stopping short of decid-
ing between the hypothetical alternatives, and thus saving itself, through ataraxia,
from the disappointment of the desire for definitive knowledge (definitives
Wissenwollen).”24
The fact that Blumenberg takes this “negative” outcome of the (reconstruction of the)
Epicurean anti-curiositas into account, as well, reveals both his aim of giving a compre-
hensive account of the Ideengeschichte of the concept of curiosity, and the broadly phe-
nomenological approach underlying his survey.
Supplementing the more “technical” and “structural” aspects of Epicurean atomism
already sketched out for the Legitimacy of the Modern Age, a further concern of
Blumenberg’s philosophy comes to the fore in Cave Exits—his interest in metaphors. In
this work, a comprehensive discussion of the (reception of the) Platonic Allegory of the
Cave, Blumenberg is inclined to call atomism the “absolute metaphor (absolute
Metapher) [. . .] of the equality of all men under chance.”25 According to Blumenberg,
metaphors do not simply serve as rhetorical ornaments: as absolute metaphors they are
also “fundamental elements of philosophical language, ‘transliterations’ that resist being
converted back into authenticity and logicality.”26 Absolute metaphors have the ability
to express what cannot be grasped or replaced by (non-metaphorical) philosophical
language or concepts. Thus, in referring to atomism as an absolute metaphor for equal-
ity, Blumenberg underlines that in Epicureanism equality is conceptualized in its most
“radical” way, since it is not linked to categories such as justice (Gerechtigkeit) and injus-
tice, but to chance (Zufall). According to Blumenberg, the underlying concept of free-
dom and ataraxia which results from this “neutralization of the world” (Neutralisierung
21 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 232: “From a central affect of consciousness there
arises in the modern age an indissoluble connecting link between man’s historical self-understanding
and the realization of scientific knowledge (Erkenntnis) as the confirmation of the claim to unrestricted
theoretical curiosity.”
22 For Blumenberg’s discussion of Plato, cf. Niehues-Pröbsting, “Die Höhle und ihr Schatten”; and
Section I in Möller, Prometheus gibt nicht auf, which deals with Hans Blumenbergs Platonlektüren.
23 Cf. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 263‒68. For a survey of the “Logic of Multiple
Explanations” in Epicureanism see Hankinson, “Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Logic of Multiple
Explanations.”
24 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 265. 25 Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 335.
26 Blumenberg, Paradigms for a Metaphorology, 3; original emphasis.
der Welt)27 can be linked to the concept of the absolute metaphor because the kind of
justice Blumenberg refers to by means of atomism would become incomprehensible
without this reference. Furthermore, atomism as an absolute metaphor can be under-
stood here as “metaphorical background”:
[M]etaphors . . . do not need to appear as such in the lexical sphere of expression;

but a collection of statements suddenly coalesces into a meaningful unity if the lead-
ing metaphorical representation from which these statements were “read off ” can be
hypothetically ascertained.28
While there is much more to be said about Blumenberg’s metaphorology, this brief
review of Cave Exits—as well as our earlier glances at Shipwreck with Spectator and
Legitimacy of the Modern Age—should give weight to the claim that Blumenberg’s refer-
ences to Epicureanism are both numerous and diverse. He does not offer a uniform
picture of Epicureanism by referring only to specific concepts or parts of its doctrine,
nor does he mention Epicureanism only affirmatively in order strengthen his own argu-
ment. Rather, as has been shown, Blumenberg substantially disagrees with Epicurean
concepts and uses them as critical references for comparison. Beyond these different
modes of reception, however, Epicureanism in Blumenberg’s œuvre also allows deeper
insights into the epistemological foundations of antiquity and modernity.
Jacques Derrida
From Blumenberg, we turn to a thinker who in many ways, both chronologically and
philosophically, may be considered the high priest of postmodernism, Jacques Derrida
(1930–2004). At first pass, Derrida’s engagement with Epicurus and Epicureanism may
appear slight, particularly when contrasted with his well-known readings of Plato, such
as “Plato’s Pharmacy,” his detailed consideration of the myth of the invention of writing
in Plato’s Phaedrus.29 In the first place, his extended, explicit treatment of Epicurus is
largely confined to a single essay. General surveys of Derrida’s engagement with ancient
philosophy, moreover, while noting his treatment of a broad range of Greek and Roman
figures (including inter alia Lucretius, Cicero, and Plotinus), tend to leave Epicurus to
the side in favor of earlier Greek thinkers.30 Symptomatic of this phenomenon is
Michael Naas’s recent chapter on “Derrida and Ancient Philosophy,” which holds the
additional—and revealing—parenthetical subtitle “(Plato and Aristotle).” Although
27 Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 355. 28 Blumenberg, Paradigms for a Metaphorology, 10.

29 “Plato’s Pharmacy,” originally published in two volumes of Tel Quel in 1967 and 1968, first
reappeared as part of Derrida, La Dissemination and then was translated into English at Derrida,
Dissemination, 61–171.
30 Derrida himself concedes that his work has “ ‘privileged in many ways’ the Platonic corpus”
(Derrida, “We Other Greeks,” 34). (The words in single quotation marks are those of Francis Wolff.)
postmodernism 797
fully aware of the broad range of Derrida’s writing and interests, in his piece Naas not
only limits himself to Plato and Aristotle but in fact argues that Plato—and, more spe-
cifically and restrictively, the Phaedrus myth of the invention of writing—“played a cen-
tral and unparalleled role in Derrida’s work from the beginning right up until the end.”31
While Naas makes his case in a clear and convincing fashion—there is no denying the
import of the Phaedrus for both “Plato’s Pharmacy” and a range of other foundational
texts from the late 1960s—reasons remain for probing Derrida’s relationship to
Epicureanism more deeply. In the first instance, Derrida himself asserts that “a few dis-
creet signs suggest how much the Greek ‘materialists’ . . . matter to me.”32 Moreover, as
we shall see, Derrida not only engages directly with Epicurus (as well as Lucretius) but
there are ways in which Derridean philosophy resonates clearly (and profoundly) with
concerns of Epicureanism. That is, while there is little doubt that Derrida’s explicit
engagement with Plato far exceeds—at least in terms of sheer written pages—his direct
attempts to write about and analyze Epicurean thought, there are reasons to think that
Epicureanism can claim more than an ancillary position both in parsing Derrida’s own
thought and in comprehending its relationship to ancient philosophy.
Any consideration of Derrida’s engagement with Epicureanism must focus above
all on the essay “My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean
Stereophonies,” which was delivered originally in October 1982 as the Weigert Lecture
under the auspices of the Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities.33 This essay was
subsequently published, together with a number of scholarly responses, as an edited
volume entitled Taking Chances: Derrida, Psychoanalysis, and Literature.34 The context
giving rise to the essay is important; for, as the title of the collection suggests, it weaves
together the theme of chance with two others—psychoanalysis and literature. Indeed,
given the nature of the event for which he prepared his remarks, we may conclude that
Derrida was invited (implicitly or explicitly) to take a position on the connection
between psychoanalysis and literature; and “chance,” it turns out, is the vehicle for artic-
ulating this connection. This contextual background—concerned as it is with psycho-
analysis and literature—thus colors extensively the treatment of Epicureanism we find
in the essay, which nevertheless remains Derrida’s most forthright confrontation with
the philosophy of the Garden.
While it would certainly repay the effort to follow all the twists and turns of Derrida’s
essay, such a project would involve re-tracing complex jumps from Epicurus and
Lucretius to Edgar Allan Poe, Martin Heidegger, and Sigmund Freud. It is thus easier, if
also a bit riskier, simply to hew closely to Derrida’s reading and understanding of
Epicurus and Lucretius, which is—in many ways, if not all—the central move of the
essay; for, in his attempt to link psychoanalysis and literature, Derrida turns to the theme
31 Naas, “Derrida and Ancient Philosophy,” 231. Note also that in the recent Derrida and Antiquity,
Epicurus appears only once by name (Leonard, Derrida and Antiquity, 391).
32 Derrida, “We Other Greeks,” 34.
33 For the original context of Derrida’s piece, see Smith and Kerrigan, Taking Chances: Derrida,
Psychoanalysis, and Literature, vii.
34 Smith and Kerrigan, Taking Chances.
of chance and language, a theme which takes him directly to the Lucretian clinamen, or
swerve. As Derrida remarks in the opening gestures of the essay, the French phrase des-
tiner au hasard—a phrase that, on any interpretation, involves ideas of both chance and
delivery, or communication—“can . . . have two syntaxes and therefore two meanings.”35
On the one hand, destiner au hasard may connote the idea of abandoning oneself to
chance; on the other, “it can also mean to destine something unwittingly, in a haphazard
manner, at random.”36 And Derrida immediately connects this structural ambiguity to
the Lucretian clinamen.37 For Derrida, as we shall see, the clinamen is not an Epicurean
theoretical anomaly, an ill-conceived innovation postulated to account, at a physical
level, for free will, but rather a clear forerunner of his own notion of the mark, or the
trace.38
After providing an initial glimpse of his understanding of the clinamen—or at least its
role in attempting to articulate a link between psychoanalysis and literature—Derrida
returns to the theme of the swerve in the body of his essay. The swerve, as he explains it,
serves a key role in the creation of various worlds, producing “the concentration of
material (systrophē) that gives birth to the worlds and the things they contain.”39 It does
so, Derrida asserts (following the W. H. D. Rouse–M. F. Smith rendering of Lucretius),
by allowing atoms to deviate from their otherwise rigid, downward movement, facilitat-
ing collisions and creation.40 And the systrophē that results from the swerve provides a
key figure for the remainder of Derrida’s essay. The systrophē is not simply a feature of
Epicurean physics but a way of articulating and describing Derrida’s own discourse:
When I bring up the names of Epicurus and Lucretius here, a kind of systrophē takes
place in my discourse. For Epicurus, condensation or density, the systrophic relief,
is first of all the twisted entanglement and concentrated turn of atoms (mass, swarm,
turbulence, downpour, herd) that produces the seeds of things, the spermata, the
seminal multiplicity (inseminal or disseminal). . . . What are the various and inter-
secting reasons for which I have provoked this Epicurean downpour?41
From here, Derrida suggests a variety of reasons for the presence of Epicureanism in his
essay, but these reasons all essentially come down to one central idea—the atomist tradi-
tion anticipates his own notion of the mark.
35 Derrida, “My Chances/Mes chances,” 347. 36 Derrida, “My Chances/Mes chances,” 347.
37 Derrida acknowledges that the ambiguity he identifies may depend “on the context” but also that
“a context is never sufficiently determined to prohibit all random deviation” (Derrida, “My
Chances/Mes chances,” 347). In other words, the ambiguity offers a structural problem that wants
explanation rather than simply a phrase rendered ambiguous by a lack of context.
38 Here is not the place to address all the different scholarly interpretation of Lucretius’s clinamen:
Derrida does not address them himself, and he seems content to use it largely as a figure for
characterizing the action of chance in language. Further on the swerve, see Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic
Motion, esp. 407–27, as well as the relevant parts of the lemma-by-lemma commentary on Lucretius;
and Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1.107–12.
39 Derrida, “My Chances/Mes chances,” 350.
40 Derrida, in effect, summarizes Lucr. 2.216–24, as translated in the Rouse–Smith Loeb.
postmodernism 799
As Derrida notes, in Lucretius atoms and letters are often denoted by the same word,
elementa; and he links this back to the earlier use of the Greek term stoicheion. In partic-
ular, he comments that:
The indivisible element, the atomos . . . is the stoicheion, a word designating the
graphic thing as well as the mark, the letter, the trait, or the point.42
The key idea here seems to be that the atomist tradition, and Lucretius in particular, by
acknowledging the ability of letters, like atoms, to recombine and form new words offers
a particular window on the theme of language and chance. As we noted above, the clina-
men, the swerve, is not simply a feature of Epicurean physics, but in Derrida’s hands a
way of articulating the play of ambiguity in language. The move to link letters to atoms—
to see the creative power of atoms in letters but also to articulate the “swerviness” of lan-
guage through a physical metaphor—in many ways anticipates the things that Derrida
wishes to say about language himself.43 Yet Derrida also, as he ultimately makes clear,
wishes to distinguish himself, at least somewhat, from the atomist tradition: he contends
that the ultimate element—what he calls the “mark” rather than the stoicheion or ele-
mentum—is in fact “divisible” rather than “indivisible” (atomos).44 What he means by
this statement is the claim that any letter or mark—to function as a mark—must be not
fixed with an original meaning or elemental quality but rather inherently able to with-
draw from its original context and “play” or function in new ones. For Derrida, the mark
contrasts with the elementum in being originally contextual, not an origin or a building
block but a figure inherently at variance with itself.
In sum, then, “My Chances/Mes chances”—while it is only one essay in Derrida’s vast
œuvre—offers a glimpse of why Derrida would retrospectively observe that the Greek
materialists mattered so much to him. This one essay suggests that—in the realm of lan-
guage, the realm, that is, where Derrida arguably attained his greatest prominence as a
philosopher—the French philosopher saw Epicurus and Lucretius as allies and fore-
bears. Even if he takes care to distance himself from certain elements of atomist thought,
Derrida’s acknowledged proximity to Epicurean ideas of the clinamen and elementum
makes such distancing appear relatively limited. Moreover—and this remark can only
point to terrain for future investigation—it seems that there is a large number of other
areas where there are resonances between deconstructive ideas and those of
Epicureanism. For example, it has recently been argued forcefully—and with attention
to Derrida’s entire œuvre—that Derrida’s philosophy is founded upon a profound athe-
ism.45 While Epicureanism is not an avowedly atheistic philosophy, it is structurally so
in that it removes the gods from any active participation in the world; and of course, it
has often—both in antiquity and afterwards—been read precisely as an atheistic school

43 See here, too, Shearin, The Language of Atoms, 17–45 (passim), where various connections
between Derridean ideas on language and Epicurean linguistic theory are noted.
44 See Derrida, “My Chances/Mes chances,” 354, 360. 45 Hägglund, Radical Atheism.
of thought. Additionally, Derrida gave the theme of friendship extensive treatment in

his œuvre, most notably in The Politics of Friendship;46 and friendship is of course also a
prominent theme in Epicurean thought. While Derrida does not tackle Epicureanism in
his most extended discussions of friendship—referring more often to Cicero, Aristotle,
Montaigne, and Nietzsche—this theme adds to a burgeoning dossier that suggests the
most postmodern thinker of all had more than a few things in common with the Garden.
Michel Serres
We turn now to another French thinker, one who is often seen as standing outside the
main currents of postmodernism or any other school, Michel Serres (1930–2019). Yet
whatever his intellectual affiliations, Serres’s interest in Epicureanism is undeniable.
And in the first instance, “Epicureanism” in Michel Serres’s œuvre means Lucretian
Epicureanism. This fact is particularly obvious in Serres’s The Birth of Physics,47 which
provides the most comprehensive insight into the aims and methods of his reception of
Epicurean concepts. Thus, in what follows, The Birth of Physics will be of undeniable
interest. Yet, in order to outline more clearly Serres’s philosophy in general, as well as his
reception of Epicureanism in particular, we offer first a brief sketch of his intellectual
(philosophical) background, above all his position in the field of twentieth-century
French philosophy. Generally, one locates Serres’s philosophy in the field of history of
science and, with regard to his beginnings as pupil of Gaston Bachelard, of epistemol
ogy.48 But Serres himself refuses to be assigned to a certain Denkschule or tradition, and,
through his manifold œuvre, manages to elude a fixed position in the field of academic
philosophy.49 As Latour rightly points out, Serres is not a “Critique” philosopher since
he is not focused on “founding knowledge, debunking beliefs, adjudicating territories,
ruling opinions.”50
In The Birth of Physics, we encounter many of the specifics both of Serres’s style of
writing and his philosophical modus operandi. Beginning with the title, one can already
observe the center and starting point of his reception of Epicureanism: it is all about
46 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship.

47 The French edition, La naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrèce, appeared in 1977; we use
the English translation by Hawkes: Serres, Birth of Physics.
48 Cf. Serres’s dissertation Le système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques (1968).
49 For a comprehensive and acute overview of Michel Serres’s philosophy in the context of
contemporary French philosophy, cf. Latour, “The Enlightenment without the Critique.” In an
interview with Latour, which serves as excellent introduction to Serres’s philosophy, Serres (Latour and
Serres, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, 9) summarizes his intellectual formation as
follows: “What contemporary author have I followed? None, alas. . . . Epistemology seemed to me to
develop empty commentaries. Phenomenology didn’t interest me either for reasons of taste and
economy. . . . [A]lthough I went through the best schools, I became, in the end, a self-taught man.”
50 Latour, “The Enlightenment without the Critique,” 85.
postmodernism 801
physics, the key concept of Epicurean thought and starting point for its ethics.51
Serres writes:
The Lucretian text is a discourse on physics. Commentary, at once critique and

translation, in general refuses to recognize this, avoiding the nature of things them-
selves and treating the knowledge it presents as that of an ignorant pre-history, it
speaks instead of morality and religion, politics and freedom. It cuts Lucretius off
from the world. The scholiast loathes the world.52
Hence, the predominant topic to which Serres refers again and again throughout his
“Lucretian meditation”53 is the development and formation of modern science, espe-
cially physics. As he “provocatively”54 implies in the title of the French edition, its birth-
place is Lucretius’s De rerum natura. Serres argues that modern physics, especially
mechanics, is determined in its history by a pre-assumed focus on solidity.55 In The Birth
of Physics, however, we see that this does not get the point: based upon a central concept
of Epicurean physics in De rerum natura, the clinamen,56 viz. “the minimum angle of
formation of a vortex,”57 Serres seeks to establish a forgotten (or neglected) paradigm of
physics, which relies not on solidity but, on the contrary, on fluidity, as the subtitle of the
French edition of The Birth of Physics, fleuves et turbulences (“flow and turbulence”),
already hints.58 Serres’s Epicureanism, we can say up to this point, is aimed not only to
establish a new paradigm of science but also to (re-)establish Lucretius in the history of
science:
We understood Lucretius’ knowledge very poorly because we were the children of

Plato and the Stoics. Because the fundamental facts of Epicurean nature remained
marginal to traditional science. . . . And so we judged them irrelevant to the history
of sciences.59
51 See Asmis, “Lucretius’ New World Order,” 141; and Webb, “Michel Serres on Lucretius,” 132; contra
Warren, “Ancient Atomists on the Plurality of Worlds,” 358: “[A]lthough Epicurus will on occasion refer
to his physical theory to bolster particular ethical claims [. . .], Epicurean ethical theory is not, so to
speak, deduced from Epicurean physics or cosmology.”
52 Serres, Birth of Physics, 107. 53 Berressem, “Incerto Tempore Incertisque Locis,” 56.
54 Webb, “Introduction,” vii. 55 Cf. Serres, Birth of Physics, 5.
56 Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion; and Schmidt, Clinamen provide a detailed analysis of the
“theory” and “practice” of the Lucretian clinamen.
57 Serres, Birth of Physics, 6.
58 Cf. Serres, Birth of Physics, 11 and esp. 17–18. Holmes, “Deleuze, Lucretius, and the Simulacrum of
Naturalism,” 320 states that the “Epicurean clinamen became a potent, if multivalent, figure for a
number of French philosophers” and hereby emphasizes that “the most important intervention in this
tradition has been Michel Serres’s The Birth of Physics, a forceful defense of Lucretius relevance to
post-Newtonian physics.” For a more detailed discussion of Serres’s concept of the clinamen, see Noller,
“De la théorie à la pratique.”
59 Serres, Birth of Physics, 112. For the general concept of history which plays a decisive role as
“physics” (Serres, Birth of Physics, 179) in The Birth of Physics, cf. Clucas, “Liquid History,” esp. 77‒83.
In what follows, we sketch more fully the most important aspects of this “Epicurean
nature.” Yet despite the above-mentioned focus on physics, Serres’s preoccupation with
Epicureanism does not elude but rather slides gradually into ethics.
Serres adopts the system of Epicurean physics quite comprehensively, i.e. he refers to
atoms, void, the axiomatic principles, and their mechanisms. As already briefly out-
lined, the clinamen (“swerve”/“déclinaison”) hence serves both as an argumentative and
conceptual “epicenter” for Serres’s innovative reading of the (history of) modern phys-
ics, since according to him, it is not an unscientific invention or a logical, mechanical, or
physical absurdity at all.60 Rather the clinamen is essential in establishing as an alterna-
tive to the “mechanics of solids” a “mechanics of fluids.”61 Throughout the Lucretian
poem, the concept of fluid and turbulence represented most fundamentally in the clina-
men, argues Serres, is always present as a subtext.62 In establishing a “mechanics of flu-
ids,” that is a physics of fluids and turbulence, the clinamen gains its importance from the
fact that it possesses a singular “initial force”:
The clinamen is the smallest imaginable condition for the original formation of tur-
bulence. . . . Atoms meet in and by turbulence.63
From a macrocosmic viewpoint which is introduced by Serres here, his specific interest
in the Lucretian clinamen becomes particularly clear and, furthermore, reveals the
underlying methodological and epistemological premises of The Birth of Physics. Serres
is first of all concerned with the inherent paradoxes of Epicurean physics:
The physical theory of turbulence contains a paradox. Laminar flow, the figure of
chaos, is at first sight a model of order. The atoms pour out in parallel, without mix-
ing or sticking to each other. These preliminary rows are already a taxonomy, as the
word itself indicates. Turbulence seems to introduce a disorder into this arrange-
ment. . . . Disorder emerges from order.64
60 Cf. Serres, Birth of Physics, 3.

61 Serres, Birth of Physics, 5. In this context one has briefly to point out Serres’s fascination for
Archimedes, the “Euclid of the Epicurean world” (Serres, Birth of Physics, 24). To him, Serres dedicates
a chapter in his book to strengthening his assumption of a serious contribution of Epicureanism to
science in antiquity: “We can no longer read the atomist physics as a naive phenomenology of things, it
has rigorous support. Or rather, a well-formed analogon. It begins with Democritus, and the edifice is
completed, crowned, by Archimedes. A mathematical physics, close to the world and proven, in fact
existed among the Greeks who were not supposed to have one.” (Serres, Birth of Physics, 25.) The
Epicurean physics, thus, has its analogue in Archimedean mathematics.
62 Cf. Serres, Birth of Physics, 110‒11: “In the beginning we were warned: maritime turbulence,
admired in bad weather from the land, only agitates fluids, waters and winds: turbantibus aequora
ventis. In the theoretical text, reference to singular bodies is directed only at fluids: imbris uti guttae,
like drops of water, per aquas atque aera rarum, through water or the rare medium of the air and, again,
corpus aquae naturaque tenuis aeris.”
63 Serres, Birth of Physics, 6. 64 Serres, Birth of Physics, 27.
postmodernism 803
For Serres, the clinamen, a nec plus quam minimum is a phenomenon of threshold, first
because it entails and at the same time destroys order and, second, because this “infini-
tesimal turbulence . . . is also the passage from theory [i.e., the parallel fall of the atoms] to
practice [i.e., clinamen-caused turbulence].”65 This explanation, finally, is particularly
worth mentioning since it shows how Serres deals with paradoxes: he tries not to solve
them but to describe them as precisely as possible, and he thereby manages to explain
the clinamen not (only) philosophically but also systematically.66
Epicurean physics, however, is in Serres’s system not only concerned with mechanics,
fluids, and materialism, but also serves as a predicate for ethics and epistemology:
Morality is physics. An exact knowledge of natural things. So it is not surprising that

right in the middle of the treatise on atoms, there intervenes a treatise on the soul.
It [viz. the soul] is mortal . . . . It knows all the same, this is the point. And this excep-
tion must be reduced. Hence the book of perception and simulacra . . .67
and “all gnoseology (gnoséologie) is physics.”68 The theory of simulacra or eidōla (Ep.
Hdt. 46–48), then, is mentioned by Serres in order to reformulate his critique on mod-
ern science and epistemology from a different angle: the (Post-)Cartesian “contact” to
the world, underpinned by its scepticism against sensory perception,69 can be replaced
by the “theory of simulacra . . . a theory of communication.”70 The simulacra provide a
theory of knowledge which is based on (physical) contact (cf. the “theory of communi-
cation”). For Serres, this fact ultimately blurs the lines between knowledge and being; it
is effectively his “materialistic proof ” of the Cartesian cogito.
Serres’s Epicurean ethics, finally, is based on the concepts of ataraxia and hēdonē.
Here, we encounter a slight change in Serres’s handling of Epicureanism, since he is
exclusively focused no longer on the specific Lucretian mode of Epicureanism but now
on more general concepts of Epicureanism. In his strictly “physical” interpretation of
Epicurean ethics, Serres relates ataraxia and hēdonē to physics: “Physics dictates
morality.”71 Ataraxia is therefore the complete absence of disturbance and turbulence,72
whereas hēdonē (according to Serres’s etymological explanation) “is torn from the dinē
[whirlpool]”73 and thus points to these very movements of turmoil. The underlying
pattern of ethics which becomes visible right from the two concepts of ataraxia and
65 Serres, Birth of Physics, 83; original emphasis and my addition.

66 Cf. Latour, “The Enlightenment without the Critique,” 91: “Serres never overcomes anything.
Serres’s philosophy is free from negation.”
69 For a more explicit account of Serres’s attack against Rationalism see the preface to Les cinq sens.
72 See Serres, Birth of Physics, 127: “Ataraxy, a moral state, is thus a physical state, without deviation
or distance.”
dinē is thus all about equilibrium.74 The little that disturbs this “equation”75 brings us
back to the clinamen, which for Serres is not only a physical but also an ethical
phenomenon.76
Serres thus follows Epicurean doctrine closely but emphasizes its elements in a differ-
ent manner than many modern scholars. With regard to the reception of Epicureanism
in the twentieth century, it is not surprising that his whole argument is based on the
clinamen, which (as we have seen) also attracted the attention of Derrida.77 What is sur-
prising, though, is his almost total neglect of its otherwise mentioned ethical implica-
tions: free will, which is often seen precisely as finding its starting point in the clinamen,
does not play a decisive role in The Birth of Physics as such. Instead:
[The] wise man in accordance with nature controls himself by [the laws of nature].
If he understands physics, he conduces himself morally.78
This makes clear once again the way in which Epicureanism has influenced Serres’s
mode of thinking: first, he seeks to establish a link between philosophy and science by
reading Lucretius’s De rerum natura as a philosophical treatise not on ethics but on
science—a different, paradoxical science. Second, Serres’s Epicurean ethics seeks to
stress a materialist ethics; that is, it tends to give prior position to the materialist funda-
ments of Epicurean physics. In this way, Serres’s reception adds to this focus on the
promulgation of the scientific character of Epicureanism an ethical or even advisory
dimension when he states:
The Epicureans criticized science as we would today. Not all science, not science as
such, but that science or that reasoning which attracts or follows force, mastery and
domination on its paths of totalization. . . . We, people of the totalitarian age of the
universal and the university, have paid dearly to learn what the Epicureans were not
wrong to fear.79
This statement reveals that according to Serres Epicureanism is not only a historical
phenomenon but rather a mode of thinking about science and ethics that still affects, or
at least should affect, the present.
74 Serres, Birth of Physics, 183 bases his argument on DRN 5.1117‒18: vivere parce / aequo animo: “The
equation is paradoxical, it operates a slight deviation. . . . To the right, on the side of the aequo animo,
this is the zero of equilibration, it is the equanimity without flaw . . . : repose. To the left, on the side of
the vivere parce, here is a small amount of parsimony. How can this part . . . be reduced to zero?”
76 For a comprehensive survey of Serres’s “Epicurean” ethics see Webb, “Michel Serres on Lucretius.
Atomism, Science, and Ethics,” esp. 132‒35.
77 Cf., too, the previous section on Derrida. 78 Serres, Birth of Physics, 185.
postmodernism 805
Conclusion
This review of three thinkers—one German, two French—offers but one limited labora-
tory for investigating the fate of Epicureanism in the postmodern age, yet it perhaps
allows us some basis for returning to the question from which we began: is there a post-
modern Epicureanism, in the strong, thematic sense of that term?
On the one hand, while there is no denying that each of the figures considered here
engages deeply with Epicureanism, it may seem that they do so only in a piecemeal fash-
ion. Blumenberg, for example, uses Epicureanism largely as an analytical tool for defin-
ing, e.g., past epochs rather than as a body of thought to be embraced wholesale.
Likewise, Derrida and Serres seem to overemphasize the clinamen, or swerve, at the
expense of other elements in Epicurean thought. Such remarks perhaps give heft to
Fowler’s assertion that the Epicureans are not postmodern, or at least suggest that post-
modern Epicureanism is a fragmentary Epicureanism, which no longer attempts to
present the ideas of the ancient school in a comprehensive fashion.
Yet one may surely view this fragmentation more positively. The clinamen, or swerve,
seems especially to have spoken to several postmodern thinkers. While it is often treated
as a logical anomaly and philosophical embarrassment by opponents of the school, for
an era that had abandoned hope in grand narratives the swerve’s very status as a contra-
diction could hardly but seem appealing. As we have seen, Derrida—by any measure a
postmodern—saw many of the elements of his own attitude towards writing embedded
in the swerve and in atomist thought on language more generally. And while none of
this analysis means that the swerve or Epicureanism is inherently postmodern,
Epicureanism clearly provided key conceptual resources for the articulation of post-
modernism. Indeed, even if the term postmodern Epicureanism still, after so many
pages of discussion and analysis, evokes a specter of paradox, perhaps that very
specter—a marker of the challenge of digesting and incorporating such a resolutely anti-
sceptical body of thought—is what made Epicureanism so appealing for so many
postmodern thinkers.
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Index
Abba Shaul 554 Anaxarchus of Abdera 413

About the Criterion (Epicurus) 43 see also Angeli, Anna 388, 402, 416
Canon (Epicurus) anger 209, 211, 409, 472–473
absolute metaphors of Blumenberg 795–796 Anima mundi (Blount) 652
abstract concept of value 125–126, 129 animals
Academica (Cicero) 480–482 minds of 193–194, 208–209
Achilles 473 motion of 212, 241–242
actions natures of 214–216, 437
feelings prompting 212 spirits or souls of 650, 651, 653, 681
freedom of 236–243 training 218
necessary or “through ourselves” 234–235 Annas, Julia 274
Acts of the Apostles 582–584, 586, 591 Anniceris 142, 161–162, 175
Adams, John 733, 734, 737, 740 antanaplērōsis 98
Adriani, Marcello 629 anti-reductionism 224
Adversus Colotes (Plutarch) 50–51, 508–511, 526 anticipation, pleasure of 153, 158
philosophers, attacks on 518–522 antimartyrēsis 60–61, 105
on political leaders 562 antiperistasis 491
Aeneid (Vergil) 472–473, 499 Antiphanes 36
Aenesidemus 482 antisemitism 536, 543–544
Aetna (Anonymous) 101, 108 Antisthenes 141
afterlife, see life after death apatheia 471
Against Colotes (Plutarch), see Adversum Apiqoros 549–551, 579–580
Colotem (Plutarch) Maimonides on 556
Against Craterus’s Refutation of see also Rabbinic literature and
“Demonstrations of Geometry” (Zeno of Epicureanism
Sidon) 382 apiqorsut 577–579
Against Empedocles (Hermarchus) 438 apokatastasis of the Stoics 585, 592
air, Seneca on 491–492 Apollodorus 22
Akiva (Rabbi) 554, 557 Apollonius 372
Aldus Manutius 624 Apollophanes 389
Alexander, military strategist 125–126, 129 Apology (Plato) 736
Alexander Magnus 413 aponia 158 see also painlessness
Allen, Walter 385 Appleby, Joyce 740
Almanach des gourmands (La Reynière) 722 Aratus of Soli 108
altruism 180, 252, 262–263, 479, 538, 699 Arcesilaus 21, 519–520
ambition 433 Argonautica (Apollonius) 372
Ambrose 599–601, 604 Aristion 303
Amoraitic materials 552, 560–566 Aristippus of Cyrene 142
Anaxagoras 369, 437 Aristippus the Younger 142, 151, 156
810 index
Aristo of Ceos 415, 416 and infinity 70–71

Aristotle Maimonides and 571–573
atomic theory of 64, 65, 653 Marx on 771–773, 775–779
Cicero’s opinion of 485 minima of 63–67, 69–70
elements of 90–91 minimal parts of 63–67, 69–70
friendships of 280 movement of 61–62, 71–73, 238
generally accepted beliefs for 47–48 and the not strictly infinite 67–70
on hedonism 141–142, 156 and poetics, similarity to 369, 370
Maimonides and 572, 574–576 primary and secondary qualities of 76–77
marriage, right age for 364–365 resistance and 60
on rhetoric 334 and self-development 214–218, 229–230
and the soul 55, 191 Seneca on 491
space, nature of 70–71, 74 sense perception and 76–77
theology of 95, 98, 574–575 sentience of atoms 649
see also specific writings of simplicity of 77
Armstrong, David 278, 343, 369, 403 and thought 196, 198–199
Arnobius 598 and void 60–62, 201
Arrighetti, Graziano 314, 349, 588 weight and 60, 71–75
arrogance 297, 415–416 see also swerve, atomic
Ars Poetica (Horace) 456 attention, paying or not paying 202, 203, 212
Artemidorus 389 attestation in sense perception 53–54
Asmis, Elizabeth 349, 353, 366, 473 Atticus 112
associationists 268, 271 Augustine 203, 604
astral theology 107 Aurispa, Giovanni 616, 621
Astronomica (Manilius) 108 autarkeia 589
ataraxia 158, 263, 432, 443, 471 autonomy 263
Blumenberg on 795–796
gods and 587 Babylonian Talmud 560–561
Marx on 775, 776, 780 Bachelard, Gaston 800
poetry and 349, 442 Bailey, Cyril 367
Serres on 803–804 Balzac, Honoré de 726
atheism of Epicurus, charges of 7, 95–96, Bar Kepha, Moses 592–593
481, 539 Barbaro, Francesco 621
in early Christianity 586, 587–588, 591, 594 Bardaisan of Edessa 591–596, 603
Athenian Plague 434–435, 450, 616 Barère, Bertrand de Vieuzac 713
atomism 6, 59–80, 643–650 Barhadbshabba 593
Blumenberg on 794–795 Basil of Nyssa 602
Cicero on 480–481 Basilides of Tyrus 22
and cosmology 90–91 Bassus, Aufidius 489, 501–502
criticism of by Plutarch 514 Bauer, Bruno 762
Derrida on 798, 799 Baxter, Richard 647
described 61–63 Bayle, Pierre 647–649, 660
early Christianity and 585, 591–593, 595, beliefs 199–203
603, 643–644 and feelings 204, 208–210
in the eighteenth century 643–650 and focusing the mind 231–232
and hedonism 142–143 not perceivable 200–201
Hegel on 763–768 perceivable 200
index 811
Bendlin, Andreas 537, 539, 540 Callimachus 441, 442

Benitez, Miguel 656 Callisthenes of Olynthus 413
Bentham, Jeremy 743, 744 Calpurnii Pisones 401
egoistic hedonism and 755 Calvinists and Thomas Jefferson 734–735
on happiness 747–748 Canon (Epicurus) 43, 44, 52
on pain, absence of 753 canon of philosophical schools 32–33
on pleasure 746–748 Capece, Scipione 631–633
Bentley, Richard 646, 657 cardiocentrism 684–686
Berchoux, Joseph 719–722, 726, 727 Carmina (Horace) 465
Bernier, François 644 Carneades 516
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom Carneiscus 21
(Jefferson) 734 Carpe Diem (Horace) 465–466
Birth of Physics, The (Serres) 800–804 Casanova, Angelo 546
Birth of Tragedy, The (Nietzsche) 782, 784, 785 Cassius 477, 482, 483
Blank, David 344 Catullus 447
blessedness of the divine 97–101, 109 causes 233, 235
Bloch, Herbert 394 Cavallo, Guglielmo 404, 410, 413, 416, 417, 420
Bloch, Olivier 644 Villa of the Papyri and 394, 398, 403,
Blount, Charles 652 406, 407
Blumenberg, Hans 792–796, 805 Cave Exits (Blumenberg) 793, 795, 796
absolute metaphors of 795–796 Cavendish, Charles 678
on atomism 794–795 Cavendish, Margaret 647
see also specific writings of celestial bodies, divinity of 89–90, 107–108,
body 190–191, 194 see also universe
and hedonism 142, 153–155, 160, 177–178 Celsus 591, 596–597
pleasures and pains of 205–207 Cerebri anatome (Willis) 651
properties of 201 chance, concept of 592–595
Boethius 628 Chandler, Clive 355
Boethus 510 Characters (Theophrastus) 414
Book of the Laws of Countries (Bardaisan) 592, Charleton, Walter
593, 596 on atoms 647, 649–650
Bourguet, Louis 660 on the soul 650
Bowditch, P. L. 565 Chazet, René 716–719, 726, 727
Boyancé, Pierre 348 Chilton, W. 546
Boyle, Robert 644, 646 Chion of Heraclea 542
Bromius 36 Christianity and Epicureanism 94–95,
Brown, Eric 697 256–257, 572–573, 582–612
Brown, Stuart 649 Ambrose 599–601, 604
Brucker, Jakob 656 atomism and 584, 591–593, 595, 603
Bruni, Leonardo 616–617 chance, concept of 592–595
Bruno, Giordano 634 Dionysius of Alexandria 597–598
Bucolics (Vergil) 459 Gregory of Nyssa 601–602
Buffon 659–660, 663 heresies of 591
Burley, Walter 621 Jerome 603–604
Lactantius 598–599
Cabanis, Pierre-Jean-Georges 663 on life after death 740
Cabisius, Gail 449 New Testament and Epicureanism 582–584
812 index
Christianity and Epicureanism (Continued ) Plutarch’s case studies on 518–522

Nietzsche on 787 and poetics 348, 355–357, 373
Origen on 585, 590–591, 595–598 in refuting others 517–518
paganism, charges of 590, 591 see also Adversus Colotem (Plutarch)
Paul, the apostle 582–586, 589, 591, 594, 604 Commentary on the Mishnah
Rufinus 603 (Maimonides) 566–567, 569, 570, 577
Chrysippus 479, 508, 536, 590 common perceptions 54
Cicero 199, 405, 447, 476–485, 499 Common Sense of Sidgwick 752
criticism of Epicureanism 172–183, 476, Comparatio Cimonis et Luculli (Plutarch) 508
483, 519 Comparetti, Domenico 392–394, 397, 416,
and Epicurus, opinions of 477, 479, 418–419
484–485, 561 Concolino Mancini, Bianca 356
on ethics 478–480 concrete concept of value 125–126, 129
on feelings 204 connectionists 268
on friendship 261, 263–272, 281, 479–480 contestation in sense perception 53–54
and the gods 97, 99, 111, 481, 484, 586, Continuation des pensées diverses (Bayle) 648
598–599 Contra Celsum (Origen) 595
and humanists 619, 625 contract 4, 692–695
and Lucretius 482 social 674–675
on the mind 201 conventionalist stage of language 324
on Philodemus of Gadara 384–387, 476, corpuscular physics 657
482–483 Corvinus, Matthias (King of Hungary)
on physics 480–481 622, 624
on politics 288, 484 Cosimo de Medici 621–622
and Roman Epicureans 481–485 cosmological traditions 592, 593
on the shape of the universe 83 cosmology 6, 81–87, 99
Thomas Jefferson and 730–732 motions in the universe 84–87, 90–92
in Victorian England 743 place of the gods 89–90
see also Torquatus; specific writings of of the Stoics 584–585
Cichorius, Conrad 386, 389 cosmopolitanism 538
Clay, Diskin 531, 535, 539, 541, 543 cosmos, see universe
Cleanthes 179, 536, 584 Costabile, Felice 397–398
Clement of Alexandria 94, 95, 538, Cosway, Maria 731
594–596, 600 courage 169
Cleomedes 85 Coward, William 653, 654
clinamen 222, 240, 436, 481, 483 Cradle Argument on pleasure and
Derrida on 798, 799 pain 146–149
Serres on 801–805 objections to 172–173
see also swerve, atomic Crates of Mallos 361–362
clouds 87–88 Cratylus (Plato) 327
Clucas, Stephen 645 criteria 44–52, 696
cognitive therapy 131, 134 Hellenistic use of term 44
Collection of Philosophers (Philodemus) 14, 26 sense perception 44–46, 146
Colotes of Lampsacus 21, 50–51, 294, 508, 522 criteria for truth, Epicurus’s 52, 103, 105
citing of Epicurean works 512–513 feelings of pleasure or pain 48, 157–158
Democritus and 519–521 preconceptions 46–48, 310–311
language investigations of 317 Croesus 540
index 813
Crönert, Wilhelm 348 atoms, used metaphorically in 444–445

Cudworth, Ralph 642, 645–646, 648, 657, 660 contemporary readership of 445–451
Cyrenaics 154, 169–171 death in 448–449
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 7, 175, 178 desire in 433
friendships of 280 French Enlightenment and 714
hedonism of 141–142, 151–153, 156, 157, and humanists of the Renaissance 615,
163, 166 621–628, 631
in Horace 469 on language 319–323
poetic form of 438–445
De amicitia (Cicero) 480 politics in 446–450
De amore prolis (Plutarch) 511, 512 and postmodern Epicurus 793–794
De anima brutorum (Willis) 650, 651, 653 religion in 432–433, 437, 442
De appetitu et affectibus animae Serres on 800, 801, 804
(Gassendi) 685 structure of 430–438
De beneficiis (Seneca) 492–493 on swerve, atomic 222–223, 236–243,
De cive (Hobbes) 690, 699, 700, 702 245–246, 436
De cohibenda ira (Plutarch) 517 Vergil and 459
De Deo (Raphson) 654 De sera numinis vindicta (Plutarch) 507
De diis (Philodemus) 105, 106 De signis (Philodemus) 380, 390
De finibus bonorum et malorum De Simone, Antonio 391
(Cicero) 144–147, 172, 352, 477 De summo bono (Valla) 619–620
atomism in 480–481 De superstitione (Plutarch) 511
egoism in 483 De vita beata (Seneca) 493
on friendship 261, 263–272, 276, 495 De voluptate (Valla) 619–620
Lucretius in 482 death 7, 118–140, 545
pleasure in 478–479 badness of 125–129
in Victorian England 743 fear of 118, 120, 122–124, 130–138, 211–212,
De ira dei (Lactantius) 598 465–466
De Lacy, Estelle Allen 348, 419 fear of, lack of 98–99, 419, 544, 654–655
De Lacy, Phillip Howard 348, 385, 419 implications of 136–138
De latenter vivendo (Plutarch) 523–526 life after 77, 95, 118, 119, 124
De legibus (Cicero) 482 meaning of 121–122
de Marolles, Michel 626 objections to Epicurean beliefs
De motu, loco et tempore (Hobbes) 679, 688 about 123–130
De motu cordis (Harvey) 684 Seneca on 501–502
De natura deorum (Cicero) 95, 99, 101, value of, Epicurean reasoning
482, 484 about 120–123
De officiis (Cicero) 449, 480 death penalty 136–137
De otio (Seneca) 496, 497 Del Mastro, Gianluca 406, 412, 420
De Petra, G. 392 Delattre, Daniel 410
De pietate (Philodemus) 96 deliberative rhetoric 337
De Pythiae oraculis (Plutarch) 510 Demetrius Laco 23–24, 404, 520
De re publica (Cicero) 480 and the doctrine of the Garden 33
De rerum natura (Lucretius) 30, 81, 111, 113 language investigations of 323–327
annotation of 627–630 and poetics 349, 358–361, 373
Athenian Plague in 434–435 theology 105
atomism 449–451 democratic man 165–166
814 index
Democritus 484, 524, 538 Diogenes of Oenoanda 2–3, 31–32, 531–548

atomic theory of 59, 63–64, 213, 224, 238, cosmology and 83
480–481, 774 criticism of Epicureanism 175–176, 436
and Colotes 519–521 cultural context of 533–535
and Marx 769–771, 773, 777 Epicurean texts and 536–537
and Nietzsche 780–781, 783 on fear 202
on sense perception 43, 51–52 fragments and recent discoveries 538–545
soul atoms of 64 on hedonism 150–151, 153, 154, 157,
demonstrations and proofs 56 166–167
Demosthenes, C. Julius 532 illness of 541
deprivation argument about death 124, 127, 129 language investigations of 326–327
Derrida, Jacques 793, 796–800, 805 maxims inscribed by 17, 144, 509, 519,
on atomism 798, 799 531–535, 537, 545–546
on gods 799–800 methodology and interpretation 535–536
Descartes, René 645–647, 680 motivation of 533–535
religion of 648 pleasures 176
desires psychic pain of 207
classification of 164–168, 211–212, 285–286 sense perceptions 197
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 176–177 stones, texts, and editions 545–546
Horace on 471 on the virtues 169–171
for life 206 wealth and 167
psychic distress of 207–208 Diogenes of Seleucia 303
vices and passions 167 Diogenianus 326–327
Deutsches Archäologisches Institute 545 Dionysius of Alexandria 597–598
development, human 214–215, 228–231, 245 Dionysius of Lamptre 22
dependent on oneself 231 Dionysius Thrax 336
DeWitt, Norman 582 Discours anatomiques (Lamy) 651
Dhanani, Alnoor 571 disloyalty in friendship 292
d’Holbach, Paul Thiry 641, 657–658, 662–663 dissident Epicureans 32–36
Diderot, Denis 656–657, 660–663, 716 d’Ivernois, Francis 713
on Epicureans and Stoics 715 Divinae Institutiones (Lactantius) 598, 619
see also specific writings of divine intervention, rejection of 55, 99–100
Diels, Hermann 369, 393 divine providence, see providence
dikaion 692–693 divinity of celestial bodies 89–90, 107–108
Dillon, Sheila 400 Dobbs, B. J. T. 654
Diogenes Laertius 509, 519, 537, 594 Donini, Pierluigi 487
on hedonism of Epicurus 148, 162 Dorandi, Tiziano 383, 386, 406, 416
and humanists of the Renaissance 621, “down” in the universe 74–75, 84
625–626 dreams 197–198, 538–539
on poetry 352–353 Duchesneau, François 645
on politics 525
on religion 463 early modern Epicureanism 671–710
on rhetoric 342 and ancient Epicureanism,
self-evident observations 104 compared 671–677
traditional education and 334–335 cardiocentrism 684–686
and truth, criteria of 44–46 ethics, happiness and
and writings of Epicurus 16, 17 self-preservation 686–692
see also specific writings of the heart in 684–686
index 815
justice, utility and contract 692–695 in priestly offices 110–111

mechanistic psychology of 677–684 rhetoric of 341–344
political theory of Gassendi 695–698 Epicurus 14–18, 451
self-preservation 684–686 as an empiricist 57–58
society and human nature 699–704 deathbed of 122, 155, 178, 181, 202, 489
utility vs. sovereignty 704–706 egoism of 252–253
earthquakes 89 epistemology of 43, 52
Ecclesiastes 594 importance of 2
eclipses 91 in Judaism 551–553
Eclogues (Vergil) 459, 460–462, 467 leaders, contempt for 561–562
Edelstein, Dan 715 as object of veneration 113
egoism and friendship 253, 254, 256, 258 on pain 133–134
egoistic hedonism 747, 748, 755–757, see also personality of 296, 297
hedonism reductionist view of atomism 224–225
Egyptians 543–544 as tree trunk 284, 292, 304
eidola 107, 111, 681, 787, 803 will of 37–38, 541–542
sense perception and 103–104, 195–198, 200 see also specific writings of
eighteenth century Epicureanism 656–664, epideictic rhetoric 337, 339, 341, 344
711–728, see also materialism epigrams of Philodemus 439–440
Elazar ben Arakh (Rabbi) 552, 555–559, 567 epilogismos 57–58, 517
Elements of Law Natural and Politic epistemology 43–58
(Hobbes) 679, 687–688 criteria of 44–52
eliminativism 224 criticism of by Plutarch 515
Elisha ben Abuya 579 and ethics 56–58
Empedoclean metaphor 317–318 scientific method 52–56
Empedocles 432, 437, 438, 444 Epistle to Herodotus (Epicurus) 99, 101, 107,
empiricism 57–58 see also Letter to Herodotus (Epicurus)
empty space, see void and language 310, 320
enargeia 21, 100, 103, 105, 764 Epistle to Menoeceus (Epicurus), see Letter to
Ennius 441–442 Menoeceus (Epicurus)
entropy 61 Epistle to Pythocles (Epicurus), see Letter to
Ephrem 592 Pythocles (Epicurus)
epibolê 203 Epistles (Horace) 469–471
Epictetus 29, 729, 732 Epistulae Morales (Seneca) 259, 489–490,
Epicure, definitions of 714 497, 499
Epicureanism Erler, Michael 383
blessings of 289–292 erotic desire 510, 544
community practices of 256–257 Esposito, Dominico 391–392
extensionalist language of 309 Eternal Epicurus of Nietzsche 782–783
ideological uniformity of 34–35 Ethica Comparetti (Philodemus) 418–419
negative associations with 590–591 ethical hedonism 146–149, 151, 152–153, see also
propositions of 756 hedonism
study of, benefits from 278 ethics 7, 16–17, 676–677, 686–692
women, as students of 37, 544–545, 675 criticism of by Cicero 478–480
Epicureans criticism of by Plutarch 515
genuine vs. dissident 32–36 and epistemology 56–58
golden age of 541 and fear of death 136
in politics 301–304, 333 of Horace and Vergil 457, 460
816 index
ethics (Continued ) free will 6, 240–241, 578

and humanists of the Renaissance 628 freedom of pleasures 711–728
Marx on 778–779 French Enlightenment 712–714
and modern Epicureanism 673–674 Epicureanism in 716
and moral sense 730 friendship 250–283, 291–292
physics and 81 in antiquity 257–258
Seneca on 492–493 Cicero on 261, 263–272, 281, 479–480
Serres on 803–804 criticism of Epicureanism 180, 279–280
and theology 111, 112, 276 Derrida on 800
eudaimonia 118, 119, 134–135, 254 disloyalty in 292
Horace and Vergil and 457, 459, 460 egoist motives for 253, 254, 256, 258
eudemonism 180 goals of 281
Eudoxus 141, 148 and hedonism 171, 251, 264, 268–270
eusebeia 459 intrinsic good of 147, 169, 251
Eusebius 596, 597–598 as pact for mutual love 267–268
euthanasia 128, 129 Philodemus 275–279
Evans, Matthew 258–261, 273 pleasures of 252, 266, 268–273, 757
Evelyn, John 626 for safety and protection 253, 266, 292
extensionalism 308–311 as self-regarding 250–251, 254–275
Seneca on 259–260, 495
fear 202, 209 of Stoics 259, 260, 280, 479–480, 495
and cosmology 81–82, 85, 92 writings on 254–255
of death 118, 120, 122–124, 130–138, 211–212,
465–466 Gaines, Robert 343–344
desires related to 165 Gaius Memmius 385, 401, 446
and meteorology 87–89, 92 Gale, Monica R. 367
psychic distress of 207–208 Gallavotti, Carlo 397
of torture in the afterlife 131 Garden of Epicurus in Athens
feelings 204–205, 212 decline of 24–25
and beliefs 204, 208–210 founding of 15
Stoics’ classifications of 207 friendship within 256, 261
see also pain, feelings of; pleasure, feelings of organization and common life of 37–38
Ficino, Marsilio 631, 633 succession in 293
fine body of the soul 190–191 Gassendi, Pierre 632, 642–645, 650, 655, 658,
first imprints 215–217 677–684
flat disc shape of earth 74, 83 animal spirits of 653, 681
flattery 413–414 atomism of 6, 649, 681, 682
focusing of the mind 231–232, 236 Descartes, criticism of 680
Fonzio, Bartolomeo 622 ethics, happiness and self-preservation
forensic rhetoric 337 in 676–677, 686, 688–692
Formey, J. H. S. 657 the heart in 684–686
Foucault, Michel 793 and Hobbes, friendship with 678
Fowler, Don 244, 791–792 justice, utility and contract 4, 692–695
Frachetta, Girolamo 632 and modern Epicureanism 672–676
Franceschi, Raffaelle 632–633, 635 naturalism and conventionalism 696–697
frank criticism 341, 459 nature, law of 697–698
Franklin, Benjamin 739 political theory of, innovations in 695–698
Frede, Dorothea 271, 272, 279 politics for 676
index 817
psychology in 680–683, 685 Goldschmidt, Victor 262, 694

society and human nature 699–704 Gorgias (Plato) 141, 285
utilitarianism 696 on rhetoric 334
utility vs. sovereignty 704–706 Gospel of Thomas 582
writings by 678–679, 684, 685 gourmand 715–716
see also specific writings of gravity, atomic theory and 72–74
Gastronomie, La (Berchoux) 719–722 “greatest happiness principle” 744, 748–749
gastronomy 715–716, 719–721 Greek language, superiority of 318
Gaultier, Abraham 655–656 Greenblatt, Stephen 714
Gay Science, The (Nietzsche) 783, 784 Gregory Nazianzen 603
Georgics (Vergil) 462 Gregory of Nyssa 601–602
Georgos (Menander) 370–372 Gregory Thaumaturgus 596
Germany, Epicurus in 761–790 grief
Hegel 763–768 over others’ deaths 121–122
Marx 768–780 Seneca on 504–505
Nietzsche 780–788 Griffin, Mariam 499
Ghislieri, Michele 631 Grotius, Hugo 671, 672, 695
Giancotti, Francesco 410 Guerra, Tepedino 316
Gigandet, Alain 263, 264 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides) 566,
Gigante, Marcello 390, 398–399 568–570
on Philodemus 380–381, 385–389, 410, atomic physics in 571–573
414, 419 creation theories 573, 576
writings of 383 deity in 575–576
Glidden, David 308, 311 prophecy in 573
Glisson, Francis 650, 653 on providence 573–574
gods 7, 97–98, 595, 768, 799–800 on the universe, nature of 574–575
benefits from 112–113 “guides” of the Garden 19
as causes of phenomena 55 Guidobaldi, Maria Paola 391–392, 401
Cicero on 97, 99, 111, 481, 484, 586, 598–599 Gutenberg 624, 636
Derrida on 799–800
existence of 90, 95–97, 102–103, 586–589 Hadrian 30, 532
friendship between 276, 277–279 Halevi, Yehudah 566, 567
Hegel on 768 Hall, Alan 531
human shape of 105–106 Hammerstaedt, Jürgen 327, 544–546
inactivity of 98, 101 Hankins, James 617
to know 106–107 Hannah, Jack 582
language for analysis of 311–312 happiness 162, 163
Marx on 772, 780 criticism of by Plutarch 515–516
nature of 98–101, 104–105, 131, 539 criticism of Epicureanism 180–181
need for humans for 590 and the gods 111, 113
Nietzsche on 787 and incorrect ideas about death 118–119
perception of 107, 200 successful achievement of 57
Plutarch on 515–516, 588 in Victorian England 747–748
powers of 109–110 see also pleasure, feelings of
Seneca on 492, 495 Harvey, William 649, 684, 685
simulacra from 586 health, pleasure of 153–154, 160, 161, 164
voice and language of 318 criticism of Epicurean hedonism 173, 174
Goldin, Judah 555 heart in early modern Epicureanism 684–686
818 index
heavenly airs 91–92 justice, utility and contract 4, 692

Heberdey, Rudolf 546 and modern Epicureanism 674, 675–676
hēdonē 348, 349, 478 motive powers in 684
Serres on 803 society and human nature 699–704
hedonism 7, 141–188 utility vs. sovereignty 704–706
calculus of 149–153, 297, 300 writings by 679, 687–688, 690
criticism of 143–145, 172–183 see also specific writings of
desires, classification of 164–168 Hoffman, George 542
egoistic 747, 748, 755–757 Homer 473
elaboration and defense of 153–163 “honeyed cup” simile 367, 368
and friendship 171, 251, 264, 268–270 Horace 3, 456–475
humanist opinions on 618 on amor 462–463
and modern Epicureanism 673 and death, fear of 465–466
pleasure as the moral end 145–149, 169 education of 456–457
in utilitarianism 745–753 plain living in 467
virtues, status of 168–171 pleasure in 465–466
Hegel, G. W. F. 1, 762, 763–768, 770, 773, 776 on the Stoics 467–470
on atomism 763–768 see also specific writings of
on gods 768 horses, motion of 241, 242
Helmbold, William Clark 508 Houston, G. W. 405, 406
helping element 234–235 Hubbard, Margaret 466
Helvétius, Claude 744 human rights, emergence of 673–675
Hemmerdinger, B. 393–394 humanist dissemination of
Heraclitus 437 Epicureanism 615–640
Herculaneum and papyri of 2, 14, 379–429 censorship and persecution 631–636
library of 17–18, 21–22, 26–28, 387, 403–421 Epicureanism without Epicureans 618–620
Vergil and 457–458 Lucretian language 626–631
Villa of the Papyri 391–403 printing of texts 624–626, 635, 636
Hermarchus 20, 437, 438, 600 recovery and dissemination 620–626
on killing 128, 701–702 the Renaissance context 616–618
language investigations of 317–318, 321, 327 scholarly reading practices 626–631
Seneca and 504 Hume, David 743
successor of Epicurus 293, 401, 436 Hutcheson, Francis 743
utility vs. sovereignty 704–706 Hutchinson, G. O. 446
Hesiod 15, 347, 432 Hutchinson, Lucy 632
Hierocles 480 hylozoist 646
Hilary of Poitiers 598, 599 hypolepsis 104–105
History of Philosophy (Brucker) 656 hypothesis and phenomena, consistency
History of the Academic Philosophers with 54–55
(Philodemus) 379, 380
Hobbes, Thomas 645, 646, 677–684 ibn Daud, Abraham 566, 567
cognitive powers in 681–683 ibn Ezra, Abraham 566, 567
Descartes, criticism of 680 ibn Tibbon, Samuel 572
ethics, happiness and self-preservation Idomeneus 290, 499
in 676, 677, 686–690 Iliad (Homer) 473
and Gassendi, friendship with 678 immortality of the soul 599, 601–602, 652–653
the heart in 685–686 Immortality of the Soul, The (More) 646
index 819
impiety 104 and modern Epicureanism 673, 674

In Pisonem (Cicero) 385, 476, 482 preconceptions of 315–316
“inconceivably” large 67–69 Seneca on 494–495
incorruptibility of the divine 97–98, 101 usefulness of 295
increasing constitution 227–228 Justin Martyr 590
Indelli, Giovanni 419, 473
inference from the phenomena 238 Kalām beliefs 571–573
inferences Kalinka, Ernst 546
as demonstrations 56 Kant, Immanuel 761
sign 52, 54, 56 katastematic pleasure 155–162
infinity 70–71, 82–83 bodily pleasure 206
classes of 68 criticism of Epicurean hedonism
of worlds 541 172–179
Intensionalism 308–309 nature of 204–205
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and and poetry 442
Legislation, An (Bentham) 744 psychic pleasures 207
intuition about death 127 and virtue 168–169
intuitionism 751, 752 kathēgemones 19–21, 29, 32–35, 37
investigation into the facts 359 Katsnelson, Berel 550, 551
Invitation to Piso (Philodemus) 363, 389–390 kenodoxia 113, 435
Inwood, Brad 499 Key Doctrines (Epicurus) 14, 17, 45, 466,
Ioppolo, Anna M. 416 472, 499
Irenaeus 591, 595 Diogenes of Oenoanda and 537
Isidore of Seville 604–605 on fear 81
isonomia 95–96 the gods 98, 99, 589
Italy 25–26 politics 298–299
Philodemus of Gadara in 26, 30, Seneca and 489, 494, 496, 502, 503
382–390, 404 killing, wrongness of 127–128, 137
the Renaissance in 616–617 in Hermarchus 701–702
kinetic pleasure 155–162
Janko, Richard 348, 411, 458 bodily pleasure 206
Jefferson, Thomas 3, 729–741 criticism of Epicurean hedonism 172–175,
and Epicurus 730–732, 737, 740 177, 178
reason and 732–733, 735 nature of 205
religion of 733–740 and poetry 442
Jerome 603–604 psychic pleasures 207
Jerusalem Talmud 558, 560, 564, 569, 570 Konstan, David 258, 262–263
Jesus and Socrates Compared (Priestley) 733 Korach 563–568
Jesus Christ 256, 582, 584 Kors, Alan 644
Thomas Jefferson on 729, 733–736, 739 kritikoi 361
Journey to Brundisium (Horace) 458
Jovinian 603 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de 658–663, see also
Judaism 543–544, 585, see also Rabbinic specific writings of
literature and Epicureanism la politesse gourmande 724–725
Julius Caesar 137 La Reynière, Grimod de 722–727
justice 4–5, 128, 137, 169, 526 Labendz, Jenny 555–558, 561
and friendship 260–262, 265–266 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de 716
820 index
Lactantius 589, 590, 598–599, 604, 618–619 death in 120

on Epicurus 699 ethics in 16–17
Lamprias catalogue 508 on friendship 251, 279
Lampsacus, school founded by Epicurus in 15 hedonism in 144, 156, 168, 470
Lamy, Guillaume 651–652, 655, 658–659 moral responsibility in 225–226
Lange, Friedrich Albert 96 plain living in 467
language 308–332 Seneca and 489, 499–500, 502
Colotes, contributions of 317 soul and body in 190
Demetrius Laco, contributions of 323–327 on study of Epicureanism 278
Diogenes of Oenoanda, contributions theology in 97, 102, 110–111
of 326–327 Letter to Menoeceus (Epicurus) 461, 466, 545,
and errors of communication 309, 315 594, 595
Hermarchus, contributions of 317–318, Letter to Mother (Epicurus) 162, 542
321, 327 Letter to Pythocles (Epicurus) 16, 490,
linguistic methodology of 541, 542
Epicurus 310–316 cosmology and meteorology 85–88
Lucretius’ perspective 319–323 divine nature in 100, 101
meaning, analysis of 323–326 Letter to Pythocles (Lucretius) 30
Metrodorus, contributions of 316–317, 321 Letter to the Pisos (Horace) 456
nameless things 319–320 Letters to Serena (Toland) 653, 654, 662
origin of 308–309, 320–322, 326–327 Leviathan (Hobbes) 688, 705, 706
orthodoxy and innovations in 316–318, 328 L’Histoire naturelle de lâme (La Mettrie)
Philodemus of Gadara, contributions 658–659
of 323–327 L’Homme machine (La Mettrie) 658
poetry 322–323 L’Homme-plante (La Mettrie) 662
Polystratus, contributions of 317 libera voluntas 240–241, 243, 451
and reality, relationship with 308 liberal arts 349–350, 352, 354
Latour, Bruno 800 Lieberman, S. 555
Laws of Repentance (Maimonides) 567–569 life after death 119, 124
Layton, Henry 652–653 Christianity on 740
Le Clerc, Jean 646, 648, 660 fear of torture in 131
L’École des Gourmands (Chazet) 716–719 Life of Epicurus (Diogenes Laertius)
Lectures on the History of Philosophy 13–14, 32
(Hegel) 762, 763 Life of Philonides 14
legacy, deceased person’s 126, 129 lightning 88
Legitimacy of the Modern Age Likutei Mohoran (Nachman) 577, 578
(Blumenberg) 793–796 limit
Lehem Mishneh 568 atomism and 63, 69
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 649, 664 death as 462
and Epicureanism, criticisms of 672 infinity and 70–71, 82–83
Leto, Pomponio 623, 627, 629, 633 of pleasure 143, 160–161, 167, 433,
Letter sur les aveugles (Diderot) 660 478–479
Letter to Antipater (Diogenes) 541 Lippold, Georg 394
Letter to Herodotus (Epicurus) 16, 190, 201, 765 literary critics, Epicureans as 370–372
atomism 73, 225 Live in Obscurity (Plutarch) 524, 525
cosmology 84–86, 777 Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Diogenes
criteria of truth 47, 48, 52 Laertius) 407
language 313 Lives (Plutarch) 508, 515, 524
index 821
Livy 447 atomism of 571–573

Locke, John 255, 706 see also specific writings of
logos 735, 736 Malpaghino, Giovanni 620
Lolordo, Antonio 644 Mandeville, Bernard 656
Long, A. A. 308 Mangoni, Cecilia 348
Longo Auricchio, Francesca 388, 398 Manilius, Marcus 108
Lorenz, Thuri 402 Manuel des Amphitryons (La Reynière) 722,
Lucian 31, 531, 540, 591, 615 723–725
Lucilius 484, 490, 503–504 many worlds of Epicurus 83, 86
Seneca and 497–500 Marchetti, Alessandro 626, 635
Lucretius 30, 430–455, 482 Marcus, Hannah 635
on action 212 Marcus Aurelius 531, 730
and atomic theory 69 Mark, Zvi 579
cosmology and 82–86, 90–91 Markschies, Christoph 596, 598
development, human 230 Marullo, Michele Tarcaniota 622
on dreams 197–198 Marx, Karl 727, 762, 768–780, 786
early Christianity and 598 on atomism 771–773, 775–779
fear of death 131–132, 202 on ethics 778–779
hedonism 144, 156, 165 on Hegel 763, 768
humanists and 626–636 on swerve, atomic 771–772
on language 319–323 Masi, Francesca 226, 236
meteorology and 87, 88–89 materialism 641–670
on the mind 193, 196–197, 201, 208–210 atoms, properties of 643–650
on pleasure and pain 206–207 the eighteenth century 656–664
and poetics 366–370 Epicureanism and 642
on poetry 322–323 and modern Epicureanism 683, 684–685
and rhetoric 335 on souls 650–656
and scientific method 55 see also atomism
on sense perceptions 46, 50, 51, 199 mathematical entities 592
Serres on 800, 801, 804 matter vs. void 60–61
on the soul and body 191, 192, 210 Mattusch, Carol 399–400, 402
on theology 102, 111, 113 Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de 659, 661
see also specific writings of mechanistic psychology of modern
Lucullus 484, 508, 524 Epicureanism 677–684
Lucullus (Cicero) 476 meditative reading 500
Lurianic kabbala 577, 580 Memmius, C. 401
Luther, Martin 95 Memoirs (Philodemus) 14
luxuries and pleasure 176, 177 Memorabilia of Socrates (Xenophon) 733,
Lysias of Samos 303 736–737
Lysis (Plato) 317, 355–356 memories
pleasure of 153, 158
Machiavelli 622, 627, 629–630, 633 and preconceptions 200
Mackey, Jacob 323–324 “men” of the Garden 19
Macrobius 519 Menander 370–372
Maecenas 456 Meno (Plato) 47
Maimonides 566–576 Menoeceus 57
on the Apiqoros 556 Mersenne, Marin 678, 679
on Aristotle 572, 574–576 meteorology 6, 87–89, 92
822 index
Methods of Ethics, The (Sidgwick) 745 mortality 135–136

Metrodorus 19–20, 289, 292, 302, 562 motion
language investigations of 316–317, 321 of animals 212, 241–242
on pleasure 156, 167 of atoms 61–62, 71–73, 238
and poetics 353–355, 357, 361, 373 by living beings 241–244
Seneca and 489, 490, 498, 504 in the universe 84–87, 90–92
on the wise 415 Müller, Reimar 693, 697
Mill, John Stuart 730, 743, 744–745 multiple-correspondence simile 443
egoistic hedonism 756–757 multiple explanations 7, 539
on pain, absence of 753 in cosmology 85–87
on pleasure 748–751, 759 in meteorology 87–88
Miller, Mary Ashburn 715 of swerve, atomic 246
mind in theology 100
of animals 193–194, 208–209 murder, wrongness of 127–128
and belief 199–200 Muscettola, Adamo 395
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 177–178 “My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous
development of 230 with Some Epicurean Stereophonies”
and feelings 204, 210 (Derrida) 797, 799
focus of 231 Myth of Er 519
and hedonism 154, 155, 159, 160, 171
nature of 189, 196–197 Naas, Michael 796–797
philosophical preparation of 201–202 Nachman of Breslov (Rabbi) 577–580
rational and non-rational functions names, origin of 313
of 208–209 Naples, Epicureans in 390
and soul and body 192–194 natural desires 164–165, 211–212
and the swerve, atomic 244 “natural history of man”, see materialism
minimal parts of atoms 63–67, 69–70 Natural History of Revolution (Miller) 715
Mishnah, Apiqoros in 553–559 natural law in Epicureanism 673–674,
Mishneh Torah (Maimonides) 567–570 693–694, 697–698
Mitsis, Phillip 245, 687 Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca) 100,
modern Epicureanism 671–677 490, 491
and materialism 683, 684–685 naturalism and conventionalism 696–697
and pleasure 697, 698 naturalism and hedonism 153
molecule of Diderot 661 Nausiphanes of Teos 15, 19, 27, 342, 561
Molière 716, 717, 723 necessary desires 164–166, 211
Mommsen, Theodor 393, 395, 397 necessity, non-Epicurean concept of 230,
monads of Leibniz 649 232–235
Montaigne 630 Needham, John Turberville 662
moon, light of 91–92 Newton, Isaac 654, 664, 740
moral responsibility, see voluntary action and Nicasicrates 23, 36
responsibility Niccoli, Niccolò 621, 622, 627
moral sense of Thomas Jefferson 730 Nicholas V (Pope) 616
Moralia (Plutarch) 515 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 685
morality 145–149, 155, 171 Nietzsche, Friedrich 762, 780–788
and the swerve, atomic 245 on Christianity and Epicureanism 787
More, Henry 646, 647 Nilus 602–603
mortalists 652 Nisbet, Robert G. M. 394, 466
index 823
non-attestation in sense perception 53 On Poems (Metrodorus) 353, 357, 361, 373

non-contestation in sense perception 53–54 On Poems (Philodemus) 325, 348, 358,
non-necessary desires 164–166 410, 411
Non posse (Plutarch) 508–509, 518, 522–523 poetry, qualities of 27, 361
normative hedonism 148, 745–753, see also On Property Management (Philodemus) 167
hedonism On Providence (Philodemus) 28
“not strictly infinite” 67–70 On Relieving Arrogance (Aristo of Ceos) 415
Numenius 34, 509 On Rhetoric (Philodemus) 29, 337–341, 343,
Numicius 471 361, 380, 398, 410
art, rhetoric as 26–27, 36, 353–354
Obbink, Dirk 418 dedication to 385, 386
O’Connor, David 256, 257 on poetry 362
Octavius, Marcus 393–394, 406 On Sanctity (Epicurus) 589
Odes (Horace) 465 On Signs and Inferences (Philodemus) 418, 419
Oenomaus of Gadara 540 On Slander (Philodemus) 413
O’Keefe, Timothy 224, 254, 272–275 On the End (Epicurus) 156
old age 543, 545 On the Gods (Philodemus) 28, 418
oligarchic man 165 On the Good King According to Homer
omega, in mathematics 68 (Philodemus) 26, 28, 353, 372, 373,
On Anger (Philodemus) 29, 409 398–399, 411, 414
On Arrogance (Philodemus) 413 On the Lifestyle of the Gods (Philodemus) 418
On Characters and Ways of Life On the Moral End (Epicurus) 146, 158–159, 179
(Philodemus) 27, 381–382, 409, 412 On the Nature of Things (Lucretius) 144
On Choices and Avoidance (Philodemus) 28, On the Opinions of the Philosophers
151, 152–153, 155–156, 158, 419 (Plutarch) 73
On Conversation (Philodemus) 27, 417 On the Stoics (Philodemus) 27, 409
On Death (Philodemus) 28, 414, 418, 419 On the Use of Poems (Zeno of Sidon)
On Economy (Philodemus) 413 357–358, 361
On Envy (Basil) 602 On the Vices Similar to Flattery
On Epicurus (Philodemus) 14, 408, 420 (Philodemus) 413
On Flattery (Philodemus) 29, 413 On Vices and Their Opposing Virtues
On Frank Criticism (Philodemus) 14, 27, 28, (Philodemus) 27, 387, 402, 412, 414, 458
343, 459 On Wealth (Philodemus) 14, 27, 370
On Frankness (Philodemus) 409 “one thought too many” 272–273
On Gratitude (Philodemus) 27, 417 O’Neil, Edward N. 508
On Greed (Philodemus) 413 Opera omnia (Gassendi) 678
On Kingship (Epicurus) 372 Opramoas of Rhodiapolis 534–535
On Methods of Inference (Philodemus) 28 oracular prophecy 540
On Music (Philodemus) 361, 410 Orator (Cicero) 479
On Nature (Dionysius) 597–598 Ordering of the Philosophers
On Nature (Empedocles) 438 (Philodemus) 398, 407–408, 420
On Nature (Epicurus) 14, 30, 214, 245, 435, 588 Origen 585, 590–591, 595–598, 600–601
on atheists 96 Platonism of 597
existing books of 17–18 original constitution 227
moral responsibility in 226–234 Orpheus, myth of 462, 463
On Philosophy (Polyaenus) 112 Osler, Margaret 642, 644, 647
On Piety (Philodemus) 14, 28, 420, 595 otium 447, 466
824 index
ouk antimartyrēsis 105 philia 263

Ovid 627 Philip of Thessalonika 363
Philippson, Robert 349, 386, 693
Paganini, Gianni 648 Philippus, Lucius Marcius 398
Pagano, Mario 401 Philo of Alexandria 585, 594
paideia 334–335, 347, 440, 445, 518, 523, 534 Philo of Larissa 476
pain, feelings of 211 Philocalia (Origen) 595
choices, for and against 149–150, 297 Philodemus of Gadara 26–30, 379–429,
criteria for truth, Epicurus’s 48 445, 458
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 179, analysis of nature 517
181–182 in Athens 381–382
evil of 146–147 Cicero on 384–387, 476, 482–483
fear of 133–134 death of 390, 394
and hedonism 142 desires, classification of 164–165, 211–212
and life’s goal 57 and dissident Epicureans 35–36
management of 168 early life and education of 379–381
mind’s contributions to 154, 155, 179 early treatises 407–410
mind’s protection against 179, 202 friendship 275–279
Seneca on 502–503 and the gods 276, 277–279, 595
painlessness 478–479, 753–755 on hedonism 151, 152–153, 156–157, 162, 169
Cicero on 478 influence of 28–29
criticism of Epicurean hedonism in Italy 26, 30, 382–390, 404
175, 176 language investigations of 323–327
as pleasure 155, 156, 160, 161–162, 167, 171, literary criticism of 372
173, 205 mature thoughts of 407, 411–420
Paleario, Aonio 633 on mind 194, 202
Pandermalis, Dimitrios 394–397 modern discoveries from 2, 3
panegyric 339, 340, 344 on pain 211
Pansa Caetronianus, Gaius Vibius 386 physical pleasures and 153–154
Parmenides 520 Piso, relationship with 384–388, 398,
past, view of 298–300 400, 402
pathē 152, 156, 190, 204, 207 poems of 362–366, 389–390
Patristic philosophy 582, 583, 598 and poetics 349, 361–368, 373, 439–440
Patro 25, 401, 476 on politics 288, 301–302, 304
Paul, the apostle 582–586, 589, 591, 594, 604 theology 96, 105, 106
penalties, fear of 501 on wealth 167
Pensées philosophiques (Diderot) 660 writings of 144
Peri Parresias (Philodemus) 262 and Zeno of Sidon 28, 29, 381–383
Peri physeōs (Epicurus) 31, 96, see also On see also specific writings of
Nature (Epicurus) philoi 263
personal security 291, 299 Philonides of Laodicea 22, 304, 372, 419–420
Petrarch 616, 618–620 Philosophiae Epicuri syntagma
Phaedo (Plato) 601 (Gassendi) 684
Phaedrus 25, 382, 476 Philosophical Dissertation on Death, A
Phaedrus (Plato) 334, 796–797 (Radicati) 654
Phenomena (Aratus of Soli) 108 philosophy
Phenomenology of Spirit, The (Hegel) 763, 773 insights and rules of 297
Philebus (Plato) 478, 507 life practices of 516–517
index 825
Plutarch’s opinion of 509 in friendships 252, 266, 268–273, 757

study of 118 health 153–154, 160, 161
as therapy of a sick soul 287–288 and length of life 160–161
physical pleasures 153–154, 160, 177–178 and life’s goal 57, 169, 208
Physics (Aristotle) 574 and memories 153, 158
Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana mind’s contributions to 154, 155, 177–178
(Charleton) 649 and modern Epicureanism 697, 698
Piaggio’s machine 416 as the moral end 145–149, 169
Pintard, René 644 Plutarch on 515, 522–523
Piso Caesoninus, Lucius Calpurnius and politics 286–287
384–389, 458 in rhetoric 340
Cicero on 476, 482 Seneca on 493–494
and the Villa of the papyri 391, 395, 398, utilitarianism 746–755, 759
400, 402, 405 and virtue 141–142, 168–171, 179–180, 757
Pius, Albertus 634 see also hedonism; painlessness
Pius II (Pope) 95 Plotina, Pompeia 30
place of the gods 89–90 Plotinus 600
placidity 209 Plutarch 507–530, 561
Plato anti-politics of Epicurus 523–526
Cicero’s opinion of 479, 481, 485 as author, intentions of 512–514
on desires 165 background of 509–510
friendships of 280 case studies of 518–526
on hedonism 141, 156 continuity in 510–511
Origen and 597 criticism of Epicureanism 178, 284–285,
Patristic philosophy and 583 514–516, 519–520
philosopher kings of 523–524 Epicurean doctrine in 510, 511–512
Plutarch and 507 and Epicurus, opinions of 509–510
on politics 285, 526 epilogismos of 517
Renaissance interest in 618 on the gods 515–516, 588
on rhetoric 334 on language 311, 312
soul, immortality of 514–515 method of 516–518
Thomas Jefferson on 733–734 persona in writings of 510
see also specific writings of philosophy, opinion of 509
Platonic Theology (Ficino) 631 and Plato 507
“Plato’s Pharmacy” (Derrida) 796–797 on pleasure 515, 522–523
pleasure, feelings of 205–207, 465–466 and poetry 351, 354
availability of 167 on rhetoric 335
body’s contributions to 142, 153–155, 160, sense perceptions 50–51
177–178 as source of Epicurean thought 508–509,
choices, for and against 149–150, 202, 512–514
351, 746 on weight of atoms 73
Cicero on 478–479 writings of 508
criteria for truth, Epicurus’s 48 see also specific writings of
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 173–176, poetics 347–376
181, 182 Colotes 348, 355–357, 373
and discomfort, lack of 176 Demetrius Laco 349, 358–361, 373
from food, for the French 716–725, 727 Epicurus 349–353, 362
in French thought 712–714 harmful elements of 350
826 index
poetics (Continued ) Jacques Derrida 796–800

literary critics, Epicureans as 370–372 Michel Serres 800–804
Lucretius 366–370 poverty 370–371
Metrodorus 353–355, 373 Praechter, Karl 487
Philodemus of Gadara 349, 361–368, 373, preconceptions 200–201
389–390, 439–440 and belief 199, 200
Zeno of Sidon 357–358, 369, 373 formation of 314
poetry 350–353, 438–445 of justice 315–316
as deliberate falsehood 322–323 language of 311–313, 322, 324, 325, 327
origin of 323–324 truth of 46–48, 52, 310–311
Poggio Bracciolini 616, 620–622 see also prolepseis
points, mathematical 64 premature death, fear of 134–135
polemical laughter, against presentist hedonism 142
politicians 288–289 Priestley, Joseph 656, 733, 734
Polignac, Melchior de 632, 658 priests in Epicureanism 110–111
political rhetoric 339–340 primary qualities of atomism 76–77
politicians Prime Mover of Aristotle 98
and pleasure 286–287 Principes philosophiques sur la matière et al
ridiculing of by Epicurus 288–289 mouvement (Diderot) 662
successful, historically 299–300 principle of utility 747
use of by Epicurus 293–294 prison, politics as 287, 288
politics and society 284–307, 525–526, 676, Proclus 321, 519
699–704 Prodicus 141, 171
the basics 284–292 profligacy, denouncing 166, 178
blessings of Epicurean life 289–292 prolepsis 5, 46, 103–104, 360, 373, 694
Cicero on 484 of the gods 104–105, 107
Epicureans in politics 301–304, 333 of the good poet 356–357
exceptions and qualifications 297–304 see also preconceptions
follies of a political career 285–289 proofs and demonstrations 56
good reputation in 296–297 prophecy 573, 587
legislation, respect for 295 oracular 540
a more nuanced perspective 292–297 propositions of Epicureanism 756
past, view of 298–300 proskynesis 413
Plutarch on 523–526 Protarchus of Bargylia 22
the sage at royal court 300–301 providence 109, 112, 573–575, 595–598
and security, pursuit of 298–299 prudence 168–169
Seneca and 301–302, 496–497 psychic pains 207, 211
usefulness of 294–295 psychological hedonism 147–149, 745–753,
Politics of Friendship, The (Derrida) 800 see also hedonism
Polyaenus 20, 112 psychology 189–220
Polystratus 21–22, 317 belief 199–203
Pomponazzi, Pietro 633 criticism of by Plutarch 514–515
Pontifex, L. Calpurnius Piso 393, 395, 400, 403 mechanistic 680–683, 685
Posidonius 95, 481, 491 motivation 204–213
postmodern Epicurus 791–808 self-development 213–218
defined 792 sense perception 194–199
Hans Blumenberg 792–796 soul, mind and body 190–194
index 827
Puglia, Enzo 325, 412 Renaissance scholars and Epicureanism 615,

Pulcher, Appius Claudius 397, 398, 401 616–618, 631–636
punishment and virtue 180 Lucretius’ De rerum natura 615,
Pyrrhus 286–287, 299, 508 621–628, 631
Pythian Nome 359–360 replenishment and pleasure 159–160
Republic (Plato) 165, 478, 519, 524, 526
quadrilemma of divine powers 109–110 Thomas Jefferson on 733–734
Quaestiones convivales (Plutarch) 510 virtue in 180
qualifying philosophy 298 resistance and atomism 60
Quintilian 335 responsibility, see voluntary action and
responsibility
Rabbeinu Yonah 555 restorative pleasures 156, 159, 174
Rabbinic literature and resurrection
Epicureanism 549–581 in Christianity 584, 652, 677, 735, 740
Amoraitic materials 552, 560–566 in Epicureanism 585, 596–597
Apiqoros in 551–553 in Rabbinic literature 553, 554
on Korach 563–566 Rêve de d’Alembert (Diderot) 661, 662
Maimonides 566–570 Revolution, French 715–716, 722, 726
Nachman of Breslov (Rabbi) 577–580 Rey, Roselyne 651
physical theories of Epicurus in rhetoric 333–346
571–576 avoidance of 333–336, 344
Tannaitic writings 552, 553–559 early views of 334–336
Radicati, Alberto 654, 655 Epicurean 341–344
rain, causes of 88 Metrodorus writings on 19
rainbow, causes of 89 Philodemus writings on 337–341
Ranocchia, Graziano 416 training in 336, 343
Raphson, Joseph 654 types of 337–341
rationalism and hedonism 153, 178 written communication 341–342
reason Zeno of Sidon on 36, 144, 337
to control human nature 209–210 rhetorical puns 369
and soul 193 risk and pleasure 177
and Thomas Jefferson 732–733, 735 Rist, John 250, 487
use of to counteract fear 131 Rochoux, Jean André 663–664
as way to know the gods 106–107 Roger, Jacques 660, 662
Reasons of Christian Religion, The Roman Inquisition 631, 633–635
(Baxter) 647 romantic love 433, 437, 461
Recognitiones (Rufinus) 603 Romeo, Constantina 360
reductionism 224 Roskam, Geert 535
Reid, Thomas 743 Ruffo, Fabrizio 391
religion Rufinus 603
in De rerum natura (Lucretius) 432–433,
437, 442 Saad, Mariana 663
of Descartes 648 sage at royal court 300–301
of Thomas Jefferson 733–740 Sallust 447
in Vergil 463–464 Sarasin, Jean-François 632
see also Christianity and Epicureanism; Satires (Horace) 467–469
Rabbinic literature and Epicureanism Saturninus, Lucius Herennius 510, 519
828 index
Sauron, Gilles 396 Thomas Jefferson and 730, 732

Scarre, Geoffrey 758 virtue and pleasure 492–496
Scatozza, Höricht 398 see also specific writings of
Schiesaro, Alessandro 449, 450 sense perception 5, 194–199
Schmid, W. 349 and atomism 76–77
Schmidt, Johan Werner 656 and belief 199
Schofield, M. 56 explanations of 50–51
Schopenhauer, Arthur 786–787 and knowledge, in French thought 713
scientific method 52–56, 190 Marx on 773–774
Second Thoughts on Human Soul scientific method and 52–53, 190
(Coward) 653 and the self-evident 103–104
secondary qualities of atomism 76–77 self-preparation for 197
Sedley, David 189–190, 230, 316, and the soul 191–193
382–383, 438 Thomas Jefferson and 732
on Lucretius 435, 436 truth of 44–46, 48–50, 196
Seelenheilung 288, 289, 300 Sententiae Vaticanae, see Vatican Sayings
self-development 213–218, 229–230 (Epicurus)
difference from atomic nature 217–218 sentience
first imprints 215–217 of atoms 649
responsibility from oneself 216–217 principle of good and bad and 120, 123–125
training 218 Serenus, Annaeus 489
self-evident ideas Serres, Michel 800–805
gods, existence of 103 swerve, atomic 801, 802–803
pleasure as arbiter of moral truth 146 Sextus Empiricus
self-preparation for sense perception 197 and atomism 66–67, 69–70
self-preservation 684–686 and epistemology 49–51, 53–54
ethics, happiness and 676–677, 686–692 and hedonism 148
self-regarding nature of friendship 250–251, on language 311, 312
254–275 poetry and 350
self-sufficiency 259–260, 291 and theology 109
seminal fluid 645 Sextus Pompeius 389
the soul and 650 sexual intercourse 510, 544
Seneca 7 Shimon ben Zemach Duran (Rabbi) 556
on death 501–502 Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a
on Epicurean thought 33–34, 619 Metaphor for Existence
on friendship 259–260, 495 (Blumenberg) 792, 793–794, 796
human nature and the tactics of the Sider, David 363–365, 388, 389, 468
therapist 500–505 Sidgwick, Henry 743, 744–745
knowledge, extent and provenance egoistic hedonism 755–756
of 488–491 on John Stuart Mill 749, 750, 753, 756
leisure and contemplation 496–497 on pain, absence of 754–755
literary ambitions of 499 on pleasure 747, 748, 751–753
maxims and meditation 497–500 sight
on pain 502–503 focused and unfocused 198, 199
physics and theology 491–492 of moving objects 198
on politics 301–302, 496–497 nature of 195
and theology 100, 589–590 and the soul 192
index 829
sign inferences 52, 54, 56 on feelings and emotions 207, 208

silence of history on pleasure friendships of 259, 260, 280, 479–480, 495
motivation 182–183 Horace on 467–470
simple fare, doctrine of 460–461, 470 modern Christianity and 671
simulacra 103–104, 107, 586, 681, 685, 803 on pleasure 494
Siro 30, 385, 386, 390, 457 Seneca on 495–497, 500, 505
Sisyphus 433–434 on the soul 651–652, 654
Smith, Martin 436, 531, 532, 537 Thomas Jefferson and 729–730, 732
on Diogenes fragments 543–546 Stowers, Stanley K. 565
Snyder, H. Gregory 537 Strato of Lampsacus 648
Snyder, Jane McIntosh 369 Stratonism 648
social contract 674–675 suicide 128, 129
social metaphor 449 sun
Socrates 733, 735–737, see also Plato light of 91–92
song and the void 579 motion of 85, 91
sophistic rhetoric 337, 338–339 sunbeam motion 242
Sosylos 388 superstition 101–102, 109, 515
soul 119, 190–194 swerve, atomic 72, 73, 75–76, 84, 212,
after death 77, 95, 118, 119 244–245, 436
and body, relationship to 190–191 Cicero on 481
existence of 189 Derrida on 798, 799, 805
immortality of 599, 601–602, 652–653 Diogenes of Oenoanda on 540–541
language regarding, errors of 316 Hegel on 765, 766
materialism and 650–656 Marx on 771–772
nature of 55, 92, 189, 209, 210 multiple explanations of 246
Plato on 514–515 proof of existence of 240–243
pleasures and pains of 205, 207 Serres on 801, 802–803
Stoics on 651–652, 654 voluntary action and responsibility 222–223,
soul atoms 64, 119 236–243, 245–247
“soul of the soul” of Lucretius 191 symmetry argument against fearing death 132
sovereignty vs. utility 704–706 sympheron 694
Speroni, Sperone 633–634 Syndikus, H. P. 466
spherical shape of cosmos 82 synthēkē 694–695, 697
Spinelli, Emidio 416 Système de la nature (d’Holbach) 641, 662
Spinoza, Baruch 550, 642, 672 Systéme d’Epicure (La Mettrie) 658–660
spontaneous generation 662 systrophē 798
stars
divinity of the 89–90, 107–108 Taking Chances: Derrida, Psychoanalysis, and
earthly vapors and 92 Literature (Smith and Kerrigan) 797
start 266 Tannaitic literature 552, 553–559
static pleasure 155 tarachē 439
Stoics 92, 417, 418, 714–715 technai 354
apokatastasis of 585, 592 temperance 169
Cicero on 478 Tepedino Guerra, Adele 383
cosmology of 584–585 Terror of the Natural Right, The
death, fear of 502 (Edelstein) 715
early Christianity and 583–585, 589–590 Tertullian 590, 595, 604
830 index
Tescari, Onorato 348 True Discourse (Celsus) 596

tetrapharmakos of Epicurus 119, 133 trust, in friendships 260–261
criticism of Epicurean hedonism 176, 179 truth, see epistemology
psychic pain of 207 Tsouna, Voula 275–276, 419, 546
thanatology, see death Tusculan Disputations (Cicero) 477, 479,
Theaetetus (Plato) 46 503, 504
thematic puns 369
theodicy 599 universalistic hedonism 751, 752–753, see also
Theodoridas of Lindos 541 hedonism
theology 94–117, 574–575, 589–590 universe
ethics and 111, 112, 276 infinite nature of 70–71, 82–83
Theophrastus 414, 415 Marx on 775–777
Theophrastus Redivivus 655 motion in 84–87, 90–92
Thomson’s Lamp 63 shape of 82
“thrust” of attention 201, 203 unnatural desires 164–165, 211–212
Thucydides 434 unnecessary desires 211
thunder 87–88 Usener, Hermann 252, 582, 594, 603
Timaeus (Plato) 18, 107, 436, 591, 592 and the gods 586, 588, 589
Timagoras 36 utilitarianism 696, 730, 742–760
Timasagoras 23, 36 egoistic hedonism 755–757
time hedonism, psychological vs.
Epicurean view of 61, 773 normative 745–753
Marx on 773–774 pleasure and absence of pain 753–755
observable events in relation to 56–57 principles and goals of 744
Timocrates 32, 94, 292, 302 Utilitarianism (Mill) 751
on rhetoric 342 utility 696, 698
Toland, John 653–655, 662 and sovereignty 704–706
Torquatus, Cicero’s Epicurean spokesman
144–145, 266, 270–272, 352 Valgius 462–463
on egoism 483 Valla, Lorenzo 619–620, 623, 628, 632
on ethics 157 value, concept of 123–127, 129–130
on friendship 263–267, 269 van Giffen, Hubert 634–635
on happiness 182 Varius Rufus, Lucius 414
and the hedonist calculus 149 Varro 482
on justice 265–266 Vatican Sayings (Epicurus) 17, 537
on pleasure and pain 145–149, 169, 173, vector of atomic movement 72–74
175, 687 Velleius 95
Tosefta 554 Vergil 3, 446, 456–475, 627
touch, sense of 206 on amor 461–463
Traité de la Vie Élégante (Balzac) 726 education of 457–458
Traversari, Ambrogio 621 religion in 463–464
Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick see also specific writings of
Diseases (Mandeville) 656 Victorian England 742, 743, 757–758, see also
Treatise on the Memory of Epicurus and utilitarianism
Others (Philodemus) 408 Villa of the Papyri 388–389, 391–403
tree trunk, description of Epicurus as 284, construction of 391–392, 406
292, 304 design of 391, 395–397, 400
index 831
Greek library of 403–421 weather, explanations for 87–89

owner of 392–402, 421 weight and atomism 60, 71–75
sculptures of 394–396, 398–400, 402–403 well-being 118–119, 130, 134–135
Virgil, see Vergil criticism of Epicurean hedonism 174
virtue Willis, Thomas 650–653
and friendship 270, 271 Wilson, Catherine 642, 649
Horace on 471 Wojcik, Maria Rita 396–399
humanist view of 617–618 women, as students of Epicureanism 37,
and pleasure 141–142, 168–171, 179–180, 757 544–545, 675
Seneca on 494 Woolf, Raphael 470
Virtus (Horace) 470–471 Works on the Records of Epicurus and Some
vision, see sight Others (Philodemus) 420
Vita Pyrrhonis (Plutarch) 508 World as Will and Representation, The
void (Schopenhauer) 787
argument for existence of 53, 54
atomism and 60–62, 201 Xenophon 415, 733, 736–737
and cosmology 90–91
geometrical description of 60 Yirmiyah ben Elazar (Rabbi) 563
Hegel on 765 Yisrael ben Eliezer (Rabbi) 577
in Rabbinic literature 577, 578–579
resistance of concept of 62 Zeller, Eduard 487
volition 212, 240–242, 244 Zeno of Sidon 24, 25, 412, 476, 536
voluntary action and responsibility 221–249 lectures of 381–382
swerve, atomic 222–223, 236–243, 245–247 library in the Villa of the
swerve, atomic, modern views on 243–246 Papyri 404
voluntas 212, 240–242 and Philodemus of Gadara, influence
on 28, 29, 381–383
Warren, James 535 physical pleasures and 153
Waszink, J. H. 349 and poetics 357–358, 361, 369, 373
wealth 19 and rhetoric 36, 144, 337
and pleasure 167 Zeno’s paradox 63, 65

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress

10. Friendship 250

Daryn Lehoux Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Queen’s University, Kingston,

Emidio Spinelli Full Professor of History of Ancient Philosophy in the Department of

context of the Epicurean psychological and anthropological account of the origins of

(Chapter 24), and then on through to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French

The school founded by Epicurus in Athens in 307/6 or 305/4 survived as an institution

2 Tepedino Guerra, “L’opera filodemea Su Epicuro.” 3 Militello, Memorie epicuree.

12 Cf. Sedley, “Epicurus and His Professional Rivals,” 135.

19 See Spinelli and Verde, Epicuro. Epistola a Erodoto.

21 See Heßler, Epikur Brief an Menoikeus.

The First Generation: “The Guides” (hoi kathēgemones) or

An untimely death prevented Metrodorus from succeeding Epicurus as director of

41 The fragments are collected in Longo Auricchio, Ermarco. Frammenti.

Among the immediate disciples of Epicurus of whom we have some concrete

Demetrius Laco, Zeno of Sidon, and Phaedrus

Philodemus, Lucretius, and the Spread

From Italy to Athens Again, in Alexandria,

Genuine (gnēsioi) Epicureans and

84 Sedley, “Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,” 103–107.

87 Philodemus On Rhetoric 2 (P.Herc. 1674) Longo col. 27.14–16.

Organization and Common Life

————. “The Philosophical Writings of Demetrius of Laconia.” In Greek and Roman

1 Democritus fr. B125; trans. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers.

The word “criterion”—literally, instrument of judgment—had been used occasionally

of perception, and it may be used to modify the incoming information. By separating

5 Trans. Long and Sedley with modifications.

Preconception, they say, is as it were a cognition (κατάληψις), or a correct opinion,

6 Trans. Long and Sedley.

The preconceptions represent Epicurus’s solution to the notorious puzzle raised in

7 Trans. Long and Sedley.

8 See, e.g., Cic. Fin. 1.30–31.

Imagining a dialogue, Plutarch then has an Epicurean say:

By Zeus indeed—for he is better at seeing and preserving the consequences of the

9 Trans. Bury with modifications.

10 Democr. fr. B11; trans. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers.

Second, we should observe everything in accordance with the sense impressions

12 Trans. Long and Sedley with modifications.

The movement of bodies, therefore, is a sign of the existence of void.

Epistemology and Ethics

16 See Allen, “Experience as a Source”; and Asmis, “Epicurean Empiricism.”

methodological debates of the Hellenistic doctors—and neither Democritus nor Epicurus

Atoms and Void

According to atomism, the fundamental constituents or principles of the world are

antimartyrēsis or “counter-witnessing”) and were more plausible or intuitively self-evident

14 Diels-Kranz 68A43, from Aëtius; cf. Verde, Epistola a Erodoto, 105–107.

“The Not Strictly Infinite”

Primary and Secondary Qualities

Verde, F. “Minimi temporali nell’Epistola a Erodoto di Epicuro?” La Parola del Passato 64

1 Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.

The Shape(s) of the World

6 If Cicero, De fato, is to be believed, there may also be an element of antideterminism involved.

7 See also Ep. Pyth. 87.

be hard-pressed to find contemporaries of Epicurus who thought that lunar phases

10 See, e.g., Lucr. DRN 1.354–69, 2.112–28.

10. Friendship 250