[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Yona and Davis deserve our gratitude for producing this powerful and thought-provoking look at what Romans in the late republic made of Epicureanism, with many of the essays examining the degree to which “Roman” Epicureanism represented a rejection of Romanitas. In successive chapters we see a range of people who felt inspired to use (or abuse) the Epicureanism that was part of the cultural air they breathed and that might just be either the answer to all of life’s problems or else mark the end of the (Roman) world. The Epicurean mantra “avoid engaging in politics” could easily be seen as marking an end to the traditional Roman quest for gloria—but might well have appealed to people living in the turbulent and bloody first century BCE. Many a stressed politician working in the fractious homo homini lupus world of the late republic probably found the idea of otium and ataraxia highly appealing – even if (like the would-be rusticus of Horace, Epode 2) he failed to act on it.
Cicero was never a big fan of the hedonic calculus and Geert Roskam in the opening chapter shows how he went out of his way to argue that traditional Roman values could never accommodate the apolitical cultivation of ataraxia in the garden: Epicureans who did not engage in politics would simply be of no service to the state. Cicero’s dictum “Leave that to the Greeks” (De Finibus 2.68) is shown here, however, to be a blind alley: an educated Roman studied philosophy in Greece, was fully conversant with the language and the issues of the schools, and it is clear that the Greek tradition had become “part and parcel of his own philosophical frame of reference” (p. 18). Cicero’s Torquatus speaks as a Roman aristocrat, and Cicero uses this to his embarrassment when he challenges the young man to look at the altruistic self-sacrifice of his own glorious ancestors, who would have done nothing of the kind had they been Epicureans—as well as reminding him that he (Torquatus) changes tack when he addresses the senate and starts speaking the language of duty rather than the pleasure that he is supposed to prize. Roskam ends with the telling point that if Cicero was right to assert that Romanitas precluded Epicureanism, then it is hard to explain how popular this creed was in all walks of Roman life.
Daniel P. Hanchey continues the examination of Cicero, looking at his reluctance to dignify Epicureans by naming them. Cicero will allude to them simply as “the people who refer everything to pleasure,” but this is not just mean-mindedness, since Cicero is tackling them on their ethical principles and so is attacking anybody of any school who subscribes to that view whether or not they call themselves Epicureans. Cicero furthermore argues that his philosophical works are a continuation of his political career by other means and that his “Roman” philosophy was one of “care of the state” as opposed to the Epicurean “care of the self.” Once again, the dead Greek philosopher was perceived as a threat by the living Roman statesman.
Cicero’s friend Atticus was said to be an adherent of Epicureanism and Nathan Gilbert assesses the validity of this judgement. Was Cicero simply teasing him for his equestrian lifestyle? Could the highly cultured Atticus really be an Epicurean without taking leave of Epicurus’ dictum to flee from paideia? This chapter (and the following chapter on Julius Caesar) both raise the fascinating question of how far one has to be faithful to all the doctrines of the master to be counted a “proper” Epicurean. In the case of Caesar, Katharine Volk shows how he used the Epicurean view of death (as annihilation) as part of his argument that the Catilinarian conspirators ought to face life in prison rather than the execution proposed by Cato, but that other aspects of his lifestyle were anything but Epicurean. Romans could (and clearly did) approve intellectually of some teachings (such as the atomic theory and the rejection of an afterlife) while disavowing the ethical precepts of the simple life or the rejection of romantic love.
Catullus has often been assumed to have been an Epicurean for the simple reason that some of his poetry celebrates otium and voluptas, and Monica Gale shows how this lazy thinking needs abundant qualification. Poem 47 is prima facie a piece of anti-Epicurean animosity, and poem 13 is a parodic response to Philodemus Epigram 27. Furthermore (as the poet points out vividly in poem 16), poetry should not be taken as proof of the poet’s personality. If Gale is right to suggest that Catullus’ reminiscences of Philodemus “tend to suggest antagonism or perhaps rivalry” (p. 92), then I would suggest that the quarrel is at least as much about the poetry as about any philosophical stance behind it. Many of Catullus’ poetic stances are anything but Epicurean: his vesanus amor is closer to the derided romantic of Lucretius 4 than to the casual Epicurean sex favoured in Philodemus, Horace, Lucretius (4.1071) and (for that matter) Catullus 32. Gale’s discussion of the intertextual links between Catullus and Lucretius is interesting but also raises further questions: she rightly tells us that Catullus appears “deeply pessimistic about the moral condition of the human race” (p. 100) in the coda to poem 64, but that coda is both highly ironic and also arguably less bleak than the ending of the De Rerum Natura. She tells us that Catullus treats the theme of human degeneracy “as a tragic inevitability, leaving no room for Lucretius’ more optimistic suggestion that… a life of serenity is possible” (p. 101), without considering that perhaps Catullus is promoting the poetry itself as the only refuge from ubiquitous misery. Catullus is closer to Epicureanism when he describes death as nox perpetua una dormienda (5.6), but then he also voices more conventional consolatio in poem 96. This poet—like Horace in the next generation—resists tidy labels and is happy to change his tune to suit his poetic purpose, while also making full use of the philosophical hot potatoes of the time.
Part II of this book is devoted to Lucretius. Elizabeth Asmis looks at Nature’s “harsh” harangue (3.931–962) addressed to humans who complain about their mortality. Asmis reminds us that Nature’s words are aimed at an excessive lamentation that she sees as unnatural and unnecessary, since (as the poet has shown) Nature promises care-free sleep after death (3.939) and the power to dignam dis degere vitam (3.322) before it, giving us a garden of earthly delights far beyond what we need. Lucretius’ anti-teleological view of the world still insists that, while the world is not made for our comfort (tanta stat praedita culpa (2.181~ 5.199), there is more than enough happiness available to those who know where and how to look. Our lives have immovable temporal limits, but “the limits… are laden with all the pleasures we need to live life to the fullest” (p. 128). Asmis points out wisely that the old man under fire from Nature is being blamed for having wasted his chances of ever enjoying life—this man will be unhappy even if he lives forever, as he will never carpe that diem.
Pamela Gordon takes an interesting line on Lucretius’ attitude towards death by centering her article around the concept of kitsch, contrasting the poet’s all too vivid and authentic depiction of putrefaction against the “cheesy” words of the mourners (“Epicurean candor obliterates kitsch,” p.137). The poet creates these straw mourners to allow him to ventriloquize false opinions, and the kitsch style adds further layers of irony and scorn. She deftly compares Philodemus, Epigrams 3, where the “candid Epicurean . . . deflates the would-be lover’s schmaltzy language and his extravagant reference to the sleep of death”. Gordon goes on to look at the market for kitsch rings, intaglios and busts of the master, before homing in on Horace Odes 1.11 as a studied exercise in seduction via philosophy. As with other chapters in this fine book, we are reminded that Epicureanism could be both mind-bogglingly complex but also disarmingly simple, which must have helped to explain its appeal to all levels of society.
Mathias Hanses takes a fresh look at Lucretius’ use of Ennius, with particular reference to Pyrrhus, Iphigenia and the Trojan War. Ennius’ account of Pyrrhus is read as the source of the term Graius homo as applied to Epicurus (1.66), where the verbal similarity enhances the contrast between the military man and the saviour of human happiness; more tellingly, Hanses shows that the scene depicting the sacrifice of Iphigenia/Iphianassa (1.80–101) and also his short disquisition on the Trojan War (1.464–477) both derive less from Greek tragedy than from Ennius, whose dramas on the Trojan War were regularly performed and will have been seen by Lucretius’ readers. Hanses also adduces the way in which the visual arts illustrate Lucretius’ words to a degree of detail which is too close to be coincidental.
The final chapter takes on the “Epicurean shibboleth” of the size of the sun. Epicureans were ridiculed by their opponents for claiming that the sun was no bigger than a human foot, and Gellar-Goad shows that Lucretius’ account of the conundrum is couched in terms that do justice to the infallible nature of sense-perception without losing sight of the aporia surrounding the size and distance of celestial objects. What the poet is expressing in his account (5.585–591) is a sense of wonder and open-minded enquiry rather than dogmatic assertion, assisting the overarching didactic purpose of making the reader think.
There is a full bibliography and a general index. Typos are vanishingly rare and the book is attractive and accessible, with all languages other than English well translated. This collection of essays by different scholars is also remarkably coherent in style and in content, which gives the book a cumulative force and makes it far greater than the sum of its parts. This reader now wants more: there is scope for further books to take the story of Roman Epicureanism into the imperial period—starting with the age of Virgil, Horace, and Varius Rufus. Nobody is better qualified to do this than Yona, Davis, and their expert team, and I hope we do not have to wait too long for them to do it.
Authors and Titles
Sergio Yona, Introduction
PART I: Epicurus and Roman Identities
Gert Roskam, Sint ista Graecorum: How to be an Epicurean in Late Republican Rome – Evidence from Cicero’s On Ends 1-2
Daniel P. Hanchey, Cicero’s Rhetoric of Anti-Epicureanism: Anonymity as Critique
Nathan Gilbert, Was Atticus an Epicurean?
Katharina Volk, Caesar the Epicurean? A Matter of Life and Death
Monica R Gale, Otium and Voluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism
PART II: Epicurus and Lucretian Postures
Elizabeth Asmis, “Love it or Leave it”: Nature’s Ultimatum in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (3.931–962)
Pamela Gordon, Kitsch, Death and the Epicurean
Mathias Hanses, Page, Stage, Image: Confronting Ennius with Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things
T.H.M. Gellar-Goad, Lucretius on the Size of the Sun