This book by Alexander Sigl is a lightly revised version of his 2020 dissertation. It aims to provide a survey of Epicurean thought and of representations of Epicurean characters—not only self-proclaimed followers of Epicurus but also those figures who are imbued with a certain color Epicureus—in late republican and early imperial Roman literature. While the author does engage substantially with a handful of prose authors, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Lucian, the bulk of the work focuses on Roman poetry. In addition to evaluating how philosophically accurate (or inaccurate) each of these literary portrayals was, Sigl sets himself the task of assessing how these varied texts contributed to the construction of Roman stereotypes about Epicureans, as well as how individual authors adapted different Epicurean motifs for their own purposes.
The book begins with a “Thematische Einführung” (Ch. 1) in which the author lays out the scope and goals of his investigation and reviews the state of modern scholarship on Roman literary receptions of Epicureanism. This is followed by a chapter on “Epikureisch ,gefärbte‘ Figuren in vor- und frührömischer Literatur” (Ch. 2), which offers a chronological survey of the earliest moments of literary engagement with Epicurean thought and Epicurean characters in Greek and Roman literature, spanning from the fragments of Greek New Comedy to the Latin dramas of Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Pacuvius. While Sigl is generally thorough in his analysis of individual passages and in his engagement with the relevant scholarship pertaining to them, there are two omissions in this chapter worth noting. The first is the absence of any reference to Pamela Gordon’s The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus (2012), the first chapter of which anticipates most of Sigl’s analysis of Epicurean reception in the fragments of New Comedy at pp. 46–69. Gordon also discusses a few interesting literary figures that are not covered by Sigl, such as the renegade Epicurean Timocrates and the comic poet Alexis, who provide important (albeit indirect) further evidence about the early reception of Epicureanism in Greek literature.[1] In a similar vein, the absence of Lucilius fr. 28.16 (Charpin) – eidola atque atomus vincere Epicuri volam – from the section on early Roman reception of Epicureanism is surprising. This enigmatic fragment has been studied extensively (e.g. Gellar-Goad 2020: 59–61, Reinhardt 2005: 155, Chahoud 2004: 17–21), and is evidently the earliest explicit reference to Epicurean philosophy in Roman literature.
The subsequent three chapters are organized thematically, investigating interesting moments in the reception of Epicurean ideas about pleasure (Ch. 3), theology and thanatology (Ch. 4), and the ethical ideals of lathe biōsas and ataraxia (Ch. 5). Chapter 3 begins by comparing and contrasting Cicero’s characterizations of L. Calpurnius Piso and L. Manlius Torquatus as Epicurean figures, before moving on to an analysis of Epicurean voluptas in Horace and Silius Italicus. Sigl’s analysis highlights the ways that each author adapted and recontextualized Epicurean ethical ideas to make them applicable to issues of contemporary politics, daily life, and national history.[2] I found Sigl’s discussion (pp. 206–234) of Book 15 of Silius’s Punica exemplary in this regard, as he illustrates how the description of Scipio’s allegorical choice between Virtus and Voluptas (Pun. 15.18–127) deftly weaves together elements from Epicurean philosophy, Lucretian and Virgilian epic, and the popular Herakles am Scheideweg motif that originated with Prodicus.
Chapter 4 focuses on close readings of the Epicurean Velleius in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, various Horatian Odes, the figure of Daphnis in Virgil’s Eclogue 5, and Capaneus in Statius’s Thebaid. Approximately half of the chapter is devoted to Horace’s Odes, where Sigl argues that, although Epicurean language or ideas are present to some extent in all of the poems about death and mortality, the poet’s orientation toward Epicurean philosophy is far from dogmatic. Horace’s engagement with Epicureanism in these texts runs the gamut from marginal, passing gestures (e.g. Carm. 1.3) to poems in which specific, identifiable teachings of the Garden are evoked as viable models for daily living (e.g. Carm. 3.29). Similarly, in the sections on Virgil and Statius, Sigl is cautious not to overinterpret the presence of Epicurean motifs and philosophical language, emphasizing that these elements often play more of a supporting role within the broader structure of each poem.
In the fifth chapter, the author takes up the (in)famous Epicurean ideals of lathe biōsas and ataraxia in Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics, Horace’s Epistles and Satires, and Statius’s Silvae. In the sections on Virgil and Horace, Sigl follows in the footsteps of a long tradition of scholarship that investigates how certain characters are made to embody Epicurean ethical principles, which are often presented in a positive, or at the very least neutral, light. In the section on Statius’s Silvae (5.3), echoes of these philosophically-inflected characters are found in descriptions of contemporary villas and their owners. Here Sigl is interested in demonstrating that Statius’s literary engagement with Epicurean ethics reveals the continuing vitality of these ideas (and not simply as an object of scorn or parody) within the social world of Rome in the Flavian period.
Finally, Chapter 6 provides an “Exkurs” on Lucian of Samosata’s handling of Epicurean characters, focusing on Symposium, Iuppiter tragoedus, and Bis accusatus. While acknowledging that the depictions of Epicureans in these texts traffic in certain stereotypes and doctrinal mischaracterizations that go back to Cicero, Sigl argues that Lucian partially rehabilitates the Garden’s poor reputation by making the Stoics look even worse by comparison. I found the close readings of each passage in this section well-argued (Sigl does a particularly good job here of teasing out how poorly the Stoic characters come off in these exchanges). However, I am less convinced by the claim that, taken together, these moments amount to a positive reevaluation of the Epicurean school, however partial. After all, Lucian’s portrayal of Epicureans in each of these dialogues is so thoroughly indebted to the bad-faith stereotyping of the Garden’s detractors that even a tactical victory over a Stoic opponent (whether that of Hermon in Symposium or of Damis in Iuppiter tragoedus) still comes off as a back-handed compliment that heavily distorts both Epicurean doctrines and practices.[3]
In a brief final chapter (Ch. 7), Sigl summarizes the results of each chapter, helpfully highlighting key areas of continuity as well as innovation across the different authors, texts, and genres discussed in the preceding chapters. Overall, this book gathers together much interesting material related to the broader cultural impact of Epicureanism in the Roman world. As far as the production of the book goes, I noticed only a handful of minor typos, although references to a passage in Book 2 of Cicero’s De divinatione at p. 141 and p. 126 n. 38 appear to be mistaken.[4] While one can disagree with certain readings and interpretations of individual texts advanced by Sigl, he has performed a valuable service by putting so many varied moments of Epicurean reception into dialogue with each other, and by carefully weighing the philosophical, literary, political, and social dimensions of each passage. Those who are interested in Roman Epicureanism, or in receptions of philosophy within Latin literature more generally, will find Sigl’s book worth reading.
Bibliography
Chahoud, Anna. 2004. “The Roman Satirist Speaks Greek.” Classics Ireland 11: 1–46.
Gellar-Goad, T. H. M. 2020. Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Satire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gordon, Pamela. 2012. The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Reinhardt, Tobias. 2005. “The Language of Epicureanism in Cicero: The Case of Atomism.” In T. Reinhardt, M. Lapidge, and J. N. Adams (eds.), Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 151–77.
Sedley, David. 1976. “Epicurus and his Professional Rivals.” In J. Bollack and A. Laks (eds.), Études sur l’Épicurisme antique. Lille: Cahiers de Philologie 1. 119–159.
Van Nuffelen, Peter. 2011. Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Notes
[1] On Timocrates, see also Sedley 1976: 127–32.
[2] Here again the lack of engagement with Gordon’s work is unfortunate, as her discussion of Epicurean allegorical readings of Homer’s Odyssey (2012: 41–44) is highly relevant to Sigl’s analysis of the figure of Odysseus in Horace (pp. 178 ff.).
[3] For an alternative interpretation of the pervasive strands of anti-Epicurean discourse woven into Lucian’s works, including Iuppiter tragoedus and Alexander, see Van Nuffelen 2011: 179–99.
[4] The passage cited (Div. 2.5.4) is not listed in the index locorum, and the mention of graeci or graeculi in these contexts would appear to refer instead to Cic. Red. sen. 14, which Sigl quotes and discusses on p. 120.