A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

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Life Worthy of the Gods

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Life Worthy of the Gods The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

David Konstan

Las Vegas | Zurich | Athens

PARMENIDES PUBLISHING Las Vegas | Zurich | Athens © 2008 Parmenides Publishing All rights reserved. In part originally published in 1973 as Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology by E.J. Brill, Leiden This revised and expanded edition published in 2008 by Parmenides Publishing in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-930972-28-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Konstan, David.   A life worthy of the gods : the materialist psychology of epicurus / by David Konstan. — New ed.    p. cm.   Rev. ed. of: Some aspects of Epicurean psychology. 1973   ISBN 978-1-930972-28-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.  Epicurus. 2.  Lucretius Carus, Titus. De rerum natura. 3.  Emotions. 4.  Human behavior.  I. Konstan, David. Some aspects of Epicurean psychology. II. Title.   B573.K66 2008   187—dc22 008029131 Excerpts from On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and translated by Martin Ferguson Smith (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2001) appear by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Typeset in Book Antiqua and OdysseaUBSU (Greek) by 1106 Design Printed by United Graphics in the United States of America

1-888-PARMENIDES www.parmenides.com

Contents

Preface to the Revised Edition Introduction to the First Edition Acknowledgments

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Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

1 27 79 127

1: Epicurean “Passions” 2: Psychology 3: Social Theory 4: Epistemology

Bibliography Index

153 169

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Preface to the Revised Edition

This book is a new edition of Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology, originally published by E.J. Brill in 1973. Besides being brought up to date in a great many details, it includes much wholly new material, for example this preface, the entire first chapter, and more. This revised edition was first published in Italian (Konstan 2007a), thanks to the kind encouragement of my dear friend, Ilaria Ramelli, who also translated it, and of Professors Roberto Radice and Giovanni Reale, the editors of the series, “Vita e Pensiero,” published under the auspices of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Milan. A word of justification is needed for republishing a book on Epicureanism that is now more than thirty-five years old. The field has changed greatly over the past few decades. New editions of papyri from the Epicurean library in Herculaneum, accompanied by fine commentaries, have greatly augmented our knowledge both of the later tradition of Epicurean theory and of the original form it took at the hands of Epicurus himself, for example in his magnum opus, On Nature. In addition, Epicureanism has come in for intensive investigation, stimulated both by the work of Marcello Gigante and his associates in Naples and other scholars in Italy, as well as by the meetings and publications sponsored by the Symposium Hellenisticum, where specialists from various countries focussed critical attention on Epicureanism, Stoicism, skepticism, and other relatively obscure philosophical traditions. We understand a great deal better today Epicurean epistemology, physics,

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and moral theory than we did in the early 1970s (for recent surveys of Epicurean doctrine in general, see Konstan 2002, 2005). There would have been little point in republishing an essay on Epicurean psychology that took no account of these developments, and I have endeavored to bring the present volume up to date, in the sense that I have taken notice, where it seemed relevant, of the principal contributions to the subjects that are covered in it, indicating where they seem to confirm or to challenge the conclusions that I had drawn. Naturally, in reflecting on the themes treated here in light both of new research and my own wider experience of ancient philosophy, I have modified my views, and this too had to be reflected in a new edition (note especially the new Chapter 1). All of this required a good deal more than the mere addition of references to new books and articles, with the body of the book left unaltered. And yet, this is not simply a new study of Epicurean psychology (in the sense to be specified below). It is a new edition of an old book, however much it may have been amended and, I hope, improved. The basic argument and armature of the original study have been left intact. This gives the book a certain hybrid or palimpsestic quality: it preserves the original plan and idea, and yet is in many respects quite new, incorporating numerous supplementary passages and arguments that materially affect the exposition. This new edition is meant to replace the old (which is now in any case out of print), not to complement it (my thanks to E.J. Brill for releasing me from the copyright of the original version, and encouraging the publication of the new one). Inevitably, there is a certain tension in the structure of a work of this sort. The arguments I presented thirty-some years ago were cast in reponse to the predominant scholarship of the time, and this determined to some extent their order and emphasis. It did not seem appropriate to eliminate the citations of earlier research, even though I might add discussions of more recent studies, in which the focus had changed and some of the older problems were either settled or have come to seem marginal to an understanding of Epicureanism. I have sought, in this new edition, to preserve the basic dialectic of the original version, even as I adapted it, where necessary (which was often), to reflect new texts and currents of thought. I believe that, in spite of this double focus, the

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book continues to exhibit a line of argument that is both coherent and contemporary. My readers will have to be the judge of how well I have succeeded in this attempt. The reader may wish to see in advance an outline of the arguments that follow, in which the major theses are stated and the most controversial conclusions are clearly marked as such. With the benefit of much new scholarship, some of which has engaged directly with the hypotheses and analyses presented in the first edition of this book, I can myself perceive more plainly where my contributions are more or less solid, given the state of the evidence. In what follows, then, I present a summary of the central claims, and an indication of how they hang together. For the details, the reader will have to consult the chapters that follow, which, despite considerable expansion over the original version, retain the relative brevity suitable to a monograph. In Chapter 1, which, as I have said, is wholly new, I make a radical claim concerning the nature of the pathê in Epicurus’ own writings. In brief, I argue that the pathê for Epicurus are precisely pleasure and pain, and that they, like sensations or aisthêseis, reside in the non-rational or alogon part of the soul (the very division of the soul into a rational and non-rational part in Epicureanism is controversial). It follows from this that a positive or negative sentiment or reaction experienced in, or requiring the participation of, the rational part of the soul (the logikon) is not, strictly speaking, a pathos, that is, either pleasure or pain, but something else. In fact, Epicurus refers to such responses as either joy (khara) or fear (phobos), terms which stand in, as it were, for pleasure and pain at the level of the rational soul. Although later Epicureans, and Philodemus in particular, do not always observe the distinction between pathê in the narrow sense and what we may call “emotions” (Epicurus seems not to have employed a special term to cover both positive and negative feelings in the rational soul), it represents, I argue, a crucial distinction in Epicurean psychology. In Chapter 1, then, I examine an aspect of Epicurean psychology in the ancient sense of the term, that is, the science of the soul or psyche. For the Epicureans, as A.A. Long and David Sedley observe, “the soul’s primary functions are consciousness in all its aspects—especially sensation, thought, and emotion—and the transmission of impulses to the

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body” (1987: 1.70). In modern terms, much of this material would come under epistemology at one extreme and physiology at the other. In the balance of this book (that part which represents the revision of the original monograph: here, Chapters 2 to 4), I investigate, or attempt to reconstruct, certain views of the Epicureans concerning what we may call psychology in the modern sense, that is, the mental states, emotions, and activities that contribute to or disrupt the healthy operation of the psyche. Today, psychological therapies look to treat pathologies such as depression, obsessive and compulsive syndromes, and delusions. Such disorders, or behaviors that are comparable to these clinical conditions, were of concern to Epicurean thinkers as well: even more than the other philosophical schools of classical antiquity, the Epicureans conceived of their insights as providing a cure for tribulations afflicting the mind, and it is this aspect of their program that I consider in the sequel (cf. Nussbaum 1994). It is well known that the Epicureans believed—and were often ridiculed for believing—that the principal cause of human unhappiness is the fear of death and the punishments that were imagined to attend upon it. But death, they held, is in fact nothing, so far as human beings are concerned, and hence it is not a proper object of fear. As Epicurus writes in the Letter to Menoeceus (124): “Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, since all good and evil reside in sensation [aisthêsis], and death is the privation of sensation.” The doctrine is summarized more pithily in the second of the so-called “Principal Doctrines” of Epicurus, and also by Lucretius (3.830: nil igitur mors est ad nos), and is a cornerstone of Epicurean philosophy. The fear of death is disturbing in itself, whether the Epicureans thought of it as an unconscious or repressed dread, as some modern scholars maintain, or simply one that is denied, perhaps even to oneself (see Gladman and Mitsis 1997). But the harm it does to human happiness extends beyond the malaise it generates in the soul, according to Epicurus. For the Epicureans held that this fear is also responsible for the excessive and irrational desires that cause people to disregard their wellbeing and put their lives in danger, and that lead to wars, wrongdoing,  All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.



Preface to the Revised Edition

and a general deterioration of social life. Thus, Lucretius writes: “Greed and the blind passion for positions of power, which drive wretched men to exceed the limits of the law and, as partners and abetters in crime, to struggle day and night with all their might to reach the heights of wealth—these blights on life are nourished in no small part by the fear of death” (3.59–64). Why should the fear of death have such consequences? The answer, I argue, is indicated in part in the same passage of the Letter to Menoeceus cited above (124): “And so a correct understanding of the fact that death is nothing to us makes this mortal life enjoyable, not by adding to it an infinity of time, but rather by ridding us of the longing for immortality.” Even today, when Freudian psychology has accustomed us to the idea of unconscious fears and desires, and to the mechanisms by which they are disguised, the Epicurean theory is striking. All the more so was this the case in antiquity. It was radical simply to maintain that an empty fear could be a pervasive cause of human desire and action. In Chapter 2, I look further into the mechanism by which irrational fear is converted into irrational desire, taking as my point of departure several passages in Lucretius’ De rerum natura. In a moment I shall indicate something more about the nature of the argument I develop in this regard. But I also make an additional claim, and this one is less commonly acknowledged in the modern scholarship on Epicurean psychology. I argue that not only does the irrational fear of death induce limitless desires, but that, in turn, such desires are at least in part responsible for the anxieties that human beings have in regard to death. Once again, a good part of the evidence for this claim is derived from the exegesis of passages in Lucretius’ poem. The consequence of this double process or direction of causation is that irrational fears and desires mutually reinforce each other, and the closed cycle that results is a major reason why both fears and desires are so difficult to eliminate or control. When the first edition of this book was published, this constituted a new explanation of the relative tenacity of irrational fears and desires, in spite of Epicurus’ revelations concerning the physical universe and human nature; nor is it now a commonly accepted view. But it was also novel in respect to method. Let me indicate how. In the so-called tetrapharmakos or “four-fold remedy,” Epicurus indicates the need to reduce both fears and desires if true contentment is to

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be attained. I quote from the formulation in Philodemus’ Ad contubernales or To His Companions (PHerc 1005, col. 4.9–14), as translated by Michael Erler and Malcolm Schofield (1999: 645): “God presents no fears, death no cause for alarm; it is easy to procure what is good; it is also easy to endure what is evil.” Erler and Schofield remark that the first two axioms “can be established only by physics, not by ethical inquiry narrowly conceived.” The next assertion, concerning the ready availability of good things, rests on the Epicurean ideal of moderation, which is achieved, according to Erler and Schofield, when we comprehend “the nature and species of desire”; thus, this too will “in the end depend on understanding nature—human, not now cosmic, nature.” Now, it is perfectly true that Epicurus offers an analysis of three kinds of desire—natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and both unnatural and unnecessary—and, on the basis of an accurate appreciation of human needs and their satisfaction, demonstrates how and why we irrationally pursue, at great effort, goods beyond what our nature requires. In Chapter 2 of this book, however, I seek to demonstrate a different kind of connection between irrational fears and desires. It is not merely that both depend on a failure to understand something about the constitution of the world, whether the fact that there is no punishment in the afterlife or that human needs are by nature limited. Rather, I examine the interrelationship between fears and desires on what we may call the phenomenological level, by arguing that the fear of death and of punishment after death inspires the urge to limitless acquisition of wealth and power, and that these very desires in turn contribute to and augment the fear of death. What is more, the mechanism by which the fear of death is converted into acquisitiveness, and acquisitiveness into fear of the afterlife, is basically symbolic in nature: on the one hand, people imagine that poverty is similar to death; on the other hand, the torments of the next world are projections of the restless life of desire that people lead in this one. Both of these errors depend on our making symbolic or quasiallegorical substitutions—we genuinely believe that in avoiding poverty we are escaping death, and that images of frustration derived from this life represent the reality of the next. Mistakes due to false metaphors are, on this interpretation, central to Epicurean psychology, which in this respect bears an important resemblance to modern psychoanalytic theories.

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As I have said, I base a good part of my case for this account on a reading of certain passages in Lucretius, which I believe offer important evidence of Epicurus’ own approach (for my views on the extent of Lucretius’ own contribution to Epicurean philosophy, see Konstan 2006). For example, when Lucretius insists that our anxieties “do not fear the sound of arms … nor do they respect the gleam of gold” (2.49–51), but can be assuaged only by the power of reason, I take him to mean that people really do imagine that wealth and power put fears of death to flight, and that this is why they seek them so relentlessly. Once more, when Lucretius asserts in the proem to Book 3 that greed and the blind desire for power “are nourished in no small part by the fear of death because [enim]”—as he explains—“foul humiliation and bitter poverty seem … to linger, as it were, before the portals of death, and this is why [unde] men wish to escape them, driven by illusory terror” (3.64–68), I understand this to be not a poetic flourish but rather a genuine piece of Epicurean doctrine, and a necessary element in his overall argument. The irrational and limitless desire for wealth is motivated not just by a failure to perceive that in truth what nature requires is “limited and easily obtained,” as Epicurus says in Principal Doctrine 15, but also by a false inference deriving from the figurative resemblance between a humble station and death. If the fear of death generates unlimited desire by a kind of metaphorical confusion, it is by a similar mechanism, I argue, that irrational desire in turn produces and augments anxieties over death. The clue to how it works is once more to be found in Lucretius, this time, as I indicated above, in his famous explication of the punishments in the underworld as projections of the lives of human beings in this one: “Undoubtedly it is in our life that all those things exist which are fabled to be in the depths of hell…. What there is in real life is the fear of punishment for crimes…. Here on earth the life of the foolish becomes hell” (3.978–1023, trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.152–53). Here again, I take this elaborate allegory to represent an authentic part of Epicurus’ explanation of the fear of punishment in the afterlife. For Epicurus would have needed to provide some account of why people entertain precisely this vision of hell’s torments, that is, as an assortment of forever frustrated cravings that leave their victims in a continual state of pain, just as he required an

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explanation of why greed and ambition are consequences of the fear of death: the images of infernal tortures derive, I suggest, from simulacra of our behavior in this world which, by an unwarranted addition of belief, are imagined as torments actually existing in the next. Such, then, are Lucretius’ explanations of how fear drives people to endless accumulation, and why in turn such insatiable desires should compound the fear of punishment after death. What is more, Lucretius’ accounts, not despite but just because of the imagery in which they are cast, provide the only analysis that survives of how these psychological processes operate. Difficult as irrational fears and desires are to eradicate in people today, thanks in part to their reciprocally reinforcing character, there nevertheless was a time, according to the Epicurean conception of human social evolution, when neither the dread of punishment in the afterlife nor the unappeasable passion for wealth and power had yet come to dominate the minds of human beings. Lucretius’ account of the history of the race in Book 5 makes it clear that primitive people were not subject to the superstitious terrors that afflict people in the modern world. Besides, in the early days of human society, when resources were too scarce to permit individual accumulation, and the threat of harm from savage creatures and other dangers demanded general cooperation, there would not have existed the behaviors that in a later age served as the basis for the popular image of Hades’ torments. Nor does it follow automatically that the mere existence or possibility of wealth generates an unassuageable desire for it, which is then imagined as a form of punishment in the hereafter—for why should anyone believe that the gods would seek to punish evildoers, and in just this fashion? In Chapter 3 I argue that the emergence of such fears and desires depended on, among other things, two further major transformations in the course of human history: the development, first, of language, which was the precondition for the kinds of mental error or symbolic construal that we have seen to be an important ingredient in irrational fears and desires, and, second, of a social system based on the rule of law and the generalized fear of punishment that law entails, which gave rise in turn to a religious terror of a like castigation inflicted by the gods in the afterlife. In the third chapter, accordingly, I discuss in some detail the Epicurean theory of language and of the place of law and punishment in society,

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as well as the attitude toward early society and whether Epicurean anthropology can properly be labeled either primitivist or progressivist. I propose that the rule of law has a double character in Epicureanism. On the one hand, it emerges naturally and necessarily in the course of human history, as new resources, including both the development of language and other technical and political advances, give rise to widespread violence within human communities. On the other hand, I argue that law and punishment also have a negative side, for they are an essential source of the pervasive fear of punishment by the gods, and hence contribute to the very crimes, resulting from limitless desire for wealth and power, that necessitate legal contraints in the first place. Lucretius again gives the best evidence of this paradoxical status of law in Epicurean theory, but it reflects, as I try to show, orthodox Epicurean doctrine. Beyond the aspiration to wealth and power in the misguided hope of allaying the fear of death, human beings suffer, as Epicurus observes in the Letter to Menoeceus (124), from a “longing for immortality” that Epicurean philosophy is intended to abolish, thereby permitting the full enjoyment of this mortal life. In Chapter 4, I argue that the cause of this irrational desire for eternal life resides in another symbolic confusion, this time not between death and weakness or poverty, which is the motive force of greed and ambition, but of a quite different sort. Epicurus held that the life of the sage was equal to that of a god, and that the pleasure experienced by the wise is in no way inferior to that enjoyed by divine beings. I take this analogy to divinity to be seriously meant: the fullness of joy and pleasure available to mankind is not augmented by time, and in a certain sense stands outside of temporality. The mistake is to imagine that such a timeless experience of pleasure and ataraxy can be achieved by the indefinite prolongation of life, an immortality like that which the Epicureans ascribed to the gods. Yet another instance of such epistemological confusion or kenodoxia, to be dispelled by Epicurean science, is the human passion of erotic love. All animals experience the impulse to procreation, which Lucretius labels “Venus” in the proem to the first book of his poem. But Venus stands also for a higher-order kind of satisfaction that human beings share with the gods. The experience of being in love generates an image of fulfillment that misleads people into believing that the deep desire for tranquillity can be satisfied by sexual

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communion. Relying once again chiefly on the analysis of erotic desire in Lucretius, I attempt to indicate in the fourth chapter (and also toward the end of the second) the nature of this error and its consequences. This, then, is the structure of the book before you. It begins with an investigation of where fear, joy and desire are lodged in the soul (the rational part) and how they relate to the non-rational sensations of pleasure and pain and to the higher-order happiness of ataraxy. I then discuss the dynamic interaction between irrational fears and desires as a consequence of erroneous symbolic associations, and indicate, in the following chapter, what it is in the evolution of human capacities and social life that gave rise to such misunderstandings. Finally, I suggest yet another kind of confusion that haunts human life, namely the belief that one can realize physically, through an infinitely extended life or the complete union of selves in the act of love, the kind of consummate happiness that only a proper understanding of cosmic and human nature—that is, Epicurean philosophy—can confer. The red thread running through the study as a whole is the idea that a kind of linguistic confusion or unconscious allegorical substitution contributes significantly to the empty beliefs or kenai doxai that perturb the life of mankind. While interrelated, the arguments in support of the several claims are independent. The reader must be the judge of whether they stand up to scrutiny in the light of the latest disoveries concerning Epicurean philosophy.

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Introduction to the First Edition

In this book, I examine certain aspects of the thinking of Epicurus and Lucretius on problems connected with human emotions and behavior. Specifically, I inquire into the Epicurean analysis of irrational fears and desires, insofar as the fragmentary or incidental treatments that we have may shed light on this matter. I then review the Epicurean account of the origin of society, in order to determine whether and how irrational fears and desires arose in the course of the development of civilization. Finally, I look very selectively at certain questions in Epicurean physics and epistemology, to discover what, if anything, in the natural theory provides the ground for error and irrational passions. Although this study enters upon a number of different problems in Epicureanism, it is not intended to be an investigation of Epicurus’ philosophy as a whole. Epicureanism is today a highly controversial subject. In several places I defend a position that has not won the universal consent of scholars. I do not imagine that I have said the last word on these matters, but to get a general view of the topic of irrational fears and desires it is necessary and timely to take some steps toward a synthesis of the results of some recent studies. It may be that, because I am looking at Epicurean psychology, social theory, and physics in order to see their connection with fear and desire, I shall be guilty of a certain misplaced emphasis, treating as “explanations” for irrational emotions various theoretical positions that were developed with quite other issues in mind. That is, perhaps, a natural consequence

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of the focus of my argument. However, I believe that the irrational fears and desires played a more central and controlling role in the Epicurean system than has sometimes been supposed. I hope, nevertheless, not to give the impression that fears and desires were the sole preoccupation of the Epicureans. A word on method may conclude this preface. In interpreting the poem of Lucretius, I have frequently used techniques of literary analysis, such as stressing the significance of images, metaphors, puns and the like, in order to uncover philosophical positions and arguments. To put it in Otto Regenbogen’s terms (1932: 2 and n. 1), I examine Lucretius the poet in order to find out more about Lucretius the Epicurean. This method involves serious risks, of which I hope I have been sufficiently aware. The logic of poetry is not the logic of philosophy. But Lucretius was so profoundly imbued with the doctrines of Epicurus that his sometimes elliptical and allusive verse may nonetheless contain the clue, as I believe, to important ideas for which scant other evidence survives. Nevertheless, the results of such analysis must remain tentative. The justification for the procedure is that no other route exists to the Epicureans’ thinking on these problems. Perhaps, too, I may add something to the understanding of certain passages, especially in Lucretius, which come in for detailed discussion.

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Acknowledgments

In the preface to the original edition, I wrote: “It is my pleasure to acknowledge the encouragement and assistance of friends and colleagues who helped me to clarify many of the arguments and ideas in this essay, although they are not, of course, to be held responsible for the various points of interpretation where I have defended an unusual or controversial view.” Today, I can add many more names to the list of those who have generously provided me with guidance as I worked through difficult questions in Epicureanism. Let me begin by recalling those whom I was pleased to thank more than thirty years ago. There was my close friend, the late Richard Ross, to whom I owed the inspiration to pursue problems of Epicurean psychology. I was also deeply indebted to Thomas Cole, the late Stephen Crites, and David Furley for their acute criticisms and kind moral support. My colleagues at Wesleyan University, and in particular Stephen Dyson and Kevin Whitfield, made many helpful suggestions. I also owed much to conversations with my then wife, Loretta, who patiently endured my ponderings. I should note too that the publication of the first edition was supported by a subvention from the Stanwood Cockey Lodge fund, administered by the Department of Greek and Latin (now the Department of Classical Studies) of Columbia University. Today, I must add, first and foremost, an expression of thanks to Ilaria Ramelli, who not only translated my revised manuscript into Italian, which in turn is the basis of this new edition, but has been a constant source of stimulation and support. I wish to express my gratitude also

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to Regina Höschele, who read the chapters with her unfailingly critical eye, and was generous with her encouragement. I am grateful to Brad Inwood and Phillip Mitsis for critical commentary on many points, as well as for their friendship. My wife, Pura Nieto, has been my companion in all my work. I wish also to thank the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, located in Stanford, California, for a grant that enabled me to undertake the revision of the book in a most splendidly tranquil and collegial environment, and also the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided additional funding for my leave. I may note that Chapter 1 was originally presented as a lecture in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utrecht; I am deeply grateful to colleagues there for penetrating questions and comments. An abbreviated version was published in a Festschrift for Dorothea Frede (Konstan 2006a), and I happily dedicate it to her once again in the somewhat fuller form in which it appears here (my thanks also to Burkhard Reis and Stella Haffmans, the editors of that volume). Some material deriving from that argument has also appeared in an essay on the soul in Epicurus, published in French (Konstan 2007). The original edition of this book bore the dedication, “To My Parents.” Now, thirty-five years later, I dedicate the revised edition to their memory.

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Chapter 1

Epicurean “Passions”

In what follows, I investigate the status of the pathê (plural of pathos) in Epicurean psychology. It will emerge that Epicurus had a very narrow view of the significance of this term, in comparison with its use among his contemporaries, and indeed among some of his own followers (see Konstan 2006b). What is more, this restriction has important consequences for Epicurus’ understanding both of the emotions and of the goal of life in general. In popular as well as philosophical literature of the late fifth century onward, pathos is the normal Greek word for “emotion.” The term nevertheless retained a wide range of connotations, and if it came to refer specifically to emotion only in “the 420s and probably later” (Harris 2001: 84), it was not limited to this meaning either in everyday or scientific usage. For example, the word often bears the sense of an accident or misfortune, as well as the neutral significance of a condition or state of affairs. In philosophical language, pathos may signify a secondary quality as opposed to the essence of a thing (cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 1022b15–21; Urmson 1990: 126–27). Even in the domain of psychology, pathos might well include sensations such as pleasure and pain, and also desires or appetites, which we do not necessarily classify as emotions in the strict sense of the term—nor did Aristotle. Thus, in the Rhetoric to Alexander (7.5 = 1428a36–b5), formerly thought to be by Aristotle but now commonly ascribed to Anaximenes and dated slightly earlier than Aristotle’s own Rhetoric, we find pathê illustrated by contempt, fear, taking pleasure



A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

(hêsthentes), feeling pain (lupêthentes), and desiring (epithumountes); elsewhere (7.14), the list of characteristic pathê is given as passionate love, anger, drunkenness, and ambition (erôs, orgê, methê, and philotimia). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle himself adopts a somewhat wider usage, in which he includes desire in the broad sense among the pathê, e.g. at 1105b21–23: “I call pathê desire [epithumia], anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy [khara], love, hatred, longing, competitiveness, pity, and in general those things upon which attend pleasure and pain” (cf. 1147a14–15; for pathos complemented by epithumia, 1151b8–9; also Eudemian Ethics 1220b12–13; further discussion in Konstan 2006b). Aristotle is more precise, however, in the Rhetoric, where he offers his most detailed analysis of the several pathê. Here, Aristotle makes it clear that pleasure and pain (hêdonê and lupê) are elements or components of pathê, properly speaking: “Let the emotions be all those things on account of which people change their minds and differ in regard to their judgments, and upon which attend pain and pleasure, for example anger, pity, fear, and all other such things and their opposites” (Rhetoric 2.1, 1378a20–23). This account is confirmed in the Nicomachean Ethics as well, where Aristotle describes the virtues as being about actions and pathê, and adds that “pleasure and pain attend on every pathos and every action” (1104b14–15). The pathê that Aristotle discusses in the Rhetoric include anger, the satisfaction that assuages anger, love and hate, fear and confidence, shame, gratitude, pity, envy, and competitiveness, among others. Some of these are characterized by a desire, for example anger (a desire or orexis for revenge) and love (a wish that the loved one may prosper); but simple desires in the sense of appetites—hunger, thirst, and the like—are not treated as pathê.  Solmsen 1986: 151 notes that in Plato’s Timaeus (42A5, 69D4) aisthêsis is twice treated as “an ingredient of the irrational soul part,” which must report to the rational soul if it is to be conscious of it (although the aisthêsis is not said to occur only when the conscious soul is aware of the sensation, 152). For Plato, pleasure and pain accompany sensations (64A2–65B3; note use of pathêmata for “sensations” here), although sensation (e.g., sight) can of course occur without pleasure or pain: “what produces pleasure and pain is the intensity of the movement by which particles leave their natural condition or return to it” (153). Solmsen continues (154): “ἡδονή and λύπη are not strictly speaking αἰσθήσεις but potential concomitants of αἰσθήσεις; they are παθήματα—a word of even wider range than αἰσθήσεις” (citing 64A2ff). Solmsen remarks (154–55) that Plato sometimes



Epicurean “Passions”

More particularly, Aristotle in the Rhetoric treats pleasure and pain, that is, hêdonê and lupê, as sensations or aisthêseis: “since feeling pleasure is in the perception of some experience [pathos], and phantasia is a weak kind of perception [aisthêsis], some phantasia of what one remembers or expects always occurs in a person when he remembers or expects something…. Thus, it is necessary that all pleasures are either present in perception or arise in remembering things that have happened or in expecting things that will happen” (1.11, 1370a27–34). In respect to pathos, as with a number of other technical terms, Epicurus went his own way, and indeed seems almost deliberately to have turned Aristotle’s account on its head. Pathos appears principally as one of three (or perhaps four) basic epistemological capacities that Epicurus calls “criteria.” Thus, Diogenes Laertius, in his summary of Epicurus’ teaching, reports (10.31) that “in the Canon, Epicurus says that the criteria of truth are sensations [aisthêseis] and preconceptions [prolêpseis] and the pathê, and some Epicureans add the imaginative projections of thought [tas phantastikas epibolas tês dianoias].” Epicurus associates sensations and pathê in several passages in the Letter to Herodotus (37–38, 55, 63, 82; cf. Principal Doctrines 24). For example, he writes (38): “For it is necessary to look to the primary concept behind each sound…. Then we must observe everything in accord with the aisthêseis, and, simply, the attendant speaks of pleasure and pain as aisthêtika (cf. Theaetetus 156B), but he typically follows Greek usage in distinguishing the categories of perception and feeling, and this was to be decisive for later schools (cf. Hippocrates On Ancient Medicine 9), even though aisthêsis “continued to be used for perceptions as well as feelings” (157). For a full discussion of Aristotle’s conception of the emotions, see Konstan 2006c.  On the relationship between phantasia and aisthêsis in Aristotle, see On the Soul 3.3 and On Dreams 2, 459a15–19, where phantasia is said to be a motion that arises from (or as a result of) the activity of perception. Solmsen 1986: 157 affirms that Aristotle makes aisthêsis “a cognitive power inferior only to the activities of νοῦς.” It is conceivable that Aristotle’s account, in De anima 3.7, 430a26–31a8, of aisthêseis as determining what is or is not the case, whereas the pleasant and unpleasant condition what one seeks and avoids, had an influence on Epicurus; for discussion of Aristotle’s view, see Solmsen 1986: 160; Modrak 2001; 95–191, 221; Struck 2004: 60–62.  Cf. Solmsen 1986: 162: “Epicurus goes entirely his own way.”  Solmsen 1986: 157 oddly asserts that for Epicurus aisthêsis is “the capacity of feeling pleasure and pain.” On the status of prolêpseis as criteria, see Laks 1976: 104–05; Morel 2007; Konstan 2007b.



A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

projections whether of thought or of some other of the criteria, and so too the occurrent pathê” (cf. Letter to Pythocles 116, where it would seem that there are projections [epibolai] not just of dianoia but also of aistheseis and pathê). However this may be, it is clear that the pathê operate alongside aisthêseis and certain processes of thought, and together provide us with all the information we have concerning the world. The aisthêseis have received considerable attention by scholars, especially in connection with Epicurus’ doctrine that “all sensations are true” (see e.g. Taylor 1980; Everson 1990; Striker 1996). Leaving this puzzle aside, what we know about aisthêseis is that they do not involve reason (aisthêsis is alogos, D.L. 10.31) or memory (mnêmê), and that they are associated with the five senses (Letter to Herodotus 68). The pathê are evidently distinct from the aisthêseis, but what precisely are they? According to Diogenes Laertius (10.34), the Epicureans “say that there are two pathê, pleasure [hêdonê] and pain [algêdôn], which exist in every animal, the one pertaining to what is one’s own [oikeion], the other pertaining to what is foreign [allotrion], by which choices and avoidances are distinguished.” For Epicurus, then, the pathê are what inform us about the affective value of things in the world—whether they are to be pursued or shunned—whereas the aisthêseis inform us about how things appear physically. Epicurus also uses the term pathos in connection with the senses, for example in his explanation of hearing: “Hearing too derives from a kind of stream that is borne along from the object that sounds or echoes or knocks or in some way or other provides the acoustic pathos” (Letter to Herodotus 52; cf. 53). It is conceivable that this usage reflects a distinction between the impact of the acoustic stimuli, which consist of material films or eidôla (in Latin simulacra), and sensation proper, which is something more than the mere physical collision of the image-bearing atoms and the auditory apparatus—something more akin to perception, perhaps, and occurring in the psyche, not just in the ear. If this is so, and if the pathê of pleasure and pain are in this respect analogous to the akoustikon  Cf. Prost 2004: 117: “de même que dans l’ordre de la physique la sensation nous renseigne sur ce que les choses sont, de même dans l’ordre de l’éthique l’affection nous renseigne sur ce que les choses sont pour nous.” Obbink 1996 notes that Philodemus, in De pietate, attributes aesthêsis and hêdonê to the gods (5.21–23 = 137–39, pp. 114–15); they lack, however, the pathos of pain (algêdôn), cf. 7.22–24 = 194–96.



Epicurean “Passions”

pathos, then they would consist of the immediate response, at the level of the skin, so to speak, to incoming stimuli, before they are registered in the soul. But I suspect rather that Epicurus is simply using pathos in a way that is equivalent to aisthêsis here. In a recent survey of “Epicurean Epistemology” in the The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Elizabeth Asmis (1999: 275–76) offers a subtle and detailed analysis of the role of the pathê in Epicurus’ psychology. I cite it in extenso, both because of its clarity and because I find myself in disagreement with certain elements of her interpretation. She writes: Epicurus joins “feelings” (pathê) to perceptions as a basis of inference. In his survey of Epicurean canonic, Diogenes Laertius (x.35) states that there are two feelings, pleasure and pain, by which choice and avoidance are judged…. But this does not imply that pleasure and pain are not also a criterion of truth. For they determine action by serving as a measure of what truly is good and bad…. The basic difference between these two measures of truth is that feelings are acts of awareness of inner states, whereas perceptions are directed at what is external to us. As a type of canon, the feelings are not simply altered conditions of the sense organ; they include an awareness of the condition. Epicurus agreed with others that every act of perception depends on an  Cf. Koenen 1997: 169 on Letter to Herodotus 53: “it appears that, according to Epicurus, smell causes a πάθος.” Rejecting the claim by Bailey 1947: 1257, 1261 that pathos here “suggests a subjective element” (based, Koenen notes, “on a highly polemical statement on the Epicurean explanation of taste” in Plutarch Adv. Col. 1121C = fr. 324 Usener), Koenen invokes rather the use of πάθος in the explanation of hearing in the Letter to Herodotus 52 along with Aetius 4.13.1 = fr. 318 Usener, and concludes: “one gets the impression that Epicurus uses πάθος to refer in a general and neutral way to the effect, caused by particles which are emitted from the sense object, on the sense organ.” Contrast Lautner 1989: 25–26: “die Atomen in die Ohren strömen und dort eine entsprechende Reaktion zur Folge haben, die der pathe der wahrnehmender Person entspricht…; das pathos durch die Strömungen der Atomen verursacht wird, und andererseits ist das pathos das Zeichen für diese Strömungen. Das ist nach Lust und Schmerz messbar und berichtet nicht darüber, was man eigentlich wahrnimmt” (26). But one does perceive the pleasurability or painfulness of the object, even if these are not physical characteristics in the same sense as color or sound.



A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

alteration of the sense organ; and this may be called a feeling. In addition to being moved, the sense organ may have a feeling of being moved; and this constitutes a criterion of truth. At the most general level, this criterion is a feeling of pleasure or pain. Subsumed under these feelings is the whole range of bodily sensations, such as feeling sated or hungry or having a pain in the stomach, and the entire range of emotions, such as anger, sadness, or joy…. One highly controversial claim supported by reference to feelings is the claim that the mind is situated in the heart. Like the Stoics (though with a different logical apparatus), the Epicureans sought to determine the location of the mind by the “evident” fact that the heart is where we feel fear, joy, and other emotions…. Since the mind is the seat of the emotions, this feeling shows that the mind is located in the heart.” Let me isolate four of Asmis’ claims for closer attention: (1) “feelings are acts of awareness of inner states, whereas perceptions are directed at what is external to us”; (2) “feelings are not simply altered conditions of the sense organ; they include an awareness of the condition”; (3) “Subsumed under these feelings is the whole range of bodily sensations, such as feeling sated or hungry or having a pain in the stomach, and the entire range of emotions, such as anger, sadness, or joy”; (4) “feeling shows that the mind is located in the heart.” First, then, let us consider the pleasure we derive from agreeable music—one of Epicurus’ own examples of kinetic pleasure (On the Goal, quoted in Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.41), and clearly quite different from pleasures of replenishment, such as those which derive from satisfying hunger or thirst. Why is the pathos associated with listening to music more “internal” than, say, the auditory sensation, which also, as we have seen, involves a pathos? We perceive the pleasing quality of the music, just as we hear the pitch and rhythm of the music, not of the locus where the sensory organ is affected. Second, is there a distinction between a pathos as a condition of an organ, and as the awareness of that condition? I am inclined to think that Epicurus would not have recognized such a division; certainly, there is no direct evidence that he did. Rather, the alteration in the sense organ (in which, as we shall see, the



Epicurean “Passions”

psyche is implicated) just is the awareness of pleasure. Stephen Everson (1999: 551) writes in the same Cambridge volume that there is good reason to believe that “Epicurus accepts that atomic change determines mental change”; we may add that atomic change in the complex of body and psyche just is mental change. Asmis’ third point involves the inclusion of the emotions among the pathê, so that a pain in the stomach associated with the feeling of hunger is subsumed under the same category as anger and joy. We may consider this item together with the last, that the feelings testify that the mind is located in the chest or heart. The evidence for this last proposition is a scholium incorporated into the text of Diogenes Laertius 10.66 = fr. 311 Usener, which reads as follows: “He says elsewhere that it [the soul] is made up of very smooth and round atoms, which differ greatly from those of fire; and one part of it is non-rational [alogon], and dispersed throughout the rest of the body; but the rational part [to logikon] is in the chest [thôrax], as is evident from fears [phoboi] and from joy [khara].” Now, to say, with Asmis, that “feeling shows that the mind is located in the heart” is to beg the question of whether emotions may be classified under pathê, since the “feelings” in question are not pleasure and pain, which we know to be pathê, but rather fears and joy. These latter pertain to the rational part of the soul; that is why our awareness of them in the chest proves that the rational part of the soul is located there. I presume that Epicurus appeals to fears and joy because they are more palpable than thoughts, and are more commonly felt to inhabit the region of the heart. But his argument goes also to show that these two emotions, if we may call them that, are specifically situated in to logikon (the term to logikon does not seem to occur elsewhere in  See Glidden 1980: 184 on “the material identity of these pathê with atomic motions in our bodies”; but note the criticisms of Mitsis 1988: 45–46. Lautner 1989: 24 argues that “Die pathe, die letzten Endes Schmerzen und Lüste sind, werden nach Epikur in einem gegebenen Sinnesorgan durch die Strömung der Atomen zustande gebracht. Wie diese Strömungen die Schmerz- und Lustempfindungen konstituiren, so das, dass man sich dieser Empfindungen bewusst ist, ist auch nichts anderes, als dass er sich der im Körper zustandegekommenen physiologischen Wandlungen bewusst ist.” But why should one be aware of change in the body, rather than of the property of the thing itself? See also Prost 2004: 116: “notre rapport au monde se fait par l‘intermédiaire des atomes.“



A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

Epicurean writings, at least according to the Glossarium Epicureum = Usener 1977). As I shall indicate in a moment, that is not the locus of what Epicurus calls pathê. First, however, I cite the evidence of Lucretius to show that he confirms Epicurus on this matter quite precisely. The passage is toward the beginning of Book 3 (136–51); I quote the translation of Long and Sedley (1987 vol. 1: 66–67), inserting the Latin words where relevant: My next point is that the mind [animus] and the spirit [anima] are firmly interlinked and constitute a single nature, but that the deliberative element [consilium] which we call the mind [animum mentemque] is, as it were, the chief, and holds sway throughout the body. It is firmly located in the central part of the chest. For that is where fear and dread [pavor ac metus] leap up, and where joys [laetitiae] caress us: therefore it is where the mind [mens animusque] is. The remaining part of the spirit [anima], which is distributed throughout the body, obeys the mind [mens] and moves at its beck and call. The mind by itself possesses its own understanding and its own joys [sibi gaudet] while nothing is affecting either the spirit [anima] or the body. And just as, when our head or eye is hurt [laeditur] by an attack of pain [dolor], the agony is not shared [non … concruciamur] by our whole body, so too the mind [animus] sometimes itself suffers pain [laeditur] or waxes with joy [laetitia] while the rest of the spirit [anima] throughout the limbs and frame is receiving no new stimulus.

 Mehl 1999: 272–87 argues that because Lucretius wished, like Epicurus, to use only common rather than technical terms, and had available only animus and anima to cover the three categories of the soul, its rational part, and its non-rational part in Epicurus (274), he makes rather a mess of things. Thus, “For psukhê, the union of to logikon and to alogon, he uses animus alone, anima alone, animus and anima joined by a connective, and mens and anima joined by connective; for to logikon, he uses animus alone, mens alone, or animus and mens joined by a connective; and for to alogon, he uses without exception the word anima” (274–75). The only ambiguity, however, resides in the occasional use of anima for the entire soul as well as for its non-rational part. But in this, Lucretius follows Epicurus’ own practice in respect to psukhê.



Epicurean “Passions”

Lucretius goes on to explain that when the mind (mens) is affected by a very great fear (metus), the spirit (anima) as a whole shares the sensation (152–53), while physical impacts such as a wound from a spear affect the mind (animus), for example by producing mental confusion (mentis aestus) (168–76). I note first that the familiar contrast in Lucretius between animus and anima, while it produces an agreeable jingle, may serve to obscure Epicurus’ precise characterization of these parts, of which Lucretius himself is perfectly well aware. He chooses the term consilium as the proper equivalent to Epicurus’ to logikon; he explicitly says that he will call this animus or mens, which are more natural in Latin.10 The word nous does not seem to occur in Diogenes Laertius’ tenth book, and I suspect that Epicurus avoided it as a technical term  Boyancé 1958: 135 notes that the Latin jingle reproduces that between logikon and alogon, the two parts of the psukhê indicated by scholion to the Letter of Herodotus 67 and by Aetius 4.4.6: Δημόκριτος, ᾿Επίκουρος διμερῆ τὴν ψυχήν, τὸ μὲν λογικὸν ἔχουσαν ἐν τῶι θώρακι καθιδρυμένον, τὸ δὲ ἄλογον καθ᾿ ὅλην τὴν σύγκρισιν τοῦ σώματος διεσπαρμένον (= fr. 312 Usener, fr. 68A105 Diels-Kranz, fr. 160 Arrighetti2: “Democritus and Epicurus hold that the soul is bipartite, containing the rational part fixed in the chest, and the non-rational dispersed throughout the entire constitution of the body”). 10 Boyancé 1958: 133 misinterprets the connection: “L’animus, auquel il accole le mot mens, comme à peu près équivalent, exerce sa domination sur tout le corps et à ce titre peut être considéré comme consilium, c’est-à-dire volonté réfléchie.” Boyancé says of the reason why the animus is located in the chest: “c’est que là réside le siège de la peur et de la joie, c’est-à-dire des émotions, ce que nous conduit à remarquer que la sensibilité, comme on peut s’y attendre chez un épicurien pour qui le plaisir est le souverain bien, appartient au même principe éminent que la volonté et que les facultés intellectuelles.” This is to confuse voluptas (pleasure) with laetitia (joy); Boyancé does, however, recognize that on the intellectual level, fear takes the place of pain (“c’est moin encore la douleur que la crainte”). Servius, on Virgil Eclogue 2.58 (p. 27 Thilo), ascribes to the Epicureans the view that there are two distinct senses to the term voluptas, one physical, the other intellectual: “Epicurei enim dicunt, quod etiam Cicero tractat, geminam esse voluptatem, unam quae percipitur, et alteram imaginariam, scilicet eam quae nascitur ex cogitatione. Unde ita debemus accipere, hunc [i.e., Corydon] usum per cogitationem illa imaginaria voluptate, qua et cernere et adloqui videbatur absentem” (“The Epicureans say—as Cicero too discusses—that pleasure is double: there is one that is perceived, and another that is imagined, that is, the kind that arises from thought. And so we ought to understand that Corydon has experienced that imagined pleasure by way of thought, by virtue of which he seemed to behold and converse with one who is absent”). Servius derives this view from Cicero, however, and it may be doubted that it goes back to Epicurus himself.



A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

(cf. Glossarium Epicureum s.v.).11 Lucretius’ anima, in turn, renders Epicurus’ psukhê. The psukhê is the locus of aisthêsis, which, as we have seen, is specifically said to be alogos, and lacking in memory or mnêmê. Like Epicurus, Lucretius calls in witness two emotions, fear (pavor ac metus = phoboi) and joy (laetitiae = khara) to show that the consilium is located in the chest. Just as khara is distinct from the pathos hêdonê, so too Lucretius employs the term laetitia rather than voluptas for the emotion that resides in the consilium.12 The body is affected by pain: dolor renders Epicurus’ term algêdôn, which, unlike lupê, the term favored by Aristotle, connotes a specifically physical or corporeal sensation. Epicurus, again, seems to have avoided the term lupê, though he employs the participial form of the verb lupeisthai to designate mental distress.13 The body, however, 11 Bailey 1947: 2.1005ff. states that Lucretius’ animus corresponds to nous in Epicurus, and anima to psukhê; according to Bailey, then, the anima is the seat of sensation and the animus the seat of thought and emotion. Contra Boyancé 1958: 133–34, who insists that some pleasures, pains and emotions are peculiar to the animus. Bailey is, in my view, more likely to be right concerning the narrow sense of psukhê in Epicurus, even if it may sometimes, like anima, have referred to the combined rational and non-rational parts of the soul. Boyancé asserts further that the animus and anima are separate in location, but identical in substance (135), and that pain and pleasure are not restricted to the anima, that is, to the parts outside the chest (although Bailey includes them among the sensations), since pain and pleasure are in the chest too (137–38); but this is not what either Epicurus or Lucretius affirms. Boyancé concludes that the anima too contains the fourth element (138), a matter on which I suspend judgment. 12 Solmsen 1986: 163 is mistaken in saying that in Lucretius 3.106–16 “the mind may experience pleasure and pain independently of the body”; pain pertains to the body and well-being to the mind. Again, Solmsen wrongly affirms that the body alone is said to have aisthêsis in Lucretius 3.350–58 (165); Lucretius in fact states the opposite. Solmsen is committed to the view that perception involves reason, and this leads him to misconstrue its function in Epicurus’ system. 13 Cf. Principal Doctrines 3 and 10, where to algoun and to lupoumenon are evidently distinct, and neither is compatible with the presence of hêdonê (cf. Diano 1974: 168); for lupeisthai = “grief,” see D.L. 10.119; at 10.125 the three mentions of lupein presumably reflect an opponent’s words. Metrodorus fr. 5 has ἔστιν γάρ τις ἡδονὴ διὰ λύπης θηρευτέα (“for there is a certain kind of pleasure that is pursued through pain”), which suggests that here lupê = algêdôn; but note Seneca, Epist. 99.25: est aliqua voluptas cognata tristitiae, where “grief” or “sadness” seems the sense, as opposed to dolor; Cic. Tusc. disp. 3.25.61 translates lupê as aegritudo, and this seems right. Cf. also Epic. fr. 154, λύ]πης οὐ πανα[κὲς τὸ τ]ὸ κατ᾿ ἔ[ν]δειαν [ἀλγοῦν ἐξ]α[ιρο]ύμενον; (“Is it not a perfect cure for distress that the pain due to lack is eliminated?”), and VH2 11.29: τὴν

10

Epicurean “Passions”

cannot feel pain, or anything, on its own; it is only in combination with psukhê that it experiences the pathê, whether pleasure or pain.14 Thus, in the Letter to Herodotus (63–64) Epicurus writes: “one must hold firmly that the soul [psukhê] is most responsible for sense-perception [aisthêsis]. But [the soul] would not have aquired this [power] if it were not somehow enclosed by the rest of the aggregate. But the rest of the aggregate, though it provides for the soul this cause [of sense-perception], itself has a share in this property because of the soul; for it does not share in all the features which the soul has” (trans. Inwood and Gerson 1997: 13, modified). Like the psukhê, the rational element can also suffer: Lucretius applies the verb laeditur to both; but its distress resides in fear itself, which seems to serve as the contrasting term to khara or laetitia. Thus, in the proem to Book 2, Lucretius famously declares that “nature demands nothing for itself but that pain [dolor] be absent from the body, and that the mind [mens] enjoy a pleasing sensation [iucundo sensu] with the removal of anxiety and fear [cura … metuque]” (17–19). Lucretius contrasts the pain of the body with that of the mind, and this is a natural enough way to speak, but in a sense it is not wholly accurate. Both pain in the sense of algêdôn, and the distress of fears or phoboi, are perceived by the soul in the larger sense in which psukhê includes both the non-rational and the rational parts; likewise, both pleasure as hêdonê and joy, or khara, are psychological affects. The difference between them is better expressed as that between non-rational vs. rational affects: the former are the pathê; the latter do not seem to have a special name in Epicurean theory, but it is reasonable to dub them emotions.15 ἐ[γ]κειμένην ὑπὲ[ρ τ]ῆς τ[ε]λευτῆς λύπην (“the distress that resides in us on account of death”). Contra Diano 1974: 178, who describes the pleasures and pains of the soul as “gioie e tristezze, χαραί e λύπαι.” 14 The formulations of Diano 1974: 174 are thus only approximate, taking the body for the combination of body and non-rational soul: “La sensazione è in loco e l’anima non ha nulla che fare coi πάθη del corpo…; l’anima dell’ἀλγηδών e dell’ἡδονή del corpo non può saper nulla.” It is true, however, that Epicurus and especially Lucretius sometimes speak in a shorthand way as though aisthêsis and the pathê pertained to the body alone. That the awareness of pain resides in the soul is a doctrine that goes back to Plato Philebus 33D-34A, 43A-C; cf. Knuuttila 2004: 18. 15 Diano 1974: 252 asserts that “Πάθη nel senso specifico di ‘passioni’ s’incontra negli scritti epicurei di frequente,” citing frr. 221 and 548 Usener; his other evidence does not derive from Epicurus himself, however, and I suspect that a change occurred in usage

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A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

The pathê, then, are a function of the psukhê or anima, and are not rational in the sense that they do not involve the logical element or mind. The pathê of pleasure and pain function automatically, and do not depend on logos; according to Diogenes Laertius (10.137 = fr. 66 Usener), Epicurus cited as proof that pleasure (hêdonê) is the goal (telos) the fact that “animals, as soon as they are born are satisfied with it but are in conflict with suffering [ponos] by nature and apart from reason [logos]. So it is by our experience all on its own [autopathôs] that we avoid pain [algêdôn]” (trans. Inwood and Gerson 1997: 44). The twin emotions of fear and joy, on the other hand, belong specifically to the consilium or logikon, and they are distinct in category from the pathê.16 in the later school, for example in Philodemus (see below). Diano also insists (254) on a distinction between the pathê of soul and of body, but it is more correct to speak of pathê as pertaining to the anima, not the body or to logikon. Cicero De fin. 1.55 says animi … voluptates et dolores nasci fatemur e corporis voluptatibus et doloribus (cited 256); but this is Cicero. Epicurus himself states (Us. 429, from Plutarch Contra Ep. beat. 1088E): ὅσον ἐλπίσαι τι περὶ σαρκὸς ἢ παθεῖν ἢ μνημονεῦσαι χαίρουσα… etc., but here the preposition περί is crucial. Again, Diano (266) speaks of pathê as perturbationes arising from empty opinion, citing fr. 485 Usener; this passage does indeed mention empty fears—but not pathê. It is an interesting puzzle whether the memory or anticipation of pleasure is itself an instance of pleasure; I suggest that it is not, for Epicurus; among other things, our memories may play tricks on us, and we may be mistaken about future pleasures (or pains). Prost 2004: 140 rightly observes that “La joie, la peine, la colère, etc., associent à l’affection un acte de pensée rationelle sur un état de choses donné; si l’affection seule relève de la partie irrationelle de l’âme, l’émotion est, elle, produite par la partie rationelle.” It is a question, however, whether there is a necessary element of physical pain or pleasure that serves as the substrate of emotional fear or joy, as is the case for Aristotle, for example. The positive and negative qualities of the emotions do not seem to be directly connected, by Epicurus, to affects of the anima. To speak, then, of “les douleurs de l’âme” (142) may be something of a misnomer. 16 In this, I agree essentially with Diano 1974: 168, save that I speak of the rational and non-rational parts of the soul, where as Diano speaks of the soul vs. the body. Citing Diogenes Laertius 10.34, Diano remarks of the pathê: “Essi sono dell’anima e del corpo; per l’anima sono detti rispettivamente χαρά e λύπη, per il corpo, ἡδονή e ἀλγηδών; e come il piacere è, oltre che moto dei sensi provocato da un agente esterno, anche assenza di dolore, si ha, quanto a questa seconda specie, ἀταραξία e ἀλυπία per l’anima, e pel corpo ἀπονία e ἀοχλησία. Queste denominazioni sono per Epicuro termini tecnici. ῾Ηδονή resta sempre il termine generico, ma, quando si tratta di specificare, non accade mai ch’egli li scambi, come avviene sempre in Platone e nelle scuole in cui la tradizione si mantiene.” The two types of affect are distinct, as συμπτώματα of different atomic motions, which is why Epicurus can conclude that the animus is a distinct part of the soul (168–69).

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What, then, is the status of khara or laetitia in Epicurus’ system? To begin with, we may say that khara ought not to be confused with the goal or telos, which is variously described either as hêdonê (e.g., D.L. 10.11; cf. 10.131, where hêdonê is defined as “neither feeling pain [algein] in the body nor being disturbed [tarattesthai] in the soul [psukhê]”; 10.137), or as ataraxia, “freedom from perturbation” (cf. Letter to Pythocles 85; D.L. 10.128, where ataraxy is defined similarly to hêdonê as “neither suffering pain [algein] nor anxious fear [tarbein]),” but never as khara or joy.17 Diogenes Laertius reports (10.136 = fr. 2 Usener) that, in his book On Choices (Peri haireseôn), Epicurus affirmed that “ataraxy and freedom from trouble [aponia] are katastematic pleasures [hêdonai]; but khara and good cheer [euphrosunê] are regarded as kinetic activities” (reading κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνέργειαι [nom. pl.] with Long and Sedley 1987 vol. 2: 124–25; the mss. give κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ [dative sing.], “kinetic by virtue of activity”).18 Erler and Schofield, again in the Cambridge History (1999), Cf. ps.-Alexander of Aphrodisias Êthika Problêmata 126.7–32: “That lupê, not ponos, is the opposite of pleasure: for ponos implies a kind of corporeal pressure, whereas lupê implies a psychic contraction…. For lupê is both in the pressures of the body and of the soul in its own right, just as pleasure is, but ponos is in the body only” (῞Οτι τῇ ἡδονῇ ἡ λύπη ἐστὶν ἐναντίον ἀλλ᾿ οὐ πόνος. ῾Ο μὲν γὰρ πόνος σωματικήν τινα θλῖψιν ἐμφαίνει, ἡ δὲ λύπη ψυχικὴν συστολήν…. ἡ μὲν γὰρ λύπη καὶ ἐπὶ ταῖς θλίψεσι τοῦ σώματος καὶ αὐτῆς τῆς ψυχῆς ἐφ᾿ αὑτῆς, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ ἡδονή, ὁ δὲ πόνος ἐπὶ σώματι μόνον). On ponos = dolor and labor, cf. Cicero Tusc. disp. 2.15.35. 17 On the distinction between joy and pleasure, cf. Purinton 1993: 287–88; I disagree, however, with Purinton’s definition of khara as “the intentional state which has pleasure as its object” (292). 18 Purinton 1993: 288–90 defends the dative (the passage is cited more extensively, with further discussion, in Chapter 4, pp. 131–32). Giannantoni 1984: 28 cites this passage to show that Epicurus “teneva distinte khara e euphrosunê in quanto in moto, da quella condizione catastematica dell’anima (ataraxia) e del corpo (aponia) in cui consiste la vera hêdonê”; I agree, save that hêdonê in the strict sense pertains, I believe, to the non-rational part of the soul. Giannantoni’s interpretation is facilitated by taking ἐνεργείᾳ as dative. Stokes 1996: 160 rightly notes that “it is difficult to resist the supposition that ἀταραξία and ἀπονία offer within the katastematic category a contrast of bodily and mental”; hence both body and soul have both kinds of pleasures. Despite Stokes’ doubts, this surely reflects Epicurus’ own view. But the contrast between khara and euphrosunê is, Stokes says (161), obscure: the latter should, in the context, refer to kinetic bodily pleasure or hêdonê, and I do not doubt that it does, even though the term is not clearly so restricted in the Epicurean texts we have. Since hêdonê includes both static and kinetic bodily pleasure, Epicurus presumably chose euphrosunê here in order to indicate the specifically kinetic

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A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

offer an interpretation of this passage which has the great merit of making clear the distinction between khara and hêdonê, but with which I find myself in disagreement over the fundamental character of these affects. Erler and Schofield first explain the difference between static or katastematic pleasures, and those that are kinetic or dynamic. The essence of katastematic pleasure, they write (1999: 656), “is simply that it is a stable condition…. When the body is in such a katastêma, it is entirely free of pain; hence the designation of aponia as a katastematic pleasure. We must suppose that ataraxia, the katastematic pleasure of the soul, is achieved when it attains an analogous condition of stable psychic harmony.”19 Erler and Schofield then continue: “What matters most for Epicurean ethics in the end is not katastematic pleasure itself, but the joy and delight it gives us. For joy and delight are forms of awareness, or pathê, as katastematic pleasure is not” (here they cite the passage from Diogenes Laertius quoted above).20 And they conclude: “From one point of view, therefore, Epicurus’ disagreement with Aristippus is much less than he makes it appear, since the greatest pleasure remains strictly speaking a kinetic pleasure, namely our delight in aponia and ataraxia.”

variety. Stokes (162) seems to interpret as a third category of pleasure those which Epicurus describes at Principal Doctrine 10 as “the pleasures concerning the profligates,” i.e., merely sensual pleasures which do not fulfill a lack. But these are surely kinetic, as Lucretius rightly indicates (4.622–23). 19 Cf. Diano 1974: 170: “Quanto al piacere catastematico, esso è negativamente definito come assenza di dolore ἀπονία, ἀοχλησία, più precisamente: τὸ μὴ ἀλγοῦν κατὰ σάρκα; positivamente come equilibrio, εὐσταθία e sanità della carne.” Katastasis is the state of the atoms having returned to their original position (remigare). Contrast Giannantoni 1984: 44, who concludes that “il piacere cinetico non è poikilma bensì soddisfazione di desideri naturali ma non necessari,” whereas “il piacere catastematico è quello che soddisfa i desideri naturali e necessari” (those that are neither necessary nor natural cannot be satisfied at all). But surely kinetic pleasures are those associated with fulfilling any kind of need, and above all a natural one like eating. For a survey of modern views on kinetic vs. katastematic pleasure, with particular reference to the relevance of Cicero’s testimony in De finibus 2, see Mitsis 1988: 45–51; Stokes 1995: 151–52; Prost 2004: 119–24. 20 Striker 1993: 16 inclines to the view that aponia and ataraxia “are states of pleasure, but the joy and delight (sc. that come with them) manifest themselves in motion, that is, in particular episodes of pleasure and enjoyment.”

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Now, it will be clear from what I have said that I disagree about applying the label pathos to joy and delight. Beyond the question of labels, however, there is a substantive issue here. The pathê are very elementary forms of awareness, operating at the level of the non-rational psukhê. They constitute the physiological basis of approach and avoidance, and are instinctive, pertaining as much to animals as to human beings. In themselves, they admit of no deliberation, no reasoning.21 The sense in which the pathos of pleasure or hêdonê constitutes the goal or telos for Epicureanism is, as I understand it, just by virtue of the fact that it is the thing to which all living creatures are naturally attracted, just as they are repelled by its opposite, algêdôn.22 Of course, one is aware of such pleasure, just as one is aware of sensations or aisthêseis without the mediation of higher-order reasoning in the logikon part of the soul. This awareness is as much a feature of katastematic pleasure as it is of kinetic pleasure: 21 Mitsis 1988: 43 argues that “For Epicurus, the pathê provide a standard of truth and a criterion by which to judge actions. They therefore have the same kind of foundational role to play in our moral life that sensation does in grounding the pursuit of knowledge. Both serve to give us infallible, causal contact with the world. Yet both are alogon…. They must be sorted out and fitted together by further judgments, or prolêpseis, if they are to guide our epistemological or moral judgments reliably.” With all this I am in agreement. However, it does not follow that “a pathos can serve only as a sign or as a basis of inference that must be confirmed or disconfirmed by subsequent affective evidence, by prolêpseis, and by our knowledge in general” (44); there is no confirming or disconfirming of the pleasure or pain we experience, though of course we can judge whether in the given circumstances it is worth pursuing or not, given an overall calculus of pleasures. Mitsis affirms (138–39) that Epicurus “wants the pathê to serve as a preconceptual given,” but he goes beyond Epicurus’ view in adding: “At the same time, however, Epicurus thinks that beliefs have an active, causal role to play in our pathê. Thus, the Epicureans’ use of pathos is … extremely elastic inasmuch as it includes both relatively simple sensations and more complex emotions.” 22 Alberti 1994 argues, rightly in my view, that Epicurus located the highest good in pleasure, not in virtue (contra Mitsis 1988, Annas 1987, 1993); the virtues are not pleasurable in themselves. Cf. Cicero De finibus 1, where Torquatus (29–31) makes it clear—against later Epicureans who think that reason plays some part on our knowledge of the highest good—that pleasure is the criterion for choice for every animal; animals do not choose rationally. All that reason or logismos does, apart from getting rid of false opinions (198–99), is to choose among immediate pleasures with a view to the long-term pleasurable state (194–97): “È sempre dunque la ragione, e non la virtù, a determinare qual’è la condotta richiesta per conseguire il fine del piacere” (201). Hence, “la teoria etica epicurea si pone al di fuori della cosiddetta ‘etica della virtù’” (202).

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A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

one simply is conscious of the pathos constituted in and by stability and the absence of pain or perturbation in the body or soul.23 Joy or khara, however, is not the same as pleasure at all, any more than fear, the negative condition of the logikon or rational part of the soul, is the same as pain. The important thing is to recognize that phobos and khara are both kinetic activities of the rational soul.24 Fear is the sign of a disturbance or tarakhê, of course; what then is joy a sign of? There is no evident reason for supposing that it constitutes awareness of the katastematic or stable condition of the body or soul. Let us pursue the analogy with fear. We understand fear as involving not simply the awareness of an unpleasant sensation, but rather as a complex emotion involving a 23 For an example of the kind of confusion that results from not distinguishing the parts of the soul in which pleasure and higher-order mental operations such as beliefs operate, cf. Strozier 1985: 86–87: “experience involves not simply the consciousness of feelings but a consciousness of the causes of the feelings…. Every feeling is, as I have said, the necessary consequence of a cognition. The cognition is the recognition of the cause of the feeling and consequently the knowledge of the means to achieve the feeling, once it has been experienced.” Cooper 1999: 497 offers a more nuanced account of the goal of life as “a certain state of consciousness caused or occasioned by the complete absence of pain and distress.” 24 Stokes 1996: 167 quotes Vatican Saying 27 as indicating a kinetic pleasure of the mind, namely that of learning: ᾿Επὶ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδευμάτων μόλις τελειωθεῖσιν ὁ καρπὸς ἔρχεται, ἐπὶ δὲ φιλοσοφίας συντρέχει τῇ γνώσει τὸ τερπνόν· οὐ γὰρ μετὰ μάθησιν ἀπόλαυσις, ἀλλὰ ἅμα μάθησις καὶ ἀπόλαυσις. In other pursuits the reward comes at the end and is hard won. But in philosophy enjoyment keeps pace with knowledge. It is not learning followed by entertainment, but learning and entertainment at the same time (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.156) Whereas Stokes sees a collapse of kinetic and katastematic pleasures here (167; cf. 168–69), I should say rather that the pleasure is clearly kinetic: as fears are dispelled, joy (here called to terpnon) enters. This is different from the absence of perturbation, although on 169 Stokes allows that there is a temporal distinction between acquiring wisdom (a kinetic pleasure) and achieving it (henceforward, a katastematic pleasure). Prost 2004: 125 agrees with Stokes that kinetic pleasures of the mind have to do with learning (“apprentissage”), and more particularly with the philosophical knowledge that brings tranquillity of soul: “Le plaisir est donc le privilège du savoir vrai.” Prost aptly cites (126) Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 11.169 = fr. 219 Us. = LS 25K that “philosophy is an energeia that produces a happy life by way of reasoning and discussion.” It is not clear whether energeia necessarily implies a kinetic joy, unless it serves to dispel fears: even the sage can have this experience by recalling and repeating the lessons learned (126). Prost argues further (127) that there is kinetic pleasure in friendship, insofar as it contributes to a state of ataraxy.

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judgment concerning the nature of the object to which it corresponds, or which evokes it. In this sense, fear is very much like an Aristotelian emotion. Aristotle’s definition of fear runs as follows: “let fear be a kind of pain [lupê] or disturbance [tarakhê] deriving from an impression [phantasia] of a future evil that is destructive or painful; for not all evils are feared, for example whether one will be unjust or slow, but as many as are productive of great pain or destruction, and these if they are not distant but rather seem near so as to impend. For things that are remote are not greatly feared” (Rhetoric 2.5, 1382a21–25; cf. Konstan 2006c: 129–34). Fear involves the sensation of pain, but not just that: it also depends on evaluation or calculation—what Epicurus would call epilogismos (D.L. 10.73)—of the nature of an impending evil: that it is indeed harmful or productive of pain. The sensation of pain is incorrigible: that is in the nature of a pathos. Fear, however, is subject to reasoning and argument. It may indeed have a valid cause, in which case it is justified, or it may not—as in the case of the fear of death, according to Epicurus. It is esssential to fear that it pertain to the rational part of the soul, for if it did not, there would be no possibility of eliminating it by the therapy of philosophy. I take it that khara or joy is also a rational emotion, which responds to an impression of something deemed to be pleasant. As such, it too should be corrigible, and hence able to be mistaken. One may, for example, imagine oneself acquiring a large fortune, and think oneself perfectly secure as a result. If one is thinking of security against death, this will be a false kind of joy, dependent on what Epicurus calls empty belief or kenodoxia and motivated in large part by a fear that is itself irrational. It will also prompt desires that are insatiable in nature, leading to a reciprocally reinforcing cycle of empty fears and desires (see Chapter 2). If, however, one anticipates rather the kind of tranquillity that is possible for human beings, and which resides in the absence of pain and the freedom from mental perturbation, then it is a proper and rational joy.25 25 Cf. πᾶσα διὰ σαρκὸς ἐπιτερπὴς κίνησις ἐφ᾿ ἡδονήν τινα καὶ χαρὰν ψυχῆς ἀναπεμπομένη (“every pleasant movent in the body is referred to some pleasure and joy of the soul”; fr. 433 Usener = Plut. Non posse sauviter vivere 2, 1087B; partially quoted also in fr. 552 Usener); I expect this is a somewhat garbled reference to the distinction between hêdonê and khara, the latter specific to the rational part of the psukhê. So too Cicero De finibus 3.10.35: quamquam Stoici communi nomine corporis et animae hedonên appellant, ego malo laetitiam appellare quasi gestientis animi elationem voluptariam (“although the Stoics call the

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A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus

Erler and Schofield’s claim that “What matters most for Epicurean ethics in the end is not katastematic pleasure itself, but the joy and delight it gives us,” is thus misleading. The telos or goal of Epicurean philosophy is not khara, but ataraxy (combined with the absence of physical pain). To the extent that the condition of non-perturbation is pleasurable, the awareness of it takes the form of a pathos, and is experienced in the irrational part of the psukhê.26 If, as I have argued, fear and joy are experienced in the rational part of the soul, the question arises: do animals (other than human beings) have these emotions? The answer depends on whether animals are considered rational. Aristotle, like the Stoics, held that they are not. As William Fortenbaugh writes (2002: 94): Humans have the capacity to think…. Animals lack this cognitive capacity and therefore cannot experience emotions as analyzed by Aristotle. Of course, animals can be said to experience pathê, for this word has multiple meanings and can be used inclusively to cover both the emotional responses of human beings and the reactions of animals. In addition, emotion words like orgê and

pleasure of the body and that of the soul by a common name, I prefer to call ‘laetitia’ the pleasurable elation of the, so to speak, exulting mind”); this passage seems decisive for the technical distinction recognized by the Epicureans. Lucretius employs voluptas somewhat more freely, sometimes in connection with tranquillity of mind (3.40, 6.94); cf. divina voluptas … atque horror (3.28–29), which may indicate the frisson Lucretius feels upon contemplating the boundless universe, and not an intellectual pleasure as such. Venus, understood as sexual pleasure, is hominum divomque voluptas (1.1; cf. 2.172–73, and 4.1057, 1075, 1081, 1085, 1114, 1201, 1207, 1263), and Lucretius speaks too of the voluptas that derives from “sweet [suavis] friendship” (1.140–41; for an implicit contrast between voluptas on the one hand and suave and dulce on the other, cf. 2.1–13). At 2.258, voluptas, like hêdonê, is the cause of attraction. On voluptas as the sensation associated with the return of matter in the body to its proper place, see 2.963–68, and cf. 3.251, 4.627–29 on pleasures of the senses; on the impossibility of new pleasures, 3.1081, and on their natural limit, 5.1433. 26 This is an important point, and deserves emphasis. If freedom from fear and other perturbations is to be understood as pleasurable, that is, as a kind of hêdonê (of the katastematic variety, to be sure), then qua pleasure it is a pathos, and hence pertains to

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phobos, “anger” and “fear,” can be used to describe the behavior of animals, but this is analogical usage.27 Epicurus’ own position on the rationality of animals is not entirely clear, due, I expect, to the lacunose condition of our sources.28 Hermarchus, the alogon or non-rational part of the soul. When Cooper (1999: 497) writes that pleasure, for Epicurus, is “a certain state of consciousness or perception,” I agree, provided we understand “perception” as pathos rather than aisthêsis (both are operations of the non-rational soul). I agree with Cooper (511–13) too that there are not, for Epicurus, two kinds or genera of pleasure, but rather a single kind of pleasure that has two causes, both of which—the katastematic as well as the kinetic—involve processes or activities, not mere inert states; Cooper effectively resolves the ostensible contradiction in Epicurus’ view of pleasure on which Bonelli (1979: 19–44), drawing largely on Cicero’s critique, insists. 27 Aristotle allowed that animals possess “similarities to intelligent understanding” (τῆς περὶ τὴν διάνοιαν συνέσεως … ὁμοιότητες, Hist an. 8.588a23–24); cf. Politics 1332b5–6 for human beings alone possessing reason (logos); also Politics 1254b23–24, where Aristotle contrasts human beings, who possess reason or logos, with animals and slaves, who obey their pathêmata; at Politics 1253a9–15, Aristotle specifies that “among animals, only humanity possesses reason, and the voicing of what is painful and pleasant is a sign of this: for this pertains also to other animals (their nature reaches the level of having the perception [aisthêsis] of what is painful and pleasurable and signaling it to one another), but reason resides in manifesting what is advantageous and harmful, and so too what is just and unjust” (see too EN 1098a3–4, EE 1224a26–27, Metaphysics 980b26–28; History of Animals 641b8–9; Sorabji 1993: 13). Hence only man can feel happiness (Parts of Animals 656a5). For the position of the Stoics, see Diogenes Laertius 7.129; cf. Cicero De officiis 1.50. Contrast Plutarch On the Cleverness of Animals, e.g. 960–62, where the claim is made that animals do have both a share in reason and pathê (966B). 28 Boyancé 1958: 141 suggests animals too likely have to logikon in Epicurus, though we have no texts on the matter; but this seems highly doubtful to me. According to Dierauer 1977: 197, the Epicureans held that “die verschiedenen Emotionen, Lust und Schmerz, Begierde und Angst, bei Menschen und Tieren weitgehend vergleichbar seien,” although at the same time they believed that “den Tieren Vernunft und Überlegungskraft versagt seien.” The latter condition, however, denies them emotions (that is, desire and fear) in the strict sense. Dierauer 196 n. 8 cites several passages in Philodemus’ Peri theôn (ed. Diels 1916) for the view that “die Tiere unter ähnliche Ängsten und Schrecken litten wie die Menschen,” e.g. XI.18ff., 32ff.; XIII.29ff.; XV.21ff., but the crucial point is that such fear is ἀνάλογον (XI.19, cf. 31, XIII.29–31, XV.23), not identical to the human emotion; cf. Diels 1916: 62–65. Obbink 1996: 123 translates Philodemus De pietate 9.3–11 = 232–242 as follows: “Again, because not even the other animals [zôia] had been deprived of the analogy of disturbance [taragma], and because about this humans have the fear of death…” Obbink parses the underlined phrase (n.5) as “deprived by early humans in their thinking”; but I wonder whether the point is rather that animals are not subject to tarakhê in the strict

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as quoted by Porphyry in De abstinentia (1.12), notes that there can be no justice between human beings and animals because the latter lack reason or logos (cf. Epicurus Principal Doctrine 32; Warren 2002: 138–40). Polystratus, who, according to Diogenes Laertius (10.25), succeeded Hermarchus as the third head of the Garden, clearly denies to animals the possibility of either recalling or anticipating events, including their own prior or future states of pleasure and pain (coll. I–VII = Indelli 1978: 109–11; cf. Warren 2002: 137–38). Moreover, Lucretius provides, I believe, indirect evidence that animals do not experience emotions, and more particularly fear. Lucretius is attempting to explain the odd fact that lions cannot endure the sight of roosters, but instantly take to flight (4.710–13). He writes (4.714–21): ni mirum quia sunt gallorum in corpore quaedam semina, quae cum sunt oculis inmissa leonum, pupillas interfodiunt acremque dolorem praebent, ut nequeant contra durare feroces, cum tamen haec nostras acies nil laedere possint, aut quia non penetrant aut quod penetrantibus illis exitus ex oculis liber datur, in remorando laedere ne possint ex ulla lumina parte. Nor is it any wonder, since in the body of roosters there are certain constituents, which when they are introduced into the sense, any more than the gods are. Atherton 2005: 127 (citing On Nature 25, 1056 5.1.11 and Laursen 1995: 16) remarks: “There is some evidence that Epicurus recognised a distinction between animals that are, and animals that are not, subject to something like moral assessment…. Given the criterion by which it is defined, such animals must be able not merely to learn, and to modify their behaviour—including, presumably, their signaling and vocalising behaviour—, but to do so in response to experiences based on reward and punishment directed toward the acquisition of very particular dispositions: otherwise it is hard to see why we should think of them as liable to ‘the mode of admonition and correction’ (25, 1191 7.2.5.2–4, Laursen 1995: 31). But the origin of such modifications remains notoriously mysterious. Other evidence about the Epicurean school points to disagreement about the status of animals, and gives little or no guidance on the issue of intentionality.”

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eyes of lions, dig into their pupils and produce a sharp pain, so that, fierce as they are, they cannot withstand it, although these [constituents] cannot harm our eyes, either because they do not penetrate them or because, though they do penetrate, they are given free passage out of our eyes, so that they cannot harm our eyes in any direction by remaining trapped inside. The lion’s avoidance of roosters is instinctive; it results from an immediate physical pain (dolor), produced by simulacra that are so shaped as to cause pain in the visual apparatus of these animals in particular. The rooster does not pose an actual threat to the lion; nevertheless, the lion’s reaction is not an instance of empty or vain opinion (kenodoxia), since it does not involve a judgment (doxa) at all. The entire process occurs at the level of the non-rational soul: it does not involve memory or learning from experience, for if it did, the lion would soon overcome its dismay and make a meal of the creature.29 Properly speaking, then, the lion does not fear the rooster. This same analysis will explain the instinctive impulse to flee that deer, for example, experience at the sight of a predator, where the danger of harm is perfectly real. In neither case is reason involved: deer no more learn to avoid lions than lions learn to avoid roosters. What passes for fear is simply the natural tendency of all creatures to shun pain. There may be a special term for the fear-like evasion of painful stimuli that is characteristic of animals. Lucretius seems to employ metus chiefly of human fear; it is often associated with cura or “anxiety” (an exception is 5.1061, where metus is paired with dolor in the phrase metus aut dolor). So too timor is reserved for the human emotion, and most frequently occurs in connection with the fear of death. Pavor, however, may be used of animals (e.g., 3.305, 3.743), though it is also applied to 29 Aristotle is not entirely consistent on whether animals have memory or other rational capacities; in History of Animals 8, 589a1–2, for example, he allows that “the more intelligent [sunetôtera] ones, which have a share in memory, do tend their offspring longer and more sociably [politikôteron]”; cf. Generation of Animals 753a7–17, on the more clever (phronimôtera) animals having an attachment (sunêtheia) and affection (philia) for their young.

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humans in connection with a child’s instinctive fear of the dark (for the verb paveo, cf. 2.376).30 Whether or not it is the case, as I have suggested, that Epicurus deliberately restricted the use of the term pathos to the non-rational sensations of pleasure and pain, as opposed to emotions such as fear that entail rational judgments, Philodemus, in his treatise On Anger, clearly does refer to anger (orgê) as a pathos, although the term most often seems to carry a negative connotation.31 Philodemus in this essay draws a sharp distinction between orgê, which he, like Aristotle, considers a legitimate response to harm or insult, and what he calls thumos, which is excessively intense. Thus, Giovanni Indelli (2004: 104) explains: With orgê, Philodemus designates the true and proper feeling of anger, without further specifications. When it is caused (as happens in the greater part of the cases) by particular actions or behaviors, when, that is, it is not kenê orgê (“empty orgê”), it need not, for the Epicureans, be repressed, because it is considered something natural and rationally controllable, in contrast to thymos, 30 In those passages in which Lucretius does ascribe apparently human emotions to animals, I suggest that this is, strictly speaking, an “analogical usage” (as Fortenbaugh says of Aristotle); cf. the analysis of the origin of human language at 5.1056–90, where Lucretius says that animals too are capable of vocally expressing metus (1061) as well as dolor and gaudia (surely = voluptas), and note too rabies (1065). Lucretius is accurate in describing these animal states as sensus (1087), “feelings”; only human beings can use language to identify “things” (res, 1058, 1090) in the world outside. Cf. Atherton 2005: 128: “horses are said by Lucretius to have a ‘mind’ [mens, animus] (2.265, 268, 270; cf. Annas 1993: 67), and animals are said to dream, as we do, about the important events in their lives (4.984–1010; cf. Sorabji 1993: 28–9). But (pace Annas 1993: 67) at 3.299 there is nothing necessarily rational about the stag’s ‘mind,’ for this, being governed by cold air currents, is more like its ‘natural temperament’ (‘intellect’ [animus], 288, and ‘nature’ [natura], 302, are clearly synonyms for mens here). Similarly, the horse’s mens may be (the physiological basis of) its consciousness or subjectivity, not (that of) its rationality.” 31 E.g., III 23: τοῖς ὀργ[ιλοῖς] πάθεσιν (“the angry pathê”) VI 13, τὰ δ᾿εν τῇ ψυχῇ πάθη διὰ τῆν ἡμετέραν ψευδοδοξίαν παρακολουθοῦντα (“the pathê in our soul that accompany us on account of our false opinions”), where pathos refers to passion resulting from false opinion; XV 17, οὑτω δὲ καὶ ἐκφέρει τὸ πάθος, ὥστε καὶ προίεσθαι ποιεῖ ταῦθ᾿ ὧν μάλιστα δεινοὺς ἔχει τοὺς εἱμέρους ὁ θυμούμενος (“a pathos carries one away to such an

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characterized by a fundamental irrationality, since the latter is the product of instinct and not of logismos (“calculation”).32 Now, it is unlikely that excessive or uncontrolled anger is “a product of instinct.” Jeffrey Fish (2004: 121) argues that “there is reason to believe that only in Philodemus’ school, even among the Epicureans, was any theory of anger like this taught.”33 Even if this is so, and despite the damage to the text, Philodemus would not have described an instinctive or non-rational response as “empty.” A pathos in this sense is, as we have seen, always correct and incorrigible. If anger is “empty” or “vain,” extent as to make an angry person give up those things for which he has the fiercest desires”), where again pathos seems used of excessive or irrational anger; XXVI 11, τῶν ὀργίλων πάθων; XL 36, βλαβεὶς ὑπό τινος ἑκουσίως ἢ λαβῶν ἔμφασιν τοῦ βλαβήσεσθαι, πότερον ἀδιάφορον ἀναδέξεται πάθος; (“having been deliberately harmed by someone or having the impression that one will be harmed, will one experience the same pathos?”); XLIII 8, οὐδὲ χρὴ τὴν διάφορον, ἣν τὸ πάθος ἔχει πρὸς τὸ γινόμενον (“nor should one … the difference that the pathos has in respect to the event”); passages cited from Indelli 1988. Mitsis 1988: 139–40 refers to this treatise for confirmation of the role of belief in the pathê, but Philodemus’ use of pathos in this connection is, I think, a novelty, and very likely influenced by Stoicism. 32 Cf. Indelli 1988: 24: “Filodemo distingue l’ira dall’irascibilità, cioè il pathos vero e proprio dall’inclinazione a caderne preda”; Indelli 2004: 105–06: “Even for the Epicureans, then, the difference was quite clear—underscored by Philodemus in col. xlv.33–37—between orgê, natural anger, springing from motives that are justified, moderate in its duration and its intensity, and thymos (which Philodemus seems also to call kenê orgê), blind and uncontrolled rage, to which the wise man certainly is unable to fall prey”; Fish 2004: 114, citing XLIV 5–35; Armstrong 2008; Sanders forthcoming. 33 Fish notes further (133n46): “Much of Philodemus’ treatise is taken up by polemic against Epicureans who did not share his views concerning the nature of anger and its proper treatment…. It is possible that Philodemus inherited these views from his teacher Zeno.” Cf. Procopé 1993: 378–86. Julia Annas (1989) argues that Philodemus also adapted Epicurus’ distinction between natural and necessary desires to his own distinction between natural and empty anger. She affirms that in Epicurus natural desires are for generic things, like food or drink, whereas natural but unnecessary desires are for particular foods, e.g. lobster (151–52); the empty belief is that this particular food is necessary. Anger, while not a desire (153), has desire for revenge as a component part, as Aristotle and the Stoics (Arius Didymus ap. Stobaeus Ecl. 2.91.10–11) maintained. To take pleasure in punishing others is perverse, according to Philodemus (col. 42.22–34); retaliation may correct or be taken to excess as a result of empty belief, although here “False beliefs do not … attach the desire to retaliate to a specific object, as false beliefs attach the desire to eat to lobster in particular” (160).

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it must mean that it is based on, or involves, the addition of opinion: it is the doxa that is false, and this pertains to to logikon, not to the alogon meros or non-rational part of the psukhê. More than any other philosophical school in antiquity, and in pronounced contrast to Aristotle in particular, the Epicureans were concerned with emotions that appear to have no reasonable object in the world: emotions, that is, and above all fear, that are elicited by false beliefs about the nature of an ostensibly threatening or harmful event. Epicurus designated these emotions as “empty” (kenos), in the sense that they depend on vain opinion. Aristotle noted in passing that people may experience fear even when there exists no immediate cause in the environment (De anima 1.1, 403a23–24: μηθενὸς γὰρ φοβεροῦ συμβαίνον-τος ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι γίνονται τοῖς τοῦ φοβουμένου). But he did not suggest that such fear was a pervasive cause of human malaise; as William Harris (2001: 16) states in respect to anger, “Aristotle and all the other classical authors who defined anger agreed, in effect, that it was an emotion with a specific object, which is precisely what a mood is not.” But for the Epicureans, emotions elicited by events that do not justify them were a primary object of attention. Thus, analogously to the distinction between two kinds of anger drawn by Philodemus, Diogenes of Oenoanda discriminates two types of fear (frag. 35.II Smith): “As a matter of fact this fear is sometimes clear, sometimes not clear—clear when we avoid something manifestly harmful like fire through fear that we shall meet death by it, not clear when, while the mind is occupied with something else, it (fear) has insinuated itself into our nature and [lurks]….” (trans. Smith 1993: 385; the last word represents one possible restoration of the Greek text, which breaks off at this point). The Epicurean emphasis on the vanity of the object of fear, in particular in the case of the fear of death, made it essential to locate fear and other emotions in the rational part of the soul, where the direct and incontrovertible evidence provided by sensation and the pathê was embellished by the addition of belief. Nancy Sherman (2000: 155) has observed that on Aristotle’s “appraisal-based” view of the emotions, “emotional shifts are the result of cognitive shifts.” But, she adds, this intellectualist approach constitutes a limitation to his theory: “What Aristotle doesn’t explore is why some emotions don’t reform at the

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beck and call of reason” (156). Sherman extends her critique to ancient Greek and Roman thought as a whole: “The question Ancient moral psychology leaves us with (though the Ancients never ask it) is, why doesn’t persuasion work? That is, why doesn’t rational discourse undo irrational emotions?” These are the very questions, as Sherman notes, that “underlie Freud’s project” (157). Thus, although Freud “allies himself with the Aristotelian view that emotions have cognitive or ideational content,” he departs from this view in a radical way by stipulating that “ideational content may be unconscious…. Rage at you may really be about rage at myself” (ibid.). In the Hellenistic period, however, some philosophical schools did pose the question of why certain emotional responses seem to be resistant to amelioration (for the Stoic account, see Graver 2007: 149–63). The Epicureans in particular held that people are commonly mistaken about the causes of their emotions, and more particularly are universally consumed by the fear of death, a fear they either conceal or misrecognize. To help rid human beings of this anxiety, they elaborated a complex doctrine involving two levels of the soul, the one irrational and the seat of sensations and feelings or pathê, the other rational and the locus of those emotions that depend essentially on belief. In addition, they examined how such false beliefs arose in the course of human history, and why they persist in the face of argument, thanks to the vicious circle of mutually reinforcing fears and desires. The roots of Epicurus’ theory in many ways lie in the tradition represented by Plato and Aristotle, but he gave their insights a radically new twist. His doctrine of the pathê is a crucial element in this development.

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Chapter 2

Psychology

It is important, in understanding Epicureanism, to observe that the Epicureans play down talk of praise and blame. Although Philodemus composed a work in ten books entitled On Vices and the Opposing Virtues, which includes one book On Household Management (PHerc. 1424), one On Arrogance (the tenth = PHerc. 1008), and probably three books On Flattery (PHerc. 222, 223, 1082, 1089, 1457, and 1675), the Epicureans have little to say about virtue, in the sense of promoting standards or ideals that prescribe what is right or fitting to do. Lucretius rarely uses the  Philodemus On Frank Speech (Konstan et al. 1998) advocates a nuanced use of frank criticism (παρρησία) in the instruction of novices, which may involve the judicious application of blame (μέμφομαι, 13.2–3, 87.8–9, XIXa.1–2; ἐπιμέμφομαι, 35.7, μεμπτός, IXb.3, IXb.4, IXb.5, IXb.12; cf. κακίζω 77N.4–5) and praise (αἴνεσις, VIIIa.10, ἐπαινέω 49.1–2, XIIIb.12, XVIIIa.8, ἔπαινος 68.4–5, IIa.12 [conjectured], T4.I.3). But the emphasis in pedagogy was on a correct understanding of the doctrine, not on virtuous or vicious actions as such. Contrast Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1.12, 1101b31–32, ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἔπαινος τῆς ἀρετῆς· πρακτικοὶ γὰρ τῶν καλῶν ἀπὸ ταύτης (“praise is for virtue; for people perform fine deeds as a result of virtue”); 1.13, 11039–10: τῶν ἕξεων δὲ τὰς ἐπαινετὰς ἀρετὰς λέγομεν (“we call praiseworthy dispositions virtues”).  Cf. Letter to Menoeceus 132: Τούτων δὲ πάντων ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν φρόνησις. διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφίας τιμιώτερον ὑπάρχει φρόνησις, ἐξ ἧς αἱ λοιπαὶ πᾶσαι πεφύκασιν ἀρεταί, διδάσκουσα ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, ‹οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως› ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. συμπεφύκασι γὰρ αἱ ἀρεταὶ τῷ ζῆν ἡδέως καὶ τὸ ζῆν ἡδέως τούτων ἐστὶν ἀχώριστον (“The beginning of all these things, and the greatest good, is prudence. Therefore prudence, from which all the remaining virtues arise, is a more valuable thing than philosophy, since prudence teaches that it is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently, nobly, and justly, <nor to live

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word officium, “duty” or “responsibility”—only five times does the word occur in De rerum natura, and in three of these it just means “natural function.” In fact, Cicero attacked Epicureanism on just this point, and because it afforded no officii praecepta, “counsel in respect to duty,” he denied that it was a philosophy at all. The reason is not, of course, that the Epicureans were indifferent to what people do or feel, but they prudently, nobly, and justly> without living pleasantly. For the virtues are naturally combined with living pleasantly and living pleasantly is inseparable from the virtues”); and cf. KD 5. The emphasis here is on pleasure as the condition for virtue, not the reverse; cf. Cicero De finibus 1.29–30, and Alberti 1994; also Athenaeus 12.546 (cf. 7.280b): κὰν τῷ Περὶ τέλους δὲ πάλιν· τιμητέον τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ τὰ τοιουτότροπα, ἐὰν ἡδονὴν παρασκευάζῃ· ἐὰν δὲ μὴ παρασκευάζῃ χαίρειν ἐατέον (“In On the Goal, again: ‘one must value nobility and the virtues and things of this kind, if they provide pleasure; but if they do not, then farewell to them’”); and fr. 72a = Plutarch Against Colotes 1117a1: ἐν τῇ πρὸς ᾿Ανάξαρχον ἐπιστολῇ ταυτὶ γέγραφεν [᾿Επίκουρος]· ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἐφ᾿ ἡδονὰς συνεχεῖς παρακαλῶ καὶ οὐκ ἐπ᾿ ἀρετάς, κενὰς καὶ ματαίας καὶ ταραχώδεις ἐχούσας τῶν καρπῶν τὰς ἐλπίδας (“In his letter to Anaxarchus [Epicurus] wrote as follows: ‘I summon people to continuous pleasures and not to virtues, which are empty and vain and bring with them perturbing expectations of rewards’”). Philodemus did of course mention and analyze virtues and vices in various treatises, e.g. On Frank Criticism 57.3 (κακία). Note especially Philodemus’ [if he is indeed the author] treatment of the interaction of pleasure and the virtues (an extended list) in On Choices and Avoidances (Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995) XIV; Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan comment (175): “The author claims that there is a one-way entailment between a pleasant life and a virtuous life, i.e. that the former entails a life in which all the virtues are present at once,” and they add: “The passage is a paraphrase of Epicurus’ thesis that virtue and pleasure are intrinsically connected.” Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan argue further that Epicurus “viewed virtue as a unitary state of the mind in which the virtues are distinguishable but not separable from one another,” though they acknowledge that “Epicurus did not explicitly argue for the doctrine of the unity of the virtues” (176; cf. 33n30, 44–46). He did not necessarily need to, since his point, I take it, is that someone who understands in the proper sense that pleasure is the telos will behave in the ways that people generally understand to be virtuous (it is a “one-way entailment”); there are no virtuous dispositions (or a single virtuous disposition) as such, in the way that Aristotle and the Stoics maintained.  “Function” at 1.336, 362, and 4.857; at 1.336 there is a pun of the verb officio, which accounts for the use of officium there and at 362; cf. Friedländer 1941: 19. At 2.605 the term apparently signifies “kindness” rather than “duties”; at 4.1124 it has its common significance in a passing reference to everyday obligations. For Lucretius’ treatment of such fundamental Roman ethical concepts as ius and virtus, see Minyard 1985: 51–52; Minyard concludes (52): “Like civitas and ius, virtus proves uninteresting and unuseful to Lucretius the Epicurean.”  Cicero De officiis 1.2.5–6. Epicurus does speak of offering “instructions” (παραγγέλλω) on how to live properly (Letter to Menoeceus 123, 126), but by this he refers to the

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believed that if they do what is necessary for pleasure, they will naturally be just. The problem remained that while human nature clamors for its simple pleasures, easy to provide, human beings are tormented by vain fears and are engaged in irrational pursuits. Part of the task of Epicurean psychology was to explain why this is so. The explanation that Epicurus developed rested largely upon an analysis, original and profound, of irrational fears and desires. The proem to Book 2 of Lucretius’ De rerum natura is subtle and condensed, but it accurately reflects (I believe) Epicurus’ thinking concerning the connection between irrational fears and desires, and provides a good point of entry into the question. It begins with a vivid sequence of images that describe, with considerable economy, how irrational desires threaten the tranquillity and even the lives of those they hold in thrall. Because it has been seen, however, as a mere expression of selfish egoism, it is necessary to pause a moment to examine it in some detail. First, the accusation, as represented by Cyril Bailey, in his massive commentary on the poem (1947: 2.797): There remain the introductory lines (1–13) which to almost all readers have an unpleasant taste of egoism and even of cruelty. The Epicurean philosopher, secure in his own independence, gazing on the troubles and struggles of his fellow-men is an almost cynical picture; Bacon referred to it ironically as “Lucretian pleasure.” Nor can it be wholly defended, for it is true that Epicurus’ hedonism was essentially individualistic; the Epicurean must elements (στοιχεῖα) of his philosophical system, not to moral advice as such. Cf. Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995: 180–81.  See further pp. 54–58 below.  It will be clear that I do not accept the distinction that Bonelli (1979: 89) draws between Lucretius’ “atteggiamento sentimentale che ha in sè e solo in sè le proprie motivazioni, di ordine intuitivo e fantastico,” and which “non ha sicuramente nessun rapporto con Epicuro,” and Lucretius the Epicurean, understood as “quei momenti dell’opera in cui l’esposizione non si accende di particolare luce poetica”; Bonelli insists that “la questione filologica contiene un errore di metodo in quanto non distingue l’elemento documentario dall’elemento poetico.”  For the figure of the priamel, and its place in the tradition of the philosophical protreptic, see the rich collection of parallels in Fowler 2002: 18–28.

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be freed from the pains of body and mind, and it would no doubt enhance his sense of pleasure to observe the contrast in the lives of others. Perhaps the only pleas which could be made in extenuation are that in practice the Epicurean, like the founder himself, showed a large degree of kindness to others (εὐγνωμοσύνη), and that it was the aim of Lucr. to make converts, so that as many men as possible might share Epicurean tranquillity. We may remember too the strong Epicurean injunction against taking part in public affairs: λάθε βιώσας was to be carried out literally. Here is the text: 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 suave est. 5 suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli, sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, despicere unde queas alios passimque videre 10 errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, noctes atque dies niti praestante labore ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.

 Italics mine. Bailey’s extenuation of Epicurus is the same as Cicero’s (above, n. 4). Boyancé (1963: 43) rescues Lucretius by means of a subtle distinction: “Disons—ce n’est pas vaine subtilité—que c’est la vue des misères des insensés qui réjouit le sage, non celle des insensés misérables.” Fowler 2002: 39 notes that Lucretius “makes the consciousness of one’s own lack of pain the main element,” rather than pleasure in another’s discomfort; “Nevertheless,” he adds (40), ‘Lucretian comfort’ is apt to seem ‘selfish and anything but humanitarian’” (citing Nichols 1976: 62), though he defends the passivity of the sage in these situations on the grounds that they are “ones in which we are helpless to do anything” (41) to relieve the persons in distress. For an interpretation similar to mine, see Holtsmark 1967.  Text according to Bailey 1949 unless otherwise indicated.

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I provide the English prose version by Martin Ferguson Smith (2001: 35): It is comforting, when winds are whipping up the waters of the vast sea, to watch from land the severe trials of another person: not that anyone’s distress is a cause of agreeable pleasure; but it is comforting to see from what troubles you yourself are exempt. It is comforting also to witness mighty clashes of warriors embattled on the plains, when you have no share in the danger. But nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power.10 Two questions, which Bailey however does not raise, suggest themselves with respect to the first four verses: from what kinds of evils (malis, 4) is the Epicurean sage exempt, and what is the cause and nature of the sentiment that he derives when he observes them? Lucretius has adapted, in the initial image, a commonplace or proverbial figure, and similar expressions elsewhere may help to indicate the nature of the sentiment. In 59 b.c., Cicero described to Atticus (ad Att. 2.7.4) his feelings about the state of Roman politics: “I desire to gaze upon those shipwrecks from the land, I desire, as your friend Sophocles says, ‘to hear the thick hail from beneath my roof, with my heart in slumber’” (cupio istorum naufragia ex terra intueri, cupio, ut ait tuus amicus Sophocles, κἂν ὑπὸ

10 Smith 2001: 35 n. 1 cites Bailey’s criticism and observes: “In reply, two points may be made. One is that Lucr. is careful to stress that pleasure is derived not from the suffering of other people, but from the thought that one is not sharing it, and surely what he says is true. The other point is that, although the Epicureans experienced enhanced pleasure when they compared their own tranquillity and happiness with the discontent and unhappiness of the unenlightened, they made it their business to bring the message of truth and salvation to those in ignorance of it.” My own defense of Lucretius’ thought is of a different nature, as will become clear.

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στέγῃ πυκινῆς ἀκούειν ψάκαδος εὑδούσῃ φρενί).11 A still closer parallel is a fragment of the Athenian comic poet, Archippus: “How sweet it is to gaze upon the sea from the land, Mother, when one is not oneself sailing anywhere” (ὡς ἡδὺ τὴν θάλατταν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ὁρᾶν, ὦ μῆτερ, ἐστὶ μὴ πλέοντα μηδαμοῦ).12 The two Greek dramatists are clearly expressing the same sentiment, the sweet pleasure that attaches to a sense of security. This is surely also the thought that is uppermost in the lines of Lucretius, inasmuch as security (ἀσφάλεια), as DeWitt (1954: 184) has put it, was “a catchword of Epicureanism.”13 Cicero’s remark seems to be in the same spirit; however, since Cicero, like Lucretius, alludes not only to his own safety but to the misfortunes of others as well, there is the impression of another, less worthy sentiment: the selfish delight that resides in estimating one’s own good fortune by the afflictions of others.14 Is this idea also present, as Bailey supposes, in Lucretius? Apparently anticipating such misunderstanding, Lucretius rejects the notion at once: “not because there is an enjoyable pleasure in the fact that anyone else is suffering distress” (non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas, 3). Ernout and Bailey, however, dismiss this emphatic disclaimer as an effort to “corriger ce que cette exclamation égoïste peut avoir de choquant,” or to “tone down” its “harshness.”15 But consistency is on the side of Lucretius, for a sense of security—if that is the idea here—is unlikely to emerge from the contemplation of bad fortune as such, which would rather prompt an awareness of one’s own vulnerability. It remains, then, 11 Sophocles Tympanistae fr. 579 Nauck = fr. 636 Radt (with slightly different text: φεῦ φεῦ, τί τούτου χάρμα μεῖζον ἂν λάβοις τοῦ γῆς ἐπιψαύσαντα κᾆθ᾿ ὑπὸ στέγῃ πυκνῆς ἀκοῦσαι ψακάδος εὑδούσῃ φρενί;). For related passages, see Fowler 2002: 28–33. 12 Archippus fr. 43 Kock = fr. 45 Kassel-Austin. 13 Cf. Principal Doctrines 7, 13, 14, 28; Vatican Sayings 17, 31; On Nature fr. 26.42 Arrighetti2. 14 I think we can safely exclude the idea that Lucretius is referring to the malicious pleasure that derives simply from the spectacle of another person’s suffering, what in German is called Schadenfreude and in Greek epikhairekia (see Aristotle Rhetoric 1386b34; Nicomachean Ethics 1107a10). This was perceived as a wholly ignoble sentiment, akin to phthonos or envy, and would certainly be alien to the Epicurean sage. The delight arising from the mere comparison of one’s own well-being with the lesser comfort of another is more respectable; cf. Democritus fr. D55 Taylor = B 191 Diels-Kranz, quoted below pp. 37–38. 15 Bailey 1947: 2.797; Ernout and Robin 1962: 203 ad v. 1.

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to determine the cause of the sentiment that Lucretius’ onlooker enjoys. Lucretius gives the reason in the fourth verse, but because the language is condensed, it requires close analysis to bring out its significance: sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est. Bailey renders the line as follows: “but because it is sweet to perceive from what misfortunes you yourself are free.” This translation, however, leaves several points unclear. First of all, we may note that the phrase, cernere quibus malis careas (to put it in ordinary prose word order), is ambiguous. Grammatically, it is in the form of an indirect question (“to perceive from what … you are free”), which requires that careas be in the subjunctive; it may have been so in the direct statement as well, or else have been in the indicative. In the latter case, it will mean “from what particular misfortunes you are free” (i.e., the storm at sea that Lucretius imagines); in the former, it will mean “to perceive from what kind of misfortunes you are free.”16 Bailey evidently adopts the first alternative, but there is good reason not to reject the second. In the second place, although “perceive” as the translation of cernere is satisfactory in one respect, in that the Latin term may denote intellectual discrimination as well as optical vision,17 it fails to capture another sense of cernere that is particularly frequent in De rerum natura, that of “discerning” or “making out” something small, remote, or otherwise difficult to see or understand. It is the word used of descrying things just become visible, or, with a negative modifier, of not quite seeing things below the threshold of discrimination or not naturally perceptible. There are some 40 occurrences of cernere (in the infinitive) in Lucretius, and more than half of them bear this special connotation of “detect” or “discern.”18 If cernere may mean “discern” in the passage under consideration, then the way is open to an interpretation different from Bailey’s, one that will not leave Lucretius or the Epicureans exposed to the charge of cruelty. For on 16 Cf. Munro 1886: 2.118; Holtsmark 1967: 199n15; Paratore and Pizzani 1960: 194 translate “da quali mali tu sia libero.” 17 For the intellectual sense, see 1.347, 4.915; the visual meaning is far the most common. 18 For the special connotation, cf. 1.134, 301, 327, 600, 751; 2.140, 248, 250, 314, 315, 827, 837; 3.359; 4.105, 596, 610, 760, 767, 803, 809, 1231; 5.63; 6.407. The proportion is similar for other forms of the verb.

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this interpretation, cernere will not simply repeat the meaning of spectare in v. 2, and will not refer to the pleasure that derives from beholding a person struggling on a foundering ship. Finally, the word careo, in this context, perhaps means something more than is indicated by the phrase, “to be free of.” For careo may sometimes denote an essential, rather than a temporary or accidental privation: thus carere morte (Horace Odes 2.18.12), for example, means “to be immortal” or “not to be susceptible to death.”19 In line with the preceding arguments, then, the entire verse might be accurately, if not wholly elegantly, rendered: “but because it is sweet to discern the kind of evils to which you yourself are not susceptible.” On this reading, the cause of the sense of security is revealed as the awareness that one is safe from certain misfortunes. The question remains: what kinds of evils are these? No one is free from what is arbitrary or fortuitous, so the evils cannot be of this kind. Rather, they must be avoidable evils, easily and naturally avoidable, of the kind one must pursue if one is to encounter them. Now, to the Romans, even more than to the Greeks, a storm at sea was just this type of misfortune. It is a commonplace of Roman poetry, which Kirby Flower Smith, among others, has amply illustrated, that seafaring “violates the law of nature and of the gods, and is therefore impious.” That is, seafaring is not regarded as a natural occupation. More important, “the motive of seafaring is greed of gain.”20 In turn, the perils of the sea are regarded as the punishment for human cupidity: natura insidians pontum substravit avaris (Propertius 3.7.37). Lucretius’ own attitude toward seafaring accords well with the typical Roman literary conception (cf. 5.1000ff., 2.552ff.); it is the association with greed that no doubt prompted the expression, improba navigii ratio (5.1006).21 In the light of this literary topos, Lucretius’ image of the storm-tossed ship acquires particular significance: the poet imagines, not the helpless victim of 19 Cf. Lucr. 3.356: dimissa anima corpus caret undique sensu (“once the soul is lost, the body lacks any sensation at all”). Cicero’s definition—desiderat, requirit, indiget (Tusc. 1.87, cit. TLL s.v. ad init.)—puts the emphasis on the subjective side of “missing” something. 20 Smith 1913: 246–47; cf. Heydenreich 1970: 13–62. 21 Bailey 1947: 1482 suspects that 5.1006 is an interpolation, on the grounds that it “interrupts the sequence”; but if seafaring is associated with the pursuit of wealth, then the logic of the passage is clear enough.

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natural disaster, but the audacious trader whose unnatural greed lures him to incur the perils of the sea.22 The evils, then, from which one enjoys sweet security are the misfortunes which attend the lust for wealth; or, perhaps, it is greed itself which is the evil, and it is the achievement of Epicureanism that it can free people from such desires. On this reading, moreover, the opening lines become consistent with the import of the poem as a whole. To recapitulate: Lucretius has evoked the sweetness of the sense of security, but he has intimated as well that this security derives from the awareness that unnatural desires do not infect the soul. Perhaps, indeed, the picture of a ship beset by stormy winds suggests a soul laboring under the blasts of passion. The ship as soul too is a conventional literary metaphor in antiquity.23 Lucretius’ language seems to support the image: the calm, even waters (aequora) are aroused (turbare) as though by passion (turbare is the natural Latin equivalent of ταράσσειν).24 The storm, then, would be both the symbol and the penalty for immoderate desire. There were, above all, two “unnecessary desires” which Lucretius exposed as the enemies of tranquillity in the soul and in the community: avarice and ambition. Bailey (1947: 1000 ad 3.59) observes that “avarice and ambition, as Heinze notes, were characteristic Roman vices at the end of the Republic.”25 The twin desires for wealth and for power are specifically the focus of Lucretius’ proem to Book 2: ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri (13), or in the translation of Smith: “to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power.” The desire for wealth, I have suggested, is the underlying subject of Lucretius’ first image, the ship 22 It was a commonplace that merited or earned misfortune does not deserve pity (see Konstan 2001: 34–48); hence the sage would not react with this emotion. 23 Cf. Holtsmark 1967: 195 and n. 7; also Lucretius 6.34 volvere curarum tristis in pectore fluctus, which is a development of the motif (there is a parallel in Catullus 64.62: magnis curarum fluctuat undis). 24 Strong emotions were perturbationes; cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 4.10: quae Graeci πάθη vocant, nobis perturbationes magis placet quam morbos (“what the Greeks call pathê, we prefer to call ‘perturbations’ rather than ‘diseases’”). 25 Cf. Cicero De officiis 1.7.24, 1.8.25–26; the reference is to Heinze 1897 ad loc. Minyard 1985: 35 desribes Lucretius’ poem as an attempt “to apply a philosophical system to the realm of Roman social behavior.” But the condemnation of greed (φιλαργυρεῖν) as a chief instance of irrational desire is not merely Lucretian or Roman, but goes back to Epicurus himself; see Spinelli 1996.

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at sea (emergere is a sea metaphor, as Ernout points out, and it perhaps picks up the motif of the opening lines).26 The desire for power, in turn, is alluded to in the second image, taken from warfare (5–6). The spectator whom Lucretius has in mind is surely not the common soldier but a powerful officer such as Memmius, for whom military tenure was a necessary stage in the cursus honorum and in the service of political ambition. Even if tua parte (6) = “your share” does not refer to Memmius27 himself but is the generalizing second person formula, it must refer to a high-ranking military officer, as is clear from Lucretius’ summary of his argument at vv. 37–41: quapropter quoniam nil nostro in corpore gazae proficiunt neque nobilitas nec gloria regni, quod superest, animo quoque nil prodesse putandum; si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi fervere cum videas belli simulacra cientis…, etc. Again, in Smith’s version (2001: 36): Therefore, since neither riches nor rank nor the pomp of power have any beneficial effect upon our bodies, we must assume that they are equally useless to our minds. Or when you watch your legions swarming over the spacious Plain in vigorous imitation of war…, etc. “Your legions” (tuas legiones) can only refer to a person of consular or near-consular status (Smith 2001: 36 n. 6 suggests that the “Plain” is the Campus Martius, and that Lucretius may have witnessed the exercises of Julius Caesar’s army there in 58 b.c.). Here again, then, the pleasure in beholding the contests of war (certamina; cf. certare, 11) derives from a feeling of complete security from this kind of danger: the Epicurean sage is free not to participate in such pursuits, and was encouraged to lead a life unencumbered by political aspirations—to “live inconspicuously” 26 Ernout and Robin 1962: 205–06 ad 2.13; cf. Fowler 2002: 64–65. 27 For the question of reference to Memmius in the poem, see Farrington 1965: 24ff.

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(λάθε βιώσας), in the formula adopted by Plutarch as the title of one of his essays (Moralia 1128A; for Plutarch’s polemical purpose in this essay, see Gallo 1996). The model for such a disengaged style of life in Lucretius’ own time was Cicero’s intimate friend Atticus, who avoided all public office and succeeded in remaining on amicable terms with all parties, whether partisans of Caesar or of Pompey. Struggle and danger (laborem, 2 and pericli, 6) are the conditions of life for the uninstructed (cf. labore, 12 and periclis, 15). The thrice-repeated adjective magnus (1, 2, 5) underscores, I think, the excess in such desires; for the natural needs of human beings, pauca videmus esse opus omnino (20–21: “And so we see that the nature of the body is such that it needs few things,” trans. Smith 2001: 36). With the third and culminating image of a fortified citadel, the metaphor becomes transparent (7–13). The true fortress of security is the teaching of the wise (doctrina sapientum, 8), that is, the philosophy of Epicurus. From this vantage point alone may one look down in safety upon the restless and futile activity of people who stray and wander, strive and contend, reduce talent, station and industry (ingenio, nobilitate, labore, 11–12) to the service of empty and limitless desire.28 Amid the frantic, compulsive motion at sea, on the battlefield, everywhere, only the Epicurean is stationary and secure. There is a fragment of the ethical writings of Democritus, preserved in Stobaeus, that bears a striking similarity to the passage under discussion in Lucretius, and it is illuminating to compare the two.29 Democritus writes (frg. 191 Diels-Kranz): ἀνθρώποισι γὰρ εὐθυμίη γίνεται μετριότητι τέρψιος καὶ βίου συμμετρίηι· τὰ δ᾿ ἐλλείποντα καὶ ὑπερβάλλοντα μεταπίπτειν τε φιλεῖ καὶ μεγάλας κινήσιας ἐμποιεῖν τῆι ψυχῆι. αἱ δ᾿ ἐκ μεγάλων διαστημάτων κινούμεναι τῶν ψυχέων οὔτε εὐσταθέες εἰσὶν οὔτε εὔθυμοι. ἐπὶ τοῖς δυνατοῖς οὖν δεῖ ἔχειν τὴν γνώμην καὶ τοῖς παρεοῦσιν ἀρκέεσθαι τῶν μὲν ζηλουμένων καὶ θαυμαζομένων 28 Ingenia is the usual word for natural ability, in contrast to labor, “effort” or “diligent practice.” The idea of restlessness is conveyed in the words errare, palantis, certare, contendere. 29 Morel 2000: 54 observes that this passage of Democritus “annonce ainsi le célèbre prologue du Chant II de Lucrèce”; for interpretation, cf. Morel pp. 60–61.

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ὀλίγην μνήμην ἔχοντα καὶ τῆι διανοίαι μὴ προσεδρεύοντα, τῶν δὲ ταλαιπωρεόντων τοὺς βίους θεωρέειν, ἐννοούμενον ἃ πάσχουσι κάρτα, ὅκως ἂν τὰ παρεόντα σοι καὶ ὑπάρχοντα μεγάλα καὶ ζηλωτὰ φαίνηται, καὶ μηκέτι πλειόνων ἐπιθυμέοντι συμβαίνηι κακοπαθεῖν τῆι ψυχῆι. ὁ γὰρ θαυμάζων τοὺς ἔχοντας καὶ μακαριζομένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῆι μνήμηι πᾶσαν ὥραν προσεδρεύων ἀεὶ ἐπικαινουργεῖν ἀναγκάζεται καὶ ἐπιβάλλεσθαι δι᾿ ἐπιθυμίην τοῦ τι πρήσσειν ἀνήκεστον ὧν νόμοι κωλύουσιν. διόπερ τὰ μὲν μὴ δίζεσθαι χρεών, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς εὐθυμέεσθαι χρεών, παραβάλλοντα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον πρὸς τὸν τῶν φαυλότερον πρησσόντων καὶ μακαρίζειν ἑωυτὸν ἐνθυμεύμενον ἃ πάσχουσιν, ὁκόσωι αὐτέων βέλτιον πρήσσει τε καὶ διάγει. ταύτης γὰρ ἐχόμενος τῆς γνώμης εὐθυμότερόν τε διάξεις καὶ οὐκ ὀλίγας κῆρας ἐν τῶι βίωι διώσεαι, φθόνον καὶ ζῆλον καὶ δυσμενίην. In the translation of Taylor (1999: 25 = frg. D55), the passage runs: For men achieve cheerfulness by moderation in pleasure and by proportion in their life; excess and deficiency are apt to fluctuate and cause great changes in the soul. And souls which change over great intervals are neither stable nor cheerful. So one should set one’s mind on what is possible and be content with what one has, taking little account of those who are admired and envied, and not dwelling on them in thought, but one should consider the lives of those who are in distress, thinking of their grievous sufferings, so that what one has and possesses will seem great and enviable, and one will cease to suffer in one’s soul through the desire for more. For he who admires those who have and who are congratulated by others and is always dwelling on them in his memory is continually obliged to get up to new tricks and in his desire to achieve something to attempt some wicked deed which is forbidden by the laws. Therefore one should not seek those things, but should be cheerful at the thought of the others, comparing one’s own life with that of those who are faring worse, and should congratulate oneself when one thinks of what they are suffering, and how much better one is doing and living 38

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than they are. For by maintaining that frame of mind one will live more cheerfully and will avert not a few evils in one’s life, jealousy and envy and malice. Cheerfulness (εὐθυμίη), according to Democritus, is acquired through moderation (μετριότητι), which is interpreted as a certain stability of the soul (εὐσταθέες); moderation, in turn, is understood as the freedom from envy (ζῆλος) or desire (ἐπιθυμίη), and to realize this disposition, it is helpful to contemplate the lives of those less fortunate than we. Desire undermines the cheerfulness and tranquillity of the soul by stirring up restless and illicit aspirations (ἐπικαινουργεῖν, ἀναγκάζεται καὶ ἐπιβάλλεσθαι δι᾿ ἐπιθυμίην τοῦ τι πρήσσειν ἀνήκεστον ὧν νόμοι κωλύουσιν).30 For Lucretius, too, there is a joy in the freedom from restless desire, and a sense of liberty and security may be stimulated by reflection upon the compulsive pursuits of others (cf. Smith 2001: 35 n. 1, cited in n. 10: “the Epicureans experienced enhanced pleasure when they compared their own tranquillity and happiness with the discontent and unhappiness of the unenlightened”). Nevertheless, there is an important difference between the two, and it points, I think, to a fundamental distinction between Epicurean doctrine and Democritus’ more practical ethic, at least so far as the fragments permit us to infer. Democritus’ wisdom does not seem to go beyond gnomic exhortation and advice.31 In the passage just cited, the suggestion is: count your blessings. Such precepts may be useful, but they do not seem to constitute the kind of psychological theory or approach that the Epicureans developed, doubtless thanks to the inspiration of Democritus.32 Lucretius does not suggest that a comparison of fortunes 30 The passage is discussed by Bailey 1928: 199; for a detailed analysis, see Warren 2002: 44–64. Warren notes (46) that “Democritus is no full-blooded hedonist since he does not characterise the best life as one in which the maximum amount of pleasure is enjoyed.” 31 See, for example, fragments 198–203, and, among the gnômai, fragments 37, 39–41, 56–57, etc.; on Democritus’ ethical theory, see Vlastos 1945, 1946; also Kahn 1985; Konstan 1987. 32 Nausiphanes substituted the term akataplêxia (“undauntability”) for Democritus’ athambiê, “fearlessness,” as crucial to the good life, which invites comparison with Epicurus’ ataraxia or “imperturbability”; on Nausiphanes’ role in transmitting Democritus’ teachings to Epicurus, see Warren 2002: 160–92.

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can, in and of itself, bring about moderation in desire or cheerfulness. For the Epicureans, envy and competitiveness were not the causes of excessive desire; at most, they were manifestations of it. The cause of immoderate desire was, according to the Epicureans, irrational fear: denique avarities et honorum caeca cupido 60 quae miseros homines cogunt transcendere finis iuris et interdum socios scelerum atque ministros noctes atque dies niti praestante labore ad summas emergere opes, haec vulnera vitae non minimam partem mortis formidine aluntur (3.59–64). In the translation of Smith (2001: 69): Furthermore, avarice and blind lust for status, which drive wretched people to encroach beyond the boundaries of right and sometimes, as accomplices and abettors of crime, to strive night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth—these sores of life are nourished in no small degree by dread of death. The phrasing in this proem to the third book clearly echoes that of the proem to the second (noctes atque dies niti praestante labore ad summas emergere opes, 2.12–13), and underscores the connection between the two passages. Irrational desire (caeca cupido), in the form of avarice and ambition (avarities, honorum), is nourished by the fear of death. In this relation between desire and fear, I argue, lies the profound insight of Epicurus and the advance represented by his psychological theory.33 The question remains, however, just how the fear of death is translated into desire.

33 Kenney 1971: 83 ad 59–86 writes: “The idea that avarice and ambition, with all their attendant crimes, are motivated by the fear of death seems to be L.’s own extension of the Epicurean thesis that it was a desire for security (ἀσφάλεια = stabilis vita 66) that drove men to seek fame and status (Κ.Δ. 7, 73 Us.; cf. Cic. De Fin. 1.59–61)…. What lends L.’s exposition of the idea its peculiarly urgent flavour is of course its contemporary relevance.” But, as we have seen, Epicurus too speaks of the drive to accumulate wealth and power.

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This question takes us to the heart of Epicurus’ doctrine.34 To resume the discussion of the argument of the proem to Book 2: in the introductory lines 1–13, Lucretius explains that desire undermines the security of the soul, and further observes that desire is the result of ignorance. Lucretius makes it clear in the following verses that human beings are ignorant of the elementary requirements of their natures: o miseras hominum mentis, o pectora caeca! 15 qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 34 Smith 2001: xviii notes that “the Epicureans regarded fear of death not only as a very bad thing in itself, but also as the root cause of that feeling of insecurity that leads people to compete for wealth and power and often to commit crimes or go to war in pursuit of these objectives.” Smith relates Lucretius’ view to the contemporary turmoil in Rome, for example the Catilinarian conspiracy. On the association of desires and fears, see Porphyry To Marcella 29 = Epicurus frr. 203 and 485 Usener. Especially illuminating in this connection is Porphyry De abstinentia 1.54, cited in Diano 1946: 145–46 and in Heinze 1897: 58; the latter observes: „Die kühne Behauptung, dass die Hauptwurzel auch dieser Übel die Todesfurcht sei, ist echt Epikureisch.“ Perelli 1969 argues at length and with considerable ingenuity that anxiety over death plays a role in Lucretius which is entirely out of proportion to, even if it is not inconsistent with, its significance in the writings of Epicurus himself and his successors, like Philodemus. Perelli accounts for this emphasis by a psychoanalytic diagnosis of Lucretius as a morbidly neurotic personality, a victim, as Saint Jerome reports (Chronicle, Olympiad 171.3), of periodic depression or insanity. Perelli’s book represents an advance over previous efforts along these lines (e.g., Logre 1946, Lortie 1954, Cavendish 1963; cf. also Rozelaar 1943, Beye 1963). But it is unlikely that Lucretius introduced any major innovations into Epicurus’ treatment of the fear of death (Perelli 1969: 80, 89–101); see the review of Perelli by Wormell 1971, and more recently, Sedley 1998, who makes a very strong case for Lucretius’ “fundamentalism” in respect to orthodox Epicurean doctrine; also Konstan 2006 for a discussion of the limits of Lucretius’ philosophical originality (Clay 1983 illustrates Lucretius’ originality in “making his own poem the visible model for the nature of things” [35]; cf. also 169–91 on Lucretius’ method). For Philodemus’ views on the fear of death, see Armstrong’s (2003) brilliant discussion of the treatise On Death; Armstrong remarks (28) on the essay’s “alternation of sarcasm (harsh frank criticism) with the gentler medicine of genuine human sympathy for the worst aspects of the fear of death, and its recommendation of deep, continuous and serious religious meditation on reality and the stark facts as the only escape from these difficult aspects.” Armstrong provides an extensive bibliography of discussions of the fear of death in Epicurean and modern philosophy in n. 28 on pp. 28–29, and concludes that “most of these articles would need radical revision if the On Death of Philodemus had been part of modern scholarship’s apparatus of Epicurean texts.” Indeed, Armstrong remarks (31) that there are “some kinds of fear of, and pain at the thought of, death … which even a philosopher will sympathize with.”

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degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne videre nil aliud sibi naturam latrare nisi utqui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque? (2.14–19) O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life’s little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importunately demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment! (trans. Smith 2001: 35–36)

Nature’s needs are not difficult to discern or comprehend; she barks or howls out (latrare, 17)35 her simple, basic requirements: avoid bodily pains and mental fears (for the distinction between pains as pertaining to the non-rational part of the soul and fears as disturbances in the rational part, see Chapter 1, pp. 10–16). Lucretius then sets forth in verses now pleading, now ironic, how neither riches nor power can banish pain (20–36) or ease anxiety (37–53).36 On the contrary, the pursuit of wealth and power is marked by toil for the body (cf. laborem, 2) and terror for the mind (pericli, 6). The demands of nature are not mysterious, but people mysteriously sacrifice natural satisfactions for the sake of wealth without value and power without safety. If desire is sustained by fear, as Lucretius affirms, then it is a kind of fear that no natural precautions can allay.37 Later in the proem, where Lucretius satirizes the motives of greed and ambition, he explores further the relationship between fear and desire:

35 On the word, see Fowler 2002: 73–74. 36 The two segments are equal in length (17 verses each), suggesting that Lucretius has consciously balanced them; on the careful structure of the proem to Book 2, see Fowler 2002: 16–18. 37 I should note here that I am referring primarily to irrational fears and desires, or what Epicurus referred to as “empty” passions. The Epicureans did not reprove natural or limited desires and fears. In a general way, it was a commonplace that fear or concern over threats to life might lie behind a desire for money sufficient to ensure a relative security (cf. Anonymus Iamblichi 4, in Diels-Kranz pp. 401–02; I am indebted to Tom Cole for pointing out the similarity between this passage and the Epicurean view).

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quapropter quoniam nil nostro in corpore gazae proficiunt neque nobilitas nec gloria regni, quod superest, animo quoque nil prodesse putandum; 40 si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi fervere cum videas belli simulacra cientis, subsidiis magnis et ecum vi constabilitas, ornatas armis †itastuas† pariterque animatas, 43a fervere cum videas classem lateque vagari, his tibi tum rebus timefactae religiones 45 effugiunt animo pavidae; mortisque timores tum vacuum pectus linquunt curaque solutum. quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus, re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela 50 audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai, quid dubitas quin omni’ sit haec rationi’ potestas? (2.37–53)38 In Smith’s version (2001: 36): Therefore, since neither riches nor rank nor the pomp of power have any beneficial effect upon our bodies, we must assume that they are equally useless to our minds. Or when you watch your legions swarming over the spacious Plain in vigorous imitation of war, reinforced with numerous reserves and powerful cavalry, uniform in their armor, uniform in their spirit, and see your fleet swarming and widely fanning out,39 can it be that these experiences strike terror into your irrational notions, causing them to flee in panic from your mind? Can it 38 I have departed from the text in Bailey 1947, retaining the manuscript order of vv. 42–43; in his earlier Oxford Classical Text (2nd edition, 1928), Bailey printed the manuscript order. 39 I have added this clause to Smith’s translation; Smith omits line 43a, on which see note 41 below.

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be that the fears of death leave your breast disburdened and eased of care? But if we recognize that these suppositions are absurd and ridiculous, because in reality people’s fears and the cares at their back dread neither the din of arms nor cruel darts, and strut boldly among kings and potentates, respecting neither the glitter of gold nor the brilliant luster of purple raiment, how can you doubt that philosophy alone possesses the power to resist them? Wealth and power are thought to provide security against the fears that beset people’s minds (metus hominum curasque sequaces, 48), fears that are, at least for the most part, ultimately aspects of the fear of death (mortisque timores, 45).40 It is for the sake of security that men practice war and navigation (40–43, 43a):41 haec vulnera vitae non minimam partem mortis formidine aluntur. 65 turpis enim ferme contemptus et acris egestas semota ab dulci vita stabilique videtur et quasi iam leti portas cunctarier ante; 40 Mortis timores explains or specifies religiones; the plural timores points to the breadth or complexity of such fear, as Ernout points out (Ernout and Robin 1962; 1.217). 41 Bailey interprets classem (43a) as “legion,” rejecting, for no very clear reason, the possibility that it means “fleet.” Martin took it to mean “fleet,” as Bailey notes (1947: 2.807), and Ernout compares Horace Odes 3.1.38–40: neque/ decedit aerata triremi <et> post equitem sedet atra Cura (“nor does dark Anxiety withdraw from a bronze-trimmed warship, and it sits behind the cavalryman”). The words late vagari do not suggest a review of infantry maneuvers (on the possibility here that simulacra suggests “empty images,” see below, n. 49). With a reference to a fleet, Lucretius would be continuing the two images of sea-faring and war with which the proem begins. The verse does not appear in the main manuscripts of Lucretius; Lambinus inserted here on the basis of a quotation in Nonius 503 p. 808 Lindsay, where it is attributed to Lucretius. Fowler 2002: 115–17 rejects it, on the grounds that it “seems weak to have just one line on the naval forces to four on the array, especially with the anaphora” (116); perhaps more has been lost, but I think the reference back to the opening of the proem, where incidentally seafaring is given four lines in comparison with two on military excercizes, is sufficient to justify its inclusion here.

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unde homines dum se falso terrore coacti effugisse volunt… (3.63–69) these sores of life are nourished in no small degree by dread of death. For as a rule the ignominy of humble position and the sting of penury are considered to be incompatible with a life of enjoyment and security, and are thought to imply a sort of premature loitering before the portals of death from which people, under the impulse of unfounded terror, desire to flee away (transl. Smith 2001: 69)

Grinding poverty and despised estate seem like death’s anteroom; to avoid death seems, in turn, to require means and station, and this moves people to seek them at all cost. The image is a powerful one, but how should we understand the association between indigence or powerlessness and death? Heinze (1897) offered a purely empirical explanation: the former conditions may lead, very generally, to the latter. Lucretius, Heinze argues, is thinking of progressive impoverishment which seems at last (iam) to arrive at the gates of death. For Schrijvers (1970), on the other hand, the connection is psychological: because death is a poor and despised condition, poverty and contempt may appear proleptically (iam) as death. Schrijvers suggests, moreover, that the fear of death is here explained along the lines developed in 3.894ff., that is, based on the mistaken belief that sensation may somehow persist after life is extinguished. This may be implicit, but Lucretius nowhere suggests that the image people have of Hades is one of grinding poverty (for discussion, see below, pp. 59–66). Lucretius here takes it for granted that people have an irrational fear of death; the point at issue is why they imagine that they can allay the fear through the kind of exaggerated acquisitiveness that leads to restless discontent and may well put life and limb at risk. The symbolic association between poverty and death’s antechamber seems to have a lot of work to do, since it is the principal link, so far as our sources permit us to judge, between irrational fears and excessive or empty desires. Poverty is not conceived as a mere metaphor for death; or rather, it is a metaphor that has so captured the minds of people as to constitute the major reason why the response to

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anxiety over death takes the form of the desire for wealth and status. As Fowler 2002: 80 expresses it, “Men desire life because they fear death, and reify life as wealth and power.” If this is so, then symbolic or allegorical thinking has a deeply significant role in explaining the nature of the kinds of false beliefs on which limitless desires are predicated.42 There is, as I shall indicate further on, reason to suppose that Epicurus himself entertained such a robust view of the deleterious consequences of metaphor and allegory for human reasoning.43 The Epicureans recognized that human beings must meet the necessities of life (cf. 2.20ff. and Bailey 1947 ad loc.), but they held that such needs were by nature limited and easily satisfied.44 ῾Ο τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος καὶ ὥρισται καὶ εὐπόριστός ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει. 42 Gigandet 1998: 32 observes that, because “Il n’y a pas d’autre de la nature, paroles vaines, songes, fantasmes et illusions en participent aussi bien,” and hence, “exhiber les raisons du mythe impose de le réinscrire dans l’ordre des causes.” 43 Contrast Kenney 1971: 84 ad 65–73: “the career of criminal acquisition = flight from uncertainty to security … = revulsion from the idea of death. If this … is L.’s logic, it is not above criticism, as turning on a rather strained play of words and ideas, but that is often true of the logic of preachers and moralists.” 44 Cf. Lucretius 5.1117–24, and Bailey’s (1947: 2.800) interpretation of 2.20–23; also Perret 1940, though I cannot agree with Perret (282 n. 3) that the thought here is Lucretian, but not Epicurean. Piet Schrijvers (1970: 286–90) has challenged the traditional view of the connection between 3.59–64 and verses 65–67, which Heinze (1897: 58 ad v. 65) summarizes as follows: “contemptus und egestas weilen schon vor den Pforten des Todes; wer bei ihnen angelangt ist, wird in Kürtze dem Tode selbst verfallen.” Schrijvers argues that 65–67 contain two different and independent reasons for human avarice and ambition: according to 65–66, people “s‘efforcent d‘échapper au mépris et à la pauvreté parce que, d‘une part, le mépris et la pauvreté leur paraissent incompatibles avec une existence douce et stabile”; the second reason, introduced in 67 by et, which Schrijvers takes in the strong sense of “in addition” (citing Leumann, Hofmann, Szantyr 1977: 2.172: “steigerndes et = und ausserdem”), is that “cet état de dénuement semble anticiper sur la mort” (290). Schrijvers reasons that since Lucretius asserts that irrational desires are motivated by the fear of death “to no small degree” (non minimam partem, 64), Lucretius must have indicated another cause, namely the practical anxiety mentioned in 65–66. But he does not explain why an Epicurean would believe that the real difference between indigence and economic security should be the source of unnatural and unnecessary desires. Irrational or empty desires do not result from true beliefs, according to Epicurus. I expect that Lucretius meant rather that other irrational fears, perhaps related to the fear of death, also generate avarice and ambition.

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Wealth based on nature is delimited and easily provided, whereas that based on empty beliefs plunges out to infinity. (Principal Doctrines 15) Lucretius, however, holds the fear of death responsible for unlimited desires, in the service of which people abandon all thought for security and may even be driven to embrace death itself: intereunt partim statuarum et nominis ergo. et saepe usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae 80 percipit humanos odium lucisque videndae, ut sibi consciscant maerenti pectore letum obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem. (3.78–82).45 Some throw away their lives in an effort to gain statues and renown. And often, in consequence of dread of death, people are affected by such an intense loathing of life and the sight of the light that with mournful hearts they sentence themselves to death, forgetting that the source of their sorrows is this very fear (transl. Smith 2001: 70).46 What is the nature of this terror of death, from which people seek to protect themselves through restless and reckless acquisition of wealth and power, abandoning tranquillity and jeopardizing, even forfeiting their lives? The answer to this question is to be found, I believe, in a fragment from the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda which distinguishes two 45 Cf. Seneca Letters to Lucilius 24.22–23 = Epicurus fragments 496–98 Usener, and Cicero De finibus 1.5.49. A similar idea is attributed to Democritus (fragment 203 Diels-Kranz): ἄνθρωποι τὸν θάνατον φεύγοντες διώκουσιν (“human beings, in fleeing death, pursue it”; cf. Warren 2002: 36–38). In light of other gnomic statements of Democritus, I am inclined to take the participle φεύγοντες to mean “while” or “although fleeing,” and not to suggest, what Lucretius affirms, a causal connection between the fear of death and suicide. 46 Cf. Segal 1990: 15: “Epicurus himself seems more concerned with overcoming infinite desires than with the fear of the infinite void after death, and in fact most of his warnings against the ‘unlimited’ are directed at desire”; Nussbaum 1994: 197–98. On the role of limit or measure in Epicurus’ thought, see Annas 1993: 191n17; Morel 2000: 37–39; Erler 2002: 173 (“the μέτρον is ἐν φύσει”).

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kinds of fears; unfortunately, the stone is mutilated at a critical juncture, but the sense seems reasonably clear:

ν[ῦν δὲ] οὗτος ὁ φόβος τ[οτὲ] μέν ἐστιν τετρα[νωμέ-] νος τοτὲ δ᾿ ἀτρα[νής·] τετρανωμένος [μέν] ὅταν ἐκ φανεροῦ  [κακόν] τι φεύγωμεν ὥσ[περ] τὸ πῦρ φοβούμε[νοι δι᾿] αὐτοῦ τῷ θανάτῳ [περι-] πεσεῖσθαι, ἀτραν[ής] δὲ ὅταν, πρὸς ἄλλ[ῳ τι-] νὶ τῆς διανοίας ὑ[παρ-] χούσης, ἐδεδυμ[ένος τῇ] φύσει καὶ ὑποφω[λεύων]…47 Smith (1993: 385) translates: As a matter of fact this fear is sometimes clear, sometimes not clear—clear when we avoid something manifestly harmful like fire through fear that we shall meet death by it, not clear when, while the mind is occupied with something else, it (fear) has insinuated itself into our nature and [lurks]….48

According to these definitions, the two kinds of fear are distinguished in part with respect to their objects: in the case of ordinary fear, the object is clearly apprehended (ἐκ φανεροῦ), represents a real and immediate threat to safety, and is feared on this account; the natural response to such fear is avoidance (φεύγωμεν). But in the case of “indistinct” or “indefinite” 47 Text in Smith 1993, fragment 35.II; older editions (cf. fr. 31 Grilli 1960, fr. 29 Chilton 1967, fr. 30 William) are superseded by Smith. 48 The last word represents one possible restoration of the Greek text, which breaks off at this point; see Chapter 1, p. 24).

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fear (ἀτρανής φόβος), which today we might call anxiety, our attention is directed elsewhere (πρὸς ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῆς διανοίας ὑπαρχούσης), and the object is not clearly perceived—it might be something falsely imagined as a threat—with the result that the fear lies hidden within us, and we cannot simply escape the danger.49 The editors compare Lucretius 2.55–61 (= 3.87–93, 6.35–41): 55 nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest 60 non radii solis neque lucida tela diei discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque. For, just as children tremble and fear everything in blinding darkness, so we even in daylight sometimes dread things that are no more terrible than the imaginary dangers that cause children to quake in the dark. This terrifying darkness that enshrouds the mind must be dispelled not by the sun’s rays and the dazzling darts of day, but by study of the superficial aspect and underlying principle of nature. (transl. Smith 2001: 37) Anxiety is the dread of imaginary things (fingunt) which populate the darkness of people’s ignorance. In order to express precisely his concept of anxiety, Lucretius joins in a sort of hendiadys the Latin word for “cares” and the word for “fear” to produce the phrase, cura metusque (2.19, 48).50 The state of malaise is associated with, or perhaps interpreted as, ordinary fear. Again, anxiety is related to the fear of death (2.44–46): 49 William 1907, followed by Chilton 1967 and Grilli 1960, supplied the verb ταρβῶμεν, “we tremble,” as the antithesis to φεύγωμεν, “we avoid.” Cf. Fowler 2002: 80: “These fears might more properly be called anxieties, since they have no real object but are caused by vain imaginings.” 50 Cf. Commager 1957: 106; Zonneveld 1959: 189: “Sterk geladen zijn vooral de verbindingen anxius angor, angore metuque, cura metuque.“

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his tibi tum rebus timefactae religiones effugiunt animo pavidae; mortisque timores tum vacuum pectus linquunt, curaque solutum? can it be that these experiences strike terror into your irrational notions, causing them to flee in panic from your mind? Can it be that the fears of death leave your breast disburdened and eased of care? (transl. Smith 2001: 36) But it should be clear that the fear of death, which is involved in anxiety, is not the same kind of affect as the fear of fire, to use Diogenes’ example. The expressions are syntactically similar (timor mortis, timor ignis), but we must recognize an important difference in meaning: our own death is not a real object of fear in the sense that fire is.51 51 For the basic argument, see Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 124–25, of which Principal Doctrine 2 is an abbreviated recapitulation. Putting the argument in its logical order (the reverse of Epicurus’ own), it begins with the proposition that our own death is never present to us, because so long as we exist, it is not, and when it is present, we are not (this argument derives from Aristotle De interpretatione 21a33; cf. Ackrill 1963: 103; Warren 2004: 17–19 distinguishes two separate arguments, one, represented by KD 2 and the beginning of ad Men. 124, based on the premise that what is dead cannot perceive, and hence that death cannot appear either good or bad, the other, in what follows in ad Men., predicated rather on the impossibility that “we” can be co-present with our own death; but “we,” that is, humans, are taken to be sentient beings, and so the two arguments are interdependent). Therefore, death as such causes no real disturbance, but rather an empty anguish (κενῶς λυπεῖ), and that by way of anticipation (προσδοκώμενον), i.e., in the form of fear. Accordingly, for anyone who understands the nature of death it holds no terrors. Consequently, there will be no irrational desire for immortality (ἀθανασίας πόθος), and one may enjoy this mortal life. Compare also ps.-Plato Axiochus 369 B-C: ἤκουσα δέ ποτε καὶ τοῦ Προδίκου λέγοντος ὅτι ὁ θάνατος οὔτε περὶ τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε περὶ τοὺς μετηλλαχότας. {ΑΞ.} Πῶς φῄς, ὦ Σώκρατες; {ΣΩ.} ῞Οτι περὶ μὲν τοὺς ζῶντας οὐκ ἔστιν, οἱ δὲ ἀποθανόντες οὐκ εἰσίν. ὥστε οὔτε περὶ σὲ νῦν ἐστίν—οὐ γὰρ τέθνηκας—οὔτε εἴ τι πάθοις, ἔσται περὶ σέ· σὺ γὰρ οὐκ ἔσῃ. μάταιος οὖν ἡ λύπη, περὶ τοῦ μήτε ὄντος μήτε ἐσο μένου περὶ ᾿Αξίοχον ᾿Αξίοχον ὀδύρεσθαι (“I once heard Prodicus say that death concerns neither the living nor the departed. [Axiochus]: What do you mean, Socrates? [Socrates]: I mean that, concerning the living, there is not death, whereas the dead are not. Thus, it does not concern you, for you are not dead, nor will it concern you, should you pass away, for you will not be. Therefore it is a vain distress for Axiochus to grieve over what neither does nor will concern Axiochus”). Several of Lucretius’ arguments against the fear of death in 3.830ff. have analogues in the Axiochus and in other consolatory literature (see Heinze 1897 ad loc. for details; Nussbaum 1994: 199), although Lucretius does not make explicit use of the reasoning indicated above.

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There is a parallel distinction between two kinds of anger in Philodemus’ treatise on this passion (see Chapter 1, pp. 22–24). Here, as we have seen, Philodemus differentiates between orgê, which is a response to intentional aggression on the part of another, and thumos, which he treats as an excessively intense version of the emotion. Orgê proper responds to specific acts; however, thumos, also called empty anger (kenê orgê), is based on a false belief about the stimulus, just as anxiety is caused by false or empty belief about the nature of the threatening object. In Lucretius’ ironic satire on the notion that wealth or power can provide security against death (2.37–53), the superstitious man objectifies his fears (religiones, 44), imagining that Fear itself will take fright at a display of arms and riches. But he can ward off nothing, because his anxiety has no real and avoidable object. His efforts to hold the threat at bay are thus futile and absurd (ridicula ludibriaque, 47). As Lucretius puts it in the proem to Book 6 (9–19): nam cum vidit hic ad victum quae flagitat usus 10 omnia iam ferme mortalibus esse parata et, proquam possent, vitam consistere tutam, divitiis homines et honore et laude potentis adfluere atque bona gnatorum excellere fama, nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia corda, 15 atque animi ingratis vitam vexare <sine ulla> pausa atque infestis cogi saevire querelis, intelligit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus quae collata foris et commoda cumque venirent. He saw that almost everything that necessity demands for subsistence had been already provided for mortals, and that their life was, so far as possible, established in security; he saw too that they possessed power, with wealth, honor, and glory, and took pride in the good reputation of their children; and yet he found that, notwithstanding this prosperity, all of them privately had hearts racked with anxiety which, contrary to their wish, tormented their lives without a pause, causing them to chafe and fret. Then

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he realized that the cause of the flaw was the vessel itself, which by its own flaw corrupted within it all things, even good things, that entered it from without. (trans. Smith 2001: 178) The attempt to achieve security against death and its attendant terrors through wealth and power is hopeless: against death there is no ultimate defense, as Epicurus said (Vatican Saying 31): Πρὸς μὲν τἆλλα δυνατὸν ἀσφάλειαν πορίσασθαι, χάριν δὲ θανάτου πάντες ἄνθρωποι πόλιν ἀτείχιστον οἰκοῦμεν. Against other things it is possible to provide security, but as for death, all we human beings live in an unwalled city. Irrational desires such as avarice and ambition may be regarded as extrapolations upon the natural and elementary human needs for sustenance and safety (cf. Lucretius 3.65ff. and pp. 46–47 above), but they are infinite and meaningless extrapolations, for the superstitious person seeks to protect himself, not against pain, which is justifiably avoided, or against objective threats to life, but against death itself, which is impossible. Thus, it is the source of irrational anxiety, which only reason (rationi’ potestas, 53), as Lucretius insists, is able to dispel. The fear of death, then, is a species of anxiety, the dread not of something that constitutes a real harm when it is present, but rather of something that is vaguely imagined to be an evil.52 Death is nothing to mortals (nil igitur mors est ad nos, 3.830); it is meaningless, in a certain sense, to

52 Segal 1990: 19 suggests that “Epicureanism appealed to Lucretius and his contemporaries not because it allayed fears of an afterlife but because it addressed the problem of anxiety, including the free-floating anxiety about pain and death.” But the element of punishment in Hades is essential to Epicurean doctrine. To fear pain and make efforts to avoid it is perfectly rational; it is imagining that we will experience pain when we are dead that is the source of irrational dread for Epicurus, and one of the main reasons why people entertain this false belief, which runs contrary to plain sense, is the idea that they will be punished in the afterlife. The mortality of the soul, and the indifference of the gods to human behavior, constitute a two-pronged attack on this erroneous expectation.

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speak of a “dead human being.”53 That people, in their ignorance, seek to reduce the anxiety they feel upon contemplating their condition when dead as though they were protecting themselves against objective dangers is the cause of the compulsive pursuit of wealth and power, compulsive because no amount of riches and authority can provide security or peace of mind in the presence of this empty belief. Only instruction in the truth, that is, in the teachings of Epicurus, can free people from dread and hence from irrational desires. To return to the introductory lines of the proem to Book 2: the images which, if taken metaphorically, showed that security is freedom from desire, also announced, when taken literally, that tranquillity truly dwells within the soul, for no security is sweeter or surer than the security of an instructed mind. That is, while the ship at sea was symbolic of commercial greed, and the battle lines symbolic of political ambition, nevertheless each was at the same time an image of physical security, and each yielded to the sweetness of that spiritual or mental security that is attained only through the teachings of the wise. The Epicurean doctrine that fear or, better, anxiety is the cause of unlimited desire marks a significant departure, I believe, from the views of Plato and Aristotle on immoderate passions such as avarice or ambition. Both Plato and Aristotle taught that in practice the virtue of moderation was acquired through habits developed by long and careful training or education, and conversely, a life dominated by excessive passions was the product of a bad or undisciplined upbringing.54 A doctrine concerning the nature of the soul—psychology in the ancient sense—explained whence immoderate passions arose. Plato, in Book 8 of the Republic, associates the ambition of the “timocratic man” with the predominance of the spirited part of the soul (548C5ff.), and avarice with 53 Cf. Heinze 1897: 36–37: “Beim Menschen also, dem τοιουτονὶ μόρφωμα μετ᾿ ἐμψυχίας (“this shape with soul” fr. 310), gehört die Empfindung zu den συμβεβηκότα [i.e., perception is one of the essential characteristics as opposed to accidental characteristics or συμπτώματα], denn wenn sie aufgehört hat, ist das μόρφωμα kein Mensch mehr.” Heinze’s review, in the Introduction to his commentary, of Epicurus’ psychology as it is developed in the Letter to Herodotus is still one of the most judicious accounts (Bailey seems not to have made use of it in his commentary). 54 See, e.g., Plato Republic 518–19; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2.1.

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the “appetitive part” (553C4ff.). But by this move desires limitless by nature are rendered innate in mortal beings: they must be subjected to rational control, but cannot be finally eliminated (whether the incorporeal soul has such ambitions and appetites is unclear). Plato in this passage suggests an allegorical explanation of acquisitiveness: souls without a spiritual component of gold and silver seek to accumulate the material metals in their place (547B2ff.). Indeed, no quantity of material wealth can compensate for a spiritual insufficiency. This kind of analysis, however, is essentially metaphysical.55 Aristotle, on the other hand, with brilliant insight discriminated the objects of specific and therefore limited desires such as clothing or shelter (what we might, following Marx, call use values) from exchange values—that is, the cash equivalent or commodified form of goods—which are the basis of unlimited and unnatural greed (Politics 1.9). The reason why the desire for money (that is, for things reduced to the intangible common denominator of exchange value, which is representable as a bare number) is unlimited is that value in this form is abstracted from concrete and natural needs (1.8, 1257b33–1258a14). But Aristotle does not explain why money should exert so compulsive an attraction upon the psyches of human beings.56 Epicurean psychology rejects the premise that certain desires are by nature unlimited, and must accordingly account in another way for cupidinous passions in the psyche. The Epicurean analysis, insofar as it may be extracted from the passages discussed above, rests ultimately on the supposition that death (or being dead) is nothing to human beings, but in fact it is universally feared. Against this anxious dread people 55 Plato describes erotic passion as unbounded (Republic 573–77), but does not offer a reason why this should be the case. As Jonathan Lear (1995: 70) observes: “It is as though there are omnivorous appetites that, in themselves, know no limit…. Unless there is some constraint—whether political or intrapsychic (like shame)—these desires will motivate unbounded consumption.” The desire for money and power are in this context pragmatically motivated, since they are the means by which to acquire the objects of erotic passion. 56 There is perhaps a hint of a reason at 1257b40ff.: αἴτιον δὲ ταύτης τῆς διαθέσεως τὸ σπουδάζειν περὶ τὸ ζῆν, αλλὰ μὴ τὸ εὖ ζῆν (“the reason for this disposition is a passion for living, as opposed to living well”). For the contrast between Aristotle’s “dialectical” approach to moral improvement and Epicurus’ therapeutic pyschology, see Nussbaum 1994: 102–115.

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seek material security. Such an image of security may perhaps provide a specious satisfaction, to the extent that it seems to allay fear, but it cannot offer real, uncontaminated pleasure (voluptas liquida puraque, 3.40) or tranquillity.57 Hence people erect ever higher the bastions of wealth and power, transcending all bounds of justice and nature, seeking vainly to protect themselves from a threat that does not exist, and from an anxiety that dwells within. The dynamic understanding of anxiety as a cause of inordinate desire is, I think, evident as well in a much-discussed passage in the proem to Book 3 (41–58): nam quod saepe homines morbos magis esse timendos infamemque ferunt vitam quam Tartara leti et se scire animi naturam sanguinis esse aut etiam venti, si fert ita forte voluntas, 45 nec prorsum quicquam nostrae rationis egere, hinc licet advertas animum magis omnia laudis iactari causa quam quod res ipsa probetur. extorres idem patria longeque fugati conspectu ex hominum, foedati crimine turpi, 50 omnibus aerumnis adfecti denique vivunt, et quocumque tamen miseri venere parentant et nigras mactant pecudes et manibu’ divis inferias mittunt multoque in rebus acerbis acrius advertunt animos ad religionem. 55 quo magis in dubiis hominem spectare periclis convenit adversisque in rebus noscere qui sit; nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo eliciuntur <et> eripitur persona, manet res. In the version of Smith (2001: 69): To be sure, people often claim that they dread illness or a life of infamy more than Tartarus and death, and that they know the 57 For a fuller discussion of pleasure, see Chapter 1, pp. 12–18, and below, pp. 74–77.

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mind to be composed of blood, or even of wind if that happens to catch their fancy; they claim too that they have absolutely no need of our philosophy. But you may see from what follows that all these claims are a display of bravado to win applause rather than prompted by true conviction. For the same people, though banished from their homeland, driven far from the sight of other human beings, branded with the stigma of some foul crime, and afflicted, in a word, with every kind of tribulation, continue to live. Wherever they bring their troubles, they offer sacrifices to their ancestors, immolate black victims, dispatch oblations to the infernal deities, and in their bitter plight turn their minds much more zealously to superstition. The lesson is this: it is advisable to appraise people in doubt and danger and to discover how they behave in adversity; for then and only then is the truth elicited from the bottom of their hearts: the mask is ripped off; the reality remains. Benjamin Farrington has questioned the traditional explication of these verses, according to which boasters who hypocritically proclaim their freedom from the fear of death nevertheless, when tested against misfortune such as exile and disgrace, reveal their superstitious anxiety by sacrificing to the spirits of the underworld. Farrington observes (1955: 10): “One would expect the poet to put the boasters on the deck of a sinking ship or in the forefront of the battle when the line is about to break. But nothing of the sort. The boasters are merely sent into banishment…. There is something feeble and inconsequential about the argument.“58 Farrington’s solution is to take persona (58) in the sense of “rank” or “station” rather than “mask.” The boasters, then, “are obviously of the class of nobiles engaged in the cursus honorum.” Their boasts are philosophically fashionable, but you may perceive their real nature “when you knock them off the fundamentum stabile (V 1121) they provided for themselves by wealth and power. Strip them of their social position and see what their 58 Farrington seems to overlook the ironic force of vivunt (50), which exposes, as Heinze (1897: 57 ad v. 48) points out, the hypocrisy with which the boasters affirm that the infamis vita (42) is to be feared more than death.

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philosophy amounts to. The mask is off and the truth revealed” (10–11).59 Farrington’s picture of sinking ships and battle lines perhaps involves a notion of last-minute fear and repentance not altogether relevant to the pagan world, but his point nevertheless seems sound. Lucretius’ exiles had vaunted their freedom from the fear of death and death’s torments. In exile, their anxiety, and their beliefs, become manifest in their homage to the shades of the departed, partly, of course, because the need for pretense is removed (conspectu ex hominum, 49).60 But the fear of death, formerly largely latent, now strongly asserts itself for two reasons. One is Farrington’s: the props of wealth and power are fallen (cf. 65ff. and pp. 45–46 above). The other is surely the fear of retribution in the afterlife which, alongside the terror of sheer extinction, is the major component of anxiety in Lucretius’ and Epicurus’ view. The fear of retribution, moreover, best explains the sacrifices as symptoms of the fear of death. A weakness in Farrington’s interpretation is that it does not take account of the reason why the nobiles find themselves in exile: they are foedati crimine turpi, “befouled by some vile charge.”61 Here we may perhaps see an allusion to the political chaos of mid-first-century Rome, with its crimes motivated by greed and ambition, the law manipulated as a weapon by political factions, and abrupt reversals and disgrace (think of Cicero’s exile in 58 b.c.). But whether or not Lucretius had the contemporary turmoil in mind, he has made the case that the selfdescribed materialists really do fear punishment not only by adducing their behavior once they find themselves in trouble (and far from the eyes of their peers), but also by alluding to the behavior that caused them to 59 The fundamentum stabile does not, as Farrington implies, represent real security in the passage in Lucretius; it is rather the unrealizable object of people driven by irrational fears and desires. 60 It must be anxiety or fear that is revealed, not just superstition in the modern sense of commitment to rituals in order to sway the gods. There is no point to the argument if the exiles sacrifice merely to obtain their recall to Rome, for example. Religio has the connotation of superstitious terror in Lucretius; cf. Bailey 1947 ad 1.63. 61 Ernout (Ernout and Robin 1962) compares 1.85 (the slaughter of Iphianassa): aram … turparunt sanguine foede (“they foully besmirch the altar”). There is no mention of turpe crimen in Polystratus’ otherwise similar refutation of unphilosophical pretensions to security from the fear of death in Περὶ ἀλόγου καταφρονήσεως (ed. Indelli 1978); cf. also Seneca Epistle 82.7. These and related passages are cited by Heinze 1897: 55–56 ad v. 41.

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be banished in the first place.62 These are just the people who have been driven to “encroach beyond the boundaries of right and sometimes” been “accomplices and abettors of crime” (transcendere finis iuris et interdum socios scelerum atque ministros)—actions “nourished in no small degree by dread of death” (non minimam partem mortis formidine aluntur, 3.60–61, 64). Lucretius takes it as given that such people are motivated to strive endlessly for wealth and power just because of anxiety; this is why he is certain that, once they are reduced to misery, they will reveal their true colors. The life they have been leading is precisely the kind that is driven by the fear of death, which is invariably at the root of ambition and the transgression of all decency. In exile, these boasters reveal the cause of their lawlessness. The mask is removed; what remains is the anxiety that had been denied and concealed. Anxiety over death creates limitless desire. The question naturally arises, what causes and sustains this anxiety?63 There is a certain insufficiency in the usual answer, that superstition is simply the product of ignorance, and more particularly, ignorance of Epicurean doctrine concerning the material nature of the universe and the mortality of the soul, first of all because human beings in primitive times were apparently free, on Lucretius’ own account, from such anxiety (see below, pp. 86–88), and second—and more important—because this answer does not explain why the fear of death is so persistent in the face of philosophy and the fashionable skepticism about the afterlife, testified to by Lucretius in the passage cited above and confirmed by Cicero, Plutarch, and others who thought to refute Epicureanism by dismissing stories about the punishments in Hades as children’s fables in which no intelligent adult believed (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.6.10, 1.21.48; Plutarch Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum 10, 1093A, 26, 1104C, etc.; cf. Segal 1990: 14–19). The Epicurean position is a hard one: all human beings, except for those proficient in Epicurean philosophy, are wretched because they harbor deep anxieties, whether dissembled or, perhaps, unconscious (that the Epicureans had no notion of unconscious 62 Cf. Kenney 1971: 81 ad 48–86: “It is worth remembering also that Epicurus himself had endured exile.” 63 I am concerned here with the immediate psychological cause of anxiety—punitive retribution in the afterlife—and not with the general nature of irrational fear, which is discussed below in Chapters 3 and 4.

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motives in the modern sense is argued forcefully by Gladman and Mitsis 1997).64 We may recall Nancy Sherman’s challenge, quoted in Chapter 1, to the “intellectualist approach” to emotion characteristic of Aristotle and of classical philosophy generally, which fails to explain “why some emotions don’t reform at the beck and call of reason,” that is, “why doesn’t rational discourse undo irrational emotions?” (2000: 156). We have now seen that irrational desires for wealth or power are driven by fear of death. But given Epicureanism’s unique emphasis on irrational fear (as opposed, for example, to submission to the senses and lower appetites, or acquired disposition, or want of discipline) as the reason for human misery, excessive desire, and injustice, it is crucial to account for the persistence or reproduction of this fear itself, in spite of strong arguments and self-professed beliefs to the contrary. I argue in what follows that the Epicureans did indeed have a response to this question, and that it is to be found, at least in a rough form, in the socalled allegorical explanation, at the end of Book 3, of the mythological torments of the underworld, which was, I suggest, a traditional and well-known feature of Epicurean doctrine. As the passage extends for nearly 50 lines (978–1023), I quote just the introductory and concluding verses, which contain the essence of it: 978 atque ea nimirum quaecumque Acherunte profundo prodita sunt esse, in vita sunt omnia nobis. 1013 qui neque sunt usquam nec possunt esse profecto. sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis 1015 est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luella, carcer et horribilis de saxo iactu’ deorsum, verbera carnifices robur pix lammina taedae; 64 Cf. Cicero De finibus 1.18.59: nec vero quisquam stultus non horum morborum aliquo laborat; nemo igitur est non miser (“nor indeed is there any foolish person who does not suffer from one of these diseases; thus, there is no one who is not wretched”). It is perhaps worth observing that Cicero’s frequent remarks to the effect that the Epicureans greatly exaggerate the significance of the fear of death (cf. Bailey 1947: 2.994) proves that this emphasis was not an innovation or quirk of Lucretius; cf. Puliga 1983: 238: “La massiccia presenza di termini quali φόβος, φοβεῖν, φοβερός nell’opera superstite di Epicuro … ci testimonia l’esigenza essenziale e primaria di scongiurare … ogni paura annidata nell’anima umana.”

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quae tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia factis praemetuens adhibet stimulos torretque flagellis 1020 nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum possit nec quae sit poenarum denique finis atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant. hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.65 Next let me assure you that all the punishments that tradition locates in the abysm of Acheron actually exist in our life. These terrors do not exist and cannot exist anywhere at all. But in life people are tortured by a fear of punishment as cruel as their crimes, and by the atonement for their offenses—the dungeon, the terrible precipitation from the Rock, stripes, executioners, the execution cell, pitch, red-hot plates, torches. Even though these horrors are absent, the mind, conscious of its guilt and fearfully anticipating the consequences, pricks itself with goads and sears itself with scourges. It fails to see how there can be an end to its affliction, or a limit to punishment; indeed it is afraid that its sufferings may increase in death. In short, fools make a veritable hell of their lives on earth. (trans. Smith 2001: 94–96) There are two separate arguments here. Benjamin Farrington (1955: 7) has a comment that applies specifically to the first. He begins by observing that “Fear of hell was countered by a two-fold argument. First … atomic physics disproved the possibility of Acheron and its victims.” Farrington then turns to the passage under discussion: “In the second place there was a sociological argument … which aimed to show that Acheron was an illusion of a corrupt society, being nothing but the projection of an imagined afterlife of the hell fools had actually made of their life on earth.” Lucretius’ account here is better described as psychological rather than sociological (he in fact has an independent sociological or anthropological analysis 65 I follow Bailey’s 1928 edition in positing a lacuna before 1013; in any case, qui should be taken to refer to all the mythological torments described in 980ff.

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of the origin of the fear of punishment in the afterlife, which I discuss in Chapter 3), but the important question that we must first address is: what is the status of this “allegorical” explanation in the Epicurean understanding of irrational fears? Richard Heinze (1897: 184) gave it none: It seems to me that the way Lucretius here treats punishments in Hades would not suit an Epicurean consolation. It is a step further to go from combatting fear to an allegorical interpretation of punishments as self-inflicted sufferings in this life, as Lucretius presents it. (wohl aber scheint mir die Art, wie L. hier die Hadesstrafen behandelt, in eine Epikureische Trostschrift nicht hineinzupassen. Es ist von der Bekämpfung der Furcht ein weiter Schritt zur allegorischen Deutung der Strafen auf die selbstverschuldeten Leiden dieses Lebens, wie sie L. gibt.) Franz Cumont, in a learned paper (1920), placed the source of the allegory in neo-Pythagorean doctrines developed in Alexandria, and Pierre Boyancé (1963: 180–81) also agreed that Lucretius, rather than Epicurus, was responsible for its adaptation to Epicureanism, although he traced the idea rather to the Hellenistic Academy: In reality, the true parallels with Lucretius are those offered above all by the texts of Philo the Jew. There, we find the same formulas as in De rerum natura, and first of all that the true Hell is the life of the wicked or foolish person. Misfortunes are precisely the result of the passions…. The only difference is that the passions are those not of Epicurean ethics but of Stoic ethics. (En réalité, les parallèles véritables avec Lucrèce sont ceux qu’offrent surtout des textes de Philon le Juif. Car là nous retrouvons les formules mêmes du De rerum natura et d’abord celle-ci que le véritable Enfer, c’est la vie du méchant ou de l’insensé. Les malheurs son très précisément ceux des passions…. La seule différence serait que les passions apparaissent non celles de l’éthique épicurienne, mais celles de l’éthique stoïcienne, 180.)

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Bailey (1947: 2.1158), on the other hand, was of the opinion that, “in spite of Heinze’s endeavour to show that it is un-Epicurean in thought,” there cannot be “much doubt that the allegorical interpretation of the legends is derived from Epicurus himself.”66 Bailey, seconded by Ernout and Robin in the second edition of their commentary (1962) and also by Paratore and Pizzani (1960), has in his favor the fact that Seneca (Letters 24.18: Epicuream cantilenam, “that old Epicurean song”) and Lactantius (Div. Inst. 7.7.13) explicitly name Epicurus in connection with this doctrine (contrary-minded critics discount this evidence).67 Certainly, allegoriza66 Gale 1994: 26–38 argues rightly that, for Lucretius, “allegorical exegesis … as traditionally practised … must be rejected, since it is based on the (false) assumption that the poets and myth-makers were either philosophers or else were turning the works of genuine philosophers into poetry” (31). But Lucretius’ explanation of how the idea of hell’s torments arose is not allegory in the traditional sense, for no intention is ascribed to the inventors of the tales, nor are they seen to convey a hidden meaning to be decoded by the audience. Lucretius is not interpreting the myths; he is accounting for the belief in them (for the distinction cf. Russell and Konstan 2005: xvii–xviii, Gale 1994: 40; note that Lucretius explicitly rejects the Euhemeristic explanation of the gods as deified benefactors of humanity, 5.1–54). Gale points out that in Book 5.1161–93 Lucretius “puts forward the view that myths were in origin misguided attempts to answer questions about the natural world” (32). In each case, the belief is inspired by perceived phenomena; as Gale says (32n.114), “It would not in fact be consistent with Epicurean theories of thought and perception to write off the entire corpus of myth as completely unrelated to the real world” (cf. 91: “the poets must have got their ideas from somewhere”). While Gale allows, however, that Lucretius employs allegory “in a more positive way” (37) in his interpretation of the mythic torments in Hades (already anticipated in Democritus fr. B 297 Diels-Kranz = D 162 Taylor; cf. Lactantius Div. Inst. 7.7.13), she finds it unlikely that Lucretius’ exegesis goes back to Epicurus (cf. 93–94). Although the matter cannot be decided conclusively, there remains the need for some such explanation to account for the fear itself, which plays so massive a role in Epicurean psychology; see below. 67 Segal 1990: 22 observes: “Such a displacement of anxiety from one area (physical suffering and the violation or annihilation of bodily integrity) to another (the afterlife) is in fact consistent with Epicurean psychology, as David Konstan has pointed out, for the Epicureans recognized the fear of the Underworld as a displaced form of fear in this life.” Smith 2001: 94 n. 68 takes a more cautious position: “It is not unlikely, though not certain, that Lucr. has derived from Epicurus himself the idea that the punishments alleged to exist in hell actually exist in our life.” See too Philodemus On Choices and Avoidances XX.6–7 (Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995: 97–98): κἂν ταῖς ἀποβολαῖς ταῖς χρημάτων ἀποταρταροῦνται (“people are tormented too by losses of money”). Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan comment (210): “The verb ἀποταρταροῦμαι is a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. Its primary meaning is that one is thrown into Tartarus where one suffers the torments of the Titans.” Cf. ταρτάρωσις and ταρταρόω in Philodemus De pietate p. 322.12 and 19.

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tion of this type was current before Epicurus. As Cumont (1920: 235) remarks: “We know from Plato that the Pythagoreans in his time had already interpreted the myth of the Danaids carrying water in a sieve, which empties as quickly as it is filled, as an emblem of insatiable souls which, abandoning themselves to limitless desires, are never sated with pleasure” (“Nous savons par Platon que les Pythagoriciens de son temps interprétaient déjà le mythe des Danaïdes portant l’eau dans un crible, qui se vide à mesure qu’on le remplit, comme un emblème des âmes insatiables qui, s’abandonnant à des désirs sans frein, ne sont jamais repues de jouissances”; cf. Plato Gorgias 493B, ps.-Plato Axiochus 371E). There is some evidence that Epicurus himself took an interest in allegory. At all events, Diogenes Laertius (10.2) records this story about Epicurus’ youth: ᾿Απολλόδωρος δ᾿ ὁ ᾿Επικούρειος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ τοῦ ᾿Επικούρου βίου φησὶν ἐλθεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίαν καταγνόντα τῶν γραμματιστῶν ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἐδυνήθησαν ἑρμηνεῦσαι αὐτῷ τὰ περὶ τοῦ παρ᾿ ῾Ησιόδῳ χάους (“The Epicurean Apollodorus [head of the school in the 2nd century b.c.], in Book 1 of his On the Life of Epicurus, says that Epicurus took up philosophy out of contempt for his school teachers, when they were unable to interpret for him the passage in Hesiod concerning chaos”; cf. Theogony 116, 123). It is possible that Epicurus simply asked: “What, then, preceeded Chaos?”, and went off in a huff when they couldn’t reply (cf. Obbink 1995: 189–90; also Laks 1976: 36–38). But this scenario does not quite correspond to the use of the term ἑρμηνεῦσαι (“interpret”), and even if Epicurus already believed that Chaos could not have arisen out of nothing, he need not have objected to the idea that a random flux of some sort had always existed (Hesiod’s term γένετο, 116, need not mean “was born”). But Epicurus might have sought or expected a different kind of meaning in Hesiod’s description of Chaos, prompted, perhaps, by early allegorical explications of Homer and Hesiod, which had been flourishing since the late sixth century b.c. (see Ramelli 2004: 49–78; Struck 2004: 77–110; Russell and Konstan 2005: xiii–xv). Needless to say, Epicurus’ own approach, at least in his mature years, to rationalizing the stories purveyed by poets will have differed from the Stoic type of allegorizing, The idea that desires in this life are models for the torments of Hades thus has good Epicurean credentials.

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for example, in which names of gods are treated as symbols of natural elements such as air, earth, fire and water (see Ramelli 2004: 79–145, with full bibliography; in particular, 106–22 on the names of the gods); indeed, Philodemus indicates that Epicurus explicitly rejected the technique of associating the gods with things in this world by “transposing the letters of their names” (παραγραμμίζ[ουσι] τὰ τῶν θεῶν [ὀνόμα]τα, On Piety 534–36 Obbink), e.g., by understanding the name Hera (῾´Ηρα) to signify air (ἀήρ).68 He will have preferred to explain rather how the myths came into being as a result of false interpretations derived from evidence of the senses but contaminated by the addition of belief—just as he did in respect to popular ideas of the nature of the gods, in the twelfth book of his On Nature (cited by Philodemus On Piety 225–31 Obbink).69 That he would have offered some such explanation of beliefs concerning Hades is, then, in itself no cause for surprise. A third reason for taking Bailey’s, and Farrington’s, part in this question emerges from a closer examination of the function of this allegorizing interpretation of the underworld in the Epicurean system. In answer to this question of the role of the argument, Boyancé (1963: 181) observes: 68 For full discussion of Philodemus’ rejection of the Stoic style of allegorizing in the second part of De pietate, see Obbink 2002: 203–09, with special reference to lines 360–62 (text and translation on 206–07). Whether Lucretius was responding to the Stoics remains controversial; for his direct dependency on Epicurus, and hence the absence of allusions to Stoic doctrine, see Furley 1989; Sedley 1998; contra (e.g.), Gigandet 1998: 63–69, 81–87, 386–92. 69 Cf. Clay 1983: 49, who explains Epicurus’ view of myths as “the constructs the mind adds to its real experience: what Epicurus would call προσδοξαζόμενα.” Contrast Gale 1994: 129, who argues that the theory of myth is “one area in which we can be virtually certain that the poet is not in complete accord with Epicurus”; Ackermann 1979: 103: “Epikur und seine Schüler lehnten eine Allegorese des Mythos ab, weil sie auch gegen die Mythen schlechthin skeptisch waren…. Lukrez ihre Meinung nicht ganz teilte—er hat oft zur Allegorisierung des Mythos gegriffen” (cf. 216). The point is, however, that for Lucretius as much as for Epicurus allegory, or beliefs based on symbolic analogies, was a source of popular error that demanded to be exposed. For a survey of views concerning Lucretius’ use of myth, see Gale 1994: 1–5; for Lucretius’ own attitude to allegory, 26–50. For the multiple ways in which Lucretius deploys myths in his poem, see Gigandet 1998: 14–20. For the debate on the nature of the gods according to Epicurus, and whether they are materially existing entities or psychological projections, see Kany-Turpin 2007; Sedley 2009 (projections); Konstan 2009 (really existing); further bibliography in Chapter 3 n. 51.

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“Sans doute parce qu’elle lui a paru rendre raison de la naissance des mythes, expliquer comment les hommes ont pu se laisser égarer par eux. Cela comporte évidemment qu’une certaine vérité leur est reconnue.” This, it seems to me, is on the right track. Greek myths concerning punishment in the underworld have most of them in common some perpetual activity doomed forever to frustration. How, Lucretius seems to inquire, might such a picture have arisen in the minds of human beings? I find it difficult to suppose that Epicurus altogether ignored a question so central to his philosophy; indeed, we now know that Philodemus too referred to the punishment of the Danaids in connection with the fear of punishment in the afterlife, in his treatise On the Gods (fr. A6, in Kleve 1996: 674). The only answer consistent with Epicureanism, moreover, would seem to be the one Lucretius offers, that the picture of Hades is an image of life in this world. In particular, it is an image of the life of limitless or irrational desire, which afflicts all but the wise. It will have been generated by simulacra of such endless, hopeless, and constantly thwarted activity, which are misrecognized as pertaining to the underworld; some belief in a life after death will already have been current among human beings, presumably deriving, as Lucretius explains in Book 4.757–67, from dreams in which dead people, thanks to residual simulacra of them in the atmosphere, seem still to exist and move about. Those dreams by themselves, however, would not necessarily have led to the idea that people were punished or tormented after their death, nor, more particularly, that the punishments would assume the specific form of endlessly repetitive and vain actions, such as those of Tityos, Icarus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, the Danaids, and the rest who populate Hades. To account for these myths, there was good reason for Epicurus to adopt an allegorical, or rather pseudo-allegorical explanation of the sort that Cumont describes, since, for Epicurus, all mental pictures are derived from real simulacra.70 70 Cf. Letter to Herodotus 50. It may be relevant here to compare Lucretius’ views on allegory as expressed in connection with his rationalization of the myth of the Magna Mater (2.600–660). In the concluding verses of this passage, Lucretius condones the use of at least a poetical metonymy: “dum vera re tamen ipse/ religione animum turpi contingere parcat” (“provided that in fact one not stain one’s mind with foul superstition,” 659–60). To be sure, he is interested to represent ancient myths as anticipations of the

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If, despite the allegorical form of the argument, its Epicurean credentials are secure, its consequences are important for our understanding of Epicureanism. The concrete picture of retribution in the afterlife is a projection from lives beset by cupidines or excessive desires. A major component of the fear of death will thus rest upon irrational desire and its reflection. But irrational desire was itself explained as resulting from anxiety over death and punishment. I shall return to this reciprocal or circular relationship between irrational fears and desires after a brief analyis of the second argument contained in our passage, this one more specific to the school of the atomists and going back to Democritus. The second argument, which comes at the conclusion of the passage (1014–23), explains the idea of punishment in the afterlife as anticipated retribution for misdeeds in this world. Lucretius’ formulation of the notion raises a problem, perhaps, that is not present in Democritus’ description. Democritus writes (fr. 297 Diels-Kranz, cited by Bailey 1947: 1158): ἔνιοι θνητῆς φύσεως διάλυσιν οὐκ εἰδότες ἄνθρωποι, συνειδήσει δὲ τῆς ἐν τῶι βίωι κακοπραγμοσύνης, τὸν τῆς βιοτῆς χρόνον ἐν ταραχαῖς καὶ φόβοις ταλαιπωρέουσι, ψεύδεα περὶ τοῦ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν μυθοπλαστέοντες χρόνου. In the translation of Taylor (1999: 51): true doctrine of Epicurus. But why should the “ancient learned poets of Greece” have had intimations of this teaching? The view was a commonplace as early as the Stoics, who held that only the sage could be a poet (SVF 3.654 = Stobaeus 2.61.13 W.; cf. Strabo 1.2.3). Sometimes, the oldest poets were imagined to be particularly close to the fount of original wisdom, which later became corrupted; for discussion of the wisdom of the poets, see especially Ramelli 2004: 123–40; Struck 2004: 118–41. Epicurus, believing that one must hew to the “primary” or “first” (prôtos) meanings of words, could have entertained such a view. It is clear, in any case, that for the Epicureans myths must in some way be derived from an image of events occuring in nature. It was not the program of the Epicureans simply to deny such tales, since everything that is imagined has some basis in reality. Schrijvers 1970: 50–60 suggests that Lucretius here defends his use of poetic expressions in the exposition of Epicurean doctrines; this may be correct, but it does not adequately account for the inclusion in the poem of the Magna Mater passage itself, which is what the concluding lines are intended to explain. See too Gigandet 1997: 213 for Lucretius’ use of a “méthode tout à fait étrangère à celle de l’allégorie.”

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Some people, ignorant of the dissolution of mortal nature, but conscious of their evil-doing in life, trouble their time of life with terrors and fears, inventing false tales about the time after death. For Democritus, it is only some people, those who have in fact been guilty of some transgression, who trouble their lives with fear of future retribution. In Lucretius’ version, it would seem, the vast majority of mankind (the stulti of line 1023) have a sense of guilt for deeds done (mens sibi conscia factis, 1018). Why this should be so it is difficult to say, except that all who are victims of irrational fear and desire are, for the Epicureans, at least potential transgressors of right. This is the burden of Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 5, rendered by Cicero, De finibus 1.18.57, as follows: Clamat Epicurus, is, quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse iucunde vivi, nisi sapienter, honeste iusteque vivatur, nec sapienter, honeste, iuste, nisi iucunde. Epicurus cries out—he whom you pronounce overly devoted to pleasures—that it is not possible to live pleasantly, unless one lives prudently, honestly and justly, nor prudently, honestly, and justly unless pleasantly. What seems clear, at least, is that this second argument too locates the source of anxiety over death and punishment in behavior which, according to standard Epicurean doctrine, is consequent upon unlimited and irrational desire, and the image of hell once more is interpreted as a projection of circumstances in this life.71 Lucretius’ argument, or rather closely integrated pair of arguments, thus furnishes the answer to a crucial question in Epicureanism: how 71 Compare the Freudian idea of how guilt functions, as summarized by Dodds 1951: 47: “The psychologists have taught us how potent a source of guilt-feelings is the pressure of unacknowledged desires.” Dodds’ distinction between shame cultures and guilt cultures, borrowed from the work of Ruth Benedict, is no longer compelling as a description of Greek moral values, but Epicurus’ focus on unacknowledged fears and desires does anticipate certain aspects of the modern idea of guilt; see Konstan 2006c: 91–110.

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the fear of punishment after death is perpetuated in people’s minds. The verses contain, on this interpretation, an important fragment of Epicurean doctrine, according to which anxiety over death is, to a large degree, a product or projection of the life of irrational and limitless desires in this world.72 Human feelings and behavior generate the fear of Tartarus. In turn, however, it is the terror of death and the afterlife that, as we have seen, are in great measure responsible for irrational desires. Between the irrational fears and desires there seems, then, to be a certain interdependence. This interdependence is, of course, natural enough in Epicureanism. Irrational fears and desires have in common the fact that their objects are vain or misperceived (see below, pp. 73–77). The terror at empty images of retribution drives people to pursue limitless wealth and power as the way to achieve an impossible security against death. Conversely, this ever-frustrated striving contributes to the creation of the popular image of Hades as a place of punishment. Irrational fears and desires thus go hand in hand, both of them species of empty anticipation. This mutuality of anxiety and inordinate desire raises, however, certain questions: how do such fears and desires arise historically? how are they accounted for by the Epicurean theory of knowledge and the soul? and finally, how can one escape from what seems to be a vicious circle of passions? These questions will occupy the next two chapters. I conclude the present chapter with a discussion of one passion in particular that we have not so far addressed, that is, Lucretius’ account of obssessive love or amor. This passion too, for Epicureanism, turns out to be based on a kind of epistemological error, predicated on vain or empty beliefs about the nature of the object desired. Lucretius’ account of amor (4.1091–1104), the third great passion which, along with avarice and ambition, infects the souls of human beings, brings out well the nature of such irrational passions: 72 Here I disagree with Rumpf 2003: 202–07 and passim, who argues that Lucretius’ poem introduces a new perspective on problems of life, death, and the self; cf. 241: “Die zweckhaft angelegte Physislehre des Epikureismus tritt in einen neuen Bezugsrahmen, denn De rerum natura erschliesst gegenüber der nur furchtabweisenden und insofern ‘negativen’ Naturlehre des Epikur eine ganz andersartige Dimension von Erkenntnis.” I do not doubt, however, that Lucretius the poet has enriched Epicurean doctrine with subtle pyschological nuances.

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nam cibus atque umor membris assumitur intus; quae quoniam certas possunt obsidere partis, hoc facile expletur laticum frugumque cupido. ex hominis vero facie pulchroque colore 1095 nil datur in corpus praeter simulacra fruendum tenvia; quae vento spes raptast saepe misella. ut bibere in somnis sitiens cum quaerit et umor non datur, ardorem qui membris stinguere possit, sed laticum simulacra petit frustraque laborat 1100 in medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans, sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris possunt errantes incerti corpore toto. In Smith’s translation (2001: 129–30): Food and drink are taken into our body and, since they are able to occupy fixed parts, easily assuage our hunger and thirst. But from the fair face and complexion of a human being nothing passes into the body for enjoyment except impalpable images, a sorry hope often snatched away by the wind. Just like thirsty people who in dreams desire to drink and, instead of obtaining water to quench the fire that consumes their limbs, with vain effort pursue images of water and remain thirsty, though they drink in the midst of a torrent stream, so, in love, lovers are deluded by Venus with images: no matter how intently they gaze at the beloved body, they cannot sate their eyes; nor can they remove anything from the velvety limbs that they explore with roving, uncertain hands. There is a passage in Bailey’s The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (1928: 491) which reads like a commentary on these lines, although Bailey does not cite them here: Desire may arise in two ways: it may in the first place have a purely corporeal origin: the waste caused by bodily effort or

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merely by the natural processes of life results in a loss of material: consequent upon this comes a movement of pain due to want (τὸ ἀλγοῦν κατ᾿ ἔνδειαν): this pain calls up the image of its satisfaction and that in turn produces the painful movement of desire. Then, if the means of satisfying the desire is within our attainment, there follows another movement accompanying the process of satisfaction: this movement (κίνησις) is a kind of pleasure. As the result of the completion of the process there ensues a second kind of pleasure (ἡδονὴ καταστηματική), the static pleasure of the equilibrium (εὐστάθεια) or freedom from pain (ἀπονία) which the body now enjoys. But the image of desire may also be presented to the mind without the antecedent process of loss and pain due to want, as in the case of gluttony or the social desires of ambition and so on; the desire is in this case also in itself painful and satisfaction is attended with the pleasure of movement, but, as it was not originally caused by the pain of want due to loss, it was a gratuitous upsetting of the pleasure of equilibrium. I do not know how Bailey arrived at the opinion that pain due to want first evokes “the image of its satisfaction” (is this the same as “the image of desire”?), which image then produces desire. On the testimony of Lucretius, at any rate, it is safe to say that the desire for food or water (laticum frugumque cupido, 1093) may be sated by drinking or eating the appropriate substances, while obsessive love is an insatiable appetite since it feeds on insubstantial images (simulacra fruendum tenvia, 1095–96), which can no more abate desire than the dream-images of water (laticum simulacra, 1099) can slake real thirst (sitiens, 1097, is a substantive, as Ernout points out, and does not of course refer to dreamed-of thirst; cf. Brown 1987: 236–37). It is not that certain simulacra arouse limitless desire; rather, desires are limitless when they feed on simulacra.73 Shortly before the discussion of amor which concludes Book 4 of De rerum natura, there is a passage (4.870–76) in which Lucretius explains 73 For the connection between simulacra, dreams, and love, see Brown 1987: 71–76, 82–87.

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thirst as the consequence of excessive heat within the stomach (calor amplius aridus): 870 875

umor item discedit in omnia quae loca cumque poscunt umorem; glomerataque multa vaporis corpora, quae stomacho praebent incendia nostro, dissipat adveniens liquor ac restinguit ut ignem, urere ne possit calor amplius aridus artus. sic igitur tibi anhela sitis de corpore nostro abluitur, sic expletur ieiuna cupido.

Similarly fluid is channeled into all the parts of the body that require fluid. The numerous particles of heat, whose accumulation causes a burning in the stomach, are dispersed and quenched, like a fire, on the arrival of the moisture, so that the parching heat can no longer consume the frame. In this way, then, our body’s panting thirst is swilled away, and the craving of hunger satisfied. (trans. Smith 2001: 123–24) From the immediately preceding discussion of hunger (858–69) we know the process that ensues: the imbalance in the body gives rise to pain (dolor, 866) which is accompanied by or experienced as a desire for food (amorem edendi, 869).74 The excessive heat in the case of thirst may be cooled by liquids (quae incendia dissipat adveniens liquor ac restinguit ut ignem; Lucretius is probably thinking of the dissipation of heat atoms). This is an example of the satisfaction of a perfectly natural need, but it bears an interesting resemblance to the language in which Lucretius describes the immoderate passion of amor which in Lucretius, and in literature of the Roman republic generally, often had the sense of a mad and limitless desire or obsessive love.75 Lovers 74 There is a resemblance here to Plato Philebus 34D-35E, as Robin points out (Ernout and Robin 1962: 2.264); cf. also Schrijvers 1970: 281–82, where the discussion of hunger is described, in accord with Schrijvers’ theory of Lucretius’ poetic technique, as a preparation for the analysis of amor. 75 On amor in Roman literature of the period, see Allen 1950: 261–64; Caston 2006. Whereas Greek distinguished between philia, that is, the love that obtains between

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seek, in Lucretius’ words, to extinguish the fires of passion’s ardor (4.1086–87): namque in eo [sc. amore] spes est, unde est ardoris origo, restingui quoque posse ab eodem corpore flammam. For the hope is that the same body that kindled the burning passion can also extinguish the flame. (trans. Smith 2001: 129) But there is no liquid to extinguish this heat. In a subtle and characteristic play on words, Lucretius suggests that the frenzied embraces prompted by amor cannot, like cooling water (umor), slake the desire of love.76 Indeed, these embraces do more to hurt (laedere, 1082) than to give pleasure. This word-play, and also the collocation of the passages concerning hunger and thirst on the one hand, and amor on the other, are significant.77 Irrational passions, unlike natural needs, have an unreal or misperceived object, an empty simulacrum, and therefore cannot be allayed by consuming, as thirst and hunger can.78 These vain desires are extrapolations upon or analogous to real needs, but rest, in some way, upon a false opinion. Thus Epicurus says in Vatican Saying 59: ῎Απληστον οὐ γαστήρ, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοί φασιν, ἀλλ᾿ ἡ δόξα ψευδὴς ὑπὲρ τοῦ ‹τῆς› γαστρὸς ἀορίστου πληρώματος.

friends or members of a family, and the passionate desire of erôs, the Latin amor might represent both (amor fraternus, for example, would render the Greek philia, not erôs). In erotic literature, however, amor regularly corresponds to erôs. See Flacelière 1954; full discussion in Brown 1987: 111–18. 76 Friedländer 1941: 18 notes the pun on amor/umor but in a different connection. 77 Older editions (including Bailey 1928) bracket 858–76, and neither Robin’s defense of it (Ernout and Robin 1962: 2.264–65), criticized by Bailey 1947: 2.1285, nor Bailey’s excuse of it are very convincing. I believe the connection to its context is that suggested above; cf. Brown 1987: 32–33, who concludes that “the passage is not quite so detached from the main themes of Book Four as it initially appears.” 78 Perhaps simulacra at 2.41 too has an overtone of “empty images,” which would suit the context as I have interpreted it above (p. 44 and n. 41); this would make easier the words late vagari in 43a.

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The stomach is not something unfillable, as the masses think, but rather it is false opinion concerning the limitless filling of the stomach. I conclude this chapter with a brief examination of the idea of false opinion. Epicurus seems to have coined a term for empty opinion or imagination in the word κενοδοξία.79 Thus, Epicurus writes in Principal Doctrine 30: ᾿Εν αἷς τῶν φυσικῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν μὴ ἐπ᾿ ἀλγοῦν δὲ ἐπαναγουσῶν ἐὰν μὴ συντελεσθῶσιν, ὑπάρχει ἡ σπουδὴ σύντονος, παρὰ κενὴν δόξαν αὗται γίνονται, καὶ οὐ παρὰ τὴν ἑαυτῶν φύσιν οὐ διαχέονται ἀλλὰ παρὰ τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κενοδοξίαν (for translation, see below). And again, in 15: ῾Ο τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος καὶ ὥρισται καὶ εὐπόριστός ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει. Wealth deriving from our nature is both limited and easily provided, but that deriving from empty beliefs tends to infinity. Another instance is 29: Τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι φυσικαὶ καὶ ‹ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ φυσικαὶ καὶ› οὐκ ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ οὔτε φυσικαὶ οὔτε ἀναγκαῖαι, ἀλλὰ παρὰ κενὴν δόξαν γινόμεναι. Of desires some are natural and not necessary, and some are neither natural nor necessary, but arise through empty belief.

79 It occurs in one of the Hippocratic Letters (17), but these are late; nearer to Epicurus’ own time is Polybius Histories (three times, plus three related forms); it is also the title of a work (Hypomnêmata peri kenodoxias) by Aristo of Chios (Diogenes Laertius 7.163).

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The idea of empty belief was philosophically controversial. Plato was long perplexed by the problem, and, in the Theaetetus (198B12ff.), suggested as an explanation of error mistaken or crossed belief, ἀλλοδοξία (cf. ἑτεροδοξία, 193D2), to which κενοδοξία sounds, indeed, like a polemical or at least deliberate rejoinder. The doctrine of empty belief (κενοδοξία) was percieved to have problematic implications analogous to those accompanying the notion of empty space (τὸ κενόν), as Plato had argued (Theaetetus 188Cff.; cf. Sophist 240Cff.). The basis and nature of false belief are epistemological questions, which will be examined further in Chapter 4. But it is worth inquiring whether desires due to empty imagination can be satisfied, and their satisfaction attended by real pleasure. According to Bailey, as we have seen in the passage quoted above (pp. 69–70), there is a real kinetic pleasure in the satisfaction of inordinate desires such as gluttony and ambition. Now, limitless desires, as we have seen, cannot be fulfilled or satisfied. But can the attempt to satisfy them afford some kind of pleasure? Unfortunately, the sources do not permit certainty on this matter, but Bailey’s translation (1926: 103) of Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 30 would certainly suggest an affirmative answer: Wherever in the case of desires which are physical, but do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not fulfilled, the effort is intense, such pleasures are due to idle imagination, and it is not owing to their own nature that they fail to be dispelled, but owing to the empty imaginings of the man.80 However, the word “pleasures” does not appear in the Greek text, and the demonstrative pronoun αὗται surely refers, not to pleasures, but to desires (ἐπιθυμίαι). I am not sure that I understand Bailey’s interpretation; in any case, the following is a more natural reading of the text: Those natural desires not leading to pain if they are not fulfilled, and in which there is an intense strain, arise because 80 Cf. Bailey 1926: 368, which anticipates the ideas in Bailey 1928, quoted above.

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of empty belief, and are not dissolved, not because of their own nature, but because of the empty belief of the person.81 There is nothing here about fulfillment of or pleasure in empty desire. Lucretius’ evidence on this point is more helpful. He is clear that obsessive love cannot produce “pure pleasure” (the pura voluptas of 4.1081; cf. also 1075 and 3.40). The problem is, how are we to understand “impure” pleasure? Benjamin Farrington (1952: 27) has suggested that impure pleasure is indeed a species of voluptas, but a bad or violent kind; non pura (1081), on this account, is used pejoratively to stigmatize such pleasure. It is far more likely, however, that “impure” is used in the sense of “mixed” in this connection. The idea of mixed pleasures goes back to Plato’s Philebus (44–47) where one of its meanings, later picked up in Aristotle’s Ethics (7.14), has reference to things like itches, where the pleasure of relief is bound up the painfulness of the condition.82 This sense superficially accords with Lucretius, who emphasizes the pain and violence of amor (4.1079–83). In fact, however, it is another passage in the Philebus (32B-36C) which is more likely the source for the Epicurean doctrine. Here Plato distinguishes between actual or present pleasures and pains and the anticipation of these affects. Ian Hackforth (1945: 61) summarizes the position in this way: A second kind of pleasures and pains are those consisting in anticipation of the first kind…. Such pleasures often occur

81 Compare the translation of Arrighetti 1973: 130 “Fra quei desideri che se non vengono soddisfatti non comportano dolore corporeo quelli in cui intensa è la passione provengono da vuote opinioni, e non per la loro natura sono difficili a dissiparsi, ma per le stolte credenze degli uomini.” There is a kind of desire not leading to pain when not fulfilled, such as a desire for pleasant odors, which, though natural, is not necessary. These are not accompanied by an “intense strain,” which appears here as the distinguishing mark of the unnatural desires involving empty belief. 82 On the relationship of Epicurus’ theory to that of Plato and Aristotle, cf. Brochard 1954: 260ff.

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simultaneously with actual present pain, thereby constituting one type of what are later called “mixed pleasures.”83 This discussion of anticipatory pleasures leads directly to an analysis of false pleasure in the Philebus. Here again I quote, for convencience, from Hackforth’s summary (1945: 69): Just as we call an opinion “not right” if it makes a mistake about the object opined, so we shall call a pleasure (or pain) “not right” if it involves a mistake about the object at which it is felt (περὶ τὸ ἐφ᾿ ᾧ λυπεῖται ἢ τοὐναντίον ἁμαρτάνουσαν, 37E).84 To return now to Lucretius: one component of the pleasure of amor is the genuine and present pleasure of sexual release (4.1084–85): sed leviter poenas frangit Venus inter amorem blandaque refrenat morsus admixta voluptas. But during the act of love Venus mitigates the lovers’ penalties, and the admixture of seductive pleasure curbs their bites. (trans. Smith 2001: 129) Lucretius also clearly refers, however, to the pleasure of anticipation (cf. voluptatem praesagit muta cupido, 1057; praesagit gaudia corpus, 1106). The clearest evidence is in a passage that has been partially quoted above (4.1084–88):

83 Frede 1993: xliv explains Plato’s argument as follows: “Further considerations show that it is not correct to equate even the simple pains and pleasures of hunger and eating only with emptying and refilling the organism. Memory and desire turn out to play an important role in these processes as well…. [H]unger always already contains the desire for the corresponding replenishment that we remember.” 84 Frede 1993: xliv–xlv explains that the “analysis of the complexity of pleasure and pain provides the basis for discovering the promised discrimination among different kinds of pleasures and identifying their different kinds of flaws. For if pleasures are always defined by their content, their intentional object, we can be mistaken about them in various ways. Therefore pleasures can be false.”

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sed leviter poenas frangit Venus inter amorem 1085 blandaque refrenat morsus admixta voluptas. namque in eo spes est, unde est ardoris origo, restingui quoque posse ab eodem corpore flammam. quod fieri contra totum natura repugnat. But during the act of love Venus mitigates the lovers’ penalties, and the admixture of seductive pleasure curbs their bites. For the hope is that the same body that kindled the burning passion can also extinguish the flame. However, nature objects that quite the reverse happens. (trans. Smith 2001: 129) This hope, however, is specious; it is snatched away by the wind, because it feeds on simulacra (quae vento spes raptast saepe misella, 1096).85 Impure pleasure, then, is compounded partly of sexual delight and partly of anticipated pleasure and the pain (dolorem, 1079) that comes from violently clutching at anticipated and unrealizable pleasure. I have attempted to show that, for the Epicureans, irrational fears are the cause, at least in part, of irrational desires such as greed and ambition, and that the life of immoderate desire, in turn, is projected onto an afterlife in the form of a falsely anticipated retribution, thus reinforcing anxiety. Irrational fears and desires alike are grounded in false beliefs and the avoidance or pursuit of simulacra. The question naturally arises, whence come the simulacra in the first place? What is the origin of the cycle of irrational fears and desires? The answer to these questions will occupy the third chapter, which treats the social theory of the Epicureans.

85 I follow here the reading adopted by Bailey in his 1928 edition, and rejected in the 1947 edition in favor of the reading of the mss. O and Q (so too Giussani, Diels, and Martin): quae vento spes raptat. Bailey admits (3.1307) that on the latter reading “the thought is certainly obscure and the construction of vento difficult” (he renders: “which vain hope tosses to the wind”), but concerning the reading of A and B (followed by Munro) he asks: “what is the hope? The immediate context suggests nothing and it can hardly be the spes of 1086.” Bailey evidently does not recognize the importance of anticipation in the explanation of false pleasures. For discussion of the crux, see Brown 1987: 234–35.

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Chapter 3

Social Theory

In a famous passage in Book 5 of De rerum natura, Lucretius compares the hazards faced by primitive men with the dangers that inhere in modern society (5.988–1010): nec nimio tum plus quam nunc mortalia saecla dulcia linquebant lamentis lumina vita. 990 unus enim tum quisque magis deprensus eorum pabula viva feris praebebat, dentibus haustus, et nemora ac montis gemitu silvasque replebat viva videns vivo sepeliri viscera busto. at quos effugium servarat corpore adeso, 995 posterius tremulas super ulcera taetra tenentes palmas horriferis accibant vocibus Orcum, donique eos vita privarant vermina saeva expertis opis, ignaros quid vulnera vellent. at non multa virum sub signis milia ducta 1000 una dies dabat exitio nec turbida ponti aequora lidebant navis ad saxa virosque. 1007 tum penuria deinde cibi languentia leto membra dabat, contra nunc rerum copia mersat. illi imprudentes ipsi sibi saepe venenum vergebant, nunc dant sollertius ipsi.

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In Smith‘s translation (2001: 163–64, modified): Mortal beings did not leave with lamentions the sweet light of life in greater numbers then than now. Then it more often happened that individuals were caught by wild beasts and provided them with living food for their teeth to tear, and filled the woods and mountains and forests with their shrieks as they saw their living flesh being buried in a living tomb. Others, who had escaped with their bodies part devoured, afterward pressed the palms of their quivering hands over hideous sores and called on Orcus with dreadful cries until they were robbed of life by agonizing pains, destitute of help and ignorant of what treatment their wounds wanted. But never in those times did a single day consign to destruction many thousands of men marching beneath military standards; never did the boisterous billows of the ocean dash ships and sailors upon the rocks…. Moreover, whereas in those times it was lack of food that consigned people‘s languid limbs to death, nowadays it is surfeit to which they succumb; and whereas in those times they often served poison to themselves unwittingly, nowadays they give it to others to make away with them more expertly. Around this passage there has arisen a considerable discussion about what Lucretius’ or the Epicurean view was concerning the primitive state of mankind, whether better or worse than the present condition. Primitive man plainly suffered from the want of technology, for example, and some scholars have concluded that Lucretius’ extensive account of the development of technical crafts, which includes the higher arts and culminates in philosophy itself, places the poet squarely in the camp of the progressivists, despite the fact that he sees and even “dwells on the darker side of the picture” (Taylor 1947: 194). But with the advance of technology, other critics have argued, emerged mankind’s violent and unnatural passions; primitive people were at the mercy of fortune  Smith reads, instead of with the Justine edition, nunc dant and renders: “nowadays they make away with themselves more expertly.” For discussion, see Campbell 2003: 252.

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but were not yet each others’ victims. “La vie des premiers hommes,” comments Robin (1962: 2.128), “toute misérable qu’elle peut être parfois, est du moins une vie naturelle et simple, voisine par conséquent de la vraie philosophie” (cf. Green 1942). History, then, is the record of the decline of mankind, although this “darker side” is no doubt relieved in part by the intellectual achievements of humanity, and especially by the philosophical discoveries of Epicurus. It might seem discreet to withhold judgment, allowing, with Lovejoy and Boas (1935: 239), that elements or strands of progressivism and of primitivism are to be found in Lucretius’ discussion, without assigning primacy to either. This solution, however, denies Epicureanism a systematic and coherent account of social history. But such an account was necessary for Epicurus’ doctrine, and a brief discussion of some of the reasons why may reveal in turn why “primitivism” and “progressivism” were likely to prove barren categories with which to clarify the issue. According to Epicureanism, like many other philosophies, human beings naturally have the capacity to lead fulfilled lives (that is, a τέλειος

 See also Merlan 1950, with a good bibliography of work to that time. Merlan attacks the unity of Book 5, and concludes that Lucretius was not at all concerned with the problem of progressivism or primitivism, but sought principally to show that technology developed without divine intervention. Further discussion in Borle 1962; Sasso 1979: 18–22; Bertoli 1980; Grilli 1995. See also Asmis 1996, who argues that Lucretius’ account of evolution is essentially a history of ideas, some of which (like Epicureanism itself) succeed in promoting human welfare while others do not. Gale 1994: 156–82 analyzes Lucretius’ account of cultural history as an example of “latent myth”: “While Lucretius’ Kulturgeschichte is strictly rationalistic, it is possible to detect underlying references to mythological accounts of human prehistory and the development of culture” (156). She makes it clear that Lucretius does not wish overly to glamorize the primitive age, since “For an Epicurean, paradise lies not in the past but (potentially) in the present” (161). Nevertheless, “Many of the features of Lucretius’ account of early man in 925ff. can be seen as rationalizations of aspects of the Golden Age myth” (164), e.g. men were tougher, nature was kinder, there was no agriculture, no “laws or states,” no sailing or war (165–67). Gale compares (167) Lucretius’ account to Dicaearchus’ Bios Hellados, as reported in Porphyry De abstinentia 4.1.2, where Dicaearchus accepts the rough picture of the reign of Cronus, but removes τὸ λίαν μυθικόν. But if Dicaearchus idealized the early age, Lucretius did not (168–69); “Technological progress,” she concludes, is “a deeply ambivalent affair in Lucretius’ eyes” (177).  The unity of Lucretius’ account should not be merely mechanical, as Jelenko 1936 maintains.

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βίος). For the Epicureans, specifically, this meant lives free of irrational fears and desires, so that people might securely enjoy the natural pleasures and freedom from bodily pain. In fact, however, people everywhere abandon pleasure and safety, driven by empty fears and false, limitless desires. Furthermore, the Epicureans did not ascribe blame for this corruption to some part of humanity’s natural psychology, such as the senses or the passions. Human beings in the natural state, indeed, do not practice the vices that are symptomatic of the irrational passions: there was no war or seafaring, as Lucretius tells us in the passage quoted above (cf. Chapter 2, pp. 64–65). This view of mankind, which is the basis for Epicurean optimism, makes it necessary to locate the source of the corruption of human nature somewhere in the process of cultural development. This is what gives the theory a certain primitivist aspect. At the same time, some degree of social organization and technological progress is needed to provide an essential minimum of security, and the Epicureans’ interest in the long and difficult struggle for the means of material and cultural welfare sets the progressivist tone. In what follows, I examine the social theory of the Epicureans chiefly to discover just when and how irrational fears and desires arose and became universal in the course of history, and shall be concerned with technological advances only insofar as they contribute to the formation and, perhaps, the elimination of these passions. Lucretius’ exposition of Epicurean social theory reflects an account originally worked out by Democritus, as Thomas Cole (1967; see especially the outline on page 26) has argued in a detailed and cogent defense of a thesis first advanced by Karl Reinhardt (1912). The influence of this theory may be traced also in Vitruvius, Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus, and the Byzantine commentator and erudite Tzetzes. All five accounts  For other systems, of course, the fulfilled life consisted in knowledge, virtue, faith, etc.  The senses, along with the feelings or pathê, were, according to Epicurus, the basis of all judgment (Letter to Herodotus 38, 82; see Chapter 1, p. 4). The Stoics, who also invoked social evolution to explain the currency of false opinion, seem nevertheless to have held that some false impressions are naturally persuasive; see Graver 2007: 154–58.  Sasso 1979: 63–69 calls attention to important differences between Lucretius’ account and the parallels in Diodorus and Tzetzes. Lucretius may have influenced, in turn, Juvenal’s fifteenth satire (132–59), as well as Lactantius’ description of social evolution in Institutiones Divinae 6 and Epitome 56; see Konstan 2001: 121–24.

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not only reproduce a substantially identical sequence of stages in social history; they also reveal an identical and rigorous method behind their speculative reconstruction of that history. As Cole explains (1967: 47): The most important and most characteristic feature of our five texts is to be found … in the importance which all of them assign to the individual technological advance, an advance which is always plausibly accounted for in terms of empiricist psychology as the result of accident, imitation or suggestion…. Such individual episodes are the basic and essential units in the entire cultural process. Progress is simply an accumulation of them, multiplied indefinitely because of the social character of the medium in which they occur. Thus, the Epicureans inherited from Democritus’ model the basic pattern at least for the progressivist aspect of their doctrine. Lucretius’ account contains certain intrusions, apparently, upon the Democritean blueprint which, as I have suggested and now attempt to demonstrate more clearly, are not the product of some kind of pessimism native to the Roman poet that disrupts Democritus’ cool and logical conception of human progress. Rather, the theory is developed in such a way as to include some explanation of the genesis of irrational passions. Thus, what is isolated as a primitivist side of Lucretius’ story may indeed have been due to the Epicureans, but not at all in the spirit of pessimism. If in the course of history there arose irrational fears and desires, according to Epicureanism, it is natural to expect that social development will be represented in the theory as a process involving two or more stages, one of them, at least, prior to the widespread emergence of such passions, and one or more subsequent to it. In any case, this is the picture Lucretius gives us. Benjamin Farrington, who has approached the question in four studies relating to the historical theory of the Epicureans (1953a, 1953b, 1954, 1955), gives us the following outline of Lucretius’ account. The Epicureans, he argues (1953a: 62), “divided the history of mankind into two stages, the second of which was the political stage, which they condemned.” The first stage, or vita prior (5.1105), was a simple pastoral society, united by “a pact of friendship (foedus amicitiae)” and

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free of class division and political oppression (1954: 10). “But,” Farrington observes, “since men had discovered natural justice before they imposed on themselves the yoke of law, the urgent question arises how men ever came to abandon the good life and make for themselves a worse” (1955: 8). This is, of course, an essential problem, and Farrington’s answer to it is, the fear of death, by which, he adds, “Lucretius means what we call the struggle for existence” (1953b: 337). For the fear of death “begat avarice … which destroyed the pact of friendship and started humanity on the competitive struggle which destroys all the pleasure of life” (1955: 8). But the vita prior remained the ideal of the Epicureans. Accordingly, Farrington concludes, “they were in the strictest sense reactionaries. They believed in going back so far as possible to the form of society that had been superseded by the State and recognised that in order to do so it would be necessary to abandon many of the gains of civilization, many of the achievements of applied science” (1953b: 338). I agree with Farrington in this: it is important to identify the stages of social development in the theory, and, especially, to discover how the transition from one stage to the next is motivated in terms of Epicurean philosophy. Farrington’s analysis, however, which is of course a simplified and schematic picture, raises an essential problem that is not resolved in a wholly satisfactory way. If human beings in their ignorance have feared death from the beginning, and if avarice, moreover (like ambition, one may add), is a symptom of the fear of death, how is it that humanity’s first society was relatively free of socially destructive desires and achieved stability, for a time at least, on the basis of friendship? In the latest of his four studies, Farrington suggests an answer (1955: 8): “when in the course of progress property and money came to be invented men thought they could win security if they could make themselves richer than their fellows.” That is, anxiety over death could manifest itself as greed only when society had reached the stage of private property. The evidence in Lucretius for this interpretation is a highly controversial passage (5.1105–14): 1105 inque dies magis hi victum vitamque priorem commutare novis monstrabant rebus et igni ingenio qui praestabant et corde vigebant.

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condere coeperunt urbis arcemque locare praesidium reges ipsi sibi perfugiumque, 1110 et pecudes et agros divisere atque dedere pro facie cuiusque et viribus ingenioque; nam facies multum valuit viresque vigebant. posterius res inventast aurumque repertum, quod facile et validis et pulchris dempsit honorem. And more and more every day those endowed with exceptional talents and mental power showed how to exchange their former way of life for new practices and, in particular, for the use of fire. Kings began to build cities, and to choose sites for citadels to be strongholds and places of refuge for themselves; and they distributed gifts of flocks and fields to individuals according to their beauty, strength and intellect; for beauty was highly esteemed, and strength was held in honor. Later wealth was invented and gold discovered, and this easily robbed the strong and handsome of their prestige. (trans. Smith 2001: 167) The question is whether the discovery of gold (1113) and the attendant evils of greed which are described in the subsequent lines mark a competitive and violent phase of history distinct from a benevolent or, in Robert Philippson’s words (1910: 314), “patriarchal” lordship of the wise, which is supposed to be described in lines 1105–12. The evidence is surely against the patriarchal stage, which seems to have been the specific contribution of Posidonius to the Democritean tradition (Cole 1967: 18 and n. 7; Boyancé 1963: 248). Nowhere else in the Epicurean tradition are individual benefactors of superior wisdom allowed a decisive role in the development of culture. Furthermore, the kings mentioned  Cf. Lucretius’ polemic against the idea that some one individual may have discovered or assigned names for things and taught them to others (5.1041ff.), taken up also by Diogenes of Oenoanda; see below, p. 103 and n. 36. Gale 1994: 177–82 notes that Lucretius attacks the “heurematistic” tradition of great inventors, although there are “latent references” to the mythological tradition; in particular, she sees his representation of Epicurus as equivalent to a Euhemerist creator: thus, “Lucretius has taken on the Euhemerists on their own ground” (160).

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in v. 1009, who apparently existed before the discovery of property and money, were such as to require citadels in which to take refuge “from the envy of the people,” as Bailey (1947: 3.1501) points out. It is reasonable to conclude that the Epicureans recognized a single stage of history, following immediately upon the end of the vita prior, in which the irrational and aggressive desires, of which greed is only one, emerged. A further weakness in Farrington’s argument is that the Epicureans can scarcely have looked back to the vita prior as a paradigm of the ideal community if they imagined it as a society of people whose security was corroded by the fear of death. If early humans did not know vain desire, neither were they subject to empty anxiety (see below). It is necessary, then, to examine Epicurean social theory more closely in order to determine the origin of irrational fears and desires. Mankind was not at first social, but existed in a state of “primitive individualism,” in Bailey’s phrase (1947: 3.1499). Lucretius says that people lived like wild animals (5.932, cf. 945–47). On the whole, Lucretius’ description of this stage is parallel, as Cole makes clear, to the accounts of Diodorus and Tzetzes, except in two respects. First, Lucretius introduces the idea of the earth’s spontaneous bounty in primitive times (cf. Cole 1967: 27–28). Second, and more important, Lucretius pauses to explain the kinds of cares that troubled the minds of early human beings. The passage deserves quotation in full (5.973–87): 975

nec plangore diem magno solemque per agros quaerebant pavidi palantes noctis in umbris, sed taciti respectabant somnoque sepulti, dum rosea face sol inferret lumina caelo. a parvis quod enim consuerant cernere semper alterno tenebras et lucem tempore gigni, non erat ut fieri posset mirarier umquam

 Cf. Cole 1967: 18 n. 7. One might argue, less convincingly, I think, that the arces are intended as protection from foreign enemies; cf. Philippson 1910: 304ff., Sasso 1979: 42–45, who traces the interpretation involving popular envy to the humanist commentator G.B. Pio (42–43 n. 40).  Boyancé 1963: 249 sees ambition as the hallmark of the third stage.

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980 985

nec diffidere, ne terras aeterna teneret nox in perpetuum detracto lumine solis. sed magis illud erat curae, quod saecla ferarum infestam miseris faciebant saepe quietem. eiectique domo fugiebant saxea tecta spumigeri suis adventu validique leonis atque intempesta cedebant nocte paventes hospitibus saevis instrata cubilia fronde.

In Smith’s translation (2001: 163): They did not roam panic-stricken through the countryside in the shadows of the night, seeking the day and the sunlight with loud lamentations, but waited silent and buried in sleep for the sun’s rose-red torch to spread its radiance over the heavens. Having always been accustomed from their infancy to see darkness and light born alternately, they could not possibly have ever wondered at the departure of day, or feared that the sunlight might withdraw forever, leaving the earth in the possession of perpetual night. A much greater cause of concern was the way in which the tribes of wild beasts often made rest perilous and wretched for them. Driven from their homes by the arrival of a foaming boar or powerful lion, they would flee panic-stricken from their rocky shelters and at dead of night surrender their leaf-strewn beds to their ruthless guests. Bailey (1947: 3.1479), comparing Manilius 1.67–70 and Statius Thebaid 4.282.84, observes that Lucretius “is apparently arguing against a theory that primitive men dreaded that day might not return.”10 It may be so, but the important point is this: primitive people did not regard celestial phenomena with superstitious fear.11 Lucretius is explicit about the 10 The argument may have been originally directed against Aristotle; cf. Blickman 1989: 163 and 168–69, where he compares Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines 39–40. 11 This does not mean that primitive people did not believe in or had no knowledge of the gods: the gods do exist, for Epicureanism (see Blickman 1989: 158; for the nature of the gods, see below, n. 51). It is worth noting that Lucretius, in his account of the origin

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reason why: experience had taught them that day and night alternate with regularity, so that they could not possibly ever have been struck with wonder or doubt (977–81). We are given to understand that primitive people were empirical: the idea of perpetual night did not enter their heads, because there was no objective basis for such a belief. Their sleep was not disturbed by fantastic terrors which they had no reason to expect. They were concerned rather with the concrete danger of predatory beasts, which broke in upon their peace and forced them from their rude shelters. Primitive people trembled (paventes, 986), but not with unfounded anxiety like children in darkness (cf. nec … pavidi, 5.973–74, and contrast 2.55–61); they trembled in the face of real and present perils to their security. In the language of Diogenes of Oenoanda, their fear was not unclear (ἀτρανής), but rather distinct and clearly perceived (τετρανωμένος). Lucretius’ meaning seems unmistakable, though the point has not received the attention it merits. For pre-social humanity, irrational anxiety, to the extent it may have been experienced, was in no sense a cause of universal wretchedness, as it later became in an advanced stage of social development. Upon the state of primitive individualism, which did not yet look to the common good (commune bonum, 958) or know to regulate conduct by custom (mores) or law (leges, 959), there followed the first community of human beings, the society that Farrington identifies as the vita prior. As in other accounts in the Democritean tradition, the formation of society is accompanied, in part as a result but also as a cause, by certain of the worship and fear of the gods (5.1161ff.), interjects an apostrophe to mankind on the nature of false pietas (1194–1203). Following upon this interjection, Lucretius discusses the sources of the new cura or anxiety, namely superstition: “then, when their breasts were oppressed by other evils, that anxietiey too began to raise its newly awakened head against them” (tunc aliis oppressa malis in pectora cura/ illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit, 1207–08). Before this interjection, Lucretius assigns two reasons for belief in the gods, one of them valid (the evidence of dreams and visions, 1169–82), according to Epicurean doctrine, the other invalid (the regularity of celestial phenomena, 1183–93). Neither of these reasons for belief in the gods need have produced dread of them. Primitive people’s confidence in the regular cycle of day and night might well have been associated with a belief in divine order. Boyancé (1963: 252) notes that the evidence of dreams and the regularity of the cosmos were the original causes of the idea of the divine according to Aristotle’s De philosophia; this may be part of the reason why these two factors are not associated necessarily with irrational anxiety. See further below, pp. 114–19.

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technological discoveries—houses, clothing, fire, the cultivation and preparation of grain—as well as by the beginning of language (cf. Cole 1967: 30–36; Lucretius 5.1011, 1092–1104; on language, 1028ff.).12 Lucretius places special emphasis on the development of the family, through the medium of which Venus, whose character had formerly been rude and not dissimilar to animal desire (962–64), gradually tames and softens human beings (1017–18). The consequence of association in the family is a desire for amicities (5.1014–23): tum genus humanum primum mollescere coepit. 1015 ignis enim curavit, ut alsia corpora frigus non ita iam possent caeli sub tegmine ferre, et Venus inminuit viris puerique parentum blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum. tunc et amicitiem coeperunt iungere aventes 1020 finitimi inter se nec laedere nec violari, et pueros commendarunt muliebreque saeclum, vocibus et gestu cum balbe significarent imbecillorum esse aequum misererier omnis. Then the human race first began to soften. For fire saw to it that their chilly bodies could not now bear cold so well under the covering of the sky; sex sapped their strength, and children by their charm easily broke their parents’ stern demeanour. Then too neighbours began to form friendships, eager not to harm one another and not to be harmed; and they gained protection for children and for the female sex, when with babyish noises and gestures they indicated that it is right for everyone to pity the weak (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 127). Robin (Ernout and Robin 1962: 3.139) saw in what he called “cet aspect sentimental” in Lucretius’ account a divergence from Epicurus 12 A propos clothing, Mitsis 1988: 85 notes that, according to Lucretius (5.1420), “the first man to wear skins was probably killed for them by his fellows,” thus confirming the connection between expensive goods and violence.

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(as well as from Diodorus), and Bailey (1947: 3.1484), remarking that “the Epicurean foundation of justice is purely utilitarian,” was of the same opinion. For he adds: But this austere utilitarian doctrine … is undoubtedly softened and humanized by Lucr. He emphasizes family love as the foundation of union, insists on the sentiment of pity for women and children, and, most notably of all, maintains (1019) that the desire for friendship was one of the causes of the formation of the contract. He does not revolt from the Epicurean idea, but gives it a more natural and human background. In fact, it is doubtful that Lucretius is introducing an innovation here into Epicurean doctrine.13 The idea denoted by amicities has two aspects. On the one hand, it is grounded in utility, and serves as the basis for mutual security among people. Lucretius’ early people initiate alliances with their neighbors with a view to abstaining from inflicting harm on one another. This sense of alliance is picked up in the words foedera (1025) and communia foedera pacis (1155), both of which correspond exactly to the συνθήκη or “pact” of Epicurus, as Philippson (1910: 314–15) pointed out.14 As Campbell (2003: 275) observes, nec laedere nec violari is “clearly a translation of Epicurus’ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι” in Principal Doctrines 31, 32, 33, and 35, which Epicurus ties closely to the idea of a social pact (cf. Müller 1969: 305ff. and 318): ῞Οσα τῶν ζῴων μὴ ἐδύνατο συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἄλληλα μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πρὸς ταῦτα οὐθὲν ἦν δίκαιον οὐδὲ ἄδικον· ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅσα μὴ ἐδύνατο ἢ μὴ ἐβούλετο τὰς συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι. 13 For Lucretius’ dependence on Epicurus in his history of mankind, see Furley 1989a: 212; on parents’ natural love for their children, cf. Demetrius Lacon in Herculanean papyrus 1012 col. 46 (De Falco 1923: 49). 14 But this is not to say that amicitia in Roman literature regularly “refers to political alliances … with little or no sentimental connotations,” as I wrote in the first edition of this book (p. 43), following Ross 1969: 82–84 and others. For full discussion of Greek and Roman ideas of friendship, see Konstan 1997.

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For those animals that were unable to form pacts not to harm one another or be harmed, there existed neither justness nor injustice, and so too for those nations [of human beings] that were unable or unwilling to make pacts not to harm or be harmed. (Principal Doctrine 32)15 On the other hand, the capacity to form such alliances was evidently not present in the earliest, pre-social stage of humanity (note Epicurus’ “unable or unwilling”). In this respect, amicities, like pity, is a new capacity, developed in the context of social life, which is necessitated by the weakness of the species in its modern form (this in turn a consequence in part of the invention of fire and the evolution of family life).16 As John Armstrong (1997: 326–27) observes à propos Lucretius 5.1020–23, the earliest compacts among human beings were made on the basis of what is fair (aequum), with no mention of enforcement by penalties. Armstrong adds: “It is plausible to suppose that this was indeed the reason that moved them to form their alliance (amicities), for the emotional softening experienced within early families had likely given these primitive men considerable capacities for sympathy (1017–18).” Amicities is evidently a relationship among equals, whereas pity obtains between stronger and weaker. The ground of pity, Lucretius explains, is an understanding of fairness: “it is right for everyone to pity the weak”; correspondingly, a sense of what is useful or necessary is the basis for amicities. But friendship is not reducible to utility any more than pity is reducible to justice. Rather, both sensibilities have emerged among beings who had previously lived in isolation, where there was no scope for either (cf. Sasso 15 Alberti 1995: 166 observes that, unlike laws about animals, which are merely useful, those that prohibit killing of people “are also just” (166), since they depend on a pact, and one cannot make a pact with irrational creatures (166–67)—although one can of course make pacts about them (167 n. 12). Cf. Cosenza 1996: 362–63, who notes that, besides animal species, there are certain human groups that either cannot or will not enter into contracts. The effort of Goldschmidt (1977: 53) to distinguish Lucretius’ attitude toward animals from that of Hermarchus seems misguided to me; one may certainly tend animals, as one would the weak, but this is not the same as forming a compact with them, which is the basis of justice. 16 Cf. Long 1985: 310 and Nussbaum 1994: 162, 266, and contrast Armstrong 1997: 327 n. 8, who denies any implication of friendship in the use of the term amicities.

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1979: 12–13). Human beings are able to establish pacts of friendship just because they have now acquired the ability to love, which was lacking during the primitive stage in which their temper was tyrannical (ingenium superbum) and all lived for themselves alone.17 The friendship that marks the new stage of human society is an altruistic sentiment (see Konstan 1997: 53–56; also O’Connor 1989: 185).18 It is Epicurus, as much as Lucretius, who emphasizes its inherent desirability as opposed to its merely utilitarian function (Vatican Saying 23): Πᾶσα φιλία δι᾿ ἑαυτὴν ἀρετή· ἀρχὴν δὲ εἴληφεν ἀπὸ τῆς ὠφελείας. All philia is an excellence [aretê] in itself, but it has taken its origin from service [ôpheleia].19 Friendship has indeed a practical function in the Epicurean system, in that it provides for a certain elementary security against misfortune and shores up our confidence. Thus, Epicurus writes (Vatican Saying 34): Οὐχ οὕτως χρείαν ἔχομεν τῆς χρείας ‹τῆς› παρὰ τῶν φίλων ὡς τῆς πίστεως τῆς περὶ τῆς χρείας. 17 For further discussion of the two aspects to φιλία in Epicurus’ own writings, see Konstan 1996; cf. also O’Connor 1989; O’Keefe 2001; Brown 2002. Annas 1993: 236–44 emphasizes the tension in Epicurus’ “two-level” theory of friendship, which has its origin in utility but is felt as a genuine caring for others (see esp. p. 240). She identifies, moreover, a similar duality in the idea of justice, which depends on a utilitarian social contract but takes the form of a trait of character (293–302): “what motivates the adoption of the contract is not what the individually just Epicurean bears in mind” (300); Annas takes a like view of the role of virtue in general in Epicurus’ system (340–44). 18 Wolff 2000: 172–80 discusses, rather impressionistically, the “antinomy” between the utilitarian and altruistic sides to Epicurean friendship: “Utile ou désintéresée l’amitié? Ni l’un ni l’autre, au fond, concède Épicure” (177), and explains: “L’amitié commence au moment précis où l’on cesse de chercher cette aide” (179). 19 I keep the mss. reading ἀρετή, with Bollack 1975 and Long and Sedley (1987: 2.132). Usener emended to αἱρετή, “choiceworthy.”

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We have use not so much for usefulness from our friends [philoi] as for trust in their usefulness [khreia]. But friendship can only confer this benefit if it is sincerely believed in. With the term amicities, Lucretius seems to capture both the utilitarian function of Epicurean friendship and its sentimental aspect, by which it is suitably paired with pity. The important thing, in any case, concerning the first human community is that, while it was not perfect, nevertheless for the most part the social compact was piously observed (5.1024–27): nec tamen omnimodis poterat concordia gigni, 1025 sed bona magnaque pars servabat foedera caste; aut genus humanum iam tum foret omne peremptum nec potuisset adhuc perducere saecla propago. Although it was not possible for concord to be achieved universally, the great majority kept their compacts loyally. Otherwise the human race would have been entirely extinguished at that early stage and could not have propagated and preserved itself to the present day. (trans. Smith 2001: 164).20 The question is, why did the bonds of obligation and friendship dissolve into competition and mutual violence? One reason is doubtless contained in verses 1026–27, quoted above. In the primitive society, survival itself depended upon cooperation and mutual non-aggression. Once riches were accumulated, it became easier to forget that civilized life would be destroyed in the absence of cooperation. This view is in accord with the account of early human society ascribed to Hermarchus, Epicurus’ 20 Cf. Armstrong 1997: 327: “Not everyone kept the original contract (1024–25), but laws, with their accompanying sanctions for noncompliance, did not come until much later when cities arose and then collapsed on account of strife over wealth and political power.” Mitsis 1988: 83 observes that “individuals have no natural need to engage in troubling competitive pursuits and have no reason for harming others” (83). At the first stage of civilization, “covenants serve more to coordinate common familial interests … than to solve conflicts of interest” (84).

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successor as head of the Garden, by Porphyry in his tract, De abstinentia (1.10–11 = Longo Auricchio 1988: 71, with Italian translation—somewhat different from the present—on p. 97):21 μέχρι μὲν οὖν τινος διὰ ταύτην ἀπείχοντο τοῦ συγγενοῦς… ἐλθόντος δὲ ἐπὶ πλέον τοῦ χρόνου καὶ τῆς δι᾿ ἀλλήλων γενέσεως μακρὰν προηκούσης, ἐξεωσμένων δὲ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων ζῴων καὶ τῆς παρασπάσεως, ἐπιλογισμὸν ἔλαβόν τινες τοῦ συμφέροντος ἐν ταῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλων τροφαῖς, οὐ μόνον ἄλογον μνήμην. ὅθεν ἐπειράθησαν βεβαιοτέρως ἀνεῖρξαι τοὺς προχείρως φθείροντας ἀλλήλους καὶ τὴν βοήθειαν ἀσθενεστέραν κατασκευάζοντας διὰ τὴν τοῦ παρεληλυθότος λήθην. This is why they refrained, up to a certain moment, from [killing] kinsmen. But as time went on, and reproduction among themselves had greatly advanced, whereas animals of other species and their dragging off [of humans] had been repelled, some people undertook a calculation of advantage in people’s conduct toward one another, and not just an irrational recollection [of former conditions]. From then on they tried more forcefully to prevent people from killing one another readily and furnishing help that was too weak because they had forgotten the past. The passage is highly condensed, perhaps due to some abbreviation of Hermarchus’ text, but the central idea seems clear enough.22 Originally, Hermarchus (as reported by Porphyry) explains, the better sort bore 21 The text that Porphyry is following is probably Hermarchus’ Pros Empedoklea; cf. Gallo 1985; Obbink 1988; Vander Waerdt 1988, esp. 87; Longo Auricchio 1988: 33–36, 123ff.; Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995: 64–65. 22 For discussion, see Longo Auricchio 1988: 137–45; there are some textual difficulties, especially the expression τῆς παρασπάσεως, which Long and Sedley (1987: 2.138) mark as a crux. Sasso 1979: 50–52 reviews opinions concerning the reliablility of the passage as a reflection of Hermarchus’ views, and notes, not without justice, that “sia o no riflesso fedele delle idee di Ermarco, il passo di Porfirio è cosí disordinato e, nel punto che più ci interessa, incoerente, che solo con estrema difficoltà potrà stabilirsi se, ed entro quali limiti, la ‘doppia nascita del diritto’ sia una ‘tesi’ e non, invece, il frutto di

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in mind that they refrained from murder because it was useful to their safety, and they inculcated a reminder among the rest of the fact that this would contribute to the common good and thereby to that of each individual, whether in regard to expelling wild beasts or other people bent on harming them (1.10): Some of the most accomplished people of that time recalled that they had refrained from killing since that was useful for survival, and they inculcated in the rest the memory of what resulted in those associations with one another, so that by refraining from [killing] a kinsman they might preserve the community, which contributed also to the individual survival of each individual. Not only was it useful to be separated off, nor to do anything injurious to those who were gathered in the same place, insofar as driving out animals of other species was concerned, but against other human beings who might come for the purpose of doing harm. διαμνημονεύοντες δέ τινες τῶν τότε χαριεστάτων ὡς αὐτοί τε ἀπέσχοντο τοῦ κτείνειν διὰ τὸ χρήσιμον πρὸς τὴν σωτηρίαν, τοῖς τε λοιποῖς ἐνεποίουν μνήμην τοῦ ἀποβαίνοντος ἐν ταῖς μετ᾿ ἀλλήλων συντροφίαις, ὅπως ἀπεχόμενοι τοῦ συγγενοῦς διαφυλάττωσι τὴν κοινωνίαν, ἣ συνήργει πρὸς τὴν ἰδίαν ἑκάστου σωτηρίαν. οὐ μόνον δὲ χρήσιμον ἦν τὸ χωρίζεσθαι μηδὲ λυμαντικὸν ποιεῖν μηδὲν τῶν ἐπὶ τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον συνειλεγμένων πρὸς τὸ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων ἐξόρισμα ζῴων, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς ἐπὶ βλάβῃ παραγιγνομένους. As communities became numerous and the threat from wild animals receded, however, people, it seems, again began to commit murder against their fellow beings. Evidently, a mere reminder of the utility of abstaining from internecine violence was no longer sufficient to un’inconseguenza concettuale ed espositiva” (52–53); further discussion on pp. 53–62. See also Gallo 1985: 39–41, with bibliography.

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deter them. In these conditions, some people made a prudent calculation (ἐπιλογισμός) concerning advantage in social relations, and no longer relied on irrational memory.23 As a consequence, they imposed harsher measures, based on laws and punishments. The calculation to which Hermarchus refers has to do not with the ability to recognize the usefulness of refraining from murder within the community, since the earlier leaders were well aware of this and did what they could to remind others. What the new lawgivers figure out, I would argue, is that legal penalties are needed to enforce the ban on intracommunal killing. Why is this additional apparatus required at this stage? The reason would appear to be the size of the population and its success in eliminating the danger posed by savage animals. People are now free of fear (cf. ἀφοβίαν in the following sentence), and so more readily violate the norms of solidarity that had previously kept them in check.24 This fearlessness, then, is one reason why people began to violate the bonds of friendship that had obtained in the first stage of social organization. Lucretius follows this argument, however, with a long digression which perhaps suggests another cause of the historic transition away from the vita prior: the invention of language. Only after society had been in existence for a time could language develop, according to what seems to me the most likely interpretation of Lucretius. Until then, people signified their feelings by gestures and inarticulate sounds: vocibus et gestu cum balbe significarent (1022). Bailey (1947: 3.1485) supposed that the subject of this line and the next was “the children,” but surely it was not children 23 These lawgivers cannot be the same as the “accomplished people” (τῶν τότε χαριεστάτων), as Goldschmidt 1977: 307 maintained (cf. Longo Auricchio 1988: 143), since they belong to an earlier stage of human society. 24 Armstrong 1997 (330) discusses the double prohibition on killing in Hermarchus, and concludes: “the Hermarchus passage makes explicit the Epicurean chain of justification: the security of social life is conducive to the security of the individual, which is conducive to the individual’s freedom from fear.” See also Alberti 1995: 164, who argues that according to Hermarchus, people first abstained from killing one another on the basis of utility, that is, “their own personal safety”; this awareness and practice preceded “any legislative intervention” (165). The law was established later to stabilize this situation via threats of punishment, and also served to make people rationally aware of the need for abstaining from homicide. Laws are required later because of “changed social conditions and historical events” (166), which make people forget (or be unmindful of) the utility that underwrites their practices.

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who propounded the standard of social justice: imbecillorum esse aequum miserier omnis (1023; cf. Campbell 2003: 279, who notes: “Unless we have a sudden change of subject it would seem more natural that aventes finitimi are the subject of significarent”; also Armstrong 1997: 326–27 n. 7).25 Robin rather explains (Ernout and Robin 1962: 3.139) that the original compact “est signifiée par un langage tout émotionnel, gestes et balbutiements, et elle a pour objet la protection des faibles, femmes et enfants, en tant qu’ils sont eux-mêmes les objets d’émotions tendres ou compatissantes.”26 This kind of communication, from which language proper later developed (or was at this moment in the process of developing), is akin to the speech of animals, which can express feelings such as pain and pleasure but cannot name things (cf. Sasso 1979: 14–15). Lucretius makes clear, in his account of the origin of language, the essential distinction between animal noises and the vocabulary of human beings (5.1056–61, 1087–90): postremo quid in hac mirabile tantoperest re, si genus humanum, cui vox et lingua vigeret, pro vario sensu varia res voce notaret? cum pecudes mutae, cum denique saecla ferarum 1060 dissimilis soleant voces variasque ciere, cum metus aut dolor est et cum iam gaudia gliscunt. ergo si varii sensus animalia cogunt, muta tamen cum sint, varias emittere voces, quanto mortalis magis aequumst tum potuisse 1090 dissimilis alia atque alia res voce notare! Lastly, why is it so very remarkable that human beings, with their power of voice and tongue, should designate things by different sounds according to their different feelings? Even domestic 25 Bailey (1947: 3.1490–91) accepts, however, the idea of a pre-linguistic stage of mankind. Schrijvers 1999a: 57 affirms that primitive people spoke like children (referring to Lucretius 5.1022). 26 Cf. Philippson 1910: 296–97, Cole 1967: 60–61, especially n. 3; also Giussani 1896: 1.274–75. These verses tell against the argument of Spoerri 1959: 135–37, who denies a pre-linguistic stage; cf. Cole’s criticism (loc. cit.).

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animals and the species of wild beasts, despite their dumbness, regularly utter distinct and different sounds according to whether they are afraid or in pain or full of joy…. So if animals, despite their dumbness, are impelled to utter various sounds expressive of various feelings, how much more natural is it that mortals in those early times should have been able to designate different things by different sounds! (trans. Smith 2001: 166) Many animals utter sounds to express their feelings (sensus, 1087; cf. metus, dolor, gaudia, 1061).27 Nevertheless, they are dumb (mutae, 1059; muta, 1088), that is, “unable to frame words” (Bailey 1947: ad 1059), for they are unable to denote things (res notare, 1090; cf. 1058). Naming things, however, is a characteristic feature of human language (5.1028–29): At varios linguae sonitus natura subegit mittere et utilitas expressit nomina rerum. As for the various sounds of speech, it was nature that prompted human beings to utter them, and it was utility that coined the names of things. (trans. Smith 2001: 164) The question naturally presents itself: how did language arise out of something like animal cries?28 This question requires an examination of 27 On the apparent ascription to animals of the emotion fear, along with the pathê or feelings of pain and pleasure (gaudia = voluptas), see Chapter 1, n. 30. According to Aristotle (Politics 1253a12–14), “animals can signify the sensation of pain and pleasure to one another” (τοῦ ἔχειν αἴσθησιν λυπηροῦ καὶ ἡδέος καὶ ταῦτα σημαίνειν ἀλλήλοις). 28 Schrijvers 1999a: 57–58 recognizes (with Bailey) two early phases, the first consisting in expressing physical reactions to emotions or sensations, and the second in the production of nomina rerum (1029), which has to do with communication and mutual comprehension: “le langage est donc pour Lucrèce un fait social” (58). For a survey of recent opinions with citation of many of the relevant texts, see Campbell 2003: 283–94. I omit a discussion of the role of utilitas here, save to indicate my view that there can only have arisen a use for language after human beings began to associate with each other in communities; in the pre-social stage, nothing would have promoted the development of language (for the sense of the utilitas in Lucretius, see note 37 below). For various views, including comparison with modern ideas on the origins of language, see Atherton 2005: 110–21.

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a difficult and much-discussed paragraph in Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus (75–76), where certainty about details is perhaps impossible to attain. It is clear, however, that Epicurus distinguished three stages in the growth of language,29 in the first of which, the text seems to say, human beings did not employ names that had been ascribed or modified by convention (τὰ ὀνόματα ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὴ θέσει γενέσθαι);30 they naturally, rather than deliberately (θέσει) emitted sounds according to their feelings (πάθη = sensus) and sense impressions (φαντάσματα), sounds which varied with the different tribes or nations (ἔθνη): ὅθεν καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὴ θέσει γενέσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὰς τὰς φύσεις τῶν ἀνθρώπων καθ᾿ ἕκαστα ἔθνη ἴδια πασχούσας πάθη καὶ ἴδια λαμβανούσας φαντάσματα ἰδίως τὸν ἀέρα ἐκπέμπειν στελλόμενον ὑφ᾿ ἑκάστων τῶν παθῶν καὶ τῶν φαντασμάτων, ὡς ἄν ποτε καὶ ἡ παρὰ τοὺς τόπους τῶν ἐθνῶν διαφορὰ εἴη. Thus names too did not originally come into being by coining, but men’s own natures underwent feelings and received impressions which varied peculiarly from tribe to tribe, and each of the individual feelings and impressions caused them to exhale breath peculiarly, according also to the racial differences from place to place. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.97) This stage corresponds more or less to the condition of animals, and Horace (Satires 1.3.100) indeed refers to early mankind as mutum pecus, “the dumb herd”; 31 but since human beings even at this point produce sounds that correspond not just to inner states (πάθη) but also to outer 29 Verlinsky 2005: 64–65 defends the idea that there are only two stages. 30 Taking μή with θέσει; in the first edition (p. 46 with n. 39), I took μή rather with γενέσθαι, and interpreted the phrase to mean that names as such did not exist in the beginning; this is not excluded by what Epicurus says here—he is speaking about how names originally arose—but his attention here is on the contrast between the role of convention versus nature. Spoerri (1959: 136 n. 5) implausibly understands the phrase to mean that ὀνόματα arose ἐξ ἀρχῆς φύσει, that is, “naturally from the very beginning.” 31 Cf. Giussani 1896: 274; Spoerri 1959: 143 n. 38 rejects an Epicurean influence on Horace here, despite verbal echoes of Lucretius (e.g. mutum pecus, notaret), mainly because his own theory does not allow for a mute stage in human history.

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impressions (φαντάσματα), these latter vocalizations perhaps already have the character of names or designations of things. Lucretius furnishes a hint as to what occurred next: human beings had a natural advantage over other animals with respect to language, for their voice and tongue were more developed or adapted to speech (cui vox et lingua vigeret, 1057). All animals naturally make use of their specific capacities, Lucretius argues (1030–40); just as nestling birds attempt to fly before their wings are mature, so human beings naturally babble before the faculty of speech is fully developed. This biological difference, one may surmise, is the basis for the formation of true language, a process that is best understood, it would seem, as taking place in the latter part of Epicurus’ first stage. In the second stage, according to Epicurus, there enters the element of convention (τεθῆναι): ὕστερον δὲ κοινῶς καθ᾿ ἕκαστα ἔθνη τὰ ἴδια τεθῆναι πρὸς τὸ τὰς δηλώσεις ἧττον ἀμφιβόλους γενέσθαι ἀλλήλοις καὶ συντομωτέρως δηλουμένας. Later, particular coinings were made by consensus within the individual races, so as to make the designations less ambiguous and more concisely expressed. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.97) There has been considerable controversy over the meaning and significance of this second stage in the growth of language. P. and E. De Lacy, who hold that originally people uttered merely “emotional cries … which did not say anything specifically about external objects,” describe the next stage as follows (1941: 140): “From these cries, Epicurus says, there gradually arose a system of conventional sounds, referring to objects” (my emphasis).32 Gregory Vlastos (1946: 53–54), followed by Cole (1967: 62 with n. 5), dissents from attributing so great an importance to the role of convention: “The ‘second’ stage,” he remarks, “elaborates and perfects at the level of common consent what was already a working system at 32 Cited by Vlastos 1946: 54 n. 16 (the passage is omitted from the revised edition, 1978); cf. also De Lacy 1939: 87–88.

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the level of ‘nature.’”33 A problem for those who stress the conventional stage in Epicurus’ account, Vlastos notes (54 n. 17), is the apparent discrepancy with Lucretius, “where the second stage of the Epicurean theory has shrunk to near extinction.”34 Long and Sedley (1987: 1.100) suggest that inflections may have been added at this point to the bare nouns, adjectives and verbs of the preceding stage. Verlinsky (2005: 72) has recently adduced a passage in Claudius Ptolemy’s On the Criterion and Ruling Element (3.2.7–8 Lammert), that seems to be derived from an Epicurean source: τῶν γὰρ διὰ τοῦ λόγου σημασιῶν τὰς μὲν πρώτας εἰκὸς ὑπὸ τῶν μηδέπω παραδόσεώς τινος ἐπιτυχόντων φυσικῶς ἀναπεφωνῆσθαι πεποιημένας ἀπό τε τῆς τῶν προσπιπτόντων παθῶν, καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν φωνῶν ἰδιοτροπίας, τὰς δ᾿ ἐφεξῆς ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνων ἤδη κατὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐφαρμογὴν συνθέσεώς τινος καὶ ἤδη προσηγορίας τυχεῖν…. ἤδη δὲ τοῖς ἐφεξῆς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐπιμεληθεῖσι τῆς τῶν ὀνομάτων πολυχωρίας ἐπῆλθεν ἐκ περιουσίας καὶ περὶ τούτων αὐτῶν ὥσπερ νομοθετεῖν…. ὡς μηδενὶ ἂν συγχωρῆσαι μηδαμῶς ἑτέρως διασημαίνειν τὰ πράγματα, κἂν εὐθὺς ὦσιν αὐτοῖς τοῖς δηλουμένοις παρηκολουθηκότες, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μόνον ἴδιον τέλος τοῦ προφορικοῦ λόγου. It is plausible that the earliest verbal expressions were uttered naturally by people with no previous traditional usage: they must have been the product of the particular features of the experiences [πάθη] that impinged on them and of the individual nature of the sounds themselves. The next generation of verbal expressions probably was made from the previous ones by the way of composition and conscious naming, in accordance with features of named things…. But their successors, having worked hard to enrich linguistic usage, were led by the superfluity of names to lay down, as it were, laws about the words themselves…. The result was that they would not permit anyone to describe things in any 33 Cf. also Dahlmann 1928: 100; Manuwald 1972: 91–2. 34 Cf. Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 12.II.11–V.14 Smith.

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other way than the way they prescribed, even if they immediately understood perfectly the meaning of what was being stated, which is the only proper purpose of uttered expression. (trans. based on Verlinsky) Verlinsky explains the process as follows: In the first stage, people tried only to indicate things and their attitudes to them, and it didn’t matter whether they designated the same thing with one word or several. In the second stage, on the contrary, restrictions concerning word usage were introduced so as to exclude the naming of things otherwise than was prescribed, i.e. to avoid the ambiguity of the previously existing usage. The second stage is represented thus as the creation of new words, on the one hand, which was presumably necessary to designate new concepts, and as the establishing, on the other, of a univocal nomenclature in view of the diversity of natural names used for the same things. And he concludes: “If the theory of Ptolemy can be regarded as evidence for Epicurus’ theory, it is tempting to understand the words τὰ ἴδια τεθῆναι in the latter as the introduction of the new words coined from already existing natural ones in accordance with etymological correctness.” Some development, clearly, occurred in the second phase. To a certain extent the controversy over the second stage of linguistic formation has been fostered, I think, by an interpretation of the opposition between φύσις and θέσις more relevant to the disputes of certain sophists of the fifth century b.c. than to Epicurus, who, as Philippson showed in the case of law and justice, regarded conventions themselves as based upon nature.35 If Lucretius’ emphasis seems different from Epicurus’, it is perhaps 35 Philippson 1910: 292ff.; cf. 298: “Es ist bemerkenswert, dass die Entwicklung des Rechtes genau mit der der Sprache übereinstimmt.” Cf. Armstrong 1997: 330: “With the connection between contract and end firmly in mind, we can perhaps see why Epicurus says, ‘The justice of nature is a pledge of usefulness regarding not harming one another or being harmed’ (KD 31). For well over a century, the sophistic debate over the nature of law and justice—whether they are purely conventional or whether they have some

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because he is polemicizing, like Diogenes of Oenoanda after him (fr. 12 Smith), against the notion that a single individual invented names and taught the multitude to speak (it is possible that Epicurus took this to be the argument of Plato’s Cratylus, or it may be that Lucretius was taking aim rather at Posidonius).36 What is significant about the θέσις-stage, however, is that the names for things are no longer automatically elicited like the sounds emitted by animals (ciere, 1060; cogunt, 1087; cf. subegit, 1028),37 nor are they directly derived (with or without some element of social agreement) from such automatic responses.38 Names are now abbreviated (συντομωτέρως) and, at least relatively, arbitrary. It seems reasonable to suppose that this is the stage at which the natural or primary meanings of words are altered, and no longer necessarily correspond to their proper objects. As Catherine Atherton (2005: 122) puts it: “Now the second stage involved (and, if it is continuing, still involves) the use of ‘reasoning’ [ἐπιλογισμός], which makes its advances at different rates, and thus presumably imports some degree of contingency; and of course communal imposition of names and improvement thereof will require basis in nature—had drawn a clear division between nature and convention. Yet here we find Epicurus claiming that ‘the justice of nature’ is a ‘pledge’ or a ‘contract.’” 36 See Chilton 1962: 160; Bailey 1947: 3.1488–89, for the influence of the Cratylus. Boyancé 1963: 244–46 suspects that the idea derives from Pythagorean sources. 37 Subegit in 1028 is used of human beings analogously to the use of ciere and cogere with respect to animals. Schrijvers 1999a: 59 n. 11 notes that the imposition of names is not associated with verbs of compulsion such as subegit and cogunt, and concludes that natura and utilitas thus constitute distinct causes. Names, then, arise in determinate social conditions, and their earliest meanings are not a simple or unmediated consequence of physiological necessity, whatever the case for the more primitive expression of sensations and feelings. Schrijvers examines (59–61) the sense of usus and utilitas in Lucretius, which he takes to mean “use, practice, experience,” and takes exprimere to be equivalent in force to the necessity implicit in subigere (61). Nature and utility work in concert, not in conflict, and together (independently of deliberate actions) shape human evolution (62–63). 38 Schrijvers 1999a argues that Epicurus’ conception of phusis refers not to a natural connection between sounds and things, but to a natural origin of language (55–56); this is why at an early stage it was necessary to get rid of ambiguities (amphiboliai) in language (Letter to Herodotus 75–76). Thus, there are no original “right meanings” to words, and the phusis-stage cannot have been “exaltée par Epicure et Lucrèce pour sa rectitude” in contrast with the later thesis-stage (56). But there are other explanations for the existence of ambiguities even in the most primitive phase of utterance, as Verlinsky and Atherton make clear.

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deliberate choice amongst alternatives.” This is apparently the process that Epicurus describes in a rather opaque fragment of his On Nature (frg. 31.5 Arrighetti; translated by Arrighetti on pp. 295–96): …καὶ πά[ν]τ[ων τῶν ὀ]νομάτω[ν] μετα[βολή· ὀ]λ ίγα γὰρ [ἔ]ξ[ε]στιν τῶ[ν κατὰ] τὰς  [αἰ]σθήσε[ις], ἃ πρότερον [ο]ὕτως [νομίζ]οντες κατὰ [τὸ]ν οὐ φ[αν]ταστικ[ὸν] τρ[όπομ], μετε[θέ]μεθα συν[ι]δόντες οὐ [τοι]αῦτα ἔκ τινος ἐ[π]ιλ[ογ]ισμ[ο]ῦ· …and a change of all the words: for it is possible for a few of those that are in accord with sensations, which, because we previously believed them to be this way in accord with a mode not based on impressions, we altered when we realized on the basis of some calculation or other that they were not such. Perhaps this process of μεταβολή or transformation continues into the third stage, which Epicurus describes as follows (Letter to Herodotus 76): τινὰ δὲ καὶ οὐ συνορώμενα πράγματα εἰσφέροντας τοὺς συνειδότας παρεγγυῆσαί τινας φθόγγους, τοὺς ἀναγκασθέντας ἀναφωνῆσαι, τοὺς δὲ τῷ λογισμῷ ἑλομένους κατὰ τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν οὕτως ἑρμηνεῦσαι. Also, the men who had knowledge introduced certain unseen entities, and brought words for them into usage, some giving utterance under compulsion, and others having chosen words rationally, and interpreting them in accord with the principal cause. (trans. based on Long and Sedley 1987: 1.97, with substantial changes) Here Epicurus seems to be describing the introduction into the vocabulary of words for abstract concepts (οὐ συνορώμενα πράγματα), which are perceived, at first in any case, only by some, and then explained in terms of some kind of prevailing interpretation (τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν).39 39 Cf. Cole 1967: 62 with n. 31. Verlinsky 2005: 77–83 shows clearly that “the usual meaning of συνοράω is ‘to notice,’ ‘to consider’ or ‘to comprehend,’ not ‘to look at’ or ‘to see’

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With the introduction, then, of conventional names, whether concrete or abstract, as opposed to automatic vocal responses to sensible stimuli (whether external or reflecting inner feeling states) and words directly derived from such responses, language is set at one remove from sensation. After this, it is possible to utter sounds without an appropriate or meaningful reference. It is such language that Epicurus calls “empty sounds” (κενοὶ φθόγγοι), sounds devoid of meaning.40 The idea of “empty sounds” is a familiar part of the doctrine of Epicurus; it is essential, he says, not to be deceived by them (Letter to Herodotus 37–38). I believe that Lucretius makes explicit use of this idea in his explanation of aggressive competition in human society, that third stage of development in which people ruthlessly pursue wealth and power and so subvert the security they seek. This is the passage (5.1133–34):

quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis. since their wisdom is derived from the mouths of others and their aims are determined by hearsay rather than by their own sensations. (trans. Smith 2001: 168)

People believe what they hear about, rather than what they themselves perceive. Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 37 seems to point to the same idea: in a literal sense” (Verlinsky cites inter alia Plato Phaedrus 254D, Laws 965B, Epicurus Letter to Herodotus 38, 63, to which add Polystratus On Contempt of Popular Opinions col. I = Indelli 1978: 109, where “what is healthful or unhealthy, and other advantageous or disadvantageous things,” are among the kinds of things that are “not comprehended” [οὐ συνορᾶται] by animals). Verlinsky concludes that “Epicurus consequently has in view neither things which were not seen previously, nor things which are in principle imperceptible, but rather those which could not be comprehended by all members of a tribe as easily as ordinary physical objects could.” Examples are such things as “’motion,’ ‘rest’ and ‘time’ on the one hand and ‘liberty’ and ‘slavery’ on the other.” On the meaning of τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν, I follow Verlinsky p. 78. 40 Barnes 1996: 213 observes that “the concepts and preconceptions which lie behind our beliefs and inquiries are propositional items—indeed, are themselves beliefs…; a word or phrase is surely empty if it means nothing.” More precisely (214), “a word is empty if nothing is collected under it.”

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ἐὰν δὲ ‹νόμον› μόνον θῆταί τις, μὴ ἀποβαίνῃ δὲ κατὰ τὸ συμφέρον τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνίας, οὐκέτι τοῦτο τὴν τοῦ δικαίου φύσιν ἔχει· κἂν μεταπίπτῃ τὸ κατὰ τὸ δίκαιον συμφέρον, χρόνον δέ τινα εἰς τὴν πρόληψιν ἐναρμόττῃ, οὐδὲν ἦττον ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἦν δίκαιον τοῖς μὴ φωναῖς κεναῖς ἑαυτοὺς συνταράττουσιν ἀλλ᾿ εἰς τὰ πράγματα βλέπουσιν. But if someone makes a and it does not happen to accord with the utility of social relationships it no longer has the nature of justice. And even if what is useful in the sphere of justice changes but fits the preconception for some time, it was no less just throughout that time for those who do not confuse themselves with empty utterances but simply look at the facts. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.125)41 Philippson (1910: 299) supposed that φωναῖς κεναῖς referred to the “vain statements of opponents” (“eitlen Aussprüchen von Gegnern”). I think it more likely that Epicurus means that the confusion resulting from empty sounds afflicts most people, and is the reason why they cannot accurately judge the conformity of laws to natural justice. The mechanism for such confusion will, as I understand it, be this: people take vain sounds (κενοὶ φθόγγοι) as designating a kind of reality (this is what is known as “empty belief” or κενοδοξία).42 In the abuse of language may be found one of the causes of empty and irrational desires. As Campbell (2003: 17) states: “language is closely tied in to the development of society as a positive cohesive force, but also, in its association with the rise of religious error, it is a negative force involved in the descent 41 Alberti 1995: 162 notes that there do not survive any texts by Epicurus concerning law: “The very word nomos occurs only once in the texts securely attributed to him” (Principal Doctrines 37, but thanks only to an emendation by Usener). 42 See Cole 1967: 76–79. Schrijvers (1970: 124) remarks: “Les paragraphes 37 et 38 de la lettre addressée à Hérodote et portant sur la πρόληψις, l’exposé de Lucrèce (IV 777/817) et le résumé de Diogène Laërce (X 33) impliquent que, selon Épicure, la pensée est étroitement liée au langage”; cf. Schrijvers’ entire discussion, pp. 87ff. On prolêpsis, see Morel 2007; Konstan 2007b; and n. 52 below.

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into strife and violence that occurs during the rise of civilization.”43 If the mad struggle for wealth and power was in part the consequence of increasing human security, and in part, perhaps, stimulated by new possibilities and new modes of accumulation, it was a function also of the liberation of language from its instinctive and natural connection with the feelings and senses. To return now to Farrington’s argument: the vita prior was undermined by social and technological advances, as well as by the blind development of language. It seems to me impossible that the Epicureans could have desired or approved the literal recreation of the vita prior (Cf. Blickman 1989: 162). Mankind’s instinctive nature points the way to the resolution of human problems, but human beings are more than creatures of instinct. Their progress from the early stage was natural and inevitable. Furthermore, the Epicureans did not seek to reverse technological progress. Material abundance, on the contrary, must first have been achieved in order to reveal humanity’s inner insufficiency, as Lucretius makes clear (6.9–19): nam cum vidit hic ad victum quae flagitat usus 10 omnia iam ferme mortalibus esse parata et, pro quam possent, vitam consistere tutam, divitiis homines et honore et laude potentis affluere atque bona gnatorum excellere fama, nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia cordi, 15 atque animi ingratis vitam vexare <sine ulla> pausa atque infestis cogi saevire querellis, intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus, quae conlata foris et commoda cumque venirent.

43 Cf. Campbell 2003: 16: “The connection between the origins of language, religion, and injustice is based on this ability to form false judgements. Originally words, produced by direct interaction with nature, would hold only their true fundamental meanings, and thus ‘God’ would mean nothing more than what the simulacra of the gods, as perceived by early people, showed the gods to be: perfectly happy eternal beings.”

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He saw that almost everything that necessity demands for subsistence had been already provided for mortals, and that their life was, so far as possible, established in security; he saw too that they possessed power, with wealth, honor, and glory, and took pride in the good reputation of their children; and yet he found that, notwithstanding this prosperity, all of them privately had hearts racked with anxiety which, contrary to their wish, tormented their lives without a pause, causing them to chafe and fret. Then he realized that the cause of the flaw was the vessel itself, which by its own flaw corrupted within it all things, even good things, that entered it from without. (trans. Smith 2001: 178) This inner insufficiency cannot be made good by reverting to an earlier phase of human development, in which mankind’s instinctive nature prevailed, for the people of those times “manquaient, à vrai dire, eux aussi, de la science morale qui devait être révélée un jour par Epicure.” Boyancé adds (1963: 260–61), in his perceptive summary of the Epicurean position: “On ne peut donc pas dire que les satisfactions de ces hommes presque engagés encore dans l’animalité nous seraient proposées comme modèle.” Rather, it is necessary to purge the language of “vain sounds” in order to gain a correct appreciation of the nature of reality and thus realize that human needs are limited. This point Epicurus makes strenuously at the beginning of the Letter to Herodotus (37): πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ ὑποτεταγμένα τοῖς φθόγγοις, ὦ ῾Ηρόδοτε, δεῖ εἰληφέναι, ὅπως ἂν τὰ δοξαζόμενα ἢ ζητούμενα ἢ ἀπορούμενα ἔχωμεν εἰς ταῦτα ἀναγαγόντες ἐπικρίνειν, καὶ μὴ ἄκριτα πάντα ἡμῖν ‹ᾖ› εἰς ἄπειρον ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἢ κενοὺς φθόγγους ἔχωμεν. First, then, Herodotus, we must grasp the things which underlie words, so that we may have them as 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. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.87)

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Lucretius expresses this same idea, I think, in verses in the proem to Book 6 which follow shortly upon the lines quoted above (6.24–25): veridicis igitur purgavit pectora dictis 25 et finem statuit cuppedinis atque timoris. Therefore with words of truth he purged people’s minds and laid down limits to desire and fear. (trans. Smith 2001: 178, modified) Here, veridicis dictis signifies, I suggest, not only the true teaching of Epicurus but also words that have a true referent, and are not rendered empty by virtue of vain beliefs. The above account of the role of language is likely to be original with Epicurus, though various components of it were, of course, current before he wrote. The Epicurean doctrine rests on the assumption that words have ultimately some natural or intuitive connection with external things, and that their right meanings can be recovered by “attending to the orginal conception associated with each sound” (ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸ πρῶτον ἐννόημα καθ᾿ ἕκαστον φθόγγον βλέπεσθαι, Letter to Herodotus 38).44 This cannot have been part of the theory of Democritus, from whom Epicurus nevertheless borrowed the general outlines of his cultural history, including some part of the account of the origin of language, it would seem, and the social context in which it developed (cf. Vlastos 1946 on the differences between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ views of language). Furthermore, Epicurus seems to have complemented his doctrine that human needs are by nature limited with the position that in the state of primitive individualism and in the first community of human beings, human desires did not yet, for cultural reasons, take the irrational form that came later to predominate in society. It was reasonable for Epicurus to fasten on the development of language as one of the events in the course of the 44 I take πρῶτον to mean “original,” rather than “first” in the sense of immediate or unreflective, as Bailey seems to take it; Long and Sedley (1987: 1.87) translate “primary”; so too Schrijvers 1999a: 56–57 n. 7 affirms that prôton in Letter to Herodotus 38 means, not “original,” but rather has “un sens logique.”

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progress of culture that made possible the emergence of irrational and empty desires. Out of the disintegration of the first human community emerged the city-state, in two stages. The first, marked by universal and unrestrained competition for the summits of wealth and power, a war of all against all, culminates in the establishment of tyrannical monarchies, which in turn are overthrown by the oppressed populace (5.1136–40). Apparently to abolish the vicious circle of tyranny and revolution—for the fall of the tyrants leads at once to the renewed struggle for power (1142)—society submits to the rule of law, wearied by ceaseless violence (5.1143–50): inde magistratum partim docuere creare iuraque constituere, ut vellent legibus uti. 1143 nam genus humanum, defessum vi colere aevom, ex inimicitiis languebat; quo magis ipsum sponte sua cecidit sub leges artaque iura. acrius ex ira quod enim se quisque parabat ulcisci quam nunc concessumst legibus aequis, 1150 hanc ob rem est homines pertaesum vi colere aevom. At length some of them taught the others to create magistracies and established laws, to induce them to obey ordinances. The human race, utterly weary as it was of leading a life of violence and worn out with feuds, was the more ready to submit voluntarily to the restraint of ordinances and stringent laws. The reason why people were sick and tired of a life of violence was that each individual was prompted by anger to exact vengeance more cruelly than is now allowed by equitable laws. (trans. Smith 2001: 168) “In the developed community,” Bailey remarks (1947: 3.1505), “the natural desire to unite which was seen in the earliest stage has disappeared; once again natura has given place to utilitas and foedus.” Important to an understanding of Epicureanism is the question whether the latest stage in human development—the rule of law—represents “a very real gain,” as Margaret Taylor (1947: 191) puts it, affording “at least 110

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comparative security,” or whether legal justice was, on the contrary, “a poor substitute” for the bond of friendship which had been destroyed, as Farrington (1953b: 334) has argued. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to recognize, in the first place, that the Epicurean injunction against the political life did not mean that the school was actively hostile to established political authority. Quite the contrary, as Philippson (1910: 300ff.) demonstrated and DeWitt (1954: 183ff.) has argued at length, civic governments provided the secure conditions in which it might be possible to lead a good life.45 It does not necessarily follow, however, that the Epicureans justified and defended legal penalties and the fear of punishment as the way to control unjust or irrational behavior. Philippson (1910: 299) believed that such a justification was part of Epicurean political doctrine: Thus, for the Epicureans deterrence was the goal of punishment. As far as Epicurus is concerned, this is confirmed by Principal Doctrine 35, which grounds the effectiveness of the threat of punishment in the fact that a criminal cannot hope to remain hidden, even if he remains so a thousand times over for the present. For it is uncertain whether he will also remain hidden until his death. (Den Epikureern gilt also danach als Strafzweck die Abschreckung. Dies bestätigt für Epikur der Spruch 35, der die Wirksamkeit der Strafandrohung damit begründet, dass der Verbrecher nicht hoffen darf, verborgen zu bleiben, auch wenn er es tausendmal im Augenblicke bleibt. Denn es ist unsicher, ob er es auch bis zum Tode bleiben wird.) Indeed, Philippson goes on to assert that Epicurus’ recognition of the relation between free will and praise and blame implies that punishment is valid not only as a deterrent but also may be justified as requital or revenge for the offence (Vergeltungszweck, 300). 45 Epicurus wrote a work Peri basileias, but little is known of its contents from the meager fragments (Plut. Non posse 1095 C; Adv. Colotem 1127 A). Philodemus’ own treatise is dedicated to Piso, and Dorandi 1982: 45–47 suggests that it may have concerned relations between patrons and clients.

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Before taking up Philippson’s arguments, I should like to present some evidence that Lucretius, at least, did not take so positive a view of the role of legal punishments. In the verse that follows immediately upon the passage quoted above concerning the origin of the laws, Lucretius writes: “thence does fear of punishment tarnish the rewards of life” (inde metus maculat poenarum praemia vitae, 1151). A fear of punishment that stains or pollutes life’s richness can scarcely be altogether a good thing for an Epicurean: it bears too close a resemblance to the irrational anxieties over punishment in the afterlife, and is indeed a contributing factor to such anxieties, as Lucretius says (see above, p. 66). This view would seem to be confirmed by a passage in the treatise On Choices and Avoidances (this is probably the title, and it is probably composed by Philodemus) col. XII: The many are rather led to right conduct by the laws which threaten with death, and with punishments coming from the gods, and with pains which are considered intolerable, and with the privation of things which are supposedly hard to procure. This is the case … partly because these things threaten men who are foolish and who cannot be persuaded by the true precepts; and the only thing that is achieved through them [sc. the laws] is deterrence for a short period of time (trans. Indelli and TsounaMcKirahan 1995: 106).46 46 Philippson 1941 ascribed On Choices and Avoidances to Hermarchus, and believed it was the text that Porphyry cites in De abstinentia; contra Gigante 1983: 247–59, Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995: 65–66: “Hermarchus’ point in that text is that the ancient lawgivers, after examining the life and social dealings of their contemporaries, prohibited homicide by law and instituted legal penalties for the perpetrators…. The emphasis of Hermarchus’ account is on the origin and function of the law in primitive societies, not in societies the members of which have fully developed ἐπιλογισμός by means of Epicurean philosophy. On the other hand, col. XII of our text refers to the function of legal justice in societies which have passed the primitive stages of their development and in which the alternative of Epicureanism is available. It does not deal exclusively with laws concerning homicide. And, even as a mere concession to other schools, it does not appeal to the concept of φυσικὴ οἰκείωσις in order to justify the legal prohibition of homicide. So Hermarchus’ conception of punitive law as reported by Porphyry is not implied by the text of PHerc. 1251 and cannot be used in support of the thesis that Hermarchus is the author of the latter” (65–66). For arguments that Philodemus is the author, see Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan pp. 66–70. It is true that, in the text cited by

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Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan argue (30–31) that the author is very likely responding to an objector who holds that popular theology and the law are useful to deter criminal behavior, and he replies that deterrence by the threat of legal punishment is at best temporary. The author maintains, on the contrary, that only an understanding of Epicurean doctrine is effective in preventing such behavior. What is more, the fears promoted by legal chastisements, though they may inhibit or repress lawless behavior in the short run, also have a share in causing the irrational desires which lead to antisocial behavior. It is from such a vicious circle, I have been arguing, that the Epicureans wished to free mankind.47 Philodemus too speaks of philosophers who perceived “that evil deeds were held in check by the tales [of punishment] because foreboding hung over the more foolish of mankind,” and so allowed such myths to circulate (On Piety 1202–17 = Obbink 1996: 189). He also holds that one should obey the laws and common customs of mankind, provided that they do not enjoin anything impious, but he makes no mention of punishment in this context (1369–83 = Obbink 1996: 201). The danger is rather that people “will suppose that the gods are terrifying tyrants, and most of all because of their own bad consciences they will expect great misfortunes from them” (2031 = Obbink 1996: 247; trans. Obbink). The reference, as Obbink says (n. 1), is to “People manipulated by philosophers or rulers by means of the poets’ false tales about gods.”48 Porphyry, the emphasis is on the origin of law in the need to control homicide, whereas in PHerc. 1251 it is rather on the effect of the law in instilling a fear of punishment. But Lucretius’ text indicates that the two arguments work in tandem, and both may very well go back to Epicurus’ Peri phuseôs. 47 Mitsis 1988: 64 notes that “Our being just benefits us by allowing us to achieve the highest state of inner calm, ataraxia,” and he adds (66–67): “Freeing us from the fear of death is a chief goal of Epicurean ethics…. Contractual theorists, however, have no program for delivering us from the fear of death. On the contrary, many of them would argue that it is an important, if not primary, motivation for not only forming but also maintaining contracts…. Epicurus would object that the fear of death does not incline men to inner peace.” Cf. Müller 1974: 73 on Lucretius’ narrative of the evolution of the state: “Gewiss bringt die Strafandrohung neue, für die Ataraxie bedrohliche Störfaktoren mit sich. Aber wer sich aller Verstösse gegen das Gesetz enthält, geniesst nun jedenfalls eine grösere Sicherheit als früher.” 48 For the connection between fear of detection and fear of punishment by the gods, see Philodemus On Piety 2219–42 = Obbink 1996: 259.

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Following upon the discussion of the fear of punishment and its consequences, Lucretius turns to the question of belief in the gods and the origin of superstition (5.1161–1240). Boyancé remarks (1963: 250), without explanation: “De la justice à la religion il y a une transition naturelle.”49 To us, perhaps, the connection is that religion is conducive to just behavior, among other reasons, because of fear of divine retribution. The ancients too, of course, were familiar with this motive. The clearest expression of it is in the satyr-play Sisyphus, attributed to Critias, one of the thirty tyrants in Athens in 404 b.c. (fr. 88B.9–15 Diels-Kranz):50 ἔπειτ᾿ ἐπειδὴ τἀμφανῆ μὲν οἱ νόμοι 10 ἀπεῖργον αὐτοὺς ἔργα μὴ πράσσειν βίᾳ, λάθρᾳ δ᾿ ἔπρασσον, τηνικαῦτά μοι δοκεῖ ‹πρῶτον› πυκνός τις καὶ σοφὸς γνώμην ἀνήρ [γνῶναι] ‹θεῶν› δέος θνητοῖσιν ἐξευρεῖν, ὅπως εἴη τι δεῖμα τοῖς κακοῖσι, κἂν λάθρᾳ 15 πράσσωσιν ἢ λέγωσιν ἢ φρονῶσί ‹τι›. Next, since laws prevented people from publicly committing acts of violence and yet they committed them secretly, that is when, I think, some clever man, wise in judgment, discovered fear for mortals, so that evil people would have some fear, even if they did or said or thought of something secretly. Lucretius, however, does not turn at once to the matter of superstitious anxiety. The first of the reasons he cites for belief in the gods— namely, evidence from dreams and visions (1169–82)—is a valid one by Epicurean criteria (see above, p. 87 n. 11; also Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 9.25 = fr. 356 Usener; Philodemus De pietate lines 225–31 with Obbink’s comment at 1996: 6–7; Gigandet 1998: 170, 173–80); 49 Contrast Blickman 1989: 157–58, who notes that the chronological progression of the section on religion is ambiguous. 50 The idea is expanded in 16ff. The notion that fear of the gods (whether or not the gods exist) is useful in order to keep the mass of mankind law-abiding is commonplace, e.g. Polybius 6.56, Cicero De divinatione 2; cf. Taylor 1949: 76ff. The attribution of the Sisyphus to Critias is not entirely secure; some scholars have ascribed it to Euripides.

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presumably, Lucretius (and Epicurus) included this argument in the account of religio or superstitious fear because one must believe that gods exist if one is to dread them. Over the nature of the gods, according to Epicureanism, there is considerable controversy, into which it is not necessary to enter here.51 Philodemus (De pietate 205–19 = Obbink 1996: 121) cites Epicurus’ Peri hosiotêtos or On Holiness for the idea that certain things may “subsist not only indestructibly but also continually one and the same in their perfection” (τὸ μὴ μόνον ἀφθάρτως, ἀλλὰ κ[αὶ κα]τ ὰ συντέλε[ιαν] ἓ[ν] καὶ ταὐ[τὸν συν]εχῶς ὑπάρχον), which suggests that they are imperishably self-identical, but in a manner different from the ordinary durability of objects. Again, in Book 12 of the Peri phuseôs, according to Philodemus (227–31), Epicurus says: το]ὺς πρώτους φη[σὶν 51 Obbink 2002: 185 affirms that the central proposition for Epicurean theology is that “for Epicurus nothing is so important about the gods as our correct thinking about them.” Obbink then notes that the gods have no interaction with our world, and concludes: “It therefore must be that our ideas about the gods (and not any other extra-cosmic physical or perceptual processes) facilitate and structure for us the very existence of the divine,” and adds that this is equivalent to saying that “according to Epicurus the gods are merely our ideas of them, noetic entities or ‘thought-constructs’ of human beings—each god a projection of an individual person’s own ethical ideals” (full bibliography of opinions for and against this view at 214 n. 104). Obbink’s conclusion does not seem to me to follow from the premises he states, and to be implausible in itself, since piety would have negative consequences for people who have false ideas of the gods, nor would there be any way of appealing to common prolepseis of the gods as a way of rectifying false conceptions about them. See also Philodemus 320–425 Obbink 1996, with commentary pp. 321–23, for Obbink’s view that “gods do not have an existence independent of the coalescence of the images by which we perceive them: their existence consists fundamentally in that coalescence” (322); also 325–27, 330–31. For a defense of the proposition that our way of deriving knowledge about the gods demonstrates incontestably “un’esistenza reale degli dèi” (contra Long and Sedley 1987: 1.144–49) see Giannantoni 1996: 27; also Herculanean papyrus 1055 col. XV (Santoro 2000: 96), possibly deriving from a treatise by Demetrius Lacon on the shape of the gods, which affirms that god “together with reason has subsistence” (“insieme alla facoltà razionale ha anche l’esistenza reale,” trad. Santoro 2000: 106: σὺν λογισμῶι τὴν ὑπόστασιν ἔχη‹ι›), with Santoro 2000: 151, who argues that the term ὑπόστασις “è molto significativa, in quanto, indicando esistenza concreta e sostanziale dell’essere divino, dimostra che è infondata la teoria degli dèiεἴδωλα” going back to Scott 1883 and defended by Bollack 1975: 225–38 and Long and Sedley 1987: 1.144–49. See also Santoro pp. 36–38, and 60–65, and, most recently, Sedley 2009, who defends with further arguments the claim that the gods are psychological projections, and Konstan 2009, who argues for their real atomic existence; Kany-Turpin 2007 is undecided.

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ἀ]ν θ ρ ώπους επὶ ν[οή]ματα ‹τῶν ἔ›ξω βα‹ί›νειν ἀφθάρτων φύσεων, which Obbink renders “he says that the first people arrived at conceptions of imperishable external entities”; Obbink explains (n. 6) that these are the first people “in human history.” This would tend to confirm that the primary conception of the gods, according to Epicurus, is also chronologically first, and precedes the corruption of belief that enters in with society and with language.52 Superstitious anxiety is the consequence of a mistaken view of the nature of the gods, not of belief in their existence per se. When Lucretius comes then to address the question of religious anxiety, it is with these words (5.1218–25):

praeterea cui non animus formidine divum contrahitur, cui non correpunt membra pavore,

52 Epicurus does not say that the noêmata of the original people corresponded to really existing external objects that are imperishable, but it must be those subsisting (ὑπάρχον) entities of the previous sentence. Obbink 2002: 185 states that Epicurus “urged his followers to refine their culturally received ideas of the gods so as to recover the original, unacculturated prolepsis of them, and to contemplate and to worship their thought-constructed gods.” If there is an “unacculturated prolepsis” of the gods, it would seem to follow that early mankind had such a prolepsis, or one that was nearer to it than we have, especially in the pre-social state and before the full development of language. Obbink argues that despite Cicero’s dependence, in De natura deorum 1.25–43, on Philodemus De pietate 184–210, at 1.43 Cicero reverses Philodemus’ point about popular beliefs: “Whereas Philodemus says explicitly that the Epicureans uphold the κοινὴ φήμη, adding that they hold that they exist (πάντας θεοὺς) ὅσους φασὶν οἱ Πανέλληνες ἀλλὰ καὶ πλείονας εἶναι [“there are all the gods the Greeks name and indeed even more”; cf. col. 362.25–31], Cicero, by contrast, makes Velleius at exactly this point deride vulgi opiniones as magna inconstantia” (211). Obbink concludes (214) that Philodemus’ broad class of gods would include “many debased or aberrant concepts of divinities, at least as potential divinities.” These divinities, Obbink affirms (215), can only intervene in our lives via our preconceptions of them, “i.e., culturally and traditionally received opinions of divinity philosophically refined to an acceptable approximation of what they had been for the first humans in civilisation” (215). But why only in civilization, as opposed to the pre-social stage? And at what stage of civilization would the original idea of the gods have become corrupted? Obbink concludes (220): “We are reminded that ‘Epicureanism is in a sense about returning human beings to their natural state by stripping from them the false beliefs that have corrupted them’” (quoting Fowler 2000: 217). On prolêpseis in general, and of the gods in particular, see Morel 2007; Konstan 2007b.

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1220 fulminis horribili cum plaga torrida tellus contremit et magnum percurrunt murmura caelum? non populi gentesque tremunt, regesque superbi corripiunt divum percussi membra timore, ne quod ob admissum foede dictumve superbe 1225 poenarum grave sit solvendi tempus adactum?53 Moreover, whose heart does not contract with dread of the gods, and who does not cower in fear, when the scorched earth shudders beneath the terrible stroke of the thunderbolt, and rumbles of thunder run across the vast heaven? Do not nations and people tremble, and do not proud kings shrink in every limb, stricken with terror of the gods, in case the dreadful moment of reckoning has come for some heinous deed or arrogant word? (trans. Smith 2001: 170) Superstitious terror, it appears, presupposes some pre-existing sense of guilt and fear of punishment.54 Lucretius next gives the illustrative 53 In 1124, ne quod is the reading of the manuscripts (O, Q); Lachmann conjectured nequid; in 1225, adauctum is the manuscript reading, whereas adactum is an emendation of Marulla’s, adopted in Bailey 1947. 54 Giancotti 1981: 63 n. 15 cites Perelli 1966–67: 222, who writes: “il timore degli dèi, come esseri superiori che puniscono i malvagi, non può essere anteriore alle leggi umane, ma nasce dopo e in conseguenza di esse,” and notes (214): “per impedire le violenze continue fu necessario istituire le leggi e tenere a freno gli uomini col timore della pena. A questo punto, e non casualmente, si inserisce il sorgere del timore religioso, dei riti e dei culti; infatti al timore della pena terrena si associa immediatamente il timore della pena ultraterrena.” Sasso 1979: 102–07 places the rise of the fear of punishment in the monarchical era of human development. Giancotti 1981, in subjecting Sasso’s view to critical appraisal, provides a detailed and careful examination of the relevant passages in Lucretius with a view to demonstrating that an awareness of the gods precedes this stage and may be ascribed to early mankind (“la causa in sé [of belief in the gods], il videre i simulacra divini, preesistette a quelle urbis, a quella diffusione, agli altari, ai riti,” 317; cf. 351). But the question is whether a superstitious fear of punishment after death arose simultaneously with belief in the gods; and here, whatever the exact chronology might have been (and I agree that there is not a precise dividing line), it seems to me that Lucretius’ verse 5.1180 is decisive in showing that it did not: quod mortis timor haud quemquam vexaret eorum (“the fear of death did not at all disturb any of them”), in spite of visions and dreams of the gods; cf. Giancotti 61–64. Lucretius’ program is to

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example of a military commander with his fleet, praying in the storm for peace from the gods, and he concludes (5.1233–35): usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures 1235 proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur. It all goes to show that there is some invisible force that tramples on human ambitions and seemingly treads underfoot the glorious rods and grim axes of high office, and treats them as its playthings. (trans. Smith 2001: 170) In his treatise On Piety (lines 2158–82 Obbink 1996: 255, cited also in Obbink 1995: 199), Philodemus appears to distinguish two moments in the invention of stories designed to inspire a terror of divine punishment. First, there was a stage in which thoughtful people promoted such beliefs in order to repress crime and harm to the state (πολιτεία); this occurred when early freethinkers, no longer inhibited by fear of the gods, began to commit crimes in secret. Then came a second stage, in which certain people introduced truly terrifying tales of retribution by the gods, now no longer with the more or less legitimate motive of preventing unjust actions but simply in accord with popular opinion and heedless of mad inconsistencies in their ideas. This would suggest that, according to Philodemus, demonstrate quibus ille modis divum metus insinuarit/ pectora, terrarum qui in orbi sancta tuetur/ fana lacus lucos aras simulacraque deum (“those ways in which that fear of the gods insinuated itself into into people’s breasts, the fear that throughout the world protects as sacred temples, lakes, groves, altars, and statues of the gods,” 5.73–75): not just belief, but fear is his subject, and there is not sufficient reason for supposing that the two insinuated themselves into the minds of human beings in the pre-social phase, even if some superstitious ideas emerged before the full regime of law and punishment did. Cf. Giancotti’s discussion (332–37) of mankind’s possible belief in Hades at the time of the vita prior, based on Lucretius’ assertion that, when they were caught in the jaws of wild beasts, they “summoned Orcus” (accibant … Orcum, 5.996); but even if Orcus is more than a mere metaphor for death, as Giancotti argues, it scarcely suggests a deep anxiety over punishment in the afterlife in this early epoch (nor does the mere notion that the gods may sometimes be angry). Thus I do not entirely see the motivation for Giancotti’s response (341 n. 45) to my own view (p. 41 of the original edition): “Mi riesce difficile accettare l’asserto che il ‘belief in the gods’ derivante da quanto è descritto in 1169–1193 fosse scevro di ‘dread of them.’”

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a sober concern over punishment by the gods may have served some constructive purpose in the earliest human communities, but that later on it became wildly distorted and harmful. As Obbink (1995: 199) puts it: “Poetic myths about the gods, and their interpretations at the hand of opportunistic philosophers and politicians, historically have served for the most part to obscure naturally formed conceptions, while lulling us into a false sense of security in the hope that potential wrongdoers will believe the poets’ myths and so refrain from injustice.” Taken together, the passages mentioned above seem to invite two conclusions. First, the rule of law, which rests upon the fear of punishment as the deterrent to antisocial behavior, was certainly an inevitable stage in human history, and undoubtedly useful under the circumstances in which it arose, but should not be understood as a prescriptive Epicurean doctrine for society. As Diogenes of Oenoanda states (fr. 56, trans. Smith): “But if we assume [wisdom] to be possible, then truly the life of the gods will pass to men. For everything will be full of justice [δικαιοσύνη] and mutual love [φιλαλληλία], and there will come to be no need of fortifications or laws and all the things which we contrive on account of one another.” John Armstrong, who quotes this passage, comments (1997: 326): Here laws seem necessary only for protection against aggression, so they will be absent from the ideal community. In spite of this absence, however, the community is “full of justice.” It would seem, then, that justice is independent of law. Recent scholarship on Epicureanism frequently misses this. One reason Epicureans could conceive of justice as independent of law is that, unlike laws, the contract necessary to establish justice in a community (KD 32) does not come with institutionalized penalties for noncompliance.55 55 But see Alberti 1995, who argues that “justice is the realization of utility by means of a contract” (169; cf. Principal Doctrines 32 and 33), and that law’s raison d’être lies in utility. Epicurus thus abandons “the traditional idea that law and justice coincide” (170); hence the conventionalist interpretation of Epicurean justice (e.g. Müller 1972: 104–10; Goldschmidt 1977: 71–83) is inadequate, since it “reduces justice to positive law.” But “utility is, in Epicureanism, a real state of the world” (171); this is why Polystratus classifies it among “relative existents” (col. 27 Indelli). Law, then, “is an expression of the real interests and

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The rule of law is a fact in the development of society, not an Epicurean principle. On the contrary, it is too closely associated with the anxieties that in part at least produce irrational desires and behavior to be regarded as altogether good.56 Second, and this point is more tentative than the first, superstitious fear, which seems not to have existed among human beings in the state of primitive individualism and perhaps played no significant role in the vita prior, may first have become, according to the Epicureans, an important feature in the third and fourth stages of society, those of unbounded competition and the subsequent rule of law (cf. Gigandet 1998: 171–72, 190–96). The discussion of this anxiety follows upon the description of these latter stages; we are told that dread of the gods is concerned with punishment for foul deeds or tyrannical words, and the fear of such punishments can only have arisen after the institution of like punishments in society; finally, the victims of such fears are emphatically the wealthy and powerful, and these classes clearly arose in the last two stages of society. If these arguments are right, then, just as the Epicureans associated the rise of vain desires with the development of language, so they associated the spread of empty anxieties with both the subsequent outbreak of greed and ambition and the laws and threats of punishment that contained them.57 It is now necessary, in conclusion, to turn to the argument of Philippson mentioned above, and to the passages in Epicurus and Lucretius concerning the fear of punishment and detection. The question is this: do these texts indicate, contrary to what I have argued above, that the Epicureans

wishes of the masses” (172), and enjoins what people would do spontaneously if they could calculate and pursue their own utility (173); in this sense, law “does not perform any coercive function” (175). Law, then, is not valid or just by virtue of enactment: validity is dependent always on relative utility (179). It is the contract that “gives rise to a character, that of justness or unjustness, which … becomes a real property of the action” (180–81). Justness is thus an accidental property of a relational sort (cf. Letter to Herodotus 70–71), but no less real for that (181–85), just as moral values are real (in Polystratus), but always relative and subject to revision, according to circumstances (188). See also Morel 2007a: 175–84, and Mitsis 1988: 65–67, 79–92 on justice and contracts. 56 Cf. Blickman 1989: 160, who speaks of “the time when ambition and fear of the laws emerged to plague human life.” 57 For further discussion with ample bibliography, see Blickman 1989: 173–79.

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in some sense “approved” of punishment as a deterrent in their own time? The evidence may be divided under several heads. First may be cited statements to the effect that only fear of punishment deters people from criminal acts. Plutarch is explicit (Contra Epicuri beatudinem 25, 1104B = fr. 534 Usener; cf. frr. 531–32 Usener): οὐ γὰρ ᾿Επίκουρος ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῆς ἀδικίας οἴεται δεῖν ἀπείργειν ἢ φόβῳ κολάσεων. Epicurus does not believe that one should refrain from injustice for any other reason than fear of punishment. Such remarks, mostly found in hostile sources, go beyond the evidence we have from Epicurean texts (cf. Philippson 1910: 300 bottom). The second group, drawn from Epicurean texts, consists of passages in which the fear of punishment is acknowledged as a powerful motive, e.g. Lucretius 3.825–27 (cf. also 3.1014–15 and 5.1154–57): 825 advenit id quod eam [sc. animam] de rebus saepe futuris macerat inque metu male habet curisque fatigat praeteritisque male admissis peccata remordent. the soul is often visited by feelings that torment it about the future, fret it with fear, and vex it with anxious cares, while consciousness of past misdeeds afflicts it with remorse. (trans. Smith 2001: 89) Closely connected with the fear of punishment is the role of conscientia, as the above passage makes clear. For Seneca, the term appears to have a meaning like that of our “conscience” as we see in Seneca Letters to Lucilius 97.15 (= fr. 531 Usener): hic consentiamus [sc. cum Epicuro], mala facinora conscientia flagellari. In this let us agree with Epicurus—that evil deeds are punished by conscience. 121

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For Lucretius, who employs the adjectival phrase conscius sibi, not the abstract noun conscientia, the term seems to refer, as it commonly does in the Republic, not to the torments of conscience in the modern sense of the word but rather to the guilty knowledge that, combined with a fear of punishment, may betray the offender, whether through gestures, looks, careless words, or cries uttered during sleep (cf. Cicero Against Catiline 2.13, 3.11, 27; also Lucretius 3.1018, 4.1018–19 and 1135, 5.1158–60). So far, we have been dealing with motives and reactions that affect the mass of human beings. The fourth category, however, concerns the fear of detection, which creates discomfort even when illegal acts are done covertly. Here we may include Vatican Saying 7 (cf. Principal Doctrines 34, 35): ᾿Αδικοῦντα λαθεῖν μὲν δύσκολον, πίστιν δὲ λαβεῖν ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαθεῖν ἀδύνατον. It is hard for someone who commits an injustice to escape notice, and impossible to acquire confidence about escaping notice. What these passages tell us is that it is impossible to have confidence (πίστις) that one will escape detection, a view that is amply supported by Philodemus and other writers in the Epicurean tradition (cf. Seneca Letters to Lucilius 97.13; Atticus in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 15.5.5 = fr. 532 Us.; Plutarch It is Impossible to Live Pleasantly according to Epicurus 1090B-C, etc.). Here, then, is a tone that is definitely prescriptive. The existence of chastisements and chastisers is assumed, and a recommendation based upon this circumstance is made to the effect that one should avoid contravening the laws. Are legal punishments, then, approved, in order that justice may prevail?58 The fifth and last group of testimonies suggests another answer. These are all concerned with the behavior of the sage or σοφός. Two passages 58 Cf. Seel 1996: 360, who remarks that “La lettura forte della R.S. XXXIV è sbagliata. Oltre alla paura di essere punito esistono altre ragioni, proprie al saggio, per astenersi dal violare la legge.”

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are relevant, the first from a fragment of Epicurus’ Διαπορίαι or Puzzles (Plutarch Against Colotes 1127A = fr. 18 Usener = fr. 12 Arrighetti2, with translation on p. 166), in which Epicurus asks εἰ πράξει τινὰ ὁ σοφὸς ὧν οἱ νόμοι ἀπαγορεύουσιν, εἰδὼς ὅτι λήσει. καὶ ἀποκρίνεται· “Οὐκ εὔοδον τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἐστι κατηγόρημα.” whether the wise man will do what the laws prohibit, if he knows that he will escape notice. And he answers: “A simple statement is not easy.”59 Plutarch comments ungenerously on Epicurus’ reply: “What he means is: I will do it but I don’t want to admit it.” The second is a remark by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 4.22.143.6 = fr. 582 Usener): καὶ ὅ γε ᾿Επίκουρος ἀδικεῖν ἐπὶ κέρδει τινὶ βούλεσθαί φησι60 τὸν κατ᾿ αὐτὸν σοφόν· πίστιν γὰρ λαβεῖν περὶ τοῦ λαθεῖν οὐ δύνασθαι. ὥστε εἰ πεισθήσεται λήσειν, ἀδικήσει κατ᾿ αὐτόν. And Epicurus too, indeed, says that the sage (as he understands it) wishes to do wrong for the sake of some gain; for he cannot achieve confidence concerning escaping notice. Thus, if he should be persuaded that he can escape notice, he will do wrong, according to him [i.e., Epicurus].61

59 See the discussion of this passage in Cosenza 1996: 368–69. 60 Text as in Usener. The Akademie-Verlag edition, ed. Stählin and Früchtel (1960: 312), follows Bywater in inserting ‹οὔ› before φησι, yielding “they say that the sage … does not wish to do wrong,” but it is not required. The γάρ (“for”) in the following clause explains why, though the sage wishes it, he nevertheless refrains from wrongdoing. With οὔ, the qualification “for the sake of some gain” seems pointless. Whether Clement is accurately reflecting Epicurus’ own view here may, of course, be doubted. 61 In the first edition, I cited also fr. 533 Usener (Herculanean papyrus 1012) as bearing upon this topic; the fragment, however, as restored by De Falco 1923: 42 (col. 36) and attributed to Demetrius Lacon, deals rather with the Epicurean conception of the highest good as self-sufficient, and is irrelevant here.

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It is this second passage that provides the link between the arguments concerning the impossibility of confidence that illegal acts will remain covert and the statements concerning the behavior of the sage. I expect that all the passages cited under the fourth and fifth heads above may have formed part of a single argument, whose source may well have been the book called Διαπορίαι. Phillipson explained brilliantly the point involved in Epicurus’ puzzle concerning the sage. The laws of any given community might not reflect the natural purpose of the contract from which justice (δικαιοσύνη) arose, namely, the prevention of mutual harm (cf. Principal Doctrines 37 and 38). Will the sage then obey such laws, in the case, for example, that social changes have rendered older legislation obsolete? He will, answered Epicurus, presumably in most instances, because it is impossible to feel secure about the consequences if one has transgressed them.62 The problem was not new with Epicurus; Plato seems to have raised it in the Republic (cf. 441C–443B).63 For the sake of a life free from disturbance, the sage ought indeed to obey the precepts of common morality in whatever place and at whatever time he or she may be living. Neither the threat of punishment nor the laws, however, are required for the sage to act in accord with what is naturally just, that is, beneficial to social life.64 As Paolo Cosenza observes (1996: 366–67, 370), the sage’s desires are limited to what is easily acquired, and hence there is no motive for commiting injustice. Thus, the fear of punishment, while it may work as a deterrent and is appropriate to, or at least inevitable in, a certain stage of social development, is not an important motive for the sage, and ought not to be construed as an “approved” principle for society among the Epicureans. Indeed, where social life has progressed to the 62 Cosenza 1996: 375–76 notes that where unjust laws are in effect, a sage might be deterred from violating them by the fear of detection; but he concludes with a non liquet on whether the sage will ever violate such laws. 63 See Philippson 1910: 302–03. On the passage in Plato’s Republic, see Sachs 1963; Vlastos 1968 and 1969. 64 Mitsis 1988: 89 observes that, “By entering into contracts, the Epicurean can gain security from those who are not sagelike” (cf. Stobaeus 43.139 = fr. 530 Usener: “the laws exist for the wise, not that they may not do wrong, but that they may not suffer it”). One motive, then, for respecting the law publicly is to discourage others from violating it.

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point at which sufficient means of life are available to all, and only an irrational fear of punishment in the afterlife prevents the majority of people from enjoying a life of pleasurable tranquillity, the time may be near when the threat of chastisement will cease to be a useful method of social control at all.

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Chapter 4

Epistemology

Irrational fears and desires, I have been arguing, arise from a false opinion or belief concerning empty simulacra, and the vain pursuits conditioned by these passions may afford a certain pleasure derived, in part, from the hope or anticipation of their abatement. Ambition and greed, in particular, have as their object the provision of a security beyond what is possible, that is, immunity to death. The desire for such security is nourished by the fear of death, and is given scope in the course of social development through changes in the character of language and the rise of new possibilities of wealth and power unrelated to real or natural needs. Fears, in turn, are the product in part of excessive desires, and are reinforced by the institutions of law and punishment designed to check socially harmful behavior or, at certain stages of society, to serve the interests of a religiously skeptical and morally irresponsible elite, who invent or help to disseminate false stories about the gods. One may yet inquire whence comes an image of a security so complete as to suggest the possibility of immortality in a universe in which all phenomena are eventually reduced to atoms. While we cannot achieve certainty in this matter, I argue that the god-like invulnerability that, according to the Epicureans, the soul may in fact attain itself holds out the promise of an immortal and unshakable happiness. The problem is that this security is misunderstood by the mass of mankind as physical deathlessness. It is a striking fact that the Epicureans, who hammered home the inevitability of death, nevertheless frequently described the sage or addressed members of their own circle as divine and even immortal. Illustrations 127

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are easy to multiply. Thus, Epicurus concludes an epistle to Colotes (fr. 141 Usener = Plutarch Against Colotes 1117B) with the words: ἄφθαρτός μοι περιπάτει καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀφθάρτους διανοοῦ. Go thou imperishable and consider us imperishable. To Pythocles, whom he addresses as “blessed one” (μακάριε, Diogenes Laertius 10.6 = fr. 163 Usener), he writes (Diogenes Laertius 10.5 = fr. 165 Usener = fr. 88 Arrighetti2): καθεδοῦμαι προσδοκῶν τὴν ἱμερτὴν καὶ ἰσόθεόν σου εἴσοδον. I shall sit in expectation of the pleasure and your godlike arrival. A letter of Epicurus to his mother, preserved by Diogenes of Oenoanda (fr. 65.29–40 Arrighetti = fr. 125 III.9–IV.10 Smith; text as in Smith), makes the point forcefully: ο]ὐ  γὰρ μεικρὰ οὐδέ[ν τ᾿ ἀνύ]τοντα περιγείνεται ἡ[μ]ε ῖ ν τάδ᾿ οἷα τὴν διάθεσιν ἡμῶν ἰσόθεον ποιεῖ καὶ οὐδὲ διὰ τὴν θνητότητα τῆς ἀφθάρτου καὶ μακαρίας φύσεως λειπομένους ἡμᾶς δείκνυσιν. ὅτε μὲν γὰρ ζῶμεν, ὁμοίως τοῖς θεοῖς χαίρο μ  εν For not small [or ineffectual] are these gains for us which make our disposition godlike and show that not even our mortality makes us inferior to the imperishable and blessed nature; for when we are alive, we are as joyful as the gods. (trans. Smith 1993: 414) Lucretius, in famous lines, avers that nothing prevents human beings from leading lives worthy of the gods (dignam dis degere vitam, 3.322), and he passionately affirms the divine stature of Epicurus (5.8ff.). Plutarch  Cf. also Epicurus Letter to Pythocles 135, Vatican Saying 36, where Metrodorus describes the life of the master as a μῦθος, and DeWitt 1954: 280–81. Schmid 1961: 694–95,

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(Moralia 1091B-C, 1117C) remarks scornfully that this language was characteristic of the school. It would be wrong, I think, to dismiss such language as a conventional or rhetorical way of magnifying Epicureanism or its conception of the sage, especially in the light of Epicurus’ well-known prejudice against poetic or metaphorical exaggeration. For the Epicureans maintained doctrines concerning the nature of pleasure and the soul which give meaning to these descriptions, and should be related to them. First of all we may mention the idea, derived from Aristotle, that pleasure is independent of duration (Principal Doctrine 19): ῾Ο ἄπειρος χρόνος ἴσην ἔχει τὴν ἡδονὴν καὶ ὁ πεπερασμένος, ἐάν τις αὐτῆς τὰ πέρατα καταμετρήσῃ τῷ λογισμῷ. Infinite time and finite time contain equal pleasure, if one measures the limits of pleasure by reasoning. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 150) Epicurus gives the reason for this in Principal Doctrine 20, employing language borrowed from the mystery religions, as Festugière has pointed out: following Bignone 1936: 1.121–24, compares Aristotle’s Protrepticus fr. 10c Rose; Steckel 1968: 583 states that Epicurus affirmed, in his response to Colotes’ gesture of worship, “das Gleichgewicht von Rationalismus und Mystik in seiner Lehre.”  The fullest description of religious language and motifs in Epicurean writings is that of Schmid 1961, esp. cols. 741–55.  Cf. De Lacy 1939. According to Vlastos’ account (1945: 580–82) of the “divine” in Democritus, the idea was irrelevant to the atomic system, and merely referred to “any natural entity whose moral value is not less than that traditionally attached to supernatural entities of popular religion” (1946: 63). It is not necessary to explain away the expressions of a fervent religious feeling in Lucretius as the outbursts of “un mistico represso” (Perelli 1969: 179).  See Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10, 1174a14ff., Diano 1946: 122; also Vatican Saying 27 on the purity of pleasure that derives from the pursuit of philosophy, and compare Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1154b26–28, 1177a25–27. On the idea that pleasure is not increased by duration, see also Mitsis 1988: 24–27.  Alternative reading of the last word: προσεδεήθη. The terms αἰών and παντελής are borrowed from the mysteries; cf. Festugière 1955: 47 on τέλειος and related terms; also Friedländer 1958: 24; Obbink 1996: 531–37 on how Epicureanism “could be consonant

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ἡ δὲ διάνοια τοῦ τῆς σαρκὸς τέλους καὶ πέρατος λαβοῦσα τὸν ἐπιλογισμὸν καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ τοῦ αἰῶνος φόβους ἐκλύσασα τὸν παντελῆ βίον παρεσκεύασε, καὶ οὐθὲν ἔτι τοῦ ἀπείρου χρόνου προσεδεήθημεν· The intellect, by making a rational calculation of the end and the limit which govern the flesh, and by dispelling fears about eternity, brings about the complete life, so that we no longer need infinite time. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 150). An understanding of the limits or ends (τέλους καὶ πέρατος, perhaps even “the essential nature”) of the body makes possible a “complete” or “perfect” life (παντελῆ βίον), and what is perfect does not require or admit of improvement over time. There is an elegant contrast between “anxieties over eternity” (τοὺς ὑπὲρ τοῦ αἰῶνος φόβους) and the completeness that needs nothing of “infinite time” (τοῦ ἀπείρου χρόνου), suggesting subtly that the αἰών or “eternity” promised by the mysteries is attainable only by turning away from cultic preoccupations and attending rationally to the body’s nature and the real pleasure of which it is capable. with, and (in a sense) account for, basic religious practices and beliefs” (537). For Epicurus’ tendency to use aiôn and related terms of a falsely imagined eternal survival after death, see Ramelli and Konstan 2007: 34–35.  On the varied uses of τέλος and πέρας in Epicurean philosophy, including that of accounting for the essences or definitions of things, see De Lacy 1969: 105ff. On the vexed question of Aristotle’s conception of pleasure, see Hardie 1968: 306ff.; also Chapter 1, and n. 11 below.  For αἰών, see also Diano 1946: 128.35, and for the general idea, Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus 128. Ramelli and Konstan 2007: 34 observe that “Epicurus uses aiônios in reference to the future life that non-Epicureans expect, with its dreadful punishments, that is, to an afterlife in which Epicureans do not believe,” citing Letter to Herodotus 81 and Principal Doctrine 28; we might have added the present passage as well. Puliga 1983: 247–50 cites Epicurus’ pronouncements on time in the Letter to Herodotus 72–73, and (p. 248) Lucretius 1.459–63, Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 10.219 = fr. 164 Arrighetti = fr. 294 Usener, as well as PHerc 1413 coll. 5 and 9 = fr. 37.17 Arrighetti2, and concludes (252): “Il ridimensionamento della morte che Epicuro opera sul concetto di χρόνος ci sembra essere il colpo di grazia inferto … al φόβος della morte, il quale si genera, in definitiva, dal considerare l’ἄπειρος χρόνος come realtà dotata di un carattere assoluto, senza circoscriverlo nell’ambito della φύσις.” Mitsis 1988: 55 notes that “Epicurus argues against the Cyrenaics that mental pleasures are greater than bodily

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The Epicurean texts that we possess have nothing of Aristotle’s analytic arguments on the nature of pleasure, although Epicurus may have employed such arguments elsewhere. What we do have is a physical interpretation of pleasure that accounts for the subjective phenomenon of pleasure’s completeness and timelessness. The theory is essentially this: the body and soul feel pain or perturbations, respectively, when their healthy constitution, that is, the natural coherence of their atoms, is disrupted, and pleasure arises from the return of the body to its healthy state or else consists simply in the experience of well-being. The distinction between two sorts of pleasure Epicurus derived from Aristotle, who developed ideas that Plato had presented in the Philebus. Epicurus called these types of pleasure, respectively, the “kinetic” and the “static” (καταστηματική). Static pleasure, which does not involve a change of state, is the greater, according to Epicurus. Moreover, Diogenes Laertius also informs us that Epicurus regarded the joys of the soul as superior to the pleasures of the body (10.136–37): Διαφέρεται δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Κυρηναϊκοὺς περὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς· οἱ μὲν γὰρ τὴν καταστηματικὴν οὐκ ἐγκρίνουσι, μόνην δὲ τὴν ἐν κινήσει· ὁ δὲ ἀμφοτέραν ‹καὶ› ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος, ὥς φησιν ἐν τῷ Περὶ αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς καὶ ἐν τῷ Περὶ τέλους καὶ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ Περὶ βίων…. ὁ δ᾿ pleasures (De fin. I.55). The chief reason for the priority of mental pleasures is that they are temporally extended in a way that the pleasures of the body are not.” This is true in the sense that I can derive pleasure now from the memory of prior pleasures, not that an enduring pleasure is greater than a transient one merely by virtue of its duration (the expression animi … voluptates et dolores in Cicero is, I believe, inexact, and the speaker continues with what seems a more rigorous formulation: quamquam autem et laetitiam nobis voluptas animi et molestiam dolor afferat [“although pleasure brings us joy of mind and pain brings us distress of mind”]; see Chapter 1). Cf. Pigeaud 1981: 163: “Parce que l’expérience du plaisir catastématique est l’expérience d’un temps tellement plein, il est l’équivalent de l’infinité du plaisir de la chair dans un temps infini”; Nussbaum 1994: 212–13. Although the philosophical idiom is entirely different, there is a certain analogy between Epicurus’ view and that of Plotinus (Enneads 1.5.7.22–26, trans. Smith 2004: 55): “Well-being must not be counted by time but by eternity (αἰών); and this is neither more nor less nor of any extension, but is a ‘this here,’ unextended and timeless.” For aiôn used of timelessness in the Platonic tradition, see Ramelli and Konstan 2007: 12–28.  On the physical theory of pleasure, see Merlan 1960: 1ff., and on pain, Zonneveld 1959: 187, 192; also Schmid 1961: 719–23.  Cf. Hardie 1968: 302–03.

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᾿Επίκουρος ἐν τῷ Περὶ αἱρέσεων οὕτω λέγει· “ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀταραξία καὶ ἀπονία καταστηματικαί εἰσιν ἡδοναί· ἡ δὲ χαρὰ καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνέργειαι10 βλέπονται.” ῎Ετι πρὸς τοὺς Κυρηναϊκούς· οἱ μὲν γὰρ χείρους τὰς σωματικὰς ἀλγηδόνας τῶν ψυχικῶν…, ὁ δὲ τὰς ψυχικάς. τὴν γοῦν σάρκα τὸ παρὸν μόνον χειμάζειν, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ παρελθὸν καὶ τὸ παρὸν καὶ τὸ μέλλον. (text as in Long and Sedley 1987: 2.124) Epicurus disagrees with the Cyrenaics on pleasure: they do not admit static pleasure but only the kinetic type, whereas he accepts both types, for soul and for body, as he says in his book On choice and avoidance and in On the Goal and in Book 1 of On lives…. In On choices he speaks as follows: “Freedom from disturbance and absence of pain are static pleasures; but joy and delight are regarded as kinetic activities.” He has a further disagreeement with the Cyrenaics: they take bodily pains to be worse than mental ones … but he takes the mental ones to be worse, since the flesh is storm-tossed only in the present, but the soul in past, present and future. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 1.118)11 10 For the reading ἐνέργειαι, see Chapter 1, n. 18. 11 Cf. Merlan 1960. Freedom from pain is clear enough as a static pleasure, but in what sense are “joy and delight” kinetic activities (note that, on Long and Sedley’s reading, they are not defined, strictly speaking, as pleasures)? By analogy with the replenishment theory of kinetic pleasures in the body, joy might be understood as the alleviation of fear; but, as we have seen (Chapter 1, p. 6), Epicurus affirmed in On the End (cited in Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.41) that listening to music is a kinetic pleasure, but it is surely not a function of alleviating a pain associated with need, unless perhaps we suppose that it is soothing to a mind perturbed by anxiety. I think it more likely that χαρά may refer also to mentally pleasurable excitation in general, for example the sight of a dear friend. Long and Sedley 1987: 2.124–25 remark correctly that “The terms ἀταραξία and ἀπονία evidently pick out mental and bodily absence of pain respectively,” but go astray when they add: “but χαρά and εὐφροσύνη are most naturally interpreted as two terms for kinetic pleasure each of which can apply to mind or body”; these latter apply only to pleasures of the logikon part of the soul (see Chapter 1, pp. 16–18). Stokes 1996: 154 argues that at De finibus 2.9 “Cicero’s Torquatus distinguishes kinetic and katastematic as process and state pleasures,” rightly, according to Stokes (156), who explains that the motions that accompany process pleasures such as quenching thirst may be atomic or at a higher level (157); but Stokes obfuscates the issue by introducing sensual pleasures that accompany the satisfaction of needs, for example, in the case of eating, a good taste

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It is reasonable to suppose that the static pleasure of the soul, involving no change and requiring nothing for its completion, is the major component of that happiness which, Epicurus said, belongs to the gods (Diogenes Laertius 10.121a = fr. 407 Usener): εὐδαιμονίαν διχῆ νοεῖσθαι, τήν τε ἀκροτάτην, οἵα ἐστὶ περὶ τὸν θεόν, ἐπίτασιν οὐκ ἔχουσαν· καὶ τὴν ‹κατὰ τὴν› προσθήκην καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν ἡδονῶν. Happiness is a twofold notion: the highest, such as god enjoys, which is incapable of increase; and the happiness which is capable of addition and subtraction of pleasures (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 117). The relative stability of the soul, the atoms of which, like those of every other physical structure, exhibit a certain resistance under collision and tend to preserve their natural coherence, defines the soul’s διάθεσις or disposition. David Furley (1967: 228) has argued persuasively that Epicurus’ notion of the soul’s disposition may be regarded as an atomistic adaptation of Aristotle’s ethical theory, which held that “external objects stimulate characteristic responses in us; what we do as moral agents depends not only on the nature of the stimulus but also on our own trained dispositions.”12 The disposition of the sage is in perfect accord with nature (Plutarch How a Youth should Listen to Poems 37A = fr. 548 Usener = fr. 125 Diano = fr. B 85 Bailey = fr. 144 Arrighetti2):

in the mouth (158), and thus blurring the distinction between the two kinds of pleasure. Some purely sensation-based pleasures that do not depend on need are still kinetic. 12 On διάθεσις, cf. DeWitt 1954: 252–55; on the physical causes of the stability of the soul, Furley 1967: 230–31, who explains the “resistance” of atoms as a consequence of their weight, and Bailey 1928: 337–38, 345–49, who suggests that concilia have a kind of organic cohesion (Furley does not entirely reject this possibility: cf. 229). See also Sambursky 1956: 124ff., and Lucretius 1.221–24. Taylor (1999: 189–95) argues that Democritus recognized forces of attraction and repulsion between atoms; this seems most unlikely to me (see Konstan 2000 for discussion), and in any case, inapplicable to the theory of Epicurus. On the Epicurean idea of character, see also Diano 1946: 129–31; Vlastos 1945: 582ff.; Sedley 1983; Mitsis 1988: 132–66; Purinton 1996.

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τὸ εὔδαιμον καὶ μακάριον οὐ χρημάτων πλῆθος οὐδὲ πραγμάτων ὄγκος οὐδ᾿ ἀρχαί τινες ἔχουσιν οὐδὲ δυνάμεις, ἀλλ᾿ ἀλυπία καὶ πραότης παθῶν καὶ διάθεσις ψυχῆς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν ὁρίζουσα. Neither a great amount of money nor piles of possessions nor political offices nor power contain what is happy and blessed, but rather freedom from pain and gentleness of passions and a disposition of the soul that determines what is in accord with nature. This character is perfectly stable and does not even imagine (πλάττειν)13 a contrary condition (Diogenes Laertius 10.117 = fr. 222a Usener): ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἅπαξ γενόμενον σοφὸν μηκέτι τὴν ἐναντίαν λαμβάνειν διάθεσιν μηδὲ πλάττειν ἑκόντα· But a person, once become wise, no longer receives the opposite disposition nor willingly imagines it. The disposition in accord with nature is the basis of the sage’s independence (αὐτάρκεια, Porphyry to Marcella 27 = fr. 202 Usener = fr. 67 Diano = fr. 216 Arrighetti2):14 ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος [ἀληθῶς φιλόσοφος]15 ὥρισται καὶ ἔστιν εὐπόριστος, ὁ δὲ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν ἀόριστός τε καὶ δυσπόριστος. ὁ οὖν τῇ φύσει κατακολουθῶν καὶ μὴ ταῖς κεναῖς δόξαις ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτάρκης· πρὸς γὰρ τὸ τῇ φύσει ἀρκοῦν πᾶσα κτῆσίς ἐστι πλοῦτος, πρὸς δὲ τὰς ἀορίστους ὀρέξεις καὶ ὁ μέγιστος πλοῦτός ἐστιν οὐδέν. Wealth that pertains to nature [the one who is truly a philosopher] is limited and is easily provided, whereas that of empty beliefs 13 I do not see why Bailey 1926: 165 renders πλάττειν as “pretend,” which seems irrelevant to the context. 14 On αὐτάρκεια cf. also Letter to Menoeceus 130, and the listings under αὐτάρκεια and αὐτάρκης in the index to Diano 1946. 15 I bracket these words as a gloss.

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is unlimited and difficult to provide. One who follows nature, then, and not empty beliefs is in all things self-sufficient; for in regard to what suffices for nature, every possession is wealth, but in regard to unlimited desires even the greatest wealth is nothing. The sage is independent of chance (cf. Porphyry To Marcella 30 = fr. 489 Usener = B 77 Bailey = fr. 210 Arrighetti2; Letter to Menoeceus 134). Like the gods, “in cui tutto è necessario e tutto bene,” as Carlo Diano (1942: 48) has argued in his extensive survey of Epicurean psychology, is the sage, who, although he is not a god, but a mortal man, “lives among goods that are those of the immortals,” since, with chance [tukhê] eliminated from his every act, he functions invariably in accord with the strict logical necessity of his nature [phusis], that is, of the flesh. The fool, however, who is in the opposite state, is basically unfree. (è il saggio, che pur non essendo dio, ma uomo e mortale, “vive tra beni che son propri degli immortali,” giacché, esclusa da ogni suo atto la τύχη, non opera se non secondo la stretta necessità logica della φύσις, e cioè della carne. Nell’opposta condizione e però fondamentalmente non libero lo stolto.) Diano has shown (17ff.) how this conception of the sage’s διάθεσις too derives from considerations raised by Aristotle. In the atomistic adaptation, the wise person’s soul is most stable and least susceptible to perturbations, which are imagined as physical, that is, atomic in character. Constituted in accord with nature, its pleasure is static, wants nothing from time, and is in this sense divine and immortal.16 16 On time and pleasure, Puliga 1983: 254, citing Principal Doctrine 19 = Vatican Saying 20, affirms that “Epicuro ha voluto dimostrare che il tempo è una categoria psicologica che non ha senso fuori di noi, oltre la nostra vita”; this is too strong—color too is an accident of atoms and void, but is not for that reason a subjective or psychological category of experience. Puliga cites (255) Diano 1974: 275 for idea that pleasure is “fuori del tempo; perché non c’è tempo per l’identico.” See also Mitsis 1988: 24–27 on the Epicurean idea that pleasure is not increased by duration.

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Two further points about the divine nature of the sage perhaps deserve mention. Epicurus, once more adapting an insight of Aristotle’s to his own atomic theory, defined time as “an accident of accidents” (Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 10.219). For time, as Lucretius explains (1.449–63), is not a thing in itself (per se) like matter and space, nor is it a property of compound bodies.17 Rather, the sense of time arises out of motion and rest, that is, the perception of changes in things, whether external, such as day and night, or internal alterations between the various affects and the absence of them.18 The stable and continuous pleasure of the sage ought not, on this account, to give rise to a sense of time, and this is perhaps another reason why the sage needs nothing of infinite time.19 17 Cf. Epicurus Letter to Herodotus 68–73. The nature of “properties” (συμβεβηκότα, coniuncta) and “accidents” (συμπτώματα, eventa) in Epicurean theory is controversial. Bailey 1926: 235ff., following Giussani, defends Epicurus against the charge of inconsistency in the use of these terms by observing that “properties” and “accidents” are relative; thus, to use his example, “slavery” is an accident of “man” but a property of “slave.” But there is no evidence, so far as I know, that Lucretius and Epicurus were thinking of attributes as logical predicates. On the contrary, Lucretius (1.478–82) reduces all phenomena, even historical events, to accidents of body (corpus) and place (locus). Matter (that is, atoms) and space alone exist per se (1.419), and all phenomena may be regarded as their attributes. Certain attributes, however, are the immediate consequences of the atomic structure of a thing, and cannot be altered without destroying the object’s atomic coherence (cf. permitiali discidio, 1.451–52). These, I take it, are “properties”; the hardness of stone is an example. Other attributes derive, not from relationships of atoms within compound bodies, but rather from relationships among or between such bodies. These seem to be the “accidents,” and Lucretius cites such abstract notions as slavery, wealth, freedom, war and peace as illustrations. Slavery is a relationship among human beings and is not inherent in the atomic constitution of an individual person. The question whether slavery is a “property” of a slave seems irrelevant to the analysis presented by Epicurus and Lucretius. 18 Cf. Letter to Herodotus 72–73. I have used the phrase “sense of time” where Lucretius has only the word tempus and Epicurus the word χρόνος, because I think the Epicureans were concerned with the subjective recognition of time. Cf. the discussion of “becoming” in Grünbaum 1967: 17: “What qualifies a physical event at a time t as belonging to the present or as now is not some physical attribute of the event or some relation it sustains to other purely physical events; instead what so qualifies the event is that at least one human or other mind-possessing organism M experiences the event at the time t such that at t, M is conceptually aware of the following complex fact: that his having the experience of the event coincides temporally with an awareness of the fact that he has it at all.” 19 Prost 2004: 152, citing Principal Doctrine 20, observes that “L’illimité est en effet … la forme de l’inconscience.”

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The Epicurean sage also seems divine in the ability to comprehend mentally all the spaces of the universe. Thus, Lucretius writes of Epicurus (1.72–74): ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra processit longe flammantia moenia mundi atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque. And so his mind’s might and vigor prevailed, and on he marched far beyond the blazing battlements of the world, in thought and understanding journeying through all the measureless universe. (trans. Smith 2001: 5) And of his own enlightenment through the teachings of Epicurus Lucretius says (3.16–18): diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi discedunt, totum video per inane geri res. apparet divum numen sedesque quietae…. the terrors of the mind are dispelled, the walls of the world dispart, and I see what happens throughout the whole void. Plainly visible are the gods in their majesty, and their calm realms…. (trans. Smith 2001: 68) While a certain poetic license must be admitted here, these verses nevertheless have their place in a philosophical tradition going back at least as far as Parmenides,20 and are especially reminiscent of Plato’s description of the philosopher in the Theaetetus (173E), who is oblivious to political life because, τῷ ὄντι τὸ σῶμα μόνον ἐν τῆ πόλει κεῖται αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐπιδημεῖ, ἡ δὲ διάνοια, ταῦτα πάντα ἡγησαμένη σμικρὰ καὶ οὐδέν, ἀτιμάσασα παν ταχῇ πέτεται κατὰ Πίνδαρον “τᾶς τε γᾶς ὑπένερθε” καὶ τὰ 20 Cf. Guthrie 1965: 17–19.

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ἐπίπεδα γεωμετροῦσα, “οὐρανοῦ θ᾿ ὕπερ” ἀστρονομοῦσα, καὶ πᾶσαν πάντῃ φύσιν ἐρευνωμένη τῶν ὄντων ἑκάστου ὅλου, εἰς τῶν ἐγγὺς οὐδὲν αὑτὴν συγκαθιεῖσα. In reality only his body resides in the city and visits there, but his mind, believing all these things to be of little or no account, despises them and flies everywhere, as Pindar puts it, “beneath the earth,” and measures out its surface, “and above the sky,” studying the stars, and discovering everywhere the entire nature of each thing as a whole, not lowering itself to any of the things close by.21 Michael Erler (2002: 162) has examined in detail how the idea of homoiôsis theôi or “similarity to god” in Epicurus derives directly from Plato. He points out as well that Lucretius appears to allude specifically to Plato in the proem to Book 5, in the phrase deus ille fuit, deus (“a god he was, a god”);22 the specific echo is of Laws 642A, θεός, ὦ ξένε, θεός, ὥς γε τὸ δικαιότατον εἰπεῖν (“a god, stranger, a god, to state it with most justice”), an exclamation which Erler describes as “the only parallel in a philosophical context known to me.” Erler remarks further (168) that in the phrase ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις in Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus (135), “The Greek ὡς … corresponds with Lucretius’ ‘fuit.’” Erler registers (172) an important distinction, however, between Plato’s concept of transcendent fulfillment and that of Epicurus, which I too have emphasized in Chapter 2, insofar as “the theoria Plato is looking for is not to be achieved by everyone…. On 21 Fowler 2002: 50–51 cites also Metrodorus Against Menestratos fr. 37 Körte = Vatican Saying 10 and fr. 38 Körte (Fowler remarks that this “example shows the close relationship between this commonplace and the uplifting of the initiate in the mysteries, who similarly rises above his earthly existence”); also Dionysius of Alexandria, cited in Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica 14.27.8 = fr. 364 Usener. 22 For this kind of expression in Latin poetry, see Wills 1996: 61; imitations or analogues in Virgil Aeneid 6.45–46, Ovid Met. 15.677, Calpurnius Ecl. 4.100, Statius Thebaid 5.751–52 and Silvae 4.6.36–37, all with deus … deus separated, though they occur in sequence in Horace Epodes 14.6 and Virgil Ecl. 5.64; cf. also Virgil Ecl. 1.6–7; in Greek, theos theos occurs in Bacchylides 3.21, and parallels are given in Snell-Maehler’s apparatus ad loc., cited by Wills 61 n. 31. Wills writes: “What these lines describe is a particular revelatory moment …, proclaiming the power of a god or, more often, a hero (Daphnis, Epicurus, Hercules). Accordingly, the demonstrative ille is a feature of the tradition from Lucretius to Virgil to Statius.”

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the other hand, Epicurus strongly believes that everyone and every age should philosophise, because everyone can understand the basic rules of nature as explained by his doctrine, which frees everyone from fear and provides eudaimonia.”23 Whatever this image may have meant for Plato, it is reasonably certain that Lucretius took it figuratively. In the proem to Book 1, for example, Lucretius plays upon the ambiguity of certain words for sight which also signify insight or understanding (1.140–48, 151–54):24 sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas suavis amicitiae quemvis efferre laborem suadet et inducit noctes vigilare serenas quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti, res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest non radii solis neque lucida tela diei discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque. quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnis, quod multa in terris fieri caeloque tuentur, 23 Erler also compares (176) in this connection the idea of the “flight of the mind” in Lucretius 1.62–79, 2.1044ff., which taken literally “contradicts Epicurean psychology”; he concludes that as a metaphor it “stands for a disposition, which enables us to deal with the phenomena properly in order to gain ataraxia.” On the general idea of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ (Theaetetus 176B1), see also Roloff 1970; Gale 1994: 191–207, who treats the deification of Epicurus as another instance of latent myth in Lucretius’ poem. It may be worth noting that Philo, De virtutibus 8 (p. 377 M.) mentions the idea of τὴν πρὸς θεὸν ἐξομοίωσιν very shortly after referring to “empty beliefs” (τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν, 7), which was something of an Epicurean catchword. 24 Very generally, video and its derivatives, like perspicio and related forms, are used metaphorically to mean “understanding”; tueor, on the other hand, is usually restricted to the vision of the eyes. Note the emphatic contrast, in end-line positions, in vv. 152–53, as well as in the proem to Book 2, e.g. vv. 5, 9. On tueor, see Guiraud 1964: 35ff. For the metaphor of the “eyes of the soul” or “eyes of the mind,” cf. Friedländer 1958: 15–16 and 340–41 nn. 15–16; also Schrijvers 1970: 123: “Il résulte de ces analyses que, d’après la théorie épicurienne de la connaissance, le mécanisme de la pensée est analogue à celui des yeux.”

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quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre possunt ac fieri divino numine rentur. But your fine qualities, Memmius, and the hope of gaining the pleasure of your delightful friendship spur me to make a success of my task, however laborious, and induce me to forego sleep and spend the still calm of the night in quest of words and verses that will enable me to light the way brightly for your mind and thus help you to see right to the heart of hidden things. This terrifying darkness that enshrouds the mind must be dispelled not by the sun’s rays and the dazzling darts of day, but by study of the superficial aspect and underlying principle of nature…. The fact is that all mortals are in the grip of fear, because they observe many things on earth and in the sky and, being at a complete loss for the explanation of their cause, suppose that a supernatural power is responsible for them. (trans. Smith 2001: 7) The Epicureans did not, of course, conceive of an intelligible world such as Plato’s, to which distance and change could not apply in any ordinary sense. I have tried to indicate, however, that as descriptions of purely subjective states of awareness, the Epicureans found and defended a serious application of some of the language used by Plato and in the mystery cults with reference to religious or idealist notions that Epicureanism itself rejected. It may be useful to indicate how the soul’s physical stability, which is the basis for character in general and in particular for the sage’s autarky, is grounded in the atomic theory of the Epicureans. The fundamental premise is that the atoms are capable of only a limited number of viable combinations. “The Epicurean limits of variation,” as Phillip De Lacy observes (1957: 116), “are equivalent to definition, setting forth the differentiae of genera and species; thus they substitute for Platonic or Aristotelian universals, circumscribing the limits of the possible.”25 Such limits of variation would apply as well to the 25 Cf. De Lacy 1969 and Vlastos 1965: 139ff., who explains how limitation on the variety of atoms was a necessary consequence of Epicurus’ own atomic theory (although I

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human soul and, incidentally, might have been employed to attack a Democritean legacy of skepticism. Epicurus had insisted, of course, that the phenomena of the universe were lawful and that their order was discoverable, especially in order to assure mankind that avenging gods do not arbitrarily intrude upon human affairs, and that Hades and other objects of empty fears have no existence.26 Besides the requirement that objects have determinate forms, which was met by the principle that De Lacy called limits of variation, the Epicurean theory had to satisfy two further conditions which were indicated by Democritus (Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 7.136; fr. B9 Diels-Kranz; cf. also frr. B6, 8): ἡμεῖς δὲ τῶι μὲν ἐόντι οὐδὲν ἀτρεκὲς συνίεμεν, μεταπῖπτον δὲ κατά τε σώματος διαθήκην καὶ τῶν ἐπεισιόντων καὶ τῶν ἀντιστηριζόντων. In fact we know nothing firm, but what changes according to the condition of the body and of the things that enter it and come up against it. (trans. Taylor 1999: 11) Democritus’ reasoning is apparently that what is perceived varies (1) with the condition of the observer and (2) with distortions in the immediate stimulus suffered in the course of transmission. To the second difficulty, the Epicureans responded with the practical expedient of repeated and nearer views, which would afford an increasingly more accurate representation of the object (cf. Diogenes Laertius 10.33–34; Lucretius 5.353ff.). As for differences in the perceivers, the Epicureans could regard these as negligible because the human soul was subject to the same laws and limits as other things. Sensation and other modes of awareness, moreover, are accidents (συμπτώματα) of the motions of atoms must register my disagreement with Vlastos’ interpretation of the nature of Epicurean minima; see Konstan 1982); on the function of natural limits in Epicureanism, see also Gigandet 1998: 145–51. 26 The lawfulness of the phenomenal world provides the means of discriminating real objects of fear from the fancied objects of vain anxiety, at least insofar as these involve irregular irruptions of divine agencies into the natural universe.

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in the soul, bearing to the soul the same kind of relationship that color bears to visible objects.27 This is the principle, of course, on which the subjective experience of the sage is related to the stability of his or her soul, as that of the mass of humankind is to the perturbations that afflict theirs. We may compare Lucretius’ demonstration (2.730–990) that atoms have no color, warmth, sound, or taste, an argument that culminates in ironic ridicule of the notion that atoms, to compose a conscious soul, must themselves have senses and awareness. Consciousness is only a kind, albeit a special kind, of secondary quality (Lucretius 2.891–96): 895

illud in his igitur rebus meminisse decebit, non ex omnibus omnino, quaecumque creant res sensilia, extemplo me gigni dicere sensus, sed magni referre ea primum quantula constent, sensile quae faciunt, et qua sint praedita forma, motibus ordinibus posituris denique quae sint.

So, in this connection, you will do well to remember this: I am not suggesting that every substance capable of creating sensible things produces sensations as a matter of course, but that the 27 See Letter to Herodotus 64, and cf. Peters 1967: 186 s.v. symbebêkos. See too Aristotle’s discussion of qualities in Categories 8, where affects are included. I may note that the doctrine of the validity of sensation contributes nothing to the refutation of skepticism per se. Lucretius (4.495–99), in a polemic against the skeptics, writes: ideoque necesse est non possint alios alii convincere sensus. nec porro poterunt ipsi reprehendere sese, aequa fides quoniam debebit semper haberi. proinde quod in quoquest his visum tempore, verumst. Therefore it is necessary that one sense cannot overcome another. Nor, furthermore, can they refute themselves, since we must always have an equal confidence in them. Thus, whatever appears to these at a given time, is true. Bailey (1947: 3.1237ff.) takes this passage as intended to refute the extreme skepticism of Metrodorus of Chios. To see that this is not likely to be right, it is enough to note that Metrodorus also affirmed, according to Eusebius, that everything exists which anyone perceives or thinks (πάντα ἐστίν, ὃ ἄν τις νοήσαι, fr. 2 Diels-Kranz). See Warren 2002: 7–9, 193–200, who notes that Epicurus’ principal move against Democritean skepticism was to maintain that the senses report real properties of atomic combinations (195).

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supremely important factors are, first, the size and shape of the particles that produce the sensible, and, secondly, their motions, order, and positions. (trans. Smith 2001: 57) From these premises it is an easy step to the conclusion that, as the souls of human beings are more or less alike, in accord with atomic limits on variation, so are their perceptions of things, which are ultimately reflections of the properties of their own component atoms. The ascription of divinity and immortality to the sage, then, had a precise meaning for the Epicureans and was grounded in their physics and psychology. Such terms had only a subjective reference, however, in the case of human beings, although the phenomena to which they referred were, according to their theory, a reflection of a stable condition of the body and, especially, of the soul. Those who have a correct understanding of these matters (οἱ ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυνάμενοι) can enjoy absolutely firm and steadfast joy (χαρὰν … βεβαιοτάτην), as Epicurus says (Plutarch That it is Not Possible to Live Happily according to Epicurus 1089D = fr. 68 Usener = fr. B11 Bailey = fr. 22.3 Arrighetti2): Τὸ γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα τὴν ἀκροτάτην χαρὰν καὶ βεβαιοτάτην ἔχει τοῖς ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυναμένοις. The comfortable state of the flesh, and the confident expectation of this, contain the highest and most secure joy for those who are capable of reasoning. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 117)28 28 The exclusive mention of the flesh, in this fragment, cannot, if we take the context in Plutarch into account, be understood as a legitimate expression of Epicurean doctrine on this matter. For Plutarch continues: ὅρα δὴ πρῶτον μὲν οἷα ποιοῦσι, τὴν εἴθ᾿ ἡδονὴν ταύτην εἴτ᾿ ἀπονίαν ἢ εὐστάθειαν ἄνω καὶ κάτω μετερῶντες ἐκ τοῦ σώματος εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, εἶτα πάλιν ἐκ ταύτης εἰς ἐκεῖνο τῷ μὴ στέγειν ἀπορρέουσαν καὶ διολισθάνουσαν ἀναγκαζόμενοι τῇ ἀρχῇ συνάπτειν (“Now first observe their conduct here, how they keep decanting this ‘pleasure’ or ‘painlessness’ or ‘stable condition’ of theirs back and forth, from body to mind to body, compelled, since pleasure is not retained in the mind but leaks and slips away, to attach it to its source” (trans. Einarson and De Lacy 1967: 37). Cf. also Brochard 1954: 254 and frr. 437, 439 Usener.

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The mass of mankind, according to the Epicureans, seek security through fame, wealth or power (Principal Doctrine 7; cf. Vatican Saying 81 and Chapter 2 above). Such security would be a good thing, Epicurus admits, if it could be achieved (Principal Doctrine 7): ῎Ενδοξοι 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. Certain people want to become famous and admired, thinking that they would thus acquire security from other men. Consequently, if such people’s life was secure, they did obtain nature’s good; but if it was not secure, they are not in possession of the objective which they originally sought after on the basis of nature’s affinity. (trans. Long and Sedley 1987: 126) However, it cannot be achieved in that way. Security is the product of a stable condition of soul and body, not of material acquisition or social approbation. In this connection may be noted the familiar contrast between the enjoyment of present good and the desire for things distant or in the future. Lucretius puts the idea in the mouth of Nature personified, reproving a man’s lament over mortality (3.955–60): 955 960

aufer abhinc lacrimas, baratre, et compesce querellas. omnia perfunctus vitai praemia marces. sed quia semper aves quod abest, praesentia temnis, inperfecta tibi elapsast ingrataque vita et nec opinanti mors ad caput adstitit ante quam satur ac plenus possis discedere rerum.

Stop snivelling, you dolt! Away with your whinings! You had full use of all the precious things of life before you reached this senile state. But because you continually crave what is not present and scorn what is, your life has slipped away from you incomplete and unenjoyed, until suddenly you have found death standing at 144

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your head before you are able to depart from the feast of life filled to repletion. (trans. Smith 2001: 93)29 Seneca (Letters to Lucilius 15.9 = fr. 491 Usener; cf. also frr. 493–94) gives us the idea in this form: stulta vita ingrata est et trepida: tota in futurum fertur (“the life of fools is unpleasant and fearful: for it is wholly projected into the future”). Secure pleasure is at hand; when it is sought as the object of empty desires it brings fearful joylessness. People may enjoy a divine and immortal happiness, if this is properly understood. It is the natural goal (τέλος) of their lives (cf. Diogenes Laertius 10.137). To want something, people must have some idea of it (Diogenes Laertius 10.33): καὶ οὐκ ἂν ἐζητήσαμεν τὸ ζητούμενον εἰ μὴ πρότερον ἐγνώκειμεν αὐτό. We would not seek the object that is sought if we did not know it in advance. The idea of immortal happiness would seem to derive in part, at least, from the image, however confused, that people have of the gods.30 The proper function of prayer, in turn, is to become receptive to the ideal of blessedness that we perceive obtaining among the gods. Like Lucretius, Philodemus too insists that the right reason for prayer is not to avoid the hostility of the gods, but rather in order that, “according to the understanding of beings surpassing in power and excellence, we may realize our fulfilments and social conformity with the laws” (737–51 Obbink; trans. Obbink 1996: 157; Philodemus is here citing Epicurus’ Peri biôn).31 29 Smith reads, and translates, barde for baratre in v. 955; the latter would mean “hellhole.” Other emendations have been proposed; see Kenney 1971: 216–17. 30 Cf. Festugière 1955: 62–63: “The Sage would perhaps have been surprised to hear it said, nevertheless it remains true that the religion of Epicurus is related to Plato’s…”; also Paratore 1947: 145; Frischer 1982 on images in Epicureanism. 31 Cf. 1147–55 = Obbink 1996: 185: “And one who understands that the provisions of goods and evils that derive from him [sc. the god] are without feeble anger and favor, affirms that he needs nothing of human things” (my trans.). Obbink 2002: 215 asks how we can have preconceptions of things that do not exist, and suggests that we have

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But the idea of true pleasure is also confused; people cannot see, as Lucretius says (2.17), what their natures are barking for. The Epicurean account of error is a simple one. People “add opinion,” falsely, to the data of their senses, making what we should call a false inference from valid but insufficiently clear information provided by the senses (cf. Furley 1971; Asmis 1984: 141–59). There is no evidence, so far as I know, that the Epicureans applied this theory of error to the all-important confusion over the nature of complete or perfect pleasure, but it seems as though they might well have done so. Divine pleasure is possible for human beings: the datum is there. Its nature, and the means to it, are misunderstood through the addition of empty opinion.32 Vain desires are limitless, as I argued in Chapter 2, because they feed on simulacra. These simulacra, we may now tentatively add, present an image of godlike, deathless joy which, misunderstood, motivates an empty quest for absolute security. This analysis applies to immoderate desires such as greed, ambition and the pursuit of glory. An analogous treatment is posnotions of comparably immaterial entities: “Knowledge of the gods, like that of virtues, mathematics, qualities, etc. constitutes a reality that supervenes on corporeal physical existence.” But we do not ascribe to these a material existence; with the gods, on the contrary, “we are to think of them as living outside the cosmos. Human psychological processes necessitate that such ideas take their formation here, within the human soul. But where for Epicurus does the abstract concept of virtue, or number, or quality actually reside?” The answer, surely, is nowhere. We do not, moreover, have images of tall or happy virtues, as we do of gods. It is a more interesting question how one could know that gods are eternal and indestructible solely from their simulacra: no number of images reaching people over the history of a single cosmos could demonstrate that the gods outlive it (but see Santoro 2000: 37, who argues that our idea of the gods’ immortality is based on inference). Obbink adds (216) that “The existence of such beings would be inconsistent with the condition for indestructibility in the Epicurean universe”; this is a puzzle, but it does not entitle us to dismiss Philodemus’ (and Lucretius’) claim that the gods are indestructible (see Obbink’s text 11a = col. 364; no hint here that “the gods are merely our ideas of them”). Would Epicurus have deliberately foisted such false notions on his followers without ever making clear what they meant? See also Sedley 2009 and Konstan 2009 for further arguments on both sides of the issue. 32 Here, I think, is the source of Epicurus’ hostility to the “astral religion” associated with the doctrines of Plato (cf. Festugière 1955: chh. 1, 5): idealistic theories teaching the immortality of the soul would confirm the fatal confusion that the Epicureans sought to dispel. Cf. also Santoro 2000: 163–67, commenting on col. XX of the treatise on the form of the gods attributed to Demetrius Lacon, where the astral theology of the Peripatetics and Stoics is attacked.

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sible, I believe, for the case of obsessive love. Lucretius describes how lovers, in their limitless passion, appear to desire that their bodies may dissolve (liquescunt, 1114) and merge in complete physical union (4.1108–14): adfigunt avide corpus iunguntque salivas oris et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora, 1110 nequiquam, quoniam nihil inde abradere possunt nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto; nam facere inter dum velle et certare videntur; usque adeo cupide in Veneris compagibus haerent, membra voluptatis dum vi labefacta liquescunt. they greedily press body to body and intermingle the salivas of their mouths, drawing deep breaths and crushing lips with teeth. But it is all in vain, since they cannot take away anything from their lover‘s body or wholly penetrate it and merge into it. At times they do indeed seem to be striving and struggling to do this: so eagerly do they remain fettered in the bonds of Venus, while their limbs are slackened and liquefied by the force of the ecstasy. (trans. Smith 2001: 130) It is tempting to compare the angel Raphael‘s account to Adam, in Milton‘s Paradise Lost (8.622–29, quoted from Hughes 1957), of the embraces of angels: 625

Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy’st (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence, and obstacle find none Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars: Easier than Air with Air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure Desiring; nor restrain’d conveyance need As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul.

Physical interpenetration, like immortality, is of course impossible, according to the Epicureans. However, the oneness of like-minded 147

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spirits joined in friendship was exalted and revered by Epicurus and his followers, once again building on the legacy of the Academy and especially on Aristotle’s views. Friendship is an “immortal good” (ἀθάνατον ἀγαθόν, Vatican Saying 78), Epicurus affirmed, because, as Festugière explains (1955: 46), “it bestows a happiness similar to that enjoyed by the immortal gods.” Friendship causes people to be of one mind (ὁμονοούσης), so that the sage, who alone knows true friendship, suffers as much for the torment of a friend as for his own (Vatican Saying 61; cf. 56, 57). A confused desire for the total unity of friendship, misunderstood as a physical or sexual possibility, was conceived of as the basis, I suggest, of the irrational passion of love. The analogy with aggressive social desires is clear. In each case, what is possible and natural as a state of the soul—a kind of divinity—becomes a goad to mad and frustrated passion when grasped for as the object of desire. A confused anticipation of true pleasure, which resides in the extinction of such desires, affords a certain false pleasure, as I have argued, which in turn may reinforce the passion. Thus Lucretius says that in love, and acting as its cause, is the hope that the passion may be quenched by what produced it (4.1086–87): namque in eo spes est, unde est ardoris origo, restingui quoque posse ab eodem corpore flammam. For the hope is that the same body that kindled the burning passion can also extinguish the flame. Such is the result of ignorance of the nature of the soul and its pleasure. This interpretation of amor can perhaps help to provide another perspective on the role of Venus in the proem to Book 1 of De rerum natura, a passage that has been much clarified by several studies (cf. Friedländer 1939; Elder 1954; Giancotti 1959; Ackermann 1979: 181–88; Asmis 1982; Clay 1983: 82–95; Gale 1994: 208–23; Rumpf 2003: 72–95). Apart from her mythological character as the consort of violent Mars, the ancestress of the Roman people and the muse of Lucretius’ verse, invoked by tradition at the beginning of an epic, Venus has several symbolic aspects, 148

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of which I should like to single out two: she represents sexual desire and procreation among animals (1–20), and she is the sacred spirit of peace which reigns among the gods (44–49) and which Lucretius prays Rome may enjoy (29–43).33 Venus represents also the pleasure (voluptas, 1) both of sexual fulfilment and of tranquillity or ataraxy, the one a variety of kinetic pleasure, and physical, as Bignone (1945: 437–44; cf. Bailey 1947: 3.1749–50) has made clear, the other a pleasure of the soul, and static. Moreover, both sexual generation and the tranquillity of the gods may be said to confer on human beings a kind of immortality, though only, of course, in a special or metaphorical sense. For, on the one hand, the immortal peace of the gods is the pattern of the sage’s spiritual security, which is like immortality; and, on the other hand, with respect to procreation, “it is tempting,” in the words of Phillip De Lacy (1957: 125 n. 53; cf. Schrijvers 1970: 273–76), “to see here the influence of Plato, Symp. 207–8, where it is stated that perpetual generation is the closest that mortals can come to immortality.” Human beings alone can participate in both the pleasures of Venus, for they share the joy of procreation with animals, and may share with the gods the bliss of utter peace within the soul.34 But if only human beings may know both pleasures, they alone are capable of confounding them, for both appear to them as Venus. It is natural and necessary first to satisfy the needs of the body, for they are always registered, as Epicurus makes clear, in the soul (Porphyry To Marcella 30 = fr. 200 Usener = fr. B44 Bailey = fr. 225 Arrighetti2; Italian translation at Arrighetti 1973: 562): ἀφυσιολόγητον μηδὲν ἡγοῦ βοώσης τῆς σαρκὸς βοᾶν τὴν ψυχήν· σαρκὸς δὲ φωνὴ μὴ πεινῆν, μὴ διψῆν, μὴ ῥιγοῦν. καὶ ταῦτα τὴν ψυχὴν 33 Venus’ symbolic functions may also include the Empedoclean φιλία or φιλότης, and she is appropriate as well to the proem as Memmius’ family deity. Clay 1983: 82–95 shows that Lucretius’ Venus also stands for the generative power of nature or φύσις, a transformation of Epicurus’ more mechanistic conception of nature. 34 For two kinds of Venus, cf. also Lucretius 5.962 and 1017. From the fact that, in Lucretius’ description, Mars and Venus enjoy each other’s embraces (1.31–40), I do not believe that it is legitimate to conclude that, according to Epicurean theology, the gods know sexual pleasure.

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χαλεπὸν μὲν κωλῦσαι, ἐπισφαλὲς δὲ παρακοῦσαι τῆς παραγγειλάσης φύσεως αὐτῇ διὰ τῆς προσφυοῦς αὐτῇ αὐταρκείας καθ᾿ ἡμέραν. Do not consider it at all unnatural that when the flesh cries out, the soul cries out as well. The voice of the flesh cries: do not be hungry, do not be thirsty, to not be cold. It is difficult for the soul to prevent these things, but dangerous for it to take no heed when nature bids, because its [the body’s] daily self-sufficiency is naturally attached to it. For this reason, I think, Lucretius first presents Venus in her role as the universal sexual impulse. But when the flesh has been satisfied, and passion is spent, the soul then aspires to its own peace. Lucretius’ proem, which commences with the description of physical desire culminating in the embraces of Mars and Venus, and then turns to the hope for lasting peace and a vision of the gods’ tranquillity, suggests the rhythm of sexual excitement and release.35 If the soul, however, loses sight of its proper joy, and seeks peace and security merely through the satisfaction of the flesh, it cannot find contentment, and its desire will be frustrated. The physical Venus, if I may borrow Lucretius’ imagery, cannot pacify Mars. The happiness of the sage rested, according to the Epicureans, upon the stability of his or her disposition. To achieve this disposition, even to begin to achieve it, it was necessary to understand the nature and limits of humanity and the universe. Understanding, however, at least in connection with ethical matters, itself requires a healthy disposition, as Aristotle had argued (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1.4). To realize freedom from the irrational passions, then, one needed the conviction that the soul was capable of true pleasure, as well as discipline, and the support of others who were nearer the goal, or at least advancing at the same pace.36 Friendly association becomes the way to wisdom, and is perfected as wisdom matures (see Vatican Sayings 23, 39). For this reason, I believe,

35 I owe this observation to Archibald W. Allen. 36 On the role of faith in Epicureanism, cf. DeWitt (1954: 303–05); on Epicurean educational methods, and the care with which the more advanced helped others to absorb and accept the major doctrines, see Philodemus On Frank Speech (Konstan et al. 1998).

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Epicureanism pointed naturally to the development of communities of converts or disciples dedicated to finding tranquillity, where members might remove themselves, to some extent, from the environments that reinforced their passions, and would find spiritual support and delight in one another’s company (on the communities, see DeWitt 1954: 328ff.; Clay 1983: 169–75; Clay 1983a). Festugière (1955: 41–42) describes the Epicurean community in these words: Sheltered from the world and the buffeting of Fortune, this little group had the feeling that they had reached harbour…. Since they had no care left but to strive to understand better what the Master had said, friendship … became the primary pursuit of the elect. Each one had to work to build up the atmosphere in which hearts would open like flowers. It was a question before everything of being happy, and the mutual affection and the confidence with which the disciples relied upon each other contributed more than anything to that happiness…. Epicureanism was a spirit much more than a doctrine, a spirit embodied in the closely-knit circles whose members scrupulously preserved the words of the Master and made a cult of friendship. Festugière’s beautiful and learned book had the great merit of restoring the appropriate emphasis on the spiritual side of Epicureanism—to some extent, unfortunately, at the expense of the physical doctrine and also, as we are in a better position to appreciate today than at the time when Festugière was writing, the practical pedagogical methods that they developed and employed. But the spiritual teachings of Epicureanism cannot be divorced from its materialism. Human beings are lonely creatures in the Epicurean universe, which is independent of our will, our ideas, and our values (cf. De Lacy 1957: 114ff.). All things change and perish, and though they must in time be recreated, nevertheless they will not be the same in any sense that has human meaning.37 Within the whirl 37 On eternal recurrence and its irrelevance to the question of human immortality, see Lucretius 3.847ff.

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and tumble of dark atoms through the infinite void, the souls of human beings may know, for their brief duration, a perfect peace in which they are fulfilled. But this peace is theirs only if they see and give assent to the ever-changingness of the cosmos, and do not seek there a lastingness that cannot be.38 People must realize that security lies within themselves, a subjective image of the atoms in their souls—yet this security is everything that religions and philosophers have promised.

38 Cf. Pesce 1974: 98, who, despite the somewhat flowery language, captures something of the inspirational quality of Epicureanism: “Sta qui il profondissimo senso religioso della dottrina di Epicuro, che colpisce per la singolarità di un ascetismo che non è la pavida ed egoistica fuga dinanzi alla vita del cinico né l’elevazione alla pura teoresi del platonico, ma la scoperta, tanto più sorprendente perché raggiunta al di fuori di ogni tradizione religiosa costituita (benché forse qualche sentore è dato avvertirne nell’antico paganesimo), che il livello dell’elementare coincide con quello dell’essenziale, là dove, tolto il vano e il superfluo, si tocca l’essere.”

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Index

Aetius, 9n9 afterlife, punishment in, xiv; see also Hades, punishment

anxiety, 49–53, 55–58; as cause of desire, 55–58 Apollodorus, Life of Epicurus, 63

aiôn, 130

aponia, 14

aisthêsis, ix, 3–4, 15

Archippus, 32

[Alexander of Aphrodisias] Êthika Problêmata, 13n16

Aristotle On Dreams 3n2

algêdôn, 10

Metaphysics 1

allegory, xii, 59–66; and Epicurus, 62–63

Nicomachean Ethics 2 1.12, 27n1

alogon, 7

7.14 (on mixed pleasure), 75

ambition, xiii, 35–37, 40, 42, 46, 52

Politics 1.9 (on greed), 54

amicities, 89–93

Rhetoric (on pathos) 2; (on fear) 17

amor, 68–72

On the Soul

Anaximines Rhetoric to Alexander 1–2

1.1, 24

anger, two kinds in Philodemus, 22–24, 51

3.3, 3n2 on animals and rationality, 19n27

anima, 8–12 animals Aristotle on, 19n27 and language, 97–98 and rationality, 18–22 animus, 8–12

on ethics, 133 Armstrong, John, 91, 119 Asmis, Elizabeth, 5–7 asphaleia, 32 ataraxia, 13–14, 39, 113, 139 Atherton, Catherine, 103

169

A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus atoms, lacking secondary properties, 142–43 autarkeia, 134–35, 150 Bailey, Cyril, 29–30, 62, 69–70, 90, 110

on social evolution, 82–83 and skepticism, 140–42 desire in Aristotle, 54

bodily needs, 149–50

as cause of fear of death, xi

Boyancé, Pierre, 61, 64–65, 108

easily satisfied, 74

blame, 27

and emotion, 2

Caesar, Julius, 36–37

and empty belief, 74–75

Campbell, Gordon, 97, 106–07

interdependence with fear, 67–68

careo, 34

limitless, x–xii

catastematic pleasure, 14–17 cerno, 33–34

natural, necessary, unnecessary, xii, 35–36

Cicero

nature of, 69–73

To Atticus

in Plato, 53–54

2.7.4, 31 De finibus

in primitive communities, 109 Diano, Carlo, 135

1.18.59, 59n64

diathesis, 133–35

1.18.57, 67

Diogenes Laertius

1.29–31, 15n22

10.2, 63

3.10.35, 17n25

10.11, 13

De officiis 1.2.5, 28

10.31, 3–4

Clement of Alexandria, 123

10.33, 145

Cole, Thomas, 83

10.66, 7

communities, philosophical, 151

10.136–37, 131–132

conscientia, 121–22 criterion, 3, 5–6

10.137, 12 Diogenes of Oenoanda

Critias, Sisyphus, 114

(on two types of fear) 24, 47–49

Cumont, Franz, 63

(on justice) 119

cura, 21, 49–50

dolor, 10

death

emotion, ix

fear of, x, xiii, 45–47, 50–53, 58–59 is nothing to us, x

empty, anger, 24; opinion, see kenodoxia; sounds, 105–07

De Lacy, Phillip, 140, 149

epibolê tês dianoias, 3

Democritus

Epicurus On Choices, 13–14, 132

fr. 191 D-K, 37–39

fr. 68 Usener, 143

fr. 279, 66–67

170

Index fr. 141, 128

Puzzles (Diaporiai), 123

fr. 534, 121

Principal Doctrines

fr. 200, 149–50

3, 10n13

fr. 202, 134–35

5, 67

fr. 222a, 134

7, 144

fr. 407, 133

10, 10n13

fr. 491, 145

15, xiii, 46–47, 73

fr. 548, 133–134

19, 129

fr. 582, 123

20, 129–30

On the Goal, 6, 28n2, 132

24, 3

On Holiness, 115

29, 73

Letter to Anaxarchus, 28n2

30, 73–75

Letter to Herodotus

32, 90–91

37, 108

37, 105–06

37–38, 105

Vatican Saying

38, 109

7, 122

52, 4

23, 92

55, 82, 3, 68

27, 16n24

63–64, 11

31, 52

67, 9n9

34, 92–93

75–76, 99–101

59, 72–73

76, 104

61, 148

Letter to Menoeceus

78, 148

23, 28

epithumia, 2

24, x, xi, xv

Erler, Michael, 13–18, 138–39

24–125, 50

error, as result of symbolic thinking, xii

26, 28

escaping notice, in the case of crimes, 122–23

128, 130 130, 134

eternity, 130

132, 27n2

ethics, Epicurus’ dependency on Aristotle, 133

134, 135 135, 138

eudaimonia, 133

Letter to his Mother, 128

euphrosunê, 13

Letter to Pythocles 116, 4; fr. 165, 128

euthumiê, 39

On Lives, 132, 145

Everson, Stephen, 7

On Nature vii, 12, 64, 115–16;

evolution, social

frg. 31.5 Arr., 104

171

A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus in Democritus 82–83

fear of, 114–19

Hermarchus on, 93–96, 112n46

belief in, 114–15

and origin of desire, 83–84

happiness of, 133

and origin of greed, 84–86 and origin of law, 95–96

as model for human happiness, 145

primitive stage, xiv–xv, 80–92

in Plato, 138–39 sage likened to, xv, 127–28, 138–39

and tryanny, 110

greed, xiii

Farrington, Benjamin, 56–58, 60–61, 75, 83–84, 86, 88, 107, 111

in Aristotle, 54

fear

in Plato, 53–54 irrational, ix

and seafaring, 33–34, 42–45, 52

as cause of desire, x–xii

and social evolution, 84–86

caused by desire, 59–66

Hackforth, Ian, 75–76

of death, x–xii

Hades

defined by Aristotle, 17

and allegory, 59–66

of gods, 114–19

punishments in, 45–46, 58–68

interdependence with desire, 67–68

happiness model of deriving from gods, 145

and language, xiv

of mortals vs. gods, 133

and law, xiv

Harris, William, 24

lion’s fear of roosters, 20–21

hêdonê, as element of pathos in Aristotle, 2, 8–12; see also pleasure

not in primitive society, xiv, 81–82, 88

Heinze, Richard, 61

and social evolution, 83–84

Hermarchus

two kinds of, 24, 47–49

on animals and justice 19–20

widespread, 58–59

on the evolution of society 93–96, 112n46

feelings, 5–7 Festugière, A.J., 148, 151

Hesiod Theogony 116–23, Epicurus on, 63

Fish, Jeffrey, 23 Fortenbaugh, William, 18–19

Hippocrates On Ancient Medicine, 3n1

Freud, xi, 25

homoiôsis theôi, 138

friendship, 89–93, 150–51; an immortal good, 148

hunger, 7, 69–71 immortality

Furley, David, 133

desire for, xv

goal of life, 145

and human life, 127–30, 143

god(s)

Indelli, Giovanni, 22–23

existence of, 64n69, 115–16, 145n31

individualism, primitive, 86–88

172

Index insanity, of Lucretius, 41n34

1.449–63, 136

joy, ix

2.1–13, 29–37

justice, and law, 106; and pleasure, 67

2.14–19, 41–42

kenodoxia, xv, 17, 73–77

2.37–41, 36–37

kenos

2.37–53, 42–44, 51

of anger, 24

2.49–51, xiii

of opinion, 72–77

2.55–61, 49

of sounds, 105–07

2.600–60, 65n70

khara, ix, 7, 11–17

2.891–96, 142–43

knowledge, as condition for seeking something, 145

3.16–18, 137

laedo, 11

3.59–64, xi

3.41–58, 55–58

laetitia, 10, 13

3.63–69, 44–45

language

3.64–68, xiii, 40

and animals, 97–98

3.78–82, 47

and convention, 99–105

3.136–51, 8–11

and irrational fear and desire, xiv

3.322, 128

origin of, 96–107

3.825–27, 121

pre-linguistic stage, 97–100

3.830, x

law

3.955–60, 144–45

and irrational fear, xiv–xv

3.978–1023, xiii

and justice, 106

3.978–1023, 59–67

origin of, 95–96

4.714–21, 20–21

rule of, 110–13, 119–20

4.870–76, 70–71

and punishment, 112–13, 121–25

4.1084–88, 76–77

sage’s obedience of, 123–25

4.1086–87, 72, 148

two aspects of, xv, 110–20

4.1091–1104, 68–72, 76–77

lions, afraid of roosters, 20–21

4.1108–14, 147

logikon, ix, 7–9, 12

5.73–75, 118n54

love

5.973–87, 86–88

obsessive, 70–71, 75, 147–50

5.988–1010, 79–84

and physical interpenetration, 147

5.1006, 34

Lucretius

5.1024–27, 93

De rerum natura

5.1028–29, 98

1.72–74, 137

5.1056–97, 97–98

1.140–48, 151–54, 139–40

5.1105–14, 84–85

173

A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus 5.1133–34, 105

Philippson, Robert, 111, 124

5.1136–40, 110

Philodemus,

5.1143–50, 110

On Anger, 22–23, 51

5.1151, 112 5.1218–25, 116–17

On Choices and Avoidances, 28n2, 62n67, 112–13

5.1233–35, 118

To His Companions xii

6.9–19, 107–08

On Death, 41n34

6.9–19, 51–52

On Frank Speech, 27n1

6.24–25, 109

On the Gods, 65 On Piety, 113

lupê, as element of pathos in Aristotle, 2, 10

205–19 Obbink, 115

Memmius, 36

225–31, 64, 115–16

mens, 8–9

227–31

metus, 9, 21

232–42, 19n28

Milton, Paradise Lost 8.622–29, 147

534–36, 64

mind, situated in the chest, 6–7

737–51, 145

mood, 24

1147–55, 145n31

music, 6

1233–35, 118

myth, see allegory

1369–83, 113

nature, sage’s life in accord with, 133–34

2031, 113 phobos, ix, 7, 16–17

Obbink, Dirk, 119

pity, 91–92

officium, 27–28

Plato

opinion

Axiochus, 50n51

addition of, 146

Laws, 138

empty, xv, 72–77

Philebus (on mixed and anticipated pleasure), 74–76 Republic 8 (on desire), 53–54

in Plato, 74 orgê, 22–23, 51

Theaetetus 3n1, (on false opinion) 74

pact, social, 90–91 pain, ix; as pathos, 4

on the mind’s vision, 137–38

pathos, ix, 1–24

Timaeus 2n1 pleasure, ix, 2

akoustikon, 4–5

anticipated, 75–77

defined by Aristotle, 2–3

catastematic, 14–17

as pleasure and pain, 4

confused, 146–48

pavor, 21–22

Cyrenaics on, 131–32

phantasia, 3

divine, 146

174

Index independent of time, 129–30

and escaping notice, 122–23

and justice, 67

and the law, xiv–xv, 112–13, 121–25

“Lucretian,” 29

and revenge, 111–12

mixed, 75–76

Robin, Louis, 97

as pathos, 4

sage

physical basis of, 131–35

independent of chance, 135

pure, 55, 75

likened to a god, xv, 127–28, 135–43

of soul superior to that of body, 131–32

in accord with nature, 133–34

static, 14–17, 131–33

and obedience to law, 123–25

Plutarch,

and security, 127, 143–45

Against Colotes, 123

self-sufficiency of, 134–35

Impossible to Live Happily according to Epicurus, 17n25

stability of disposition, 134–35, 140–43, 150

politics,

vision of, 137, 139–40

avoidance of, 36–37, 111

Schofield, Malcolm, 13–18

in contemporary Rome, 36–37, 41n34, 57

seafaring, 34–35 security, 32, 52–53

Polystratus, 20 poverty, likened to death, 45–46

conditions for its being realized, 108

power, xiii, 36–37, 42–45

of the sage, 127, 143–45

praise, 27

self-sufficiency of sage, 134–35

prayer, 145

Seneca, Moral Epistles

primitive society, xiv–xv, 80–92

15.9, 145

absence of irrational fear in, 86–88

97.15, 121 sensation, ix

individualism, 86–88

Servius on Virgil Eclogue 2.58, 9n10

primitivism, 80–82 progressivism, 80–82

Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 11.169, 16n24

psukhê, ix, 7–8; as bipartite, 9n9

Sherman, Nancy, 24–25, 59

psychology, ix–x

skepticism, Democritean, 141–42

Ptolemy, Claudius, On the Criterion and Ruling Element (on language), 101–02

Smith, Martin Ferguson, 39 society

punishment

evolution of, in Democritus 82–83

in the afterlife, xiii–xiv, 45–46, 58–66

Hermarchus on, 93–96, 112n46 and origin of desire, 83–84

and conscience, 121–22

and origin of greed, 84–86

as deterrent, 111–13, 121–24

175

A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus and origin of law, 95–96 primitive stage, xiv–xv, 80–92 and tryanny, 110 Sophocles Tympanistae 31–32 soul, ix; stability of, 140–43 sounds, empty, 105–07 stability of sage’s disposition, 134–35, 140–43, 150 static pleasure, 14–17 symbolic thinking, xii technology, rise of, 80–81 telos, 12, 13, 15, 18, 145 tetrapharmakon, xi–xii thirst, 68–72 thumos, 22–23, 51 time as an accident of accidents, 136 pleasure independent of, 129–30 tyranny, as a stage of social evolution, 110 variation, limits of, 140–43; as an answer to skepticism, 141–42 Venus, xv–xvi, 18n25, 89–91, 147–49 Verlinsky, Alexander, 102 virtue, 27–29 vision of sage, 137, 139–40; in Plato, 137–38 vita prior, 83–86, 107 Vlastos, Gregory, 100–01 voluptas, 18n25 war, 36–37 wealth, xiii, 35–36, 42–46

176

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