Epicurus Pamela Gordon

The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus Pamela Gordon the uNiversity Of MichigaN Press aNN arbOr Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2012 All rights reserved is book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by e University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2015 2014 2013 2012 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gordon, Pamela, 1957– e invention and gendering of Epicurus / Pamela Gordon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-472-11808-3 (cloth : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472- 02817-7 (e-book) 1. Epicurus—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epicureans (Greek philosophy) I. Title. B573.G67 2012 187—dc23 2011043630 To Li and Mei Acknowledgments is book was made possible by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. I also received support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate Research Fund of the University of Kansas. I am extremely grateful to the scholars who generously offered their advice, corrections, and timely encouragement. I owe thanks to the anonymous refer- ees for the University of Michigan Press. Elizabeth Asmis offered perceptive critiques of chapters 2 and 4. Tony Corbeill offered invaluable comments on two dras of chapter 4 and graciously claimed to have found that painstaking work pleasurable. Bernie Frischer sent me a helpful response to chapter 2. Julia Dyson Hejduk shared many insights that improved chapters 2 and 4, and it was her article “Dido the Epicurean” that first inspired me to pursue Phaeacian paths. Hanne Sigismund Nielsen shared her wise responses to chapter 3, Allen Brent answered questions about the statue of Saint Hippolytus at the Vatican Library, Sheila Dillon was kind to answer my queries about portrait statues, and Teresa Morgan shared her wisdom about ancient proverbs. William Duffy cor- responded with me about my earlier work on the Phaeacians and sent me data from his own investigation of Phaeacian traditions. Patricia FitzGibbon al- lowed me to read her unpublished articles on Aelian and helped me sort out which lines in the Suda ought to be ascribed to him. Tara Welch offered advice about translating Seneca’s indignation into idiomatic English. Beth Sperry, Car- oline Jewers, and Marni Kessler offered sage advice about various modes of writing; and Marni helped me make the introduction clearer. My spouse, Harold Washington, is always my best reader. Far too long ago, I benefited from the responses to my various papers pre- sented at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, the Classical viii Association of the Middle West and South, and the Hellenistic Moral Philoso- phy unit of the Society of Biblical Literature and from the encouragement of John Finamore, Ellen Greene, and Hanne Sigismund Nielsen, who invited me to give talks at the University of Iowa, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Calgary, respectively. Also long ago, I learned much from Julia Gaisser’s critique of a previous incarnation of chapter 2. I owe many thanks for the congeniality of my unparalleled colleagues Tony Corbeill, Stan Lombardo, Emma Scioli, Michael Shaw, Phil Stinson, Tara Welch, and John Younger and also of my students at the University of Kansas. Among my students I must thank in particular Kirk Bray, Wade Cartwright, Lisa Feldkamp, Doug Fischel, Tiffany Huggard-Lee, Cara Polsley, Mark Preus, Mariah Smith, Anna Talleur, and Cat Wilson. Doug Fischel pressed me on sev- eral points about the Epicurean telos, and Cara Polsley demanded clarity, caught many errors, and tactfully pointed out that an earlier dra of the introduction was better suited to the book I at first set out to write. Sonia Farmer, her assistant Lauren Callahan, and Pam LeRow were also extremely helpful. For Epicurean companionship—including spiritual and intellectual suste- nance in general—I thank Maggie Childs, Caroline and Hammish Jewers, Marni Kessler, Beth Sperry, and Harold Washington. ey have helped me seek ataraxia on many occasions. My deep appreciation of them expands conceptions of Epicurean friendship and aligns me with the “timid Epicureans” men- tioned by Torquatus (Cicero, Fin. 1.69). Marni’s role as honorary sister and aunt is especially valued, as always. Denise DeTommaso was great company for many miles beyond counting. Also with me at many turns have been my sisters, Sheila Ulrich and Deirdre Gordon; my mother, Janice Gordon; my nephew Henry Ulrich; and the memories of my nephew Tommy Ulrich and my father, Kenneth Hickok Gordon. Li, Mei Mei, and Harold make it all worthwhile. e wonderful and inspiring company of Li and Mei Mei, who have startled Harold and me by suddenly turning ten and six, has sped me up as much as their need to eat, play, and wear clean clothes has slowed me down. Contents Introduction 1 chaPter 1. e First Lampoons of Epicurus 14 chaPter 2. Odysseus and the Telos 38 chaPter 3. A Woman Named “Pleasing” 72 chaPter 4. Virtus and Voluptas 109 chaPter 5. e Material Epicurean 139 cONcLusiON: e Size of the Sun and the Gender of the Philosopher 178 Works Cited 197 Index Locorum 213 General Index 219 Introduction If renown is pleasant, disgrace is painful; and nothing is more dis- graceful than lack of friends, idleness, irreligion, hedonism, or being regarded with contempt. All people except the Epicureans themselves consider these attributes to belong to their sect. (Plutarch, Non posse 1100 C–D)1 I shall not say what most of our own [Stoics] say, that the sect of Epi- curus is the instructress of indecencies. But I do say this: it has a bad reputation; it is notorious. “But that is unfair,” someone might protest. But how would an outsider know? Its very facade provides opportu- nity for gossip and inspires wicked expectation. It is like a man in a dress: your chastity remains, your virility is unimpaired, your body has not submitted sexually, but in your hand is a tympanum.2 (Seneca, De vita beata 13) As a philosophical community and as a way of seeing the world, Epicureanism had a centuries-long life in Athens and Rome, as well as in cities and towns across the Mediterranean. In the words of Diogenes Laertius, who records in the third century CE that the school in Athens had already survived without in- terruption for half a millennium, the friends of Epicurus “outnumbered the populations of whole cities” (10.9). But despite its longevity and its many ad- herents, extant Greek and Roman texts that disparage Epicureanism generally 1. εἴ γε μὴν τὸ εὐδοξεῖν ἡδύ, τὸ ἀδοξεῖν δήπου λυπηρόν ἀδοξότερον δ’ ἀφιλίας ἀπραξίας ἀθεότητος ἡδυπαθείας ὀλιγωρίας οὐθέν ἐστι. ταῦτα δὲ πάντες ἄνθρωποι πλὴν αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τῇ αἱρέσει προσεῖναι νομίζουσιν. 2. Itaque non dicam quod plerique nostrorum, sectam Epicuri flagitiorum magistram esse, sed illud dico: male audit, infamis est. ‘At inmerito.’Hoc scire qui potest nisi interius admissus? frons eius ipsa dat locum fabulae et ad malam spem inritat. Hoc tale est quale uir fortis stolam indu- tus: constat tibi pudicitia, uirilitas salua est, nulli corpus tuum turpi patientiae uacat, sed in manu tympanum est. 2 drown out the works that elucidate or endorse it. Dominant voices in both Greece and Rome routinely depict the Epicurean as a monstrous or laughable figure. Even the popularity of Epicureanism damaged its reputation. Cicero, for example, presents a mock interview of Epicurus (over two centuries aer his death) in which the philosopher is accused of having an imprecise and confus- ing theory of pleasure. When cornered by a single argument, Epicurus sputters: “I can find many people—no, countless people—less inquisitive and bother- some than you are, whom I can easily persuade to believe whatever I want.”3 At first glance, the development of the notoriety of Epicurus is a straightforward matter: the Epicurean focus on happiness and pleasure was easily lampooned as license for debauchery. But the traditions about the Garden (as the school of Epicurus was called) and the production of anti-Epicurean discourse traveled long and complex routes. e aim of this study is to present a necessarily fragmented history of the way the Garden’s outlook on pleasure captured Greek and Roman imagina- tions—particularly among non-Epicureans—for generations aer its legendary founding. Unsympathetic sources from disparate eras generally focus not on particular historic personages but on the symbolic Epicurean. Yet one of my goals is to show how the traditions of this imagined Garden, with its disrep- utable women and unmanly men, give us intermittent glimpses of historical Epicureans and their conceptions of the Epicurean life. Although this is not a book about the philosophy of Epicurus, I hope to suggest how a close hearing and contextualization of anti-Epicurean discourse leads us back to a better un- derstanding of the cultural history of Epicureanism itself. My primary focus will be on sources hostile to the Garden, but I hope that my Epicurean-friendly perspective will be apparent throughout. I hope also that my engagement with ancient anti-Epicurean discourse makes more palpable its impact on modern responses to the Garden. As A. A. Long has written recently, “Epicurus, though much of his thought is firmly rooted in the Greek tradition, was too innovative overall to gain a fair hearing from his intellectual rivals; and the process of re- habilitation is still far from complete.”4 Any history of anti-Epicurean discourse must be sewn together from a broad range of sources that do not lend themselves to neat accounts of chrono- logical development or to continuous narratives about the relationships be- 3.

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