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! ! ! ! ! DIPLOMARBEIT,/,DIPLOMA,THESIS, Titel!der!Diplomarbeit!/!Title!of!the!Diploma!Thesis! „Sic$placet$an$melius$quis$habet$suadere?$ An!Examination!of!the!Golden!Age,!Arcadia!! and!the!Cosmopolis!as!Stoic!and!Epicurean!! Proto@Utopian!Paradigms!in!Roman!Literature.“! ! verfasst!von!/!submitted!by! Katharina@Maria!Schön!! ! angestrebter!akademischer!Grad!/!in!partial!fulfilment!of!the!requirements!for!the!degree!of! Magistra!der!Philosophie!(Mag.!phil.)! ! Wien,!2017!/!Vienna,!2017! ! StudienKennzahl!lt.!Studienblatt!/! A!190!338!344! degree!programme!code!as!it!appears!on! the!student!record!sheet:! Studienrichtung!!lt.!Studienblatt!/! !!!Lehramtstudium!UF!Latein!UF!Englisch! degree!programme!as!it!appears!on! ! the!student!record!sheet:! ! ! ! Betreut!von!/!Supervisor:!! !!!Univ.@Prof.!i.!R.!Dr.!Kurt!SmolaK! 1 2 Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, gehe nur im Endlichen nach allen Seiten. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 3 4 Table of Contents Introduction and Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 1 1. Finding the Utopos – Conceptual Clarifications and Generic Limitations ............................ 5 1.1 Utopia – An Etymological, Content-Related and Functional Approximation ............................... 5 1.2 The Developmental Advancements and Temporal Desiderata of Utopia ..................................... 8 1.3 Exploring the Triad: Ideology, Myth and their Interrelations with Utopia ................................ 10 1.4 Reservations against and Arguments for the Utopian Idea ........................................................ 16 1.5 Proto-Utopia in Antiquity: Contradiction in Terms or Productive Symbiosis? .......................... 18 1.5.1 The Proto-Utopian Genre: Elusiveness at its Best ................................................................ 21 1.5.2 The Proto-Utopian Function: À la recherche de l’essence voilée ......................................... 21 1.5.3 The Proto-Utopian Content Scope: Literary Pipe-Dream or Philosophical Vehicle? .......... 22 1.6 Methodological Considerations and Structural Remarks ............................................................. 23 2. Abundance, Morality, Nostalgia and Future Prophecy in the Golden Age ......................... 26 2.1 Ad fontes: Hesiod’s Golden Age as Template in the Proto-Utopian Mirror ............................... 26 2.2 Lucretius’ Prehistoric Triangulation: Hope, Nostalgia and Future Prophecy .............................. 30 2.2.1 Frugality, Autochthony and the Ambivalence of Technical Progress ................................... 30 2.2.2 The Moral Code of Communal Property and the Epicurean Origins of Justice .................... 32 2.2.3 An Epicurean Recipe of Personal and Civic Proto-Utopia vis-à-vis Societal Ills ................ 37 2.2.4 Lucretius’ Conception of History: virtus and ratio as Guarantors of Progress ..................... 42 2.3 Horace and the Island of the Blessed ........................................................................................... 46 2.3.1 The Horatian “Barking Cure” – An Embittered Stocktaking of the Status Quo ................... 46 2.3.2 Setting Sails for Better Days to Come: Horace’s Version of Après moi, le déluge .............. 48 2.3.3 Horace’s Allochronic and (Meta-)Literary Proto-Utopia ..................................................... 49 2.4 Vergil and the Coming of a Messiah ............................................................................................ 53 2.4.1 Announcing the Advent of an Infant Prodigy and the Return of the Golden Age ................ 54 2.4.2 Paradise Lost and Found ........................................................................................................ 56 2.4.3 The Person behind the Mask – Exploring the Elusiveness of the puer-Identity ................... 58 2.4.4 Vergil’s Metaliteracy between Panegyric and Self-Assured Programmatic Formula ........... 60 2.5 Vergil’s laudes Italiae – Proto-Utopia Here and Now? .............................................................. 63 2.5.1 The Jovian Fall from Grace and the Ambivalence of Technological Progress ..................... 63 2.5.2 The Frugality-Ideal: Proto-Utopian Catalyst and Challenge to the Status Quo .................... 66 2.5.3 The Praise of the Saturnia tellus as Metaliterary Lynchpin for labor and securitas ............. 68 2.6 Synopsis: The Core Features of the aurea aetas – A Plurally Minted Coin ................................ 74 5 3. ‘Arcadia’: Distorting Mirror, Present Travesty and Future Prophecy ................................. 77 3.1 Arcadia and Utopia: A Definitional Approximation .................................................................... 77 3.2 Proto-Utopian ‘Arcadian’-Epicurean Articulations in Roman Literature ................................... 81 3.3 The Vergilian Eclogues – Bucolic Microcosmos and Proto-Utopian Template ......................... 82 3.3.1 ‘Arcadia’ as a Mirror of Contemporary Ills ........................................................................... 83 3.3.2 Octavian’s Presence in the Network of Eschatology and Ideology ....................................... 88 3.3.3 The locus amoenus as a Site of Metaliterary Symbolism and the Epicurean κῆπος ............. 91 3.4 Epicurean-‘Arcadian’ Traces in the Sermones – A Topsy-Turvy Proto-Utopia? ....................... 97 3.4.1 Effortless Epicurean Justice: A Mutually Beneficial Social Contract ................................... 99 3.4.2 The Magical Triad of voluptas-otium-rus: Horace’s Proto-Utopian Toolkit ...................... 102 3.4.3 Satiric Reflections on libertas: Trigger for a ‘Subjective’ Proto-Utopia? .......................... 107 3.5 Synopsis: Vergil’s and Horace’s ‘Arcadian’-Epicurean-Microcosmos in nuce ........................ 112 4. A Cosmopolitan Vision: Towards a (Comm)unity of Moral Perfectibility ....................... 114 4.1 Defining Cosmopolitanism: The Nature of the Beast ................................................................ 114 4.2 Back to the Roots: The Founding Fathers of the Stoic Proto-Utopia ........................................ 119 4.3 The Cosmopolis in the Roman Realm: A Tale of Two Cities .................................................. 125 4.3.1 οἰκείωσις and the Foundations of Justice ............................................................................ 127 4.3.2 Natural Laws, Social Contracts, the Virtue-Endowment and Self-Care ............................. 134 4.3.3 Friendship, Beneficence and the Texture of the Sage ........................................................ 139 4.3.4 Temporal Disillusionment and the Alterity-Encounter of the Self in the Social Body ....... 143 4.4 Synopsis: No Place like the Cosmopolis .................................................................................... 148 Conclusion and Prospectus ....................................................................................................150 Primary Literature: Source Texts, Editions and Translations ................................................154 Secondary Literature: Monographs, Anthologies, Academic Articles ..................................156 Appendix ......................................................................................................................................................... 167 6 Introduction and Acknowledgements Quid verum atque decens, curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum: condo et conpono quae mox depromere possim. (Horace, Epistle 1, V. 11-12) Utopian tendencies have been a ubiquitous phenomenon as far as human thought dates back. Be it in biblical paradise visions, in post-apocalyptic narratives of transcendental bliss or in the plenteous (socialist) dreams of equality, we automatically stumble upon utopian projection screens when we glimpse at the earliest literary incarnations. Contemporary outlets encompass, among others, the longing for physical perfectibility, the elevation of life to a spiritually infused ontological state or the institution of global peace. The feasibility of such high-aiming projects, however, is not only profoundly questionable, but diametrically opposed to current proceedings on the world stage. A glance at the daily newspapers, which do not tire of solemnly heralding the advent of a post-factual age, suffices to witness a vast array of pernicious socio-political inclinations that include, but are not limited to sebastomania, jingoism, terrorism, corruption, cronyism, debaucheries or truth-distorting rhetoric practices. In other words, even though the present is suffused with a plethora of utopian desires, it must appear as a dystopian nightmare that has come true to time travelers from the past. The omnipresent stare into the abyss of nihilism is nowadays permanently forced upon enlightened and rationally endowed human agents who are not willing to bury their heads in the sand. This curious juxtaposition of destabilizing practices of meaning dissolution as well as the abominable sanctioning of human rights violations, which we encounter on a daily basis, and the incessant future-oriented desire to effectuate both individual and societal betterment has sparked my initial interest in the topic. With this motivational foundation, I took a ride back on the temporal axis of utopian thought patterns and landed, as so often in my life, in the safe haven of Greek and Roman literature. In light of the fact that utopia proper starts not in antiquity, but in the early modern period with Thomas