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this issue by asserting Ihat Dido's apparenl Epicureanism and the Epicurean atmosphere of her court are couched not just in the traditional language of the Garden of Epicurus, but in specifically Lucretian terms.' This essay-while resisting the impulse to claim Virgil for either the Stoa or the Garden-proposes ~ that there is an even richer and more persistent Epicurean presence intertwined with the Dido episode. Although Virgilian quotations of Lucretius provide the Phaeacian Dido: most obvious references to Epicureanism, too narrow a focus on the traces of the de I'entll1 nalUra obscures important resonances with Virgil's more obvious models: the Odvssev and Apollonius' A/gonalllica. Reversion to and Lost Pleasures of an Epicurean Intertext Apollonius Rhodius, however, does not dim the Epicurean aura around Dido. Rather. what I wish to show is that the reader who keeps in mind the Homeric context is a reader even more convinced of the presence in Virgil's Carthage of the virtues (or-in the eyes of some readers-the vices) of the authentic Epicurean. At play here is the merging of two traditions. First. there is the well-known story of among the Phaeacians (ad. 6-12), long recognized as the most fundamental of the many Homeric elements in Virgil's depiction of Aeneas' cXo.;V0:1:OVyap [1~ (PPOVtl-l0U~ (lVO:l q;o:to:xo:~, sojourn with Dido. Also present. however, is a particular type of post-classical Ot [1a),o:

1 have run the course that fortune granted," Aen. 4.653). Although Seneca (to PHAEACIA. ODYSSEUS. AND AN EPICUREAN PALIMPSEST whom we owe the story) depicts Diodorus as a good philosopher who died with a clear conscience after a life of Epicurean tranquillity, other contemporaries seem Today the tradition of referring to Epicureans as "Phaeacians" is familiar to to have protested that in choosing suicide, Diodorus had violated Epicurus' own few people who are not well acquainted with the backroads and sidestreets of the teachings (de vita beata 19). Diodorus' quotation of Virgil, however, signaled Epicurean tradition. but the formula had wide currency in antiquity.' Although its more than a dramatic final exit; it was also a gesture toward a complex Epicurean most unambiguous statements appear on the margins of the classical canon, once tradition. Diodorus had an Epicurean precedent of sorts in Dido. those sources are known it is diflicult to miss the presence of an "Epicurus the Commentators since antiquity have remarked that Virgil's Dido espouses Phaeacian" cliche in better known authors such as Lucretius. Philodemus, Horace, an intermittently Epicurean outlook in the face of Aeneas' similarly imperfect Seneca, Plutarch. Athenaeus, and-as I proposc here-Virgil. To start with the Stoicism.' Several recent articles have gone beyond previous statements of

3. Reccl1l treatments or Lucretian language in VirgiJ"s Dido episode include: Hardie 1986, For support granted to this research, r am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies_ the Hamilton 1993, Lyne 1994, ami Dyson 1996. C1'. also Brown 1987: 142. Farrell 1997: 234-35 Hall Center for the Humanitie~. and the Sabbatical program of Ihe University of Kan~as. r would demonstrales Ihal. Virgil also lIses Lucretjan language 10 present ;, and in AeJl. 9. Vir~i1's debt fo Lucretius in general has of course long referees and Chair of the Editorial Board for Classica! AlIlh{lfify. Thi:-. essay is dedicated to the been recognized. memory of my nephew, friend, and mentor Tommy Ulrich. 4. For a short list or ancien I sources that associate the Plweacians specifkally with Epicureans, Rhocliuo" I. Eratosthenes (ca. 285-·194), who succeeded Apollonius as head of the library at see Bignone t 936: 269-70. DeWill 1954: 365 (note 12 to ehap. 4) and Bumere 1956: 319-21 eite the Alexandria, quoted by Athenacus DeipJ1()sophistoe !.16e. I same texis. Recent articles that mention the Phaeacian/Epicurean tradition include Sider and Asmis 2. For Virgilian citations and bibliography see Pca~t' !935 and Dyson 1996. in Obbink 1995. I © 1998 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERStTY OF CALIFORNIA. ISSN 0278-6656(P); 1067-8344 Ie). 1 190 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 2/0ctober 1998 GORDON: Phaeacian Dido 191 most obvious example, and one that is hosti Ie to Epicurus: the cliche figures was ignorant of Homer: &p' ouX1 xcLt1:au8' a flOVOl't<{lpl(p rrapEO(uXEVOllaxpD)e; conspicuously in a work called Homeric Questions by a certain Heraclitus (second cryvo~aOle; rrOlp''OI..L~POUXEXAOoe;'Errlxoupoe;, 6 1:'lje; moments (as hero al Troy, as invader of Thrace. as a man who had been to the ~oov~e; EV Wle; lo[me; x~rrme; YEwpyoe;, 79.2)5 underworld and back, etc.) and is praising Phaeacia simply out of a need to ingrati• Heraclitus also sheds some light on the apparent origins of the cliche. for ate himself with his rescuers.' Thus Heraclitus concludes, sarcastically: Epicurus he makes it clear that Epicurus has been dubbed a "Phaeacian" not simply mistook Odyssean lies for the purpose of life and "planted them in his blessed gar• because Epicurus (as a Hellenistic philosopher who praised the virtues of pleasure) dens" (1:au1:a 'tOLe;aEflvOle; xf,rrme; EflcpU1:El)aOle;.79.10: cf. 79.2). Similarcriticislll seemed to be vaguely similar to the Phaeacians (who were generally regarded as of Epicurus' affinities with Odysseus and the Phaeacians appears in the work of archetypal hedonists).' Heraclitus reveals that the supposed connection is in fact Athenaeus (fl. ca. 200 CE). who attributes this assessment of the Garden to Mega• more precise: there was an established tradition of reading Odysseus' professed cleides (DeipnosophisTae 12.513 a-e). Iii A new twist to this discourse appears in appreciation of Phaeacian pleasures (Od. 9.5-11) as an Epicurean manifesto. Lucian's (or pseudo-Lucian's) Parasite, where a character named Simon contends Odysseus delivers his famous declaration, of course, at the Phaeacian banquet that Epicurus stole his professed ideal of pleasure from Homer but never pursued soon after his rescue by the princess Nausikaa. After years of war, and years of it. Instead of enjoying the life of a parasite among the Phaeacians, Epicurus• wandering through inhuman realms Odysseus declares: Simon asserts-concerned himself with incessant inquiries into the shape of the ou yap EY&lYE 1:[ CPl)I..LL1:EAOe;X

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banish all these pleasures from the mind (psvche), and they even banish quotation come from a speech by that was regarded in antiquity (as the the pleasures that come from mathematics. Homeric scholia reveal) as a notorious avowal ofPhaeacian sensuality: "No brave (Non Posse I093c) boxers or wrestlers are we, but at fast racing-by foot or by ship-we are the best. and always dear to us are the banquet, the cithara. dances. changes of clothes, warm In the first rhetorical question quoted here, Plutarch opposes Phaeacian feasting to baths, and OUf beds·' (Od. 8.246-49). Between the quoted hexameters Plutarch heroic poetry and offers the implied answer that only an ignorant ti,icurean would has apparently inserted his own editorial remark, and the third quotation seems to rate parties over literature." A more literal translation of Plutarch's text muddies be an otherwise unattested fragment of Epicurus." Plutarch's hostile citing of this the message but reveals that the question must be an intertextual rejoinder: "Who "Epicurean·' text reveals in a nutshell what Plutarch and so many others found would eat while hungering and drink while thirsting the stuff of the Phaeacians most threatening about the Garden: the Epicureans' professed hedonism (which with more pleasure than he would follow Odysseus' tale of his journey?" (-ele; Plutarch distorts into sensualism) and the ideal Epicurean's withdrawal from the 0' av (.pCtyOtnsLVWVxed nLOt OL<.jJ<0V1:21 euCtxuw~oLOV1] OLEAElOt1:0V'OoucraEule; turmoil of public life struck outsiders as tantamount to a wholesale repudiation

anoAoyov 1:~e; nACtvY)e;;Non Posse I093c). I understand the awkwardness of this of masculine prerogatives and responsibilities. 1.1 language as an example of what Michael Riffaterre has called "agrammaticalites,'· It is difficult to say whether the tradition of associating the Garden with textual ripples or anomalies thllt can serve as clues to lost intertexts (Ri ffaterre Phaeacia was hostile from its inception, or whether Plutarch and Heraclitus are ]981: 5). Not necessarily. a matter of grammatical error, an "ungrammaticality" distorting a tradition that was initially friendly to the Garden. Norman DeWitt, can be a shift in style. syntax, or register that alerts one to an allusion or quotation. the well-known (if controversial) scholar of the Garden, once claimed that it Thus I take the obtrusive participles ("hungering" and "thirsting") as signs that was Epicurus himself who first added Odysseus' speech on the lelos to the Plutarch is quoting or parroting a lost Epicurean text, possibly one that asserted Epicurean canon (DeWitt 1954: 73-74). But ultimately it is irrelevant whether the difference between the pleasure of drinking while thirsty and the pleasure of the comparison between Phaeacians and Epicureans was first voiced by hostile quenched thirst (cf. dejin. 2.9), or perhaps one that proclaimed that food and drink outsiders, by Epicurus ipse, or by later Epicureans. Once the formula becomes provide genuine pleasure only to the hungry and thirsty (cf. Ep. Men. 131). The an established way of ridiculing the Garden, the task of later Epicureans is to align odd and apparently allusive pljrase "the stuff of the Phaeacians"(Ta cuCtxwv) themselves for or against Phaeacia. In other words, the affronted Epicurean must also sounds like the vestige of some other text(s). either reject the "Phaeacian·' stereotype as an unjust lampoon of the Garden, or The lack of subtlety in Plutarch's intertextual engagement with Phaeacia, as ,embrace the slur and defend Phaeacian pleasures. One Epicurean tactic would well as his condemnation of the supposedly Phaeacian pleasures of the Epicureans, be to cite Phaeacia as an exemplum not of luxurious living but of peace, goodwill. is even clearer elsewhere. At the beginning of the Non Posse, Plutarch's mingling and friendly communion. Such an interpretation of the "Epicurus the Phaeacian" of the Homeric with the Epicurean goes beyond making the Epicureans the tradition is recorded by Seneca, who complains that all of the philosophical perpetual dinner guests of the Phaeacians. For Plutarch, the Phaeacian sensibi lity schools, including the Garden, find their models in Homer: is so closely aligned with the Epicurean that the words of the Phaeacian king Nam modo Stoicum ilium faciunt, virtutem solam probantem et volup• Alcinous can be merged with those of Epicurus as though both were official tates refugientem et ab honesto ne inmortalitatis quidem pretio receden• spokesmen for the Garden. Thus in the opening chapters of the Non Posse, Plutarch tem, modo Epicureum, laudantem statum quietae civitatis et inter con• cuts and pastes Homeric and Epicurean quotations into one ersatz Epicurean voice vivia cantusque vitam exigentis, modo Peripateticum tria bonorum genera that shouts in hexameters spliced with prose: "'No brave boxers we,' or orators, inducentem, modo Academicum. omnia incerta dicentem. Adparet nihil or leaders of the people, or magistrates, 'bu( always dear to us is (he banquet' horum esse in illo, quia omnia sunt. Ista enim inter se dissident. and 'every pleasing stirring of the flesh that is sent up to give some pleasure (Epistles 88.5) and delight to the mind'" (ou yap nUY[1CtXOtdflEV a[1u[10VEe;OUOEp~1:OpEe;000E For sometimes they make him [Homer] a Stoic, who approves only of npocr1:Ct1:Olt0~[16)VOUOEcrpXOV1:Ee;,ad 0' ~[1lVoaLe;1:E'PlAT)xal nacra Ota crapxoe; virtue and shuns pleasures and refuses to give up honor even at the price im1:Epn~e; xlvT)crte;E'P' ~oov~v nva xal xapav <.jJ\)x~e;avanE[1no[1EvT), ]087b). The of immortality; sometimes they make him an Epicurean. who praises iwo hexameter lines (italicized in my translation) in this macaronic "Epicurean" the condition of a citizenry at peaee that lives a life of symposia and songs; sometimes they make him a Peripatetic, who classifies the good 11. Plutarch's second rhetorical question, which implies that his audience should agree whole• heartedly that love stories are better than sex, is highly unusual. Plutarch asserts throughout the Non Posse and elsewhere in the Mnra!ia thaI the Epicureans indulge in intercourse frequently, an 12. See Usener 433 and 552. On pleasure and the mind cf. DRN 2.18-19. assertion that is at odds with Lucretius ~DRN 4.1 030-1287) and other Epicurean texts. See Brennan 13. See Gordon forthcoming. Plutarch and others in the anti-Epicurean and anti-Phaeacian 1996. camps of course overlook the lines abOtIL racing and ship-faring. l 194 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17 INo. 2/0ctober 1998 GORDON: Phaeacian Dido 195

in three ways; and sometimes they make him an Academic, who holds for Phaeacian diners. In addition. the gold. the silver. the paneling. and the lyre that everything is uncertain. It is obvious that none of these phi losophies reflect a composite of the dining scene described at the beginning of OdYsse\' 9 is in Homer, since they all are. For they are mutually exclusive. and the Phaeacian palace as Odysseus first beholds it (Od. 7.81-99)." Although Seneca write as though an Epicurean or Epicurean-friendly interpretation of it seems to me that the commentaries miss the broader import of this Phaea• the Phaeacia connection (one that highlights peace and conviviality, with no cian intertex!. most note the "unusually close rendering of Homer's words"" suggestion of excess) were a commonplace in the first century CEo I imagine in DRN 2.24-26 and many readers have recognized in Lucretius' description that the tradition Seneca knew linked the Garden with the groves and gardens of unnecessary luxury the setting in which Odysseus addressed King Alcinous on the Ie/os. of Phaeacia (Od. 6.321-22; 7. 1 12-33) and extolled both as utopian communities Thus Lucretius declines to sit at the Phaeacian table and settles his ideal that offered safe harbor on the fringes of a dangerous world. The Epicurean position was neither monolithic nor static, however. Lucretius, for example. Epicureans on the grass outside where they will be just as happy, weather firmly rejects the Phaeacian aesthetic, including the golden statues that adorn the permitting. Not all first-century Epicureans, however. were so concerned about Phaeacian palace and the cithara that accompanies the banquets there. Lucretius' distinguishing Phaeacian from Epicurean pleasures. The other eminent Epicurean unambiguous position on Phaeacia appears in the famous proem to Book 2. where philosopher-poet of that era, Philodemus (ca. 110 - ca. 40J:l5 BCE), writes he pronounces certain pleasures as unnecessary: admiringly (and perhaps apologetically) of Phaeacia in his scholarly work and playfully accepts the Epicurean/Phaeacian cliche in a poem to Piso (consul in 58 ergo corpoream ad naturam pauca videmus BCE). This poem invites Piso for a modest meal in celebration of "Epicurus day" esse opus omnino, quae demant cumque dolorem. (the twentieth of the month): II, delicias quoque uti multas substernere possin!. gratius interdum neque natura ipsa requirit, ::'

gilded beams echo with the lyre. nevertheless, stretched out in groups on 14. Purple dye (later a catchword for excess) is less recognizable as a peculiarly Phaeacian the soft grass near a stream of water under the branches of a tall tree. peo• accouterment, but the superfluous purple coverlets Lucretius spurns in the next lines (as no more ple happily take refreshment at no great cost, especially when the weather helpful to the sick than a "plebeian" cover; DRN 2,34-36) also recall Arete's purple wool and the is lovely and the season of the year sprinkles the green grass with flowers. purple bedding provided to Odysseus by the Phaeacians on his nrst night after washing up on their shores 0,336-38). Purple dye is also abundal1l in Virgil's Carthage fe.g. ] .700 and 11.72-75), where Readers of the Odyssey should recognize that Lucretius' survey of needless extrav• it seems to he not only Phaeacian but typici3l1y Tyrian. 15. See Bailey 1947: 802 on line 2.25. See also Gale 1994: III, who does note the Epi• agances is no random list, but a direct allusion to particular Phaeacian pleasures. curean/Phaeacian tradition. The description of the golden statues (DRN 2.27-29) is a close paraphrase of 16. On Epicuru< birthday and the. monthly Epicurean gatherings. see Sider 1997: l56. Odyssey 7.100-102, where Homer's lamp-bearing "golden boys" provide light 17. Transl

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And if you ever turn an eye to us too, Piso, instead of a modest feast we we are Penelope's wasteful suitors and Aleinous's shall lead a richer one. young men. indecently busy at grooming their hides. A good life to them meant snoozing until afternoon. Here Philodemus deftly redeems the Phaeacian/Epicurean stereotype by refusing enjoying a lazy sleep. lulled by a cithara. to align the Phaeacians with luxury or excess, linking them instead with poetry and the most basic Epicurean pleasures. Thus the Phaeacian pleasures emphasized The Epicurean Philodemus also finds something to admire in the habits of Pene• by Plutarch (wine and food) are replaced with two crucial Phaeacian pleasures lope's suitors." but I take the suitors' presence here as Horatian embellishment of also lauded by Odysseus in his telos speech: friendship and listening to the bard. anti-Epicurean polemic. As David Sider puts it. the reference to the Phaeacians promises Piso that he Elsewhere in the same book, a poem ostensibly about the search for a bathing will receive "the combined pleasures of poetry and Epicurean companions."" spot with amenities asks whether a particular location offers fine sea food and (No paradox is implied here: the widespread misconception that poetry and the game: "so I can thence return home fat, and as a Phaeacian" (pil/gl/is /It i/lde dOl/n/ln Garden are intrinsically incompatible has more roots in anti-Epicurean polemic passim Phaeaxque rel'erti. Epistles 1.15.24). Confirmation that fat Phaeacians than in Epicurean doubts about literature.j1" Philodemus' tone is more defensive with well tended hides (cf. in CUTecurallda in EpiSTles 1.2.29) are Epicurean in his essay On the Good King According to Homer, which is also addressed to doppelgangers appears at Ihe end of another epistle: Piso. There Philodemus defends Demodocus' choice of the (often condemned) me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises story of Ares and Aphrodite, praises AJcinous as a good king who knows how to cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum. achieve peace. and challenges the hackneyed notion of the allegedly lazy. effete, (1.4.15-16)" and self-indulgent Phaeacian.'o Horace takes yet another approach. Scholarly positions on Horace's attitudes Come and see me, your fat, sleek friend with the shiny hide. a pig from Epicurus's herd. if you ever want a laugh. toward Epicureanism are diverse, depending as they do upon each reader's estimation of the poet's "sincerity," tone, and ironic self-effacement. Readers of For Horace, the Phaeacian tradition is ripe for appropriation, as are other currents all persuasions. however. should recognize traces of the "Epicurus the Phaeacian" of anti-Epicurean discourse. Even his reference to Phaeacian grooming habits tradition in three poems of the first book of Horace's Epistles. In my reading, these (cute cU/'llnda.I.2.29; bene ('urata cute. 1.4.15-16) sounds like a travesty of epistles meet the slur head on by affirming sardonically that the Epicureans are Lucretius' corpora (,U/'lIllt ("they take refreshment" or "attend the body," DRN indeed a herd of well-fed and self-indulgent Phaeacians: Horace should know. 2.3 j). a phrase Lucretius uses in his acclamation of Epicurean (and, in the context, for he is one of them. non-Phaeacian) pleasures. While Horace professedly aligns his poetic persona First, one poem contrasts the Stoic models that can be learned from Homer with a version of Epicureanism based on the sort of lampoon later epitomized by with the baser and (implicitly) "Epicurean" models that "Horace" and his friends Plutarch. his tone' marks these references to the Garden as transparent distortions prefer: of Epicurean hedonism. Anyone conversant with Epicureanism knows that it nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati, values spiritual or cerebral pleasures over the physical, once essential bodily needs (food and shelter) have been mel.'4 sponsi Penelopae, nebulones. Alcinoique in cute curanda plus aequo operata iuventus, The observant reader would also be aware that the tradition of ridiculing cui pulchrum fuit in medios dormire dies et the supposedly Epicurean-like Phaeacians (and so the Phaeacian-like Epicure• ad strepitum citharae cessantem ducere somnum. ans) for rejecting literature and indulging instead in wine and food also dis• (Epistles 1.2.27-3J)" torts the Homeric passage, for the singer of tales at the Phaeacian table is cru• We're mere numbers, simple eaters of earth's substance. cial to Odysseus' statement of what is kallistoll (very/most beautiful). Signifi• cantly. Epicurean (and Epicurean-friendly) sources that refer to the Phaeacian•

18. Sider 1995:47. Epicurean equation acknowledge the presence of the lyre or cithara (emblem 19. See discussion below and Clay 1995, Asmis 1995, Sider 1995, and Wigodsky 1995 in Obbink 1995. 22. See Asmis 1991: 38. 20. See Asmis 1991: 37 and 41. and Sider SO. Jufresa 1982 (which I know only from Sider's 23. Tr"nslation by Fuchs 1977: 56. reference) argues that the Good King presents the Phaeacians "as the model of a Utopian Epicurean 24. See Diog. Laer!. (10.137). who contrasts pleasures of the body (a&.p~ and a0JI.HX) with the community" (Sider 1997: 1601. greater pleasures of the mind or spirit ((~I)X.~),a reporllhat is consislenl wilh Epicurus Ep. Alcn. ] 32. 2!. Translation by Fuchs 1977: 54. For discussion see Gosling and Taylor 1982: 349~54 and Long 1986 .

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of bolh epic and lyric genres) in the Phaeacian realm. Thus Seneca refers lit for her by the Paphians (Am. 1.415-17 and Od. 8.362-66)." The goddesses to "symposia and songs" (Epist/es 88.5), and the "musical" or "muse-loving" in both scenes conceal the hero with mist so that he can make his way safely to his Philodemus (!-'ouaocptAr", Epigram 27. Sider) stresses poetics over comestibles. rescuer (Aeneas to Dido: Odysseus to Nausikaa's mother Arete). Like Alcinous in Even Lucretius is protective of Phaeacian pleasures; although the proem to the Odvssey, Dido alTers her guest safe passage. or. alternatively, the option to Book 2 presents Phaeacian pleasures as "unnecessary," it neither exaggerates stay (Aen. 1.569-74: Od. 7.311-24). Woven in with these Homeric strands is the nor excoriates them, and the echoing cithara is included in the Phaeacjan vi• memory of an earlier reincarnation of Nausikaa: the young Medea of Apollonius' gnette. Horace, too. retains the cithara in his sardonic glance at the Phaea• Argonautiea. Apollonius' tale of Medea's divinely-orchestrated love for Jason cians and suitors (although for them the cithara is the accompaniment for sleep. (who also makes his way to Medea enshrouded in mist) asserts itself frequently in not poetry). Turning to Virgil. we notice the cithara at the table in Dido's the Aeneid, especially in Book 4, which Servius described as entirely Apollonian.") Carthage. Medea is of course no Phaeacian, and yet the Phaeacians themselves playa crucial role in the AI~~onautiea. Here it is important to recall that the notorious cave that

PHAEACIAN DIDO provides shelter to Dido and Aeneas (before their supernatural wedding) bears an obvious resemblance to the nuptial cave of Medea and Jason."1 The latter are Readers have long been aware that Dido makes her first entrance in the Aeneid married, of course. among the Phaeacians. as Nausikaa. princess of Phaeacia (cf. Aulus Gellius 9.9). That is to say, Dido's Thus it is signilkanl that Dido's "patently Homeric palace" (Dyson 1996: first appearance in the Aeneid (just before she agrees to help the shipwrecked 208) is not just Homeric, but Phaeacian (Od. 7.100-102). Lucretius had al• Aeneas) echoes closely the description of Nausikaa on the Phaeacian shore (just ready responded to the "Epicurus the Phaeacian" tradition by explicitly banishing before she agrees to help the shipwrecked Odysseus); both are compared to gold, silver, ornate paneling, and other Phaeacian luxuries from the ideal Epi• Artemis/Diana surrounded by her nymphs and both embody the beauty, strength, curean gathering (2.23-28). In a move that epitomizes a certain mode of Vir• and self-possession of the goddess (Aen. 1.498-504 and Od. 6.102-109). Dido's gilian/Lucretian intertextuality," the Aeneid reinscribes such luxuries into the entrance. however. is only the beginning of her Phaeacian past. Epicurean/Phaeacian world, echoing the very language Lucretius had used to Of the many strands of poetic tradition that merge and intertwine in Virgil's assert that Epicureans prefer simple picnics over Phaeacian banquets: fit strepitus Dido, the Phaeacian strands are the most. diverse and yet the most persistent." teetis uoccmque per amp/a uo/utant / atria; de/'endentlychni /aqnearibfls aure;;; / As commentators (both ancient and modern) have noted, Dido at moments looks il1cel1si et IlOctemfiammisfunalia uincunt. "A roar arises in the hall and they send like Nausikaa, stands in for Arete, and speaks like Alcinous.'" Dido's banquet their voices echoing through the great palace; burning lamps hang from the gold• for the Trojans recalls the Phaeacian banquet hosted by Nausikaa's parents, and paneled beams and torches conquer the night with their blaze" (Aen.1.725-27; when Aeneas tells his story there (Aen. 2-3), he is following Odysseus' precedent DRN 2.24-28). Even the lyre the bardlopas plays is golden (Aen.1.741-42). (Od. 9-12). lopas, the bard at Dido's table, has affinities with the Phaeacian Thus in the Dido episode the basic Homeric context is mediated through bard Demodocus.27 And as though it were not enough that Venus herself also more than one Hellenistic prism: Apollonius' Phaeacians participate in a complex plays Nausikaa when she meets Aeneas near the shores of Dido's Carthage (Aen. Epicurean intertext. Virgilian intertextuality, however, bears no resemblance 1.327-29 and Od. 6.149-52; Aen. 1.338-41 and Od. 6.194-96). and stands in to the cut-and-paste approach of Plutarch. Unlike Plutarch's mocking pastiche for the little girl (Athena) who assists Odysseus in Phaeacia (Aen. 1.315 and Od. of Homeric and Epicurean texts, which serves to foreclose a favorable view 7.]4-77), Venus' departure from Aeneas in that scene also gestures toward the of the Garden's affinities with Phaeacia, Virgil's intertextual modes open up story of Ares and Aphrodite as sung by the Phaeacian Demodocus; like Aphrodite the interpretive options. At first glance the reader might suspect that Virgil is in the Phaeacian story, Venus flits away to Cyprus where she can enjoy the incense

28. On Venus as Nausikaa, Athena in , and Demodocus' Aphrodite. see Knauer 19fi4: 158-63. Knauer points out that Aeneas' comparison of his (disguised) mother to Diana recalls 25. On Dido\ "multiplicity" in general see Hexter 1992. espcL'ially p. 337. Oclysscu:-.·comparison of N:.lUsikaato Artemis (1964: 159 n. I ). 26. See Aulus Gellius 9.9. Knauer 1964: 174 and passim. Clausen 1987: 15-26, Hardie 1986 29. tofUs hie liber {l"{/lIsl(l{W; e.H dt' raTio Apu!/onii. In some respects the.character Medea may passIm. My summary here focuses on the correspondences between Virgilian characters and their also be a precursor of the Homeric Nausikaa; cf. Reece 1993: 109-10. On Virgil"s mingling of the antecedents; also relev;mt to the Phaeacia/Carthage analogy afe the storms, invocations, and wrecks Homeric with the Apollonian see Clausen 1987. at sea that preceded the respective heroes' arrivals; and the shade-filled, prosperous landscapes that 30. Cf. Clousen 1987: 23-25. reeei ve them. 31. On Virgil's habit of quoting LlH;retius in alien conlexts Jnd somelimes even reversing his e7. See Hardie 1986: 60-66. Epicurean wisdom, see Hardie 1986 passim.

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simply tapping into the prevailing anti-Epicurean discourse, thus aligning himself as some assume (out of ignorance or because they disagree. or because with a tradition exemplified by Plutarch's later condemnation of the Epicureans they misapprehend us), but we mean the absence of pain in the body and as decadent, womanish. and dangerous sensualists. The fact that Dido is an the absence of distress in the spirit (I's.\'che). For it is neither continuous Easterner, and that the most cliched of her "barbarian" attributes overlap with drinking parties nor carnal indulgence in boys and women or fish or other her Phaeacian elements, add to this impression .." Other, more sinister Homeric offerings of the rich table that produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning elements in Dido's ancestry-Calypso, Circe, the Cyclops-would also support and searching out reasons for selection and avoidance, and banishing such a reading, especially since those aspects emerge gradually, as though they the sorts of received opinions that cause the greatest disturbance of the spirit. The source of all these things and the greatest good is prudence were lurking under a Phaeacian veneer. Interestingly enough, one of the most (phronesis). Thus prudence is even more valuable than philosophy. for all sinister (and ostensibly non-Phaeacian) Homeric elements of Aeneid 4 circles the rest of the virtues spring from prudence. which teaches us that it is not back to Phaeacia: when Dido curses Aeneas, her malediction echoes the parting possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and shot hurled at Odysseus by Polyphemus (Aen. 4.612-29; Od. 9.528-35). In justly, nor to live a life of prudence, honor. and justice without living Homer the Cyclopes have a vague connection with the Phaeacians (Od. 7.205• pleasantly. For virtues are naturally part of a pleasant life. and a pleasant 206) and are the Phaeacians' fonner neighbors (Od. 6.3-6), a proximity the life is inseparable from them. Aeneid recalls by placing the Cyclops episode temporally and spatially near (Ep. Men. 131-32) the Carthage episode (see Qui nt 1989: 120-23). Thus the appearance of the Epicurean/Phaeacian equation in the Aeneid would seem to support a reading of Turning from Epicurus to Eratosthenes (the Alexandrian scholar quoted in the epic that champions Aeneas over Dido, Stoicism over Epicureanism. Rome the epigraph to this essay; cf. n. I), we see that Eratosthenes too is on the de• over Africa and the East.'.' And yet when we recall that the Garden itself is not fensive. The mythical Phaeacians may strike some readers as unlikely objects of univocal regarding the Phaeacians another possibility emerges: perhaps Virgil's rebuke, but as far as we know, Eratosthenes' favorable opinion of the "prudence" overturning of Lucretius' rejection of the alleged connection between the Garden of Homer's Phaeacians was not the majority view at any time in antiquity; the and Phaeacia does not condemn Epicureanism but simply aligns Dido with a less norm---even before the founding of the Garden-was to accuse the Phaeacians of austere (but not debased) Epicurean tradition. indolence. sloth, and loose morals.)" Thus Eratosthenes' assertion ("'II is impos• sible for Phaeacians not to be prudent, since they are very dear to the gods, as PRUDENCE AND PLEASURE Nausikaa says") is a fragmentary rebuttal to the dominanl reading of the Phaiakis. Although bringing Eratosthenes' reading of Homer to bear on the Epicurean tra• Whether Epicurus lived to hear himself compared unfavorably to the Phaea• dition may be a case of anachronistic intertextuality. Eratosthenes' claim has a cians or not, it is certain that Epicurus did respond to derogatory assessments of role to play in .the dialogue with Epicurus. We know that Eratosthenes studied Epicurean pleasure. In the Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus explains that-contrary philosophy in Athens while the Garden was in its second generation, and so pre• to the claims of adversaries-Epicurean pleasures go hand in hand with phronesis sumably knew of EpicurusJ' But even if Eratosthenes himsel I'had no knowledge ("wisdom" or "prudence"). This passage is especially resonant with the "Epicurus of an early version of the "Epicurus the Phaeacian" tradition, his adducing of the Phaeacian" tradition, even if it can serve as an actual response to the charge Homeric texts to prove that the Phaeacians are virtuous would have interested only for those who read out of order, turning to Epicurus from Plutarch or Heracli• Epicurean readers. Athenaeus (to whom we owe the quotation of Eratosthenes) tus. Thus Epicurus responds in advance to the claim lhat the doctrine of pleasure reports that Eratoslhenes calls other witnesses besides Nausikaa; he also corrects he "stole" from Odysseus is morally bankrupt and thus deeply '"unpleasant": the mainstream tradition on the words of Odysseus. According to Eratosthenes, So when we say that pleasure is the end (te/os) we do not mean the the true text of Odysseus' speech on the te/os is explicit about the decency of pleasures of degenerates and pleasures that consist in carnal indulgence, the Phaeacians. In Eratosthenes' version Odysseus proclaims:

34. This may explain in pari why the delightful Nausikaa has such a dismal e~lrly Nachlcben: 32. On Dido and Eastern stereotypes see Hexter 1992. The tecta laquafla of Dido's palace afC although an optimistic rC<.Idermight expect her to have inspired happier heroines. Nau~ikaa hecame an especially rich allusion: in addition to having Phaeacian associations tDRN 2.28), such paneling the model instead for murderous or :-iuicidal abandoned women. For a concise survey of 3nciem was also considered Trojan or barbarian (for sources see Dyson 1996). commentary on Phaeacians see Heubeck 1988: 341. For recent assessments of the Phaeacians' 33. For the claim that Virgil's Dido demonstrates the obvious errors of Epicureanism see Feeney friendliness (or hostility) see C"rnes 1993 and Reecc 19Y3. 1991: 171-72 and Dyson t996. For support of the idea that Virgil's depiction of Dido is friendly 35. Although Eratosthenes was reputed to have criticized some of the early Stoics, we know to the Garden, see Williams 1983: 210-13 and Mellingholr-Bourgerie 1990. nothing about his attitude toward the Garden. Cr. Pfeiffer 1968: [52-70. 202 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17INo. 2/0ctober 1998 GORDON: Phaeacian Dido 203

00 yap i!:yeS)YE ,[

36. The Homeric scholiasts also consider this interpretation of euphrosyne. Ironically. e/l• phrosyne is a word that a later Epicurean tradition uses to refer La specific~.t1ly carnal pleasures. See 10 DRN Book 1. v·:hich in turn geslUres toward the Phaeacian story by depicting Mars in the anns Diogenes of Oeno3nda, Smith fragment 10. col. 4. ofVenlis. 37. Dyson: 205. ~O. See Hardie 1986: 33-51. See also Gale 1994: 30-0 I Segal 1971 stresses the un-Roman. 38. See especially Segal 1971. Hardie 1986, and Dyson 1996. effeminate <1spects of Topus. thus drawing attention to material for an anti-Phaeacian and anti• 39. On the moral probity of Jopas' song. cf. Servills ad Aen. 1.742: bene philosophica Epicure~m reading of this passage. imrodl/citur cWltile/l£/ ill cOllvivio reg;nae adlwc costae. The Iopas passage is also heilvy with 4]. Cf. Dyson 1996: 204, who describes Dido as "a Lucretian exemplwl1 malum." intertextual rejoinders: Virgil excises an erotic passage that Lucretius h<1d highlighted in the proem 42. Brown 1987: 142 and Hamilton 1993: 24~.

I I I I .:.I.. 204 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume I7/No. 2/0ctober 1998 GORDON: Phaeacian Dido 205 and the sound of the lover's name in the arousal of lovers (DRN 4.1061-62)." ing reader starts to think not in terms of origins and imitations. but in terms of Thus although Venus and Juno have been described at work behind the scenes, overlapping retorts, rereadings, and rejoinders from all sides. The fact Ihat Virgil both the symptoms and the mechanics of Dido's passion are Lucretian. seems not to have taken the "Epicurus the Phaeacian" formula from any particular Once Dido is stricken with love, the Phaeacian intertext (except as it is text makes "intertextuality" even more pertinent here. for intertextuality since mediated-in more sinister fashion-through Apollonius' Medea) slips away. Kristeva has acknowledged the presence not only of literal texts within texts. Dido loses all resemblance to the virginal Nausikaa, along with her prospects for but also the presence of cliches, of later traditions, and of peculiar translations. Epicurean tranquillity. To bring the author of the text more openly into this discussion: the concept of intertextuality helps one conceive of Virgil in a great dialogue not just with LOST IN THE JNTERTEXT Homer. Apollonius. Lucretius, and Epicurus (to pass over so many other sources of Virgil's inspiration), but with generations of friends and foes of the Garden. Although r am convinced that the long-standing tradition of reading Homer who in turn are engaged in spirited dialogue with Homer and Epicurus, and their as a font of Hellenistic philosophical wisdom informs Virgil's reworking of the friends and enemies. epics, 1 do not mean to reduce the Aeneid to an allegory on Stoic and Epicurean My third answer circles back to the epigraph to this essay and to a theme world views, or even to assert that the play of Epicurean versus Stoic values is that recurs throughout: Ihe "Epicurus the Phaeacian" cliche has been ignored the main theme of the Dido episode. My far simpler claim is that attention to largely because the dominanl tradition (in Greek and Roman antiquity as well the Phaeacian lineage of Dido demonstrates that her Epicurean connections are as in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship) is hostile to the Garden. deeper, more varied, and more sophisticated than has hitherto been noted. In Epicureans and Phaeacians alike have been ridiculed as gluttons, sensualists, fact. the tradition that associates the Garden with Phaeacia seems to me to have and philanderers. The philosophy of the Garden has been treated not only as such an undeniabJe presence in the Dido episode as to require an explanation of effeminate and anti-intellectual. but as downright dangerous. This supposed why it was not rediscovered by nineteenth-century source criticism. I have three emasculating potential of the Garden is latent in the jibes of larbas, who questions answers to this question. and will dispense quickly with the first by acknowledging the masculinity of Aeneas and his men (semivim comitaru 4.215) and in Mercury's my own traditional training as a Classicist. Since it was my acquaintance with rebuke of Aeneas for building a "pretty" city and subordinating himself to a woman nineteenth-century philology that led me to notice the Epicurean implications of (pulchramqlle uxorius IIrhem, 4.266). Virgil's exact location in this tradition is Dido's Phaeacian connections in the first place, I oller this particular slant on Dido difficult to pin down: readers who place Virgil squarely on the side of imperium as a late arrival. overlooked though it was during the heyday of source criticism. will line him up against the Garden. but others will demur. The second answer has to do with the efficacy of the vocabulary of intertextual• Michael Riflaterre has argued for a pragmatic engagement with a science of ity. Critics have complained that the adoption of the terminology of intertextuality intertextuality. the purpose of which is to uncover the true message of a text.'" by scholars of literature merely gives a new veneer to old methods (hence the par• Notions of intertextuality that are more akin to the Bakhtinian approach lirst ody by Genette 1992: 82).'" Now that the shine has in any case worn off, il articulated by Kristeva, however, stress the polvphonv and hereroglossia of any seems a good time simply to assert that "intertextual" is an especially apt epithet text that contains echoes of earlier texts. Interpretations of Virgil's Aeneid are for the art of the Aeneid, a poem that weaves together and reshapes a profusion notoriously diverse, and my own conviction is that one can appeal to Virgil's of traditions (literary and extra-literary) and yet whose surface is somehow not allusions to earlier texts to argue (with equal success) either for or against Virgilian elaborate but austere." The language oj' intertextuaJity also happens to be ap• sympathy for an Epicurean point of view. When reading Virgil it seems more propriate to a discussion of a long-standing paraphilosophical tradition involving appropriate to assert (with Barthes) Ihat plurality is inherent in textuality. and (at a series of Homeric allusions and anti-Epicurean misreadings. Thus the inquir- the risk of promoting a cliche) that the poem is the question. minus the answer." Such seems to be the stance of R. O. A. M. Lyne's most recent discussion of the 43. Hamilton 1993: 250. last lines ofAelleid 4. where the description of Dido's death meshes perfectly with 44. "All literary critics, for centuries, have been producing melatcxt without knowing il.·· Lucretian expositions of Epicurean belief: "They'll know it a., of tomorrow: what a ~t

omnis et una DIODORUS' EPILOGUE: A PLEA FOR PLURALITY dilapsus calor atque in uentos uita recessit. (4.704-705) Although Plutarch liked to maintain that Epicureans are too depraved to read And at once all the heat and life slipped away and receded into the winds. books, one can imagine various Epicurean responses to the Aeneid, including Epicurean readings that accept Dido as a worthy representative of the Garden. As Lyne makes clear, the final description of Dido's death evokes Lucretius' Such hypothetical Epicurean readers might pity Aeneas not only for his failure to descriptions of the soul's dissipation into air at death (DRN 3.128-29,3.214• accept the refuge of Phaeacian/Epicurean harbors, but also for his subsequent zeal 15, 3.400-401, and 3.455-56) and thus aligns the narrator-for the moment at for bloodshed and revenge." An Epicurean attuned to the Phaeacian/Epicurean least-with the Garden. For some readers, this Lucretian intertext, "an intertext tradition might also understand Aeneas' delivery from the storm before Carthage that subverts some of our certainties" (as Lyne puts it) will stand as Virgil's as an obvious allusion to the saving wisdom ofthe Garden. Salvation from troubled last word on Dido's Epicurean leanings." Those readers may then take Dido's seas is a pervasive Epicurean metaphor: witness Lucretius on Epicurus: ghostly re-appearance in the underworld as a sort of illusion, or even as the quique per artem illusory fulfillment of Dido's threat to haunt Aeneas."" Others, however, may fluctibus e tantis vitam tantisque tenebris agree with the claim that Dido's re-appearance in the underworld constitutes a in tam tranquillo et tam clara luce locavit. final undermining of Dido's Epicureanism that "leaves no doubt.'·'" (DRN 5.10-13; cf. DRN2.1ff.) For many readers the Aeneid is, on the contrary. a poem of doubt that knows no simple resolutions.51 My own conviction is that the complex intertextual modes who through skill rescued life from such great waves and darkness of the Aeneid expand its capacity to present multiple viewpoints." This brings me and placed it in such calm and in such clear light. again to thai last scene of Dido's, where a bewildered Aeneas catches a glimpse of her shade (Aen. 6.469-74). For most readers of the Aeneid, this passage An Epicurean reader might take Aeneas' departure from Dido not as an escape echoes the moment in the Odyssey when Odysseus spots Ajax in the underworld from danger but as precisely its opposite. (Od. 11.563-64). Thus the Virgilian passage poignantly evokes the grief and Such an interpretation of Virgil may seem as eccentric as Eratosthenes' loss expressed in the Homeric pre-text, while exploiting the Homeric reader's Phaeacian-friendly interpretation of Homer ..'·' And yet perhaps eccentricity is to untroubled allegiance with Odysseus. And yet here as elsewhere in the Aeneid be expected of the Epicurean; contexts in which Epicurean perspectives conform the direct Homeric allusion is only one of many intertextual strata. Layered over 10 the majority position are certainly rare. Eccentric or not. a stray fragment this reference to Odysseus and Ajax are the verdicts passed on Odysseus by later of an Epicurean reading of Virgil in which the Epicurean identifies with Dido generations. Despite the Stoic tradition of idealizing Odysseus, the centuries survives in Seneca's reference to Diodorus the Epicurean (de vila heala 19, cited before Virgil had also seen generations of poets and philosophers who knew at Ihe beginning of this essay). Diodorus is otherwise unknown, and it is difficult Odysseus primarily as a notorious liar and cheat who had not only brought about to appraise Seneca's claim that Diodorus quoted Dido before slitting his own the death of Ajax, but had engineered or assisted in the murders of Iphigenia, throat. The imperfectly contextualized tale projects a complex and arresting Astyanax. Polyxena, and Palamedes. The reader of the Aeneid who recalls not image: a male Epicurean philosopher. presumably Greek, quotes in Latin• only the Odyssey but the Ulixes of Book 2 of the Aeneid-or the Enripidean knife in hand-the exit speech of Virgil's Carthaginian queen. Seneca makes or post-Homeric Odysseus in general-knows why Ajax, like Dido, does not clear, however, that Dido's words have a particular resonance for him. and• look back. apparently-for Diodorus. For Seneca, Dido's words are not merely Virgilian or tragic in a general sense. Rather: for Seneca, Dido's Vixi .. ("I have lived, and [ have run the course that fortune granted") is emblematic of the type of respectable, austere Epicureanism that he often admired. Although Seneca's 48. Lyne 1994: 196. 49. See Lyne 1994: 196. works contain harsh ridicule of the Garden thai corresponds closely with the 50. Dyson 1996: 219. 5 I. On Virgilian ambiguity and various interpretations of Dido's death, see Pakell 1994. 52. See Perkell 1994. especially 66-67, for another way to account for Virgilian complexity 53. For differing views on lhe Epicurean :lI1d/or Stoic ramifications of Aenc:ls' killing ofTurnus. and ambiguity: it is the characters wirhin the epic who express contradictory interpretations of the see Galinsky 198R, Putnam 1990. Erler 1992, and Fowler 1997. action. Particular readers may be inclined to accept a particular character's view even if the poel 54. In Seneca's anecdote, even Diodorus himself refers to his Epicurc:ln life as J life lived in

Wilhholds explicit endorsement. a safe harbor (de lI;W heOfa J 9) .. ______1 _ 208 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 2/0ctober 1998 GORDON: Phaeacian Dido 209

anti-Epicurean rhetoric promoted by Cicero and Plutarch (see Gordon 1997 and that one ought to be grateful for one's past good fortune (praeterita ... bona. Bel/. Gordon forthcoming). Seneca occasionally acknowledges that the stereotype of 3.4.1). and that an increase in time does not increase pleasure (ef. Ben. 5.17.6-7 the effeminate and debauched Epicurean is misleading: authentic Epicureanism is and Epicurus Principal Doctrine 19). Seneca's account of Epiclll'us' teachings on actually virwous, upright. and austere (sancta; recta; tristia. de "ita beata 13). gratitude is confirmed in part by Epicurus' reference to the aging philosopher's In fact. S.eneca quotes Virgil's Dido (Aen. 4.653) in al least three different gratitude (charis) for past. experience IEp. Men. 122), but) suspect that Seueca is works (de vita beata 19, de beneficiis 5.17.5, and Epistles 12.9)." Each time he also thinking of Lucretius' personified '"Natlll'e," who denounces the ingratitude quotes her with approval, and each time with implicit (and sometimes explicit) of foolish mortals who do not. want to die IDRN 3.931-77)-''' acknowledgment oft.he Epicurean content of her words: vixi, et qllem dederat Cllr• This context also suggests t.hat Seneca understands Dido's declaration at slimfortlina peregi, "I have lived, and I have run the course that. fortune grant.ed." Aeneid 4.653 as t.he words of the proverbial Epicurean who leaves life as a satisfied In Epistle 12.8-9, Seneca mentions to his addressee Lucilius the dissolute life of guest (at I,I('/llis vitae COlllliua. DRN 3.938). Another proverbial guest. Odysseus Pacuvius (a vice-governor of Syria under Tiberius), who allegedly ended his din• among t.he Phaeacians, may be latent in that. image. The notion that the true ners wit.h mock funerals in which attendants carried him t.o bed singing in Greek Epicurean faces deat.h with equanimity and even happiness is not. made explicit "He has lived his life" (~E~(6nCtL). Seneca proposes Dido's words as a more in t.he canonical texts of Epicurus, but. is certainly present in other Epicurean seemly alternative. not. just for Pacuvius, but for himself and his reader(s): "Let. sources." In a saying attributed to Metrodorus (another founding member of the us do from a good mot.ive (conscientia) what. he did from a bad one: let us say as we Garden), the sage says he will leave life singing that he has lived well (EV go happily and joyfully to oUl' sleep: vixi, et quem dederat cllrsamfortuna peregi." ~E,Bl(,nctt. Sent. Vat. 47), and the second-century Diogenes of Oenoanda seems (Seneca seems to use the word "sleep" here bot.h lit.erally and met.aphorically. bot.h to make a similar declarat.ion (Smith fr. 3). The Epicurean tradition also attributes of night.ly rest and of death.) Nor does Seneca ignore the fact Ihat Dido's words composure and happiness 10 the dying Epicurus (Diog. Laert. 10.15-16). Thus are a prelude t.o suicide. After quoting Dido. Seneca cites Epicurus on suicide: "It in Seneca's reading, Dido's last words are a declaration of contentment that earn is bad to live under constraint: but there is no constraint to live under const.raint." her a place among t.he Epicurean worthies. Since Seneca "quotes" Epicurus in Latin rat.her than in the original Greek, and To return to Diodorus: Seneca does not explain why Diodorus has chosen t.o since t.he original text is lost. (for a remnant see Sent. Vat. 9), it is difficult to know die. What is clear is that Diodorus is content. with the years he has spent. "at anchor" where the quot.at.ion ends and where Seneca's interpret.ation begins. but Seneca's in the safety of the Garden's metaphorical harbors (ille interim beat us ac plenus epist.le continues: "Many short, simple paths to freedom are open to us. Let. us bona conscientia reddidil sibi testimonium vita excedens laudavitque aetatis in thank god that no one can be held in life. We may spurn the const.raints them• pOrlu et ad ancoram actae quietem: de vita beata 19). Although some of Diodoms' selves." At. this point Seneca anticipates Lucilius' response: Epicaf'l/s, inqllis, detractors held that suicide was unacceptable to Epicurus, Seneca's assertion t.o dixit, Quid tibi cum alieno? ("'Epicurus said that.' you say; 'What are you doing the contrary demo,nstrates his close familiarity with the texts of EpicUl'uS (whom wit.h another's property?' "). Seneca responds: "What is true is mine." and ends he quot.es-in translation-in Epistle 12.10, as mentioned above). Fundamental the letter wit.h t.he assertion that. t.he best ideas are shared property. t.o Epicureanism, clearly, is the notion that life offers many pleasures even when Dido's third appearance in Seneca occurs in his lengthy meditation on ingrat.• adversit.y exisls (Ep. Men. 126-27). Thus Epicurus is said to have claimed that it.ude in On Benefits. From t.he context it is obvious that Dido here is an exemplum a sage would not commit suicide simply because of the loss of vision (Diog. of the sort of gratefulness t.hat ordinary people lack: Laert. 10.119). and Lucretius ridicules the folly of someone who commits suicide Who dies without complaint? Who dares to say in the end: ") have because ofa fear of death. This does not mean, however, that t.he Garden prohibited lived, and I have run the course that fortune granted"? Who dies without suicide (cf. Cicero TlIsc. 5.118)." In fact, Diodorus' emulation of Dido and rebelling, without wailing? Yet not to be satisfied with the time one has Seneca's citing of Epicurus in Epistles 12.9 suggest that Seneca and Diodorus had (praeterito tempore) is to be an ingrate. read Dido's suicide as an act that was both dignified and Epicurean. The dominant (Ben. 5.17.5) tradition may view Epicurean heroism as an oxymoron, but Seneca and Diodorus

The broader context of this passage in the argument. of On Ben~fits also makes 56. Cf. if/grow DRN 3.937: illJ;ral//1II 3.934. Lucretius was not necessarily following a lost text of EpicllrllS. clear that Seneca aligns Dido's gratitude with the wisdom of Epicurus, who taught 57. See Rosenbaum 1990: 22 for

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are dissenters from the majority view, Whether they are also perverse readers of Gorier. Woldemar. 1996, "Didu und Seneca liher Gilick und VOllendung," Mllselllll Heh'eliCIIIII 53: 160-69, Virgil remains an open issue, Gosling, .I, C. B .. and C. C. W, Taylnr. 1982, The Greeh 011Pleasllre. Oxford, University of Kansas Hamilton, Colin I. M, 1993, "Dido, Tityos and Prometheus," CQ 43: 249-54, Hardie, Philip R, 1986. ViIXii:, Ameid: COSIIIOSalld "111",rilllll, Oxfurd, pgordon@falcon,cc,ukans,edu Hexter, Ralph, 1992, "Sidonian Dido," In Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden, cds .. If/nova/ions (~rAn/iqu;ly. New York. BIBLIOGRAPHY Heubeek, AI fred, Stephanie West, and J. B. Hainsworth, 1988, A COOIII/('III01T 011 HOlller:-- Od\'ss".\', Vol. I, Oxford, Ambrose, Z, Philip, 1965. "The Homeric Telos," Glofla 43: 38-62, Jufresa, M, 1982, "II mila dei Feaci in Filodemo," La Regiolle sol/errata dol Vi'SIII'i/!, Asmis, Elizabeth, 1991. "Philodemus' Poctic Theory and On rhe Good King According SllIdi e Prospel/i. 509-18, Alti del Convegno Inlernazionale, 11-15 Novemher 1979. /0 Homer." CIAIIIIO: 1-45, Naples,

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