Episode 151 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 07 - The New School In Athens
Date: 12/11/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2768-episode-151-epicurus-and-his-philosophy-part-07-the-new-school-in-athens/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 151 covers Chapter 5 of DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy, “The New School in Athens.” Epicurus arrived in Athens in 306 BC — the full panel of Cassius, Joshua, Martin, and Callistheni is present. DeWitt notes the political climate: a law had been passed requiring philosophers to obtain Senate and Assembly approval before teaching publicly (repealed the same year), and Theophrastus had been briefly exiled, evidence of hostility toward the philosophical schools. Crucially, unlike in Mytilene and Lampsacus where Epicurus was an alien requiring sponsors, in Athens he was a citizen with full rights.
On the school property: DeWitt explains that the school comprised two physical locations — a house inside the city walls in the district of Melite, and a garden outside the old Dipylon Gate on the Academy Road. The house, not the garden, was the real center of instruction. The garden was small — its price of 80 minas was less than the sophist Gorgias charged for a single course of instruction — and was referred to in ancient sources as the capidion or hortulus (“little garden”). Cassius cautions against over-romanticizing both the garden imagery (invoking Eden) and the commune image: Epicurus specifically rejected holding property in common, and students were not required to live under the same roof. The panel discusses whether the garden was a flower garden, a vegetable garden, or simply a park — and concludes the evidence is too thin to say. DeWitt’s caution against “the glamour that haunts the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Garden” is emphasized: the real school was in the house, not in the garden. Martin notes uncertainty about the present location of the site. The contrast with teaching in public is drawn: those who taught in the public gymnasium were under the authority of the gymnasiarch, subject to the same sort of censorship visible in the trial of Socrates, who was charged with impiety and corrupting the youth. Epicurus deliberately chose private instruction to avoid this — a lesson learned in Mytilene.
On ranks and titles: Epicurus was called hegemon (rendered by Cicero as dux — leader or guide), and there was an explicit distaste for the title “school teacher.” DeWitt records that Metrodorus was classed among those who “will not go forward unless another goes ahead,” and Hermarchus among those who “could be forced or driven” and needed “not so much a leader as an insider and driver.” Cassius and Joshua reflect that these descriptions are not purely negative — some people are self-starters, others need motivation or guidance, and a great teacher serves different roles for different students. Polyaenus, trained in the school of Eudoxus, is described by DeWitt as a “kindly man” — and Cassius notes he appears in Epicurus’s will as a standing consultative authority alongside Hermarchus and Idomeneus, suggesting Epicurus deliberately distributed rather than concentrated power in the school. Epicurus’s three brothers (Neocles, Chairidemus, Aristobulus) appear in the school in subordinate roles. The panel also notes that Leontium — described by DeWitt as a “perpetual scandal” — apparently lived in the school with Metrodorus as a wife, and that she later wrote a book against Theophrastus the Aristotelian.
The episode closes with a substantial discussion of friendship and fellowship. DeWitt’s key formulation: the “fullness of pleasure from the satisfaction of natural desires is a prerequisite of the fullness of fellowship.” Friendship begins in mutual need and utility but matures into genuine fellowship — the Greek word used is oikiotes (οἰκιότης), etymologically meaning membership in a household or family. Seneca’s testimony is cited: “It was not instruction but fellowship that made great men of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.” The Ikadistai (“twentiers”) are briefly mentioned — Epicureans were dubbed this because of their custom of celebrating the 20th of each month, a banquet marking the fellowship of the school. Next week: Chapter 6, “The New Education.”
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”[Intro]
Welcome to Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we’ll walk you through the Epicurean texts and we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. We’re now in the middle of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book Epicurus and His Philosophy. Now let’s join the discussion.
Cassius:
Welcome to episode 151 of Lucretius Today. We are continuing our general introduction into the background of the Epicurean school, and today we’re going to be looking at Chapter 5 of Norman DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy. The title of Chapter 5 is “The New School in Athens.” And I think generally what DeWitt is covering in this chapter is the organization and the way the school was set up — perhaps some of the attitudes within the school of the students towards the teacher, different aspects of the use of Epicurus’s images, friendship within the school, and to some extent probably the frankness issue as well. We’re definitely not going to go into it in the detail that DeWitt does here, but there probably are some issues that regularly come up in our discussions about studying and promoting Epicurean philosophy that would be of interest for us to talk about.
Cassius:
So basically we are in the phase where Epicurus has left Lampsacus and in about 306 BC has come to Athens to begin to set up his school. And of course we frequently end up discussing: well, it’s described as a garden, but is it really a garden? Is it really a single piece of property or two pieces of property? Is it located inside the halls in the center of things, or is it somehow out at a distance and isolated from other places? Very many times people think that basically the Epicurean school was a commune — that everybody was living together all the time in a single building — and they picture almost a 1960s-style hippie commune. We can talk about that today and whether the historical record really supports that kind of conclusion or not.
Cassius:
We can also talk about something that is regularly raised in our discussions — the issue of how Norman DeWitt attempts to reconstruct what he thinks is a logical probability or possibility about the way things really were from the slender evidence that we do have in the texts. None of us in the podcast agree with Norman DeWitt in every particular he comes up with, and there’ll be some issues in this chapter that he brings up where we wouldn’t necessarily come to the same conclusion. But unfortunately, to the extent we even come up with any opinions at all, there’s not a lot of evidence about a lot of these issues, and some of the evidence is conflicting. What I would basically say about DeWitt’s speculations is that I have a lot of respect for him. We’ve discussed before that DeWitt spent basically his whole professional life as a classics expert focused on Epicurean philosophy. He was as a classics professor widely read and seems to have a very wide understanding of the different Greek texts, and it just seems to me that DeWitt’s instincts about reconstructing things are entitled to some respect because of his sweeping knowledge of the literature.
Cassius:
So one of the first things he deals with in Chapter 5 is entitled “the school property” — and that’s one thing that is constantly talked about: the location of the school, inside or outside the gates, the number of buildings that might have been involved, whether it was two locations or not, and the issue of how that relates to the other schools. DeWitt says a few interesting things in the prefatory material in this chapter about how and why and when Epicurus settled himself in the city of Athens, or outside of it, or both, as we’ll get to. First of all, he says Epicurus left Lampsacus to take up his residence in Athens in 306 BC. And a little later down there’s an interesting phrase: “There was also an element of judicious timing so far as external circumstances were concerned.” He goes on to describe some of the conflict that was going on in and around the Aegean at this time, and he makes reference to a law that was passed in Athens — that all philosophers, under penalty of death, had to secure the approval of the Senate and the Assembly before offering themselves as public teachers. Then he goes on to say: “To the credit of the Athenians, although an example of their usual fickleness, it is recorded that this law was repealed within the same year.” And he indicates that Theophrastus during this time was compelled to undergo a brief exile, and that this is sure evidence of hostile feelings towards the philosophical schools. So Epicurus is not having in Athens the same problem he was having in Mytilene — the Platonists don’t quite have the power there that they did in Mytilene. In fact, philosophy in general is kind of struggling in Athens at this point, particularly philosophers who want to hold forth in public. Epicurus has apparently already decided he doesn’t want to do that. And then he goes on to say: “Epicurus had been an alien in both Mytilene and Lampsacus, and in both cities stood in need of sponsors, but in Athens he was a citizen with full rights.”
Joshua:
Yeah, Josh, let me insert right there that I have no reason to doubt anything that Norman DeWitt is saying here. It’s the kind of detailed material that unless you’re an expert in Athenian history, I don’t know how you’d have any idea whether to think there are any potential issues with it or not. I almost think it’s funny that you started out by reading the first sentence where he says that Epicurus left Lampsacus in 306 BC, and then DeWitt goes on to say: “It may be assumed that the voyage was undertaken between April and October, which was the open season for navigation in the Aegean.” That’s almost funny to me — whether Epicurus did it between April and October or not has got to be just nothing more than rank speculation. But on the other hand, it’s probably good speculation. But we’ve talked about before that it’s just necessary to apply an independent questioning mind to the study of Epicurus and to what anybody says about all of these details. At any rate, these backgrounds are very interesting and a good source of ideas for people who want to take the time to consider the different things that Epicurus is suggesting.
Cassius:
This school property issue — he’s got a lot of information in here that we may or may not want to discuss. But we’re frequently running into this situation: “I can’t be a good Epicurean because I don’t have a commune to live in. I don’t have a community of houses immediately next to each other or a big enough house myself. How can I ever duplicate what Epicurus did because he had a mansion or something with all these people living with him and constantly talking about philosophy?” — and that that’s a core necessary thing in order to live an Epicurean lifestyle. Which I think is not a good deduction at all, and certainly not the deduction that Norman DeWitt takes. But you’ve got the issue that apparently there was a garden, there was a house.
Cassius:
And if I remember correctly, one of the things that comes up later on is that Cicero or Atticus tried to prevent Memmius from destroying the house of Epicurus, but that does not appear to be the same thing as the garden. Whose is the garden, where Epicurus lived — as far as we know? Well, here’s what he says on page 92. He says: “The school of Epicurus resembled those of Plato and Aristotle in so far as it was associated with two physical properties, a house for residents and a place for lectures. It differed because both properties, and not the house alone, were registered in titled deeds in his own name, as is evidenced by his last will and testament. The two properties were not contiguous, and there is evidence for believing that Epicurus, whose health was uncertain, sometimes fared back and forth in a three-wheeled chair.”
Cassius:
Okay. Then he goes on to say: “The house was situated within the city walls in a respectable district known as Melite, and the garden was not far distant outside the walls, outside the old Dipylon Gate, on the same road that led to the Academy.” This coincidence of location is positively known to us from the testimony of Cicero, who describes with some vividness a visit made by him as a young man along with Atticus and others in 78 BC. Because Roman youth — particularly Roman youth of a certain social class — were often educated in Athens. And so what do you do when you’re in Athens? Well, you’re probably going to go see the sites, and you want to go look at the garden. It’s on the same road as the Academy. There are pictures or maps that various people have drawn of Athens and the locations of these buildings, and we’ll try to link one or more of them in the show notes. But one of the points is just simply that the Epicurean garden was apparently closer to the downtown area of Athens than the Academy was — so it’s not like it was in isolation. It’s not like he had a cave somewhere apart from everybody. He had his own location where he could teach inside it. He wasn’t standing up on the bleachers in downtown Athens — but it was not an isolated location either.
Joshua:
Yeah, yeah. DeWitt is saying on page 91 that this is similar to the Academy in Plato’s case — that nevertheless, the real school of Plato was located in his own house and not in the Academy, and that the house and park of Plato were not contiguous either, and that in fact Speusippus, the successor of Plato, in fact did have to be hauled from the house to the Academy in his old age.
Cassius:
Yeah, this is the difference essentially between teaching in public and teaching in private in Athens at that time — if you hold forth in a public place like the Lyceum, you are under the procedural control of this person they called the gymnasiarch. That’s exactly what it sounds like — just as monarchy means rule by one, the gymnasiarch is the person in charge of the gymnasium, the place of public education. And no doubt — just as in living in the United States of America in the year 2022, one of the big things going on right now is the school board wars, closings of libraries — these are not insignificant issues. The person in charge of education is making huge decisions.
Joshua:
Yes, the whole issue of censorship, the whole issue of the ability to speak your mind without having to report to somebody else. It sounds to me like what you’re saying is: these other schools, being somewhat public, were under the potential thumb — or the actual thumb — of the state authorities, and they either were censored by the state or certainly felt that if they got out of line, they were subject to state censorship. When you compare it to 2022, you certainly have all sorts of questions today about independence of thought and the ability to maintain your independence of thought, the ability to say what it is you want to say without repercussions to your ability to make a living or engage in society. That’s a huge issue today, and perhaps something from which we can take a useful lesson: that Epicurus chose to be as independent as possible and outside of the control of the authorities.
Cassius:
Just to give an idea about how political things can become in this environment in Athens, we need to look no further than Socrates, who of course was sentenced to death and drank the hemlock and died. During his defense, he made an interesting claim. He said that one of the things the rulers in the city had accused him of was impiety or atheism — things like claiming, for example, that the sun is not a god but instead a body up in space. Things like that. Socrates responded by saying that charging him with that while Anaxagoras’s book was available in the Agora for a drachma created an inherent conflict: the ideas which were already in circulation, you couldn’t just pin those on one person and basically kill him for a scapegoat — the ideas were already out there, the books were available inexpensively, and anybody who could read could read these books. So that’s just an interesting little insight during the trial of Socrates about how bad things can go under this system in Athens, a system of gymnasiarchs and the people they answer to.
Joshua:
Yeah, I don’t nearly have enough background to comment intelligently on that aspect of it, but it certainly raises the question in my mind: to what extent did the trouble Socrates got into — the ultimate charges against him, his ultimate death — to what extent result from Socrates’s decision about the methods and locations and people he was talking to? Had Socrates decided simply to have his own private school, would he have run into the same problems that he eventually did? Or is it only because he was insisting on some type of public teaching and some type of public environment that led to that? Did Athens have a secret police going out and searching for people who were talking blasphemy? Or is it only because Socrates was blasting it in their face, so to speak, that he got in trouble? I don’t know which is the case.
Cassius:
Well, one of the charges — of course there was the charge of impiety, but there was also the charge of corrupting the youth. Again, just like in 2022, that’s the accusation that’s going to get you in trouble with people. They’re trying to raise citizens for particular goals, whether it’s the citizen-soldier or the ideal ruler — a governing class of educated people who are going to lead the city-state in the right direction. And then you’ve got this guy, Socrates, who’s wildly off script and unwilling to be policed or to police himself. And he’s saying things to our children that we think is not good for them to hear — again, just like in 2022.
Cassius:
DeWitt on page 91 says that the inscription about entering “only if you know geometry” was actually not over the school of Plato but was over what he’s calling a museum or a separate type of building. Well, and at the bottom of page 92, he makes the further comparison. He says: “It is well, however, to be on guard against the glamour that haunts the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Garden” — and we might add to that the Stoa — “it was on the premises where the philosophers and their students lived, worked, and slept that the real schools were located. It was there that the confidential instruction was imparted. It was there that the true fellowship prevailed,” and so on. So he’s making the claim here that it was in the house, inside the city walls, and not in the garden outside the city walls, where the bulk of the real instruction was taking place.
Cassius:
I think that’s a very good caution about being on guard against the glamour that attaches to those names. It’s gotten to the point today where we’re constantly using the color green and the Epicurean websites have vegetation all over them, and the ideas invoked by a garden also pull in the strings of the Garden of Eden as well. But I’m wondering whether we have any real references to Epicurus himself using that analogy of a garden, or whether that’s all derivative from later people who attached a name — just like the Stoa, like you were saying. As to how far you should take the analogy of the Epicurean school being similar to a garden, that’s an interesting question. It’s not like necessarily the Epicurean lifestyle involves living as Adam and Eve in a Garden of Eden. There is, in Diogenes Laertius, I always remember the comment about the wise man being fond of the country, and that has some bearing on it probably — but the country doesn’t always resemble a garden.
Joshua:
Yeah, the garden for me is a place on a very public road — the Academy Road or the Dipylon Road — outside the main walled portion of the city of Athens, where Epicurus or his contemporaries could go out and lecture in a more public way that was nevertheless still private. You can imagine people actually going down that road, and suddenly from off to one side you begin to hear a voice lecturing on philosophy. That would be one way to actually draw more people into the school and to listening to what you have to say. It’s no good just sitting in your house with just five of you. There has to be a public-facing portion of this enterprise, and the bulk of the public-facing portion for the Epicurean school is actually the publishing effort — which DeWitt will go on to explain — whereby, much like St. Paul in many ways, they were sending letters off to all different corners of the Aegean to the friends they had made in those places. So the garden certainly has its place. I don’t want to necessarily downplay it.
Cassius:
Yeah, DeWitt is talking in that section you’re referring to — it’s almost like it would be more accurate to think of the Epicurean enterprise as being a publishing house, or we talk about college or school more frequently. And I noticed that he closes that section by talking about several references that would indicate that the garden was small, and there are references to it as a “little garden.” And a related question would be: there’s a lot of difference between a flower garden versus a vegetable garden. Is the Epicurean garden in our minds to be associated with flowers and roses and plants raised for ornamental value? Or is it a vegetable garden with potatoes and beans and things like that? And would it have been both, one or the other? Would it matter? Do you picture the garden of Epicurus as being a flower garden or a vegetable garden or both or neither?
Callistheni:
I guess you can have sculpture gardens. And that’s almost what I picture when I picture gardens in ancient Greece. There’s an interesting way in which gardening takes on a national character. A typically English garden will be very different from a typically French garden. And I think probably when I say the words “Japanese garden,” there’s going to be a picture in everyone’s mind. It’s going to be very different from the geometrical and symmetrical forms of a French garden. So in the case of Epicurus’s garden, we don’t have a whole lot to go on, but it seems likely to me that this was probably just almost more like a park than anything — a really well-landscaped, well-maintained area.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s an example of the kind of thing to think about, because that would be what probably comes to my mind and most people’s minds. But you’ve got so many references in Epicurus to self-sufficiency and the ability to live on little and so forth, that you could also make a case that it would be more of a utilitarian agricultural garden to grow food. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything that would help us understand whether it’s a food garden or a flower garden. That would have significantly different implications, which we don’t seem to know and have the ability to know — and yet we construct these mental images, which is what DeWitt is calling the glamour that haunts these places.
Cassius:
There’s just one more thing. On that point, he says that the garden was small, maybe inferred from the price, which was 80 minas — less than the sophist Gorgias charged for a single course of instruction. This inference is confirmed by references to it as the capidion or hortulus — “little garden” — not without a touch of derision. So apparently this property was actually quite small, being roughly the same price as a lecture course, which is interesting.
Cassius:
I’m doing a very poor job of bringing Martin and Callistheni into this. Martin, you’ve done some looking into where the garden is in Athens today, and how it’s sort of a junkyard now or something like that. Do you have anything to say about that?
Martin:
Yeah, that one has changed already. So the location is something I took from the internet — I think it was a video, someone took a picture there. But reportedly this has changed. But at another location I saw a picture that looked entirely different. So that means, for me, not having been there yet, there is still an ambiguity about how well that particular location is known.
Cassius:
And is that particular location, if you recall, supposed to be the house or the garden?
Martin:
The garden.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, turning from the issue of the house to sort of the organizational structure: the next section in DeWitt’s discussion talks about the ranks and titles of the people involved, and how Epicurus himself was apparently referred to as the hegemon — which Cicero renders as dux, as leader or guide — but that there was a dislike of the word “school teacher.” And there’s discussion in here about calling people wise men versus not calling them wise men, and also some lower-ranking titles. And we certainly don’t want to pass over some interesting commentary about the view of Metrodorus and Hermarchus. Metrodorus was assigned to the class of people who — “certain men who need the aid of another, they will not go forward unless another goes ahead, but they’ll make good followers.” And Metrodorus was assigned to that class, which is not entirely a complimentary description. But even more so is something said about Hermarchus — that Hermarchus was “right among those who could be forced or driven to the right philosophy and needed not so much a leader as an insider and, so to speak, a driver.” So that’s interesting to talk about for a minute — to what extent do we need to be driven? Because Metrodorus and Hermarchus are pretty key characters in the original formation of the school. So the discussion of whether you need a leader, whether you need to be driven, whether you just need motivation — those are interesting words to describe how to deal with students and people who are learning the philosophy. Are you their leader? Are you their driver? Are you inciting them? Probably some combination of all.
Joshua:
To get that started — perhaps we had this reference about how Epicurus as a very young person was questioning his teachers about the nature of chaos and the formation of the universe and so forth. So clearly there’s an element in people who are able — whether through personality or some character of mind — to be totally self-motivated to challenge orthodoxies and to question things and to discern new ideas. There’s a quote here on page 93 that’s apparently attributed to Epicurus: “There are certain men who have gone out and arrived at truth without the aid of any man. They’ve carved out their own path” — which is sort of the way Epicurus is described in the opening of Book 1 of Lucretius, where there’s that famous passage about when human life was groveling beneath the glowering gods of religion from the sky, it was Epicurus whose force of mind was able to break free of all that. It’s a big subject.
Cassius:
Yeah, it is. One of the more interesting places you’ll see this mentioned is in a book we often cite, Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens, in which she sort of sketches out the character of Metrodorus as being hugely personally indebted to Epicurus for his leadership. Some very interesting passages in there — apart from what we’re reading here in DeWitt, I wouldn’t know what to base them on. Do you remember, Cassius, the passages I’m talking about in that book? I remember one in particular where Frances Wright has Metrodorus almost critical of Epicurus, saying that he needed to be stronger in facing down his enemies. And I think there are several references in A Few Days in Athens to where she is portraying Metrodorus as a more hot-tempered and aggressive personality, at least in certain ways. Of course she has Epicurus shoot back at him and indicate that Epicurus’s position is the better one. But I do remember several things in A Few Days in Athens that would be probably also good speculation about what we’re talking about — although again, not much more than speculation.
Cassius:
You know, while we’re talking about that, Joshua, when I was looking at this this morning, my eye was caught by something on page 95, where DeWitt says that “it remained a perpetual scandal that the beautiful Leontium was a member of the inner circle of Epicurus, even if in that household she lived with Metrodorus as a wife.” I don’t remember the detail of considering Leontium to be Metrodorus’s wife. I don’t doubt that DeWitt has good reason for saying it — he’s got a footnote that people can follow to read into that. Does anybody remember Leontium being associated more closely with Metrodorus than with Epicurus?
Joshua:
Yeah, certainly. The secondary literature — this mention comes up again and again, much like it comes up here. But as for a textual foundation for that from antiquity, that would be harder to find. Certainly it’s not unique what he’s saying here — there are citations of this all over the place. It’s getting that link back to an original source that I find is difficult, as with so much that we’re dealing with here.
Cassius:
I think we’d say that we come into contact with all sorts of types of people who are interested in Epicurus, and it’s not an indictment or a problem that you need guidance or that you need to be motivated — rather, “incited” might be a better word — that people need motivation in order to go down the road. And the issue of there being a guide versus being a dictator, or just somebody who’s going to follow for the sake of following — there are elements of all of those things that probably are important to think about.
Cassius:
I think this paragraph here on Polyaenus on page 94 is actually more interesting to me than some of this other stuff. He says: “It must have given Epicurus exceptional satisfaction to enroll the mathematician Polyaenus among his associates, especially for the reason that he had been trained in the school of Eudoxus, but the abilities of this man fell below those of his colleagues. He was a kindly man, however, and was eminently qualified in his own way to lead. His success in this mission is praised in fragments of an extant papyrus.” A good combination of speculation versus — you know, just saying he’s a kindly man. I mean, oh my gosh, you say somebody’s a kindly man and you almost think, well, he’s like Santa Claus. But who knows what his personality was really like. But the idea that Epicurus would be particularly satisfied to have somebody who was accomplished in their own areas of expertise — I think that’s certainly a reasonable thing to say, and consistent with what we’re talking about. Epicurus wasn’t looking to be worshipped. He wanted to be understood and respected by people who he also respected. It certainly gives you the most pleasure to be honored and thought well of by people whom you yourself respect.
Cassius:
It’s interesting because when you read Epicurus’s will, there’s a division of not just property but of labor. I think he turns the property over to Idomeneus and some other — I can’t remember exactly how that goes — but basically with the provision that Hermarchus will carry on the school, with provision that the children of Metrodorus will have an education and ultimately a dowry, and with the further provision that in all of these decisions you are to consult with Polyaenus. That’s an interesting addition there. It’s almost like he’s trying to distribute power as much as possible — not just giving one guy the bag so he can run off. He’s trying to establish a school that will endure, and so he needs the skills that every individual person brings to the table. Not that anybody here is trying to set up a school that will endure, but that’s the benefit of having things like a panel on a podcast and having other people participate. You rely on one person and everything just stands or falls on that. You have to have teamwork, multiple people involved, to really accomplish anything that’s going to be long-lasting.
Joshua:
Right, and in the last paragraph under this heading is something we briefly mentioned last week: Epicurus’s three brothers — Neocles, Chairidemus, and Aristobulus — are all listed in the school and are not named among the associate leaders. It may be assumed that they rank among the assistants. More speculation here from Norman DeWitt, but interesting. And he goes on to say: “The fact that they were brothers would not deter Epicurus from relegating them to an inferior rank. This realistic behavior was part of that absolute honesty by which he set high store.” I think it would be fair to say — from anything I’ve read — I don’t even know if his brothers are with him in Athens at all, but maybe they are. Maybe DeWitt has source material I’m not looking at.
Cassius:
Well, as we begin to leave that section on ranks and titles, I guess what comes to my mind is that maybe one of the most important points is that there probably are implications of the word “guide” or “leader” that are significant and distinct from being necessarily a dictator or something. I keep reading into this in my own mind the idea that Epicurus isn’t necessarily saying that he himself has invented something that everybody has to memorize and follow word for word. It’s almost as if in my mind the analogy into Lucretius is that Epicurus is a discoverer of the truth. And when you’re a discoverer of the truth, you don’t really claim that you’ve invented the truth — you have the ability, after discovering it, to guide people in the same direction. That’s not a claim that you yourself are someone to be followed in a dictatorial type of form, but you’re guiding people in the same direction you yourself have followed. And I think that has significant implications for the way all this should be viewed, and not as an oppressive system that you just absolutely had to follow Epicurus chapter and verse or else you’d be bounced out of the school immediately. The people who came afterwards and followed in the same path were not thinking they were doing so just because they were slavishly devoted to Epicurus. They were doing so because they thought Epicurus had guided them in a direction that they themselves can see to be the correct one. And I think that’s important for the right attitude.
Cassius:
Okay, “Personnel and Students” — that was the section in which he makes mention of Leontium being either almost or actually as a wife of Metrodorus, and that she became the focus of attacks from outsiders who didn’t like the role of women in a philosophical school — that there had been attacks upon her for a book she wrote against Theophrastus the Aristotelian. I think in Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens she has Leontium call Aristotle “pedantic.” There’s something as well about Leontium having a daughter called Danae, who was at the court of Antiochus II and saved her lover’s life at the price of her own. That’s a story that I was not familiar with at all, but there’s a footnote, so hopefully there’s something there that people could follow if they’re interested.
Joshua:
Yeah, I don’t know anything about that either. But is that the source material for the story in A Few Days in Athens where the girl jumps into — no, she’s in the river, okay, so it almost gets switched around. She is drowning and Theon has to jump in and save her. You know, that could be. I think there is another passage that I’ve seen us discuss somewhere — there’s a fragment about hoping for escape from danger and not acting too quickly, but being ready to act when the time comes. There’s a specific fragment I’ve always thought was related to that incident in A Few Days in Athens, but this could be too — the idea of saving somebody else could have multiple sources.
Cassius:
Yeah, and in fact in A Few Days in Athens, I mentioned one possible source for that story: it comes from William Short, who was Thomas Jefferson’s correspondent. He was in a long-term affair with a French noblewoman whose husband was many years her senior — and he was apparently okay with the affair, France having interesting standards when it comes to these things. And there was a moment in which they were out on a boat and a young boy fell into the river, and this William Short immediately dove in after him. And William Short was in the same circle of friends as the people that Frances Wright was in contact with because of the interesting way that she was raised and educated.
Cassius:
Let’s make one more point on this issue of personnel — not necessarily in the sense that DeWitt is using it here with ranks and titles, but again, in the book A Few Days in Athens, there’s a scene in which they portray the Pythagorean school. Pythagoras had preceded Epicurus by considerable distance, but the school was still active — that’s my understanding — and the stories and legends about the Pythagorean school continue to abound, partially I think because there was this allure of secrecy that clung to that school all throughout its history, with the understanding that there was a much greater level of intimacy and almost like brotherhood — as if when you went to the school of Pythagoras, you gave up everything, including all your personal property. And there are stories about how the Pythagoreans don’t eat beans, the Pythagoreans don’t do this, they don’t do that.
Cassius:
In Epicurus’s school, he specifically and conscientiously rejects the idea that property should be held in common, that everyone was required to live under the same roof. Apparently some people did, but most likely there were people who had other houses and other places they lived. And so it’s slightly interesting in that regard. Sometimes in the secondary literature you’ll see things like “the Epicureans were vegetarians” — something we find very difficult to justify based on the primary texts. But it’s precisely the kind of thing that’s often said about the Pythagoreans: broad sweeping generalizations about what they did. And to what extent are those true or valid about the Epicurean school? The question gets raised because, unlike Aristotle and Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic and the Stoics, the Epicureans are a much more private affair than these other schools for reasons we’ve already talked about. And so in the case of Epicurus and his school, one of the things that gets mentioned again and again by primarily hostile critics is the debaucheries and the paintings from the Victorian period of Epicurus just sitting on a bed with food and women and things like that. That’s sort of the story that gets its own legs, but probably has very little foundation in fact.
Joshua:
What you just said reminds me that it seems like a good time to make another general comment about these stories that have arisen and these illusions that we come up with in terms of a garden or all the different things that you just mentioned. It’s interesting to think about them, and if you have the time to do a lot of research into them and follow through these details and so forth, great. But again, our purpose in the podcast and our purpose in dealing with normal people is that you do have only a limited time in life to study and learn things. And a lot of these details would be very interesting to know in greater detail and to track down which speculations might be well-founded. But I think it would be a mistake if people were to let those kinds of issues overwhelm them and get sidetracked into spending all their time discussing whether the garden was a flower garden versus vegetables or whether they ate beans. Those are interesting but not the real purpose of everything. And I do think sometimes people will get caught up into those details. A lot of these academic articles that we’ll read are great to have available, but I know in my own situation over the years I’ll find some article about some extremely detailed issue, and these guys do a great job of going through all the references and the sources and pulling out all these details and speculations — but I think that can actually be distracting and harmful if you let that become the focus of the time you’re spending with philosophy. And that takes me back to that issue of whether you’re a self-starter, whether you have to be driven, whether you just need motivation. I think various people have various needs and come at things from different directions, and there’s nothing wrong with those different directions. It’s good to know and speculate about these details if you have the time and the inclination. But in the end it’s more important to come back to the basics of the philosophy and understand how to apply it in whatever your individual circumstances are.
Cassius:
Yeah, and that’s a good time to once again plug Emily Austin’s book, because as I’ve been reading into it — I’m also going through the DeWitt material for the purpose of this podcast — I do notice a marked contrast in the approach. In Emily Austin’s book she seems to be more willing to get right into the philosophy and spend less time on this sort of background material. As I would see it there’s definitely a need for all sorts of different approaches. I think her book is targeted at a different audience and a different method of presentation than DeWitt’s book. But one of the things that comes to mind is: I think one of the reasons I think her book is so good is that I do think it takes some degree — actually a lot of degree — of understanding of this background. I think the reason Norman DeWitt appeals to me and his interpretations appeal to me is that he seems so intimately familiar with a lot of these details, and he has started with the fundamentals and not let the preconceptions that everybody seems to want to enforce on Epicurus prevail. He’s gone back to the original data and put it into perspective with what he also knows through his education and training about Greek philosophy and Greek history. It seems to me that he — and I think Emily Austin is doing it in her book as well — has got a good fundamental grasp of the direction that Epicurus was going in.
Cassius:
I say that with humility, as if I myself have a fundamental grasp, which is far from established or true necessarily. But there’s an attitude difference in people who really seem to take the fundamentals as Epicurus has presented them and run with them. You can take these controversial details — details where you don’t have all the information you’d like — and you can construct a sympathetic understanding of them. Or you can construct an explanation that’s not so sympathetic and makes Epicurus look stupid or vulgar or inconsiderate of other people. And to some extent I think a lot of people do that just based on their own preconceptions of what they think is the correct philosophy. But if you go through the details like Norman DeWitt does, or Emily Austin is doing in her book, or Catherine Wilson — I think her books as well are taking the same approach of attempting to take core Epicurean views and introduce them to a modern audience in a way that audience can understand and begin to see how Epicurus differs from these other philosophers. Catherine Wilson and Emily Austin seem to be, as I would read it, sort of a newer and more welcome wave of discussing Epicurus to a general audience as opposed to just writing academic articles that are only of use to those who are really into the details of philosophy.
Cassius:
And I guess I kind of relate that to what DeWitt is talking about here in terms of providing people motivation versus sometimes driving them along. I think most people today are going to need some kind of motivation to read into Epicurus, because these preconceived notions people have — the word “hedonist” is off-putting if you try to put Epicurus in one box. There’s just so much more behind it.
Cassius:
Joshua, what about this last section? It’s entitled “Friendship” but it’s actually more focused on the idea of fellowship — the idea of the Epicurean school or movement being a fellowship. And also he brings up this issue for the first time, I think, of the fullness of pleasure, and sort of begins drawing another set of comparisons with some analogies of Christianity in terms of fullness and so forth. What about the fellowship aspect?
Joshua:
Yeah, on the friendship issue he starts it out by saying that when you’re talking about philosophy you can talk about it under different paradigms. One of them would be founder and disciple, parent and child, but also friendship, brotherly love, fellowship — and the question is to what extent can we universalize that to something like the love of mankind. So this is how he ends this chapter. Friendship is something hugely important in Epicureanism, something that comes up again and again — I think probably in the Vatican Sayings, and maybe in the Principal Doctrines as well. I see what you’re referring to on here on page 102, he says: “This fullness of pleasure from the satisfaction of the natural desires is a prerequisite of the fullness of fellowship, that is the pleasure arising from friendship. It is true of course that friends, like food, are a necessity of living” — which is an interesting way of putting it — “and it is also true that measures must be taken to obtain friends, but it is not true that friendship continues forever to exist on the level of utility.”
Cassius:
That’s a controversial point in Epicurean philosophy, isn’t it?
Joshua:
Yes, yes. Because people look at Epicurus and the way he talks about friendship and they think, well you’re just cheapening the meaning of friendship — you’re talking about friendship for the purpose of personal advantage; that seems almost a rather cynical way of looking at friendship. But DeWitt goes on to explain here that even though it might start out on those grounds, and that friendship is nothing if we can’t rely on our friends for things, it does become something more than that. And the word he uses is “fellowship” to describe this process.
Cassius:
Yeah, I remember from the Torquatus material in Cicero’s De Finibus that even Torquatus mentions that the idea of friendship is explored in several different ways among the Epicureans. I guess this quote from DeWitt here is one of the ways, and DeWitt is adopting the position that at some point — the question I guess is whether it’s always a matter of utility, or whether it ever becomes an end in itself or a pleasure in itself. DeWitt is taking the position that it does eventually mature into something of its own. “Friendship has its origin in needs. It is true that the beginnings must be made in advance — for we also sow the ground — but it crystallizes only in the course of close association among those who have come to enjoy the fullness of pleasure.” It’s one of the ways he’s kind of bringing together the issues of fullness of pleasure with friendship.
Cassius:
You know, we’ve had some comments recently on the forum about how many of us who are most interested in Epicurus can often be introverts. And so you’ve got the question of: how many friends do you really need? Do you need a lot of friends, or is one or two necessary? So it’s kind of interesting that Epicurus seems to be pretty clearly taking the position that as a practical necessity of human life, you’ve got to have some number of friends — not only for the pleasure of associating with them, but for the safety and the needs that have to be met that you cannot meet solely on your own.
Joshua:
And he includes on page 103 an interesting quote from Seneca. He says: “It was not instruction but fellowship that made great men of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.” Seneca, of course, being a Stoic, has an interest in not valuing very highly Epicurus’s instruction. But it is interesting that he would go so far as to say that Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were great men.
Cassius:
One more interesting thing on page 103 — further up he says: “The Greek language lacked a specific term for fellowship. The word employed in the passage quoted as intimacy is oikiotes — which etymologically means membership in the family.” And my Greek is terrible, but when I look at that word oikiotes I see the Greek word for “house” or “household” as the root of that term. So the idea of fellowship — including at least some of the people in the garden living together — seems to be a part of what it’s pointing at here.
Cassius:
We need to begin to come to a close for today. I think we’re going to run along even as it is, but I’m glad you pointed out that statement from Seneca about “not instruction but fellowship that made great men out of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.” You know, that’s probably directly relevant to what we’re doing: it’s not reading Norman DeWitt’s book, it’s not reading Emily Austin’s book, it’s not reading Lucretius that can bring you the fullness of pleasure you’re looking for individually. You have to take that information and realize that there are practical steps required, including the fellowship. And what Epicurus says in the Letter to Menoikeus — that’s how you become a god among men: to study these things among like-minded friends and pursue these pleasures that are immortal, as opposed to just momentary food and drink and things that are not as long-lasting. So let’s come to the end — probably gone on long enough. Joshua, thoughts as we close for today?
Joshua:
Well, it is gratifying to see in the chapter on the subject of the Banquet of the Twentieth — he says: “I’ll just pull out one line here if I could find a good one” — “Because of the custom, the Epicureans were dubbed Ikadistai — ‘twentiers’ — as already mentioned,” and he says that “references to this are scattered through over an extent of five centuries.” Which is interesting. But this is one of the ways the Epicureans were identified — because of the Banquet of the Twentieth and because of the fellowship and friendship that it implies.
Cassius:
Yeah, this is some material that we end up talking about fairly regularly. On page 104 he’s talking about how the Eikás — like the Ides in the Roman calendar — was a date that had a name of its own. It was a sacred day in the cult of Apollo, and it was on the 20th that the final rites of initiation were performed in the Mysteries of Demeter. Hopefully I haven’t gotten that far wrong. That’ll take us next week to Chapter 6. So exactly right — next chapter next week is “The New Education,” and that’s going to bring us a little bit more closely back into the straight philosophy. So okay, let’s bring it to a close there today. Thanks very much for being with us, and we’ll come back next week.