Epicurus

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 12.12 §2 About Epicurus

  Cicero and Atticus are discussing whether to retain an Epicurean speaker among the cast of characters in one of Cicero's philosophical dialogues; "as you wish" yields the point, though Cicero adds he will "make the adjustment." Atticus was himself an Epicurean.

• Ad Familiares 7.26 §1 your Epicurus

  Epicurus (341-270 BC), the Greek philosopher whose school Fadius Gallus followed; Cicero teases his Epicurean friend by recalling that the Stoics mocked Epicurus for admitting that bladder and bowel complaints (the price of the high life) distressed him.

• Ad Familiares 9.20 §1 have flung myself into the camp of Epicurus, my adversary

  Cicero was a committed Academic and a lifelong critic of Epicurean philosophy, with its goal of pleasure. He jokes that, having abandoned politics and the law, he has deserted to the enemy 'camp' of Epicurus --- meaning he has given himself over to the good food and ease that Paetus, a genuine Epicurean gourmet, embodies.

• Ad Familiares 13.1 §3 Epicurus's ruined walls

  Epicurus (341–270 BC), founder of the Epicurean school, had owned a house and garden in Athens that became the cult centre of his school (the "Garden"). Patro wanted to build on or preserve this plot; Memmius had acquired it and proposed to develop it.

• Ad Familiares 15.16 §1 the man of Gargettus, and Democritus before him

  'The man of Gargettus' is Epicurus, born in the Attic deme of Gargettus; the doctrine of perception by images he took over from the atomist Democritus of Abdera.

• On Fate §18 lead them out of their path

  The Epicurean atomic swerve (clinamen): Epicurus posited that atoms deviate slightly and uncaused from their straight downward fall, to break the chain of necessity and rescue free will. Cicero finds the device incoherent.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §1.29 the founder of this school himself

  Epicurus of Samos (341-270 BC), founder of the Garden at Athens and of the school that bears his name. Torquatus follows Epicurus's own method of first defining the thing in question.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §1.32 that very discoverer of truth, that architect, so to speak, of the happy life

  An honorific Epicurean description of Epicurus as the one who found the truth and designed the blueprint of the happy life. Torquatus uses it to introduce the core exposition of pleasure.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §1.68 Epicurus puts it admirably in almost these very words

  Introduces a near-quotation of Epicurus on friendship as the surest protection within life's span. The hedged 'almost these very words' signals a close paraphrase of an Epicurean maxim.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.3 the gardens of Epicurus

  Epicurus taught in a garden he owned at Athens, which became the name and emblem of his school (the Garden). The Epicurean Atticus passes it on the way and recalls his fondness for Epicurus.

• On the Nature of the Gods §1.72 boasting, as we see in his writings, that he had no teacher

  Epicurus claimed to be self-taught, owing nothing to predecessors. Cotta scoffs that his doctrines plainly derive from Democritus and that he merely repaid his real teachers with abuse.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.48 its discoverer and founder, and revere him as a god

  An unmistakable jab at the Epicureans' near-cult of Epicurus as the savior who freed mankind from fear of the gods and of death. Cicero ridicules boasting of release from terrors that, he says, no sensible old woman ever felt.

• Tusculan Disputations §3.28 Epicurus, however, holds that distress is by nature the opinion of evil

  Epicurus of Samos (341-270 BC), founder of the Epicurean school. Book 3 devotes a long polemic to his consolation-theory, which Cicero finds incoherent (it both denies and relies on the goodness of bodily pleasure).

• Tusculan Disputations §4.70 this point quarrel with Epicurus

  Epicurus held love to be a thing of debauchery; Cicero says he is, on this point, not far wrong, against the philosophers (including the Stoics and Plato) who lend love their authority.

• Tusculan Disputations §5.26 the man who declared pleasure to be the end of goods

  Epicurus, who made pleasure (hedone) the highest good and end of life. Cicero's point is that Epicurus inconsistently praises frugal and honorable living while grounding all value in pleasure.

• Tusculan Disputations §5.88 the man whom we call soft, whom we call a pleasure-seeker

  Epicurus again, taken as the type of the "soft" philosopher who makes pleasure the good, yet who (Cicero grants) is in fact well armed against death and pain by his doctrines.