[755] See, e.g. Livy iii. 20: "Sed nondum haec, quae
nunc tenet saeculum, neglegentia deum venerat; nec
interpretando sibi quisque iusiurandum et leges aptas
faciebat, sed suos potius mores ad ea accommodabat." Cp.
Cic. de Off. iii. 111.
[756] Two Epicureans were expelled from Rome in 173
(probably), Athenaeus, p. 547. Cicero, Tusc. iv. 3, 7,
gives some idea of the later popularity of the school in
the first half of the last century B.C.
[757] So Masson, Lucretius, i. 263, 271.
[758] See Masson i. ch. xii. and ii. p. 141 foll.;
Mayor's Cicero de Nat. Deor. vol. i. xlviii. and 138
foll.; Guyau, La Morale d'Épicure (ed. 4), p. 171
foll.
[759] Cic. N.D. i. 19, 49 foll., and many other
passages; Diog. Laert. x. 55; Zeller, Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 441 foll.; Masson i. 292,
who aptly quotes Cotta the academic critic in Cicero's
dialogue: "When Epicurus takes away from the gods the
power of helping and doing good, he extirpates the very
roots of religion from the minds of men" (Cic. N.D. i.
45. 121). One may add with Dr. Masson (i. 416 foll.)
that a machine cannot command worship; the Natura of
Lucretius, i.e., was really a machine.
[760] Masson i. p. 284, and citations of Philodemus
there given.
[761] Mayor's Cic. N.D. vol. i. p. xlix.
[762] Lucr. vi. 68 foll.
[763] Masson i. p. 285.
[764] Cic. N.D. i. 2. 3.
[765] Cic. N.D. i. 37. 102; to believe the gods idle
"etiam homines inertes efficit."
[766] For this profound reverence for Epicurus see also
Cic. N.D. i. 8. 18. It amounted to a faith. In this
passage the Epicurean is described as "nihil tam verens
quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur, tanquam modo ex
deorum concilio et ex Epicuri intermundiis
descendisset." See also sec. 43 and Mayor's note; Cic.
de Finibus, i. 5. 14; Masson i. 354-5, who quotes the
most striking passages from Lucretius, e.g. v. 8-10:
deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi,
qui princeps vitae rationem invenit eam quae
nunc appellatur sapientia, etc.
In a paper entitled "Die Bekehrung (conversion) im
klassischen Altertum," by W. A. Heidel (Zeitschrift für
Religionspsychologie, vol. iii. Heft 2), the author, an
American disciple of W. James, argues that the exordium
of Bk. iii. indicates a psychological conversion of
Lucretius.
[767] See Masson's chapter (p. 399 foll.) on the
teaching and personality of Lucretius. Social Life at
Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 327 foll., and references
there given. I may note here that the power of Epicurism
as a faith depended also largely on the directness,
downrightness, and audacity of its system, working on
minds weary of philosophers' disputations and political
quarrels.
[768] Cic. de Finibus, i. viii. to end (translation by
J. S. Reid, Camb. Univ. Press). The following sentence
in ch. 18, sec. 57, puts the Epicurean ethics in a
nutshell: "Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis
voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse iucunde
vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, iusteque vivatur, nec
sapienter, honeste, iuste, nisi iucunde."
[769] What this quietism might mean for a Roman may be
gathered from the following passage in Cic. de
Finibus, i. 13. 43, in which sapientia is practical
wisdom, the Aristotelian [Greek: phronêsis] or the ars
vivendi, as Cicero has explained it just before:
"Sapientia est adhibenda, quae, et terroribus
cupiditatibusque detractis et omnium falsarum opinionum
temeritate derepta, certissimam se ducem praebeat ad
voluptatem. Sapientia enim est una, quae maestitiam
pellat ex animis, quae nos exhorrescere metu non sinat;
qua praeceptrice in tranquillitate vivi potest, omnium
cupiditatum ardore restincto. Cupiditates enim sunt
insatiabiles, quae non modo singulos homines, sed
universas familias evertunt, totam etiam labefactant
saepe rempublicam. Ex cupiditatibus odia discidia
discordiae seditiones bella nascuntur." And so on to the
end of the chapter. The message of Lucretius to the
Roman was practically the same. The remedy was the wrong
one in that age; though it does not necessarily entail
withdrawal from public life with all its enticements
and risks, it must inevitably have a strong tendency to
suggest it; and such withdrawal had, as a matter of
fact, been one of the characteristics of the Epicurean
life. See Zeller, Stoics, etc., ch. xx.; Guyau, La
Morale d'Épicure, p. 141 foll.
[770] History of European Morals (1899), vol. i. p.
225. The treatment of Stoicism in this work, though not,
strictly speaking, philosophical, is in many ways most
instructive.
[771] F. Leo, Die griechische und lateinische
Literatur, p. 337. See the author's Social Life at
Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 105.
[772] Polybius xxxii. 9-16.
[773] See a discussion by the author of the meaning of
[Greek: tychê] in Polybius, Classical Review, vol.
xvii. p. 445, and the passages there quoted relating to
the growth of the Roman dominion.
[774] See Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 3 foll.
[775] Ib. p. 6, note 3.
[776] See above, p. 251.
[777] Cic. N.D. ii., end of sec. 19. He is translating
the Greek [Greek: pneuma], which in Stoicism is not a
spiritual conception, but a material one, in harmony
with their theory of the universe as being itself
material, including reason and the soul. This is one of
the weak points of the Stoic idea of Unity. For the
meaning of spiritus see Mayor's note on the passage;
it is "the ether or warm air which penetrates and gives
life to all things, and connects them together in one
organic whole."
[778] Cic. N.D. ii. xiii. 36 ad fin. On all this
department of the Stoic teaching see Zeller, Stoics,
etc., p. 135 foll.; Caird, Gifford Lectures, vol. ii.,
Lectures 16 and 17.
[779] Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics, by F. W.
Bussell p. 42.
[780] Cic. N.D. ii. ch. 28 (secs. 70-72), with Mayor's
commentary; Zeller, op. cit. p. 327 foll.; Mayor,
introduction to vol. ii. of his edition of Cic. N.D.
xi. foll.; Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero,
p. 334 foll. It is important to note the distinction
drawn by Cicero between religion and superstition; what
Lucretius called religio as a whole Cicero (and Varro
too, cf. Aug. Civ. Dei, vi. 9) thus divided. See
Mayor's valuable note, vol. ii. p. 183. Some interesting
remarks on the Stoic way of dealing with popular
mythology will be found in Oakesmith's Religion of
Plutarch, p. 68 foll.
[781] See above, p. 118 foll.
[782] See Mayor's note on Cic. N.D. ii. 15. 39 (vol.
i. p. 130), with quotation from Philodemus. Zeller,
Stoics, etc., p. 337 foll.
[783] Cic. de Legibus, i. 7. 22.
[784] Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Paris, 1883.
I have borrowed the beautiful translation of my friend
Hastings Crossley, printed p. 183 foll. of his Golden
Sayings of Epictetus, in Macmillan's Golden Treasury
Series.
[785] Gifford Lectures, ii. p. 94.
[786] So Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 61 foll. The
evidence is not conclusive, and the process of argument
is one of elimination; but it raises a fairly strong
probability.
[787] Cic. de Rep. i. 21. 34.
[788] See Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 294 foll.
[789] Cic. de Rep. iii. 22. 33.
[790] Cic. de Legibus, i. 7. 22 foll.: "Est igitur,
quoniam nihil est ratione melius, eaque in homine et in
deo, prima homini cum deo rationis societas. Inter quos
autem ratio, inter eosdem etiam recta ratio communis
est," etc.
[791] Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 226 foll.
[792] Social Life at Rome, p. 117.
[793] Ib. p. 118 foll.
[794] I may take this opportunity of noting that a Roman
might better understand this notion of his Reason as the
voice of God within him, or conscience, from his own
idea of his "other soul," or genius; see above, p. 75.
But we do not know for certain that it was presented to
him in this way by Panaetius, though Posidonius (ap.
Galenum, 469) used the word [Greek: daimôn] in this
sense, as did the later Stoics; see Mulder, de
Conscientiae notione, p. 71. Seneca, Ep. 41. 2, uses
the word spiritus: "Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet ...
in unoquoque virorum bonorum, quis deus incertum est,
habitat deus" (from Virg. Aen. viii. 352). Cp. Marcus
Aurelius iii. 3. Seneca uses the word genius clearly in
this sense in Ep. 110 foll. On the Stoic daemon
consult Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 332 foll.; Oakesmith,
Religion of Plutarch, ch. vi.
[795] See, e.g., Zeller, p. 268.
[796] This habit of illustrating by historical examples
had an educational value of its own, but serves well to
show how comparatively feeble was the appeal of Stoicism
to the conscience. It may be seen well in Valerius
Maximus, whose work, compiled of fact and fiction for
educational purposes, is far indeed from being an
inspiring one. See Social Life at Rome, p. 189.
[797] Arrian, Discourses, i. 3. 1-6 (Golden Sayings
of Epictetus, No. 9).
[798] Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 190 foll.
(Panaetius), and 244 foll. (Posidonius), Zeller 160
foll. This is the Fate or Providence on which the moral
lesson of the Aeneid is based; see below, p. 409
foll. Aeneas is the servant of Destiny. If he had
persisted in rebelling against it by remaining at
Carthage with Dido, that would not have changed the
inevitable course of things, but it would have ruined
him.
[799] Gifford Lectures, ii. 96.
[800] Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 255. This, of course,
did not diminish the duty of general benevolence, ib.
p. 310 and references, where fine passages of Cicero and
Seneca are quoted about duties to one's inferiors. But
an enthusiasm of humanity was none the less wanting in
Stoicism, and this was largely owing no doubt to their
hard and fast distinction between virtue and vice, and
their want of perception of a growth or evolution in
society. See Caird, op. cit. ii. 99; Lecky, Hist. of
European Morals, i. 192 foll.; Zeller 251 foll.
[801] See some excellent remarks in Lecky, op. cit. i.
p. 242 foll.
[802] See above, note 40.