The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece

By Bernard Frischer

This study of the recruitment techniques used by the philosophical schools of Hellenistic Greece. Bernard Frischer focusses on the Epicureans, who are of special interest because their approach was at once extremely passive and extremely successful. Unlike other philosophical schools, which depended primarioly on public lectures and books, the Epicureans avoided contract with the dominant culture and attracted members by erecting statues of Epicurus and their other master in public places. These iconologically rich, "sculpted words" appealed to teh very people most likely to be attracted to Epicureanism, those most likely to accept the philosophy of materialism, sensationalism, and the repression of feeling, and those who sought a way of life sperate from teh dominant culture. This book is an innovative application of an inter-disciplinary humanistic an social-scientific approach to ancient Greek philosophy and art. It will appeal to those interested in the history of these subjects and those interested in the sociology of knowledge and communication. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520312135

Bernard Frischer

Bernard Frischer is Professor of Informatics at Indiana University.

Book preview

The Sculpted Word

Bust of Epicurus

The Sculpted Word

Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece

BERNARD FRISCHER

University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1982 by

The Regents of the University of California

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Frischer, Bernard.

The sculpted word.

Bibliography: p.

Includes indexes.

1. Epicurus. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 1. Title.

B573.F74 187 81-13143

ISBN Ο-52Ο-Ο419Ο-9 AACR2

ACADEMIAE AMERICANAE

ROMAE SITAE

Contents 1

Contents 1

List of Illustrations

Preface

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Introduction: Philosophy and Society in Greece

A Reconstruction of the Epicurean Policy on Recruitment and Conversion

From Theory to Practice: Quantitative and Qualitative Problems of Epicurean Images

Iconographical Problems: On the Identification, Reconstruction, and Dating of Epicurus’ Portrait Statue

Iconological Problems: An Interpretation of Epicurus’ Portrait

Select Bibliography

Index

Plates

List of Illustrations

Frontis Bust of Epicurus (Capitoline Museum).

Map Villa Ludovisi. Deborah Nourse Lattimore after Schreiber. 133

PLATE ONE

Figure 1. Bust of Epicurus (Capitoline Museum).

Figure 2. Bust of Metrodorus (Paris).

Figure 3. Bust of Hermarchus (Copenhagen).

Figure 4. Bust of Colotes (Capitoline Museum).

PLATE TWO

Figure 5. Bouchardon-Preisler engraving of Epicurus philosophus, from Statuae Antiquae (1732).

Figure 6. Reconstruction of Epicurus’ statue according to Frischer, by Deborah Nourse Lattimore.

PLATE THREE

Figure 7. Ludovisi Epicurus (=statue 243 Schreiber). Photo: DAI Rome.

Figure 8. Bouchardon-Preisler, Socrates philosophus, from Statuae Antiquae (=statue 240 Schreiber).

PLATE FOUR

Figure 9. Puteanus Epicurus, frontispiece to P. Gassendi, De Vita et Moribus Epicuri (16471).

Figure 10. Howenius Epicurus, frontispiece to P. Gassendi, De Vita et Moribus Epicuri (1656²).

Figure 11. Ludovisi statue 245 Schreiber, as restored after 1900 (=Naude’s and Howenius’ Epicurus). Photo: Arndt-Amelung, Einzelaufnahmen.

PLATE FIVE

Figure 12. Bottari’s illustration of the Epicurus-Metrodorus double herm found in 1742 under S. Maria Maggiore in Rome and now in the Stanza dei Filosofi in the Capitoline Museum.

Figure 13, Dontas Δ Epicurus torso, with ancient book-roll preserved. Photo courtesy Prof. G. Dontas.

PLATE six

Figure 14. Engraved gem with the bust of Epicurus, published in 1707 by Maffei as an Unknown Philosopher.

Figure 15. Dorsch Epicurus, from J. M. von Ebermayer, Capita Deorum et Illustrium Hominum (1721).

Figure 16. Stosch Xenocrates engraved gem, now in Berlin. Photo: Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikenabteilung Berlin.

PLATE SEVEN

Figure 17. Bellori’s engraving of a bust of Xenocrates in Veterum Illustrium … Imagines (1685).

Figure 18. Stanza dei Filosofi, bust 21 (=Stosch Epicurus and Albani Diogenes).

PLATE EIGHT

Figure 19. Stanza dei Filosofi, bust 88. Photo: DAI Rome.

Figure 20. Stanza dei Filosofi, bust 88, as illustrated by Bottari before removal of Albani’s fake Epicurus inscription.

PLATE NINE

Figure 21. Montfaucon Diogenes relief on the Sarcophagus of the Muses (now in the Louvre).

Figure 22. Line drawing of the Socrates relief from the Sarcophagus of the Muses, as illustrated by Maffei, Raccolta di statue (1704).

PLATE TEN

Figure 23. Statuette of Socrates in the British Museum. Photo: British Museum.

Figure 24. Miniature bust of Epicurus in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

PLATE ELEVEN

Figure 25. Damaged bust of Epicurus in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Figure 26. Hekler’s reconstruction of the seated portrait of Plato.

PLATE TWELVE

Figure 27. Lekythos relief of Timotheos (Conze, nr. 752).

Figure 28. Hercules Farnese from Salamis.

PLATE THIRTEEN

Figure 29. Asklepios of Melos with Ashmole’s positioning of the head. Source: BSA 46 (1951) plate 1 (a).

Figure 30. Head of Asklepios on a statuette from Epidaurus in the Athens National Museum.

PLATE FOURTEEN

Figure 31. Wreath of the Phaidros Sphettios inscription (/G II² 682).

Figure 31 Wreath on the Elgin Throne. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Figure 33. Wreaths of IG II1 4594a. Source: AM 6η (1942) plate 16, nr. 2.

PLATE FIFTEEN

Figure 34. The Elgin Throne. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Preface

ι

The Stanza dei Filosofi in the Capitoline Museum in Rome is a room filled with scores of busts of famous ancient poets, orators, and philosophers. The busts have been renumbered and rearranged several times in the past three centuries.¹ Since its arrival in the museum in 1743, the double herm of Epicurus and his placid follower Metrodorus has stood in the same place at the end of the main axis of the room (see the frontispiece and figure 12). That the piece has stayed put through the centuries is remarkable, for the position is special and hence vulnerable. It is a place of focus, orientation, and power. That Epicurus has occupied it against the competition of virtually the whole corpus of ancient Greek portraits speaks volumes about the magnetism of his image.

This book is a study of that magnetism. It is a test of the validity of my suspicion that my own experience of overwhelming power in Epicurus’ portrait when I first saw it in the Capitoline Museum seven years ago was not merely a personal reaction but the response intended by the third- century B.C. artist who sculpted it and by the Epicureans who commissioned it. Ancients like Cicero’s friend Titus Pompo- nius Atticus and moderns like the distinguished art-historian Frederik Poulsen have described how unforgettable the portrait of Epicurus is and how strong a hold it takes upon the

1. See H. S. Jones, A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome. The Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino, vol. 1 (Oxford 1912) 8-9, where one such rearrangement is discussed.

minds of those who view it.1 My purpose in writing this book is to give a philosophical, art-historical, and sociopsy- chological explanation of that fascination.

Of course, the fascination of a statue is not a topic about which one can sensibly write at great length, since it involves intuitive and emotional faculties that do not lend themselves to extended analysis. Most of this book is taken up with matters a good deal more mundane, which serve to prepare a secure route for approaching this elusive goal. Because the itinerary involves taking several vie tortuose, it will be well to begin by giving an overview.

In the first chapter (Philosophy and Society in Greece), I discuss the Epicurean school’s manner of interacting with Greek society compared to that of the other philosophical schools. Whereas the other schools form a subculture whose members’ status in the dominant culture ranges from high integration to complete alienation, the Garden of Epicurus is an alternative community under the charismatic leadership of a godlike master. In alternative communities, like the Garden, that do not recruit from within by training members’ children to perpetuate the organization, new converts must be sought from the dominant culture. Since the Epicureans imposed on themselves rules limiting contact and even communication with the world outside their school, the manner in which they could recruit members from the dominant culture is problematic.

In the second chapter (A Reconstruction of the Epi curean Policy on Recruitment and Conversion), I reconstruct the Epicurean policy on recruitment as a hypothetical Epicurean theorist might have done. The Epicureans faced the dilemma of how to retreat from the dominant culture while still bringing a message of salvation to mankind. I suggest that they solved this dilemma in accordance with their own theory of motivation. According to this theory, in a healthy individual perception, cognition, feeling, and motivation occur simultaneously. What we perceive, we understand and experience as pleasure or pain. If a percept is painful, we naturally try to suppress it as soon as possible. If it is pleasant, we are motivated to preserve it and to imitate it so that we become a source of pleasure to ourselves. The problem of recruitment can be viewed as the problem of motivating people to become Epicureans. Applying their own general theory to this special case should have made the Epicureans recruit by disseminating pleasing images of wisdom—that is, of the blessed and happy wise man—among as great a number of people as possible. In this way, the dilemma of recruitment could be solved by permitting the sage to perfect himself—and his image—in retreat from the world, while sending his image out into the world to do the work of recruitment for him.

The solution to this dilemma creates another problem. There are obvious practical limitations on the sage’s ability to transmit his image. It cannot penetrate the physical barriers separating the Garden from the rest of the city. It cannot outlive the sage. It cannot always show the sage at his best. An artistic (or, secondary) image of the sage’s actual (or, primary) image can make up for these shortcomings by being erected in public places in the city, by surviving long after the sage’s death, and by presenting the sage to his best advantage. In the third chapter (From Theory to Practice), I survey the archaeological remains of Epicurean artistic images to show that the statistics concerning preserved portraits of ancient philosophers confirm the guess that, because of their approach to recruitment, the Epicureans commissioned far more portraits of their masters than did their competitors, whose philosophies made interaction with the dominant culture far more direct and easy. After a digression justifying use of the tabu term fetishism in analyzing Greek religion, I link the Epicureans’ use of portraits as effective means of communication and motivation to this fundamental feature of Greek popular religion. That Epicurean theology is today recognized to be a theoretical version of Greek popular religion I take as important evidence in favor of this claim. If many Greeks attributed powers of communication and motivation to statues, then the Epicureans were likely to have agreed, although they would have linked these powers to materialistic, not magical, processes.

While the policy reconstructed in Chapter II gains statistical and cultural support in Chapter III, that support cannot weigh as heavily as a study of the iconology of Epicurus’ portrait. In lieu of explicit written documentation of the policy— which we are, alas, unlikely ever to recover—the best possible available evidence in favor of the reconstruction is proof that the portrait is a sculpted word conveying crucial messages about Epicurus’ character and mission to mankind. Before the iconology can be studied, the fragmentarily preserved ancient statue of Epicurus must be put back together and dated and its original location determined, in order to provide the hermeneutical framework for interpretation. This is the purpose of Chapter IV (Iconographical Problems),2 in which I show that the statue was probably commissioned by the Epicurean school for public erection in

Athens (near the Pompeion?) during the period 280-250 B.C. Reconstructing the lost original version of the statue takes up most of this chapter, primarily because a good deal of space must be spent on a digression in which I explain why a recent reconstruction based on an eighteenth-century engraving is wrong. My own reconstruction is based upon ancient copies of the statue that show Epicurus deep in thought and about to speak, dressed in a himation and seated on a solid-sided throne. In his left hand he holds a book-roll. The left arm rests across Epicurus’ waist, and he stretches his right hand forward toward an imaginary observer, in a gesture of teaching or greeting.

In the last chapter (Iconological Problems), the iconology of the statue is examined, with the result that Epicurus is seen to be portrayed according to the conventions of contemporary Greek art as a philosopher, father-figure, Asklep- ian healer, Herculean culture-bringer, tnegalopsychos (great- souled man), and god. Such a complex message could be designed into Epicurus’ portrait because its sculptor was ingeniously able to fill in details left undetermined by the requirements of one type with the details dictated by the other types. Thus, the philosopher-type dictated the clothing, coiffure, and book-roll. The father-figure determined the pose and gesture of the body. The Asklepian type inspired the expression on the face. The Herculean type governed the proportions of the head. The megalopsychic type was responsible for many, seemingly trivial, physiognomical traits. The god-type influenced the shape of the throne on which Epicurus is seated.

In order to add a final degree of plausibility to my interpretation of the iconology and propagandistic function of Epicurus’ portrait, I conclude the book with discussions of late fourth-century B.C. theories of the typological presentation of character in the arts and of twentieth-century theories of conscious and unconscious motivation for renewal of the self. Both discussions are intended to show the historical and universal reasons why the Epicurean approach to recruitment is likely to have been effective in drawing to the school precisely those strangers who, upon immersion into Epicurean doctrine, were dispositionally best suited to accepting the be liefs of the school, viz., the personality-type that Jung characterized as extraverted thinking-sensation.

II

The manuscript of this book was essentially completed in January 1979, so literature appearing in or after 1978 could only rarely be taken into account. A. F. Stewart’s important monograph, Attika: Athenian Sculpture from c. 320 b.c. to 14 a.d., JHS Supp. Paper 14 (1979), did not reach Los Angeles in time to be consulted, nor did H. Protzmann’s equally valuable essay, Realismus und Idealitat in Spatklassik und Fruh- hellenismus, JDAI 92 (1977) 169-203 (it did not arrive here until 31 May 1978). I am pleased to note that on page 177 Protzmann has independently observed the similarity of the expressions of Epicurus and the Asklepios of Melos (a similarity I first pointed out in public lectures during January — March 1976 at the University of North Carolina [Chapel Hill], Wesleyan University, and the American Academy in Rome).

For an excellent new study of what in Chapter IV I call the civic pride movement of the first and second centuries A.D., see now C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, Mass, and London 1978). The Hellenistic sources of Diogenes Laertius—on which I rely in my wissens- soziologische analysis of Greek philosophy in Chapter I—have been studied anew by J. Mejer, Diogenes Laertius and His Hellenistic Background, Hermes Einzelschrift 40 (1978). The appearance of H. Funke’s article on Gotterbild in RAC 85/86 (Stuttgart 1981), with its full discussion of fetishistic aspects of Greek beliefs about divine statues (in cols. 713-14), makes me feel much less lonely than I did when I originally wrote my digression on fetishism in Greek religion in Chapter III. My discussion of the presentation of character in Hellenistic art may now be supplemented by the brief, but stimulating, remarks in J. Onians, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age (London 1979). Finally, I am pleased to be able to report that my Kopienkritik and reconstruction of Epicurus’ statue in Chapter IV are in substantial agreement with the results re cently published by V. Kruse-Berdolt in her Gottingen dissertation on the Epicurean portraits.3

In this book, I discuss again two topics on which I have previously published. In Chapter II, the discussion of the Epicurean policy on recruitment supersedes that to be found on pp. 199-222 of my At Tu Aureus Esto: Eine Interpretation von Vergils 7. Ekloge (Bonn 1975). My analysis in Chapter IV of the background of the Bouchardon-Preisler engraving of Epicurus’ portrait replaces that in my article in California Studies in Classical Antiquity for 1979. Besides being justified by the demands of my present argument, the inclusion of this material here is, I think, warranted by the incorporation of insights and evidence that have come to my attention since I wrote the passages in question.

Kruse-Berdolt and I are in agreement that Bi Richter (= £32 K-B) belongs to the small group of excellent copies (my Group I, in Chapter IV, section xiii below) on the basis of which a reconstruction of the lost Hellenistic original may be attempted. Thus, it is not surprising that our reconstructions of Epicurus’ face are quite similar (cf. Kruse-Berdolt, pp. 128-29 with Chapter IV, section xiv below). Kruse-Berdolt may, however, be criticized for including in this group a very damaged head in Copenhagen (her E I3=B 21 Richter) and a head in the Louvre (her E 27=B 18 [not B 17, as Kruse-Berdolt erroneously states] Richter) that does not quite reach the highest degree of fidelity and state of preservation required for inclusion in this group. She may also be criticized for omitting from this group the excellent bronze bust B 8 Richter (=E 21 K-B) as well as the marble bust inv. nr. 197306 in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme in Rome (=E 34 K-B). (I do not mention her omission of the small marble bust G 23 in the J. Paul Getty Museum, because I am publishing it here for the first time.)

Kruse-Berdolt has admirably increased the list of known copies of both the torso and the bust of Epicurus. First listed by her in a comprehensive catalogue of Epicurus copies are: E 4 (a marble torso in the Bursa Archaeological Museum); E 11 (a small basalt head, inv. nr. Sk 1811 in the Berlin Staatliche Museen); E 16 (a small bronze bust in the Archaologisches Institut der Universitt Leipzig); E 19 (a marble head, inv. nr. 540 in the Museo Arqueologico in Malaga); and E 34 (a marble head in the magazines of the Museo Nazionale delle Terme in Rome; the head apparently lacks an inventory number). Except for E 34, all the other newly reported copies belong to my Group IV (heavily restored, unfinished, worn, and/or fragmentary copies)—at least to judge from Kruse-Berdolt’s verbal descriptions of them (unfortunately, she publishes no photographs of the pieces)— so that their absence from Chapter IV, sections xiii and xiv, will not affect the validity of my results. Kruse-Berdolt has a high regard for E 34, and so it is a pity that she was not able to publish the piece or take it into account for her own work. I regret that I have also not been able to do so.

One point of significant disagreement between me and Kruse-Ber- dolt concerns the reconstruction of Epicurus’ right arm. Since this is the only major element of the statue not attested by ancient evidence, disagreement is understandable and, perhaps, inevitable. Nevertheless, since the reconstruction of the right arm is rather important for interpretation of the portrait, I take this opportunity to bolster my hypothesis that the right arm was extended forward in a gesture of teaching or greeting by arguing against Kruse-Berdolt’s speculation that the arm was turned back toward the upper chest as if stroking—or about to stroke—the beard.

Kruse-Berdolt makes the following four arguments in favor of her reconstruction of the right forearm and hand: (1) two copies preserve supports for the elbow on the inner side of the wrist. If the right forearm jutted forward, we would have expected the elbow to rest directly on the wrist (p. 149). (2) The speaking or disputing gesture of the hand is practically not attested in the surviving corpus of Greek portraits (p. 149); the possible parallel of Poseidippos (Vat. inv. nr. 735 = Richter, Portraits of the Greeks, vol. 2, pp. 238-39, figs. 1647-50) is not applicable on account of the different positioning of the arms (p. 149). More frequent is the forearm angled back toward the beard (p. 150). (3) A disputing gesture would contradict the stern and self-contained structure of the portrait (p. 150). (4) The gesture of beard-stroking accords well with the position of the head, which, according to Kruse-Berdolt, was not only turned toward his left side, but was also inclined a bit toward the right (p. 150). Thus, the attitude of the head suggests a pose of inward meditation, not teaching.

None of these arguments withstands scrutiny. The second argument is based on the statistics of the surviving corpus of Greek portraits. It is invalid not only because too few torsos survive to permit such statistical arguments, but also because forearms raised up and back toward the upper chest (to which they were sometimes braced) were much more likely to survive intact than were vulnerably forward-thrusting forearms. The point about Poseidippos is merely special pleading, and no cognizance is taken of ancient literary sources (like Sidonius, epist. 9.9.14) which attest portraits with oratorical gestures. The first argument purports to present a technical reason against a forward-thrusting right forearm, but why the elbow of such an arm could not rest on the inner side of the wrist escapes me. Equally mistaken is the third argument. Here we may readily accept the principle that the body language of the statue ought to reflect the expression of the face. However, Kruse-Berdolt misreads the face by failing to consider the meaning of the slightly parted lips that she herself notes on p. 128 of her study. Are we to imagine that Epicurus is muttering to himself as he is lost in meditation? Parted lips imply an expression of speaking—as does an outstretched right forearm. The fourth argument gets to the heart of the matter. Kruse-Berdolt is motivated to restore the right forearm as she does and to ignore the open mouth because of her dubious reconstruction of the inclination of the head. According to her, bust E 33 (=Mus. Cap. inv. nr. 577, Stanza dei Filosofi nr. 53; Richter, Portraits of the Greeks, vol. 2, p. 195, nr. 2, figs. 1151-52) is our best copy for the hair system; her detailed study of this system has persuaded her that Epicurus’ hair is falling in such a way that the head of the original (if not of bust E 33) must have been directed slightly downward and to the left. There are two decisive objections that must be raised against this argument. First, Kruse- Berdolt nowhere establishes the reasons for giving bust E 33 pride of place when the problem of analyzing Epicurus’ coiffure is confronted. Second, bust E 33 is a particularly unreliable witness of the major physiognomical details of the face, as Kruse-Berdolt herself openly admits (p. 128). Thus, far from establishing the priority of bust E 33, Kruse-Berdolt succeeds only in disqualifying it from consideration as a useful witness of any of the characteristics of the Hellenistic original of Epicurus’ portrait. Once E 33 is eliminated, no evidence remains in favor of Kruse-Berdolt’s restoration of the inclination of Epicurus’ head. Once we have no reason to imagine Epicurus’ head turned downward to the left, we also have no reason to imagine Epicurus lost in thought and completely oblivious of the world around him. The way is thus reopened to restoring the right forearm in a way that accords with the sympathetic furrow across Epicurus’ forehead, his forward-gazing, sharply focused eyes, and with his slightly parted lips—viz., as thrusting forward in a gesture as communicative as is the expression on his face.

in

It is a pleasure to put on record my gratitude to two groups of readers who were kind enough to give me their reactions to various drafts of sections of this book. Margarete Bieber, Frank Brown, Stanley Burstein, David Furley, David Konstan, Knut Kleve, Ingrid Rowland Lacy, Steven Lattimore, Wolfgang Lotz, Charles Mitchell, Martin Robertson, and Bruce Rosenstock all expressed their support of my project—which at times seemed interminable—and, despite disagreements over details, encouraged me to persevere with it when I was beset with self-doubt. Malcolm Bell, Peter Carl, Helga von Heintze, Eva Keuls, Rebecca Miller, Thomas Schweitzer, Andrew Stewart, and an anonymous reader for the University of California Press played in their various ways the role of Horace’s Quintilius by insisting that I put aright even the smallest flaws they could discover.

Deborah Nourse Lattimore put her talented services at my disposal in preparing drawings of my reconstruction of the statue of Epicurus and a map of the Villa Ludovisi. Bru- nilde Ridgway and Helga von Heintze sent me useful comments about an earlier drawing reconstructing the statue of Epicurus. Madame Peppas Delmousou kindly sent me photographs of Greek inscriptions in the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, and she also went far beyond the call of duty in measuring all the herms in her charge. I must also thank George Dontas, Karin Einaudi, and Jiri Frei for sending me the photographs I requested. Crucial clerical help in preparing a complicated manuscript was provided by Tracy Caulfield, Elizabeth Farny, Monica Rothschild, and Charitini Ve- lissariou. My copy editor, Jane-Ellen Long, deserves my gratitude for her work in correcting my manuscript, as do my editors Doris Kretschmer and Mary Lamprech for their help in seeing this book through to publication. Various acts of Epicurean amicitia were performed during the writing of this book by my friends Princess Minnie de Beauvau-Craon, Karin and Roberto Einaudi, Maria Julia de Ruschi Crespo, Gesche and Volkart Olbrich, Ann and Russell T. Scott, and Antonio and Annabelle von Marx. My wife’s devotion to me during the period when this book was being written surpassed, if it is possible, even the infinite limits of the marriage vow.

I am extremely grateful to the following museums, libraries, and archives for allowing me to use, and in some cases to publish, material in their collections: Algemeen Rijks- archief (Den Haag); Archivio Segreto Vaticano; Biblioteca Hertziana; Biblioteca Nazionale (Rome); Biblioteca Vallicel- liana; Biblioteca Vaticana; Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris); British Museum; Cabinet des Dessins du Musee du Louvre; Epigraphical Museum (Athens); J. Paul Getty Museum; the Library of the American Academy in Rome; the Library of the C. G. Jung Institute (Los Angeles); the Library of the German Archaeological Institute (Rome); Musee du Louvre; Musei Capitolini; Musei Vaticani; Museo Nazionale di Napoli.

I could never have visited all of these research institutes or have had the time necessary to write this book were it not for the generous financial support given me by the American Academy in Rome and the Academic Senate of the University of California at Los Angeles. For their help in supporting my applications for research grants and in providing a stimulating environment in which research could be undertaken, I wish to thank my colleagues in the UCLA Department of Classics. The dedication of this book is my small way of thanking the American Academy in Rome for giving me: a research fellowship in the years 1974-1976; an appreciation for how interdisciplinary work in classics and archaeology can still be pursued in this age of specialization; and a model for what life must have been like in the Garden of Epicurus.

Los Angeles 31 March 1981

1 See Cicero, De finibus 5.1.3; F. Poulsen, Au jardin d’Epicure, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1937.1) 8-9. Poulsen’s statement, while a valuable subjective report of the experience of seeing Epicurus’ portrait, is very bad scholarship. He writes: Selon Ciceron, son ami Atticus, qui lui-meme etait epicurien, ecrivait: ‘nec tamen Epicuri licet oblivisci, si cupiam.’ Ces mots peuvent aussi etre employes au sujet de la tte d’Epicure, car c’est un des portraits antiques qu’on oublie le moins et qui se confond le plus dif- ficilement avec d’autres. Note, first of all, that according to Cicero (De fin. 5.1.3), Atticus spoke these words, he did not write them. Furthermore, he was already applying them to the subject of Epicurus’ bust, despite what Poulsen might lead one to believe. Finally, for interesting reasons that will be discussed at the end of Chapter III, Epicurus’ head is easily confused with other ancient heads, namely, those of his followers Metro- dorus and Hermarchus.

2 My titles in Chapters IV and V are inspired by Erwin Panofsky’s distinction between iconography and iconology, on which see C. Hasen- mueller, Panofsky, Iconography, and Semiotics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36 (1978) 289-302. Note that Panofsky’s terms are specifically designed for application to Renaissance art (see his essay, An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, in Meaning In the Visual Arts [Garden City, New York 1955] 26-54). As applied to Hellenistic art, they must, I think, be somewhat modified in substance, if not in method. For Panofsky, iconography deals with images, stories, and allegories (p. 35); iconology concerns the intrinsic meaning of the work … [in comparison with] the intrinsic meaning of … other documents of civilization historically related to that work (p. 39). As I use the terms here, iconography deals with what might be called the philological discipline of reconstructing, identifying, dating, and attributing the work of art (cf. pp. 31-32, where Panofsky speaks of iconography as a descriptive discipline), whereas iconology deals with the interpretation of the work of art in both werkimmanent and -transcendent terms.

3 V Kruse-Berdolt, Kopienkritische Untersuchungen zu den Portrats des Epikur, Metrodor, und Hermarch (Diss. Gottingen 1975) (despite the publication date of 1975, the work was not available—at least at the DAI Rome—until late 1980).

Abbreviations

For periodicals, the abbreviations of L’Annee Philologique have been used, with minor modifications. For standard works of reference I have used the abbreviations recommended by Lexikon der Alien Welt (Zurich and Stuttgart 1965), again with some minor modifications. My footnotes follow the style formerly recommended by the American Journal of Archaeology (see AJA 65 [1965] 199-201). The footnotes to each chapter are self-contained, so that, unless otherwise indicated, a reference to a previous note is always to a note in the same chapter. The following special abbreviations need to be listed here:

xxv

Chapter 1

Introduction:

Philosophy and Society in Greece

L Approach

There are two basic categories into which one might classify the historiography of ancient philosophy. The first is the doxographical, wherein the historian traces the development of philosophical ideas and systems of thought through time and space. Opposed to this is what could be called the sociological approach, which focuses on the various reciprocal relationships linking the abstract thought of philosophy to the concrete societal conditions under which a philosophical system comes into being and thrives. The first approach could be assigned a place in the larger project of intellectual history initiated by Hegel in the nineteenth century. The second can be viewed as a small part of the domain of the sociology of knowledge, itself a part of the larger project of cultural history that was one offshoot of the evolutionist sociologies of Positivism and Marxism. The underlying assumption of the doxographical approach is that ideas generate ideas by the processes of destructive and constructive criticism. All that is needed to reconstruct the history of Greek philosophy, according to this view, is to collect the ideas of the ancient philosophers, reassemble them into systems, and arrange these systems into chronological sequence in order to facilitate determination of the criticisms that were—or must have been— made by each philosopher concerning his predecessors and contemporaries.

The sociological approach can accept the results thus achieved by doxography and can set to work at precisely the point where doxography stops, by asking such questions as: What were the social, political, economic, and affective experiences of the world that influenced one philosopher’s reactions to another’s ideas? What were the interactions between a philosopher’s system of thought and the society to which he belonged? What were the goals—practical and philosophical—that motivated a philosopher’s decision to institutionalize (or not institutionalize) his system as a school? How did the philosophical institution relate to other societal institutions? Which groups in a society responded positively, and which negatively, to a philosophical system and school, and why?1

Philosophical historiography as practiced rarely corresponds to either approach. Although most historians of ancient philosophy have concentrated on doxography, pracitability . From the sociological (or, external) point of view, what is striking about new thoughts is the historical particulars and discontinuities associated with their appearance. Thus, for example, the internal approach may uncover an inner logic to the development of Greek philosophy, but it cannot explain why that logic took 5, 50, or 500 years to unfold, nor can it explain how the thought was received by its audience. A concern with such questions may be a weak program for the sociology of Greek philosophy, but it is one, I would argue, that is likely to yield more concrete and verifiable results than Bloor’s strong program of showing how thought itself (and not just the function and use of it) is socially determined.

For a critical account of the basic approaches to the sociology of knowledge, see P. Hamilton, Knowledge and Social Structure (London and Boston 1974); K. H. Wolff, The Sociology of Knowledge in the U.S.A., Current Sociology 15, 1 (1967). For a basic bibliography, seej. Wolff, Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art (London and Boston 1975) 139-46, and add J. Wilier, The Social Determination of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1971). Very little work has been done applying the wissenssoziologisch approach to the history of Greek philosophy. Perhaps the best known— and, unfortunately, least satisfying—is that of G. Gurvitch, The Social Framework of Knowledge, trans. M. A. and K. A. Thompson (Oxford 1971) 148-61. To his credit, Gurvitch admits that the time has not yet come for studies in depth of the sociology of philosophical doctrines (p. 99, and cf. pp. 36-37). He does not, however, explain why the time is not ripe for such work, and his own study of Greek philosophy and society may be criticized for difficulties which are not so much methodological as informational. More useful is A. W. Levi’s new book, Philosophy as Social Expression (Chicago and London 1974), which suffers, as far as Greek philosophy is concerned, from: (1) conceptual narrowness probably owing to unfamiliarity with the literature of the past twenty-five years on the sociology of knowledge; (2) insufficient knowledge of Platonic scholarship after Paul Shorey and of Greek history; (3) narrowness of focus on the aristocratic class in Greece; and (4) an overly ambitious program of dealing with four major Western philosophers and their societies (Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, G. E. Moore). In his preface, Levi claims more importance for his method than for his results, and we may agree that the book’s importance lies herein. Advances over Levi will need to remedy the faults just enumerated, and if better results are to be achieved, a much more modest focus will be needed. Equally disappointing is E. M. Wood and N. Wood, Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory (New York 1978), on which see the review of H.-J. Gehrke in Gnomon 52 (1980) 179-80 (a taste of the Woods’ tendency to oversimplify is the following quotation from p. 3: Denouncing democratic politics, many of the nobles considered it to be a sign of gentlemanly virtue to remain aloof and detached from civic life, a trend culminating in the aristocratic [!] Epicurus’ withdrawal into the Garden). A useful general study of the sage appears in F. Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (New York 1965).

tically none has done so with perfect methodological consistency. Even Hegel, who conceived of the history of philosophy as something produced by the World Spirit in its thinking consciousness of itself,2 3 saw clearly enough that thought is not generated by thought alone but is affected by material conditions. The leading practitioner of doxographical history active today, W. K. C. Guthrie, has recognized, if not a sociological element, then at least a biographical factor operative in the development of Greek philosophy.4 Nor has the sociological method always been applied with perfect consistency. For example, J. S. Morrison, a leading exponent of the study of the ancient philosophical schools as institutions, has suggested that Plato modeled the organization of the Academy after the Pythagorean school; yet, in seeking to explain this fact, he attributes to Plato a motive that is purely cognitive and of a piece with Platos adoption of Pythagorean ideas about geometry, politics, and the fate of the soul.5 For Morrison, then, the organization of the philosophical school is studied as simply another kind of philosophical idea. These kinds of inconsistencies in the application of the two methods are not to be condemned but recognized as signs of scholars’ intuitive awareness that the two approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

The subject of the history of philosophy is hard to define but, like the history of any human activity, must include as major components elements both cognitive and noncogni- five, conscious and unconscious, individual and social.6 Thus the historiography of philosophy ought ideally to combine a doxographical concern for philosophical content with a sociological concern for the societal surroundings in which content develops and to which it responds. Of course, the subject may sometimes neither demand nor permit such comprehensive treatment. Evidence may be lacking—even more lacking than it unfortunately usually is in ancient studies—and the area under investigation may be technical enough to preclude noncognitive, unconscious, or social explanation.

The philosophical problems that will be studied in this book present a case of a different sort. They cannot be raised— let alone solved—by either methodology. The primary question to be asked is: How did the Epicurean school overcome in a philosophically consistent way the contradiction latent in its philosophical system between its basic mission of bringing salvation to mankind and its basic existential method of withdrawal from the world? As will be seen, this question can be—and, if it is to be answered, must be—restated in several different ways, involving the doxographical question of motivation in Epicureanism, the institutional question of recruitment of new members for the Epicurean school, the psychological question of conversion, and the art-historical question of the nature and function of Epicurus’ portrait. The validity of the solution to be proposed will then be tested by an interpretation of the portrait-statue of Epicurus, which, if the proposed solution is correct, ought to be not a depiction of Epicurus as he really looked but the self-conscious artistic expression of Epicurus’ philosophical self-consciousness, commissioned and publicly erected primarily for purposes of

propaganda.7 Hence, not only the problem to be investigated but the very evidence that will be produced to solve it are dependent on an interdisciplinary approach. It will not surprise readers acquainted with recent developments in the sociology of knowledge to see that it is this relatively new branch of sociology which can most readily supply the methodological insights needed to link the various disciplines we shall be studying.8

π. Greek Philosophy and Politics: The Problem

The problem of the Epicureans’ ambivalent relationship to the world outside the Garden is of interest for many reasons, not least of which is that it signals the beginning of the last of the four stages of development traceable in the relationship of philosophy to society in ancient Greece before the Roman period. The evolution of Greek philosophical thought and organization can be profitably and briefly traced through a consideration of the function of philosophy in the context of the developing political and social structure