Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (32 page)

1.
For introductions to Epicurus and Epicureanism see J. M. Rist,
Epicurus: An Introduction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); J. Warren (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On Epicurus’s life and the history of the garden see D. Clay, “The Athenian Garden,” in Warren,
The Cambridge Companion,
9–28.

2.
The atoms of the soul: Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
63. Death is nothing to us: Epicurus,
Authoritative Opinions
2. On the Epicurean view of death (and its differences from the Democritean) see J. Warren,
Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); and “Removing Fear,” in Warren,
Cambridge Companion,
242–48.

3.
Critical of atheists: Philodemus,
On Piety
column 19 lines 519–48. Existence of the gods: Epicurus,
Letter to Menoeceus
123. Personal responsibility: Ibid., 133 (arguing against the presocratic
anagk
ē
or “compulsion” rather than traditional piety, but the point surely has wider relevance). For the Epicurean view of religion see A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley,
The Hellenistic Philosophers,
vol. 1,
Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 139–49; D. Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus,”
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
30 (1989): 187–223 (who also collects the accusations of atheism);
Philodemus, On Piety Part 1
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1–23; J. Mansfeld, “Aspects of Epicurean Theology,”
Mnemosyne
46 (1993): 172–210; Warren, “Removing Fear,” 238–42; and D. Konstan, “Epicurus on the Gods,” in J. Fish and K. Sanders (eds.),
Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 53–71.

4.
All perceptions are true: sources and discussion at Long and Sedley,
The Hellenistic Philosophers,
78–86. Waking and dreaming perceptions of gods: Cicero,
On the Nature of the Gods
1.46–49; Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
5.1169–71. Philodemus,
On Piety
column 8 lines 224–41 does not mention dreams,
pace
Obbink,
Philodemus On Piety
6.

5.
Incorporeal gods perceptible only to the mind: Cicero,
On the Nature of the Gods,
1.49.

6.
Epicurus on conventional misapprehension of the divine: Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus,” 194–202. Religious experience and psychosis: R. Dawkins,
The God Delusion
(London: Random House, 2006), 112–17.

7.
Gaps: Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
5.146–54. The earliest reference to the “gaps between universes” theory comes at Cicero,
On the Nature of the Gods,
1.18.

8.
Theodorus and others tried in the late fourth century: see L.-L. O’Sullivan, “Athenian Impiety Trials in the Late Fourth Century B.C.,”
Classical Quarterly
47 (1997): 136–52.

9.
For this interpretation see Obbink, “The Atheism of Epicurus,” and D. Sedley, “Epicurus’ Theological Innatism,” in Fish and Sanders,
Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition,
29–52; against this reading see Mansfield, “Aspects of Epicurean Theology,” and Konstan, “Epicurus on the Gods.”
Enagismata
and celebrations: Diogenes Laertius 10.18. In general on the “divinization” of Epicurus see Clay, “The Athenian Garden,” 20–26.

10.
Epicurus’s reputation as an atheist: M. Winiarczyk, “Wer galt im Altertum als Atheist?,”
Philologus
128 (1984): 168–70.

11.
On Lucretius and his reception see especially S. Gillespie and P. Hardie (eds.),
The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); S. Greenblatt,
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(New York: Norton, 2011). On the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: F. Turner, “Lucretius Among the Victorians,”
Victorian Studies
16 (1973): 329–48; S. Gillespie and D. Mackenzie, “Lucretius and the Moderns,” in Gillespie and Hardie,
The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius,
306–24.

12.
Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
1.62–79. On Lucretius’s portrait of Epicurus see in general M. Gale,
Myth and Poetry in Lucretius
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 190–207.

13.
Knots of religion: 1.931–932, repeated at 4.7.

14.
Iphianassa: 80–101. Voltaire: R. Barbour, “Moral and Political Philosophy,” in Gillespie and Hardie,
The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius,
164.

15.
Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
1.102–9.

16.
Ibid., 5.7–12.

17.
Ibid., 5.14–21 (quotation from 19).

18.
Lucretius,
On the Nature of Things
5.1161–1240 (quotation from 1194–1203).

19.
Ibid., 1.1–49; 3.18–30; 5.146–55.

1.
On Rome and the Hellenistic kingdoms see especially E. Gruen,
The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). For a readable biography of Mithridates (using an alternative spelling) see A. Mayor,
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Generally on the rise of Rome see M. Beard and M. Crawford,
Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations,
2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1999); H. I. Flower (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); N. S. Rosenstein and R. Morstein-Marx (eds.),
A Companion to the Roman Republic
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

2.
Parade of Syracusan loot: Polybius 9.10.

3.
Aelius Aristides 26.97. On the techniques whereby the empire was symbolically united see C. Ando,
Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Generally on the rise of the principate see M. Goodman,
The Roman World, 44 BC–AD 180
(London and New York: Routledge, 1997); C. Kelly,
The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); D. S. Potter,
A Companion to the Roman Empire
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

4.
Jewish refusal to sacrifice: Josephus,
Jewish War
2.409. On Decius’s decree see J. B. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire,”
The Journal of Roman Studies
89 (1999): 135–54.

1.
Panaetius,
On Providence:
Cicero,
Letters to Atticus
13.8. In general on the development of ideas of imperial providence see M. Dragona-Monachou, “Divine Providence in the Philosophy of Empire,” in
Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
2.36.7 (1994): 4417–90. The multifaceted relationship between Stoicism and Rome is surveyed by P. A. Brunt, “Stoicism and the Principate,”
Papers of the British School at Rome
43 (1975): 7–35, reprinted in his
Studies in Stoicism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 275–309.

2.
Polybius quotations: 6.4, 1.4. On his “weakly Stoic” conception of providence see R. Brouwer, “Polybius and Stoic
Tyche,
”
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
51 (2011): 111–32; and more generally on his pro-Roman providentialism see F. W. Walbank, “Polybius and Rome’s Eastern Policy” and “Polybius Between Greece and Rome,” in
Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 138–56 and 280–97.

3.
Vergil,
Aeneid
1.278–79.

4.
Ibid., 4.270.

5.
Augustus and Apollo: K. Galinsky,
Augustan Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 297–99. Horace:
Odes
3.5.1–2. Vespasian: Suetonius,
Vespasian
23.4. Claudius: “Seneca,”
Apocolocyntosis.
Imperial cult between Greek “pull” and imperial “push”: see for example T. Whitmarsh, “Thinking Local,” in T. Whitmarsh (ed.),
Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6–8, with references.

6.
On resistance to Rome see A. Giovannini (ed.),
Opposition et résistances a l’empire d’Auguste à Trajan
(Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt, 1987); T. Whitmarsh, “Resistance Is Futile? Greek Literary Tactics in the Face of Rome,” in P. Schubert (ed.),
Les Grecs héritiers des Romans
(Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt, 2013), 57–84. On Greek skepticism toward the imperial cult see G. W. Bowersock, “Greek Intellectuals and the Imperial Cult in the Second Century A.D.,” in W. den Boer (ed.),
Le culte des souverains dans l’empire romain
(Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt, 1973), 179–212.

7.
Plato:
Laws
885b. Atheism and rejection of providence: Lucian,
Slander
14. For Epicurean “atheism” see chapter 13.

8.
On Dionysius and his
Roman Antiquities
see especially E. Gabba,
Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), with 1–4 on his background in Halicarnassus; also, for an integrated account of Dionysius as an intellectual see N. Wiater,
The Ideology of Classicism: Language, History and Classicism in Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011). For a readable account of Mithridates’s life and campaigns see A. Mayor,
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

9.
Early Roman history as myth: T. P. Wiseman,
The Myths of Rome
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2004).
Roman Antiquities
written for Greeks: 1.4.2; Romans were originally Greeks: 1.5.1–2. Dionysius and providence are discussed in the following paragraph.

10.
Dionysius,
Roman Antiquities
1.4.2–3.

11.
The other candidate sometimes proposed (for example in Wiater,
The Ideology of Classicism,
101–2) for association with Dionysius’s list of malicious historians is Timagenes of Alexandria, but his professional career was spent largely at Rome, and (after falling out with Augustus) in Tuscany; he was never the courtier of a “barbarian” king. Life of Metrodorus: Strabo 13.1.55 and Plutarch,
Lucullus
22.1–5 (testimonia 2 and 3 in F. Jacoby,
Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
[Leiden: Brill, 1923–] 2B 184). Carneades: Cicero,
On the Orator
1.45 = testimonium 4a. Memory technique: Ibid., 2.360 = testimonium 5a (also 5b and 5c). There is some debate over whether there were two figures of this name or one: see Habinek’s entry in I. Worthington (ed.),
Brill’s New Jacoby
(Leiden: Brill, online version). On Timagenes see M. Sordi, “Timagene di Alessandria, uno storico ellenocentrico e filobarbaro,” in
Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
2.30.1 (1982): 775–97. Oppositional writing at Mithridates’s court: G. Bowersock,
Augustus and the Greek World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 108–9.

12.
Nickname: Pliny,
Natural History
34.16.34 = fragment 12. Ovid: Ex Ponto 4.14.37–40 = Jacoby testimonium 6b.

13.
Counterfactual history: N. Ferguson (ed.),
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals
(London: Penguin, 1997); for the Romans and steam power see N. Morley, “Trajan’s Engines,”
Greece and Rome
47 (2000): 197–210. For more on anti-Roman histories of Alexander see T. Whitmarsh,
The Second Sophistic
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 68–70.

14.
Alexander Romance
1.29 (in the A and
γ
traditions; 1.26 in
β
).

15.
Livy,
From the Foundation of Rome
9.18–19; see R. Morello, “Livy’s Alexander Digression (9.17–19): Counterfactuals and Apologetics,”
Journal of Roman Studies
92 (2002): 62–85, and S. Oakley,
A Commentary on Livy, Books VI–IX. Volume III: Book IX
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 199–205, and appendix 5.

16.
Plutarch,
On the Fortune and Virtue of Alexander
I–II;
On the Fortune of the Romans.
Philosopher in action:
On the Fortune and Virtue of Alexander
327e–9d; quotation: 328e.

17.
The Gauls and the Capitol: Plutarch,
On the Fortune of the Romans
325b–d. Changing meaning of Fortune: 318a (the sentence is corrupt at the end, hence the ellipsis). Generally on the role of fortune in this text see S. Swain, “Plutarch’s
De Fortuna Romanorum,
”
Classical Quarterly
39 (1989): 504–16.

18.
Shooting star:
On the Fortune of the Romans
326a; “much blood”: 326c (alluding to Homer,
Odyssey
18.149).

19.
Lucian,
Zeus the Tragedian
47–49.