Cicero Says Epicurean Souls, After Death, Will Flutter Around the Globe For A Long Period Until They Are "Purified"
Listen to the latest Lucretius Today Podcast! Episode 226 is now available. We begin (with the help of Cicero's Epicurean spokesman) the first of a series of episodes to analyze the Epicurean view of the nature of the gods.
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Sounds like a precursor to the Dark Ages. It's amazing how much power ideas like this acquired.
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Ha! Delightful.
The Talmud holds that Epicureans will be denied a share in "the world to come".
Dante's Sado-Masochism takes a subdued turn with Epicurus (Canto X), and finds us with our teachers lying in unlidded tombs. On the day of judgment our souls will awaken to the lids of the tombs sliding shut, and our souls will be trapped with our bodies—we've chosen materialism, don't forget—for all eternity.
This last imagined punishment must be a disappointment to Tertullian, who believed in the 3rd century that gloating over the torture of the damned would be one of the keenest pleasures of paradise;
QuoteWhat a panorama of spectacle on that day! Which sight shall excite my wonder? Which, my laughter? Where shall I rejoice, where exult [...] those wise philosophers blushing before their followers as they burn together, the followers whom they taught that the world is no concern of God's whom they assured that either they had no souls at all or that what souls they had would never return to their former bodies?
from On Spectacles.
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This provides us a good list of the top enemies of Epicurean philosophy Thanks Joshua!