Episode 151 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we continue to discuss early development of the Epicurean school in the chapter "The New School In Athens."
AntiChrist
Translation by H.L. Mencken, 1918.
30:
“The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that merely to be “touched” becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound. The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish (—that is to say, as harmful, as prohibited by the instinct of self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility of life… These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism. Epicurus was a typical decadent: I was the first to recognize him.—The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—the end of this can be nothing save a religion of love… ”
58. But it [Roman civilization] was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians… These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “souls”, step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but “Christianity”, which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality.—He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.—Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared… Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world”, in the flesh and inspired by genius—the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence… What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a “world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of “God on the cross”, all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “Salvation is of the Jews.”—Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the GreatMother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the “Saviour” as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth—he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand… This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob “the world” of its value, that the concept of “hell” would master Rome—that the notion of a “beyond” is the death of life. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme.
42. Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it now appeared, had referred to his “Saviour”… Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to Christianity… The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the “risen” Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something more. To see anything honest in such aman as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also willed the means.—What he himself didn’t believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he spread his teaching.—What he wanted was power; in Paul the priest once more reached out for power—he had use only for such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul—that is to say, the doctrine of “judgment.”
Beyond Good And Evil
(Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern ) Chapter 1, section 9
You desire to LIVE “according to Nature”? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, “living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “living according to life”—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature “according to the Stoa,” and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?… But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima.
Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 5, section 188
In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “nature” and also against “reason”, that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom—the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm.
Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 5, section 198
All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to their “happiness,” as it is called—what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to “all,” because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of “the other world.” That is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being “science,” much less “wisdom”; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity—whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God’s sake—for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that…; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it “no longer has much danger.”—This also for the chapter: “Morals as Timidity.”
Additional Cites From The Collection At The Epicurus Wiki
One of the greatest men, inventor of an heroic-idyllic way to philosophize: Epicurus [Human, All Too Human § 295].
The «after-death» doesn’t matter to us at all! […] Again prevails Epicurus! [Sunrise § 72/34]. Yea! I’m proud to enjoy what […] I hear and read in Epicurus, the Mediterranean joy of antiquity. […] The wisdom had taken some steps forward with Epicurus, but then it went many thousand steps backward [The Joyous Science § 45].
Epicurus would have won; each respectable mind was Epicurean in the Roman Empire: and it’s done! Then Paul arrives on the scene… [The Antichrist § 58].
The reawakened sciences have been reunited point by point with Epicurus’ philosophy, while they have escaped point by point Christianity. [Human, All Too Human § 68].
Why we seem Epicurean. We modern-day men proceed warily with farthest beliefs […] a cognitive approach we would define Epicurean, which doesn’t wish to escape from many-sided appearance of things; […] a dislike for big words and moral poses [The Cheerful Science § 375].
The Epicurean man uses his higher learning to make himself independent from dominant opinions; he overlooks on these, while the Cynic confines himself to their denial. The former walks so to speak by the side of windless paths, in well-sheltered places, in the half-light, while over him, in the wind, the tops of the trees rustle and show him how much the world out there is worked up [Human, All Too Human § 275].
That’s the ataraxia state Epicurus extolled as the end-goal and gods’ condition; to be, at that moment, free from bad urge of wish […] [Moral’s Genealogy. § 6].
“A little garden, some figs, a piece of cheese, plus three or four good friends – that was the sum of Epicurus’ luxuriousness [Human, All Too Human, II, part 2, § 192].
Stoic and Epicurean. […] The one who envisage that the external necessity enables oneself to ‘spin out a long thread’ acts well to arrange for an Epicurean way of life; all men fond of intellectual work have done so! Sure enough it would be for them the worst loss the one of ruining their subtle feeling and getting the skin of the Stoics in return, with all the quills of a sea urchin [The Cheerful Science § 306].
Four are the pairs which, for me the follower, did not turn out alien: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I must debate, when I have wandered alone for a long time, by them I want to be approved and amended […] [Human, All too Human, II 408, The Journey in Hades].
Is there any more dangerous seduction that might tempt one to renounce one’s faith in the gods of Epicurus who have no care and are unknown, and to believe instead in some petty deity who is full of care and personally knows every little hair on our head and finds nothing nauseous in the most miserable small service? [The Gay Science § 2771].
The following are not explicit references to Epicurus, but highly consistent with the Epicurean perspective:
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Walter Kaufman translation
“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth…”
Someone coming across this thread would probably also be interested in:
1 - He definitely has a "dark" side. On the other hand, darkness does exist and we have to come to terms with it in order to really be in touch with reality. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, I think someone once said 
2 - We definitely want to avoid too much eclecticism here. Discussion of Nietzsche or anyone else needs to be centered on "Do these arguments assist in understanding or presentation of Epicurean philosophy?"
3 - We need a thread on living like the gods - while at the same time acknowledging that unless we perfect the ability to regenerate and maintain our own atomic structure we're not going to achieve it ourselves 
At some point a thread on the science of life extension would be appropriate too!
Passing note while editing: We make comments in this episode as to how far to carry the analogy of a "garden" and I made the comment that Diogenes Laertius says that Epicurus held that the wise man will be fond of "the country." It occurs to me that I may have that wrong in thinking that this is an urban vs rural reference, and that this is saying that the wise man will be fond of "HIS country" almost in a patriotic way. That latter interpretation might actually be supported by other comments such as calling someone (the Cynics ?) an "enemy of Hellas." I am not sure which is the right meaning so this is something to clarify.
As this thread is now very old let's post new comments on organizational issues in this thread: General Thoughts On Organizational Methods - 2022 Edition
Setting up this thread as a possible place to discuss thoughts on organizational options as an update to the 2019 thread of similar topic.
Pacatus I figured you would get a reaction from Don in that exchange!
I agree with most everything that Don said, including this, but I will comment further:
P.S. In some sense, we are *all* neo-Epicureans.
Because we do have a regular flow in and out of the forum it's good to cover this regularly. The main reason for the "Not-Neo" list and associated posting guidelines and other rules is that while there are many places on the internet to discuss philosophy in general, and especially to promote Stoicism, there are not many devoted to Epicurus. The experience I and others had at Facebook is that the sheer numbers and loudness of the Stoics quickly drives out and even "intimidates" people who are honestly interested in Epicurean philosophy from pursuing it. As a result this forum is first and foremost a place where people interested in an environment supportive of Epicurus will have an opportunity to talk in a supportive atmosphere without have to deal with overbearing opponents of the philosophy.
Don also mentioned the difficulties of agreeing on anything, and he's surely right about that. Luckily no one here is trying to be a guru or go for world domination or anything like that, so as for our rules, all they are geared toward is maintaining a friendly pro-Epicurean environment for discussion. If you are interested in reading the details of a discussion we had several years ago on ideas to set up more of an umbrella organization, you might be interested in this thread. Those discussions did more to illuminate the difficulties more than to come to any agreements, but I am sure that over time the "organizational" question will come up again and again. For now, I've limited myself to the still difficult but more attainable goal of "herding cats" in a discussion forum.
But you will be comforted to know that I take the subject of this thread to heart. I would like to meet my end like Epicurus surrounded by friends, but I am not sure I will attain that in real life. Unless I meet my end in a totally unexpected accident, I commit to taking steps before I follow Atticus and Cassius L. and Diodorus (many many years from now, hopefully) to be sure that there's a smooth organizational transition into the future for this forum.
PS - Pacatus due to the length of that older thread most people don't take the time to wade through it. If you happen to find it interesting enough to do so, please feel free to comment.
Yes thank you that is exactly the passage I was thinking about, but was not nimble enough to find and cite quickly! Definitely a hugely important element of Epicurean psychology relevant to many issues, and another example of how there are both changeable and unchangeable aspects that have to be considered:
I confess that any perceived hint of defining a “party line” that I must, no matter what, affirm or adhere to in order to be a “True™” anything triggers a visceral unease in me
Yes this is a very interesting subject on which we once had a zoom discussion alluding to "flags.". Allegiance to a flag or anything like that is troublesome. Yet there are times - if you slare in a war, for example, you are well advised generally to head for the lines of your countries flag rather than an enemy flag. So flags can be and are very useful, as long as their limitations are kept clear.
This is definitely a hard balance, but it seems to me that if we conclude that "flags are always bad" we are likely to be just as wrong as concluding that flags are always good. We have to always remember the basic situation that there are multiple levels of things going on and we have to be flexible enough to move nimbly between them.
So it would in fact be unreasonable to strive for perfect tranquility
Maybe it is not unreasonable to strive for it in terms of using it as a guide and setting it as an image of the goal, but it surely unreasonable to expect to achieve it or to believe that it is in fact something we are going to reach and stay there. It seems perfectly clear that we change and have new experiences til the moment we die - which is essentially what PD2 says- so we are never going to reach a resting point and stay there.
I don't know who the other philosophers referenced in the article are. Their quotes sound correct to me, but it's hard to say. However I think the ones from Nietzsche are worth adding in here to the thread both for the content and for the sense of intensity that I see as similar to Lucretius:
“…the concept “the true world” insinuates that this world is untruthful, deceptive, dishonest, inauthentic, inessential—and consequently also not a world adapted to our needs.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power
“General insight: it is the instinct of life-weariness…which has created the “other world”…to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for the world that makes one suffer…Does man not eternally create a fictitious world for himself because he wants a better world than reality?”
Nietzsche, The Will to Power
“The development of pessimism into nihilism…. – The repudiated world versus an artificially built ‘true, valuable’ one. Finally: one discovers how the true world is fabricated solely from psychological needs: and now all one has left is the ‘repudiated world’, and one adds this supreme disappointment to the reasons why it deserves to be repudiated. At this point nihilism is reached:…one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality… — but cannot endure this world…”
Nietzsche, The Will to Power
“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
1 - Don's point about the serene spirit is one I had not previously appreciated so well. I thought I remembered the Atticus illustration, but the Diodorus one was new to me (or it has been so long since I scanned the Warren book I had totally forgotten it).
2 - I appreciate too where Pacatus is coming from but I am trying to think why I hesitate. I think I hesitate because it's easy to go from one extreme to the other and lose appreciation for the usefulness of words at the same time that we acknowledge their limits. I think Don is right that we do have the ability to grasp that there is a generally identifiable meaning to the words Epicurean or Christian and that we need to identify those meanings (maybe that is akin to what Epicurus was saying about being able to assign an image to a word so we don't go on explaining forever) while at the same time we acknowledge that that image does not come from God or from a realm of forms or from an "essence" that exists independently of the examples. So that is similar to keeping in mind both that (1) suicide is a last resort only for extreme circumstances but also (2) that suicide can be a powerful tool and reassuring to know that it is in our toolbox if or when those circumstances do occur. It's not a matter of taking a middle ground or seeing some kind of compromise but of seeing that both are true at the same time. The atoms and the void do exist at the same time, and for another example at the same time (1) the bodies and qualities of our world do have a "real" existence to us even though (2) they themselves are ultimately composed of atoms and void. We don't fall into despair and nihilism just because both perspectives exist at the same time, nor should we label one perspective or world as "true" and the other as "false."
Which reminds me of the Oinoanda comment that there is a flux but it is not so fast that we can't comprehend it. All this also causes me to associate Epicurus' views with the "this world vs the 'true world'" imagery that apparently Nietzsche was using if that video posted elsewhere recently is correct. There's no "true world" beyond this one, which is the only one we have. So many issues seem to resolve themselves if we recognize how many ways have been invented to try to use wishful thinking and word games to get around that reality and construct false alternatives.
In the same way, many of the otherwise obscure sayings of Epicurus make much more sense when seen as targeted at making very close to the same point. Epicurus seems to use "anxiety" and "pleasure vs. pain" terminology while Nietsche and others may use words like "nihilism" vs "will" or "power," but the enemy of despair is pretty much the same, and it's Epicurus' formula for embracing life which really holds the best answer.
More from James Warren (same source):
it is the result of a calculation that the alternative would be a continued life of pain. Provided life has pleasure left in it,we will continue to live. And the Epicurean sage will be sufficiently schooled to continue to find pleasure in life under conditions which others would find unbearable—Epicurus' own example of composure in the face of terminal illness demonstrates this. 345 Seneca reports the suicide of an Epicurean named Diodorus. On this occasion it is not so clear whether or not he is acting in strict accordance with Epicurean teaching.
Diodorum, Epicureum philosophum, qui intra paucos dies finem vitae suae manu sua imposuit, negant ex decretoEpicuri fecisse, quod sibi gulam praesecuit. alii dementiam videri volunt factum hoc eius, alii temeritatem; illeinterim beatus ac plenus bona conscientia reddidit sibi testimonium vita excedens laudavitque aetatis in portu et adancoram actae quietem et dixit, quod vos inviti audistis, quasi vobis quoque faciendum sit, ‘vixi et quem dederatcursum fortuna peregi’ (=Verg. Aen. 4.653).
They say that the Epicurean philosopher Diodorus, who just recently ended his own life by his own hand, did not act according to Epicurus' doctrine because he cut his own throat. Some want this deed to be seen as madness, others as rashness. But he, happy and full of good understanding, bore witness to himself as he left life, praised the tranquility of a life spent in port at anchor, 346 and said something which you did not like to hear, as if you too ought to follow its advice: ‘I have lived, and finished the course which fortune dealt me’. Sen. De Vita Beata 19.1
Again, the accusation of un-Epicurean behaviour seems to be on the basis of Diodorus acting not out of a sound and rational consideration of the situation but out of either madness or temperance. Seneca, however, is keen to emphasize Diodorus' calm at the end, based not only on the appreciation of a tranquil life lived but also on the acceptance that that life had come to the end of its course. What is not clear from this description is just why Diodorus had decided to quit a pleasant life, and this is presumably the reason why some were suspicious of his motives
I see James Warren says ("Facing Death - Epicurus And His Critics):
Of course, the Epicureans do agree that suicide would be the end of these people's cares, but it is certainly not the preferred course of action. If only these poor souls would instead find out from the Epicureans that death is nothing to fear, then they would be able to manage their lives properly and find true pleasure in it. Suicide, therefore, is generally a sign of having seriously misguided opinions about the world. However, there are clearly occasions and circumstances when an Epicurean too would be justified in ending his own life. While extolling the virtue of courage, Torquatus allows that in the face of certain pains suicide might be acceptable:
sic robustus animus…ad dolores ita paratus est ut meminerit maximos morte finiri, parvos multa habere intervallarequietis, mediocrium nos esse dominos ut si tolerabiles sint feramus, si minus, animo aequo e vita, cum ea nonplaceat, tamquam e theatro exeamus.
A strong soul is so readied against pains that it remembers that the greatest are curtailed by death, the small ones are punctuated by long intervals of peace, and we are in control of those of a medium strength so that if they can be endured we endure them and if not we may leave life calmly if it does not please us, just as we may leave the theatre. Cic. Fin. 1.49
The message here is that someone properly schooled can endure even quite severe pains, but if even this ability is challenged by ongoing and unendurable distress then it is open to us to leave life. Importantly, this is done calmly and rationally (aequo animo);344
Thanks for that cite! It's hard not to smile when reading the almost snarkiness of lines like "you snore when awake...". . (I am not sure why I say "almost". - you "drunken wretch!)
Democritus, warned by ripe old age that the motions of his mind’s 1040 memory were failing, voluntarily went to meet death and offered him his life.88 Epicurus himself died, when the light of his life had accomplished its course—he who outshone the human race in genius and obscured the luster of all as the rising of the ethereal sun extinguishes the stars.89 Will you, then, be hesitant and indignant, when death calls? You, even while you still have life and light, are as good as dead: you squander the greater part of your time in sleep; you snore when awake; you never stop daydreaming; you are burdened with a mind disturbed by groundless fear; and often you cannot discover what is wrong with you, when, like 1050 some drunken wretch, you are buffeted with countless cares on every side and drift along aimlessly in utter bewilderment of mind
Unless Diogenes Laetius made any short comments I am not sure we know anything much about the death of other ancient Epicureans besides Epicurus and Atticus and Cassius Longinus? Anyone recall any other anecdotes?
For these purposes I suppose we can exclude Julius Caesar as -even if of Epicurean leanings - he did not choose his exit.
He had completed seventy-seven years in such a manner, and into extreme old age had advanced no less in dignity than in influence and fortune - for he obtained many inheritances exclusively by his own goodness - and had enjoyed such good health that he had not needed medicine for thirty years, then he fell ill. At the beginning neither he nor his physicians took it seriously, for they thought it was a gripping of the bowel [i.e. dysentery] for which swift and simple remedies were proposed. When he had suffered for three months in this condition without any pain except for those he experienced from the treatment, the disease burst so violently into his lower intestine that at the end ulcers full of pus burst through his loins.
And before this befell him, after he felt the pains increase daily and the fever grow, he gave orders for his son-in-law Agrippa to be summoned, and Lucius Cornelius Balbus and Sextus Peducaeus along with him. When he saw they had come, he leaned on one elbow and said: "How much care and attention I have devoted to restoring my health recently I do not need to tell at length, since I have you as witnesses. Since I have, I hope, satisfied you that I have left nothing undone that might serve to cure me, all that is left is that I now look after my own well-being. I did not wish you to be ignorant of my purpose: for I am resolved no longer to nourish the disease. For however much food I have taken in these last days, I have so prolonged my life as to increase the pain without hope of recovery. Thus I beg of you both to approve of my resolution and not to try to shake me by pointless dissuasion"
After giving this speech with such resolve in his voice and expression that he seemed not to be quitting life but moving from one house to another, Agrippa in particular embraced him in tears and begged him not to hasten his death over and above nature's compulsion, and, since even then he might survive the crisis, to preserve himself for his own sake and for the sake of those dearest to him, but Atticus quelled his pleas with silent obstinacy. So when he had abstained from food for two days, the fever suddenly abated and the disease began to be more bearable. Nevertheless he carried through his resolution undeviatingly and so died on the fifth day after he made his decision, on the last day of March when Gnaeus Domitius and Gaius Sosius were consuls [March 31st, 22 BCE]. He was carried to his burial on a modest bier as he had himself directed, without any funeral procession, but escorted by all men of substance and by very large crowds of the common people. He was buried by the Appian Way at the fifth milestone, in the tomb of his maternal uncle Quintus Caecilius.
Let's see if anything is here:.
Epicurus.info : E-Texts : The Life of Atticus
Yes, he starved himself to death after a long illness.
I don't see textual evidence of that position.
for the time being we can just note our disagreement on that, because at least for me I do see that implication in the texts I cited. It's always difficult to know the subtleties but I see those phrases, and even the tone of "death is nothing to us" as implying an "in your face" attitude toward the view that we should be scared of things associated with death - sort of the aggressive attitude of "trampling religion underfoot" that a lot of commentators seme to think that Lucretius displays. And I am especially firm in thinking that Epicurean Philosophy points toward managing our circumstances of dying as much as managing our living.
That reminds me that there may be another useful example in the ancient bio of Atticus.
(And no I will never accept that the Roman Epicureans were not orthodox Epicureans. :-). )
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