Lucius Manlius Torquatus

Table of Contents

  • Praetor 49 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Voices and defends the Epicurean position on the highest good in Book I of Cicero's De Finibus. A member of a patrician family renowned for battlefield courage (his ancestor won the cognomen "Torquatus" in single combat against a Gallic champion), which Cicero exploits dramatically: an Epicurean spokesman from a lineage defined by martial valor underc

    Praetor 49 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Voices and defends the Epicurean position on the highest good in Book I of Cicero's De Finibus. A member of a patrician family renowned for battlefield courage (his ancestor won the cognomen "Torquatus" in single combat against a Gallic champion), which Cicero exploits dramatically: an Epicurean spokesman from a lineage defined by martial valor undercuts any easy assumption that pleasure-ethics implies cowardice or passivity.

    1. Key Texts

    Quote from Cicero, On Ends 1.29 (Torquatus, Rackham)

    We are inquiring, then, into what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in Pleasure; Pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, and Pain the Chief Evil. (Rackham)

    2. Related Reading

    3. Forum Discussions

    4. See Also

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