The contrast between Cato and Carneades was very complete: the one brutal through a morality that was too strict and too traditional, the other ignoble through a morality that was too lax and too much infected with the social dissolution of the Hellenistic world.
» Marcus Cato, even from the beginning that young men began to study the Greek tongue, and that it grew in estimation in Rome, did dislike of it: fearing lest the youth of Rome that were desirous of learning and eloquence, would utterly give over the honour and glory of arms. . . . So he openly found fault one day in the Senate, that the Ambassadors were long there, and had no dispatch: considering also they were cunning men, and could easily persuade what they would. And if there were no other respect, this only might persuade them to determine some answer for them, and to send them home again to their schools, to teach their children of Greece, and to let alone the children of Rome, that they might learn to obey the laws and the Senate, as they had done before. Now he spake thus to the Senate, not of any private ill will or malice he bare to Carneades, as some men thought: but because he generally hated philosophy.»
â€
The Athenians, in Cato’s view, were a lesser breed without the law; it did not matter if they were degraded by the shallow sophistics of intellectuals, but the Roman youth must be kept puritanical, im-
____________________
* North’s Plutarch, Lives, Marcus Cato.
€ Ib.
-237-
perialistic, ruthless, and stupid. He failed, however; later Romans, while retaining many of his vices, adopted those of Carneades also.
The next head of the Academy, after Carneades (ca. 180 to ca. 110 B.C.), was a Carthaginian whose real name was Hasdrubal, but who, in his dealings with Greeks, preferred to call himself Clitomachus. Unlike Carneades, who confined himself to lecturing, Clitomachus wrote over four hundred books, some of them in the Phoenician language. His principles appear to have been the same as those of Carneades. In some respects, they were useful. These two Sceptics set themselves against the belief in divination, magic, and astrology, which was becoming more and more widespread. They also developed a constructive doctrine, concerning degrees of probability; although we can never be justified in feeling certainty, some things are more likely to be true than others. Probability should be our guide in practice, since it is reasonable to act on the most probable of possible hypotheses. This view is one with which most modern philosophers would agree. Unfortunately, the books setting it forth are lost, and it is difficult to reconstruct the doctrine from the hints that remain.
After Clitomachus, the Academy ceased to be sceptical, and from the time of Antiochus (who died in 69 B.C.) its doctrines became, for centuries, practically indistinguishable from those of the Stoics.
Scepticism, however, did not disappear. It was revived by the Cretan Aenesidemus, who came from Knossos, where, for aught we know, there may have been Sceptics two thousand years earlier, entertaining dissolute courtiers with doubts as to the divinity of the mistress of animals. The date of Aenesidemus is uncertain. He threw over the doctrines on probability advocated by Carneades, and reverted to the earliest forms of Scepticism. His influence was considerable; he was followed by the poet Lucian in the second century A.D., and also, slightly later, by Sextus Empiricus, the only Sceptic philosopher of antiquity whose works survive. There is, for example, a short treatise, «Arguments Against Belief in a God,» translated by Edwyn Bevan in his Later Greek Religion, pp. 52-56, and said by him to be probably taken by Sextus Empiricus from Carneades, as reported by Clitomachus.
This treatise begins by explaining that, in behaviour, the Sceptics are orthodox: «We sceptics follow in practice the way of the world, but without holding any opinion about it. We speak of the Gods
-238-
as existing and offer worship to the Gods and say that they exercise providence, but in saying this we express no belief, and avoid the rashness of the dogmatisers.»
He then argues that people differ as to the nature of God; for instance, some think Him corporeal, some incorporeal. Since we have no experience of Him, we cannot know His attributes. The existence of God is not self-evident, and therefore needs proof. There is a somewhat confused argument to show that no such proof is possible. He next takes up the problem of evil, and concludes with the words:
«Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything, they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand, they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls nothing, they are compelled to make God either grudging or impotent, and to do that is quite obviously an impiety.»
Scepticism, while it continued to appeal to some cultivated individuals until somewhere in the third century A.D., was contrary to the temper of the age, which was turning more and more to dogmatic religion and doctrines of salvation. Scepticism had enough force to make educated men dissatisfied with the State religions, but it had nothing positive, even in the purely intellectual sphere, to offer in their place. From the Renaissance onwards, theological scepticism has been supplemented, in most of its advocates, by an enthusiastic belief in science, but in antiquity there was no such supplement to doubt. Without answering the arguments of the Sceptics, the ancient world turned aside from them. The Olympians being discredited, the way was left clear for an invasion of oriental religions, which competed for the favour of the superstitious until the triumph of Christianity.
-239-
CHAPTER XXVII The Epicureans
two great new schools of the Hellenistic period, the Stoics and Epicureans, were contemporaneous in their foundation. Their founders, Zeno and Epicurus, were born at about the same time, and settled in Athens as heads of their respective sects within a few years of each other. It is therefore a matter of taste which to consider first. I shall begin with the Epicureans, because their doctrines were fixed once for all by their founder, whereas Stoicism had a long development, extending as far as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in A.D. 180.
The main authority for the life of Epicurus is Diogenes Laertius, who lived in the third century A.D. There are, however, two difficulties: first, Diogenes Laertius is himself ready to accept legends of little or no historical value; second, part of his Life consists in reporting the scandalous accusations brought against Epicurus by the Stoics, and it is not always clear whether he is asserting something himself or merely mentioning a libel. The scandals invented by the Stoics are facts about them, to be remembered when their lofty morality is praised; but they are not facts about Epicurus. For instance, there was a legend that his mother was a quack priestess, as to which Diogenes says:
«They (apparently the Stoics) say that he used to go round from house to house with his mother reading out the purification prayers, and assisted his father in elementary teaching for a miserable pittance.»
On this Bailey comments:*»If there is any truth in the story that he went about with his mother as an acolyte, reciting the formulae of her incantations, he may well have been inspired in quite early
____________________
* The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, by Cyril Bailey, Oxford 1928, p. 221. Mr. Bailey has made a specialty of Epicurus, and his book is invaluable to the student.
-240-
years with the hatred of superstition, which was afterwards so prominent a feature in his teaching.» This theory is attractive, but, in view of the extreme unscrupulousness of later antiquity in inventing a scandal, I do not think it can be accepted as having any foundation. *
There is against it the fact that he had an unusually strong affection for his mother. â€
The main facts of the life of Epicurus seem, however, fairly certain. His father was a poor Athenian colonist in Samos; Epicurus was born in 342-1 B.C., but whether in Samos or in Attica is not known. In any case, his boyhood was passed in Samos. He states that he took to the study of philosophy at the age of fourteen. At the age of eighteen, about the time of Alexander’s death, he went to Athens, apparently to establish his citizenship, but while he was there the Athenian colonists were turned out of Samos ( 322 B.C.). The family of Epicurus became refugees in Asia Minor, where he rejoined them. At Taos, either at this time, or perhaps earlier, he was taught philosophy by a certain Nausiphanes, apparently a follower of Democritus. Although his mature philosophy owes more to Democritus than to any other philosopher, he never expressed anything but contempt for Nausiphanes, whom he alluded to as «The Mollusc.»
In the year 311 he founded his school, which was first in Mitylene, then in Lampsacus, and, from 307 onwards, in Athens, where he died in 270-1 B.C.
After the hard years of his youth, his life in Athens was placid, and was only troubled by his ill health. He had a house and a garden (apparently separate from the house), and it was in the garden that he taught. His three brothers, and some others, had been members of his school from the first, but in Athens his community was increased, not only by philosophic disciples, but by friends and their children, slaves
