Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

by Tim Whitmarsh

  10. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.38; Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.152–77.

  11. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.182–84 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 463. Also Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.43–44. See M. E. Burnyeat, “Gods and Heaps,” in M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (eds.), Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 315–38.

  12. Carneades not an atheist: e.g., Long, “Skepticism About Gods,” 280–81; A. Drozdek, “Skeptics and a Religious Instinct,” Minerva 18 (2005): 93–108. Cicero: On the Nature of the Gods 3.44.

  13. This paragraph and the previous rest heavily on the interpretation of D. Sedley, “From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Age,” in S. Bullivant and M. Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 139–51.

  14. Biography of Clitomachus: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 4.67. Atheist catalogue: M. Winiarczyk, “Der erste Atheistenkatalog des Kleitomachus,” Philologus 120 (1976): 32–46. The title On Atheism is recorded at Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.7. The lists appear at Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.117–19, and Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.50–58. On Epicurus see the following chapter.

  15. Sextus’s teacher and student: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 9.116. Doctor: Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 1.260; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.238. On Sextus see more generally Thorsrud, Ancient Skepticism, 123–46; P. Pellegrin, “Sextus Empiricus,” in R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 120–41.

  16. Arguments against the gods: Against the Mathematicians 9.14–194; also H. W. Attridge, “The Philosophical Critique of Religion Under the Early Empire,” in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.16.1 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1978), 46–51. Arguments equally strong on both sides: 9.59; Skeptic practices but does not believe: 9.49.

  17. Against the Mathematicians 9.14–47.

  18. Ibid., 9.49–59.

  19. Ibid., 9.60–74.

  20. Ibid., 9.75–122.

  21. Ibid., 9.123–32.

  22. Ibid., 9.133–36. This tactic of using parabolē (comparison) argumentation to refute Zeno’s syllogisms may derive from Alexinus: see M. Schofield, “The Syllogisms of Zeno of Citium,” Phronesis 28 (1983): 31–57. Skeptics take part in ritual but do not believe: 9.49.

  23. Against the Mathematicians 9.136–75.

  24. Ibid., 9.176–77.

  12. Epicurus Theomakhos

  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 anagkē 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.

  Part Four: Rome

  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.

  13. With Gods on Our Side

  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.

  14. Virtual Networks

  1. On archaism and Atticism in later Greek culture see especially E. Bowie, “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic,” Past and Present 46 (1970): 3–41, reprinted in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London: Routledge, 1974), 166–209; S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); T. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and The Second Sophistic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). The pomegranate example is from Phrynichus, Selection 223 (Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic, 45). On oratory and impersonation see especially M. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Marathon speeches: Polemo, Declamations 1–2.

  2. Doxography: for revisionist accounts see especially the three volumes of J. Mansfeld and D. Runia, Aëtiana: The Method and Intellectual Context of a Doxographer, vol. 1, The Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1997); vol. 2, The Compendium (Leiden: Brill, 2009); and especially vol. 3, Studies in the Doxographical Traditions of Greek Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

  3. Plato, Laws 886a.

  4. Philodemus, On Piety 19.519–33, with D. Obbink, Philodemus on Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 142–43. On the Epicurean library in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, see M. Gigante, Philodemus in Italy: The Books from Herculaneum, trans. D. Obbink (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 1–13. For more on the reconstruction of On Piety see chapter 7.

  5. See further above, p. 174.

  6. I translate from column 16 of M. F. Smith, Diogenes of Oenoanda: The Epicurean Inscription, edited with introduction, translation, and notes (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1993). C. W. Chilton, Diogenes of Oenoanda: The Fragments (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); many more fragments have since been published. On the inscription and what it tells us about philoso
phical and cultural life at the time see D. Clay, “A Lost Epicurean Community,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 313–35, reprinted in Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters in the History of Epicurean Philosophy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 232–56; P. Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-Century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).

  7. Agnosticism is atheism: see, for example, J. Bagnini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 22–25.

  8. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.117–19; on its derivation from Clitomachus via Philo see M. Winiarczyk, “Der erste Atheistenkatalog des Kleitomachos,” Philologus 120 (1976): 35–36; A. Dyck, Cicero, De Natura Deorum Book I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 9, argues more neutrally for “academic material.”

  9. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

  10. Aëtius, Tenets (Placita) 1.7.1–10; Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians book 9; see also Theophilus, Against Autolycus 3.7. On Aëtius see especially D. Runia, “Atheists in Aëtius: Text, Translation and Comments on De Placitis 1.7.1–10,” in Mansfield and Runia, Aëtiana Volume III, 343–74.

  11. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.54; for other references to atheists as groups see 9.14, 9.51.

  15. Imagine

  1. Age of ambition: P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). Tacitus: Agricola 30.