7. The Epicurean Spectator

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Notes

1. According to Kyle (2007, 256), the Roman inclination to be spectators and to avoid personal, public competition, especially involving nudity, is inherited from the Etruscans, their neighbours to the north.

2. Kyle (2007, 253): notes ‘the eclectic, cosmopolitan nature of [Rome's] sports and spectacles. Over time Roman sport assimilated aspects of Etruscan, Italian, Greek, and Near Eastern traditions.’

3. At De Finibus 2.69, Cicero characterises the Epicurean personification of pleasure as seated on a throne, like a queen, with the virtues at her side as handmaidens who say they are born to be pleasure's slave.

4. See Long and Sedley 1987, 124: ‘Although freedom from bodily pain and freedom from mental disturbance jointly constitute the Epicurean good, the superiority of mental pleasure … makes freedom from mental disturbance (ataraxia), or tranquility, the supreme hallmark of Epicurean happiness.’

5. In discussing Epicureanism, Nussbaum (1994, 234) makes the point that a certain amount of striving anxiety ‘seems both good and human’. But it is a therapeutic striving aimed at peace of mind and liberation from such worldly concerns as winning athletic contests.

6. The eiselasis staged for Exainetos of Akragas included 300 chariots; it sounds even better than a Roman triumph (Kyle 2007, 118).

7. See M.F. Smith in the introduction to Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (2001, xxii).

8. According to Long and Sedley (1987, 147), ‘The idea of god as an object for man to emulate as well as revere was already well developed in the work of Plato and Aristotle. … But Epicurus’ own distinctive achievement lies largely in his reconciling these features with ancient religion's plurality of anthropomorphic deities. Unwelcome aspects of traditional religion, such as divine interference in the world, are explained as false accretions to the basic conception, reflecting faulty moral outlooks – just as in another context the myths about the underworld were explained as projections of men's false moral values. [Epicurus'] inspired suggestion that god is a projection of man's own ethical ideal can be ranked with the most impressive theological theories of antiquity' (Long and Sedley 1987, 147).

9. Quoted by Philodemus, Against the Sophists 4.9–14, trans. Long and Sedley (1987, 156).