CHAPTER VII. ATHENS

I.

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW AGE

IN the year that Alexander died in Babylon, two boys in Athens were called up for military service: their names were Epicurus and Menander. In 322 his old tutor, Aristotle, and his enemy, Demosthenes, died also, and in 321 Menander produced his first play, Orge. The classical age is over, and a new epoch begins.

So great a change was not of course immediately apparent. Demades described the defeated city as ‘not the sea-power of our fathers, but a gruel-guzzling old slattern in slippers,’ but on the other hand Antigonus called her ‘the beacon of the world, whence reputation was transmitted to all mankind,’ and sixty years were still to pass before she recognized that her days of imperialism and independence were over. Then followed a generation of submission to Macedonian rule, until, in 229, taking advantage of barbarian invasions of Macedon, Athens was able to buy out the foreign garrison of the Piraeus and proclaim herself to the great powers of the Mediterranean as a neutral state, no longer the centre of commerce or even of literary production, but respected for her glorious past and still attracting students to her schools from all parts of the Greek-speaking world, so that Eratosthenes could refer to the number of philosophers contemporary with Ariston and Arcesilas as unprecedented within the compass of a single city. The political history of Athens during this period is described elsewhere, but her real importance in the third century lies in the last two manifestations of her genius—the New Comedy, and the new philosophies. These form the subject of the present chapter.

But though politics are not our present concern, the changed political situation profoundly influenced the New Comedy and was the immediate cause of the new philosophies. Both accordingly exhibit certain common characteristics which it is convenient to trace before proceeding to consider each in detail. For instance, in both appear two qualities which are almost unknown in earlier literature—cosmopolitanism and individualism, and the two spring from the same source, the conquests of Alexander, which broke down the self-sufficiency and security of the old city-state and ‘relieved active men from the ambitions of a military or political career’. Though the sacred cause of democracy still struggled, with varying success, to maintain itself in Athens, though kings continued in Sparta, the progress of the century marks their steady decline from sovereign states to municipal towns, merged in military empires.

The older citizens learn to think parochially, while the younger, more adventurous spirits go fortune-hunting Eastward Ho!1, whence they return to swagger across the stage in the role of Alazon or Miles Gloriosus and boast of their conquests in love and war. Thus the curtailment of national activities and the removal of the old frontiers forced men to substitute for former loyalties both a greater interest in their own personal lives and a recognition of a common humanity: even the distinction between Greek and barbarian tends to disappear, as no longer corresponding to a real division. It has been usual to credit Stoicism with the discovery and proclamation of the cosmopolitan idea, but while the theory had been preached as early as the Sophists and was practised as generously by the Epicureans, Plutarch2 seems to be right when he insists that the cause which made it practicable was not philosophy:

After all, the much admired Republic of Zeno, founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in one main principle: we are not to live nationally or parochially, split up into various groups with private conventions; we are to consider all men fellow-countrymen, and our life and world are to be one— one flock living together in one fold. But while Zeno sketched his philosopher’s Utopia on paper, it was Alexander who gave the theory realization. 

Aristophanes could never have written the original of Terence’s famous line

                                                 homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

But we find it, or something very like, in Menander—

                             No honest man I call

          A foreigner; one nature have we all.

A third note common to the New Comedy and to the new philosophies, and equally due to the new conditions, is the recognition of the all-but dominant role played in human affairs by Chance. The plays reveal, and the new schools presuppose, what the history of Polybius reflects, a background in which almost anything may happen to anybody at any moment. Human endeavour and forethought are for ever being brought to nothing by incalculable and resistless strokes of Fortune, and the odds in favour of disappointment and unhappiness are so great that the wisest man is he who has fewest expectations:

                     The favourite of Heaven dies in youth.

In short, we are dealing with an age which, like our own, is consequent upon a great catastrophe. Institutions which seemed settled and secure have been destroyed and old landmarks removed, confidence has been badly shaken, unexpected misfortunes have been experienced. And yet life has somehow to go on. We cannot wonder if the literature of the time reflects what has been called ‘a failure of nerve,’ a lowering of aspiration and withdrawal from high endeavour, a tendency to yield to circumstance rather than strive to control it, and to put safety first.

II.

THE NEW COMEDY

Down to the end of the nineteenth century our knowledge of the New Comedy was confined to three sources—the occasional notices of ancient critics, the Latin translations or adaptations by Plautus and Terence3, and a considerable number of fragments, few of which exceeded ten continuous lines. The first of these raised an expectation which the second entirely failed to satisfy, while the third were too short and disconnected to form the basis of any definite opinion. We hear of five names—Philemon, Diphilus, Apollodorus, Poseidippus and Menander—of whom the last, neglected by his contemporaries, attained by far the greatest reputation from posterity. Thus Aristophanes of Byzantium praised his realism in the well-known line:

                                           Menander! Life!

     I wonder which of you has copied which?

and Quintilian stated that in his opinion Menander alone, if carefully studied, would suffice to produce all the qualities desired to make a successful orator: ‘so complete is his picture of life, so fertile his imagination and command of language, so perfect his adaptation to every circumstance, character and emotion’. On the other hand, few readers of Roman comedy can have disagreed with Mommsen’s verdict, when he complains of their ‘tiresome monotony,... the dreadful desolation of life,…the fearfully prosaic atmosphere,... above all the immoral morality.’ But, it was argued, these faults were due to the transmitters, not to the originals: the Romans themselves had acknowledged the shortcomings of their countrymen. Aulus Gellius provides an illustration. ‘We were reading Caecilius’ Plocium, with pleasure to all present, and we thought we would read the original by Menander also. Heavens! how flat and dull Caecilius immediately appeared, and what a change after Menander!’ and he proceeds to support his judgment with extracts. Then, in 1905, at a place near Cairo, appropriately named Aphroditopolis, Gustave Lefebvre found a papyrus containing 1400 lines of Menander, 659 of which belonged to one play, The Arbitrants (Epitrepontes), so that we have altogether now not quite 4000 lines of his, perhaps one twenty-fifth of what he wrote. No play indeed is yet complete, but we have sufficient material surely to form a judgment. What is the verdict? Undoubtedly our first feeling is one of disappointment. The new fragments exhibit on the whole just those characteristics with which the Latin imitations had made us familiar and which Mommsen had condemned. There is the same narrow range of plot, the same lack of interest in public life or foreign affairs, the same concentration on amatory intrigue with the assumptions that ‘all’s fair in love’ and ‘all’s well that ends well.’ The realism and fidelity to nature, so much admired by antiquity, appear to have consisted more in the skill with which he reproduced the linguistic characteristics of his various types1 than in psychological observation: his studies of character do not show, so far as we can see, any particular subtlety or depth.  In one of his rapid reviews of previous poets Ovid wrote (Amores)

So long as fathers bully, servants lie,

And women smile, MENANDER cannot die,

and it seems that here, as so often, he laid his finger on the essential.

Feeling therefore free to include in our evidence the Latin plays which have survived as well as the Greek fragments, new and old, we may attempt to summarize very briefly the main features of the New Comedy. As all ancient authorities testified, it has more in common with Euripides than with Aristophanes. The agon, round which the Old Comedy centred, is gone, and so is the chorus: interludes are provided, where necessary, by bands of revellers, ‘young men half-seas-over.’ The central theme is almost always the love of a young man in good social position for a girl who has none, and his efforts (or rather those of his servant) to conceal his passion from his father. His intentions may or may not be honourable, but it presently transpires that his beloved is a lady after all, who had by one means or other been separated from her parents, and the play ends happily with marriage bells. The main emphasis is laid on youth and the pleasures that money can buy. Married women appear but seldom, and never to advantage, and married life is depicted in the background as very different from the thrills which lead up to it. There is a great deal about eating (not so much about drinking), and cooks and their Art are treated with the frequency and respect due to a popular subject. Secondary types are doctors, philosophers and soldiers, who provide comic relief.

The fragments, especially those of Menander, abound in moral commonplaces, pithily expressed, and in worldly wisdom mellowed by a kindly tolerance of human frailty. So far as they contain a criticism of life, their attitude is Epicurean, not Stoic, and there is no depth of either thought or feeling. One illustration must suffice. It is taken from one of the newly discovered plays, The Arbitrants, and occurs towards the end. Smicrines, persuaded that his daughter is being unfairly treated, is on his way to take her from her husband, if necessary, by force, when he meets Onesimus, a slave, who is better informed as to the situation.

ONES. Do you believe the gods have time enough

To pay each individual every day

His wages, good or bad ?

SMIC. How do you mean?

ONES. I’ll show you. All the cities in the world

Are, say, a thousand: thirty thousand souls Inhabit each of them. Does Heaven damn 

Or save each of these millions one by one?

SMIC. They cannot have so hard a time as that!

ONES. Then do they take (you’ll ask) no interest 

In us? We have attached as Resident 

In each his Character, which from within 

Damns one, who chooses to mishandle It, 

And saves another. That’s the God for us, 

The source of happiness or misery 

For everyone. If you want happiness, 

Please It, by not behaving stupidly.

SMIC. And so my Character, you atheist,

Is at this moment acting stupidly?

ONES. It’s crushing you. 

SMIC. What damned impertinence!

ONES. Well, do you think it right to separate

One’s daughter from her husband?

SMIC.                            No one calls

It right. Just now it can’t be helped. ones. 

ONES.                            You see?

What’s wrong our friend considers ‘can’t be helped,’

And nothing but his Character contrives 

His ruin! You are on the brink of crime, 

And now pure Chance has saved you, and you find 

Your difficulties solved and reconciled.

                                 (Epitrepontes, 544—569.)

But the dominant impression left upon the mind from a study of the Greek fragments—and here they differ from the Latin copies, written a century or more later, when conditions had changed—is, as has been said, the helplessness of man against the changes and chances of this mortal life, in which he is at the mercy of external circumstance and may be ruined in a moment. The references to the dazzling whirligigs of life and the power and caprice of Fortune are too common in Menander to be negligible. Here are a few examples:

In short, you’re human. There’s no living thing

Is subjected to such a sudden swing

Up to the heights and back to degradation. (Frag. 531.)

Fortune observes no rules

In her decisions, and while life endures

No man can boast 'That fate shall ne’er be mine.’ (Frag. 355)

We live, not as we choose, but as we may. (Frag. 50.)

So many cases I have known

Of men who, though not naturally rogues,

Became so, through misfortune, by constraint. (Frag. 604.)

It was in this soil, and to meet this menace, that the new philosophies grew. And so Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle, ‘is bitterly attacked in the books and lectures of all philosophers’1 for approving in his Callisthenes Chaeremon’s line

                             Fortune, not counsel, guides the affairs of men.

He had betrayed his cloth, sold the pass, and surrendered to the eternal foe.

III.

THE NEW PHILOSOPHIES

The first effect of Alexander’s conquests upon thought was to render obsolete and useless those theories of morals and social organization which we consider most typically classical. Aristotle’s Ethics for example must have seemed out of date almost as soon as its author died. Both to him and to Plato it had been axiomatic that ‘good living,’ or happiness in the highest sense, was only possible for members of the limited, self-sufficient and self-governing communities to which they were accustomed. ‘Man is a political animal,’ the individual is intended by Nature to form part of Society, in whose service alone he can find full self-expression, and without which he is ‘either a god or a beast’. But now society as they had known it, the sovereign city-state, had ceased to exist. And many who were not professed students of philosophy, who had taken current institutions for granted and accepted the law and custom of their polis as an unquestioned authority, must have felt themselves left without guidance and protection just at the time when life was most difficult and insecure. This bewilderment found its echo in the nihilistic pronouncements of Pyrrhon and of his pupil, Timon of Phlius. They criticized the presuppositions of all other philosophers: for them the only certainty was that there was no certainty. But such a system of thought was scarcely constructive, and can have brought little comfort to spiritual exiles, who required new standards of values and a home where they might be safe from fear of men or fortune.

These philosophy now set itself to provide. The change of attitude may be shown by two quotations. To Plato and Aristotle the origin of philosophy had been a sense of intellectual doubt and perplexity: to Epictetus it is ‘a consciousness of one’s own weakness and inadequacy.’ To Cicero philosophy is ‘the art, or guide, of life,’ ‘the training, or healing, of the soul,’1 to Plutarch ‘the only medicine for spiritual diseases.’ In other words, metaphysics sink into the background, and ethics, now individual, become of the first importance. Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before a few intrepid seekers after truth: it is rather an ambulance following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up the weak and wounded. To this extent at least it occupied the place filled by religion today, and the post-Aristotelian schools, like modern churches, made no distinction of nationality or status or even sex. They offered to all by diverse ways a road to peace and happiness and a stronghold against the attacks of Fortune, and tried to construct in ‘the Sage’ an ideal character who should be independent of all outward circumstance.

Two systems of thought were pre-eminently successful in meeting this need. Separated at first sight by a fundamental difference of standpoint, and appealing, now as then, to opposite sides of human nature, they had nevertheless certain elements in common. While the Jews learnt from their political disasters to look forward to a good time coming, it did not occur to either Epicurus or Zeno to call in a new world to redress the balance of the old. Both schools were materialistic, and brought no hopes of heaven or new revelation of God. They sought rather to make each man a god unto himself, and preached independence through withdrawal and resignation rather than by conquest. Thus evil is avoided by Epicurus, denied by Zeno, by neither overcome.

With the details of either system we shall be concerned presently. Let us first contrast the general attitude of each, and note by what different paths they point to the same goal.

IV.

EPICURUS

Epicurus is one to whom tradition has done scant justice. We have been taught to think of him as a godless scientist and an immoral pleasure-seeker, whereas in fact he did not deny the existence of the gods—but only their interference in the affairs of men—cared nothing for science in itself, and sought not pleasure, but peace. Born in 341, an Athenian citizen, he lived with his father Neocles in Samos, until in 322 the family were expelled with other Athenian settlers from the island by Perdiccas, and he spent the next fifteen years without a settled home. It has been suggested that ‘he built up his philosophy while helping his parents and brothers through this bad time,’ and certainly Epicureanism betrays symptoms of a refugee philosophy. Possessing himself a strong personality, with a genius for friendship, he was the author of a real evangel to many who were in bondage to the fear of death or to that mental disquietude which is produced sooner or later by polytheism. The gospel according to Epicurus has come down to us less imperfectly than its Stoic rival (which is our excuse for allowing it the larger space), and though the three hundred rolls attributed to his pen are lost, including 37 books On Nature and the longer summary which is supposed to be the authority followed by Lucretius, we have three letters (or Epistles) preserved by Diogenes Laertius, as well as the poem of his great disciple. These, together with some essays by Cicero and Plutarch and the recently discovered fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda, enable us to reconstruct it with some approach to completeness. Based on the atomic theory of Democritus, to which it added one patent improvement, and an entirely naturalistic interpretation of the Universe, it drew the essential inference that man has nothing to fear—either from the gods, who live in careless bliss, remote from our world, and unconcerned to punish or reward us, or from a life to come, since our souls are as mortal as our bodies, and Death is but a sleep that has no waking. It included as corollaries an explanation of the legendary torments of Hell in terms of this life—for men make their own hell here and now1, and an account of the evolution of man from savagery to civilization which attributed every step to natural development and left no room for the interposition of Divine beneficence: progress came, as the undesigned consequence of time and experience; necessity was the mother of invention.

Wonderful to relate, no change is recorded in the teaching of the school from the Master’s death in 270 till its final disappearance six centuries later. Epicureanism was, it has been said, a secular Church with infallible dogmas. The grosser minds of Rome seized on those sides of it which were most liable to perversion and won for it the infamy associated with the term ‘epicure.’ But if Roman converts were swine, Epicurus himself was no swine-herd. To the strength and charm of his character even opponents bore witness, while ‘in his lifetime his friends were numbered by whole cities.’ In the Garden outside Athens which he bought for his followers women and slaves were made welcome, and little children were among the recipients of his letters. Faithful to his precept ‘Live unobtrusively,’ Epicureans played no prominent part in politics. But wherever our scanty records of the past enable us to catch a glimpse of them, two things are notable. As an early Society of Friends they did much to develop the more amiable virtues of domesticity in a hard and unsettled age, but they were also always missionaries, waging truceless warfare against superstition, with which their rivals, Platonist, neo-Pythagorean and Stoic, came to terms. In this they were the allies, however unwitting and unwelcome, of the early Christians, with whose unpopularity they had the honour to be associated in a common charge of atheism.

This outline of Epicurus’ contribution may be rounded off with three quotations. The first is one of the passages in which Lucretius praises the Saviour who brought life and—mortality to light, and forms the opening of his Fifth Book (1—14, 43—54):

Who is sufficient, blessed with powers of brain

Enough to build an adequate refrain 

To match a Truth so wonderful, and those 

Discoveries? Or who is such a lord

 Of language, as may praises fit compose 

For his deserts, who left us such reward, 

Won by the travail of his fruitful brain? 

No man, I fancy, born of mortal strain!

For should I speak of him as is decreed

By the known wondrous Truth, He was indeed 

A god, who first that way of living taught 

Which now we call Philosophy, and brought 

Life’s vessel out of Ocean’s storms and night 

Into calm waters and most radiant light.

Then, after a scornful comparison of the legendary labours of the Stoic hero Heracles with the real services rendered by Epicurus to mankind, he continues

But till the heart is cleansed, what perils must

We enter then, what struggles of disgust! 

What bitter pangs of passion then divide 

The troubled breast, what terrors! Think of Pride, 

And filthy, wanton Lust: what havoc both 

Occasion! Think of Luxury and Sloth!

And shall not he who all these evils quelled

And from the heart by words, not arms, expelled, 

Though man, be justly reckoned in the line 

Of Gods? Since too with eloquence divine 

The very Gods Immortal he revealed 

And every mystery of life unsealed.

The second is from Lucian’s Life of Alexander, one of those religious impostors, who, deceiving themselves as well as others, sprang up all over the Roman Empire in the second century A.D. and found in the Epicureans their stoutest opponents:

In this connection Alexander once made himself supremely ridiculous. Coming across Epicurus’ Sovereign Principles, that noblest of books, which embraces in outline the main points of the Master’s wisdom, he brought it into the middle of the market place and burnt it... The wretch knew nothing of the blessings of which that book has been the cause to those into whose hands it fell, or of what peace, tranquillity and freedom it produces in them, releasing them from fears, phantoms and nightmares, vain hopes and inordinate affections, instilling reason and truth, and truly purifying the mind not with ceremonial rubbish, but with right judgment, truth and liberty.

I have dared to write this in defence of Epicurus, a real saint and prophet, who alone saw and declared the Beautiful and True, and has proved a saviour to those who came unto him. (Alexander, 47, 61.)

Lastly, four lines, in Greek twelve words (the tetrapharmakos), excavated at Herculaneum a hundred years ago, sum up the Epicurean attitude to life:

There is nothing to fear in God:

There is nothing to feel in Death: 

What is good is easily procured; 

What is ill is easily endured.

‘Meanwhile,’ wrote Sir Thomas Browne, ‘Epicurus lies deep in Dante’s hell, wherein we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortality. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spoke, or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practise and conversation—were a query too sad to insist on.’ (Hydrotaphia, IV.)

V.

ZENO

Very different was the ideal and influence of Stoicism.

Its founder, Zeno of Citium in Cyprus, came to Athens as a shipwrecked merchant about the year 314, and after attending the lectures of Xenocrates and Polemon in the Academy and the Cynic Crates he became a teacher himself in 301. ‘He used to discourse promenading up and down the Colonnade or “Porch” (stoa) of Peisianax, celebrated for Polygnotus’ painting of the Persian defeat, and so his followers, who had formerly been called Zenonians, were named Stoics.’ His native city contained settlers from Phoenicia, and he himself is frequently called a Phoenician, while three of his immediate successors were born at Tarsus, the meeting place of East and West: hence it is perhaps not fanciful to recognize in Stoic teaching some of those characteristics—an intolerance of imperfection amounting to a sense of ‘Sin,’ an uncompromising idealism, and a demand for resignation before the All-Supreme—which we associate with the Semitic spirit and find later in Islam, but which were new to the thought of Hellas. To Zeno seems to have been due the introduction of the ideas and words of Duty and Conscience, as well as the distinction of moral values, which are absolute, from practical values, which are relative and strictly indifferent. He first asserted clearly that the will or intention is everything, and that circumstances are nothing, except as forming material for exercising the will and building character. One thing alone is ‘good’—goodness or ‘Virtue.’

But just here a curious vagueness appears in the teaching.

The process by which we rise from Nature’s first impulse to self-preservation up to the conscious and continuous exercise of virtue is not clearly demonstrated, and when we ask what is ‘Virtue’? a definite reply is not given. It is distinct from the arete of Aristotle, it is not this or that; but what is its positive content? ‘It is not easy to answer the charge.... that, after all, they were merely ascetics; in other words, that their morality not only begins with the mortification of their passions, but ends there.’ In their preoccupation with personal righteousness, their austere attitude towards human nature and their love of terminological distinctions, the Stoics remind us of the Pharisees, and it is interesting to note that Josephus explicitly makes the comparison. Their creed has often been lauded as the noblest embodiment of pre-Christian thought, but it is at best a gospel of Detachment (and as such can be paralleled in Indian ethics), far removed from the gospel of Love. Marcus Aurelius writes of our days as a pilgrimage and a sojourning, but the journey has no goal. We have not even the doctrine of Progress proclaimed by the Epicureans; we may hope for nothing better than the ‘final’ conflagration, after which the cycle of events will be repeated down to the smallest detail. To the Stoic the world is the best of all possible worlds, but everything in it a necessary evil, including one’s fellow-creatures. In Seneca’s sermons the slave is a man and a brother, but in practice he and other Stoics seem to have interpreted Brotherhood in the manner of the Elder Brother in the parable. Marcus Aurelius tells himself:

“In one respect men are our nearest duty, in so far as we are bound to suffer them and do them good. But in so far as particular individuals interfere with my proper functions, man becomes to me a thing indifferent, no less than sun or wind or beast of the field.”

Even Epictetus, the most lovable of them, warns his hearers:

“As on a voyage, when the vessel has reached a port and you go ashore to get water, it is an amusement by the way to pick up a shell or a flower, but your thoughts ought all the while to be directed to the ship, continually on the watch for the captain’s call, and when it comes, you must throw all those things away and hasten, that you may not have to be bound and thrown aboard by others: so in life also, if, instead of a flower or a shell, you be given a wife or child, there is naught to hinder you from taking them for your own; but should the Captain call, run to the ship, and leave all that behind.” 

The Stoic paid a high price for his independence and the ‘unconquerable soul.’ He dare not become sin to deliver others, or poor, that they by his poverty might be made rich. All emotions that might disturb his central calm, all adjuncts within the reach of envious Fortune—pity, love, the fate of others—these must be regarded as of no essential value by the Sage. To render himself invulnerable, he turned his heart into a stone: he made a solitude, and called it peace. It is magnificent, but it is not peace.

Before we proceed to set forth these two new systems in detail, a glance is needed at the older schools. Plato at the Academy was followed by a series of undistinguished moralists, until the headship of Arcesilas, who died in 241, revived its prestige and gave a new turn to its teaching. The change began with his fierce opposition to the theory of knowledge on which the Stoics based their dogmatism. Zeno had taught that of our sense-impressions or presentations (phantasiai) some are so ‘vivid and striking’ as to convey immediate certainty of their truth or of the reality of their objects. Such a presentation he called ‘apprehensive’ (kataleptike phantasia) and defined as one ‘stamped or impressed upon the mind from a real object, and representing that object as it is— such as could not come from an unreal object!’ To this Arcesilas replied that we have no means of knowing whether a presentation comes from a ‘real object’ or not, or of distinguishing between true and false sensations: you never can tell.

Next, the Academy seems to have been hoist with its own petard, and the agnosticism, first assumed by Arcesilas for controversial purposes, became his positive belief. Looking back into history, he found the same sceptical attitude in the fountain-head, Socrates, except that Socrates did not go far enough, for he claimed to know that he knew nothing. ‘And so,’ says Cicero, who is inclined to confess himself an adherent of this school, ‘Arcesilas declared that nothing could be known—not even Socrates’ exception. Everything, he thought, was buried in mystery: neither comprehension nor certainty was possible. It was therefore wrong to assert or assent to any proposition: judgment should be suspended: nothing was more immoral than to let assent or belief outrun knowledge or comprehension. Putting his ideas into practice, he attacked all dogmas and converted most men to his own: finding the arguments on the opposite sides of the same question evenly balanced, they were the more ready to withhold assent from either. This is the New Academy so-called’. The Academy remained predominantly sceptical for the next two centuries, until Antiochus, who died in 69, produced quite another reading of history and the catholic tradition.

Meanwhile in the Lyceum Aristotle’s followers were continuing along the lines which he had prescribed of common research and the historical method. ‘While armies sweep Greece this way and that, while the old gods are vanquished and the cities lose their freedom and their meaning,’ writes Professor Murray, ‘the Peripatetics instead of passionately saving souls diligently pursued knowledge, and in generation after generation produced scientific results which put all their rivals into the shade.’ In view of the loss of almost all Peripatetic writings, this statement errs perhaps on the side of generosity, but we do know something of the quantity of their output, even if we cannot judge of its quality. The volume of Problems^ included in the Aristotelian Corpus, indicates the nature and range of their enquiries. Theophrastus, head of the school from 322 to 288, wrote not only the famous Characters and treatises on botany and psychology which have survived, but also compiled the first History of Philosophy which seems to have been the main source of the Placita ascribed to Plutarch and Aetius; fragments of it remain embedded in the commentaries on Aristotle by Simplicius in the sixth century A.D. Similarly Aristoxenus wrote the history of music, Duris of art, Eudemus of mathematics and astronomy, and Menon of medicine, while Dicaearchus brought geography up to date with a text and map embodying the new knowledge of the East gained by the armies of Macedon. To the Peripatetic school above all we owe the transition from philosophy to a number of specialized sciences. But ‘ by the middle of the third century its work was over; it had rendered much service to science and much disservice to history.’

VII.

STOICISM

Turning now to such a detailed account of the new systems as our space affords, we naturally take Stoicism first, as having more in common with the older schools than its rival. Indeed Zeno was accused of having plagiarized his ideas from the Academic Polemon, and Cicero, the earliest consecutive authority that happens to have survived, is fond of discussing the question whether the difference between Stoics and Peripatetics is not one of words rather than of essentials. The question is complicated for us by our loss of the original authorities. The first three heads of the Porch, Zeno (301—261), Cleanthes (261—231) and Chrysippus (231—206), were all prolific writers, but their works lacked style—Dionysius of Halicarnassus quotes Chrysippus as a typical example of how not to write—and dropped out of circulation, so that we have no continuous account of their teaching until we come to Cicero, two centuries later, by which time it had admittedly suffered modification, and no professedly Stoic writings till Seneca: there is no extant Stoic with authority or literary power comparable with the Epicurean Lucretius. It seems however possible to consider Stoicism as an attempt to simplify the views of Aristotle, alike in metaphysics, psychology and ethics. Thus Zeno reduced Aristotle’s four causes to two, which appear to be different aspects of one principle, asserted the unity of the soul against Aristotle’s distinction of a rational and irrational part, and denied the Peripatetic theory of three kinds of goods, by insisting that there is no good but goodness. But while a historic continuity can thus be traced, it is only fair to repeat that Zeno introduced a moral tone and religious earnestness that transform the whole system.

In their account of the world (physics), the Stoics retained only two of Aristotle’s four causes, or, to put it in another way, instead of analysing everything into Matter and Form, they postulated an original Matter and Force. Everything which exists is Matter, but as Force, the Cause, which is creative Reason (logos) or God, is eternally present in every part of it, the two principles may be regarded as different aspects of the same reality, though no Stoic writer explicitly identifies them. Hence we have two parallel accounts, one physical, the other metaphysical or theological, of the same Universe.

For the first the Stoics went back to Heracleitus. The ultimate reality is Fire, which differentiates itself into air-currents of varying tension (tonos, i.e. ‘energy’?), upon which the material qualities of things depend—‘hardness in iron, thickness in stone, and whiteness in silver’. But Fire is also Reason or God. Zeno’s great originality was the identification of the logos of the Socratics —the regulative principle of human thinking and action—with the Logos of Heracleitus, to which he gave ‘cosmological significance.’ The Reason which is in and rules the world is one with the reason in our breasts which governs our lives. Therefore the Law of the Universe is also the law of our own nature, and we can only realize ourselves truly by conforming to the purpose of God, whose service is perfect freedom. Zeus, World-Soul, Creator, Providence, Nature, Necessity or Fate—all are but different descriptions of the same reality. And so the Stoics literally made a virtue of necessity, and Cleanthes, like John Newman, found peace in resignation:

Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, O Destiny,

               Lead thou me on.

To whatsoever task thou sendest me,

               Lead thou me on.

I follow fearless, or, if in mistrust

I lag and will not, follow still I must.

Or, as Seneca puts it,

                                                 Our wills are ours—to make them Thine.

From this followed a cosmopolitanism, which, though not a new idea in the world, found with the Stoics a clearer intellectual basis than elsewhere. ‘The universe is like a community composed of gods and men, wherein the gods possess lordship and men are subjects. And men have fellowship one with another, through partaking in reason, which is natural law’. ‘Each of us owns two fatherlands, one the country in which we happen to be born, the other an Empire upon which the sun never sets’.

Thus the Stoics retained, what the Epicureans explicitly denied, a faith in the providential government of the world, and therein lay their strength to stand before kings and rebuke oppressors. But this faith cost them a heavy price, in compromising with contemporary superstition and allegorizing traditional mythology, while their attempted explanations of Evil drove them to some very special pleading. The best expression of the metaphysical or religious side of Stoicism is to be found, curiously enough, in two famous stanzas of the Catholic poet Pope:

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; 

That changed through all, and yet in all the same, 

Great in the earth, as in the etherial frame, 

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 

Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 

Spreads undivided, operates unspent, 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, 

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: 

To him no high, no low, no great, no small, 

He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all. 

Cease then, nor order imperfection name; 

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 

Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree 

Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee, 

Submit; in this, or any other sphere, 

Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear; 

Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r, 

Safe in the natal, or the mortal hour. 

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good: 

And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, 

One truth is clear—Whatever is, is right.

                            (Essay on Man)

In psychology again the Stoics returned to monism. Man soul is not governed by two chambers—reason and an irrational part— as Aristotle taught, but by reason alone. But reason may make mistakes of partial or hasty vision, and such misjudgement or ‘superfluity of impulse’ is what is called ‘passion.’ Thus avarice rests upon a mistaken idea that money is good, pleasure is due to a false opinion of what is really desirable, etc. And all passions, not only fear and pleasure, but also pain (which includes pity) and desire (which includes love) are forbidden to the Sage.

But the centre for Stoicism, as for its rival, lay in ethics, and here too Zeno effected a masterly simplification. Aristotle had recognized ‘three kinds of goods’—goods of the body, such as good looks and health, and external goods, such as prosperity and friendship, as well as goods of the soul. Zeno on the other hand enunciated the paradox of the unique goodness of goodness. The only thing that matters is that which proceeds out of a man, the purpose or intention within his heart. ‘A benefit consists not in the gift, but in the mind of the giver.’ ‘There can be no right action without right intention’. Hence of things, nothing is ‘good’ or has moral value but Virtue, for outward circumstances are but material for the will; and no action is right unless proceeding from a good will. No act is right or wrong in itself, and Zeno had no objection in theory to the grossest violations of  convention, as cannibalism, incest or homosexuality1. But all acts not rightly motived are sins, and all sins are equal, since one drowns as surely but one inch below the surface of the sea as fifty fathoms down. Hence all who have not attained Virtue remain miserable sinners. ‘We have all sinned, and we shall continue to be failures to the end of time’ (Seneca, de dementia). Similarly all things not morally good or bad are ‘indifferent’—‘such as life and death, good and ill report, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, health and sickness, and the like’. Happiness depends alone on Virtue.

Beside this rigid scheme of moral virtues, the Stoics recognized another standard of relative, practical values, with a second set of technical terms applying to acts and things. Things ‘according to nature’ they allowed to have ‘worth’ and called ‘preferred’ or ‘promoted’, these have no moral value, but are ‘desirable’, whilst their opposites are ‘undesirable’ : here the bodily and external goods of Aristotle were placed. Again it is ‘up to’ us to perform certain acts as are appropriate to the occasion, either as being suggested by Nature and contributory to harmonious living or as admitting of reasonable defence. Such ‘obligations’ or duties Zeno termed kathekonta, which Cicero rendered officia. Under particular circumstances, we are told, it becomes kathekon even for the Sage, though happy, to make his own exit from life, and in fact both Zeno and Cleanthes found it unfitting to survive.

It has been held, by ancient as well as modern critics, that the theory of official, which popularized by Cicero’s treatise proved so attractive to the Roman mind, was an after-thought, forced upon the original Stoicism as a concession to common sense. But we are expressly told that the word kathekon was adopted by Zeno himself, and Cicero is careful to make his Stoic spokesman insist that the two standards do not imply two final standards of Good  What is the exact relation between them, or how they can consistently be maintained beside each other, we are never told, and modern attempts to fill the gap are only guesswork.

VIII.

EPICUREANISM

Unlike Stoicism, the system of Epicurus admitted neither continuity with previous thinkers1 nor concessions to criticism, but it was even more direct in its subordination of everything to an ethical point of view. Neither science nor logic (which Epicurus called Canonic) was of any interest to him except in so far as either served to secure peace and quietness of mind. In the epistle to Pythocles he writes:

“First then do not suppose any other end to be gained from knowledge of the skies… or from anything else, than peace of mind (ataraxia} and firm confidence... for what our life needs is not originality and vain opinions, but to pass our days without alarm.”

We must, and can, know the fundamental truth about reality, that it consists of atoms and void and nothing else, but to dogmatize, as the astronomers do, about the causes of particular phenomena is foolish waste of time. More than one explanation is always possible of such mysteries as why the heavenly bodies rise and set or are eclipsed, and we are not in a position to decide between them; but any that is not opposed to observation is good enough, so long as it frees us from fear.

“Above all, leave God out, exempt from responsibility and in the enjoyment of all blessedness. For if this is not secured, all our explanation of the skies will be in vain.... Only let superstition be got rid of, as it will be, if we interpret the unknown in true agreement with the known.”

And there is one thing worse even than superstition:

“It were better to follow the fairytales of gods than to be a slave to the Determinism of the scientists. The one does suggest a hope of appeasing the gods by reverencing them, but the other implies a Necessity which is implacable.”

As to the possibility of knowledge, we need not hesitate to trust our senses, for they bring us into immediate contact with reality.

“There is a continuous stream from the surface of bodies,... in which the original position and order of the atoms are preserved for a considerable period, even though sometimes they are confused... .The flight of these films (idola} through space, if not impeded by any obstacle, takes an inconceivably short time to accomplish any conceivable distance... .Our perception of shapes and our ideas are due to some one of these films from external objects invading us,...films which resemble their originals in colour and shape, on a scale accommodated to our sight or understanding.... So too, hearing is produced by a wave proceeding from the object which calls or makes a noise or sound or by whatever means excites audibility... .Nor could smell, any more than hearing, have ever effected a response, had there not been certain molecules arising off the object, adapted to excite this particular organ of sense.”

In this way both the subjectivity of our sensations and undeniable delusions, such as a square tower appearing round from a distance, may be explained. Either the films miss our sense-organ, or they are damaged on the way, or the mind may draw a false inference from them. Sensations in themselves are always true or real—the Greek word is the same: to deny that lands us in scepticism. But with opinions and ideas, which are the work of the mind, the possibility of error begins. These are true only when they have been attested, or at least not contradicted, by experience: we must always wait and see. Finally, our feelings assure us that pleasure is good and pain evil.

Upon this minimum of epistemological theory Epicurus proceeded to build his account of the Universe. Starting from the self-evident laws of Nature, that nothing comes from nothing or can be reduced to nothing, he deduced the existence of an infinite number of invisible, indestructible bodies, moving eternally in infinite space. The atoms have three kinds of motion— that due to their own weight, that caused by their collisions with one another, and a third which forms the most original element in the system. It so happens that none of our fragments of Epicurus contain a mention of the famous doctrine of the Swerve, but disciples such as Lucretius and Diogenes of Oenoanda are in agreement with opponents like Cicero and Plutarch as to its existence, though there is not the same agreement as to its explanation. Thus Cicero suggests that Epicurus was ‘suddenly struck by the brilliant idea’ that a rain of atoms at equal speeds in parallel columns down through space would no more collide than do two lines, and that consequently there would be no Universe produced. And ‘so he introduced a pure invention, and declared that the atoms swerved, just the least infinitesimal bit’ : he also designed by this invention to avoid the determinism of Democritus But the orthodox account seems to have been that this theory, like the rest, was a direct deduction from experience. We know that there is a Universe, and therefore the atoms must have clashed. Further we know that we have freewill, and this quality, like any other, must have its cause in the atoms. Consequently the atoms swerve, and this is not contradicted by experience, for no one can see that they do not! The evidence of Lucretius is decisive:

Moreover, if all motion is so linked

That new from old inexorably springs 

Nor atoms swerving give the starting-point 

Of change to burst Determinism’s reign 

And break the everlasting causal chain, 

Whence came into the world this privilege 

Of living things, this freedom wrung from Fate,

 By which we move according to our will 

And change our course at undetermined times

 In uncontrolled directions, as we choose?

But while the atoms have the property of swerving ‘at times and places undetermined,’ we must not attribute to them consciousness or design. It was in fulfilment of no plan, but merely through ‘fortuitous concourse,’ that the worlds have come into being, since in the eternal process of infinite time all possible combinations and permutations must have been effected.

For certainly it was not by design

That atoms, gifted with intelligence, 

Arranged themselves in order, or agreed

 Upon the movements to be made by each! 

But that the ever-shifting change and chance 

Of countless numbers through the world dispersed 

Have in the buffetings of countless time 

All motions and all combinations tried 

And such positions finally assumed 

As those which constitute our Universe.

And let us not insult the gods by fathering upon them any concern for our weal or woe.

For it is certain that the gods enjoy

An immortality of perfect peace 

Apart and far removed from our concerns,

Free from all pain and peril, in themselves 

Sufficient, needing naught of human love, 

Whom neither service wins nor passions move.

For, though I knew not what the atoms were, 

Yet from the very workings of the skies 

I dare assert and prove by much besides— 

No God Almighty ever made for man 

A Universe of such imperfect plan.

Evolution has been due to ‘Nature’ and man’s need, to nothing else.

And man himself? The individual consists of a union of body and soul. Both are the result of temporary combinations of atoms, material and therefore mortal. And there is no Heaven beyond the grave—nor Hell. ‘Therefore Death, the king of terrors, is no concern of ours, since when we exist, Death is not present, and when Death is come, then we are not’. This is the crowning mercy of Epicurus’ gospel, and in the 250 lines which conclude his Third Book Lucretius has exhausted human eloquence and power in his earnest endeavour to commend it.

Man therefore finds himself a stranger in a blind world, which is unconscious of his presence and unconcerned for his welfare, and he must make the best terms for himself in his few years that he can. Who will show him any good ? Nature herself provides the answer.

“Every living creature doth from the moment of birth pursue after Pleasure and delight therein as in the supreme good, and doth reject and so far as may be banish Pain as the supreme evil, and this it doth, being as yet not fallen from innocence, but following the pure and undefiled judgment of Nature.” 

But what is Pleasure? In two fragments, continually quoted by his opponents, Epicurus said: ‘The source and root of all good is the pleasure of the belly: our subtleties and refinements are reducible to this,’ and ‘Personally I can attach no meaning to the idea of good, if I take away the pleasures of taste, sex, etc.’, but the context (which we have lost) must somehow have modified the grossness of these words, for it is certain that by ‘pleasure’ Epicurus really meant ‘absence of pain’—an identification much ridiculed by ancient critics, but now, it seems, supported by modern psychologists1. In the third of the Articles or Sovereign Principles which his followers learnt by heart, we read that ‘ the limit of the height of pleasure is the removal of all that causes pain’, and again in the epistle to Menoeceus:

“When we say that pleasure is the goal, we do not mean the pleasures of the profligate which consist in sensuality, as some suppose through ignorance or prejudice or wilful misunderstanding, but the absence of pain in the body and of panic in the soul. It is not a succession of banquets and revels, nor enjoyments of boys and women nor of fish and whatever may load an expensive table, that produce the life of pleasure, but a sober calculation which examines the grounds for every choice and refusal and banishes those beliefs through which so much confusion occupies our minds.”

As for sexual indulgence, ‘no man was ever the better for it, and one is lucky if he is not the worse’.

The Stoic Seneca, who loves to quote his sayings, testifies that his teaching ‘is pure and upright, and if more closely studied, ascetic. His Pleasure is limited and attenuated, and the condition imposed by us on Virtue, he imposes on Pleasure: he bids it obey Nature’. And Lucretius laments the folly of mankind in seeking satisfaction through power and luxury:

O foolish, blind and miserable men!

In thoughts how dark, in dangers how profound

Are all your days consumed! O not to see 

That the demands of Nature are but two:— 

A body guarded and preserved from pain, 

A mind at ease, relieved from fear and strain!

‘Thanks be to the blessed mother nature,’ cries Epicurus, ‘that she has made necessities accessible and inaccessible unnecessary’..

‘Calculation’ is necessary, of course, because ‘while Pleasure is our first and native good, we do not therefore choose every pleasure. There are many occasions on which we pass over pleasures when the inconveniences consequent upon them are greater, and often we consider pains preferable to pleasures if long endurance of those pains is followed by a greater pleasure’. Thus intelligence and self-control are needed to secure a balance of pleasure over pain, and it was easy for Epicurus to fit the four classical virtues into his scheme. Not that they have any intrinsic merit in themselves, but as means to the procurement of true pleasure they are essential—Wisdom, which expels panic and desire; Temperance, which bids us follow reason, and for the sake of a greater pleasure renounce the less; Courage, to bear such pains as are unavoidable; and Justice, which wins men affection and goodwill from their neighbours, and is always in the end the best policy.

But of all the devices by which we seek security and happiness, there is no protection like that of Friendship. Epicurean friendships were proverbial, and in the simple friendliness of the Society lay, no doubt, its real strength and the secret of its appeal to the world without.

It is easy enough, of course, to criticize Epicurus. He is shrewd but superficial, amiable but indolent: his quietism suggests the charge of ‘sour grapes’ or lack of vitality, and his exaggerated dread of pain is a mark of decadence. His system can only exist as a parasite upon some over-ripe civilization. The Garden is too small to contain the world, and to enlarge it would require a driving-force which he could not supply and an expenditure of sweat and blood which he would mildly deprecate. His lack of faith and hope cannot be excused by his undoubted charity.

From the first the school was unpopular with the Government, whether at Athens or Rome, and despised by the learned, and it has always been compared unfavourably with its rival. But from an age of Science rather than of Faith, and a society which, like his own, has seen its foundations shaken, Epicurus may win better understanding and greater sympathy. The individual who keeps his own door-step clean and shows himself neighbour to other individuals is perhaps a more real benefactor than many eager publicists and big movements. Recent studies, here and in Italy, beginning with Lucretius and advancing to his master, have aroused new interest in the system, and with interest has grown respect. It is even possible that the old verdict may be reconsidered, in accordance with the view expressed by the late Henry Jackson, when he wrote: ‘Is not Epicureanism a better philosophy than Stoicism, as well as “for poets”? Surely Epicureanism absorbs all the Stoicism that is valuable, and leaves room for something else.’

CHAPTER VIII .

ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE