Philodemus on Piety: Critical Text with Commentary [1] 0198150083, 9780198150084

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•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• PHILODEMUS

ON PIETY PART 1 CRITICAL

TEXT

WITH

EDITED

COMMENTARY

BY

DIRK OBBINK

.................................................. CLARENDON

PRESS · OXFORD 1996

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PREFACE ........................................................

The charred papyri of Philodemus-prcserved in variow states of disarray,fragmentation, and physical deterioration swtained over two millennia- are among the most difficult Greek texts to edit. The Greek in which they arc written is so esoteric that they would be hard to control and to translate even if they had come down to w in perfect condition. Albert Henrichs

IN T Ro Du c ING a new method of reconstructing the fragmented papyrus rolls excavated from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, this volume offers a new critical text of the philosophical part of together with an English translation and Philodemus' lIEpt E'1cE{JElac, commentary. The best-known among the papyri from Herculaneum, Philodemus' On Piety was read by Cicero and has received extensive editorial attention by scholars but has not been available in a modern critical edition since I 866. I have utilized a new format in order to present on facing pages the technical details of the papyrus and a continuous text with running English translation, to which are attached brief explanatory notes for the benefit of the reader. In the commentary, new work on ancient religion and philosophy and the history of atheism is brought to bear on the interpretation of a text that expounds Epicurus' theory of the gods and cult as an outgrowth of cultural history. In 1787 archaeologists cut open and transcribed the first few columns of a carbonized papyrus roll which, it was soon recognized, contain a Hellenistic treatise on religion. The texts dealt enticingly with charges of atheism against philosophers, but were too fragmentary to provide anything in the way of a continuous text. Nearly three

VI

PREFACE

decades later, the fragmentary first column of what was thought to be another papyrus roll was removed in Naples and transcribed. Miraculously, it matches perfectly with one of the fragmentary columns recovered two decades earlier: for both come 6:om the same papyrus roll.Yet this fact went unnoticed both by the Italian aaademiciand by Theodor Gomperz, who produced the editioprinceps.It now provides for the first time the basis for an approximate reconstruction of the original order of fragments in the treatise. De pietateconsists of two parts : one dealing with the philosophy of religion, rebutting charges that Epicurus was an atheist, and a second pan (see vol. ii) criticizing the theological views of poets and preSocratic and Stoic philosophers. The present volume treats the first (previously believed to be the second,'philosophical' part of the treatise), which provides details on Epicurean theology, cult practices, organization of Epicurean groups, accusations of impiety among philosophers, and philosophical criticism of mythological poetry. In order to set out the structure of the treatise, it has been necessary to deal in places with the second, 'critical' part of the treatise. In many respects the present volume thus serves as an introduction to De.pietate as a whole. A new method of papyrological reconstruction makes it possible to recover the original order of columns in the treatise, and thus to join many previously unconnected passages.We can now read two or even three continuous columns without a lacuna, where before we could only read one or half of one. 1 But it would be over-optimistic to pretend that the new method completely restores the narrative to its original continuous form. It is rather like being able to see the skeletal reconstruction of a dinosaur, instead of a mere pile of bones. We can, within limits, envisage the living, breathing beast, but never quite see it in the flesh. A major gain, however, is produced in seeing for the first time the extant columns in their original order, rather than the chaotic disorder in which they have come down to us. As a result it is possible to discern the plan and argument of both parts of the treatise as a unified, organic whole. The primary objective of the present edition is therefore to present ' The method has since been applied to other Herculaneum rolls opened through the process of scorzaturt2(see below, p. .25) with great success, and promises to afford additional progress in the future: sec Obbink 1986 and 1989; Delattre 1989 and 1993, endorsed by E. Pohlmann, 'Philodem, De-musica, 1969-1989', Gnomon, 63 (1991), 481-6 at 484-5 ;Janko 199.2 and 1993 applies it to Philodemus' On Poems.

PREFACE

VII

a satisfactory text of the papyrus in such a way as to provide the relevant papyrological information contained both in the papyri (where these survive) and in the original apographs, in order to provide a reliable basis on which to propose new conjectural readings. Constraintsof space make it necessary to omit here (except in special cases) both the initial stage of full diplomatic transcription with which the edition began, and the reproduction of most of the original apographs, which remain unpublished. The information of a detailed papyrological apparatus, in which every uncertain trace is analysed in terms of all the possible letters it could represent, even if some of these might appear to be ruled out on philological grounds, has been partially abridged, or, for crucial passages,largely relegated to the critical notes. All previous editions of De pietatehave been based not on the papyri, whether existing or lost, but on engraved (and in many cases erroneous or deficient) reproductions issued by the Neapolitan Academy in 1863. The columns of the text bear new numbers, and continuous line-numbering has been introduced. For equivalences with the nwnbcring of previous editions see the Concordances (pp. 639-45). The present edition is based upon the papyri themselves, wh~re they are extant, and, in those cases where the papyri have unfortunately perished, upon the next closest textual witnesses, the original pencildrawn facsimiles of the papyrus (disegni)made by Italian and British draftsmen during the process of unrolling. With its columns arranged in their proper order, the treatise affords an excellent and. extended example of a large category of ancient writing on the gods, mythography, and religion, of which only tantalizing traces otherwise survive. The treatise presents a defence of Epicurus' views on the gods, religion, and cultural history, together with a philosophical rationale for participation in traditional cult-practices as illustrating an Epicurean theory of the role of religion in the operation of justice and social cohesion. Epicurus is revealed as a thinker who, like Prodicus and Democritus, regarded cult as an outgrowth of cultural history (Henrichs 1975a), and who sought to show how far cultural phenomena (including false beliefs) could be explained along atomist principles without recourse to the teleology of the Stoics and Peripatetics. As an intimate of such luminaries as Cicero, Torquatus, and the Pisones, and the mentor of Vergil, Philodemus touches in the treatise on such issues as the efficacy of cult, options for religious pa.~cipation open to individuals, and the role of religion and religious poetry in society. A central concern of the treatise is the moral and

VIII

PREFACE

epistemological status of atheism, as is the function of religious beliefs in the affairs of the state and their consequences for the 8,a8Ec,cor psychosomatic constitution of the individual thinker. A method of composition by compilation yields a plethora of illustrative passagespreserving numerous citations from lost writers. In addition, the treatise provides an important link in the history of ideas (via Cicero, who drew directly upon the treatise or its source in the first book of De Natura Deorum) between pagan philosophical critiques of traditional religion and the arguments of the early Christian writers against polytheism. It is in this sense that it lives in two worlds, and looks in two directions at once. An introductory essay on Epicurus and Greek religion sets out the significance of the text for our current understanding of Hellenistic philosophy and intellectual history. The remainder of the Introduction deals with the text's transmission and the reconstruction of its argument and of the papyrus roll, an important preliminary to any understanding of the text, especially in the (virtually unique) case of the Herculaneum papyri, where (unlike the papyri of Egyptian provenance) we have to deal with whole papyrus rolls and an entire library of books, rather than discrete and random fragments. To this are appended supplementary treattnents of the genre and theme of the treatise and the style and syntax of Philodemus' Greek. From time to time I cite other works by Philodemus by way of comparison. In view of the problems I set forth here, and the alarming variation in readings from one edition to another, the reader will no doubt wonder how secure their texts are. Due caution is in order. In general I refrained from citing any passage the text of which I felt was seriously in doubt. In some cases I have introduced corrections of my own devising, as noted. This edition had its inception in Naples at the XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia in May 1983. It grew, from a paper at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in Toronto in 1984 in which I presented the discovery of the method used to recover the original order of the eighty-six columns which appear here,twenty-five of which I included in my 1986 doctoral dissertation, through a series of articles to its present form. Prolegomena to the edition appeared in GRBS 30 (1989), 187-223, parts' of which have been incorporated in revised form in § 1 of the Introduction. In the interim I have lectured on De pietate at UCLA, Tulane, Duke, Princeton, the Institute of Classical Studies in London, the University of

PREFACE

IX

Texas at Austin, Columbia,NewYork University,in Washington D.C., in Copenhagen, and on Capri. The auditors on those occasions will recognize their numerous insights and criticisms incorporated or countered in the present volume. Fully to reconstruct my sources of information, and the contributions of individuals and institutions who have aided and abetted this project, would be an undertaking greater than that required for all the Herculaneum papyri taken together. Professor Marcello Gigante, on whose endless learning and resourcefulness I have drawn throughout, and the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi, made it possible for me to collate the extant papyrus texts and original apographs in Naples. A. A. Long, David Furley, Peter Parsons, David Sedley, Susan Stephens, and Michael Wigodsky all provided unflagging criticism and sound advice. Knut Kleve (Oslo), the Bodleian Library, and the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples generously provided the photography that appears in the plates and important advice on matters of conservation in working on papyri of which lamentably fewer exist today than did a century ago, and many of which will probably not survive the next several decades. Sarah Sheffer produced the line art that appears as fi~. 1-3. Daniel Delattre, Tiziano Dorandi, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, and Richard Janko lavished their own time ungrudgingly on my work and saved me from more blunders than anyone cares to remember. For expert consultation on individual problems I am grateful to Anna Angeli, Angela Blackburn, Jan Bremmer, Walter Burkert, Mario Capasso,Helene Foley,Francesca Longo Auricchio, Annick Monet, D.R. Shackelton Bailey,and Leonardo Taran. I am happy to acknowledge a similar debt to others in the pages that follow, most of all to Albert Henrichs, to whom this book is dedicated, PIE TAT Is c A v s s A .

CONTENTS ........................................................ List of Rlustrations

Xl1

INTRODUCTION

Epicurus and Greek Religion The Papyrus (a) Condition (b) Editions (c) Order of Fragments (d) Genuine and Spurious Fragments (e) Apographs and Detached Fragments (f) Stichometry (g) Orthography and Handwriting (h) Corrections and Scholia 3. The Work (a) Literary Form (b) Theme (c) Style (d) Title and Authorship 4. The Edition (a) System of Presentation (b) Conspectus Siglorum I. 2.

I

24

26 37 54

58 62 73

76 81 84 86 88

99 102

I/\0.1HMOY TTEPI EYCEBEIAC TMHMA TTPOTEPON 105 COMMENTARY

279

ConspectusStudiorum Concordances Index verborum Generalindex Index locorumpotiorum

615

673

Plates

677

639 647 663

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................ FIGURES 1.

Papyrus roll in cross-section

2.

Layout of papyrus roll, showing the fragments of Part

39 1

43

3. Reconstructed layout of extant texts

46

4. Formation of alpha, eta, epsilon, phi, and omega

75

PLATES

(at end of book) 1.

Unopened papyrus scrolls carbonized during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79

2.

P.Here. 1077 Neapolitan fr. 2 (==col. 45)

3. P.Here.229 fr. 9 (==cols. 56-7) 4. Detail of Pl. 3, with stichometric letter

=

5. Oxonian Apograph of P.Here. 1077 fr. I (= cols. 52-4) 6. Neapolitan Apograph of P.Here. 1098 fr. 2 (==col. 54)

7. Scorza (P. Here.1098 fr. 29 ==col. 1) 8. Final columns of De pietate (P. Here.1428 cols. 12-15

+ subscriptio)

INTRODUCTION ........................................................

I.

EPICURUS

AND

GREEK

RELIGION

AT HE Is M in the ancient world was never a well-defined or ideologically fixed position. 1 The gods themselves constituted the prevailing centre of attention. Deviation in the proper attitude towards them, particularly as recipients of cult, could result in a charge of impietyi or in the suspicion of atheism. We know of numerous atheists in antiquity by name, most of them philosophers who taught in or around Athens in the late fifth century BC. Attention came to be centred on the explicit denial of the existence of the gods or grounds for believing in them. Philodemus in De pietategives a detailed classification of the various kinds of atheist: 1 (i) Those who say that it is unknown whether there are any gods ' Henrichs 1976, .20. Further on atheism: Decharme 1904; Getfcken 1907; F.Mauthner, Dtr Athtismus '"'dstint Gtschichtt im Abmdlandt (Stuttgart, 1920-3); Drachmann 19.2.2; W.K.C.Guthrie, OCD(ut or 2nd edn.) s.v.'Atheism';W.Nestle,'Atheismus',RACi (1950), 866-70; 0. Gigon, 'Atheismus', Ltxilton dtr alttn J¾olt(Zurich and Stuttgart, 1965), 370-1; Fahr 1969; Babut 1974; Henrichs 19756; Dover 1976 = 1988; Meijer 1980; Winiarczyk 1990, and the standard bibliography on the major 'atheists' (including Epicurus), especially Diagoras,Prodicus, Critias, Anaxagoras,Protagoras, Euhemerus, and Thcodorus. J Derenne 1930; Rudhardt 196; M. Ostwald, FromPopularSovtrtigntyto tht Sovtrtigntyof l...aw(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986), apps. A-C, pp. 525-50. 1 P.Hm. 1428 cols. 14,32-1 S,8 (vol. ii; Henrichs 19740, 25). Sextus' division (Adv. math.9. 50-1), by contrast, is simply into those who say o~ 8,oiK ,tva.,,and those who, like good Pyrrhonist sccptics,suspendjudgement on the question. I do not know whence Philodemus' cwsification derives; perhaps it is his own. It is in any case unlikely to be Academic (e.g. Carneades or Antiochus) because it avoids the conftation of categories apparent in Sextus' grouping. For a similar division of sceptics see Philod. P.Htrc. 12 sI col. 3.

2

EPICURUS AND GREEK RELIGION

or what they are like (-roveciyvwc-rovEi-r,vlc Eln 8E[o,] AlyovTQ.C 111ro,o,TIVEC EICIV • (ii) Those who say openly that the gods do not exist (-rove8,[a.]pp~811v OVIC El[c],vd.1rcx/,a.woµlvovc}. (iii) Those who clearly imply it (tpavEpovcov-ra.cwe d.V71,povv, lit.: 'those of whom it is clear that they eliminate them'). This implies at least that the charge of atheism could be incurred for something less than an outright denial of the existence of the gods. But in general the later doxographical and biographical traditions tended to lump Philodemus' first and third groups into the second. The standard rosters of atheists, for instance, regularly include Protagoras among 'those who say that god does not exist' (Sext. Emp. Adv. math. 9. 56, cf. 50-1). So in the light of explicit statements to the effect that Epicurus did in fact deny the existence of the gods, 1 I shall take such denial, or blatant disregard for their cult (commonly construed as tantamount to denial), to be the main points at issue-though of course Epicurus' views might well turn out to be in some weaker, rhetorical sense 'atheistic'~ or 'heretical' by implication in the judge"'

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' For example, Cic. Dt. nat. tltor. 1. 123 citing Posidonius (fr. 22.a Edelstein-Kidd, 346 Theiler): nullostsst dtos Epicurovidtri, qNMqwis dt tltis inmortalibusdixtrit invidiat tltttstandat g,atia dixisst;ibid. 1. 8s (Cotta): vitlto non nullisvidtri Epicllrum,,u in offmsionnn Athmitnsium ctdtrtt, llffbis rtliquissttltos,rt sustulisst.Cf. Sext. Emp. Adv. math. 9. 58, concluding his list of 1 b{ovc Trf'OC TOVC 1rollovc a1ro.,\e-{1r.-, 8.-011, weS«Trf'OCr,}11 atheists: 'E1r{,covpoc ~ ICO.T f/,tx:u,TWII TrpGYl"4TWII ouSa.f,4c.iic; Plut. Non posst SIUW. 11028, II 12D; Adv. Col. I II9DE, 1123E; Lact. Dt iratlti 4.7 (Posidonius fr. 22b Edelstein-Kidd, cf. 346 Theiler); Inst. Epit. 31. 3-to rwne but a few.A more complete list in Winiarczyk 1984, 157-83 at 168-70. J A common sentiment is Clem. Alex. Protr.5. 66. s (GCS 52 [1s] p. 51, 6-9 Stahlin,ea.,f,C~II l,c.,\~co,-io.,, 8c ouS& ,d.i\u11O&ETO.&'T'f'8e-tfpf',41toc) quoted by Philodemus, llpoc Touc [---] 2 (P. Hnr. 1005) col. 5, 1er-14 (Epic. fr. 196 Arr. ), in the new edition of Angeli 1988a, 173 (text), 265-70 (comm.), with restatements at P.Htrc. 1251 col.4 and Cic. Dtfin. 1.62, where the first colon appears as dt dis immortalibus sint ullo mttu vrra stntit; Demetrius Laco, P.Htrc. 1006 p. 59--61 (De Falco). Further discussion in Gigante 1983, 6Cr-1; f Sbordone, 'II quadrifarrnaco epicureo', CErc 13 (1983) 117-19; A. Angeli, 'Compendi, eklogai, tetrapharmakos: due capitoli di dissenso nell'Epicureismo', CErc 16 (1986), 53--66. 1

.a Norden 1923, 87-9, esp. 96-7; Henrichs 1975b, 105-6 n. 63 compares in this respect Philod. Dt pitt. ap. P.Htrc. 1428 fr. 16,7-9 (see vol. ii; Henrichs 197sb, 96 = Democritus VS 68 A 7S): TO iffpyo.lC6µu 1ov Y"OIITO.C (sc. TOIIC apxalovc) I cl/J~c8o.,. J Drmocritus VS 68 A 74, 77-9, B 142. Epicurean criticism of Democritus' theory of such images at Diog. Oen. fr. 10 Smith, esp. col. 2, 7-3, 14 (HP#t I sg): M. F. Smith, AJA 74 (1970), S1-62; CQ 2 .u (1972), I sS>--62;D. Clay, AJP IOI (1980), 342-65. 4 D.L. 10. 32, 146-,;Sext. Emp.Adv. math. 7. 201-10; Plut.Adv. Col. 1109-1o;Striker 19Ro; Taylor 1980. J Epicurus and his followers employ 'gods' (plural) and 'the divine' (sing.) indiscriminately as the occasion suits, as well as a range of substantivized adjectives (To 1,40.1ta.p,ov, To uµvov, To 80.,µov,ov)-and a neologism, To dµvwµa (Epic. Ad Htrod. 77, P.Oxy. 1121 ~ col. 1,30).

EPICURUS AND GREEK RELIGION

6

working of the cosmos (Ad Herod.76-8), such activities being incompatible with their blessedness and imperishability. Our conceptions result from a constant stream of similar images-for Epicurus the only immediate objects of perception - especially fine in structure, like the atoms of the soul, and so perceptible only by thought (,\oyq, 8Ewf'T/-ro{} that are naturally imprinted (especially during sleep) on the minds of all men. Naturally we do not 'see' the gods, as we do other material entities. But their characteristics are according to Epicurean epistemology theoretically observable ones, which we can attribute to the gods, as to atoms (like the gods, perceptible only in thought), on the basis of analogy with the perceptible. Thus, for Epicurus, thinking about the existence and basic nature of the gods, in its reliability and persistence (for both individuals and whole cultures}, constituted a range of experience criterially analogous to the reliability of sense impressions. According to a fragment from Philodemus' De pietate,Epicurus in book 12 of his magnumopusllEp, aVTac,wv oiua, Touc d.v8pamouc lvvo,av lc,raKlva, 8€oii), and quotes Epicurus' explanation: 'For when great images of human shape impressed them during sleep, they supposed that some ya.p €l8wAwv, KGl d.v8pw-,rop.of'4,c,,v such gods of human shape really existed' (Ji€')'4AWV Q \ • ..! \ (J f KGT'G T'OIJC IJ1l'VOIJC ,rpoC1r&1'T'OVT'WV 1J11'€11a,.,ov K4& T'G&C ""11 €&4&C IJ1l'GPXE&V T'&IIGC T'O&OIJT'OIJC 8€ouc d.v8pw,roµ.op4/,ouc) and 9. 43 (both standard accounts of concept formation), and Luer. 5. I 168-70. 1

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EPICURUS AND GREEK RELIGION

7

But in guaranteeing a correct 1rpo>.:qt/,1.c of the gods 1 to the earliest men, Epicurus will have effectively denied the pre-anthropomorphic stage of thinking about the gods that Theophrastus assigned to early man in his account of the origin of religion. 1 Among the false notions about the gods introduced at an early stage of civilization according to the Epicurean theory of cultural historyl is that they intervene in this world to reward the good, punish the bad, cause natural disasters, and so on. Epicurus states emphatically that the gods, being blessed and imperishable, could not conceivably reside in this world, where they could be neither entirely free from care nor immune to terrestrial forces of destruction. This is the main point of Lucretius' planned digression at DRN s. 146-7, illud item non est ut possiscredere, sedis I essedeum sanctasin mundipartibusullis ('this, too, it cannot be that you should believe, that there are holy abodes of the gods in any parts of the world'), while his adaptation (3. 18-23) of the Homeric description of Olympus at Od. 6. 42-6 to describe the sedes quietaeof the Epicurean gods was meant to depict how mankind has always conceptualized the gods in the same basic way,or to underscore poetically how deeply rooted such a conception of the gods (as alien to our world) really was in traditional thinking about the gods, 4 rather than to provide an account of their actual homes. Some later authors did of course speculate where in the Epicurean universe such gods could exist. 5 If Epicurus himself addressed the question 'where do the Or something approaching it (229 11o~µa-re1); cf. Cic. ~ nat. dtor. 1. 43 antidpationtm quandamdtorum,and Kleve 1963, 99 with n. 6 . .a Theophr. ~ pitt. F 584,AFortenbaugh ap. Porph. ~ abst. 2. 5. See comm. on 229. So also Epicurus' account corrects Democritus' anthropological version ( VS 68 A 75) of the origin of rcligiow belief. J See the text below,ll . .22s-318;Lucr. s-1161-1240. • Cf. the belief in a Homeric Olympus rationalized at Aristot. ~ catlo 2. 1, 284a, and compare the celestial, extra-cosmic, yet mythological abodes of the gods in Aristoph. Pax (esp.207-9) and Aws: Z. A. Poluovskaja, 'Les dieux d".Epicureet Teree de Thrace', Eirmt, 19 (19b), 57-70. Later reflections: Hermocles' ithyphallus (on the entry of Demetrius Poliorcetes into Athens in 290) ap. Athen. 6. 253; Lucian, lupp. tr. 45, probably modelled on a (Varronian) Menippean (R. Helm, Lutian und Mtnipp (Leipzig, 19()6), 149 n. 3). s Principally the intmnundia C,..ne1Kocp.,a., 8,a.c"7p.e1-ra),the interstices between worlds in the Epicurean universe: so Cic. Dt nat. dtor. r. praef. 18, ~ div. 2. 40 (cf. ~fin. 2. 75). For a list of references-none earlier than Cicero and most (Seneca, Quintilian, Plutarch, Augustine) almost certainly derived from him-see Pease ad loc. on both passages, and F. Peters, T. Llllrttius tt M. Cicno quo modo vocabulaGruca Epicuri disdplinat proprial.Atint vmtrint (Munster, 1926), who includes Christian authors. This view was not known to the Epicurean sources used by Cicero in~ nat. dtor.;thus it does not occur in Velleius' positive exposition in book I, where we might have expected it, though Cicero added disparaging references to it in his prefaces.perhaps in a wilful misinterpretation of Luer. 3. 18-2s. which 1

8

EPICURUS AND GREEK RELIGION

gods live?', he certainly said that they do not live in this world, 1 stressing the persistence and regularity with which individuals in fact formed conceptions of the divine, and the effect (primarily social and psychological) of these conceptions upon life in this world. Naturally Epicurus does not think every conception of a god to be _p~~~.ogdther true. Th~Qds reP-.r~sentedby n1any theoJogians_.~r:i~ wi~'1,su~h-_popular_conceptions as engender te~r.!._!re not ase on.. a....-..---,...-· wpoA7Jy,E,c,_ ~~t ~n.ta.lst: c_oncepti_onsdu_e-~~.-~h~ .._f2~~~111!i:t_ation Qf ·