Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

BACKGROUND
This verdict cannot be correct and there is little reason to doubt his Epicurean
orthodoxy. Not only does he accept the doctrine of the existence of gods in
the distant spaces between the worlds, but it is clear from an interesting passage
in the prologue to Book 6 about the ' tranquil images of the gods which strike
the minds of men' that he was aware of the deeper side of Epicurus' religious
teaching. Nevertheless, in spiteof his orthodoxy in matters of doctrine, Lucretius'
references to religious practice are nearly always hostile and it is difficult to
decide where he would have drawn the line between what was acceptable
and what was not. We know that Epicurus took pleasure in the public
ceremonies and even urged his followers to participate in the sacrifices in
spite of the dangers of absorbing false beliefs (Philodemus, De piet. 2, col.
108, 9, p. 126 Gomperz). Lucretius, on the other hand, showed little interest
in such matters and, like Empedocles, he was repelled by animal sacrifice
(5.1198-202).
Epicureans at Rome were often criticized for exaggerating the terrors of
religion. The attack on superstition had become a commonplace of the school,
and Cicero knew of ' whole books of the philosophers full of discussions of
such matters' (Tusc. disp. 1.11). What, then, are we to say of the relevance of
Lucretius' polemic? Was he flogging a dead horse and attacking beliefs which,
as Cicero suggests (Tusc. disp. 1.48), troubled no one any longer? To this
question two answers have generally been given: either that the real situation
was more complex than Cicero admitted, or that Lucretius was not writing for
the educated but for the men of the provinces, or even for the ' man in the
street'. The second line of argument cannot be correct; for, apart from the
fact that scientific epic is not the favourite reading of unsophisticated men,
Lucretius makes it clear that superstitious fears affect all men, even kings:
non populi gentesque tremunt, regesque superbi
corripiunt diuum percussi membra timore. . . ? (5.1222—3)
Do not peoples and nations tremble and proud kings
crouch in terror, struck by fear of the gods?
The other response is more plausible; for it is not difficult to show that in the
last years of the Roman Republic, even among the educated classes, there was
a wide variety of religious beliefs and practices. Against the wavering rationalism
of Cicero and the hostility of Lucretius we can set the religious conservatism
of men like Appius Claudius Pulcher or the popular teaching of the Pythagorean
astrologer NigidiusFigulus or the growing support of foreign cults which
prompted the Senate to take action four times during the decade 58—48 B.C.
Cicero's own evidence is ambivalent: his De divinatione was intended to combat
an increasing interest in religious prophecy and it ends with an eloquent
attack on superstition, which is described as 'spreading throughout the world
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