Afterlives of the garden : : receptions of Epicurean thought in the Early Empire and Late Antiquity / / edited by Gregson Davis and Sergio Yona

• Superior document: Cicero Series ; v.8
• Author: Davis, Gregson.
• TeilnehmendeR: Yona, Sergio.
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin/Boston : : Walter de Gruyter GmbH,, 2023.; ©2024.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Cicero Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (192 pages)

The collection of essays in this volume offers fresh insights into varied modalities of reception of Epicurean thought among Roman authors of the late Republican and Imperial eras. Its generic purview encompasses prose as well as poetic texts by both minor and major writers in the Latin literary canon, including the anonymous poems, Ciris and Aetna, and an elegy from the Tibullan corpus by the female poet, Sulpicia. Major figures include the Augustan poets, Vergil and Horace, and the late antique Christian theologian, Augustine. The method of analysis employed in the essays is uniformly interdisciplinary and reveals the depth of the engagement of each ancient author with major preoccupations of Epicurean thought, such as the balanced pursuit of erotic pleasure in the context of human flourishing and the role of the gods in relation to human existence. The ensemble of nuanced interpretations testifies to the immense vitality of the Epicurean philosophical tradition throughout Greco-Roman antiquity and thereby provides a welcome and substantial contribution to the burgeoning field of reception studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Afterlives of the Garden, Modalities of Reception of Epicurean Thought in Proto-Imperial and Imperial Rome -- Chapter 1 Amator miser: Epicurean Aspects of the Portrayal of Infelicitous Amor in Horatian Lyric -- Chapter 2 Evidence and Anger: Epicurean Cognition in the Finale of the Aeneid -- Chapter 3 A Woman's Pleasure: Sulpicia and the Epicurean Discourse on Love -- Chapter 4 The Epicurean Project of the Ciris -- Chapter 5 Volcanos and Roman Epicureanism: Traces of Epicurean Theory in the Poet of the Aetna -- Chapter 6 Epicurus in the Roman Imperial Age: Four Case-Studies (Aristocles of Messene, Atticus, Dionysius of Alexandria and Plotinus) -- Chapter 7 Augustine and Epicureanism -- Bibliography -- Index Locorum