Gordon, 'Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9501
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9501-gordon-epicurus
@@@@95.1.6, Inwood/Gerson, The Epicurus Reader
Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, The Epicurus Reader:
Selected Writings and Testimonia. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1994. Pp. 111. $5.95. ISBN 0-87220-242-9 (pb).
Reviewed by Pamela Gordon -- University of Kansas
This slender volume offers what many teachers of Hellenistic
philosophy have long sought: an inexpensive and readable translation of
the best known Epicurean texts, along with extended quotations of Cicero
(18 pages) and Plutarch (6 pages). In addition to the Principal Doctrines,
the Vatican Collection of Sayings, the Epicurean epistles preserved in
Diogenes Laertius, and a selection of the fragmentary works of Epicurus,
the translators have included excerpts from Diogenes Laertius' Life of
Epicurus and the ancient doxographical reports, as well as the more
useful comments of the scholiasts. Also included are several pages of
relevant quotations from Aetius, Clement of Alexandria, Philodemus,
Porphyry, Seneca, Sextus Empiricus, and others. Lucretius is omitted
(except for two pages of excerpts) but the editors urge readers to consult
the whole poem.
The introductory essay by D.S. Hutchinson, with its exposition of the
tetrapharmakos ("four-part remedy") will be useful to students who
have no prior knowledge of Epicureanism. The essay supplies almost no
historical context, but the survey of the ancient sources (xiii-xiv) is
especially informative. Throughout the essay Hutchinson combats the
hackneyed portrayal (ancient and modern) of the Epicureans as ignorant
hedonists and closes his essay by asking readers to have "the courage to
ignore two thousand years of negative prejudice" (xv). Unfortunately
Hutchinson's essay itself contributes to the stereotype of the
anti-intellectual and dogmatic Epicurean. Instead of opening with a
fictional Epicurean preacher hawking easy answers in the agora, he would
have done better to quote a real (and more dignified) Epicurean
proselytizer: the second-century C.E. Diogenes of Oenoanda.
In fact, Diogenes' inscription, which proclaims Epicurean wisdom "to
all Greeks and barbarians," is the most noticeable omission from The
Epicurus Reader. Also absent is Lucian's Alexander the False
Prophet and Plutarch's On Living the Inconspicuous Life (which
is quoted once, however). While these texts are not rich sources for the
details of Epicurean doctrine, they tell us much about the social and
cultural location of Epicureanism--and its adversaries--in the Roman
empire. Diogenes Laertius' Life of Epicurus is fascinating for
similar reasons, and this edition would be more useful if the Life
were printed in full. As it is, the editors have omitted all the
references to Epicurean women and most of the references to the Epicurean
slaves (the slave Mus appears only as "the aforementioned Mus" on p. 3).
Also missing are Diogenes' lists of the titles of (now lost) Epicurean
books, parts of Diogenes' own ardent praise of Epicurus, and the
intriguing references to such enemies of Epicurus as Timocrates and
Diotimus the Stoic.
Concise biographical notes are given for Cicero, Lucretius, and
Plutarch, but not for the other sources. As many of the fragments and
testimonia are difficult to find in English, their inclusion here is the
strong point of this edition, and a few words about the scattered sources
for the testimonia would be useful. Aetius, Clement of Alexandria, and the
other sources are also omitted from the index of topics and names, but the
index will be quite useful despite this shortcoming, especially for the
Greekless reader who cannot make use of the index of principal terms in
Bailey's edition. The translations themselves are reliable, but those
hoping for a lucid translation of the Principal Doctrines will be
disappointed. To my ear, the Principal Doctrines in Cyril Bailey's
rendering (Epicurus: The Extant Remains, Oxford 1926) are both more
elegant and more intelligible.