Sedley- decentralisation

8/18/2019 Sedley- decentralisation

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CRON CHE

ERCOL NESI

bollettino

del centro internazionale per

o studio dei papiri ercolanesi

fondato da Marcello Gigante

33 2003

direzione

Graziano rrighetti

Knut Kleve

F rancesca Longo uricchio

redazione

Giovanni Indelli

Giuliana Leone

M CCHI ROLI EDITORE


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The importance of the Herculaneum papyri, and of the writings of Philode-

mus in particular, to our understanding of late Hellenistic culture and

thought

is

one which Marcello Gigante worked for most of his life to illu-

minate. The theme of my paper

is

that these same texts are important in

another and often less appreciated way. They are a symptom of, and at the

same time an eloquent witness to, an epoch-making change

that

philosophy

underwent in the 1st century C in my view, the most significant change

to occur in the entire history of ancient philosophy, and one which divides

that history into two radically distinct halves. n the first part of this paper,

I shall sketch the nature of the change tha t I have in mind, with the aim of

contextualising, and thereby understanding better, Philodemus own place

in the history of philosophy. But I will also, wherever possible, use evidence

from Philodemus and his library in drawing the sketch. In the second half of

the paper, I will go on to ask how Philodemus and his work relate to one

particular aspect of this change, one concerned with the construction of

school histories.

Let

me

interject, at this initial stage, a word about the dating of Philodemus

books on school history. Although

it

remains debatable, I am going

to

assume the correctness of the widely held view that

both

the

Index Stoicorum

and the

Index Academicorum

are books from Philodemus work, in ten books

(or possibly more), entitled

-r v cptA.ocr6cprov

(henceforth,

Syntaxis ,

whose

tenth

book we know to have dealt with the Epicureans. Furthermore,

I am going to assume that the entire work belongs to a single period of

Philodemus life, a period which, i so, cannot be dated before the 50s BC,

since the

Index Academicorum

refers not only to the death of Antiochus

in

69, but also to the many pupils accumulated by his successor Aristus (col.

35), presumably after succeeding to the headship. Assuming

in

addition that

Philodemus died in the 30s BC, the work probably belongs to the last two to

three decades of his life.

A further question, which

as

far

as

I am aware has not been adequately

addressed, is whether the

Syntaxis

was purely biographical, or also doxogra-

phical. Certainly what we have of it includes no doxography, and the ten-

dency has been to suppose

that

there was none. But we have only the book

endings. What was

in

the lost first parts of the same rolls? n the case of the

Stoic book, there seems to me a strong case for the conjecture that the first

part was doxographical.

The

first surviving columns are

part

of the biogra-

phy of the school s founder, Zeno. Yet at the end Philodemus appears to

summarise the book s contents

as

having covered only the Stoics.

Given the

improbability that Zeno s biography filled well over half the book, added to

the book s apparent concentration on the Stoics alone, I have difficulty

imagining what filled the first half or more,

i

not a Stoic doxography. This

possibility will be worth bearing in mind when we ask to what extent

Philodemus work may have been a forerunner

of

Diogenes Laertius

Lives,

which certainly combines (albeit not

in

the same sequence)

both

doxography

and biography.

I confess to being less sure whether the same need apply to the

Index Aca-

demicorum.

This, analogously to the Stoic book,

is

still engaged in the bio-

graphy of the founder, Plato, at the point where our text begins.

That

31

DAVID SEDLEY

PHILODEMUS ND

THE DECENTR LIS TION

OF PHILOSOPHY

D VID SEDLEY

The summary might, in principle, apply not

to the whole book, but just to its last section.

However, that would be in contrast with the

ending of the Index Academicorum, on which

see below.


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parallelism might suggest the same conjecture, namely that the lost first part

was

doxographical. The difference however is that this time the book s

ending

indicates

at least

as

I understand

t

that the book has covered

not just Plato s school, the Academy, but also, prior to that, the school

founded by Eudides, that is, the Megarics. Such a sequence

is

of great

interest because

it

is

identical to the sequence of di doch i found in Dio-

genes Laertius books II-III, which once again encourages the supposition of

a historical link between the two works. But

it

also means that,

so

far as this

particular book of Philodemus work

is

concerned, we do not actually need

the hypothesis of a doxographical component in order to fill out the missing

earlier part. In principle, biographies of the principal Megaric and Platonic

philosophers could have been enough to fill the book. Moreover, the philo-

sophical heterogeneity of the Platonic school s leading adherents - includ-

ing

as

they did not only Plato and his early successors,

but

also Arcesilaus,

Carneades and

Phi lo

would have made a single consolidated doxographi-

cal

summary almost impossible, although a doxography divided into discrete

phases might still have been. a possibility. These doubts mean that the

structural homogeneity of Philodemus treatise cannot be assumed, and his

method

may well

have varied according to the nature of each sect.

Let

me

now turn to the radical change of which I have said

that

Philodemus

and his library are both symptoms and witnesses.

t is

one that sprang from

Athens loss of its status as the unchallenged centre of the philosophical

world. Until the later part of the 2nd century BC, for Epicureans, Stoics,

Academics and Peripatetics alike there can be no doubt that their sects

Athenian headquarters and their resident scholarchs possessed an unques-

tioned supremacy. Virtually

all

significant philosophical developments took

place at Athens, in the very same communities which Epicurus, Zeno, Plato

and Aristotle had founded there. Even if there may have been, for some, the

opportunity to attend a local philosophical school in Asia Minor or else-

where, there can be no doubt

as

to the massive migration of aspiring philo-

sophy students to Athens.

Towards the end of the 2nd century, but much more so in the early st

century, there are signs that this Athenocentric bias

was

diminishing. The

growth of Roman power and influence, along with a Roman interest in

philosophy that had been deepening ever since the visit of three Athenian

scholarchs to Rome in 55 BC,

was

beginning to make residence in Italy,

along with the patronage of the politically powerful, a natural magnet for

philosophers. Whenever

we may

date Philodemus decision to leave Athens

for Italy,

it is

in an obvious

way

a symptom of this new shift in the centre of

gravity.

But even if Roman expansionism

may

have been the leading reason for the

decline of Athens, Italy

was

not the only direction in which the exodus

proceeded. At least some philosophers travelled east. Twoá examples may

give

us

a clue as to the motivation.

First, take the island of Rhodes. Although Panaetius

was

formally head of

the Athenian Stoic school until his death in 110, his frequent absences in

Rome may

well

both reflect and help account for Athens diminishing im-

portance as a Stoic centre at this time. Posidonius, P.anaetius most distin-

CRONACHE ERCOLANESI

32

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guished pupil, never became head of the Athenian school, but went to teach

in Rhodes. Since Rhodes was Panaetius native island, but not that of Po-

sidonius,

it

is a reasonable guess that Panaetius - reported to have retained

his Rhodian citizenship and even his family s priesthood in the Rhodian

town of Lindos, and to have refused the offer of Athenian naturalisation

2

- had himself already been fostering the Stoic school there

in absentia,

especially if as may be conjectured, he owned property on the island. To

ll appearances, this Rhodian school in effect now eclipsed, or even replaced,

the Athenian one. For in addition to Hecaton - another eminent Stoic of

the day who,

as

a Rhodian, may be guessed to have been

at

least associated

with the Rhodian school

3

- we can link at least two further individuals with

it, neither of them a native Rhodian. Paramonus of Tarsus, a follower of

Panaetius who appears in Philodemus Index

Stoicorum

(74, 77), seems to

have moved to Rhodes, as has been persuasively proposed by Jean-Louis

Ferrary on the evidence of a Rhodian statue base dedicated by him.

4

And

the fully institutional character of the Rhodian school

is

further confirmed

by the fact that Posidonius own grandson Jason of Nysa eventually suc-

ceeded him

as

its head.

5

This presence in the early first-century

BC

Rhodian

school of a non-Rhodian contingent is a striking feature, and suggests that

what we are witnessing is less the decentralisation that was to become the

hallmark of philosophy in the imperial age, than its attempted recentralisa-

tion, to a new headquarters which at least for a while imitated the metro-

politan role previously played by Athens.

Although the choice of Rhodes for this role may be suspected to have

depended at least in part on the geographical accident of Panaetius birth,

it

is

perhaps no coincidence that around the same time we hear of an

Epicurean school in Rhodes, whose members showed a degree of indepen-

dence from the school s Athenian headquarters sufficient

to

shock at least

one of the latter s adherents.

6

It

was plausibly suggested by Cronert

7

that

Timasagoras and Nicasicrates, two Epicureans whom Philodemus heartily

dislikes, were leading figures of this school, both their names being Rhodian.

But no specific name is

attached

to

the Epicurean, teaching in Rhodes,

whom Philodemus criticises in book II of his

Rhetoric as

defending what he

considers an incorrect interpretation of the school founders views on rheto-

ric. Philodemus complains that this unnamed person takes the school ortho-

doxy to be that no rhetoric

is

a

techne.

But, Philodemus adds, the same

person reports having heard from fellow-Epicureans recently returned from

Athens that this

is

not the view held there, even though they were shock-

ingly ill-informed as to what the textual warrant was for their alternative

version of the school orthodoxy. What, for my present purposes, is most

remarkable is the independence shown by the Rhodian Epicurean: when

informed, apparently for the first time, of the doctrine on rhetoric defended

as school orthodoxy by the current scholarch Zeno of Sidon, he proceeded to

write a rebuttal of it. By the date of this incident, which must predate

Zeno s death in the 70s BC, it is clear that the Athenian school s prestige

has fallen very low indeed.

The second example that I have in mind is Miletus. The Epicurean Deme-

trius of Laconia, Philodemus older contemporary and author of a number of

3 3

DAVID SEDLEY

2

Panaetius fr. 10 ALESSE.

Other known Rhodian Stoics

of the

same

generation are a certain Plato (D.L. III 109),

Stratocles (Philodemus,

Index Stoicorum

17)

and possibly Leonides (Strabo XIV 2.13).

For a valuable catalogue of philosophers as-

sociated with Rhodes (albeit lacking Paramo-

nus), see B. MYGIND Intellectuals in Rhodes,

in

V.

GABRIELSEN et

AL.

(ed.), Hellenistic

Rhodes (Aarhus 1999), pp. 247-293.

4

J.-L. FERRARY Philheltenisme

et Imperia-

lisme (Rome 1988), p. 461

s.

Posidonius

T40 EDELSTEIN-KinD.

6

The

evidence comes from Philodemus,

Rhetoric II, and is presented in D SEDLEY

Philosophical

allegiance in

the Greco-Roman

world, in M T

GRIFFIN

and}

BARNES (ed.),

Philosophia

Togata

(Oxford 1989), pp. 97-

119.

7

W CRoNERT

Kolotes

und

Menedemos

(Mu-

nich 1906), p. 91. Cf. F. LoNGO AURICCHIO-

A. TEPEDINO GuERRA Chi

e

Timasagora?, in

Atti

del

convegno intemazionale La regione

sotterrata

dal Vesuvio: studi

e

prospettive

(Na-

ples 1979), pp. 1-9.


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8

E PuGLIA Demetrio Lacone a Mileto

ÇCEreÈ 13/1983, pp. 21-24.

9

The fullest discussion of these events is

FERRARY,

op.

cit.,

pp. 435-494.

10

Posidonius ap. Athenaeus V 213D) pre-

sents Athenian in 88 speaking of the gymna-

sia being in a squalid condition and the phi-

losophical schools silent, but no causes are

mentioned.

Cic., Fin V 1-6.

works preserved in Philodemus library,á seems to have settled at or near

Miletus, as Enzo Puglia has argued.

8

For at the end of his treatise preserved

in PHerc 1012 he addresses a certain Irenaeus, describing him

as

a philo-

sophical colleague who has never left the beautiful city of Miletus (meaning

either that he has literally

never

left it, or at any rate that he never once left

during their extended philosophical collaboration). The reason for Deme-

trius choice of Miletus, plausibly suggested by Puglia, makes an interesting

parallel to the case of Posidonius. Although Demetrius himself was,

as

his

title attests, a Spartan, his old teacher, Protarchus,

was

a native of Bargylia,

a neighbouring city to Miletus.

I t

is an attractive hypothesis that Demetrius,

like Panaetius, inherited either property or, more specifically, the headship

of a school from his former teacher, and that the choice of geographical

location was determined in that way

The diaspora of which I have been speaking had certainly started before the

crucial years

88-86

BC, which constitute the climax of the decentralisation

process, and to which I shall now turn.

9

They were the years in which at first

the Peripatetic Athenion and then the Epicurean Aristion briefly gained

absolute power at Athens, both siding with Mithridates against the Romans.

The same years

also saw

the events - a product of the protracted Mithri-

datic War 89-84)- that finally destroyed Athens standing as the centre of

the philosophical world.

It

was

during Athenion s brief reign as tyrant that

Athens suffered a crippling siege by Sulla s army, at the end of which the

city was

sacked. It is unclear how much physical damage was done during the

siege to the traditional public meeting places of the schools (certainly both

the Academy and the Lyceum, being outside the city walls, had been plun-

dered for timber by Sulla).

10

It is possible that, even for a school like the

Garden with its own private premises, the war made

it

too difficult to

recruit pupils, especially from abroad. No doubt, in addition, the philoso-

phers high political profile in these years made Athens too dangerous a place

for some of them. But, whatever the precise reasons

may

have been, around

the time of Sulla s capture of the city in 86 many philosophers left, and the

Athenian Academy and Peripatos seem to have lost all institutional impor-

tance. Philo and Antiochus, who fought for Plato s mantle, conducted their

battle from Rome and Alexandria respectively, and it

was

above all in

Alexandria that new philosophical departuresá occurred in the following dec-

ades.

It was

largely there, for example, that the emerging generation of

doctrinal Platonists now taught - such

as Antiochus associates Ariston and

Dion, and, soon after, the radical Platonist Eudorus. And

it

was there, at

this time, that the influential revival of Pyrrhonist scepticism was centred,

under the aegis of Aenesidemus,

as

well

as

the emergence of the more

mysterious and probably short-lived Eclectic school, founded by Potamon.

This eclipse of Athens did not extinguish philosophy there altogether. Ci-

cero,

11

describing a nostalgic return to the Athenian schools in

79

BC,

may

concentrate on the memory of past glories, but he makes it clear that lectures

by Antiochus can still be heard in the Ptolemaeum, and other lectures

Çabout CarneadesÈ, apparently in the Academy, while his friend Atticus

remarks that he spends much of his time with the Epicurean scholarch

Phaedrus. Antiochus, although it is uncertain whether he ever became head

CRONACHE ERCOLANESI

34

i

i

j


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of the Academy, did leave a school in Athens which was continued after his

death by his brother Aristus and Aristus own successor Theomnestus. But

there is no recorded trace of

it

after the 40s BC.

As

for the Epicurean

Garden, it continued under the successive headships of Zeno of Sidon,

Phaedrus, Patro and perhaps others, at least down to the time of Augustus;

but

we

have seen, in the Rhodian episode, that its dominant status had

already been lost by the time of Zeno s death in the 70s.

f

the philosophical centre of gravity had shifted away from Athens, one

conjectural but extremely likely explanation is the dispersal of the school

libraries. Warring Roman generals in the Greek east were well known to be

on the look-out for libraries to seize, and Sulla proved no exception, bringing

back to Rome from Athens, according to the story, some long-lost copies of

Aristotle s school treatises. Just as the Athenian Peripatos had gone into

decline after Theophrastus, on his death

ca.287

had bequeathed his books

to Neleus of Scepsis, who promptly removed them from Athens, it is an

attractive hypothesis that disruption of school libraries in the early 80s BC

was a leading cause of Athens decline

as

a philosophical centre. It seems

extremely probable that Philo of Larissa - still scholarch at the time -

likewise brought all or most of the Academy s book collection with him into

exile at Rome, rather than leave them to be added to Sulla s booty, and that

the decline of the Athenian Academy from that date owes much to this

depletion. What better explanation of the fact that Alexandria, with its

magnificent library, was now to outshine it for many years?

It is surely in this context that

we

should think of the library of Philodemus.

Of

course, many of the copies found in it

may

have been produced only after

his move from Athens to Italy, but there can be little doubt that he brought

with him, at the very least, that splendid antiquarian collection of books

from Epicurus On nature of which many rolls have beeri identified. Given

their great

age

there

is

every reason to assume that they were precious

possessions acquired in the Garden itself during Philodemus time there.

Certainly it was not merely a case of bringing essential reading matter with

him on his journey to Italy: even in its present ravaged state, the collection

includes multiple copies of a number of particularly valued books from

Epicurus

On nature.

It is only reasonable to assume that the full collection

included a great many more collector s items of this kind, precious relics of

the school s Athenian history. One such is PHerc 176, a scroll whose hand

dates

it

many years before Philodemus emigration.

12

Its author eulogises the

kindly character of the early Epicurean Polyaenus, and its value to Philode-

mus and his pupils is suggested by Diogenes Laertius report {X 24) that

Polyaenus

was

Çdecent and companionable,

as

the circle of Philodemus sayÈ.

Although

we

do not know at what date Philodemus left Athens for Italy, where

he would enjoy Piso s patronage, the conjecture that it was during the Mithri-

datic war, that is during or close to the crisis of 88-86, has a very strong claim on

plausibility. This is the obvious date for the wholesale evacuation of book collec-

tions from Athens to have occurred, in anticipation of Sulla s depredations.

I turn now to iny second topic: to consider the impact of the philosophical

dispersal on the way in which philosophers viewed themselves and their

35

DAVID SEDLEY

12

For the early dating of this and various

other Herculaneum papyri, see G.

CAvALLo

Libri scritture scribi a Ercolano

I Suppl.

ÇCEreÈ 13/1983. The parts of

PHerc

176

relative to Polyaenus are edited by A. TEPE-

DINO GUERRA

Polieno Frammenti (Naples

1991).


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It is

not always appreciated what an extraordinary fact

it is

that Diogenes

Laertius, although writing around 300 AD, supplies us with a series of

histories of philosophical successions nearly all of which end not later than

the early to mid

1st

century BC. Take the Stoics. There were undoubtedly

major Stoic thinkers

of

the imperial era. The often innovative philosophical

work of such figures

as

Cornutus and Epictetus

was

well known

not

only in

á their own day

but

also among later Platonist writers, including Simplicius.

Yet it goes altogether unacknowledged by Diogenes Laertius.

It

is true that

our book VII of Diogenes lacks its ending, and that the fuller index of

contents found in two of the MSS takes the Stoic lives down through other

names,

as

far as Cornutus. For

my

part, however, although I acknowledge

that it has become controversial, I share the doubts thatáothers have ex-

pressed

as

to the likelihood that the book, already the longest in the work,

should have contained

all

these additional lives, especially as the same index

fails to match accurately even the part of the book that

we

do possess.

14

But

for present purposes, rather than rely on so contentious a hypothesis, I shall

restrict myself to the following point. The very detailed Stoic doxography

that the book includes in full constantly cites individual Stoics as authorities

I do not mean

as

mere sources) for doctrines. These individual Stoics in-

clude every major figure of the school from Zeno to Posidonius, and many

minor ones, but not a single Stoic whose

floruit

was later

than

the mid

1st

century BC.

In

other words, the Stoic authorities taken seriously end with

the last Stoic generation active in Athens in the early

1st

century BC,

or

at

the very latest their immediate aftermath.

15

Nor is this silence - if such it is - a mere idiosyncrasy of Diogenes , for

those illustrious later Stoics are equally unacknowledged by the mainstream

doxographical tradition,

as

a glance at the index to Diels Doxographi Graeci

will confirm. Here too we have compilers who, like Diogenes Laertius,

regularly trace philosophical history only down to the early or mid

1st

cen-

tury BC. The same pattern is broadly repeated outside the doxographical

literature, for example in philosophical authors like Seneca, Plutarch, Dio-

genes of Oenoanda and Sextus Empiricus.

How can

that

be? It is not enough to postulate

that all

these writers were

reliant

on

sources from the 1st century BC, since that, although perhaps

broadly true, leaves unanswered the question why no effort should have

been made to update or replace those sources. I see every reason to suppose

that their practice is another manifestation of the attitude I have already

described: with the demise of Athens

as

philosophical centre, the actual

history

of

philosophy reaches its

de facto

end, and

is

replaced by the scholarly

task of recording and understanding it.

As

Seneca wrote in a slightly differ-

ent context,

quae philosophia fuit, facta

philologia est Ep. 108.23). The new

mood might be compared, in some respects, to the slightly later advent of

patristic scholarship, whose formal aim was to interpret rather than add to

the sacred texts, even if in reality, at least from our perspective, it also

became a major part of a continuous theological history that it purported

merely to interpret . In the case of philosophy, the Athenian golden age could

not simply be transported abroad and continued in other locations. The

small philosophical circles which sprang up all around the Roman empire

3 7

DAVID SEDLEY

14

The correctness of the Çindex locupletiorÈ

has, however, been defended by

J

MAN-

SFELD,

Diogenes Laertius on Stoic Philosophy,

ÇElenchosÈ 7 (1986), pp. 310-312, and T.

DoRANDI Considerazioni sull index locupletior

di Diogene Laerzio, ÇPrometheusÈ 18 (1992),

pp. 121-126.

1

5

Athenodorus

(DL

VII 68 and

121),

if he is

to be identified with Athenodorus Cordy-

lion, is datable to the early part of the 1

century BC

cf. S.

FoLLET

Atbenodore de

Tarse

dit

Cordylion R 18, in

R.

GouLET

ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques I,

Paris 1989, p. 658 s.). Probably the latest

Stoic cited by Diogenes as an authority is

Antipater of Tyre, who, like Posidonius, died

in the mid 1 century BC (Cic.,

Off

II 86);

the fact

(ibid.)

that he appears to have re-

tained Athens as his primary base may help

explain his inclusion as an authoritative

Stoic.


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16

E.g.

D.L. X 9.

17

D.L. X

25 s.

18

D.L. X 3, 24.

19

Cf.

M. GIGANTE Biografia e dossografia

in

Diogene

Laerzio, ÇElenchosÈ 7 (1986),

p.

27,

and

La bibliotheque

de

Philodeme et l Epicuri

sme

romain (Paris 1987), p. 38.

20

R. PHILIPPSON Orion

2, in RE XVIII.l,

1 82

s.

were too far, in time, place and philosophical culture, from the classical

Athenian schools to feel that they could participate in the life of these latter

other than vicariously, through the study of their written legacy.

Remarkably, even the Epicurean school

is

treated this way. Unlike the Stoa,

Academy and Peripatos, we have good reason to accept,

as

I have said, that

the Garden continued to exist

as

an Athenian institution for generations.

16

Yet Diogenes Laertius final book, devoted to the Garden, traces its succes-

sion of distinguished Epicureans

17

only down to Zeno of Sidon, Demetrius

of Laconia, and two others (Diogenes of Tarsus and Orion) who cannot be

securely dated but are likely to be minor associates of these two. Philode-

mus own generation is in effect missing, and there is not a word about later

generations. One of the possible explanations is the hypothesis that Philo-

demus himself is, directly or indirectly, the source. Diogenes has already by

this point cited Philodemus and his circle twice as sources for Epicurean

history in book X,

18

and since his first citation is explicitly from the tenth

book of Philodemus Syntaxis, there is a serious possibility that - as Mar-

cello Gigante proposed - it is to the model set by Philodemus that Diogenes .

owes the ten-book structure of his own work, the decision to save Epicur-

eanism for the final book, and even the strongly pro-Epicurean tone of that

final book.

19

A possible further pointer is the curious ending to Diogenes list of Epicur-

eans, Çand others whom the genuine Epicureans call sophistsÈ

X

26).

Although it has proved hard to find this actual terminology of ÇgenuineÈ

and ÇsophisticÈ Epicureans in Philodemus surviving writings, it does seem

likely that either Philodemus or one of his close contemporaries is Diogenes

source here.

20

We certainly know, from Philodemus writings, of fellow-

Epicureans whom he denounced as untrue to the teachings of the school

founders. And Diogenes way of putting it - Çothers whom the genuine

Epicureans call sophistsÈ - sounds

as

if

it

must come from an Epicurean

engaged in a factional rivalry within the school. No doubt one of the Çsoph-

istsÈ,

if

he had instead been the source, would have reversed the claim and

announced his own faction to be the ÇgenuineÈ one.

The apparent fact that the list of names ends around the time of Philodemus

suggests that this same Epicurean source was close in date to Philodemus. I f

it

is

Philodemus himself, that hypothesis has the advantage of explaining why

his own name

is missing from the list. But, assuming that to be so, what is

most significant is the absence from the list of Phaedrus or Patro, each of

whom had almost certainly attained the headship of the Athenian school by

the time Philodemus wrote his

Syntaxis.

Even for Philodemus himself, it

would follow, the history of Epicurean philosophy

as

distinct from the pro-

cess of its interpretation and dissemination} has come to an end decades

earlier. If alternatively, we discount Philodemus as source,

it

remains equally

significant that from Diogenes Laertius own perspective, regardless of his

sources, the Epicurean school s history ends in the early 1st century BC.

In Diogenes Laertius, the one unmistakable exception to the pattern I have

described is Pyrrhonist scepticism. Although Sextus Empiricus, writing in

the 2nd century AD, is yet another writer who conforms to the pattern,

rarely if ever allowing philosophers later than the mid 1st century BC to

CRONACHE ERCOLANESI

38


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enter the debates he constructs, Diogenes Laertius history of Pyrronism in

book IX does, in a brief appendix, trace the supposed history of the school

after Timon, all the way down to Sextusá Empiricus and his own pupil

Saturninus - in other words, very nearly down to Diogenes own time.

This appendix is

so

condensed, however, that it might be said barely to

constitute an exception. For example, Aenesidemus is named only in pas-

sing, despite the fact that we have excellent evidence that his work was both

innovative- indeed, the basis of the neo-Pyrrhonist movement that was to

last for at least two centuries - and influential on other writers.

On

the

other hand, the actual spokesmen for Pyrrhonism who are cited

in extenso

in

the book do include Aenesidemus and, even later than him, Agrippa.

Clearly, then, this book does not regard the early to mid 1st century

BC

as

any kind of terminus. The likely explanation lies in the fact that Pyrrhonism

had never been an Athenian-based movement (even

if

individual Pyrronists,

like Timon, spent some time at Athens), and indeed the scene of its revival

in the hands of Aenesidemus was Alexandria. It may be for that reason that

the decline of Athenian philosophy

was

not deemed to bear on Pyrrhonism

as it did on the leading four schools.

t seems to

me

that at least the default position, for both Diogenes Laertius

and the doxographical tradition more broadly, is that philosophical history

terminates around the time of the demise of the Athenian Stoa. The latest

Stoics to be cited by Diogenes Laertius are Posidonius and some of his

approximate contemporaries, while the latest Stoic to be cited by Arius

Didymus is Mnesarchus.

t

is worth pausing to ask what the exact standing

of these two was, calling

on

the help of Philodemus.

In the final column of the Index Academicorum, Philodemus appears to be

claiming to have completed his catalogue of all Zeno s Stoic heirs (oi lSV ouv

rco

Z[l J]vrovo


11/12

24

FERRARY, op. cit., pp. 457-464, DoRANDI

op. cit., p. 25.

25

Athenaeus 186A.

26

This explanation is suggested by the ana-

logous attitude of Antiochus, who, in order

to present himself

as

heir to the early Acad-

emy, placed especial emphasis on the legacy

of Polemo, not

as

the greatest of the early

Academics,

but as

(to

all

intents and pur-

poses) the last scholarch before the school

deserted Plato, and hence

as

its best summa-

tive spokesman. The alternative interpreta-

tion proposed by FERRARY (seen.

2

above)

does not fit so comfortably with the implica-

tion of Athenaeus that these groups are his

own contemporaries.

after. But there is no evidence that either, let alone both, acceded to the

headship of the school.

24

Philodemus, in his penultimate column (78), refers

to someone who attended the lectures of Dardanus and Mnesarchus ÇtooÈ,

and this again strengthens the impression that, while active and influential

in Athens, neither of them became scholarch. Their being, in Cicero s

words, the leading Stoics

t

Athens

must surely be linked to the further fact

- hardly a coincidence - that both were in fact, as we know from Philo-

demus, themselves Athenians. They therefore had personal motives for re-

maining in Athens even when others were leaving, and their high standing in

Athens must owe a great deal to the departure of their competitors.

Further confirmation of this reading of Philodemus - that Panaetius

was

the last scholarch in the list - lies in the following consideration. Athe-

naeus,

25

writing in the 2nd century AD, knows of rival Stoic clubs calling

themselves ÇDiogenistsÈ, ÇAntipatristsÈ and ÇPanaetiastsÈ. If as my argu-

ment implies, Diogenes, Antipater and Panaetius were

the

last three formal

heads of the Athenian school, it is a tempting inference that the later split

between these groups named after the three of them represented three

competing views among imperial Stoics

as

to which authority represented

the culmination of the Athenian Stoic tradition before its virtual collapse.

26

The fact that Athenaeus list does not include a fourth group - whether

named after Posidonius or after some other successor to Panaetius, such as

Mnesarchus or Dardanus - tends to confirm that Panaetius was the last

formally recognised Stoic scholarch. If as remains almost beyond doubt,

Posidonius too

was

taken seriously by many later Stoics, it will have been

by the Panaetiasts, Posidonius being Panaetius leading pupil and therefore

probably his acknowledged spokesman too.

It

seems, at all events, that the latest Stoics acceptable to the later tradition

as the school s philosophical spokesmen were Posidonius and his approxi-

mate contemporaries, including Mnesarchus, and that these were so re-

garded not because they ever became scholarchs, but because they repre-

sented the final generation of Stoics whose roots lay in the school s Athenian

headquarters.

Given Posidonius enormous philosophical importance, it

is

a curious fact

that his name does not occur anywhere in the admittedly meagre fragments

of Philodemus

Index Stoicorum

I do not for a moment think that we should

infer that he

was

excluded from the book. But it seems equally

dear

that no

continuous stretch - o f say, a column and more -

was

devoted to him.

Rather, he was simply included somewhere in a list of Panaetius pupils,

without preferential treatment. The fact that Posidonius became head of the

Stoic school in Rhodes was apparently not enough to counterbalance the

minor status that followed from his never succeeding to the scholarchate at

Athens. Since Philodemus engaged in debate with contemporary Stoicism,

he surely knew of the reputation and influence of Posidonius, who had

indeed published a direct critique of Philodemus own teacher Zeno of Sidon

on geometry. Given the likely dating of the Index Stoicorum to fifty years

or

more after the death of Panaetius, its cursory treatment of ll the post-

Panaetian Stoics cannot be explained merely by chronology.

I t

therefore

seems to me probable that Philodemus historiographical practice, which

CRONACHE ERCOLANESI

40

i

j

l

i

l

;


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effectively treats Panaetius as the last major Stoic, already enshrines a ver-

sion of the principle that I described earlier: the history of philosophy stops

with the exodus of the philosophers from Athens. At the chronological

margin, figures of the last Athenian generation who outlived Panaetius, such

as Posidonius and Mnesarchus, may be either given or denied prominence by

different writers; but the broad principle remains intact.

Does Philodemus history of the Academy conform to this pattern? Cer-

tainly the last life that it treats with any expansiveness at all is that of Philo

cols.

33-4), scholarch at the time of the exodus. After that Antiochus -

who

if

he ever became head of the Academy did so only after the period of

exile - appears to be allotted somewhere between five and ten lines for his

own biography; whereafter the book concludes, in its final column and a

half, with a brief and rapid catalogue of the school s members and associates

from the next generation, apparently not dwelling on any individual for

more than a single sentence. The impression is confirmed once again that

the exodus of philosophers from Athens in 88-86

BC

marks the point at

which the historian s interest in the school effectively reaches its limit.

Philodemus perspective shows that the historical watershed which subse-

quent generations recognised in the early to mid st century BC was not

imposed for the first time by them, long after the event and for possibly

suspect motives of their own. t started with those who, like Philodemus

himself, had actually joined the diaspora. These people were, after all, better

placed than anybody to appreciate the massive gulf that separated their

former philosophical life in their school s Athenian headquarters from their

new life, one of teaching their discipline and its history to a local clientele,

while continuing to study the school s treasured scriptures. Philosophy, they

knew well, would never be quite the same again.

27

41

DAVID SEDLEY

27

My thanks

to

James

Warren

for comments

on an earlier version.

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