Religions, Cults and Power › Part 5. The Greco-Roman World: Mysteries, Philosophy, Gnosis
After Alexander, the free city-state lost its central place in Greek life. Rome then built a world empire, and the philosophical schools came to offer educated Greeks and Romans what the civic cults no longer could: a rule of life, consolation in the face of death, and a theology that could be defended by reason. The two great Hellenistic systems answered the question of the gods in opposite ways. Stoicism taught a divine reason, the Logos, immanent in matter and governing everything by providence. Epicureanism kept the gods but removed them from human affairs, and used atomism to free people from fear of divine punishment and of death. This chapter compares the two theologies. It follows the transformation that Samuel Dill describes, in which philosophy under the Empire became spiritual direction and preaching, looks at the political career of Stoicism from the opposition under Nero to the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, and sets out the debate over whether Epictetus knew Christianity.
The Stoic Logos: god inside matter
The Romanian history of philosophy Din Istoria Gândirii Filozofice defines the Stoic god precisely: “The Stoic Logos is the creative agent of the world out of matter. It is a creative power, but it is not a supernatural, personal and independent force; it orders and creates the Cosmos, but it cannot step out of and cannot separate itself from the Cosmos.” Since it is “inherent in matter”, the textbook continues, “without matter the Stoic Logos is non-existent”. It then distinguishes the universal Logos from the logos spermatikos, the “seminal logos” [Unknown, Din Istoria Gândirii Filozofice, #86306, “Stoicism”]. The same textbook stresses that “the centre of gravity of the Stoics’ theory lay in the domain of ethics”. Physics and logic were “given an auxiliary role, subordinated to ethical reflection” [Unknown, Din Istoria Gândirii Filozofice, #86306].
The textbook presents Heraclitus as the forerunner of this cosmic reason. For Heraclitus, “out of all things one and out of one all things are made”, and the unity of the world is a tension of opposites: “what draws apart comes together, and from different things the most beautiful harmony is formed, and everything is born through struggle (agon)”. It also cites the testimony of the Christian theologian Origen on Heraclitus’ teaching about war [Unknown, Din Istoria Gândirii Filozofice, #86306, “Heraclitus”, citing Plato, Cratylus 402a, and Origen].
Modern Stoic anthologies keep this cosmic theme at the centre. The Daily Stoic quotes Marcus Aurelius: “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. For in a sense, all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other” [Holiday & Hanselman, The Daily Stoic, #71984, October 3rd]. Its editors paraphrase the doctrine: “all things are guided by reason—but … it is a vast and universal reason that we cannot always see” [Holiday & Hanselman, The Daily Stoic, #71984].
The Epicurean gods: real, blessed, uninvolved
Jules Evans begins his account of Epicurus with biography. Epicurus was born around 341 BCE on Samos, “which was also the birthplace of Pythagoras” [Evans, Filosofie pentru viață și alte situații periculoase, #16416, “Epicurus and the philosophy of pleasure”]. Evans sets out the religious question that the new materialist physics forced on its followers: “Since the cosmos obeys natural laws rather than the will of the gods, how should human beings behave? What is the good life in a cosmos in which the gods either do not exist or do not evidently intervene?” [Evans, Filosofie pentru viață, #16416]. His chapter heading gives the Epicurean answer: “The universe does not care what we do.” Evans explains its force historically. Fear of divine punishment “was, as a rule, a huge source of anxiety. The human imagination was infested with nightmare visions of what comes after death. That is why the message of Epicureanism—enjoy life here, do not torment yourself over the one beyond—was a radical one and, for some, truly liberating” [Evans, Filosofie pentru viață, #16416, “The universe does not care what we do”]. Death is removed in the same way. “‘Death is nothing to us,’ Lucretius stresses. After we die, we shall no longer be. Non-existence is not something to fear” [Evans, Filosofie pentru viață, #16416].
The atomism behind this argument appears in the Romanian textbook’s materialist account of ancient philosophy. It records the atomist thesis that “the divisibility of matter to infinity is impossible”, and the principle that thought itself “must be explained from the being of matter, and not the reverse” [Unknown, Din Istoria Gândirii Filozofice, #86306]. Evans adds that Lucretius saw that people freed from “religious superstitions” needed “new myths, new stories, new songs” [Evans, Filosofie pentru viață, #16416].
Comparing the final good: Annas on virtue and tranquillity
Julia Annas holds that ancient ethics must be read as a system: “ethical theories are theories: the notions of final good, virtue, nature, happiness and so on are systematically connected” [Annas, The Morality of Happiness, #69464]. On her account the Epicurean and Stoic schools differ over the place of tranquillity. For Epicurus, freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) amounts to happiness, yet he ties pleasure to virtue: “It is impossible to live pleasantly without living intelligently and finely and justly, … [or] intelligently and finely and justly without living pleasantly” [Annas, The Morality of Happiness, #69464, quoting Epicurus]. The Stoics, Annas writes, “do not agree with Epicurus that untroubledness or tranquillity (ataraxia) amounts to happiness”, but “they do hold that happiness will include tranquillity. From Zeno on they characterized happiness as ‘a smooth flow of life’ (eurhoia biou)” [Annas, The Morality of Happiness, #69464]. | Question | Stoics | Epicureans | |—|—|—| | Nature of god | Immanent Logos, inseparable from matter; providence | Blessed beings who do not intervene in the world | | Cosmos | Rational, ordered, “woven together” | Atoms and void, governed by natural law | | Fear of death | Accept the rational order; death is natural | “Death is nothing to us” (Lucretius) | | Final good | Virtue; happiness as “smooth flow of life” | Pleasure as ataraxia, inseparable from virtue | | Relation to popular religion | Later Stoics reinterpret external worship and imagery (Dill) | Strip away the fear of the beyond (Evans) |
Philosophy becomes spiritual direction
Samuel Dill’s Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius gives this change its classic treatment. Book III, chapter I, “The Philosophic Director”, opens with “the great change in the motive and character of philosophy”. There “the schools forsook metaphysical speculation, and devoted themselves to the cultivation of character”, and Dill attributes this to “the loss of free civic life and the establishment of world-empires” [Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, #60232, Book III ch. I, contents]. Seneca is his central figure. He has “an evangelistic passion” and conceives of “philosophy as the art of saving souls”. He teaches that “the kingdom of Heaven is within” and that freedom lies in “submission to the Universal Reason”. Dill calls him “a pagan Thomas à Kempis”, who “was claimed by the Church” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book III ch. I]. In a footnote Dill records that Seneca adopted “the Pythagorean discipline under the influence of Sotion”, but gave it up “on the proscription of suspected rites in the reign of Tiberius” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book I ch. I, note]. So even private religious practice could become politically dangerous.
Chapter II, “The Philosophic Missionary”, turns from the aristocratic director to the street preacher. “The masses needed a gospel.” It surveys the sermons of Apollonius of Tyana, Musonius and Maximus of Tyre, the Cynic “mendicant monks of paganism”, and “the ideal Cynic in Epictetus—An ambassador of God”. Dill also notes that “Demonax … [was] prosecuted for neglect of religious observances” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book III ch. II, contents]. Chapter III, “The Philosophic Theologian”, records a decisive change of doctrine among the later Stoics: “God no longer mere Force or Fate or impersonal Reason—He is a Father and Providence, giving moral support and comfort” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book III ch. III, contents].
Epictetus, “the most religious of the Stoics”
Traian Diaconescu’s preface to his Romanian Epictetus places him at the summit of this development: “The fervent religious feeling found in Epictetus’ work gives it originality. Epictetus is the most religious of all the Stoics. In his thought the god is no longer impersonal, as in Seneca or Marcus Aurelius, but personified. The god watches over the universe and the life of man, is immanent, dwells in us, sees and understands everything” [Diaconescu (ed./trans.), Epictet: Manualul și fragmente, #42286, Preface]. Diaconescu places Dill’s “Father and Providence” within the Stoic system itself. Note that he places Seneca on the impersonal side, while Dill reads Seneca’s “varying conceptions of God” as already mixing in Platonic elements [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book III ch. I].
The closeness of this language to Christianity raised an old question. Diaconescu summarises it: “The religious ideas and attitude of Epictetus made possible the thesis of his direct relation with Christian teaching. Scholars such as Th. Zahn and K. Kuiper consider that Epictetus read the New Testament, but A. Bonhöffer and Douglas Sharp reject these suppositions, affirming that Stoicism and Christianity were parallel and independent movements.” He takes a middle position: “We consider that there are interferences.” In Epictetus’ time, he adds, Christianity “was consolidating itself in the cities and conquering not only the crowd but also high society”, while Stoicism had been renewed by Seneca and Musonius Rufus. “These movements, which aimed at the moralisation of society, did not ignore each other. Stoicism and Christianity used common methods of propagating doctrine” [Diaconescu, Epictet: Manualul și fragmente, #42286, Preface]. Dill gives the opposite emphasis. To Plutarch, Dion Chrysostom, Lucian and Marcus Aurelius, he writes, “the Church is hardly known, or known as an obscure off-shoot of Judaism, a little sect, worshipping a ‘crucified Sophist'” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Preface].
Stoicism and power: from opposition to the throne
Stoicism’s political record runs in two directions. Under Nero and Domitian it was the creed of “the philosophic opposition”, a group Dill examines under the question “Was it really revolutionary?”. He names Demetrius as “a leader of the philosophic opposition” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book I ch. I; Book III ch. II, contents]. Seneca himself held up an ideal of the principate to Nero in the De Clementia [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book I ch. I]. Tacitus, in Dill’s reading, writes with “pessimism” about “the corrupting influence of despotic power” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book I ch. I]. Under the Antonines the relation was reversed. Dill’s period “closes with the realisation of Plato’s dream of a reign of the philosophers”, and “the influence of philosophy on the legislation of the Antonines is a commonplace of history” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Preface]. Yet he judges that philosophy “failed … to find an anodyne for the spiritual distresses of the mass of men”. It “was an esoteric creed, and the masses remained untouched by it”. The answer they sought “came to them at last from the regions of the East … through the worships of Isis and Mithra” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Preface]. That is the subject of the next chapter.
A modern counterpoint: Heisman on timeless order
Both Stoic providence and Epicurean natural law assume that the cosmos has a permanent rational order. Mitchell Heisman, discussing Leo Strauss, questions any such assumption: “Strauss claimed that he assumed the existence of an eternal whole. The capacity for reason requisite for arguing for a timeless order or timeless values cannot be more timeless than the principles of logic themselves. To assume the logical precedence of eternity over history is to assume that the principles of logic themselves are eternal” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, part 49]. Elsewhere he reports Meinecke’s view that historicism “liberated modern thought from the two-thousand-year domination of the theory of natural law”, replacing the vision of “timeless, absolutely valid truths which correspond to the rational order dominant throughout the universe” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, part 41]. That two-thousand-year tradition begins with the Stoic Logos described in this chapter.
Key points
- The Romanian textbook defines the Stoic Logos as the creative agent of the cosmos, inherent in matter and “not a supernatural, personal and independent force”. It is distinct from the logos spermatikos.
- Epicureans kept the gods but denied that they intervene. Evans sums up the message as “the universe does not care what we do”, a cure for fear of divine punishment and of death.
- Annas shows that the two schools disagree on whether ataraxia is happiness itself (Epicurus) or a component of a virtuous “smooth flow of life” (Stoics).
- Dill describes the imperial schools as having “forsook metaphysical speculation” for spiritual direction (Seneca) and popular preaching (Cynics, Dion, Epictetus).
- Diaconescu calls Epictetus “the most religious of all the Stoics”, with a personal, immanent, all-seeing god. Zahn and Kuiper thought he read the New Testament; Bonhöffer and Sharp denied it. Diaconescu sees “interferences”.
- Politically, Stoicism moved from the “philosophic opposition” under Nero and Domitian to the Antonine “reign of the philosophers”. Dill judges that it never reached the masses, who turned to Isis and Mithra.
- Heisman’s critique of an assumed “eternal whole” questions the timeless rational order on which Stoic theology rests.