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EPICURUS
Oxford University PressLOlldon Edmburgb Glasgow Copmhagm
Nrw rork Toronto Melbourne Cape Town
Fom¡'I1Y Cl1lcuJla Madras Shangha:
HumphfCY Muford Pllbhsher to the UNlnR8ZTY
EPICURUSTHE EXTANT REMAINS
WITH SfIORT CRITICAL APPARATUS
TRANSLA TION AND NOTES
BY
CYRIL BAILEY, M.A./owett Fellow alld Clauzcal Tuto" oj
Ballzol College, Ox/o1d
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
P"nua ,,. England
At tu OXFORD UNJVERSITY PRESS
By J oh.. Johnso..
Pnnter lo 1]U Utnvers,ty
PREFACE
AN interest in Lucretius took me back many yearsago, as it has others, to the study of the remaíns of
Epicurus, without which the true meaning of the
Latin poet cannot be fully understood. The greatwork oí Usener placed at one's disposal all that was
then available for the knowledge of EpicUfUS, and with
the exception of the Vatican Gnomologium nothing has
since been added.1 But the study of Epicltrta brought
me to the conclusion that something more than a meretext was needed: the work of Brieger, Giussani, T ohte,
and others on certain portions of the Epicurean theory
had at once shed light and raísed new problems, and
1 was thus led to set abo,ut rnaking rny own text,
translation, and cornmentary. Sínce 1 have been at
work, there have appeared the German translation of
Kochalsky, the Italian translation and brief corn
mentary of Bígnone, amI quite recently the new
Teubner text of von der Muehll. Each of these
and especially in my view the work of Bígnone-have
greatly advanced the study of Epicurus, but there is
1 For certam fragments of the llEpl. ~Ú(TEW~ see Cornrnentary,p. 39 1 .
6 INTRODUCTION
still no complete 1 translation in English and no com
plete commentary in any language.In the circumstances it seems worth while to publish
the result of a good many years' work on the Epicureantexto But 1 do so with much hesitation. No one canbe more ful1y aware than 1 am of the extreme difficultyof the writings of Epicurus, and the necessari1y tentatative character of any solution of their many cruces:
1 would repeat with fervour the words of U sener,e nune curn librurn rnanibus emitto, sentio me nominem
et inconstantem fuisse '. But 1 trust that 1 have shedsorne light on dark places and at least have rnade itclear where the problems lie and what are the data for
their solution. 1 hope to follow up this work shortlywith a volume of critical essays on the system ofEpicurus, where it will be possible to deal with sorneof the problems at greater length.
My debt to many predecessors in Epicurean studiesis great, and will become obvious in the commentary,but 1 think that after U sener 1 owe most to two great1talian scholars, Giussani and Bignone.
C. B.OXFüRD, .5eptembcr, 1924.
I Many of the lmportant passages have been translated by 1\1r. R D.Hlcks 10 hls St01C alld Eplcurean (1910), but I do not always findmyself m agreement wlth hls verslOns. His translation of DiogenesLaertms m the Loeb senes unfortunately appeared too late for me touse n. For the same reason 1 have been unable to use the translatlOnof the Letters and the Kvp¡a¡ ~ó~a' by A. Ernout in his Commentaryon Lucrelius 1, JI.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. MSS. and editions .
TEXT AND TRAN5LATIüN.Epistula ad Herodotum
Epistula ad Pythoclea .
Epistula ad Menoeceum
Kvplal ~~al •
Fragmenta
Vlta Epicun .
COMMENTARY.Letter to Herodotus
Letter lo Pythocles
Letter to Menoeceus
PrIncIpal Doctrines
Fragments
Life of Eplcurus
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF PRINCIPAL TERMS
FRONTISPIECE. EPICUruS, from the bust In
Caplto/mo, Rome.
9
18
5682
94-106
I4-0
• 173· 275
· 32 734-4-
· 375
• 4-°1
the Museo
INTRODUCTIONMSS. AND EDITIONS.
By far the greater part of the extant remains of Epicurusthe three Ietters, the Kúp¡a¡ 6,ó!aL, and many of the survivingfragments-are embodied in the tenth book of Diogenes LaertlUs.The book purports to be a •Llfe' of Epicurus and IS compiledIn haphazard fashion from many doxographical sources, thequotations occurnng from time to time in the course of thenarrative. Thus the problem of the text of Epicurus is for themost part that of the MS. sources for Diogenes. SlX MSS.(BFGHPQ) were used by Usener in the preparation of hlSgreat editlOn (1887): for a (ull account of them his pre(aceshould be consuIted. These SIX have recently been re-read,and Usener's report of the readings of the pnnCipal codiceschecked and occasJOnal1y corrected by P. von der MuehIl (1922),who has added readmgs from five more MSS. (TDWCoZ)ofwhIChthe last two are the most important. A brief account, based onthe work of Usener and von der MuehIl, will suffice for thisedltion m WhlCh 1 have been gUlded entlrely by thelr reports.
The MSS. of Diogenes fall mto two main classes, not, accordmg to Usener, representmg any anClent cleavage of tradition,but both derived during the Middle Ages (rom the same source,the one class representmg a careful copying, the other morenegligent work: thls is shown by the occasional unexpectedagreement of the chlef representatlves of the two classes,B and F.
B 1. The oldest representatlVe of the first cIass is B, the CodexBorbonicus gr. ni. B. 29 (formerly 253), a parchment codexof the twelfth century, in the public hbrary at Naples: It wascorrected by a hand of the (ourteenth century whose readingsnot infrequentIy agree with those of Co.
• 10 INTRODUCTION
P Later than B, but alroost roore important, 15 P, the CodexParisinus gr. 1759, a paper codex of the beginning of thefourteenth century. It i5 described by Usener as • the twin'oC B, but von der MuehIl is inclined to regard it as representinganother family of the same stock. P has unfortunately beenmuch corrected and the corrections have often obscured orobhterated its orIginal readings: von der MuehIl distinguishesP~ (Usener's PI) who derived bis readings froro anotber copyof tbe same familyand pa (Usener's P2) who corrected tbe textlater by tbe vulgate traditIon.
We are, bowever, often able to recover the original readingof P from two other MSS. whlch appear to have been copiedfrom P before it was corrected. For this purpose Usener relies
Q mostly on the authorlty of Q, the Codex Parlsinus gr. 1758,a paper codex made In the fourteenth century or at the be·ginmng of tbe fifteenth. Von der MuebIl prefers to quote aMS. which be has himself colIated [rom pbotograpbs and
Co which he tefers to as Co, the Codex ConstantmopolitanusVeteris Serail. (' The Old Seragho '): tbls MS. was wrlttenin the fourteenth or fifteenth century (the last page beingadded later in the sixteenth). These two, or one or otherof them, frequently confirm the orlgmal text of P, and In otherplaces, where P's reading has been obscured, may be taken topreserve lt.
H Belonging to the same class, though of lesser Importance, areH, the Codex Laurentianus LXIX. 35 of the fourteenthcentury, also a copy of P, but later than Q and made after the
W correction of P and therefore embodying a mixed text, and W,the Codex Vaticanus gr. 140 of the fourteenth century (one ofvon der Muehl1's MSS.), which he believes, though with lesscertamty, to be also derived from P.
F II. The chlef MS. of the second c1ass, denved more careIessIyfrom the same original tradition as the first class, is F, theCodex Laurentianus LXIX. 13, a large parchment MS., attributed by Usener to the tweIfth and by von der Muehll to thethirteenth century. Usener is, however, of opinion that it is an
MSS. AND EDITIONS JI
unscholarly copy and cannot be taken by itse1C to represent thetradition of the second class.
Z Von der Muehll finds the necessary support for Fin Z, theCodex Lobcowicensis Raudmtzianus, which he has hlmselCcollated. ThlS codex again has been much corrected and vonder MuehIl beheves that after lt had already recelved theaddltions of Z2 and ZJ it was the source oC the first pnntededition oC Diogenes.
f The ed,tro prtnceps was pubhshed by Froben at Basle in 1523and is said m the preface to be a transcnpt of the MS. ofMatthew Aungathus, professor at Wlttenberg The MS. wouldappear to have been abad copy of the corrected Z ThlSprinted text has therefore derivatlvely the authority of a MS.and is accordingly quoted by U sener in support of F. (1 havenot myse1f quoted lt, except where readings rest on its soleauthority.)
Von der MuehII points out the frequency with WhlCh \Ve findin support of a readmg the comb1OatlOn FpJZf thIS combmatlOn may be taken to represent the second class. Its bestreadings, however, are not mfrequently due to conJecturerather than to traditlOn, and von der Muehll 15 of opmlOn thatUsener is sometlmes mlstaken 10 attnbutmg too great Importanceto them
G The remalnmg MS quoted by Usener IS G, the CodexLaurentianus LXIX. 28, a paper MS., said to be of the [our·teenth century. It appears to represent a mixed tradltlon of
T the two classes. Von der MuehIl refers also occaslOnally to T,D the Codex Urbmas Vat. gr. 109, and to D, the Codex BorbomcuslP gr. iu. B. 28. He has also made some use of <1>, an epltome of
DlOgenes LaertlUs 111 Codex Vaticanus gr. 96, made, as he thmks,at the time of Constantlne Porphyrogemtus, which is avallablewhen from time to time lt quotes passages tn extenso A less
\{I valuable epitome of the same character IS \{I, found 111 the CodexPalatmus Vaticanus gr. 93 and dated 1338.
The MSS. of DlOgenes were ennched by a consIderable bodyof scholia, often references to other passages In EPlcuruS or
12 INTRODUCTION
amplifications of or comments on the text: these have becomeinterwoven into the text and are especiaIly frequent in theletters to Herodotus and to PythocJes. Sometimes, where theyare accompanied by references (e.g. to the llt"p' cl>vO"t"w,) it is easyto detect thern, but in other places the task of disentangling textand gloss IS extrernely difficult and delicate. Most modernedltors would agree that U sener was too ready to assurne 'gloss,schollUrn, or addztamentum', and that many phrases thus excluded by hirn can be restored to the texto Von der MuehllIS oC opinion that Jt 15 the intrusion of these addltions in theletter to Pythocles which has caused ltS dislocated and incoherentappearance, and that lt was m origm a genume work oCEplcurus' own hand. 1 am myself more mclined to hold theopmion of Usener that It is an EpIcurean compilation.
Wlth the earIJer edltlOns of DlOgenes or of the tenth bookUsener has dealt In hls Introduction (pp. XV-XVJl), and recentcntlcIsm has not altered his opimons. They falI naturally intotwo classes. The edltors of the slxteenth century had accessonly to mfenor MSS. and used thcm unscientificalIy. Of theedttw prtnccps of Froben (1523) 1 have already spoken. Stephanus(1570) reIIed on G and another infenor MS. Mananus 393:Sambucus (1566) used the Venetus, Vatlcanus, and BorbonIcus,and made sorne correctlOns, but dld not consult the MSS.constantly or wlth ]udgement. To the same class belong theedltlOns of Aldobrandinus (1594) and Menagius (1664). Yet toeach and all of these earher edltors are due certain conjecturalrestorations which stIll find a place in modern texts.
In the seventeenth century Gassendl revived the seriousstudy of Epicureamsm and may be sald to have mtroduced thetheory of atomIsm to the modern world. But though he too hascontributed permanent emendations to the text, he was a poorGreek scholar, and m hls edltIon of Book X (1649) showed norespect for tradltion and practlcaIly re-wrote the texto Meibom(1692) m Usener's view dId still greater damage to the textoSchneider (1813) was able to sorne extent to repaIr the harmdone, but Huebner (1828) agam returned to the tradition of
MSS. AND EDITIONS 13
Meibom, and Cobet (1862), though he derived assistance from Fand from his own scholarshIp, could not get free from it.
Hermann Usener's great work Eptcurea appeared in 1887,and is the foundation of aH modero study of EPICUruS. Bycollecting together from the whole range of classical lIteraturecitations from Epicurus and allusIons to hIS theories, he estab·lished a store-house of mformation on Epicureanism and In manycases parallels which serve to illustrate and often to explam thetext of Epicurus hImself. But almost more lmportant were hISservices to the texto The way for a scientIfic study of the MS.tradition had been prepared by Wachsmuth who had coIlatedthe Italian MSS. and Bonner who had coliated the two PansMSS. (P and Q). U sener threw over the whole previoustraditIon of printed editions and made a fresh start from thescientific study of the MSS and theIT re1ations to one another.His text is accordmgly estabhshed on a far sounder basls andhe has hlmself made important and valuable corrections. Atthe same tIme he is not what would now be called a conservativeeditor, and in dealmg wIth passages whlch he could not understand he was too apt eIther to mtroduce vlolent emendatlOns orto assume the mtruslOn of a gloss or schohum. But a glanceat the critIcal apparatus In thlS edltlOn or that of von der MuehIlwill show how often his correctlOns have been accepted, and anyfuture work must take the form of a re'exammatlOn of theevidence on the lines WhICh he laId down.
The work of Usener naturally gave an Impetus to the studyof Eplcurus, and smce hls edltIon there has been published aconsiderable body of essays and artlc1es, dealmg for the mostpart with indivIdual points in the Eplcurean theory, but m manyInstances also makmg contnbutlOns to the eIUcldatIon of thetexto Of these the most Important are the works of Brreger andGiussani. Bneger, who already m 1882 had pubhshed a comomentary on the Ietter to Herodotus, added a second pamphletin 1893 Eptkurs Lehre van der Sede, m which there IS a furtherstudy of the text: he lS too apt to indulge in wl1d emendatlOn,but has marle a few useful suggestlOns. More stlmulating and
