In Fam. 13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51 b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53;Footnote ¹ Memmius was (temporarily, one assumes) absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along with Att. 5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro.

A letter from Cicero to the presumed addressee of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura should by rights represent an unusually precious and informative survival, even in the context of Cicero's invaluable correspondence. But Fam. 13.1 has proved an awkward item of evidence, seeming to give us a Memmius at once unsympathetic to Epicureanism and intimately involved with Epicureans. The mainstream view has been that Memmius’ implication in a dispute about Epicurus cannot be coincidental, given his likely role in the De Rerum Natura, but equally cannot indicate that relations between Memmius and the Epicurean school were good, much less that he might himself have professed Epicureanism. The recent discussion of Fam. 13.1 by Hutchinson, in the course of an argument for re-dating the publication of the De Rerum Natura, finds in it evidence that the recipient of Cicero's letter and Lucretius’ addressee might not be the same man, although Hutchinson sees no insurmountable difficulty in supposing that a De Rerum Natura published in 49 or 48 could be addressed to this Memmius, C. Memmius L.f., the praetor of 58.Footnote ²

We propose a reading of Cicero's letter different from the current dominant reading, one that will reveal Memmius’ involvement with Epicurus’ house to have been neither coincidental nor (at least from his own perspective) of malign intent, and remove obstacles to the identification of the Memmius of De Rerum Natura and of Fam. 13.1. It will also iron out other wrinkles in the standard interpretation of the letter, most notably Cicero's ostensibly troubling characterization of Atticus’ attitude to Epicureanism, and even allow some tentative conclusions to be drawn regarding both Memmius’ role in the De Rerum Natura and the currently much disputed question of the publication date of Lucretius’ poem.Footnote ³ We should acknowledge here at the outset that dissenting views on the implications of Memmius’ behaviour in Athens have been registered before. Both Stearns in 1931Footnote ⁴ and Griffin in a penetrating footnoteFootnote ⁵ sketch readings of Cicero's letter to which we are sympathetic. But recent debate on the date of the De Rerum Natura, whether explicitly in the case of Hutchinson or implicitly in Volk's and Krebs’ avoidance of the topic of the house, confirms how marginal these alternative views remain. There is a strong consensus that Cicero's exchange with Memmius precludes any sympathy on Memmius’ part for Epicurean philosophy.

At the heart of Cicero's request to Memmius is a dispute about a property, the property in question being a house in the Melite deme of Athens that had once belonged to Epicurus. It was quite separate from the famous Garden that lay outside the Dipylon Gate on the road to the Academy, which persisted as a place of Epicurean observance probably as late as the third century a.d.,Footnote ⁶ although the two locations have not always been clearly distinguished in scholarly accounts.Footnote ⁷ Most of our knowledge of this other property in Melite is derived from Epicurus’ will, preserved at Diog. Laert. 10.16–21 (the provisions for property are located at 10.16–17), and the terms of this will in 270 b.c. go some way toward explaining how the house could have become the bone of contention it was in 51 b.c. Whereas Epicurus describes at some length his wishes for the Garden, which was to be placed at the disposal of Epicurus’ successor Hermarchus of Mytilene and his fellow Epicureans and Hermarchus’ successors to pursue philosophy, and to be maintained as a home for the Epicureans for all time, provision for ‘the house in Melite’ is only legally defined for a single generation: the trustees of the will, Amynomachus and Timocrates, are to allow Hermarchus and his fellow philosophers to live in the house for the lifetime of Hermarchus, τὴν δ’ οἰκίαν τὴν ἐν Μελίτῃ παρεχέτωσαν Ἀμυνόμαχος καὶ Τιμοκράτης ἐνοικεῖν Ἑρμάρχῳ καὶ τοῖς μετ’ αὐτοῦ φιλοσοφοῦσιν, ἕως ἂν Ἕρμαρχος ζῇ (10.17). Thereafter, Epicurus’ will makes no provision, and the house must to all appearances have been legally alienable. Cicero states (Fam. 13.1.4) that Patro's case for Memmius ceding his rights over the house included an appeal to testamentorum ius and Epicuri auctoritatem; if these appeals included any claim to the effect that Epicurus’ will required the house in Melite to remain in the possession of the Epicurean school, we can see how Memmius might have been unpersuaded.

By 51 b.c., on the evidence of Cicero's letters, the house in Melite found itself in a sorry state. The word Cicero consistently uses of it is parietinae, walls in a dilapidated condition (nescio quid illud Epicuri parietinarum, Fam. 13.1.3; parietinis in Melita, Att. 5.19.3).Footnote ⁸ Cicero further informs us that Memmius possessed the right to build on the site of this house, and had that right by virtue of a decree of the Areopagus (Cicero uses the technical term ὑπομνηματισμός, Fam. 13.1.5; Att. 5.11.6), which Cicero (perhaps humorously) dates to the Eponymous Archonship of Polycharmos (Polycharmo praetore, Att. 5.11.6).Footnote ⁹ It is worth emphasizing that Cicero describes Memmius’ designs on the location exclusively in terms of building, with no suggestion of demolition: aedificatio twice at Fam. 13.1.3 and again at 13.1.5 alongside etiam si aedificaturus esses; aedificationis consilium at Att. 5.11.6.

So Memmius was licensed at the very highest level to build on the site in Melite. What stood in his way was Patro, scholarch of the Epicureans in Athens after the death of Phaedrus, and what apparently motivated Patro in his stubborn resistance to whatever Memmius had in mind was the cult status accorded to Epicurus by later adherents of his school, and the central role played in Epicureanism by this lionization of the founder. That, at any rate, is an easy conclusion from … Epicuri auctoritatem … sedem, domicilium, uestigia summorum hominum sibi tuenda esse (Fam. 13.1.4). The prominence and sanctity of Epicurus in the later history of the school had its roots in Epicurus’ own provision, later confirmed in his will, of cults celebrating himself and his family and philosophical associates. In his lifetime he had established an annual celebration of his own birthday and—something that became a key Epicurean ritual—gatherings on the twentieth day of every month to commemorate himself and Metrodorus. There were also cults of family members and of Polyaenus, one of the three καθηγεμόνες alongside Hermarchus and Metrodorus, secondary leaders of the school after Epicurus himself. As Clay notes, the observance of a celebration every month implied that Epicurus and Metrodorus were divinities:Footnote ¹⁰ any reader of the De Rerum Natura will see the force of the exposé of Epicureanism by Timocrates, Epicurus’ great critic (and Metrodorus’ brother), as ἡ μυστικὴ ἐκείνη συνδιαγωγή, ‘that coven of mystics’ (Diog. Laert. 10.7), a philosophical school consciously shaped by its founder as a quasi-religious community. In relation to Epicurus’ house in Melite, we might suspect that just this fetishization of Epicurus motivated Patro to assert proprietorial rights over a site to which, as we have seen, he seems to have had no claim in law.

The prevailing interpretation of the situation Cicero addresses in Fam. 13.1, Att. 5.11.6 and 5.19.3 is that it indicates a fundamental rift between C. Memmius and Epicureanism. The letter ‘cannot possibly stand scrutiny as a basis for attributing Epicureanism to C. Memmius’, in the uncompromising words of Castner.Footnote ¹¹ Fowler is equally convinced of the ‘mismatch between [the De Rerum Natura] and addressee’, as illustrated by Cicero's letter, although he sees no contradiction between the antipathy he attributes to Memmius and his role in the De Rerum Natura, a text which was, after all, designed to convert (non-Epicurean) readers to the philosophy.Footnote ¹² This reading of Memmius’ activity has found more lurid expression. The references to building that we have highlighted in Cicero's account of Memmius’ plans have tended to mutate into demolition of Epicurus’ house, on the one hand, and assumptions about the nature of Memmius’ construction, on the other. Thus, Clay talks of ‘Cicero's purpose’ in Fam. 13.1 being ‘to dissuade Memmius from pulling down the ruins of Epicurus’ house in Melite’,Footnote ¹³ and Kelly states that ‘Memmius had acquired’ the ruins of Epicurus’ house, ‘and had received approval from the Areopagus to tear down the remains of the old building and construct a new house’.Footnote ¹⁴ It is worth reminding ourselves that the evidence available warrants no more than the word ‘construct’ in this latter clause: there is no suggestion that Memmius is building a house for himself, or destroying what already existed at the site. A fortiori, the reference in RE to a ‘magnificent palace’ that Memmius planned to build and Memmius’ own ‘Zerstörungslust’Footnote ¹⁵ lacks evidential basis, though no doubt arising from some implicit characterization of Memmius as a stereotypically arrogant Roman interloper in Athenian affairs. Habicht also talks of Memmius’ intention to ‘build a palace on the site where Epicurus’ house had once stood’, and further assumes that it was his ‘money, influence and connections’ that had secured the relevant decree of the Areopagus,Footnote ¹⁶ an assessment of Memmius that is potentially in tension with Habicht's (accurate) acknowledgement elsewhere that he was ‘a gifted intellectual who wrote poetry and had an interest in philosophy’, a philhellene (Cic. Brut. 247) to whom Athens might have appeared ‘as the site where he could best endure his banishment’.Footnote ¹⁷ Cicero's brief sketch of Memmius’ accomplishments in the Brutus should perhaps always be borne in mind in relation to these circumstances.

Less speculative treatments of the evidence identify more compelling grounds for the view that Memmius was no friend of Epicureans: the clear impression of unfriendly relations between Memmius and the Epicurean scholarch Patro that emerges from Cicero's letters. ‘[H]is sympathy with Epicureanism seems slender,’ Hutchinson comments, ‘to judge from his disrespectful plans to build on the ruins of Epicurus’ house, and his obvious anger at the intervention of Patro the head of the Epicurean school.’ Hutchinson's primary aim is to cast doubt on the identification of C. Memmius L.f. with the addressee of the De Rerum Natura, which in turn might support, without being crucial for, the later date for the poem that Hutchinson favours, and he suggests that Memmius’ attitude in Athens is hard to square with Lucretius’ aspirations to convert him.Footnote ¹⁸ When Shackleton Bailey remarks similarly that, ‘If this Memmius (and not his namesake C. Memmius C.f.) was indeed the dedicatee of the De Rerum Natura, he must have changed his views, or else Lucretius was sadly mistaken in him’, he does so in commenting on Cicero's dismissive words on Patro at Fam. 13.1.4 (transl. Shackleton Bailey):Footnote ¹⁹

Don Fowler took this sense of the fundamental differences between C. Memmius and Epicureanism, and thus the paradox that Lucretius’ dedicatee should be addressed in these terms by Cicero, to a logical conclusion, pondering ‘whether it was the De Rerum Natura which Cicero refers to’ at Fam. 13.1.4 ‘when he talks of the “offensiuncula” caused to Memmius by the “peruersitas” of some Epicureans’.Footnote ²¹ Clearly, an alternative reading of Memmius’ behaviour such as we are proposing needs not only to offer a more eirenic account of his building intentions but also to explain how remarks such as these between Cicero and Memmius could fail to amount to criticism of the entire philosophical school of Epicureanism, and fail to preclude attributing to Memmius any level of sympathy with Epicurean philosophy. We address these issues in reverse order.

Cicero frames his letter to Memmius as a recommendation (commendatio) made on behalf of Patro, who has requested Cicero's intervention twice, first in writing and then in person (Fam. 13.1.3). That a non-Epicurean like Cicero was enlisted as a go-between suggests an absence of good relations between Memmius and Patro, who had previously been acquainted at Rome.Footnote ²² This was no doubt rooted in the course of recent events concerning Memmius’ plans for the site: Cicero's intervention did not constitute Patro's initial approach to Memmius but was made after Memmius had rejected, and been angered by, an earlier approach (whether made by Patro directly or through another intermediary is unclear).Footnote ²³ As such, the indirectness of this second approach stems from the recent falling-out, and should not be taken to suggest that Patro anticipated any broader anti-Epicurean sentiment on Memmius’ part.Footnote ²⁴

At 13.1.4, Cicero anticipates that Memmius will be willing to engage in harsh criticism and ridicule of Patro. Accordingly, this passage constitutes the strongest prima facie evidence against the notion of a Memmius with Epicurean sympathies. If Memmius was known to have sympathized with Epicurean philosophy, it is assumed, Cicero could not have expected him to respond well to the abuse of so eminent an Epicurean as Patro, especially when said abuse is not limited to Patro's recent behaviour but appears to extend to the very fact of his Epicureanism (ratio … quam sequitur in philosophia). Memmius, says Cicero, had been affronted by the peruersitas of the members of a certain gens (usually understood to refer to Epicureans simpliciter)Footnote ²⁵ and had been the target of a set of arguments and appeals from Patro to which the correct response was thorough ridicule of both man and underlying doctrine: totam hominis uitam rationemque quam sequitur in philosophia derideamus. While ridicule is appropriate, Patro's behaviour is not so bad as to preclude toleration and, indeed, clemency: sed mehercules, quoniam illi ceterisque quos illa delectant non ualde inimici sumus, nescio an ignoscendum sit huic si tanto opere laborat; his sin (peccat) is rooted less in moral failure (improbitas) than in the tactlessness of the narrow-minded (ineptiae).Footnote ²⁶ Cicero, then, asks Memmius to view Patro and his associates as figures of fun; deeply misguided, perhaps, but essentially harmless.

An interpretation according to which Cicero's criticism of Patro and his associates at Fam. 13.1.4 is intended to appeal to broad anti-Epicurean attitudes on the part of Memmius is certainly compatible with the language of this part of the letter. A complication is presented, however, by the following paragraph (13.1.5), in which Atticus is introduced as another individual who has put pressure on him to intervene. Cicero, then, is writing to Memmius not only on behalf of Patro but also on behalf of a Roman Epicurean of a quite different complexion: Atticus, Cicero tells Memmius, is non ex istis; not a member of the gens, led by Patro, which Cicero has just invited Memmius to ridicule. While the seriousness of Atticus’ commitment to Epicurean values has been questioned,Footnote ²⁷ there is no doubt that he identified as, and was understood to be, an Epicurean.Footnote ²⁸ As such, Cicero's statement at 13.1.5 that Atticus is ‘not one of them’ presents a serious difficulty for a reading according to which ‘they’—the targets of the foregoing ridicule—are understood to be Epicureans simpliciter. A solution is easily found: the scope of Cicero's ridicule at 13.1.4, and likewise the scope of istis at 13.1.5, is restricted to those Epicureans, led by Patro, who are protesting Memmius’ plans. The difference between this group of Epicureans and Epicurean individuals like Atticus is the relative paucity of their culture and the narrowness of their learning; non quo [Atticus] sit ex istis; est enim omni liberali doctrina politissimus.Footnote ²⁹

This is not the only letter in which Cicero appears to draw a distinction between two different kinds of Epicurean, refined and unrefined. First, we may compare the language of the letter to Atticus (5.11), in which Cicero explains his motivation for writing to Memmius.Footnote ³⁰ There Cicero claims that his intervention has generated appreciation for Atticus apud Patronem et reliquos barones. Again, given Atticus’ identification as an Epicurean, the scope of reliquos barones should not extend to all Epicureans; the phrase should rather be understood as referring to those Epicureans supportive of Patro's cause, no doubt members of the Athenian school, of which he was leader, who appreciate their fellow Epicurean's intervention on their behalf. We may further compare Fam. 9.26.3, a letter to the Epicurean Papirius Paetus,Footnote ³¹ where Paetus is said to have heckled the philosopher Dio, another Epicurean,Footnote ³² who is subsequently called by Cicero a baro.Footnote ³³ A pattern may be established, then, according to which Cicero expects his Roman Epicurean addressees to be receptive to the playful ridicule and denigration of their Greek counterparts, especially in contexts where their level of culture and sophistication is in question.

The significance of this for our reading of Cicero's intervention with Memmius should be clear. As we have seen, the internal logic of the letter, given the praise of the Epicurean Atticus at 13.1.5, does not allow for the criticisms of 13.1.4 to be aimed at Epicureans simpliciter. Rather, we have suggested that the targets of said criticism are limited to those Athenian Epicureans, including Patro, who were causing difficulties for Memmius. Such a reading does not require Memmius to have held broadly anti-Epicurean views but merely to have been opposed to the behaviour of the Epicurean protesters targeted at 13.1.4. What is more, criticism of certain Greek Epicureans in a Ciceronian letter does not preclude the letter's addressee from having pro-Epicurean sympathies, or even from identifying as an Epicurean himself. As such, not only do the criticisms and ridicule of 13.1.4 not demonstrate anti-Epicureanism on Memmius’ part, they also cannot be used to rule out the possibility that Memmius, like Atticus and Papirius Paetus, identified as an Epicurean himself.

Such a reading may seem at odds with the central passage of Cicero's critique of Patro (totam hominis uitam rationemque quam sequitur in philosophia derideamus), where ‘the system he follows in philosophy’ has traditionally been interpreted as referring to Patro's Epicureanism per se. This traditional interpretation, however, is unnecessary; alternative readings are available, which offer a better fit both with the immediate context of 13.1.4 and with the praise of Atticus that will follow at 13.1.5. First, we note that the phrasing totam hominis uitam … derideamus seems too strong for the context: Cicero had earlier stated (13.1.2) that cum Patrone Epicurio mihi omnia sunt, and had described in the same passage how he personally and successfully lobbied for Patro to win certain unspecified commoda et praemia. What is more, Patro was recommended to Cicero by Phaedrus, a uir bonus et suauis et officiosus respected by Cicero and beloved by Atticus. In such a context, an invitation for Memmius to ridicule ‘the entire life’ of Patro would seem decidedly out of place. It is for this reason that Wesenberg suggested the emendation of uiam for the transmitted uitam,Footnote ³⁴ on which reading Cicero invites Memmius to ridicule not Patro's life but rather the ‘method’ or ‘approach’ (uia ratioque) he takes to philosophy.Footnote ³⁵ While this succeeds in clearing up the difficulty posed by uitam, it also introduces a slight syntactic awkwardness, with both hominis and quam sequitur in philosophia competing to define the scope of uiam rationemque. An alternative solution, accepting the paradosis, is to understand totam hominis uitam to refer not to Patro's whole life in respect of its duration but rather to the way of life he led as Epicurean scholarch,Footnote ³⁶ involving as it did the kind of devotional activity Cicero expected Memmius to find distasteful. Rationemque quam sequitur in philosophia may then be read in a similar sense as referring not to the fact of Patro's Epicureanism but rather to his particular approach to the philosophical life.

As such, whether or not Wesenberg's emendation is accepted, Cicero's invitation to deride Patro at 13.1.4 may be read in such a way that it does not entail criticism of Patro's Epicureanism per se. As we have seen, such a reading is desirable, given the positive treatment of the Epicurean Atticus that is to follow. Such a reading is further supported by the immediate context of the letter: Cicero's invitation to ridicule Patro here stems directly from the terms of Patro's appeal (contentio) to Memmius, in which he invoked the cult status in which Epicurus and his early disciples were held by his later followers: honorem, officium, testamentorum ius, Epicuri auctoritatem, Phaedri obtestationem, sedem, domicilium, uestigia summorum hominum sibi tuenda esse dicit. This is the voice of the ideologue and the purist, the blinkered devotee of the cult of Epicurus, an approach to philosophy quite distinct from that of a Roman Epicurean like Atticus, whose cultural life and learning extend across a far wider ambit. The criticism of 13.1.4, then, is not targeted at each and every Epicurean but rather at a certain group of ideologically motivated Athenian Epicureans, led by Patro, who saw themselves as the guardians of the memory and cult of Epicurus.Footnote ³⁷

As we have seen, earlier in 13.1.4 Cicero refers to the group whose peruersitas has so offended Memmius as a gens: si qua offensiuncula facta est animi tui peruersitate aliquorum (noui enim gentem illam), des te ad lenitatem. While elsewhere in Cicero gens may be used as a term to denote a philosophical school,Footnote ³⁸ we have now provided arguments to demonstrate that the scope of Cicero's abuse cannot have extended to each and every Epicurean. Accordingly, we reject Shackleton Bailey's reading (ad loc.) of gentem illam as being equivalent to ‘the Epicureans’. As an alternative, we suggest that with this expression Cicero alludes to the aforementioned tendency of the tight-knit group of Epicureans at Athens to spend much of their time eating together and observing cults of memory for Epicurus, his relatives and his disciples. On this interpretation, Cicero's phrase gentem illam casts the Athenian Epicureans as a kind of extended family-group.Footnote ³⁹ As Clay points out, the closest analogue to the cult of memorialization that existed in the Garden was the memorial γενέσια of Greek family religion; a result of the memorializing cults of Epicurus was the transformation of those living together in the Garden into a quasi-family.Footnote ⁴⁰ We further note that Philodemus, in his On Epicurus, describes the Epicurean group at Athens using the language of the family, or household: Epicurus, he says, invites to the feast ‘all those who are members of his household’ (τούς τε κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν ἅπαντας), as well as any well-wishers from outside (ἔξωθεν).Footnote ⁴¹ Not only is Philodemus’ language of the household a useful comparandum for Cicero's use of gens at 13.1.4, but the distinction drawn here between members of the Epicurean οἰκία and Epicurean outsiders is instructive for our broader reading of Fam. 13.1.

Narrowing down the targets of the criticism at 13.1.4 to a select group of Epicurean ideologues removes any obstacle to identifying Memmius himself as someone with broad pro-Epicurean leanings of the type professed by Atticus. Such an identification is bolstered by the terms of Patro's appeal to Memmius, as related by Cicero at 13.1.4: Patro must have seen Memmius as someone who would respond positively to an appeal to the authority of Epicurus and Phaedrus, in other words as someone with pro-Epicurean sympathies. Indeed, the terms of the appeal would make little sense otherwise.Footnote ⁴² Finally, as Griffin has suggested,Footnote ⁴³ identifying Memmius as someone with Epicurean sympathies also allows us to make sense of the unusual way in which Cicero opens the letter, with what looks like a parody of the kind of hedonic calculation with which Epicurus expected his followers to determine each and every course of action:Footnote ⁴⁴

A parody of the Epicurean hedonic calculus is precisely the kind of philosophical play Cicero elsewhere enjoys when writing to his philosophically minded friends; Memmius, we may assume, was expected by Cicero both to recognize the outset of the letter as an example of such badinage and, indeed, to enjoy it. Not only, then, is Cicero's intervention perfectly compatible with an addressee who had broad sympathy with Epicurean philosophy, but the presence of such sympathy in the addressee makes good sense in the light of both Patro's appeal to Epicurus’ authority and Cicero's playful engagement with Epicurean argumentation.

If Fam. 13.1 does not preclude, and may even support, sympathy on Memmius’ part for Epicureanism, the question now presents itself, what designs Memmius did have for the site in Melite. If he was neither engaged in the wholesale demolition of Epicurean remains on the site nor set upon building a luxurious dwelling for himself, what did he have in mind? What can we propose which could provoke the objections of Patro while remaining compatible with a sympathy for Epicureanism? We have suggested that any malicious intent to hurt the Epicureans of Athens by vandalizing a place sacred to them is unwarranted by the evidence. Sheer coincidence, that the purported addressee of Lucretius’ Epicurean masterpiece found himself involved in a dispute concerning a property of Epicurus, always remains a possibility. But we think a more likely explanation is available.

A salient detail in Cicero's account of these events is the involvement of the council of the Areopagus, still in Roman times a significant organ of the Athenian state. Cicero refers to the decretum illud Areopagitarum, quem ὑπομνηματισμὸν illi uocant (Fam. 13.1.5) and to the ὑπομνηματισμός that Patro hoped would be rescinded by the Areopagus (Att. 5.11.6). In the latter passage especially, the decree or ὑπομνηματισμός is intimately associated with Memmius’ aedificandi consilium: if Memmius has given up his plan to build, Cicero suggests both to Memmius himself and in his report to Atticus, he should really have no objection to the rescinding of the decree. All that might prevent Memmius’ agreement, Cicero suggests in both letters, is his lingering irritation with Patro. The role of the Areopagus in these circumstances has been explained by Geagan as an aspect of the council's (putative) jurisdiction over lands, originally proposed by Graindor on the basis of IG 12.8.26, a dedication of a statue of the Areopagus by the Athenian cleruchs of Hephaestia on Lemnos.Footnote ⁴⁵ The ὑπομνηματισμός of the Areopagus, according to Geagan's interpretation, granted Memmius ‘the lands containing the house of Epicurus for private building’. But Graindor rightly sees Cicero's letters as evidence that Memmius had been granted a right to build by this decree rather than ownership per se, and this does seem a more natural reading of Cicero's account. It also suggests a tidier explanation of the Areopagus’ involvement, since a major function of the council, as extensively illustrated by Geagan himself, was ‘as a body decreeing monuments’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Now, we must presumably make allowance for the greater likelihood of dedications surviving than other information about the responsibilities of the Areopagus. Nevertheless, a process was clearly established whereby ‘dedicatory monuments erected according to a ὑπομνηματισμός’ were ‘requested and built by a third party’, the contribution of the Areopagus (the content of the ὑπομνηματισμός) being in effect a permission allowing the third party to construct a monument.Footnote ⁴⁷ This approximates rather closely what we have shown that Cicero allows us to conclude about Memmius’ intentions: he has won the right from the Areopagus to build something. What Memmius wanted to build, we propose, was a monument honouring Epicurus.

If in fact Memmius had sought and gained permission from the Areopagus to construct some kind of monument on the site of Epicurus’ ruined house, it puts a radically different complexion both on his behaviour and on the response of Patro. This was not a fundamental disagreement between Epicureans and a man unsympathetic to the doctrine but rather an awkward difference of opinion between a Roman enthusiast and the established representatives of the philosophy in Athens about the appropriate way of managing the ruined legacy of the founder. Memmius wanted to construct a monument honouring Epicurus, and sought the Areopagus’ approval; Patro, for whatever reason, objected. But it would be just the kind of disagreement to excite the level and character of irritation that Cicero attributes to Memmius: Memmius was as frustrated and hurt by an Epicurean's obstruction of a celebration of Epicurus as one might expect an enthusiast for Epicurean philosophy to be. But it is surely testament to Memmius’ respect both for Athens and for Epicureanism that Cicero's proposal to him assumes a willingness on Memmius’ part to observe the procedures of the Areopagus, and at the same time implies that Memmius, armed though he was with the ὑπομνηματισμός of the Areopagus, an unanswerable right to pursue his aedificationis consilium, was nevertheless prepared to abandon his building project in the face of Patro's objections. Would a hardened enemy of Epicureanism, or even a callously insensitive boor, do any such thing? On the other hand, isn't this exactly the reaction we would expect if Memmius had attempted to express his respect for Epicurus at the home of his philosophical school but had been rebuffed?

Griffin ponders a parallel with Cicero's plans, divulged to Atticus, to construct a propylon at the entrance to the Academy in Athens (Att. 6.1.26, 6.6.2).Footnote ⁴⁸ The tentativeness with which Cicero shares his intentions with his friend, and the role he assigns Atticus as his arbiter elegantiae, a man unusually alive to the sensitivities of Athenians, illustrates very nicely the delicacy of any such project on the part of a Roman in Athens.Footnote ⁴⁹ It is surely such sensitivities that Memmius has fallen foul of, with Atticus again cast as intermediary between Athenians and Romans, the role he fulfils at Fam. 13.1.5. As for Memmius, we propose that he is a sufficiently keen Epicurean to conceive of constructing at his own expense a monument to Epicurus at the site of his house in Melite. We might even imagine him following a similar path to T. Albucius, exiled in around 105 b.c. for misdeeds in Sardinia, and choosing Athens as doctus … Graecis … uel potius paene Graecus (Cic. Brut. 131; cf. Fin. 1.9 quoting Lucilius’ satires, 87–93 Warmington; De Prouinciis Consularibus 15), but more specifically as a follower of Epicurus (Tusc. 5.108; Pis. 92). In other words, far from being unsympathetic to Epicureanism, Memmius’ very choice of Athens as his place of exile may have been guided by his philosophical affiliations.Footnote ⁵⁰

It may nevertheless be objected that erecting a monument to Epicurus contravenes a fundamental tenet of Epicureanism, λάθε βιώσας.Footnote ⁵¹ But while the principle undoubtedly has implications for Epicurean attitudes to memorialization, it should not be assumed that it entailed an unqualified rejection of monuments. On the one hand, we have Lucretius deploring men driven to death statuarum et nominis ergo (3.78),Footnote ⁵² but, on the other, the evidence of Patro's own appeal to Memmius, as Cicero summarizes it, citing the respect owed to the uestigia summorum hominum (Fam. 13.1.4), the memory of Epicurus as embodied by the house in Melite.Footnote ⁵³

The truth is that λάθε βιώσας, while clearly expressing a broad preference on Epicurus’ part, was subordinate in any given moral decision by an Epicurean to the principle that our choices and avoidances should be determined by the hedonic calculus, as described at Ep. Men. 129–30. That this commitment to weighing each action on its unique merits with regard to pleasure and pain left Epicurean practice more nuanced (or, from an outsider's perspective, less consistent) is illustrated by Plutarch's criticism of Epicurus’ hypocrisy in respect of his most famous maxim (An Recte 1128 F–1129A): the philosopher's advice to cultivate anonymity amounts to advising himself not to do the things to which he in fact devoted his life, proselytizing for his philosophy, publishing books, writing the praises of his fellow Epicureans and making elaborate provision (including his own ritual memorialization) for the continuation of the community after his death (cf. Plut. Non Posse 1100A–C). Roskam is able to dismiss Plutarch's broadside as ‘a polemical and malicious misrepresentation’, but also to allow, on the evidence of Sententiae Vaticanae 64 especially, that ‘the Epicurean will gratefully accept the honours that are given to him’. To imagine otherwise is to understand λάθε βιώσας ‘as absolute advice, which it is not’.

It is thus perfectly possible to read Cicero's letter to Memmius on the matter of Epicurus’ house as evidence not of C. Memmius’ antipathy to Epicureanism but of his enthusiasm for it; an enthusiasm sufficient for him to want to spend money not on building himself a comfortable residence but rather erecting a monument honouring Epicurus; an enthusiasm sufficient also to cause Memmius intense irritation when it was thwarted. Indeed, we believe that this represents a more satisfactory exegesis of Fam. 13.1 than the established one, better able to explain the roles played by both Atticus and the Areopagus, for example. Proponents of the traditional interpretation, according to which the letter provides clear evidence of Memmius’ antipathy toward Epicureanism, rely on the principle that Cicero's abuse, in an item of correspondence, of a certain philosophical group precludes the possibility of his addressee harbouring sympathies towards that group. We have provided arguments to demonstrate that this principle is flawed. The existence of a Roman Epicurean like Atticus, who did not buy into the more cult-like features of Epicurean life, may serve as a mild counterweight to those accounts which place stress on the authoritarian quasi-religious features of Epicurean philosophical allegiance.Footnote ⁵⁴ While this is indeed the model of allegiance we encounter in Philodemus and Lucretius (and, clearly, the model of allegiance that was encouraged by Patro), the case of Atticus (and perhaps, we suggest, the case of Memmius also) makes it clear that it was possible for a Roman intellectual publicly to sympathize with Epicureanism while simultaneously refusing to take seriously the centralized authoritarian strictures of its Athenian school.

But what has always fuelled interest in this and the other letters of Cicero concerned with Memmius’ building project is of course the general assumption that this Memmius is the same as the addressee of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. In the broadest terms our reading of the disagreement between Memmius and Patro as a dispute between Epicureans, albeit Epicureans who enacted their devotion to Epicurus in quite different and incompatible ways, resolves any difficulty there might have appeared to be in identifying the C. Memmius of Cicero's letter and the addressee of the De Rerum Natura: as a man who at some stage embraced Epicureanism, Memmius was an exceptionally well-chosen recipient for Lucretius’ Latin exposition of Epicurean doctrine, and Lucretius was not, pace Shackleton Bailey (on Fam. 13.1.4), ‘sadly mistaken in him’.

The precise role of Lucretius’ poem in the philosophical development of C. Memmius is worth further consideration. The De Rerum Natura implies an addressee who is both an exemplary Roman and a man prepared de rerum natura disputare with Lucretius (Vitr. De arch. 9. praef. 17). It implies also a man who, while sufficiently sympathetic to Epicureanism to engage in discussion of it, still has a lot to learn about the fundamental doctrines of the school (1.411, 2.182), whether the speed with which atoms move (2.143), the true magnitude of Epicurus’ achievement (5.8) or the nature of the Universe (1.1052, 5.93). This might hint at a formative role for Lucretius in Memmius’ philosophical education, indeed an inversion of Fowler's suspicion that it was the De Rerum Natura that had made Memmius an inveterate opponent of Epicureanism.Footnote ⁵⁵ Was it in actual fact the De Rerum Natura that first set Memmius on his path to the respect for Epicurus that his intentions regarding Epicurus’ house appear to illustrate?

We enter speculative territory, but if that in turn supports the ‘traditional’ dating of the De Rerum Natura, mainly based on Cic. QFr. 2.10.3 from early 54, we do not share the doubts of HutchinsonFootnote ⁵⁶ regarding the applicability of Lucretius’ language at 1.29–49 to the circumstances of the mid fifties b.c. Lucretius’ talk of a patriai tempore iniquo (1.41), which is monopolizing Memmius’ attention and energies, and the poet's wish that Venus’ peace prevail over Mars’ war, are felt to make a time of publication after the outbreak of Civil War in 49 more likely. But Rome in the mid fifties was indeed in turmoil; it was ‘perhaps the most turbulent, chaotic and confused period of Republican politics’.Footnote ⁵⁷ That is primarily an account of internal Roman politics, but agreement between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus at Luca in April 56 had facilitated military action that might reasonably seem ‘global’. Caesar was able to continue his campaigns in Gaul: in 55 he defeated Germanic tribes in northern Gaul and crossed the Rhine; he later invaded Britain for the first time, but the action against the Usipetes and the Tencteri caused intense controversy in Rome (Plut. Cat. Min. 51; Suet. Iul. 24.3). Meanwhile, Crassus secured one of the consulships for 55, and left Rome even before the end of his term to assume control of the province of Syria, which from the very outset seemed to portend war against Parthia (Plut. Crass. 16.1–3). Such a general state of affairs could very readily be described, even without rhetorical license, in the terms used by Lucretius: Rome was in no sense at peace in the mid fifties b.c., and the impact of external warfare was strongly felt in the capital.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is rash in any case to imagine that we can reconstruct how world events were perceived in Rome at any given time, but C. Memmius’ energetic pursuit of the consulship with the backing of Pompey (Cic. Att. 4.15.7, 4.16.6), which would culminate in his candidacy for 53, and the corruption scandal that would ensure his exile, answers much more neatly to Lucretius’ picture of a Roman politician deeply engaged in his country's crisis than would the much diminished Memmius of 49 or later, whether or not he was ever recalled from exile (and there is no evidence that he was).

If the De Rerum Natura did indeed help to shape Memmius’ thinking, Lucretius perhaps took his addressee some but not all of the way towards the poet's hyperbolic assessment of Epicurus, if events in Athens four or five years later are any guide: certainly it is hard to see much daylight between Lucretius (deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi, 5.8) and the kind of ‘fundamentalist’ Epicureanism espoused by Patro and his συμφιλοσοφοῦντες in Athens. But, however we reconstruct the dynamic between Memmius and Lucretius that lies at the heart of the De Rerum Natura, Fam. 13.1 should not be considered evidence of a failure of communication between poet and dedicatee. On the contrary, if Memmius’ real plan in Melite was to express his respect for Epicurus in monumental form, then Lucretius was addressing a senior Roman figure who would become, in his own way, a passionate devotee of the Master.