Zeno of Sidon also criticized Euclid (who was associated with the Aristoteleans
at Alexandria) and implied the possibility of a non-Euclidean geometry.
In the next generation, Zeno’s pupil Philodemus was at Naples, where for
a brief period Epicureanism received patronage from eminent Romans, includ-
ing the circle of Julius Caesar. There was even something of a split in the
Epicurean ranks at this time—the kind of thing one usually sees in a period of
success, as opportunities open up—with Philodemus debating other Epicureans
over theories of logic and mathematics (Rawson, 1985: 58–59, 295–296;
Windelband, [1892] 1901: 195). There was even a move in the direction of
a theory of induction, a significant break in the logic of antiquity. In this
same period Lucretius set forth his—strictly orthodox—statement of classical
Epicureanism, apparently in a different circle than Philodemus’.^27 The opening
for Epicurean popularity was brief; by the time of Augustus, a political crack-
down on religious unorthodoxy had driven the Epicureans out of Rome, and
we see no more creativity from them through the end of antiquity.Formal Support in the Roman Period
What stars there are in philosophical life are in the transition, when intellectual
capital is readapted to the upheaval in its institutional base. Here we find
Posidonius, Aenesidemus, Lucretius, Cicero who acted as the broker for intro-
ducing Greek ideas into Rome. For the next half-dozen generations, intellectual
life settled into a routine. There were contending positions, to be sure, but the
well-known names are not very original by the standards of what went before,
reformulators of doctrines with a backwards-looking bent, typically syncretiz-
ing positions by taking off the sharp edge of critical acuteness. Beneath this
popularistic syncretism lies a new kind of material base.
After the organized schools had broken up, unorganized movements reap-
peared. Many authors described themselves as “Pythagoreans”; but although
there had been an effort to revive a political movement at Rome under that
name (led by Cicero’s friend Nigidius Figilus around 50 b.c.e.), it is likely that
the connection was merely figurative. Some positions retained the familiar
labels—Platonist, Aristotelean, Stoic—but their proponents were now free-
lancers rather than organizational members.^28 Correspondingly, they were less
trammeled in adhering to a pure line of doctrine. The Cynic style reappears
for several generations after 100 c.e., with an outpouring of wandering street
preachers, often blending showmanship and magic; they made up part of the
movement of commercial teachers of rhetoric, on the one hand, as well as
occultist movements such as Gnosticism, on the other, characteristic of that
age (EP, 1967: 2:284–285; Hadas, 1950: 274–278, 287–290). The eclecticism
of the Roman period was due in part to the lack of solid organizational
backbone for distinctive network lineages.
114 •^ The Skeleton of Theory