Characterizations of Epicurean Atomism

Abstract

This chapter relates the history of atomism from Democritus to Lucretius and provides a survey of major opponents of atomism from Aristotle to Cicero, the latter of whom provides valuable evidence for Hellenistic responses to atomism. Early Epicureans, including Epicurus himself, were suspicious of figurative language. In contrast, opponents of atomism, most notably Cicero, made frequent use of tendentious metaphors and analogies to associate atomic physics with the disorder of rioting crowds and failed states. It is likely that Virgil adopted his own negative attitude toward atomic imagery in the Aeneid, where atomic motion symbolizes political and cosmic disorder, from these earlier anti-atomist writers.