Histoire et légende dans la polémique du Jardin contre le Portique

Abstract

One of the privileged means of access to wisdom and happiness being for Epicurus to eradicate man’ s anguish linked to the fear of death and the gods, the point was for the Garden strenuously to struggle against superstition and consequently to rule out myth and legend that breed it. His remote disciple Philodemos pursues the same goal when he energetically opposes the Portico upholders of the IInd-Ist c. B.C. in his commentaries On Music IV and On signs, as well as in his polemical work devoted to the Stoics. Here we discover in the latter a rather modern interest in history : history, in the Epicurian’ s eyes, is an important source for enriching one’ s personal experience, the indispensable starting point of any sure knowledge of ≪ phenomena ≫, but also (and above all) of the ≪ unseen ≫, of what in the universe escapes our senses (like the gods and death), and can be apprehended only through the ≪ transfer according to similitude ≫. It is easy under such conditions to understand that Philodemos could not but harshly assault myth and legend, which the Stoics on the contrary enjoyed making use of (just as much as of history) to emphasize the perfect coherence of their doctrine of a divine whole under Zeus’ providence.

Keywords

• Epicurism
• stoicism
• history
• legend
• polemic
• Philodemos