ABSTRACT
The Epicureans were notorious in antiquity for denigrating or rejecting most forms of civic participation.1 They also witheld approval for the cultural dis ciplines and activities which most other Greeks held in high esteem, both for their formative properties and for their potential to enrich the quality of a persons life. Paideia in its various manifestations-in particular, poetry, rhet oric, and music2-was not only an educational process or a means to validat ing citizenship through familiarity with accepted frames of historical, cultural and ideological reference, it could even be regarded as something which contributed to a persons right to define himself as Greek.3
