Lucretius and Epicureanism

Although Cicero’s brand of syncretizing Stoicism was to establish itself rapidly as the conventional wisdom of the senatorial class, it was not in fact the dominant philosophy of the Rome of his day. While Stoicism did on occasion attract high-profile adherents such as Cato to its cause, philosophically minded aristocrats tended in the Late Republic to be drawn instead to the teachings of Epicurus, ¹ which appear in many ways to be diametrically opposed to the high moral tone of the Stoa. Cicero certainly viewed the spread of Epicureanism at Rome as a menace to public morals, and saw its tenets as working to contradict and undermine the view of the self he held to be necessary to ethical action. ²