English Epicures and Stoics: Ancient Legacies in Early Stuart Culture (Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture)

For seventeenth-century English intellectuals, the ancient Epicureans and Stoics spoke clearly and forcefully to the kinds of problems they most wanted to solve. Whether seeking to define divinity, kingship, nobility, or liberty; to determine how people should live, govern, worship, form societies, and interpret nature; or to mediate between pleasure and virtue -- early Stuart writers time and again adapted and transformed the rival yet crossbred legacies of Epicureanism and Stoicism. In this book, Reid Barbour offers the first full account of the lively but hazardous transmission of these Hellenistic philosophies over the first half-century of Stuart rule, including the cataclysmic years of civil war that forever changed the role of classical culture in English intellectual life. Ranging from science and ethics to politics and religion, he shows how in many discourses -- plays and poems, biblical commentaries, political essays, scientific treatises, texts about health and the good life -- the Epicureans and Stoics seemed to spring as many traps as they posed solutions. In response to these dangers, English writers from Francis Bacon and Robert Burton to John Milton and Lucy Hutchinson revised and at times resisted the very philosophies they cared most about. English Epicures and Stoics 2 Contents 7 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 One Political Epicurus 30 Atomic Principles 32 Innocent Pleasure 58 The Troublesome Epicure 68 Two Epicurus in the Temple 84 Prometheus, Democritus, and Epicurus 88 Providence and Pleasure 100 Epicureanism and the Preacher 114 Three Resolute Ford 121 Resolution and Resolve 123 The Broken Heart 137 'Tis Pity She's a Whore 143 Perkin Warbeck 148 Four The Honest Court 154 The Fictive Aurelius 156 The Historical and Philosophical Marcus 159 Political Marcus 174 Charles and Marcus 181 The Stoic Platonized 186 The Stoic Seduced 194 Royal Patience and Peace 198 Five The Church Porch 204 Stoicism at York House 214 Troublesome Superstition 223 Job the Obscure 237 Six The Collapse of Accommodation 249 Milton and A Trinity of Stoics 255 Hutchinson's Conviction of Epicurus 273 Notes 278 Introduction 278 1. Political Epicurus 281 2. Epicurus in the Temple 290 3. Resolute Ford 292 4. The Honest Court 298 5. The Church Porch 304 6. The Collapse of Accommodation 309 Index 313 A 313 B 313 C 314 D 315 E 315 F 315 G 316 H 316 I 317 J 317 K 317 L 317 M 318 N 318 O 318 P 318 Q 319 R 319 S 319 T 320 V 320 W 320 X 320 Y 320 Z 320 In this book, Reid Barbour offers a full account of the lively but hazardous transmission of Hellenistic philosophers over the first half century of Stuart rule, including the cataclysmic years of civil war that forever changed the role of classical culture in English intellectual life.