Marius the Epicurean
Encyclopedia
Marius the Epicurean: his sensations and ideas is an historical
and philosophical novel
by Walter Pater
(his only completed full-length fiction), written between 1881 and 1884, published in 1885 and set in A.D. 161-177, in the Rome of the Antonines. It explores the intellectual development of its protagonist, a young Roman of integrity, in his pursuit of a congenial religion or philosophy at a time of change and uncertainty that Pater likened to his own era. The narration is third-person, slanted from Marius's point of view, added to which are various interpolated discourses, ranging from adaptations of classical and early Christian writings to Marius’s diary and authorial comment.
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Marius, a sensitive only child of a patrician family, growing up near Luna
in rural Etruria
, is impressed by the traditions and rituals of the ancestral religion of the Lares
, by his natural surroundings, and by a boyhood visit to a sanctuary of Aesculapius. His childhood ends with the death of his mother (he had early lost his father) and with his departure for boarding school in Pisae
. As a youth he is befriended by and falls under the influence of a brilliant, hedonistic older boy, Flavianus, who awakens in him a love of literature (the two read with delight the story of Cupid and Psyche
in Apuleius
, and Pater in due course makes Flavian, who is "an ardent student of words, of the literary art", the author of the Pervigilium Veneris
). Flavian falls ill during the Festival of Isis
and Marius tends him during his long death-agony (end of 'Part the First'). Grown to manhood, Marius now embraces the philosophy of the 'flux' of Heraclitus
and the Epicureanism
(or Cyrenaicism) of Aristippus
. He journeys to Rome (A.D. 166), encountering by chance on the way a blithesome young knight, Cornelius, who becomes a friend. Marius explores Rome in awe, and, "as a youth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy", is appointed amanuensis to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius's Meditations
on Stoicism
and on Plato
, and the public lectures of the rhetorician Fronto
, open Marius' eyes to the narrowness of Epicureanism. Aurelius's indifference, however, to the cruelty to animals in the amphitheatre, and later to the torments inflicted on people there, causes Marius to question the values of Stoicism (end of 'Part the Second'). Disillusioned with Rome and the imperial court which seem "like some stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed as if by malign enchantment out of the living trees", puzzled by the source of Cornelius's serenity, still Epicurean by temperament but seeking a more satisfying life-philosophy, Marius makes repeated visits alone to the Campagna
and Alban Hills
, on one occasion experiencing in the Sabine Hills a sort of spiritual "epiphany"
on a perfect day of peace and beauty (end of 'Part the Third'). Later he is taken by Cornelius to a household in the Campagna centred on a charismatic young widow, Cecilia, where prevails an atmosphere of peace and love, gradually revealing itself as a new religion with liturgy and rituals that appeal aesthetically and emotionally to Marius. The sense of purposeful community there, set against the persecution of Christians by the authorities and the competing philosophical systems in Rome, contributes to Marius' mood of isolation and emotional failure. Overshadowed by thoughts of mortality he revisits home and pays his respects to the family dead, burying their funerary urns, and sets out again for Rome in Cornelius's company. On the way the two are arrested as part of a sweep of suspected Christians. It emerges that only one of the young men is of this sect, and Marius, unbeknown to Cornelius, makes their captors believe it is he. Cornelius is set free, deceived into thinking that Marius will follow shortly. The latter endures hardship and exhaustion as he journeys captive towards Rome, falls ill, and dying is abandoned by his captors. "Had there been one to listen just then," Pater comments, "there would have come, from the very depth of his desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the singular accidents of life and death." Marius is tended in his last days by some poor country people, secret believers who ironically take him to be one of their own. Though he has shown little interest in the doctrines of the new faith and dies more or less in ignorance of them, he is nevertheless, Pater implies, "a soul naturally Christian" (anima naturaliter christiana ) and he finds peace in his final hours as he reviews his life (end of 'Part the Fourth').
Marius' quest exemplifies Pater's dictum that we should "be for ever testing new opinions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy" :
Thus the novel elaborates Pater's ideal of the aesthetic life – a life based on αίσθησις, perception – and his theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of sensation and insight as an ideal in itself. Centrally, Marius dedicates much time, and Pater much space, to examining the Meditations and character of Marcus Aurelius, who was warmly admired in the 19th century as a paragon of intellectual and moral virtue (by Niebuhr
, Matthew Arnold
, Renan
, George Long and many others), but whose Stoicism Marius ultimately finds too bleak and lacking in compassion.
The appeal of religion – whether ancestral paganism or primitive Christianity – is another major theme of the novel. Indeed the novel's opening and closing episodes betray Pater's continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he himself had lost. Michael Levey
, a biographer and editor of Pater, writes: "Pater is able to depict an early, pure Christianity, not yet sectarian, authoritarian, or established, which offers Marius a vision which is ideal because untarnished." Early Christianity, Pater notes, "had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom ... So much of what Marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion". Marius, however, having outgrown his childhood piety, dies before he has engaged intellectually with the doctrines of the new faith. He remains essentially Epicurean: "For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use life, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far as might be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself – a kind of music, all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air." His epiphany in the Sabine Hills, where he sensed a "divine companion" and the existence of a Platonic "Eternal Reason"
or Cosmic Mind, is not a prelude to religious faith. Readers may feel that Pater makes it hard for them to believe that Marius, with his acute, probing, restless mind, would have embraced Christian doctrines if he had examined them. Instead the novel remains open-ended, leaving us with a provisional ideal of 'aesthetic humanism'.
, Pater's original publishers, in New York in 1929. Two further scholarly editions were published in the mid-1980s to mark the novel's centenary (see Editions below).
the novelist Mary Ward
praised "the great psychological interest" of the book, but identified as a weakness its tendency to depict Christianity from an aesthetic viewpoint, rather than presenting it as life's ultimate truth and reality. T. S. Eliot, with his Stoic and Christian sympathies, concurred in his influential 1930 essay. More recently William F. Shuter has noted that "the lack of curiosity exhibited by Marius as to what was actually believed by the Christian community to which he is so strongly drawn" matched Pater's own lack of curiosity; it contrasts strongly with Marius' (and Pater's) keen interest in philosophy. Harold Bloom
writes, "Pater evaded the novel's ultimate problem by killing off Marius before the young man grasps the theological and moral exclusiveness of Christianity. Marius could not remain Marius and renounce [Epicureanism]. Whether Pater earns the structural irony of the novel's concluding pages, as a still-pagan Marius dies a sanctified Christian death, is legitimately questionable." Nevertheless Bloom praises Pater's integrity in his handling of Marius's epiphany in the Sabine Hills: "The self knows that it is joined to no immortal soul, yet now believes also that its own integrity can be at one with the system of forces outside it. By de-idealising the epiphany, Pater makes it available to the coming age."
. These fragments cover a range of discourses – narrative within narrative (from Apuleius), oration (by Fronto), formal dialogue (an abridgement of Lucian's
Hermotimus), letters (Eusebius) – which, taken with other metafictional
devices – the comparative lack of plot, action, characterisation, time-line and dialogue – make the novel "look forward beyond its century to modern works of fiction".
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
and philosophical novel
Philosophical novel
Philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of...
by Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
(his only completed full-length fiction), written between 1881 and 1884, published in 1885 and set in A.D. 161-177, in the Rome of the Antonines. It explores the intellectual development of its protagonist, a young Roman of integrity, in his pursuit of a congenial religion or philosophy at a time of change and uncertainty that Pater likened to his own era. The narration is third-person, slanted from Marius's point of view, added to which are various interpolated discourses, ranging from adaptations of classical and early Christian writings to Marius’s diary and authorial comment.
Plot summary
Luna (Etruria)
Luna was an ancient city of Etruria, Italy, 4~ miles southeast of modern Sarzana. It was the frontier town of Etruria, on the left bank of the river Macra , the boundary in imperial times between Etruria and Liguria...
in rural Etruria
Etruria
Etruria—usually referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia—was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria. A particularly noteworthy work dealing with Etruscan locations is D. H...
, is impressed by the traditions and rituals of the ancestral religion of the Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
, by his natural surroundings, and by a boyhood visit to a sanctuary of Aesculapius. His childhood ends with the death of his mother (he had early lost his father) and with his departure for boarding school in Pisae
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
. As a youth he is befriended by and falls under the influence of a brilliant, hedonistic older boy, Flavianus, who awakens in him a love of literature (the two read with delight the story of Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...
in Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
, and Pater in due course makes Flavian, who is "an ardent student of words, of the literary art", the author of the Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a Latin poem, probably written in the 4th century. It is generally thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, due to strong similarities with the latter’s poem Amnis ibat. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights'...
). Flavian falls ill during the Festival of Isis
Navigium Isidis
The Navigium Isidis or Isidis Navigium was an annual ancient Roman religious festival in honor of the goddess Isis. The festival outlived Christian persecution by Theodosius and Arcadius' persecution against the Roman religion.In the Roman Empire, it was still celebrated in Italy at least until...
and Marius tends him during his long death-agony (end of 'Part the First'). Grown to manhood, Marius now embraces the philosophy of the 'flux' of Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
and the Epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
(or Cyrenaicism) of Aristippus
Aristippus
Aristippus of Cyrene, , was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of Philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates, but adopted a very different philosophical outlook, teaching that the goal of life was to seek pleasure by adapting circumstances to oneself and by maintaining proper control over both...
. He journeys to Rome (A.D. 166), encountering by chance on the way a blithesome young knight, Cornelius, who becomes a friend. Marius explores Rome in awe, and, "as a youth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy", is appointed amanuensis to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius's Meditations
Meditations
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....
on Stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and on Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, and the public lectures of the rhetorician Fronto
Marcus Cornelius Fronto
Marcus Cornelius Fronto , Roman grammarian, rhetorician and advocate, was born at Cirta in Numidia. He also was suffect consul of 142.- Life :Fronto, who was born a Roman citizen c...
, open Marius' eyes to the narrowness of Epicureanism. Aurelius's indifference, however, to the cruelty to animals in the amphitheatre, and later to the torments inflicted on people there, causes Marius to question the values of Stoicism (end of 'Part the Second'). Disillusioned with Rome and the imperial court which seem "like some stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed as if by malign enchantment out of the living trees", puzzled by the source of Cornelius's serenity, still Epicurean by temperament but seeking a more satisfying life-philosophy, Marius makes repeated visits alone to the Campagna
Campagna
Campagna is a small town and comune of the province of Salerno, in the Campania region of Southern Italy.-History:The town, located in a mountainous district, gradually lost importance in the 20th century...
and Alban Hills
Alban Hills
The Alban Hills are the site of a quiescent volcanic complex in Italy, located southeast of Rome and about north of Anzio.The dominant peak is Monte Cavo. There are two small calderas which contain lakes, Lago Albano and Lake Nemi...
, on one occasion experiencing in the Sabine Hills a sort of spiritual "epiphany"
Epiphany (feeling)
An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...
on a perfect day of peace and beauty (end of 'Part the Third'). Later he is taken by Cornelius to a household in the Campagna centred on a charismatic young widow, Cecilia, where prevails an atmosphere of peace and love, gradually revealing itself as a new religion with liturgy and rituals that appeal aesthetically and emotionally to Marius. The sense of purposeful community there, set against the persecution of Christians by the authorities and the competing philosophical systems in Rome, contributes to Marius' mood of isolation and emotional failure. Overshadowed by thoughts of mortality he revisits home and pays his respects to the family dead, burying their funerary urns, and sets out again for Rome in Cornelius's company. On the way the two are arrested as part of a sweep of suspected Christians. It emerges that only one of the young men is of this sect, and Marius, unbeknown to Cornelius, makes their captors believe it is he. Cornelius is set free, deceived into thinking that Marius will follow shortly. The latter endures hardship and exhaustion as he journeys captive towards Rome, falls ill, and dying is abandoned by his captors. "Had there been one to listen just then," Pater comments, "there would have come, from the very depth of his desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the singular accidents of life and death." Marius is tended in his last days by some poor country people, secret believers who ironically take him to be one of their own. Though he has shown little interest in the doctrines of the new faith and dies more or less in ignorance of them, he is nevertheless, Pater implies, "a soul naturally Christian" (anima naturaliter christiana ) and he finds peace in his final hours as he reviews his life (end of 'Part the Fourth').
Themes
Marius the Epicurean explores a theme central to Pater's thinking and already examined in his earlier Imaginary Portrait 'The Child in the House' (1878): the importance to the adult personality of formative childhood experiences. In addition, conscious of his growing influence and aware that the ‘Conclusion’ to his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) had been misconstrued as amoral, Pater set about clarifying his published ideas. As he states in the third edition of The Renaissance (1888), Marius the Epicurean "deal[s] more fully with thoughts suggested by" the 'Conclusion'. In particular Pater is careful in the novel to distinguish between 'hedonism', as usually understood, and Marius's cerebral, ascetic version of Epicureanism:- "How little I myself really need," (runs Marius' diary ) "when people leave me alone, with the intellectual powers at work serenely. The drops of falling water, a few wild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tufts even of half-dead leaves, changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but light and shadow in it ..."
Marius' quest exemplifies Pater's dictum that we should "be for ever testing new opinions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy" :
- "Liberty of soul, freedom from all partial doctrine which does but relieve one element of our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and calculation for the future: this would be but the preliminary to the real business of education – insight, insight through culture into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence."
Thus the novel elaborates Pater's ideal of the aesthetic life – a life based on αίσθησις, perception – and his theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of sensation and insight as an ideal in itself. Centrally, Marius dedicates much time, and Pater much space, to examining the Meditations and character of Marcus Aurelius, who was warmly admired in the 19th century as a paragon of intellectual and moral virtue (by Niebuhr
Barthold Georg Niebuhr
Barthold Georg Niebuhr was a Danish-German statesman and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. Classical Rome caught the admiration of German thinkers...
, Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
, Renan
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...
, George Long and many others), but whose Stoicism Marius ultimately finds too bleak and lacking in compassion.
The appeal of religion – whether ancestral paganism or primitive Christianity – is another major theme of the novel. Indeed the novel's opening and closing episodes betray Pater's continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he himself had lost. Michael Levey
Michael Levey
Sir Michael Vincent Levey, LVO was a British art historian and was director of the National Gallery for thirteen years, from 1973 to 1986.-Biography:...
, a biographer and editor of Pater, writes: "Pater is able to depict an early, pure Christianity, not yet sectarian, authoritarian, or established, which offers Marius a vision which is ideal because untarnished." Early Christianity, Pater notes, "had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom ... So much of what Marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion". Marius, however, having outgrown his childhood piety, dies before he has engaged intellectually with the doctrines of the new faith. He remains essentially Epicurean: "For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use life, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far as might be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself – a kind of music, all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air." His epiphany in the Sabine Hills, where he sensed a "divine companion" and the existence of a Platonic "Eternal Reason"
Logos
' is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "a ground", "a plea", "an opinion", "an expectation", "word," "speech," "account," "reason," it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus ' is an important term in...
or Cosmic Mind, is not a prelude to religious faith. Readers may feel that Pater makes it hard for them to believe that Marius, with his acute, probing, restless mind, would have embraced Christian doctrines if he had examined them. Instead the novel remains open-ended, leaving us with a provisional ideal of 'aesthetic humanism'.
Publishing history
Marius was favourably reviewed and sold well; a second edition with minor revisions came out in the same year (1885). For the third edition (1892) Pater made extensive stylistic revisions, this version being reprinted regularly until the early 1930s. An edition with introduction and notes by Anne Kimball Tuell was published by MacmillanMacmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, Pater's original publishers, in New York in 1929. Two further scholarly editions were published in the mid-1980s to mark the novel's centenary (see Editions below).
Critical reception
In an early review in Macmillan's MagazineMacmillan's Magazine
Macmillan's Magazine was a monthly British magazine from 1859 to 1907 published by Alexander Macmillan.The magazine was a literary periodical that published fiction and non-fiction works from primarily British authors. Thomas Hughes had convinced Macmillan to found the magazine. The first editor...
the novelist Mary Ward
Mary Augusta Ward
Mary Augusta Ward née Arnold; , was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs Humphry Ward.- Early life:...
praised "the great psychological interest" of the book, but identified as a weakness its tendency to depict Christianity from an aesthetic viewpoint, rather than presenting it as life's ultimate truth and reality. T. S. Eliot, with his Stoic and Christian sympathies, concurred in his influential 1930 essay. More recently William F. Shuter has noted that "the lack of curiosity exhibited by Marius as to what was actually believed by the Christian community to which he is so strongly drawn" matched Pater's own lack of curiosity; it contrasts strongly with Marius' (and Pater's) keen interest in philosophy. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
writes, "Pater evaded the novel's ultimate problem by killing off Marius before the young man grasps the theological and moral exclusiveness of Christianity. Marius could not remain Marius and renounce [Epicureanism]. Whether Pater earns the structural irony of the novel's concluding pages, as a still-pagan Marius dies a sanctified Christian death, is legitimately questionable." Nevertheless Bloom praises Pater's integrity in his handling of Marius's epiphany in the Sabine Hills: "The self knows that it is joined to no immortal soul, yet now believes also that its own integrity can be at one with the system of forces outside it. By de-idealising the epiphany, Pater makes it available to the coming age."
Literary significance
As well as being of interest to students of Pater's ideas and personality (Marius's diary in Chapter XXV has a Montaigne-like candour unusual for Pater) Marius the Epicurean is of interest as "one of the more remarkable fictional experiments of the late nineteenth century". Pater's interspersing of narrative with classical and historical texts – borrowings acknowledged and unacknowledged, translations and adaptations – makes Marius the Epicurean an early example of a novel enriched by intertextualityIntertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
. These fragments cover a range of discourses – narrative within narrative (from Apuleius), oration (by Fronto), formal dialogue (an abridgement of Lucian's
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
Hermotimus), letters (Eusebius) – which, taken with other metafictional
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
devices – the comparative lack of plot, action, characterisation, time-line and dialogue – make the novel "look forward beyond its century to modern works of fiction".
Editions
- Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ed. Michael Levey (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1985); with introduction and notes.
- Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ed. Ian Small (World's Classics, Oxford, 1986); with introduction and notes.
External links
- Marius the Epicurean, various editions/formats at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions color illustrated)