what was morality like among the roman upper classes?
pre-Christian, wasn't being a pederast seen as like being a drunk? something not a straight ticket to hades, but something looked down upon?
i read that Stoicism was the main philosophy of the patricians, meaning debauchery couldn't have been so prolific, but the Epicureans surely wouldn't have cared being hedonists and all.
how did Christianity change this?
Traditional roman morality was basically Cato the elder minus the slavefucking. All the debauchery you hear about was actually a fringe occurrence very frowned upon. Even in imperial times you have plenty of authors describing hedonist pursuits of a certain part of the upper classes as degenerate and very uncommon in the rural elites.
>wasn't being a pederast seen as like being a drunk?
That's how it was until the last hundred years.
Epicureans were not this kind of hedonist. For them, pleasure is the absence of pain. They were ascetic.
Yes.
Stoicism was a popular philosophy among the Roman elite. But I don't know how popular it was. Epictetus was a stoic teacher, and you should read his condemnations against adultery. He sounds like a Catholic.
Stoicism was originally much more cynical, but it became heavily "Romanized". Originally, Stoics preached rejection of sexual rules and free love as the ideal. Then you have later stoics like Epictetus who are much more sexually conservative.
IIRC wasn't the founders of Epicureans more noble in their pleasure, hedonists who derived their pleasure from more noble things like learning, but in practice an Epicurean could be any sort of hedonist?
Epictetus took a swing and the Epicureans because they wouldn't even father children supposedly if it didn't bring them pleasure.
IIRC we only have writings from the later Stoics, after it was more Romanized. original hellenic early stoics were even more ascetic than their later ones, but without writings about them from their own words, we have only hearsay.
We don't know for sure what the early Stoics believed in, since what we got from them were mostly second hand accounts by non-Stoics. If you take second-hand accounts of non-Epicureans, you would think they were huge perverts who would spend most time drinking alcohol.
I frankly think it is illogical to be non-hedonistic (in the modern sense of hedonistic) and pro free love.
No.
>When, therefore, we say that pleasure is a chief good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those which lie in sensual enjoyment, as some think who are ignorant, and who do not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them perversely; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and the soul from confusion. For it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish and other such things, as a costly table supplies, that make life pleasant, but sober contemplation, which examines into the reasons for all choice and avoidance, and which puts to flight the vain opinions from which the greater part of the confusion arises which troubles the soul.
This is where I got my understanding of Epicureanism from, it's main rival, which isn't exactly the best, but I hoped objective.
Continued in next pic.
I gathered from this that Epicureans would abandon their children for pleasure.
Don't trust Epictetus when he's criticizing other schools. He goes hardcore into strawman mode.
So Epictetus lied about what Epicurus said?
To understand Epicureanism you have to read Diogenes Laertius
perseus.tufts.edu
Stoicism was the popular philosophy of the upper classes but i fail to see how the patricians would bother following it in the privacy of their own homes.
The rich of today are decadent and hedonistic even if some put on proper public airs. It would have been the same for a class of people with a disproportionate amount of political and economical power.
Epictetus probably repeated what some other Stoic told him.
Basically, the Stoics and Platonists liked the Epicureans as much as the Clinton Democrats like /pol/. Or as much as /pol/ like unmarried single mothers.
For the Stoics, living in a temperate way would make you happier than living a decadent life (and they were probably right).
Our current elite doesn't believe that.
See note number 33. Is the author mistaken, or is it just that Epictetus misunderstood Epicurus.
Nigger please they had gladiator fights, chariot races, military triumphs were the defeated are dragged back in chains and public lion feedings.
These people are different from us, had different morals and I dont believe in judging them for living in a distinct time period but theres no way they were not decadent and hedonistic in their own ways.
Theres a reason only a few emperors are considered Philosopher Kings
I don't think philosophy is something flaunted like how a modern senator can hold aloft a Bible.
A philosophy is something you believe because you genuinely think it'll help you. It didn't net you browny points among their peers or amongst the public AFAIK.
It wasn't the whole of Roman society that was Stoic.
As near as I can tell the games were used to placate the plebians and gods, not for the enjoyment of Stoics.
user, the Stoics did believe that virtue was the greatest good and that pleasure was not a good. As you said, they had different morals from us.
I suggest you read picrelated. It's a really good book on how the different classes in Roman society had different concepts of honor and duty.
Providing link:
amazon.com
so was 'Roman degeneracy' a meme that only a minority indulged in and contemporary writers complained about?
A few Roman Emperors were sex perverts, and most people only hear about Emperors when they read about Rome. So people assumed this kind of behavior was normal. Instead, these Emperor's behaviors would be shocking.
surely not hedonist just giving dinner in their mansions as a past time
its like todays kiddiediddler "conservatives", you can all believe how honorable they are until it gets out they got shit under their skin
>Roman elites = patricians
Roman elite started off as patricians, but that divide long since vanished. Cicero was an elite, but a Pleb. The Patrician/Pleb divide had long since vanished by the time Stoicism was introduced to them by Cicero and others.
>All the debauchery you hear about was actually a fringe occurrence very frowned upon.
There's also an hypothesis floating around that says that the wild orgies and rampant debauchery we associate with the pagan romans were a christian slander expertly suited to fit the prude morals of the roman people.
We do know that Marcus Antonius was mocked for his feminine trait of sleeping around.
Are there any good books on Mime/Pantomime in english? I really want to read about Roman pleb theater, especially pic related but I don't read german
The first few chapters of City of God made it sound like this stuff was more degenerate than modern hollywood
but thats just the old roman traditions and as time passed it was more and more left behind
kinda like today with the church
nothing is like fucking a girl the first time you meet but she asks you to let her go in the morning because shes going to church
That said, even in Marcus Aurelius big ass diary, seems to be mention of a relaxed attitude to sexuality, compared to the more reserved attitude of Christian writers.
Look up the moral lex juliae of augustus, he attempted some moral reforms which might be representative of some of the moral ideas of the elite then
>The first few chapters of City of God made it sound like this stuff was more degenerate than modern hollywood
I don't know anything about specifics, but historically actors were considered trash on par with prositutes.
>The rich of today are decadent and hedonistic
This is not as true as you might believe, the upper classes have better marriage stability, raise their children well, have better physical shape and health and by all means have better morality than the lower classes.
The hedonists are celebrities and politicians which do not represent the majority of the rich
Caesar was a Patrician
>so was 'Roman degeneracy' a meme that only a minority indulged in and contemporary writers complained about?
Yes.
You can also see that the sexual hedonism of the perverted Emperors was seen by the writers as a very bad attribute.
>You can also see that the sexual hedonism of the perverted Emperors was seen by the writers as a very bad attribute.
Yeah, and the denouncing of that got forgotten, so all people hear about was "Roman emperors were hyper-sexual. Ergo all Romans were like this"
Weren't those laws pretty much the silent laughing stock of his imperial career and thus a sign of older, discarded morality.
The pagans did indeed have a different approach to sexuality but they were still shocked by the type of outright sluttery that is stereotypically roman. The gossip about Augustus daughter tells us as much.