Stoics and Epicureans for the 'Modern Market': How Athenian Educators Re-Tooled the Old City’s 'Modernist Schools' for Republican Rome. One of a Trilogy of Studies in the Marketing of Athenian Education to a 'newer' Ancient World

• Published in: Athens journal of history (online) Vol. 3; no. 4; pp. 265 - 274
• Main Author: Wick, David P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Athens Institute for Education and Research 01-10-2017
• ISSN: 2407-9677; 2407-9677
• DOI: 10.30958/ajhis.3-4-1

After the crisis caused when Rome expelled Greek thinkers and teachers in 161 of the old era, the momentum Athens still held a destination for students from the Mediterranean west, and Rome in particular, lay mostly with the old schools whose names everyone recognized. It was the two more "modernist" schools of Athens - the self-defined scientists and life-gurus of the Epicurean "Garden" and the anthropology-driven philosophers and political thinkers of the Stoa that were most vulnerable to this assault. Today, we remember almost all the great leaders and thinkers of the late Roman Republic and the "Principate" empire it would rapidly become as Stoics, but it was the Epicurean "Garden" that began the last decades of the Republic both notorious and fashionable. Though Epicurus himself had argued that in stressful times like these the true study was of ways to harmonize or cure angst in the human soul, 1st Century Epicurean teachers split, teaching a spiritual science of contemplation and retreat, or chasing a sort of scientific, audience-based media expertise for power-hungry students. Modern classicists may associate the Stoic school with images of retired contemplation, harmony, even mysticism, but Romans of the Late Republic expected the Stoa to retail "no nonsense" political and anthropological expertise. What they found in an Athens weary of political turmoil was something more like our modern expectations of "career-practical" education. This sold poorly at first, but the prolonged effects of Civil War-weariness saved the Stoa, and made it the refuge of a generation of ruined political "players". Was it simply an accident of history that this clientele grew so quickly, or did the Stoa sense an opportunity? This overlooked Athenian success story is relevant to modern struggles in liberal arts education, as it faces thinking formed by economic crises and the short-term focus of politicians and managers created by those crises.