Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought

319 Pages·2021·5.653 MB·English

by  Christopher Star

Apocalypse and Golden Age
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Apocalypse and Golden Age
The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought
Christopher Star
Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
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© 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2021
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Mary land 21218-4363
www . press . jhu . edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Star, Christopher, author.
Title: Apocalypse and golden age : the end of the world in Greek and Roman
thought / Christopher Star.
Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021006367 | ISBN 9781421441634 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781421441641 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: End of the world in literature. | Greek literature—History
and criticism. | Latin literature—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PA3013 .S728 2021 | DDC 880.09—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006367
A cata log rec ord for this book is available from the British Library.
Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more
information, please contact Special Sales at specialsales@jh. edu.
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Contents
Acknowl edgments vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1
From Hesiod to Hellenistic Philosophy 13
2
Lucretius and Cicero: The End of the World at the End
of the Roman Republic 47
3
Golden Age, Apocalypse, and the Age of Augustus 75
4
Visions of the Origin and End of Humanity in Seneca the Younger 127
5
Tyranny and Apocalypse? Seneca’s Thyestes and Lucan’s Civil War 157
6
After the Fall: The End of the World in Pseudo- Seneca Epigrams 1,
Octavia, and Hercules Oetaeus 191
Epilogue 220
Notes 229
Bibliography 273
Index Locorum 289
General Index 299
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Acknowle dgments
I am very grateful to several colleagues, friends, and family members for sup-
port and help in completing this book. At Johns Hopkins University Press,
Matt McAdam showed interest in this proje ct even while still inchoate and
Catherine Goldstead saw it through to publication. It has been a pleas ure to
work with them and the staff at the Press. I am particularly grateful to the
readers they assembled for providing excellent and timely feedback. Joanne
Haines improved the text considerably with her skills as copy editor.
The members of the Middlebury College classics department, Jane Chap-
lin, Randall Ganiban, Pavlos Sfyroeras, and Marc Witkin, have given me the
freedom to work on this book and related endeavors for several years. At
Middlebury, I have also benefited from discussions with members of several
iterations of the Humanities Manuscript Exchange. I am very fortunate to be
directing the inaugural Humanities Research Seminar. I owe a debt of thanks
to the directors of the Middlebury Humanities Center, Febe Armanios and
Marion Wells, and to the members of the seminar, Ian Barrow, Enrique Garcia,
Rebecca Mitchell, Patricia Saldarriaga, Erin Sassin, and Spring Ulmer. I also
must thank my students, particularly t hose who have taken my class, “Apoca-
lypse When? Reason and Revelation in the Ancient World.” Cíará Staveley-
O’Carroll deserves special mention for continuing research into this topic
and for helping point the way to new aven ues. Hailey Culhane provided in-
valuable research assistance when I was just getting started.
Earlier versions of portions of this book w ere delivered at Amherst College,
Harvard University, Middlebury College, the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Wales–
Trinity St. David. I am grateful to the organizers of these events and to the
members of the audience for questions and comments. I regret that invita-
tions to conferences at Wellesley College, Trinity College Dublin, and the
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viii  Acknowl edgments
University of Lisbon had to be postponed. For advice and encouragement,
I thank Antony Augoustakis, Francesca Romana Berno, John Collins, J onathan
Griffiths, Victor Nuovo, Alison McQueen, Martha Nussbaum, Jonathan Price,
Robert Schine, Christopher van den Berg, Katharina Volk, Gareth Williams, and
Larry Yarbrough. David Elmer, Randall Ganiban, Michèle Lowrie, Christo-
pher Trinacty, and Helen Van Noorden all read drafts of portions of this book
and provided me with extremely helpful comments and suggestions.
As always, my greatest debt is to my f amily, especially my wife, Sarah, and
our son, Jeremiah, who, when he was very young, asked me what will come
after humans.
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Abbreviations
BDB F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. Briggs, A Hebrew and Eng lish Lexicon
of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1972).
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edition
(Berlin, 1952).
KRS G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic
Phi los o phers, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 1983).
LS A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Phi los o phers, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, 1987).
LSJ H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, rev. by H.S. Jones and R. Mackenzie,
A Greek- English Lexicon, 9th edition (Oxford, 1996).
OED Oxford En glish Dictionary (Oxford, 1989).
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd edition (Oxford, 2012).
RIC Roman Imperial Coinage (London, 1923–).
SVF H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1903–5).
For ancient Greek and Latin authors, I have generally used the Oxford Clas-
sical Text. The Latin text of Lucan is that of A. E. Housman, M. Annaei Lucani:
Belli Civilis Libri Decem (Oxford, 1958) and Seneca’s Natu ral Questions follows
H. M. Hine, L. Annaei Senecae: Naturalium Questionum Libros (Stuttgart and
Leipzig, 1996). Passages from the Bible and Apocrypha are keyed to the New
Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha,
5th edition, edited by Michael D. Coogan (Oxford, 2018). Abbreviations not
listed here follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary.
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