EPICURUS AND DEMOCRITUS: THE CICERONIAN FOUNDATIONS OF DANTE'S JUDGEMENT

Abstract

It is well known that Dante's treatment of Epicurus in Canto x of the Inferno is in sharp contrast with what he had already written about him in Convivio. In Convivio Epicurus and his followers are placed on the same level as the Stoics and Peripatetics. They represent one of the major philosophical schools of antiquity which ‘per la luce de la veritade etterna’ strove, each along a different path, to reach a knowledge of the chief good. Although none of them came within clear and full sight of their objective, they were united in having the summum bonum as their ultimate goal and in recognizing some of its basic implications.