This chapter claims that Atticus offers a fruitful case study of Epicureanism in the late Republic and can thereby contribute to broader questions of philosophical allegiance in the ancient world. There has, of course, been valuable discussion of philosophical allegiance in recent years. A reconsideration of Atticus’ Epicureanism will fruitfully extend these debates precisely because he is a not a perfect fit for any of these categories. He was not a professional philosopher; in any case, it is dangerous to assume that the thunderings of Lucretius or Philodemus on the Epicurean wise man map reliably onto the complexities of life, especially in the case of Atticus.

An introduction to the key themes and arguments of the volume as a whole.

In the chapter I argue that we should set aside the Quellenforschung arguments of Lefèvre and Brunt and Atkins and others and look at what Cicero is up to in book 3, where he aims to fill in a gap left by Panaetius and not followed up by Posidonius. My analysis focuses in particular on Cicero’s redeployment of the Ring of Gyges thought experiment to undercut the Epicurean reliance on Kuria Doxa (KD) 5 to bolster their ‘moral’ hedonism; and the critical role, or so I argue, of the correspondence with Cassius (which cites KD 5 in Fam 15.19) in the development of Cicero’s argument (with additional reference to Fin. 1-2, where KD 5 also takes a critical role). In addition to making the case for the importance of the correspondence as ‘work in progress’, I argue that Cicero’s engagement with Posidonius, Panaetius et al. represents a mature, confident Cicero philosophus, ready to make a targeted contribution to Stoic ethics, with none of the dissimulatio doctrinae of the works of the 50s.

This chapter claims that Atticus offers a fruitful case study of Epicureanism in the late Republic and can thereby contribute to broader questions of philosophical allegiance in the ancient world. There has, of course, been valuable discussion of philosophical allegiance in recent years. A reconsideration of Atticus’ Epicureanism will fruitfully extend these debates precisely because he is a not a perfect fit for any of these categories. He was not a professional philosopher; in any case, it is dangerous to assume that the thunderings of Lucretius or Philodemus on the Epicurean wise man map reliably onto the complexities of life, especially in the case of Atticus.

The Philippines, it is often said, has mediocre or weak political parties and an inchoate or ill-developed political party system. A political party, as defined by the country's Omnibus Election Code, is an organized group of persons pursuing the same ideology, political ideas, or platform of government. Political activist and analyst Joel Rocamora quips, however, that nobody can accuse any of the Philippines’ main parties of being such an animal. Dominated by the country's politico-economic elite, they are built around personalities, rather than around political programmes or platforms. In fact, ideologies and platforms are just adornments for them. A major Philippine daily newspaper aptly describes what the parties stand for: “The usual motherhood statements are passed off as political programmes”. Apart from being indistinguishable from one another in their political beliefs and programmes — or lack of these — the Philippines’ main parties have weak membership bases and seem to come alive only during election time. Elections are often marked — or marred — by lavish spending, vote-buying, fraud, and violence. In Philippine party politics, turncoatism is a venerable tradition — politicians flit like butterflies from one party to another. Post-Marcos parties, in particular, are said to reflect the undeveloped or malformed character of the Philippine political party system. Far from being stable organizations, they have proven to be nebulous entities that can be set up, merged with others, split, resurrected, regurgitated, reconstituted, renamed, repackaged, recycled, or flushed down the toilet any time. Most politicians belonging to the main parties have come to be derogatorily called trapo, which is short for “traditional politician”, but ordinarily means an old rag used for wiping off dust and dirt that often becomes grimy or greasy.

A scrutiny of Philippine trapo parties leads one to question certain prevailing notions about political parties and about the relationship of political parties and party systems with political development and democratic consolidation.