epicureans and the present past

Epicureans and the Present PastAuthor(s): James WarrenSource: Phronesis, Vol. 51, No. 4 (2006), pp. 362-387Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182815 .

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Epicureans and the Present Past*

JAMES WARREN

ABSTRACT

This essay offers a reading of a difficult passage in the first book of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in which the poet first explains the Epicurean account of time and then responds to a worry about the status of the past (1.459-82). It identifies two possible readings of the passage, one of which is compatible with the claim that the Epicureans were presentists about the past. Other evidence, particularly from Cicero De Fato, suggests that the Epicureans maintained that all true assertions must have a contemporaneous truth-maker and that no contingent future- tensed assertions are true. It appears, however, that they did not assert a symmetrical view of past-tensed assertions. There is no compelling reason, therefore, to think that the Epicureans were presentists about the past.

I

In the course of his exposition of the fundamentals of Epicurean natural philosophy, Lucretius turns in book one of his De Rerum Natura to give a demonstration of the thesis that all things depend ultimately for their existence on the existence of atoms and void. One of those things which depend for their existence on underlying matter and its arrangement in the void is time. Lucretius is very clear in his insistence that time does not exist per se. That, however, is about as much as can be thought to emerge clearly from a brief passage at DRN 1.459-82. This essay aims to offer a close reading of that passage and asks what it can add to our under- standing of the Epicurean view of the past and future.

Modern metaphysics has become increasingly concerned over the last century or so with revisiting questions about the nature of time and, in particular, the existence of the past and future. One of the current strands of thought, presentism, holds that only present states of affairs exist. Presentism might claim a number of considerations in its favour. It might

Accepted February 2006 * I would like to thank Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Charles Weiss, and the

journal's reader for comments on previous drafts of this essay. A version was read at a conference in Cambridge in July 2005. My thanks to the audience on that occasion for their reactions.

o Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Phronesis L114 Also available online - www.brill.nl/phro



EPICUREANS AND THE PRESENT PAST 363

claim to give due weight to a reasonable conviction we tend to have about the special status of the present and of present events. It might also claim that it explains the conviction that there is something 'open' or not- yet-determined about the future, since it says that the future does not exist. However, in denying that any events other than present events exist, it appears unable to give a satisfying account of the conviction we have that the world has a past. In particular, it seems hard pressed to explain how it is possible to talk about past events and how it is possible to make statements which involve, for example, comparisons between the present and the past.' It has been claimed that Lucretius, in the same passage in which he denies that time exists per se, both promotes a presentist ontology and also offers a presentist account of the status of the past, maintaining that the past consists in a set of present states of affairs.2 However, there is no compelling reason to think that Lucretius is offering a presentist account and there is no other evidence which demonstrates that the Epicureans were presentists. Moreover, the search for presentist claims might distract us from the Epicureans' primary interest in the past and future, which was tied intimately to their conceptions of the nature of truth and to concerns about determinism.

The structure of my argument is as follows. Section II shows that there is no direct evidence for presentism in Epicurean texts outside Lucretius. Section III identifies two possible interpretations of Lucretius DRN 1.459- 82, one of which is compatible with presentism. Section IV discusses the Epicurean conceptions of the truth of past- and future-tensed statements and suggests that the Epicureans' views were driven not primarily by thoughts about the ontology of past, present, and future, but instead by concerns over the truth-makers for future-tensed statements and the avoid- ance of determinism. They were not much interested in using their view on truths concerning the future to make clear symmetrical claims about truths concerning the past. We cannot, therefore, conclude that they were presentists about the past.

' On defining presentism see Crisp and Ludlow 2004. For a brief introduction to varieties of presentism and the problems they face see Dainton 2001, 79-92 and cf. Tooley 1997, 234-40.

2 See Bigelow 1996 for this claim.



364 JAMES WARREN

II

Were the Epicureans presentists? We can be optimistic about the chances of resolving this question since we are relatively well supplied with Epi- curean sources and reports of Epicurean theories about time. In addition to the brief treatment in Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus (Ep. Hdt.), we have the remains of a portion of Epicurus' On nature devoted to the subject (in PHerc. 1413) and Sextus Empiricus' outline and criticism of the Epicurean view of time in M 10.3

In Ep. Hdt. 72 Epicurus' primary interest is to assert that time exists and that there is no need to adopt any new terminology to describe it. However, time requires a different kind of investigation from the other accidents (c Lrn) such as shape, colour and magnitude (which he has dealt with in paragraphs 68-71). These latter could be investigated by examining the preconceptions (npoXiVEt;) built up through repeated per- ceptual experiences. Time, on the other hand, is to be investigated by con- sidering only 'that to which we attach this peculiar characteristic and by which we measure' (&AX& go6vov ) aiirXEoK0giEV Tb '6ibov ToiTo KaC icpa- ?irtpob4iev ga'Xtara 1X0oytatoT?ov: Ep. Hdt. 72). This is explained by Epicurus' assertion that there is no proof needed of the existence of time other than the fact that we attach (ionXF_KioFrv) time to days and nights and their parts, to states of affairs and feelings such as pleasure and pain. Time is an accident of these. The reference to measurement is meant to show how, from this primary and earliest impression of temporal change and duration, we come to be able to evaluate other temporal changes by using days and nights as some sort of comparative measure. Epicurus refers to some unnamed others (rtv5;) who, in contrast, want to identify some characteristic of time which places it in some special ontological class.4 His own approach is more down to earth; we should think about time in terms of whatever we primarily associate time with and whatever we use to measure time.

Much the same picture emerges from Sextus Empiricus' outline of the Epicurean account of time at M 10.219-27. At 10.226, paraphrasing the Epicureans, he writes that 'we measure the speed and slowness of motion

I For discussions of the place of PHerc. 1413 within Epicurus' On nature see Bari- gazzi 1959, 29-34; Arrighetti 1973, 650; Luciani 2000, 105-6; and Sedley 1998, 118-19, who argues that it is part of Nat. 10.

I Cf. Bailey ad loc.: 'He must of course here be thinking of some special efforts to class time with something else, but it is not clear what.'




and the greater and lesser rest by time'.' PHerc. 1413 restates the same general position, but there are serious difficulties for any more precise interpretation. In addition to the usual problems of the state of the text, this section of Epicurus' On nature appears to have been written in the form of a dialogue and it is therefore sometimes unclear to which of the speakers a particular section of text should be assigned.6 Nevertheless, once again we have an account of time in terms of a sense-impression (pavtai{xa) of, principally, night and day, which is used as a standard measure of time.7 The view being opposed by Epicurus throughout the text is prepared to consider a notion of time which makes no necessary reference to perception or experience.8

These sources offer no Epicurean response to the question of the ontological status of past and future. Instead, Epicurus has given an episte- mological account focused on the way in which humans perceive the passage of time through a direct acquaintance with, in the first instance, the alternation of night and day. This alternation is then used as a measure of duration according to which the duration and speed of other processes might be measured in comparison. In this way, Epicurus can attempt to

The verb for 'measure' here is icvcGurpoIJgrv, where Ep. Hdt. 72 uses lcxpx- iictpo6RFcv. There is probably little of significance in this small alteration. Sextus never uses the napa- compound, preferring the K(atQ- form. Epicurus uses the nuapa- form only in Ep. Hdt. 72, but elsewhere also uses the iccTa- form. The latter occurs promi- nently in PHerc. 1413's discussion of time and also in Ep. Hdt. 58-9 where Epicurus explains how the X&XtaTca (in Latin, minima) can be used to 'measure out' smaller and larger bodies. All spatial magnitudes can be expressed as sums of some finite whole number of these minima. (At Ep. Hdt. 59, Epicurus refers to this smallest measure as Tr&V gIOV Tr6 wKran.TapsiIca.) KaTaxgEpEiv also occurs in KA 19, used of the person who correctly 'measures out by calculation the limits of pleasure'.

6 There are signs of textual markers denoting different speakers. See e.g. 9pTI at Arr. 37.12.3. References are to the edition in Arrighetti 1973, 381-415.

See e.g. Arr. 37.17.1-11: iE]IXo,i-v [Tiva (pav]Irc4G][a3v T[&lv rlV pCov Kac VUKTCOV, |I KXA' 'R Tl.iq t vol[o]i4iev irpi a'TEa'; I[Kata]cxhTpTll O'v I [na KElVf?0530)- OVA' I [Y&p] 062OgEv A&rO[' I Ta;J] awUiTai; Uer[priael To'[7 XPO]VOV 6[g] I [gEpCO]V [Kail vUK[TCOv] .. .; cf. Arr. 37.31.1-7, 37.36.1-1 1. This would also make good sense of an objection made later in the text on the basis that nights and days vary in length (Arr. 37.25). Given this variation, the objector claims that nights and days cannot be standards against which all other durations are measured. Lucretius is well aware that days and nights vary in length over the year: DRN 5.680-88.

8 Early in the text there is a complaint made against any view which posits a state of the universe before time (Arr. 37.3). This might suggest that the opponent is some kind of Platonist. Cf. Isnardi Parente 1976 and Barigazzi 1959. Compare Cic. De Nat. Deorum 1.22, where Velleius ridicules the Platonist cosmogonical account: ne in cog- itationem quidem cadit ut fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset.



366 JAMES WARREN

account for humans' general awareness of temporal passage and their ability to recognise longer and shorter temporal durations without moving outside his standard account of learning and perception.' He has ventured further into the ontology of time, but only to offer an account of its nature in terms of the persistent or temporary nature of various accidental properties; the comings and goings of these properties can be perceived directly. A pain in my foot may come and go, so it is an accidental property of my foot or, perhaps, of me. But time, it seems, can therefore be said to be an accidental property of the pain; it is, in the famous slogan, an accidental property of accidental properties ( oviTcOa

Nothing in the Epicurean scheme elucidated thus far commits them to presentism, so in order to conclude that they were presentists, we would have to find evidence elsewhere. But such evidence is very hard to find. No other known Epicurean arguments rely on a presentist theory.'" Nor is it convincing simply to assert that presentism was the 'default' or common view of philosophers of this period.'2 The Stoics, for example, explic- itly grant to the present a privileged ontological status, but also say that

I Epicurus' tendency to claim that time is some sense-impression (e.g. in PHerc. 1413, Arr. 37.31.1-4 and n.7 above) might seem to make time somehow dependent on a perceiver although Epicurean sources in general stress the infinity of past and future time (see Cic. De Nat. Deorum 1.21, Lucr. DRN 3.1087-94). Morel 2002, 200-205, tries to alleviate the problem by insisting that phantasiai are produced by the object of perception itself.

" See SE M 10.219. Long and Sedley 1987 vol. 1, 37, take the evidence from Sextus to depend on Demetrius Lacon and suggest that Demetrius was himself attempt- ing to offer a more precise ontological classification of time drawing on the material in Ep. Hdt. 70-73. At SE M 10.225 time is a a1ugEiPTK6; of a night or day, but here that term is presumably being used merely to mean 'property' in general: the genus of which accidental and non-accidental properties are species. See Sedley 1988, 308. Sextus pointedly uses both aUVPEIJP11o; and aI'cgnv a of time at M 10.242, perhaps intending to suggest some confusion or inconsistency in the Epicureans' classification.

" Bradley 2004 claims that the argument that 'death is nothing to us for when we are it is not and when it is we are not' (Ep. Men. 125) must rely on the notion that only the present exists if it is to avoid obvious counterexamples of harms brought about by non-contemporaneous causes. He further claims that since, granted presentism, the Epicurean argument would be sound, this is itself a good reason to reject presentism. But in fact the Epicurean argument relies on the weaker claim that no harms can be caused posthumously (since death is the end of a person's existence). Cf. Warren 2004a, 41-55.

12 See e.g. Bigelow 1996, 35, 37, 41. Cf. Owen 1976, 15 and Owen 1966 for a discussion of whether Parmenides or Plato (perhaps at Tim. 37-38) managed to articulate a timeless sense of 'to be'.




all time, the present included, since it is not corporeal, has at best a weak claim on existence. They insist that although the present is privileged (they refer to its existence using the verb t&apXetv), past and future still 'subsist' (for which they use the verb xPrEaTava0.'3 Aristotle too is particularly concerned with the nature and status of 'now' in Physics 4.10-14. But he is equally concerned to insist on the idea of the temporal continuum, one part of which is picked out as 'now'. 'Now', he tells us, both divides and unites past and future.

However, Aristotle certainly shows some signs of presentist arguments when he outlines his opening aporiai about time, one of which (see Phys. 217b33-218a6) relies on the claims that the past is 'no longer' and the future is 'not yet'.'4 Arguments similar to this aporia were popular throughout antiquity. Sextus Empiricus, for example, launches this argument against the Epicureans at M 10.242-4.'5

71 YOiV LEpa o6&Ka`XCpO; ?Vatl XEqO?eVTI, Ka0(eO ipOTepOV 1J'M6?&iaEV, o0b

UPOEUVIKE WaITOX Ta; 6806eKa 'pa;, aXX&cc jT k tav govilv TIV ?vEaTdyav, iTjt;

OiK EGTtV ilicpx. o 6' acTO'; Xoyo; Kai E01 T?i V1)KTO. ii Tt Wpca EV nX&TEt

Voo00tV1i KOcI OtOV TptPEpil; ta?,V cKEWayEVoi; TlgtV aVnOnYtXT0to; (pqEVTxtl.

OVt?rr yap OT? TO TEp&COV CA,)TnS g0o; ?o1(YlV V9?,T1KEV, (0-6no yap rCa X0oxa,

WTMV), ox00? E T6 O 86E?trpoV- TOxE yap TO tv npITOV OUKETIt WaTiv, 10b

Tpi-Tov ouVtw UcTIv. TiEV &? n4tX6vov ai)"-; REp6V KaTa ToVTov TOV Tp0mOV ~I )lcapXovrco)v 0ov C1 )ViXI t I XapXtEv.

So, since the day is said to be twelve hours in duration, as we demonstrated earlier [M 10.1821, it does not exist as twelve hours, but as the one single hour which is present, and this hour is not a day. The same reasoning applies also to the night. And the hour too, conceived of once again as being in three parts, when we consider it appears to us not to exist. For it neither exists when the first part of it exists (for the rest do not yet exist) nor when the second exists (for then the first no longer exists and the third does not yet exist). Since it has a plurality of parts which in this way do not exist, it too cannot exist.

Sextus notes that days and nights have a temporal extension. Each is con- ventionally divided into twelve hours. Next he claims that the whole day

'" See Arius Didymus (ap. Stob. Ecl. I p.106,5ff. W.) SVF 11.509; Plut. Comm. Not. 1081F, SVF 11.518; and Schofield 1988.

'4 Cf. Miller 1974; Inwood 1991; Cavagnaro 2002, 10-16; Coope 2005, esp. 17-26. Aristotle goes on to assert that time 'is' (e.g. 219b33-220al). Hussey 1993, xlvii-xlviii, notes that although the aporia is never directly answered there is little reason to doubt that Aristotle is a realist about the past. Owen 1976, 20: 'The outcome is that, so far from shedding the past and future as unreal, the present cannot do without them.'

'" Cf. Warren 2003. Compare also Plut. De E apud Delphos 392E-F, Augustine Conf. 1 1.14-18.



368 JAMES WARREN

does not exist, only a part of it. Sextus takes this to amount to the claim that those parts of today which are not present do not exist (they either no longer exist or do not exist yet), which follows only if he is already granted the crucial premise that only what is present exists. So what does exist? Not even an hour, says Sextus, since this too is tripartite, by which he means that any duration has a part which is present, a part which is past, and a part which is future. No two of these parts can exist simultaneously, so no part of time exists.'6

Sextus' arguments will have force for the Epicureans only to the extent to which they are inclined to agree that the past and future fail to exist in contrast to the present or, in other words, share the presentist intuition that 'to be is to be now'. But the text gives us no reason to think that, on reflection, the Epicureans would have endorsed such a view.

III

Let us turn next to the Lucretian passage in which the poet discusses the existence of the past, since this seems to be the most promising place to hunt for Epicurean presentism. For Lucretius, stories such as those told of the Trojan War were the very first recorded historical events.'7 In referring to such stories in his own poem, Lucretius is not only marking his place in the poetic tradition of Greece and Rome by incorporating elements of the most august, Homeric, poetry, but is also demonstrating how it is possible to refer even to these most distant of historical events.

tempus item per se non est, sed rebus ab ipsis consequitur sensus, transactum quid sit in aevo, 460 tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur;

16 One might claim that there is a limit to temporal divisions: partless but extended 'time atoms'. Simpl. in Phys. 934, 25-30 says that oi nlrpi 'EntiKoipov make spatial magnitude, motion, and time out of partless units. Sextus, M 10.142-56, deploys an argument of Diodoran inspiration against the Epicureans, one of the consequences of which is that time must be atomic. (Cf. Denyer 1981.) The Epicureans themselves talk about durations of time which can be conceived 'only by reason' but these need not be atomic: see e.g. Epic. Ep. Hdt. 47 and 62 (oi 5& ko6you Or-wpioi Xpovot) and Lucr. DRN 4.794-6. For discussion see Isnardi Parente 1976; Sorabji 1982 and 1983, 375-7; Asmis 1984, 107-10; Schofield 1988, 339 n.10.

1 See 5.324-9, where Lucretius asks why, if the kosmos did not come to be at some time in the past, the poets do not sing of events earlier than the Theban cycle and the fall of Troy. The implication is that were the kosmos eternal, the historical record would extend back infinitely far into the past.




nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete. denique Tyndaridem raptam belloque subactas Troiugenas gentis cum dicunt esse, videndumst 465 ne forte haec per se cogant nos esse fateri, quando ea saecla hominum, quorum haec eventa fuerunt, inrevocabilis abstulerit iam praeterita aetas; namque aliud tenis, aliud regionibus ipsis eventum dici poterit quodcumque ent actum. 470 denique materies si rerum nulla fuisset nec locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque geruntur, numquam Tyndaridis forma conflatus amore ignis Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens clara accendisset saevi certamina belli 475 nec clam durateus Troiianis Pergama partu inflammasset equos nocturno Graiugenarum; perspicere ut possis res gestas funditus omnis non ita uti corpus per se constare neque esse nec ratione cluere eadem qua constet inane, 480 sed magis ut merito possis eventa vocare corporis atque loci, res in quo quaeque gerantur.

Time, however, has no independent existence, but a perception follows from things themselves: what did take place in the past, then what thing is present, what then will follow next. But it should not be stated that anyone perceives time itself, independent of the motion and tranquil rest of things.

Next, when people say that Tyndareus' daughter was kidnapped, or the Trojan peoples were beaten, we must take care that they do not force us to say that these things exist per se, when those generations of men whose accidental properties these were have now been stolen away completely by the irrevocable passage of time.

For whatever will have taken place will be able to be called an accident, in one case, of the earth, in another case, of particular regions. And indeed, if there had been no constituents of these things nor place and space in which these things took place, then never would the fire kindled by love for the beauty of Tyndareus' daughter, burning in Alexander's Trojan heart, have inflamed the famed strug- gles of savage war. Nor would the wooden horse, giving birth by night to the Greeks without the Trojans noticing, have set light to Pergamon.

So you can see that absolutely all things which have taken place are not real per se as is body, nor do they exist, nor are they spoken of in the same way as that in which void is real. But rather you might rightly call them accidents of the body and place in which all these things take place.

Characteristically, Lucretius begins by stating his conclusion: time does not exist per se (459). But what does he mean by 'time' (tempus) here? The next few lines seem to be concerned not so much with the dimension of time as with the passage of time, the sequential occurrence of events. We experience things changing or moving: first one thing happens, then



370 JAMES WARREN

the next, and so on (transactum quid sit. . . tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur: 460-61). Lucretius insists that time in this sense is perceived, an insistence which accords with the Epicurean description of 'time' as a sense-impression (pvtaxdx -rI;) of change or rest.

At 464, Lucretius turns to consider the past and takes as his example a set of events from the Trojan War. He is first of all concerned to show that although Latin uses 'to be' (esse) as an auxiliary verb in the construc- tion of the perfect tense, this should not be taken to indicate that these perfect-tensed propositions describe things that 'are' per se (466). So, although Latin will express 'Helen was kidnapped' as 'Tyndaris rapta est', there is no need to infer from the presence of the 'est' that some kind of commitment is required to the per se existence of either Helen herself or Helen's being kidnapped.'8

Lucretius faces a problem in explaining how it is possible to make statements about past events, not because he asserts quite generally - as might a modern presentist - that the past does not exist, but rather because the people and places mentioned in these statements about the past no longer exist. The past is therefore an appealing case for an objector who is trying to find an exception to the Epicurean assertions that (i) the only per se existents are body and void (1.445-8) and (ii) that all other things depend for their existence on these, being either an eventum or coniunc- tum (1.449-50). When we say that 'Helen was kidnapped' we are talking about an eventum and asserting that this was a property of Helen. ('Being kidnapped' presumably fits easily with the list of states offered at 1.455-6 as eventa: being a slave, being poor, being rich, being free and so on.) But at least for the more distant past, the original agents and cities in question no longer exist, and yet although the original bodies to which these eventa belonged are no longer around it still seems possible to say true things about the past, to describe these eventa correctly. Do these eventa therefore now exist per se?'9 Lucretius neither wants to admit that

X1 The usual Greek equivalent for Tyndaris rapta est would be something like 1

'EXevin ipnidca. For similar confusions caused by the use of the present tense of esse as an auxiliary verb see Cic. Tusc. 1.1 1-12 and cf. Warren 2004a, 44-5. The Greek use of a periphrastic past tense (perfect participle + some form of 'to be') might cause similar worries when the auxiliary verb is in the present tense: i 'EXEvI i~pnaaEv caTIV. For Epicurus' use of such constructions see e.g. Ep. Hdt. 69 and cf. Widman 1935, 135-6.

'9 Some (e.g. Bailey and Robin ad loc.) think that Lucretius is responding to a Stoic critic. Furley 1966 disagrees. Cf. Bollack and Bollack 1983, 312; Luciani 2000, 96-100.




Helen of Troy exists now, nor does he want to claim that her being kidnapped somehow exists per se. Instead, he has to find some way to avoid the potential threat of 'detached' eventa, which might then have to be accepted as existing per se. The problem is not that the past as a whole is not there to be talked about at all so much as the less controversial claim that Helen is no longer around to be talked about.20

At 469 Lucretius begins his response and relates all this to his more general thesis about the most fundamental existents and his claim that only they exist per se. First, in 469-70 he asserts that all occurrences happen somewhere. This, he hopes, will help to tie the eventa to some place or area and, ultimately, back to some body or region of void. At this point it is not clear whether he is referring to all events, past, present and future, and securing our agreement with the uncontroversial claim that all occurrences happen somewhere, or whether he is already referring more nar- rowly to the past occurrences which are the source of his present difficulty. Glancing ahead to 471-7, the pluperfect subjunctives (fuisset, accendisset, inflammasset) show clearly that at that point of the text Lucretius is referring to the time of the Trojan War itself and reasserts that it was, at that time, a necessary condition of the various events taking place that there should be matter and void existing per se. Without these fundamental existents the Trojan War could not have taken place and all the things involved in that war (Helen, Paris, the horse, Troy) were themselves collections of atoms arranged in the void. This restates what Lucretius has asserted already at 449-50: all things are parasitic for their existence on those things which do exist per se. Without matter and void no eventa can be; without matter and void there would have been no Trojan War. Had there been no matter and void at that time then the Trojan War could not have occurred when it did.

This is not yet an explicit answer to the problem at hand. Lucretius needs to tell us not about the ultimate grounds for the existence of Trojan War at the time it was taking place, but rather what grounds our present ability to talk about the Trojan War now that all the participants are long dead. Yet Lucretius confidently asserts in 478-82 that he has successfully avoided this particular problem. There is no exception, he says, to the

20 Cf. Tooley 1997, 239. The tensed-fact presentist wants to allow us to say truly 'Caesar crossed the Rubicon' since there is a present state of affairs of Caesar having crossed the Rubicon. But, objects Tooley, just what is this state of affairs at least some of whose constituents (Caesar, in particular), no longer exist? He concludes that 'states of affairs cannot exist at times when their constituents do not exist.'



372 JAMES WARREN

claim that only bodies and void exist per se, and that all eventa are eventa of body and void. Our imagined objector might justly feel that his question has not been answered. What of the present status of these past states of affairs?

If Lucretius does have an answer to this question, it must be somewhere in the preceding lines. Lines 464-8 quite clearly set up what we should not say and 471-7 tell us about the time of the Trojan War. The crucial move, therefore, must be buried in 469-70. We should not say that when Helen, for example, is no longer, the eventum of her having been kidnapped exists per se. What we should say is that this is an eventum either of the world as a whole or of some particular region.2' These lines can be interpreted in two ways, only one of which sees Lucretius offering a presentist response to the problem posed.

Reading (A)

On reading (A), Lucretius starts in 469-70 by making a general claim that all occurrences take place somewhere.22 Lines 471-7 then go on to make the more complicated point that not only did the Trojan War have to happen somewhere, it also required materies. This has the advantage of being plausible and uncontroversial, and likely to appeal to his imagined objector, but it threatens to leave him without a clear answer to the puzzle at hand since, as we have seen, 471-7 secure only the claim that at the time of their occurrence the events of the Trojan War required some basis in bodies and void. These lines say nothing additional about the status of those occurrences now the people involved are dead but only that they too

21 For terris meaning 'the world' see Dunbabin 1917 and Wellesley 1963 and cf. Virg. Aen. 1.460. Understood in this way, there is no need to emend terris to avoid an unwarranted repetition with regionibus. Cf. Bigelow 1996, 46: 'I suggest a modifi- cation to the Lucretian doctrine. One of the things that exists is the whole world, the totality of things that exist. The world can have properties and accidents, just as its parts may have. It is a present property of the world that it is a world in which Helen was abducted and the Trojans were conquered.'

22 Bailey ad loc. takes these lines to refer to all past events, glossing quodcumque erit actum as 'everything that shall prove to have taken place', 'all the events of history as you look back at them'. Munro ad loc.: 'notice too the quodcumque erit actum of a special past event, not agetur' (but Munro also reads Teucris for terris in 470. Bailey rightly rejects this emendation.) Bailey also notes, of poterit in 470, that the future tense conveys only that once this confusion is removed it will be possible to classify these things as eventa. Bollack and Bollack 1983 take these lines to refer to the indeterminacy of the future. Cf. Luciani 2001, 96-8.




can be classified as once having been (namely at the time of their occurrence) eventa of some place or region.

Reading (A) has two possible interpretations. Perhaps Lucretius has failed to see that he ought to say something about the status now of the eventa which were formerly eventa of Helen, the city of Troy and so on. He merely assures us that they were once eventa of places and people. Alternatively, and more charitably, this is an informed and deliberate refusal by Lucretius to be drawn into the game of offering some present bearer for these eventa. Rather, he reminds us that (i) all eventa are spa- tially located (11. 469-70) and (ii) these eventa, at the time of the Trojan War, were grounded in the per se existents, body and void (11. 471-82). The crucial lines 469-70 do not, on reading (A), tell us that the eventum of Helen's having been kidnapped is now an eventum of some place, but that when Helen was kidnapped, she was kidnapped somewhere. Lucretius insists that this should be enough to answer the objector. There is no further question to be answered about what the status of these eventa is now, once their original bearers are no longer, since all that matters, all that is needed for them to exist and be available to be talked about, is that at some time they were grounded in the per se existents, body and void. This interpretation, importantly, has Lucretius give a reasoned and non- presentist answer to the problem posed.

Reading (B)

On reading (B), Lucretius does not merely say that all past occurrences, when they occurred, occurred somewhere. Rather, he also says that past occurrences can rightly be classified as now being eventa of some place which itself exists now.23 On reading (B) lines 469-70 are intended to tell us something about the current bearer of the eventa which were once the eventa of Helen and so on. In this way, Lucretius is trying to find some per se existent which can serve now as the bearer of eventa which were

23 Long and Sedley 1987 vol. 1, 37 and 2, 26 offer a form of the (B) interpretation which specifies that what is at stake is the existence not of 'the past' but of 'facts about the past'. They rightly note that not even the most desperate presentist would want to say that the Trojan War is happening now, but to say that the past exists does not commit one to saying it exists 'now'. Still, for there to be 'facts about' the past there must be some truthmakers for such facts. The difference between (A) and (B) turns on whether the truthmaker for the fact that Helen was kidnapped, and therefore my ability today to say truly 'Helen was kidnapped', is some occurrence in the Aegean Bronze Age (A) or some facet of the world today (B).



374 JAMES WARREN

once borne by no longer existing people. (B) has the benefit of offering a clearer answer to the metaphysical problem at hand, but leaves us with the difficulty of making sense of a much more controversial metaphysical claim. (B) tells us that all eventa are grounded in some present existent, even such eventa as Helen's being kidnapped. Reading (B) makes Lucre- tius a presentist about the past.

Comparison and evaluation

Lines 478-82 summarise the conclusion of the section which began at 459. They contain an interesting distinction between the past-tensed 'what has happened' (res gestas, 478) and the present-tensed 'things which take place' (res ... gerantur, 482), which might be adduced in support of (B) since they seem to claim that 'things which happened' (res gestae) are now 'taking place' (gerantur) as accidents of body and void. But even if we accept that 'res gestas' here means 'past events' and not just the generalising 'whatever happens', these lines too are compatible with both (A) and (B). The (B) reading thinks that they say that past events do not exist per se but do now 'take place' (gerantur) by being accidents of bodies and void. The (A) reading, however, sees this as a further elaboration of the claim that past events do not exist per se but are rather accidents of the bodies and void in which they take place. Helen's being kidnapped is an eventum of the body and void in which it takes place. That is all we need to say about it, and the fact that we now are talking about it many years later is irrelevant: no new bearer of this eventum needs to be found. It might be objected that, if this is Lucretius' meaning he should have retained a past tense in 482: these are accidents of the body and void in which they took place. But the supporter of (A) can, I think, reply that Lucretius is generalising here: the bearers of all eventa are the body and void in which they take place, whenever that should be. (Let us say, for example, that Helen herself is the bearer of the eventum of her being kidnapped). This reveals what we should say about all eventa, whether or not they are, given our current temporal perspective, in the past.24

Both (A) and (B) are compatible with the text as it stands. Our choice, therefore, is guided by philosophical rather than philological considerations. Reading (B) shares the advantage of the charitable interpretation (A)

24 At 479 Lucretius asks us to agree that these past events neither 'are real' (constare) per se nor do they 'exist' (esse). constare is sometimes used by Lucretius to

denote how compound objects exist as collections of atoms arranged in a particular manner; the prefix carries the desired connotation of something being a collection of




of seeing in these lines a reasoned response to the problem outlined in 464-8, but it does so by making Lucretius a presentist. The difficulties with reading (B) are mainly caused by a lack of further explanation on Lucretius' part. If (B) is Lucretius' intended meaning, he does not, for example, make clear in 469-70 whether this eventum is transferred from belonging to Helen to belonging to some area or place only once Helen herself is no longer alive, or this eventum is always a property of the world or of some place, but while Helen is still alive it is also a property of her. A further question centres on what Lucretius has in mind by the regio in the case, for example, of Helen's kidnap. Perhaps he means where the event took place (for instance, Menelaus' palace) which would exist both during Helen's life and for some time after her death. Alternatively, we need to identify some regio which takes over as the bearer of these properties only after the death of the agents. Lucretius does not pursue this question. He is interested only in maintaining that some place must and in fact does fill this role once the agent has died.

If reading (B) is correct we should realise its full commitments. Lucre- tius will be committed to an extremely large range of eventa, including what we might call 'tensed' accidental properties. This is the sense in which presentism is much less ontologically parsimonious than it might appear at first glance.25 A presentist will have to convince us to accept such properties, and Lucretius will, for example, have to persuade us to accept such properties as 'being the place where Helen was once kidnapped'. Further, Lucretius will have to be able to convince us that the past in fact consists in the set of such past-tensed properties held now by their various bearers.

Further difficulties for this Lucretian presentist view arise when it is asked what will become of the past (now understood as certain past-tensed properties held in the present) when the present bearers of those properties

elements 'standing together' (cf. 1.204, 302). Elsewhere it is used simply as a syn- onym for esse (cf. 1.480, 509 (of void), 607 (of minima)). Perhaps Lucretius uses both constare and esse to prevent his objector offering some nuanced ontology, accepting for example that these past events do not 'exist' per se (esse) but somehow 'are real' or 'subsist' per se (constare).

k 25 Bigelow 1996, 47 is happy to admit this. Presentism trades the ontological extrav-

agance of eternalism, the acceptance that all times exist, for a new extravagance in the properties possessed by what exists, i.e. exists now. Cf. Keller 2004, 94-6; Lewis 2004, 7. Sider 2001, 35-41, is unconvinced by this presentist move. (41): 'Whether the world has the property previously containing dinosaurs is not a matter of what the world itself is like, but points beyond itself, to its past.' His general unease with this tactic is shared by Armstrong 2004, 146-7.



376 JAMES WARREN

themselves pass away. If, when Helen dies, what happened to her becomes a property of some part of the world (regio), what happens when that part of the world no longer exists? After all, the cities of Troy and Mycenae either no longer exist or else cling to existence only as ruins and will not last forever. Perhaps Lucretius will say that if the regio in question dis- appears then the past event will become a property of the world as a whole (terrae). But that only delays the problem, since Lucretius himself is elsewhere insistent that the world is itself only temporary. Eventually it too, like all other compounds made of conglomerations of atoms, will be eroded and cease to be. What then?

Sextus Empiricus offers a similar objection to the Epicureans at M 10.188, exploiting their claim that time is the sense-impression (qa6v- 'raaga) of day and night (illuminated and un-illuminated air). If, when the world (KoGgo;) is destroyed, there will be no days and nights (let alone anyone to perceive them), then according to this Epicurean account of time there should be no time. But then it would not be possible to say that there was a time before the world came to be and another after it will cease to be. A similar problem can be raised without relying on the claim that the Epicureans defined the nature of time in terms of sense- impressions of days and nights. Given that all compound bodies are corruptible, then the problem we faced about what to say when Helen passes away will be repeated and repeated, even to a cosmic scale. Lucretius is faced with a dilemma. Either he offers some ultimate bearer or bearers of these past-tensed properties which are not themselves corruptible or he must accept that the past can cease to be, not just in the sense in which anyone will be happy to think that the past is no longer but in the more serious sense of agreeing that truths about the past can disappear. At some point in the future, if no continued bearer of the eventum of Helen's having been kidnapped can be found, it will cease to be true that Helen was kidnapped. The statement 'Tyndaris rapta est' will fail to correspond with any feature of the world. It will also not be false that Helen was kidnapped since the statement 'Tyndaris non rapta est' will fail to correspond with any feature of the world.

Lucretius might indeed be happy with that consequence. And he would not be alone in accepting it.26 Perhaps it would fit with his general view of the universe. Once his world, in which Helen was kidnapped and so on, ceases to be it would perhaps make little sense to think that the universe

26 See Lukasiewicz 1967, 38-9; Bollack and Bollack 1983, 316; Markosian 1995; Dummett 2004, 74-9.




as a whole is still one in which this Helen was kidnapped.27 Alternatively, Lucretius may remind us that the atoms and void themselves are the ultimate bearers of all eventa, and that these atoms and void are everlasting. This would be a way of preserving the past by tying it to some per se existents which will never themselves pass away.28 But it is odd to think of individual atoms or of areas of void acquiring such properties and his- tories as time passes. Eventually, on this picture, it will be possible to talk about an event in the very distant past because a number of atoms scat- tered now throughout the universe and/or a region of void in the infinite universe have the property of once having constituted or hosted one of the compound bodies involved in that event.

IV

DRN 1.464-82, therefore, need not show that Lucretius is committed to some kind of presentism. It is possible to read it either as relying on an implicit presentism (B) or as a conscious refusal to think that anything new needs to be said in the case of eventa whose original bearers no longer exist: they were once borne by per se existents and that is enough (A). Can other evidence be offered to support one or other of these interpretations?

What we know about the Epicureans' notions of truth and, in particular, of the truth value of non-present tensed statements, suggests that they held the logical thesis that any statement is true if and only if it is true in virtue of some present (that is, contemporaneous with the statement) state of affairs. Even if it is a past or future-tensed statement then it is true in virtue of some present state of affairs. The Stoics articulated a clear version of this outlook in their discussion of 'assertibles'.29 If, in that case, all statements require present truth-makers, this might be used as support for reading (B) of Lucretius DRN 1.464-82. However, as we look more

27 However, in the infinite universe, there will always be worlds in which a Helen is being kidnapped, has been kidnapped, or will be kidnapped. See Warren 2004b.

28 Compare Keller 2004, 99-101, on 'atomic presentism'. The Epicureans would not be as squeamish as Keller about the positing of eternal elemental particles.

29 Perhaps the best piece of evidence for the Stoic view comes from SE M 8.255 where Sextus is outlining the Stoic defence of the view that a sign ("etiov), which is a kind of assertible (&4i1x,u, cf. SE M 8.244-5), is 'always a present sign of a present thing' (5tau navtob; iapbo nxpo6vro; Fci arll.Teiov: M 8.254, 256), even when its content makes reference to the past or future. For more discussion of the Stoic assertible see Kneale and Kneale 1962, 153-8; Denyer 1988, 377-86; and Bobzien 1999,



378 JAMES WARREN

closely, it becomes clear that the Epicureans are committed to this conception of truth primarily because of concerns about determinism and the necessitation of the future. They are much less concemed about the truth- makers for past-tensed statements.

For the Epicureans as for the Stoics, it seems that the truth-value of any statement is strongly temporally-relativized. The clearest evidence of the Epicureans' attitude to the truth-value of future-tensed statements comes from Cicero's De Fato. Cicero dwells on the difficulties the Epi- cureans faced in marrying their intuitions about temporally-relativized truth with a determination to avoid universal causal determinism. According to the De Fato, the threat of determinism is what led Epicurus to deny that propositions such as 'Scipio will be murdered' are either true or false and also to introduce the atomic swerve.

sic si diceretur, 'morietur noctu in cubiculo suo vi oppressus Scipio', vere diceretur; id enim fore diceretur, quod esset futurum; futurum autem fuisse ex eo, quia factum est, intellegi debet. nec magis erat verum 'morietur Scipio' quam 'morietur illo modo', nec magis necesse mori Scipioni quam illo modo mori, nec magis inmutabile ex vero in falsum 'necatus est Scipio' quam 'necabitur Scipio'; nec, cum haec ita sint, est causa, cur Epicurus fatum extimescat et ab atomis petat praesidium easque de via deducat et uno tempore suscipiat res duas inenodabiles, unam, ut sine causa fiat aliquid, ex quo existet, ut de nihilo quippiam fiat, quod nec ipsi nec cuiquam physico placet - alteram, ut, cum duo individua per inani- tatem ferantur, alterum e regione moveatur, alterum declinet. [191 licet enim Epicuro concedenti omne enuntiatum aut verum aut falsum esse non vereri, ne omnia fato fieri sit necesse; non enim aeternis causis naturae necessitate manan- tibus verum est id, quod ita enuntiatur: 'descendit in Academiam Carneades', nec tamen sine causis, sed interest inter causas fortuito antegressas et inter causas cohibentis in se efficientiam naturalem. ita et semper verum fuit 'morietur Epicurus, cum duo et septuaginta annos vixerit, archonte Pytharato', neque tamen erant causae fatales, cur ita accideret, sed, quod ita cecidit, certe casurum sicut cecidit fuit.

Just so, if it were said 'Scipio will die in his room at night overcome by force', it would be said truly. For it said something was going to happen which was going to happen; and it ought to be understood that it was going to happen from the fact that it did happen. 'Scipio will die' was no more true than 'He will die in that way', nor was it more necessary for Scipio to die than to die in that way, nor is 'Scipio was murdered' any less changeable from true to false than 'Scipio will be murdered'; nor, since that is how things are, is there any reason for

95-6. (See Bigelow 1996, 42-3, for his discussion of the passage.) SE M 8.85 notes that the Stoics say that a true proposition is one which 'obtains' (InAdpWyt), a verb which they also used to denote the special sense in which the present exists (see above n.16). Cf. Schofield 1988, 354-8; Burnyeat 2003, 15 n.56. Also see KUnne 2003, 303-6, for what he dubs the 'Requirement of Compresence'.




Epicurus either to fear fate and seek some defence from the atoms which might lead them from their path or simultaneously to hold two inexplicable notions: 1. that something might occur without a cause (from which it follows that something might come from nothing - which neither the Epicureans nor any other natural philosopher believes); 2. that when two particular atoms are moving through the void, one might move straight on while the other swerves. It is possible for Epicurus to concede that every assertible30 is either true or false and still not fear that everything comes about by fate. For it is not as a result of eternal causes which hold by natural necessity that the assertion 'Carneades goes down to the Academy' is true, nor on the other hand is it without any cause. But there is a difference between chance antecedent causes and causes which posses in themselves a natural efficiency. So also 'Epicurus will die, at the age of 72, in the archonship of Pytharatus' was always true, though there was no fate causing it to happen as it did. Rather, because it did so happen, it was certainly going to happen as it did.

Cicero De Fato 18-19

Cicero ends this passage by contrasting what he sees as the confused Epi- curean view with a more sober - Academic inspired - approach which can retain bivalence for all assertions but avoid determinism. At Fat. 19-20 he offers the alternative view, in which 'Scipio will be murdered' is true now (and has always been true) if and only if Scipio will in fact be murdered. The passage ends by claiming that the Epicureans' anxiety is generated by thinking that if 'Epicurus will die at 72' is now true, then Epicurus must die at 72. Rather, Cicero says, the direction of explanation should be reversed. Because Epicurus will die at 72, 'Epicurus will die at 72' is now true. If Epicurus will not die at 72, the statement is now false. Either way, the truth or falsehood of an assertion about the future is governed by the future; the future is not governed by the truth or falsehood of statements made about it now.3' Nothing about how the world is now neces- sitates Scipio's murder, but that has no bearing on the truth or falsity of an assertion now that such a murder will take place.32 Cicero takes evi- dent pleasure in noting that all these difficulties could have been avoided by dismissing the opening assumption that all true statements say something true about how the world is at the time the statement is made.

The Epicureans, however, have a good reason for asserting a temporally-relativized view of truth: they think it properly describes causal

30 Cicero explains at Fat. 1 that he is using enuntiatio to render &aicoga. 1' Cf. Ryle 1954. 32 Cic. Fin. 19: ita et semper verum fuit 'morietur Epicurus, cum duo et septua-

ginta annos vixerit, archonte Pytharato', neque tamen erant causae fatales, cur ita accideret, sed, quod ita cecidit, certe casurum sicut cecidit fuit.



380 JAMES WARREN

relationships. 'Hermarchus will die' is true at time t, if and only if at t, the world is such that it contains sufficient causes for Hermarchus' death at some time in the future.33 For statements such as 'Hermarchus will die', the Epicureans' view well describes what they take to be a causal claim about Hermarchus' nature. Since every atomic composite is corruptible and every human is mortal then at every moment of Hermarchus' life it is the case that the world is such that it contains sufficient causes of Hermarchus' death. In this way, some future-tensed statements can have a truth-value, but only provided that their content is either causally necessary or impossible. So, 'The sun will rise tomorrow' might be accepted as true (true now) given that the current state of the world and the laws of nature necessitate the sun rising tomorrow. Similarly, 'My pet cat will give birth to puppies' is false (false now) since given the current state of the world and the laws of nature it is impossible for my pet cat to give birth to puppies. Not all discussion of the future, therefore, is condemned to lack a truth-value.

The interesting cases, however, are precisely those which involve things which are neither necessary nor impossible. Epicurus appears to have thought that if I say, for example, 'Helen will be kidnapped' and thereby say something true, then this amounts to saying truly that the present state of the world is such that Helen's being kidnapped in the future is necessitated by a combination of that present state and the relevant causal laws. If statements such as 'Scipio will be murdered' are either true or false, then they too would be true or false now in the sense of corresponding to some present state of affairs of the world which, combined with relevant causal laws, either guarantees (if the proposition is true) or prohibits (if the proposition is false) Scipio's being murdered. If 'Scipio will be murdered' is true, it is true now. And if is true now then already the causae fatales are in place sufficient to ensure that Scipio will be murdered. Further, if all statements, such future-tensed ones as 'Scipio will be murdered' included, are either true or false then determinism threatens since all future events will be necessitated.34

33 By 'sufficient causes' I mean what are referred to here in Cicero's De Fato as causaefatales. See e.g. Cic. Fat. 19. The link between the truth of the proposition and the causal necessity of the event coming to be is emphasised by Sedley 2005 and O'Keefe 2005, 138-44. Bobzien 1998, 65-75 makes a similar case for Stoicism.

14 Cf. Cic. Fat. 26: futura vera non possunt esse quae causas cur futura sint non habeant; habeant igitur causas necesse est ea quae vera sunt; ita cum evenerint fato evenerint.




Plutarch's De Pyth. Orac. shows the Epicureans taking the offensive against those who believe in the efficacy of prophecy and lends some support to the thought that it was primarily worries about the predetermination of the future which prompted the Epicureans to consider the truth-value of predictions. Boethus, the Epicurean spokesman, explains that if proph- esies are ever fulfilled, that is merely accidental. Given the sheer number of prophecies and their often general nature it would be surprising if none of them ever appeared to 'come true'. Two pieces of evidence are impor- tant for our purposes. First, at 399A Boethus assigns to the Epicureans the paradoxical view that a contingent future-tensed statement is false now, even if what it predicts should later occur.35 So, 'Hermarchus will die on Wednesday', uttered on Monday, is false on Monday even if Hermarchus does in fact die on Wednesday since, on Monday, it is not necessary that Hermarchus will die on Wednesday. By the same reasoning, the negation of that proposition, 'Hermarchus will not die on Wednesday', is also false on Monday, since on Monday that too is not necessary. So each of a pair of contradictory statements is false, although the Epicureans apparently accepted the truth of the disjunction 'Her- marchus will or will not die on Wednesday'. This is at odds with our other more detailed source of information on this point, Cicero De Fato 37-8, which says the Epicureans held that such propositions as 'Hermarchus will die on Wednesday' (said on Monday) are neither true nor false.36 The two reports agree that the Epicureans held that the disjunction of two contradictory contingent future statements is true, and also agree that the Epi- cureans were sure that future-tensed contingent statements are never true, so we can be confident that this is the core of the Epicureans' view.37

Second, at 398F Boethus refers to prophecy as 'a statement about the non-existent' (o ciicxv t& til tinapXovxa).38 This does indeed look like a

35 399A: 'o,oicoq xiV s iaV ?tb vVv Xe7y6pevov KaV utaepov a,rEO, ?i TUX01,

yEvwrct. Cf. Warren 2004a, 49-50. For more discussion see especially Bobzien 1998, 75-86, and Ferrari 2000.

36 Cf. Lukasiewicz 1967, 32-6, Dummett 1978, and Dummett 2004, 64: 'It may be uncomfortable to admit that a disjunctive statement may be true although truth attaches to neither of the disjuncts; but it is a discomfort to which we may need to adjust.' Compare also Aristotle De Int. 9 and cf. Inwood 1991, 154-5; Hussey 1993, xlvii; O'Keefe 2005, 125-49.

37 Cf. Ferrari 2000, 161. 38 Ferrari 2000, 155 translates t& v J 1indap%ovta as 'cio che non e al momente pre-

sente'. (Cf. Schroder ad loc.) This is potentially misleading. Even someone who accepts the reality of the future event would agree that the future is not now.



382 JAMES WARREN

plain assertion of the non-existence of the future, even if we might sus- pect that it has been cast in Stoic ontological vocabulary. However, that prophecy attempts to speak about the non-existent does not entail that all future-tensed claims similarly refer to the non-existent. After all, prophecy is concerned precisely with contingent future events. Events such as tomorrow's sunrise or Hermarchus' eventual death (the fact that he will die, not that he will die at a particular time or in a particular way), because they are necessary, are not the sort of things for which prophecy is needed. It is more likely, therefore, that here the Epicureans are claiming once again that statements about contingent future events lack a truth-value, indeed are statements about 'what is not', because there are no present states of affairs and no causae fatales, which can serve to make them true.

We can be confident that this was the Epicureans' stance when dis- cussing the future. On the assumption that Lucretius shared the general Epicurean logical outlook, we can also assume that he shared such a temporally-relativized view of truth values. And this view should hold for statements of all tenses. Thus, 'Helen was kidnapped' is true at t,, if and only if it says something true about the state of the world at t,. So it is now true if and only if there is some present state of affairs in the world which serves as its truthmaker. However, if we pursue this thought there are some strange possible consequences, much like those we noted in dis- cussing reading (B) of the Lucretius passage. In particular, we can again raise the question whether some past events will eventually disappear. If it is a necessary condition of the truth of 'Helen was kidnapped' that there be something for this to be true of which is contemporaneous with the utterance, then it is presumably possible for this condition eventually to fail to be satisfied. Just as, according to the Epicureans, a future-tensed statement is true (or false) only if the present state of the world is such as to necessitate (or prevent) the future state of affairs to which it refers, so a past-tensed statement would seem to be true (or false) only if the present state of the world is such that it requires (or is incompatible with) the past state of affairs to which it refers. There would therefore seem to be plenty of past-tensed statements analogous to the future-tensed statements about contingent events to which, as we noted, the Epicureans refuse to assign a determinate truth-value. Eventually, the whole kosmos whose history contains both the events of the Trojan War and Lucretius' present will be dispersed. In that case, will 'Helen was kidnapped' simply fail to be true any longer? (If this claim fails to be true then it need not become false; for 'Helen was kidnapped' to be false, its contradictory would have to be true and this equally is a statement about the past which




would need some relevant materies and so on to be present now.) It is not merely that eventually it will no longer be known whether Helen was kidnapped. Rather, it will eventually cease to be true that Helen was kidnapped.39

Our evidence suggests that the Epicureans were not much interested in pursuing the consequences of their preferred stance on truths about the future for thinking about the past. They might well have been uneasy with accepting the thought that some statements about the past might lack a determinate truth value. There is also some support for the view that they wished to think that all past-tensed statements have and retain a determinate truth-value from a brief aside in Cicero, De Fato 27:

nam ut praeterita ea vera dicimus quorum superiore tempore vera fuerit instantia, sic futura quorum consequenti tempore vera erit instantia, ea vera dicemus.

For just as we call true those past things whose obtaining was true at some earlier time, so we will call true those future things whose obtaining will be true at some later time.

Cicero is continuing his attack on the Epicureans' refusal to accept bivalence for all propositions. If this is intended as an argument with some force for an Epicurean opponent, it should be demanding an attitude concerning the truth of future-tensed statements symmetrical to one which the Epicureans are happy to accept - or could be expected to accept - concerning the truth of past-tensed statements. As a dialectical manoeuvre, Cicero demands that the Epicureans should accept bivalence for future- tensed statements just as they in fact already do for past-tensed statements. A statement about the past is true if what it describes did take place or was the case at some previous time. (Or, a statement about the past is true if the present tense version of that statement was true in the past.)'" Put in those terms, this stance is closest to that provided by reading (A) of

19 Cf. Bollack and Bollack 1983, 316. Cf. Dummett 2004, 74-9; O'Keefe 2005, 145; and Lukasiewicz 1967, 38: 'We should not treat the past differently from the future. If the only part of the future that is now real is that which is causally determined by the present time, and if causal chains commencing in the future belong to the realm of possibility, then only those parts of the past are at present real which still continue to act by their effects today.'

I The noun instantia, translated as 'obtaining', is used only here in Cicero's philosophical works. Merguet s.v. insto, -are gives 'nahe sein' and this seems to be the sense required here. It is likely that Cicero is reporting an Academic argument which used originally Stoic terminology, and Cicero offers instantia as an equivalent for the Greek o ivr?ort [sc. Xpovo;J, which is both the usual Stoic term for the present and also the term in grammatical writings for the present tense (cf. LSJ s.v. ivianrug B



384 JAMES WARREN

the Lucretian passage. If that is correct, then we should assume that the Epicureans did indeed allow all past-tensed statements to have a determinate truth-value (even if, for example, it is impossible for us now to know whether some particular claim about the past is true) dependent on whether their content corresponds with what was the case at the time to which they refer. It remains unclear, in that case, whether they saw the potential for a tension between this claim and the thought that if a statement is true - whatever the tense of that statement - it says something true about the state of the world at the time it is uttered. It is likely that they did not see the tension between these claims and wanted rather to retain the common-sense view that the past is unalterable and that truths about the past remain true.4'

V

We cannot declare in favour of reading (B) of the Lucretian passage and conclude that Lucretius - and therefore presumably Epicurus too - is a presentist. There is no clear endorsement of a presentist position in Lucretius, nor in any other Epicurean sources. And it is not clear that such a presentist view is the 'default' or 'common-sense' view for ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. The case for attributing a presentist position to the Epicureans would have to rest on two pieces of evidence: (I) one of two possible interpretations of DRN 1.469-70 (my reading (B) above) - which itself leads rapidly to a set of difficult metaphysical questions to which Lucretius provides no explicit answer - and (2) a general Epicurean thesis about the temporally-relativized nature of truth values. The second of these elements is the more secure. The Epicureans, like the Stoics, were committed to a view that all true statements are true in virtue of how the world is now, that some state of affairs now obtains for each and every true statement which can now be made, whatever the tense of that statement.

III and SVF II.165, 517-20, and esp. 509: note Chrysippus ap. Stob. 1.106, 13-18). Lucretius may reflect a similar use by writing instet at DRN 1.461. For Diodorus Cronus' rejection (and Sextus' restatement) of the view endorsed here by Cicero see SE M 10.97-100.

41 A further reason to think that the Epicureans considered the past immutable is provided if part of their reason for denying the truth of all contingent future tensed statements is the worry that otherwise not only is it now true that it will rain on 21 July 2050 but also it has always been true that it will rain on 21 July 2050. If we add to a temporally-relativized notion of truth the thought that the past is immutable then it was true that it will rain on 21 July 2050 and it is necessary that it will rain then. See O'Keefe 2005, 128 n. 11.




The relationship between this logical commitment and the modern presentist's ontological view is complex. The stance on temporally-relativized truth values does not itself provide independent support for reading (B) of the Lucretius passage and, in any case, we have seen that there are rea- sons to doubt whether the Epicureans themselves wished to pursue the strict consequences of their view on temporally-relativized truth values for the status of the past as well as the future. No doubt, anyone fully committed to an anti-realist view of the past and future will have to try to find some properties in the present to stand as truth-makers for past- and future-tensed statements. (That is merely to state the presentist's task of finding some means of saving talk about non-present things.) But it is not necessary for anyone committed primarily to the logical thesis of temporally-relativized truth to think that the past and future do not exist. The Stoics, for example, despite their insistence that true assertibles, whether past, present or future, subsist in the present and are true 'now', did not say that the past and future fail to exist at all.42

There is no compelling reason, therefore, to think that the Epicureans were presentists. Even the passage of Lucretius from DRN 1, the prize exhibit for the presentist interpretation of Epicureanism, is compatible with a non-presentist interpretation. What is more clear is that the Epicureans held that the past is unalterable and, in principle, knowable. Statements about the past are true if they correspond with what did in fact take place. The future, on the other hand, is, to a degree, open and unpredictable. In so far as a future event is necessary or inevitable, that too is unalterable, knowable, and can be spoken of truly or falsely. In so far as a future event is merely contingent, it is as yet not only undecided and unknowable, but also 'is not'. Such an event cannot be spoken of either truly or falsely. Only for this last category of future contingent events is there clear evidence that the Epicureans deny their existence, since they deny that statements made in the present about such events can be true.

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge jiwlOOl @cam.ac.uk

42 Schofield 1988, 358, argues that the Stoics' ontological commitments were derived from their logical theory: 'Chrysippus derives his theory that only the present obtains from seeing that, in order to express what it is for a predicate to belong to a subject, the present tense is indispensable; or, as one might say: what obtains obtains only in the present tense. In the end he proves to be in agreement with Epicurus that time is an accident of accidents.'



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