David Riggs > Quotes

“Pythagoras introduced Renaissance undergraduates to the ancient (un)belief system of Epicurus and his disciple Lucretius: hell is a fable, and belief in hell a craven superstition; the body metamorphoses into the elements after death; poets and rulers invented divine retribution to keep men in awe of authority. Renaissance divines understandably concluded that epicureans were atheists.”
― David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe

“The Machiavellian Prologue to Marlowe’s Jew of Malta boasts that: ‘I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance’ (14–15). Atheism as such was not the issue in Marlowe’s case. Renaissance academics and statesmen inherited the Roman view that philosophers and rulers were entitled to a sphere of private unbelief. Marlowe took the further, more provocative step of circulating epicurean ideas among the general public.”
― David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe