Marius the Epicurean

by Walter Pater, Michael Levey

An imaginary historical portrait in which Marius is offered as a kind of self-portrait of Pater transferred to the Rome of Marcus Aurelius. Marius speculates on various views of art and life. The love of art for art's sake is advocated, as is the moral obligation to lead a good and ordered life.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Philosophy, 19th Century, Literature, British Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1885

About the author

People know British writer Walter Horatio Pater for his volumes of aesthetic criticism, including Appreciations (1889).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_...

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somerset Maugham once dismissed this book as “boring.” But other great books are “boring” too. I have read—and enjoyed—Moby Dick and Ulysses, but there are passages in each that—at least for me--never fail to bring out the yawns. (The worst come when Melville channels Shakespeare, when Joyce visits a Dublin whorehouse.)

Marius the Epicurean is the account of the coming of age of a young patrician in the age of Marcus Aurelius. Like its near contemporary, Huysmans' Against Nature, it contains a rich portrait of a complex intellectual character written in beautiful, complex prose. Both books deftly use realistic description to achieve distinctly non-realist ends, and both, despite their conventional narrative appearance, are deeply experimental novels, disdaining plot and instead seeking artistic wholeness in a congeries of tone poems, philosophical disquisitions, anecdotes and moral reflections, unified by a single viewpoint and a chronological structure. I think Marius is structurally the more daring of the two, for it also includes a number of translations (the most extensive being an extraordinarily beautiful and somewhat restrained version of Apuleius' tale of “Cupid and Psyche”), cobbling together a “narrative” from various texts in a way that foreshadows the bricolage of post-modernist fiction.

All of which does not mean that it is not boring. It is particularly boring when—in a subject dear to Pater, who was still striving to separate his own “epicureanism” from the scandalous “hedonism” of Wilde—Marius tries to distinguish his own beliefs from the atheism of Diogenes and the Cynics, and show how moral principles may be refined and strengthened by an aesthetic dimension. Pater writes of this in subtle prose that, in its complex and qualified fashion anticipates the later style of Henry James. But I have to admit that reading it gave me the sleepies, just like when Melville dons his “King Lear” mask or Joyce cavorts in The Bordello of Classical Myth.

But I'll tell you what didn't bore me: any time Pater describes a private ceremony, a seasonal festival, a religious ritual or civic pageant. He demonstrates how such practices and performances are intimately connected to the terrain and fruits of the land, to the daily rounds and emotional lives of its people. You can sense how the agnostic Marius yearns to believe in the household gods of his childhood or the risen God of his persecuted friends, and yet you realize the great distance that separates him from them too.

And one thing that kept my interest, even amid the boring parts, was the sense that Pater—beyond the experimentation, the borrowings, the mask of this second century Roman—was writing his own spiritual and emotional autobiography, that Pater—the most artful of writers—is here telling us in his artful fashion his own artless truth.

[Roxana Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite novel of all time. I will admit that it requires some classical erudition for full appreciation (philosophy and knowledge on the court of Marcus Aurelius), however great aesthetic pleasure can be had without it.
What I enjoyed most about the novel was Marius' explorations through different philosophical systems via men. This novel is intensely homosocial; all of his profound intellectual experiences come from relationships with other males, beautiful in their dignity and knowledge. This book will dispose you to sublime contemplation.

[Monty Milne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an overwritten, overwrought book by a Victorian bachelor Oxford don trying to wrestle up his weak Christian convictions and wrestle down his obvious homoerotic desires, all infused with a bittersweet nostalgia for the pagan past and the philosophers and poets of classical antiquity. There are times in my life when I would have lapped this up and thought it wonderful; but no longer. I read it in the depths of winter (and often brought to mind the face of Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius in the splendid film "Gladiator", with flurries of snow dancing round his purple-cloaked figure). However, this is probably best read on golden sunlit days in early autumn, sitting under a vine trellis and sipping the last bottle of an old vintage. There are some beautiful descriptive passages, and it disposes you to thoughtfulness and contemplation, but it doesn't really convince you that it's a real picture of the ancient world. It's a bit like Lord Leighton's painting of the Daphnephoria, which looks exactly like a lot of Victorians dressed up as ancient Greeks. This book has a certain fascination, but it is too coy and mannered, - and, let's face it, too boring - to be a real success.

[Chet Herbert]

eloquence murdered by commas

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do almost feel silly giving this 5 stars, given that it is most definitely not the most exciting page-turner ever written. I feel it deserves this just because my thoughts and feelings about life chime so closely to Pater's, whatever that says about me. Marius's complex, introverted life of thought does not lead him to any clear conclusions about life, but this is the point. We should embrace this never-ending nascency.

"Surely, the aim of a true philosophy must lie, not in futile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to the circumstances in which he chances to find himself, but in the maintenance of a kind of candid discontent, in the face of the very highest achievement; the unclouded and receptive soul quitting the world finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered the world still unimpaired, and going on its blind way at last with the consciousness of some profound enigma in things, as but a pledge of something further to come."

Additionally, the over-written prose is exactly to my taste... I'll be returning to Marius!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may say I read an old Everyman copy, not the recent Penguin. I have owned this for many years but finally read it. It is not so much a historical novel as a philosophical meditation in the form of a historical novel -- about as far from what my mother called the "lusty, busty, gusty"
style as it is posssible to be. In effect, it is a working out in story form of Lorenzo Valla's argument that Epicureanism
is closer to Christianity than Stoicism is.
Since Pater was a noted writer on the Renaissance, I suspect the similarity is intentional. Marius (obviously) is the Epicurean, his friend Cornelius the Christian, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius the Stoic. There are no swordfights or seductions, and the only significant deaths are from disease. The emperor's war against the Germans (think the opening of Gladiator) are offstage--we see him depart for war and we see him return in triumph.
There are some very effective points made--my father had taught me to admire the emperor's reading while ignoring the slaughter he was expected to sponsor in the arena, but when Pater describes it, I can see this could be a cold lack of humane feeling compared to Cornelius's outright rejection of the barbarity.
On the other hand, the beautiful scene of the aged philosopher Fronto with the imperial children is a very positive picture of the best of paganism, and Pater also indicates that for Marcus Aurelius the
traditional Roman religion was an effective expression of his more philosophical faith. The image of the church during the "little peace" (before the last great persecutions od Decius and Diocletian) may be idealized --I think Pater's idea that the church of that era was less severely ascetic than it became
later is doubtful-- but it is very attractive and makes Marius's attraction to it credible.
Considered as a historical novel, there are parts that are excellent, vivid set-piece descriptions --but there are also
passages of philosophical comment with modern references (e.g. Voltaire) that disturb the sense of immersion in ancient culture and values that I find in, say, Renault's Praise Singer. There are also sections of undigested sources -- the account of the Martyrs of Lyons, for example -- which go too far the other way.
Overall, though, I thought it worth reading.

[Nothing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simultaneously the most boring, prolix, pointless and yet wondrous Bildungsroman ever written. Not of our time.

[Jaco · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not a fluent and easygoing read. You have to do a bit of work but it is worth it because you get some beautifull passages and the whole justifies the parts so to speak.
There is a lot in this book in terms of content. A whole range of classical philosophy aswell as the life-journey of the main character growing up. You also get interesting facts here and there. For example one of the first chapters gives an apt description of what the ancient 'pagan' roman anscestoral religion would have looked like. I also loved the passage where marius is travelling the country and has a sudden intuitive aesthetic awareness of unity with the world. Pater gives a great explanation of how it all relates to aristotles' god idea... poetic stuff

[Natassa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for uni. Listen, if I have to read 30 books a week I might as well log some of them because god knows I won't be reading anything else

[Helen Victoria Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

My classmates in Decadence and the Modern tend to disagree with me, but I absolutely loved this book. Projected onto the loose narrative of a Roman's man coming of age and entrance into intellectual maturity, it has profoundly affected my aesthetic sensibilities and perceptions of subjectivity. The very textual elements my peers found to criticise here are what I love about the novel: it is true that there is only a very loose episodic narrative. Time is not clearly delineated; there is little dialogue (though what there is sparkles and fascinates) and the structure of the fiction is evidently designed to support Pater's own critical conclusions. However, this is a work of quite exquisite prose. The novel does that very difficult thing of expressing both deeply philosophical, hard-to-express sensations, and sensual pleasures

I am a very interior person, and I favour narratives which are heavy on character-interior rather than plot. I enjoy immersive language, being drawn into the structures of complex, bounds of thought and idea. In that regard, the work more than delivered. Pater's mastery of detail is absolute, his depiction of setting, character and sensation wonderfully immersive. I am also fascinated by the nature of subjective truth. Chapter 24, 'A Conversation Not Imaginary' provides one of the most sophisticated yet accessible accounts of this topic which I have read in fiction so far.

The book must lose a star for its presumption that the reader will be as versed in classical literatures and philosophers as Pater himself was. It's true that I had to read around the text a lot, and that my particular edition (Valancourt Press) did not do much to contextualise the wider philosophies and dynasties namechecked in the novel. It is also true that there are slack moments when the balance of narration and didacticism falls off-kilter and the plot dangles. (I suspect it was these moments which lost my colleagues). If the work could be taken without these (to me) small demerits, it would be a wholehearted five stars.

Though not an easy undertaking, Marius promises to be enlightening and perception-altering for those who are willing to devote a bit of time and energy to it. As a lover of Victorian studies, Pater's work has been a revelation to me, and I'll definitely be returning to his writing, and to reread this book in particular.

[Colin Heber-Percy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd been looking forward to reading this. And I'm afraid I was disappointed. There are some wonderful aspects to Marius the Epicurean - especially his extraordinary evocation of Rome and the empire under Marcus Aurelius. But the fabled prose! It's clotted and turgid and stifling. You're dying of thirst and the only thing to drink is Cointreau. Sticky and thick and sends you to sleep.

[Celia T]

Before I read this book I thought "man, Wilde and Woolf and Proust and lots of others are always going on about how great Walter Pater is! How come nobody reads him today?"

and now I'm like oh okay. That's why

[Alberony Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

En las páginas de "Mario el Epicúreo," Walter Pater despliega una prosa que trasciende la mera narrativa y convirtiendo al texto en un punado de letras sin el tropiezo. Como un hábil director de orquesta, Pater nos sumerge en las profundidades del epicureísmo, guiándonos con destreza a través de los jardines secretos de la filosofía y la belleza. La obra no se limita a ser una simple novela, sino que se erige como una exploración íntima de los placeres de la existencia, un tratado disfrazado de ficción que nos conduce por un sendero hacia la sabiduría y el deleite.

El escritor da vida a imágenes vívidas y evocadoras que despiertan los sentidos. Sus descripciones de la naturaleza, de los objetos artísticos y de los momentos de éxtasis estético son un regalo para el lector que ansía el deleite estético. En estas páginas, la belleza no es un simple adorno, sino el hilo conductor que une todas las facetas de la vida de Mario y de la obra misma, tejiendo un tapiz de significado y sensibilidad.

A través de diálogos profundos y reflexivos, Pater deja al descubierto la búsqueda de la felicidad a través del disfrute moderado de los placeres, la trascendencia de la amistad y la imperiosa necesidad de liberarnos del miedo a la muerte emergen como temas centrales que resuenan en cada página. Pater, en su rol de filósofo camuflado de novelista, nos reta a cuestionar nuestras propias creencias y a reflexionar sobre el verdadero significado de una vida bien vivida.

En conclusión, "Mario el Epicúreo" de Walter Pater es una obra maestra literaria que combina la belleza estética con la profundidad filosófica de manera magistral. En sus páginas, el lector se adentra en un viaje literario y filosófico que deja una huella indeleble en el alma, recordándonos la importancia de buscar la belleza y el placer en la vida, mientras exploramos las cuestiones más profundas de la existencia.

[Eric]

Submitted this as a third entry to the Gaddis Annotations (I've one here, another here) though it doesn't appear to have made an appearance there. Basically, Gaddis got the immortal line--the one about the procession, which makes a tangle of the opening paragraph--from Pater's novel. If you will:

"But for the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the priests, clad in their strange, stiff, antique vestments, and bearing ears of green corn upon their heads, secured by flowing bands of white, the procession moved in absolute stillness, all persons, even the children, abstaining from speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula, Favete linguis!--Silence! Propitious Silence!--lest any words save those proper to the occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the rite,"

and cf.,

"But the procession up the foreign hill, bounded by cypress trees, impelled by the monotone chanting of the priest and retarded by hesitations at the fourteen stations of the Cross (not to speak of the funeral carriage in which she was riding, a white horse-drawn vehicle which resembled a baroque confectionary stand) might have ruffled the countenance of her soul, if it had been discernible."

Even the grammatical structure of the original has been preserved and transposed.

And yes, I intend to return to this DENSE DENSE volume someday. With its profusion of Jamesian sentences, it is itself, I take it, the baroque confectionary stand Gaddis is alluding to.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do not think this historical novel set in 2nd century AD in Rome is going to be a swashbuckling swords and sandals romp : its pleasures, such as they are, are cerebral and subtle. The Marius of the title, an impressionable youth of a philosophical bent, a lover of beauty and deep thinker, attends the court of Marcus Aurelius, very much of the Stoic sensibility, keen to observe the niceties of the ancient Roman deities with their soothing ritual. Set against these Golden shadows of Rome's mighty past is the demonstration of the persecuted Christians and their simple joyous hopes for a better life beyond. Even if you don't fancy the exposition of differing philosophical creeds, you can read this just for the lush prose which is wonderful - it positively screams to be read aloud. As elegant as a top hat and similarly antiquated, this is the zenith of English prose composition. Pater shapes massive confections of sentences and he punctuates the hell out of them. I counted 17 commas in one sentence alone.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

1885 novel set in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius. This reads like Pater is projecting himself into a kind of virtual reality so as to wander around the possibilities of the era that he personally finds most enticing. It’s an imagined being, not doing. Imagining the mellow solemnity of growing up in a villa in the countryside with the rituals of the Roman Gods, already apparently a little old-fashioned, as your formative cultural heritage. Imagining encounters with Marcus Aurelius and Apuleius and Lucian. Imagining picking and choosing between various philosophies and ways of being, most notably Epicureanism, Stoicism and Christianity, having the ability to take what Pater considers to be the most interesting elements of each of them.

It seemed just then as if the desire of the artist in him — that old longing– might be satisfied by the exact and literal transcript of what was then passing around him, in simple prose, arresting the desirable moment as it passed, and prolonging its life a little.

This description of Marius’s urge to “arrest the desirable moment” reminded me of Pater’s modus operandi in this novel; he has a list of desirable moments to fit into this premise and he freeze-frames them.

Marius, as the title tells you, is an Epicurean. I know nothing about Epicureanism beyond what this novel told me, so I don’t know whether Pater’s take on it truly is a little idiosyncratic. Marius’s philosophy seems to be that nothing exists beyond the present moment so that we should take care to live the present moment as vividly as possible. The idiosyncrasy comes in with Pater’s idea of vividness. It is made clear at the beginning that Marius has a special capacity to enjoy beauty and visual stimulus and that his life’s good shall come to him through these. It is also made clear that Marius is far too refined and restrained and full of rectitude to interpret his philosophy as a licence for debauchery. I might have expected a novel full of Proustian descriptions of the visual world, then, but that doesn’t really happen. For all this emphasis on beauty being important to Marius, the physical world seems to have little reality for him. Physical beauty is the cipher for a beautiful concept behind it, he decides during a spiritual experience in a natural setting:

It was easier to conceive of the material fabric of things as but an element in a world of thought — as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, or accident, or passing condition in a world of matter, because mind was really nearer to himself: it was an explanation of what was less known by what was known better. The purely material world that close, impassable prison-wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to be actually dissolving away all around him: and he felt a quiet hope, a quiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as a really credible opinion.

This has something to do with Platonism, I think, but I don’t know enough to tell why Marius is an Epicurean rather than a Platonist. This intangible nature of what Marius is striving for is emphasised as he sums up his life at the end:

Revelation, vision, the discovery of a vision, the seeing of a perfect humanity, in a perfect world—through all his alternations of mind, by some dominant instinct, determined by the original necessities of his own nature and character, he had always set that above the having, or even the doing, of anything. For, such vision, if received with due attitude on his part, was, in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might be, observant of him.

The novel seems like it presents itself as a plea for some ethical position but the more I think about it the odder it seems. This insistence of Pater’s on talking about the physical world being everything one moment and nothing the next moment is at the heart of it. I think he means that the physical world is the key to the invisible world but this seems too obvious to him to always make it apparent. Instead there is all this invisible world stuff, when you thought it said something else on the tin.

Thankfully I have read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations because one of the main things this book is for is to quarrel respectfully with him. At one point Marius almost has a chat with him to point out where he is going wrong but Marcus Aurelius is busy with orphans and misses his chance. Part of this is Pater’s puzzled sorrow that someone who tried to be good could have lent himself to some of his period’s atrocities and part of it is a rejection of what he sees as Marcus Aurelius’s gloomy assumptions that life is a burden.

Marius encounters Christians, and after spending lots of time looking at their tombs comes to the conclusion that Christianity is all about joy. He doesn’t convert but is able to die happily knowing that Christianity exists. I was surprised by how unconvincing I found Marius’s reactions to Christianity — surprised since it seems clear that the representation of early Christianity is carefully crafted to suit Pater’s own vision. The fact that Pater had in fact lost his faith in Christianity may have something to do with the awkwardness I felt here, the effect of crudely visible lines in something that has nonetheless clearly been lovingly pieced together.

Ultimately I suppose the oddness of the book is due to the fact that this is Pater’s world, and happiness in it is defined by the tastes of one wistful intellectual. And that’s what this objectively dull book had that I quite liked: a wistful intellectual vision of happiness.

[Dillwynia Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this a real slog and had to abandon it after 12 months of reading the 1st hundred pages. The writing is turgid, dense, and flowery (floury) leaving me unsatisfied. I knew it was time to give up when it took me a week to read 4 pages.

I'm pleased others found it an enjoyable book; I just don't happen to be one of them.

[Maan Kawas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, profound and brilliant!

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha, wonderfully dense, extravagant and choking of its prose; Pater battling his epicureanism against everything Wilde; not a patch on his art writing but still a great and silly pleasure.

[Jonathan Honnor]

A "novel" as deeply strange as the synopsis sounds: a philosophical Bildungsroman told through the historical frame narrative of a young man in the Age of the Antonines but really an intellectual self-portrait of Pater himself. The intellectual self-portrait indeed rather encroaches on any kind of suspension of disbelief the narrative could provide when Pater so frequently refers to literature, art and philosophy that comes after the time period of the narrative. If being harsh, one might argue the critical and intellectual faculty seems to get in the way of the imagination. In this way it perhaps somewhat comes across like a clumsy attempt by a critically trained and minded person to attempt the novelist's art. However, whether or not it succeeds as a novel, it does certainly succeed in being sui generis.

The subtitle "His sensations and ideas" is very apt because there is very little of action in the book that is not intellectual, which is to say that much on the abstract and speculative and little on the level of the concrete and the specific actually happens. There is perhaps beautiful specificity in the details of Marius' aesthetic apprehensions of architecture and nature, but characters, such as in the Socratic dialogue of "A Conversation Not Imaginary", are flat, barely memorable. Flavian is perhaps the most memorable, and only because he dies, serving his philosophical purpose of illustrating the utter uncertainty of life that leads Marius towards the knowledge of Heraclitean flow contributing to his aestheticism. My issue with the novel is probably jointly a philosophical qualm with the aestheticism that led Pater to produce it, in that it does seem to lend itself to a kind of solipsism aesthetically and ethically. There are no memorable characters because the meaning that aestheticism finds is in the solitary life's vision unto itself, in his epiphany in the final chapter which also comes round to justifying the tenets of aestheticism,:

For such vision, if received with due attitude on his part, was, in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might be observant of him. And how goodly had the vision been!--one long unfolding of beauty and energy in things, upon the closing of which he might gratefully under his "Vixi!"

For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been [...] to use life, not as the means to some problematic end, but as far as might be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself -- a kind of music, all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air."

These are beautiful and deeply significant lines and get to some deep truth about how I have wanted and want to live -- the importance of seeing life as an end unto itself according to the second categorical imperative gets across why Pater's aestheticism is really so deeply ethical. Yet there is something still a little hollow about the picture that comes in the whole aesthetic package in a music that is only heard and significant to oneself. I don't mean to critique it, as others seem to have done, from a purely ethical notion that it fails to grasp the fundamental ethical truth of Christianity with which Pater is remarkably associating his vision of aestheticism as a supposed natural type of Christian soul ("anima naturaliter Christiana"), but rather from the aesthetic viewpoint that Marius' life appears almost not as beautiful as it could have been precisely because it is so solitary without recognising its loneliness, without the reality of Others in its aesthetic vision. Of course in the end we all die alone, there is certainly "Vixi!" and we must never lose sight of the importance of it. But can there not also be "Viximus et vivetis!"? (or maybe just "vivamus atque amemus?")

There is much to enjoy and I think a deeper engagement than my currently flighty/fragmentary attention has been able to give would perhaps gaining some insight in the precise structure of the novel and thus its development of its philosophical journey would be enlightening and instructive. But I would not say that this novel has captured my attention, not in the same way as the final chapter of Studies in the History of the Renaissance enraptured it. I believe it is a great compliment to say that this has resonances and echoes of the autobiographical intellectual self-portrait of The Prelude, only it probably has fewer shivers of the divine, and its loneliness is not as poignant.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking over my resume as a reader, you might think I would have enjoyed Pater’s masterpiece more than I did. I’m well read, a lover of classical history and philosophy, and Pater’s references (or the majority of them) are not lost on me. And yet I find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for Marius the Epicurean.

At its best, in Pater’s vignettes of social and religious life, Marius improves upon Margueritte Yourcenar’s wonderful Memoirs of Hadrian. Pater was a great scholar and is able to place us expertly into the time and place he wishes. Unfortunately, he’s more interested in the era’s intellectual than social atmosphere, and I’m less convinced of his success in this regard.

The trouble is not that he misrepresents that atmosphere (and who am I to question Pater in that direction?), but his hero’s inward life and intellectual ferment is too obviously a stand-in for Pater’s autobiography of his own soul. There’s nothing inherently blameworthy in such a manoeuver; it happens in fiction all the time. But I’m afraid that Pater’s soul is boring.

Or, to be more precise, Pater’s soul is a bore, consumed in tiresome self-indulgent monologue, like that fellow at the dinner party whom you avoid at all costs. Pater revels in a too precious refinement of sensibility, an obsession with his own exquisitely sensitive antennae for beauty, for pleasure, for stylish skepticism. There’s too much Huysmans in his aestheticism, too much late James in his overwrought prose.

[E.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

After becoming fascinated by the writers of the Decadent Movement of the 1890s, I finally decided to read the novel so often lauded as the inspiration for the movement itself. Pater's prose is indeed lovely, but it has a dated heaviness common to its Victorian time. More than that, however, this is a novel of a Classical academic, full of references beyond the reach of anyone who is unfamiliar with Ancient Greek and Roman Classicism. Even so, Pater's descriptions of the waning years of Ancient Rome are sumptuous and wonderfully readable for the modern reader. This novel is essentially accomplishing two tasks at once: evoking an Empire in decline through the experiences of Marius and contemplating competing and evolving philosophies of that time. In many ways, this novel reminded me of "The Hill of Dreams" by Arthur Machen, in that we are able to see the world through the eyes of a young protagonist who is pondering life deeply.
This book is not for everyone, but if given a chance there is much beauty and accessibility here. I have found that "Marius the Epicurean" is sometimes (wrongly) classified as a "gay" novel or other incorrect classifications of today. Pater does describe a depth of friendship that was, perhaps, more common and meaningful in Ancient times, but this is not a romance. Marius is on a journey of self-discovery and transformation, with Ancient Rome as the backdrop.

[Michel Van Goethem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marius the Epicurean by Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, literary and art critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His works on Renaissance subjects were popular but controversial, reflecting his lost belief in Christianity.
In his philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), an extended imaginary portrait set in the Rome of the Antonines, which Pater believed had parallels with his own century, he examines the "sensations and ideas" of a young Roman of integrity, who pursues an ideal of the "aesthetic" life – a life based on αἴσθησις, sensation – tempered by asceticism. Leaving behind the religion of his childhood, sampling one philosophy after another, becoming secretary to the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, Marius tests his author's theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of sensation and insight as an ideal in itself. The novel's opening and closing episodes betray Pater's continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he had lost. Marius was favourably reviewed and sold well; a second edition came out in the same year. For the third edition (1892) Pater made extensive stylistic revisions.

[Clay Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another of the "Dorian Gray" books, Marius the Epicurean shows itself a very strong influence on Wilde. Wilde's rambunctious prose is anticipated in Pater's book, and there are very few passages that don't sheer, unquestionable style. The story of a young man experimenting with the various philosophies and religions of Ancient Rome on his search for happiness, Marius the Epicurean is alternately sad and fascinating, and Pater guides the reader through Marius's journey of discovery while exploring various forms of literary expression. One of the highlights is Pater's translation of Apuleius's retelling of the Cupid and Psyche story, which brings the present book in line with one of its chief inspirations, The Golden Ass. Pater was tragically under-read in the 20th century, and will probably continue to be into the 21st. Be a part of the solution, not of the problem, and read this awesome book!

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a relief that is finished. It was far too taxing for me. Here's an example of a sentence:

Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but a series of fleeting impressions:--so Marius continued the sceptical argument he had condensed, as the matter to hold by, from his various philosophical reading:--given, that we are never to get beyond the walls of the closely shut cell of one's own personality; that the ideas we are somehow impelled to form of an outer world, and of other minds akin to our own, are, it may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of any world beyond, a day-dream perhaps idler still: then, he, at least, in whom those fleeting impressions--faces, voices, material sunshine--were very real and imperious, might well set himself to the consideration, how such actual moments as they passed might be made to yield their utmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity.

[Allan Olley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very sedate book is a mildly diverting meditation on classical Roman life and religion at the dawn of the Christian era. The main character is a somewhat pensive individual strangely drawn to religious ceremony despite the titular Epicureanism adopted later in life. The actual doctrines of Epicureanism make little if any appearance in this text, but one senses the author has some familiarity with them. The entire book feels as though it is making subtle and gross references to aspects of Roman antiquity with notables such as Marcus Aurelius and Galen making brief appearances. It is not particularly effective as Christian apologetics but does suggest at least what the author felt the most appealing aspects of Christianity were against its Pagan alternatives. There is not much of a plot, the book is more an impressionistic sketch of a young Roman's slight unease with his own society and calm depictions of a few parts of it.

[Rozonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read many of the authors that helped create my admired Oscar Wilde's philosophy and style (Ruskin, Renan, Pater) and Walter Pater is the only one i have really liked. Marius is a difficult yet beautiful book- about a young, sensitive man in Marcus Aurelius' Rome which isn't fully satisfied in his spiritual search neither by the Roman religion nor by the philosophies of the era, although he finds beauty and values in both of them. Finally, he decides to approach the nascent Christian religion attracted by the purity and simplicity of rites and beliefs- and even if he is not fully convinced, he embraces it to the point of dying in jail next to persecuted Christians, even if he isn't one.

Boring and dry at times, incredibly beautiful and erudite at many moments, this is a very complex and deep book I will have to return to- and one can see how not just Wilde, but many other authors, drew a lot from Pater and his ideas about knowledge, faith and beauty.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quiet book. I suspect Pater was trying to bring to life a world of the past that represented a possible better future.

The profound feeling for nature and for tradition. The genuinely "liberal" education which made a young patrician man grow up independent and thoughtful. The deep love and friendship between men who were kindred philosophical spirits, the classical reverence for friendship. The Epicurean philosophy -- which, the way Pater describes it, has an eerily modern information-theoretic interpretation.

I think of it almost as a very subtle, careful, understated advertisement for humanism.

[Jill Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most historical fiction, this book tells us as much about the period in which it was written (Victorian/Romantic) as it does about the one in which it is set (Ancient Rome under Marcus Aurelius). Yet it is none the less beautiful for all that. I wondered if it was one of the influences on my idol Mary Renault, with its languid descriptions of sunny Mediterranean landscapes and hints of homo-eroticism. It's mostly about the protagonist's search for the meaning of life, and can be a challenging read with its long convoluted sentences and detailed philosophical speculation. But it's well worth the effort, and its ending is as poignant as it is unexpected.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best works of fiction I've read and some of the finest prose. Every moment - every epiphanic description - exists for its own sake and not just to further the plot.
The work's weakness, though, is its philosophical untidiness. There seemed to be a multitude of special perceptive moments but in the end I couldn't summarize the author's main point. And Pater also makes naive mistakes when interpreting Aurelius' "Meditations" - for example, he confuses the idea of non-resistance with a lack of positive or necessary action.