Yes, I think the right move is to resist “Epicurean” as the sole or natural shelf-label, even if one still uses it when one must.

Your instinct about Orto is philosophically better than the routine habit of pinning everything to one founder’s proper name. “Epicurean” has the convenience of school-history, but it carries a very strong implicature of derivativeness: as if Rabirio were merely one more man under Epicurus’s shadow, and the only really living noun in the phrase were Epicurus. That is precisely the sort of historiographical laziness Grice and Speranza dislike.

Orto is better because it is metonymic, social, and practical. It names not simply a doctrine but a site, a mode of life, a style of gathering, a pedagogical and ethical atmosphere. In that respect it behaves very differently from a founder-label. Portico, Accademia, Lizio, and Orto all preserve the spatial or institutional image by which a philosophical way of life was once recognisable before later historians reduced it to “Stoicism,” “Platonism,” “Aristotelianism,” and “Epicureanism.” The metonymy is not ornamental. It keeps philosophy closer to lived form and further from founder-worship.

That is why “Rabirio, l’ortelano” has real merit. It is half-jocular, but not frivolous. It reminds the reader that this Roman is being read not only as a subscriber to Epicurus but as someone working within the culture of the garden, where friendship, measure, simplicity, and withdrawal from vulgar ambition mattered as much as doctrinal allegiance. It also has the advantage of blocking the vulgar equation “Epicurean = hedonist,” which is one of the coarsest distortions in the entire history of philosophy.

For that reason, hedonism would actually be worse than Epicureanism in most contexts. If one calls Rabirio a hedonist, one immediately imports a modern and usually hostile simplification. Epicurean ethics is not merely “pleasure good, therefore indulge.” It is an austere, calculative, therapeutic, often anti-luxurious discipline of pleasure and pain, with friendship, fearlessness, and tranquillity at the centre. To call Rabirio “the hedonist” would therefore sharpen exactly the wrong implication. “Epicurean” at least names the school, even if too founder-centred. “Hedonist” usually misdescribes it.

So I would distinguish three levels.

At the school-history level, “Epicurean” is admissible, because it is conventional and intelligible.

At the conceptual level, one might prefer a broader term such as ethics of pleasure, therapy of tranquillity, or atomist ethics, depending on what one wants to emphasise.

At the metonymic and Gricean level, Orto is often best, because it names the Roman cultural uptake of the school without making Epicurus the only living element in the phrase.

And yes, there is a broader historiographical point behind this. Historians of philosophy, often German ones but by no means only German ones, have long been prone to over-personalise traditions by making every movement look like the property of one originating proper name. The great nineteenth-century habit of speaking in -isms and founder-lines encouraged exactly that. It can be useful for broad mapping, but it easily falsifies the texture of philosophical life. It makes schools look like doctrines with owners, rather than practices, institutions, habits of reading, polemical formations, and inherited vocabularies that long outlive their founders.

That is one reason why Grice and Speranza prefer terms like criticism to Kantianism, idealism to Hegelianism, and innatism to Cartesianism. Those labels are not perfect either, but they shift the centre of gravity from the person to the problem or structure. The same move would justify preferring Orto, or at least the ortolano, in some contexts, to the routine Epicurean.

So the compact answer is this. No, one need not pigeon-hole Rabirio as “the Epicurean” if that label carries the wrong implication of mere discipleship. “Orto” is a philosophically richer metonym, just as Portico and Accademia often are. It locates him within a way of life and a conversational world rather than under the mere proper name of Epicurus. And “hedonist” should usually be avoided, because it is even cruder and more misleading than “Epicurean.”

If you like, I can next give you a very dry classificatory note for chat, something like: Rabirio, l’ortelano: preferable in metonymic or cultural context; Rabirio, l’epicureo: acceptable in school-history context; Rabirio, l’edonista: generally to be resisted as polemical shorthand.

 So this indeed would be whom you or Walter Pater for that matter ("Marius, The Epicurean") would call Rabirio, l'epicureo -- or as Grice and Speranza prefers, 'Rabirio, l'ortelano' -- where Orto allows you to SKIP a proper name ("Epicurus") that may take all the attention. "Aren't they all just hedonists?". Tullio may have a point that Rabirio is popularising the doctrines of L'Orto -- but why ascribe 'Epicurus' where there are other names. Surely, Orto is METONYMIC for Epicuro, as PORTICO is metonymic for Zenone, and ACADEMIA for Platone and LIZIO (as Grice and Speranza spells it) for Aristotle -- but was there a serious historian of philosophy (usually German), who complained about this mania to stick a whole -ism or philosophical movement to ONE personal name (that's why Grice and Speranza prefer criticism to Kantismo, and idealismo to Hegelianism, and innatismo to Cartesianismo). Input? Why pigeon-hole Rabirio as 'the Epicurean' with the implciature -- 'he never created anything -- he was just a 'disciple', as most Roman philosophers were of the Greeks they worshipped (when they did not), etc? Why not hedonism, or some other sort of -ism? or 'ortelano' if we assume that Epicurus tended a garden but was gardening qua 'amateur' activity that defined his world-view and that of his followers -- there were many orti at Rome!

Yes, I think the right move is to resist “Epicurean” as the sole or natural shelf-label, even if one still uses it when one must.

Your instinct about Orto is philosophically better than the routine habit of pinning everything to one founder’s proper name. “Epicurean” has the convenience of school-history, but it carries a very strong implicature of derivativeness: as if Rabirio were merely one more man under Epicurus’s shadow, and the only really living noun in the phrase were Epicurus. That is precisely the sort of historiographical laziness Grice and Speranza dislike.

Orto is better because it is metonymic, social, and practical. It names not simply a doctrine but a site, a mode of life, a style of gathering, a pedagogical and ethical atmosphere. In that respect it behaves very differently from a founder-label. Portico, Accademia, Lizio, and Orto all preserve the spatial or institutional image by which a philosophical way of life was once recognisable before later historians reduced it to “Stoicism,” “Platonism,” “Aristotelianism,” and “Epicureanism.” The metonymy is not ornamental. It keeps philosophy closer to lived form and further from founder-worship.

That is why “Rabirio, l’ortelano” has real merit. It is half-jocular, but not frivolous. It reminds the reader that this Roman is being read not only as a subscriber to Epicurus but as someone working within the culture of the garden, where friendship, measure, simplicity, and withdrawal from vulgar ambition mattered as much as doctrinal allegiance. It also has the advantage of blocking the vulgar equation “Epicurean = hedonist,” which is one of the coarsest distortions in the entire history of philosophy.

For that reason, hedonism would actually be worse than Epicureanism in most contexts. If one calls Rabirio a hedonist, one immediately imports a modern and usually hostile simplification. Epicurean ethics is not merely “pleasure good, therefore indulge.” It is an austere, calculative, therapeutic, often anti-luxurious discipline of pleasure and pain, with friendship, fearlessness, and tranquillity at the centre. To call Rabirio “the hedonist” would therefore sharpen exactly the wrong implication. “Epicurean” at least names the school, even if too founder-centred. “Hedonist” usually misdescribes it.

So I would distinguish three levels.

At the school-history level, “Epicurean” is admissible, because it is conventional and intelligible.

At the conceptual level, one might prefer a broader term such as ethics of pleasure, therapy of tranquillity, or atomist ethics, depending on what one wants to emphasise.

At the metonymic and Gricean level, Orto is often best, because it names the Roman cultural uptake of the school without making Epicurus the only living element in the phrase.

And yes, there is a broader historiographical point behind this. Historians of philosophy, often German ones but by no means only German ones, have long been prone to over-personalise traditions by making every movement look like the property of one originating proper name. The great nineteenth-century habit of speaking in -isms and founder-lines encouraged exactly that. It can be useful for broad mapping, but it easily falsifies the texture of philosophical life. It makes schools look like doctrines with owners, rather than practices, institutions, habits of reading, polemical formations, and inherited vocabularies that long outlive their founders.

That is one reason why Grice and Speranza prefer terms like criticism to Kantianism, idealism to Hegelianism, and innatism to Cartesianism. Those labels are not perfect either, but they shift the centre of gravity from the person to the problem or structure. The same move would justify preferring Orto, or at least the ortolano, in some contexts, to the routine Epicurean.

So the compact answer is this. No, one need not pigeon-hole Rabirio as “the Epicurean” if that label carries the wrong implication of mere discipleship. “Orto” is a philosophically richer metonym, just as Portico and Accademia often are. It locates him within a way of life and a conversational world rather than under the mere proper name of Epicurus. And “hedonist” should usually be avoided, because it is even cruder and more misleading than “Epicurean.”

If you like, I can next give you a very dry classificatory note for chat, something like: Rabirio, l’ortelano: preferable in metonymic or cultural context; Rabirio, l’epicureo: acceptable in school-history context; Rabirio, l’edonista: generally to be resisted as polemical shorthand.