Yes you can. A while ago Dan Horrigan released a package called Capsule for Laravel 4 which allowed Eloquent to be used independently and with minimal setup. The package itself has been merged with the L4 core so you no longer need to use the package.
If you refer to the illuminate/database repository there is a nice little introduction on using Eloquent without the framework.
Here is a small excerpt of getting it up and running.
$capsule = new IlluminateDatabaseCapsule($config);
$capsule->bootEloquent();
$capsule->connection()->table('users')->where('id', 1)->first();
Update
Dan Horrigan has since removed his Capsule implementation as it is now built directly into Eloquent. Refer to the above illuminate/database
link for more details on how to use Capsule.
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