Bust Of Epicurus Reconstructed - Great Video Shared by Elli!

SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Read the post for our December 7, 2025 meeting -- or find out how to attend.

 

    Thank you for finding this Elli! WOW Epicurus comes out STRONG in this video! Here's Epicurus reconstructed, and then afterwards the full video at about the 2:05 mark. This Epicurus is ready to star in his own movie!


    Quote from JJElbert

    I don't know if this is an example of the "uncanny valley" or not, but when I look at this picture it's just–it's just odd somehow...

    This is LOT better than some and AI has come a LONG way (no more dead-eyed Polar Express), but yeah there's definitely still some side trips down there uncanny valley. I would have liked to see his hair a little more gray but overall seeing him in his prime was cool I'll admit.

    Exactly the kind of look i picture when he was going through that list of his least favorite philosophers!


    Quote

    He used to call Nausiphanes ‘The mollusk,’ ‘The illiterate,’ ‘The cheat,’ ‘The harlot.’ The followers of Plato he called ‘Flatterers of Dionysus,’ and Plato himself ‘The golden man,’ and Aristotle ‘The debauchee,' saying that he devoured his inheritance and then enlisted and sold drugs. Protagoras he called ‘Porter’ or ‘Copier of Democritus,’ saying that he taught in the village schools. Heraclitus he called ‘The Muddler,’ Democritus [he called] Lerocritus (‘judge of nonsense’), Antidorus he called Sannidorus (‘Maniac’), the Cynics [he called] ‘Enemies of Hellas,’ the Logicians [he called] ‘The destroyers,’ and Pyrrho [he called] ‘The uneducated fool.’

    You know, Don's comment has me thinking and combining a couple of things.The caption "This is PLEASURE" makes a lot of sense, but I think Epicurus would himself think something else was more appropriate. The connected point is something we rarely talk about, but it remains one of my favorite semi-poetic translations -- the translation by Rolfe Humphies.

    So my proposal for the caption would be:

    1815-pasted-from-clipboard-png

    This is THE WAY THINGS ARE!



    That's the intensity I see in these eyes:

    pasted-from-clipboard.png

    All fun aside, I do think more and more that Epicurus probably continued to think as he got older the same way he apparently approached life as a child, when he first wanted to get behind the inconsistency of the contention that the universe came from "Chaos."

    I therefore doubt he saw his work on "pleasure"' as really the crowning achievement of his life work. I would think if we could talk to him today, he would say that what always drove him, from start to finish, and where he found his greatest pleasure, was in searching for the truth about "the way things are."

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