Foundations 005 - By His Victory Religion Is Trampled Underfoot

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    By his victory, the terror of religion is trampled underfoot, and we, in turn, are lifted to the stars.

    Quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo.


    This highly memorable line is a good one to review the Latin and alternate translations. Here are several renditions in English, and all of them make much the same point.

    It appears to me that Munro might be the most strictly literal, with Brown and Humphries emphasizing the terror / fear of religion, while Bailey inserts "in revenge." Humphries' and Munro's "trampled" would seem to be a good rendition of "subjected to the feet."

    However Loeb and Smith are particularly disappointing in choosing to deflect the blow against "religion" by inserting "superstition" in its place. While I think that is probably a defensible choice if one takes the position that the Epicureans considered their view of the gods to be "true religion" and the standard views of the majority as "superstition" - that editorial choice really does not seem warranted given that the Latin is "religio" and in our modern context the clear indictment by Lucretius and Epicurus was against what we today regard as "religion."

    At any rate, anyone who seeks to soft-pedal Epicurus' views on the harm caused by standard supernatural religious viewpoints will be hard-pressed to deal with this passage.

    Brown: And so Religion, which we feared before, by him subdued, we tread upon in turn. His conquest makes us equal to the Gods.

    Munro: Therefore religion is put underfoot and trampled upon in turn; us his victory brings level with heaven.

    Bailey: And so religion in revenge is cast beneath men’s feet and trampled, and victory raises us to heaven.

    Loeb: Therefore superstition is now in her turn cast down and trampled underfoot, whilst we by the victory are exalted high as heaven.

    Smith: So now the situation is reversed: superstition is flung down and trampled underfoot; we are raised to heaven by victory.

    Humphries: Religion, so, is trampled underfoot, And by his victory we reach the stars.

    You're right, Cassius , that is a good line!

    FYI: I noticed in the Perseus Latin edition, it's line 78-79.

    I fully agree with your take on religion vs superstition.

    Those translations of various permutations of "we are raised to heaven by victory" or, worse, "His conquest makes us equal to the Gods" bother me. It smacks of the supernatural. Lucretius's "caelo" is just the dative of caelum which is the "the sky, heaven, the heavens, the vault of heaven (in Lucr alone more than 150 times)."

    I don't think it can be anything to do with the Gods because the Epicurean gods "reside" in the Intermundia, not the heavens. They are beyond the "vault of the heavens." The "vault of heaven" is just the sphere/bowl that surrounds/covers the Earth that has the stars, planets, etc.

    Leonard's translation at Perseus reads:

    Wherefore Religion now is under foot,

    And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

    If you exalt someone to "high heaven" it's just a metaphor for "raising the roof" as it were. Those translation seem to imply a supernatural connotation. I think Lucretius is just saying "Let the bells rings out and the banners fly! Woohoo!! We are victorious! Religion has no power over us!!"

    Yes I agree that some form of "to the skies" is a good non-religious metaphor that makes the most sense.

    As for the line numbers i will probably go to my grave never being happy with a numbering system. I've taken lately to using the Loeb numbers and I kept all this designated at under line 62 because Loeb doesn't give another line number until 80. I presume that these are just discretionary paragraph divisions so I think as a compromise from here on out I am going to make all my digital versions conform to Loeb paragraph numbering for the sake of some kind of ability to cross-reference.

    Thanks for the commentary!

    vicissim seems to be just "on that other hand, in turn, etc" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…:entry=vicissim

    opteritur appears to be "wear away, to tread upon, etc." http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…%3Aentry%3Dtero

    I see no terror or fear in those specific lines. That seems to be editorializing. Understandable editorializing, but not in the Latin.

    Quote from Cassius

    As for the line numbers i will probably go to my grave never being happy with a numbering system. I've taken lately to using the Loeb numbers and I kept all this designated at under line 62 because Loeb doesn't give another line number until 80.

    I hear you! And I didn't mean to be pedantic :) Just in case someone was looking at their own copy and thinking "Hmm, why don't I see that on line 62???"

    Cassius , are you certain you have the translation right?

    I just received a copy of the Humphries translation in the mail this week, and my version has it;

    Quote

    Religion, so, is trampled underfoot,

    And by his victory we reach the stars.

    I remember the audible version vividly enough to know it is the same there. And I would have remembered it anyway, as his is my favored translation of this passage!

    nos exaequat victoria caelo.

    Exaequat is an interesting verb and had some intriguing connotations.

    Perseus parses it as a "verb 3rd sg pres ind act" which would be "it X's"

    Nos can be nominative (subject) or accusative (direct object), so we or us. Since the verb is 3rd person singular, it almost has to be "us" here, doesn't it? Wouldn't "we are raised/equal" be "nos exaequamus"?

    The verb had the basic definition of "To make even or level or equal with any thing"

    So, I'm getting (with my literal rudimentary Latin):

    "By (the) victory, it makes us level to/with the sky." ?

    Aequo = level, equal

    PS:

    If my parsing is right, I'm slightly annoyed by translators changing the active to a passive construction. It seems to take the importance or agency away from the victory of trampling religion underfoot. Consider the different feeling of:

    It makes us equal...

    We are made equal...

    The second takes the emphasis away from the trampling; however, should the emphasis be on the trampling (it) or on the beneficiary of the trampling (us)? Maybe it's just poetic license as to what the translator wants to highlight? Does it make a significant difference in interpretation in English?

    Quote

    Aequo = level, equal

    And also "plane" or "plain". In the Hymn to Venus "Aequora Ponti" is usually translated "waves [i.e. surface] of the sea". In English another word for this would be "reach", as a noun. "Sailing over a broad reach", and so forth.

    Perhaps "reach the stars" is not so far out of place?

    Quote from JJElbert

    Cassius , are you certain you have the translation right?

    Thank you for catching that Joshua -- I am not sure where that came from! I will correct. As I write this I can't remember if I had a source for that particular version or just mashed them together in a way that seemed logical at the time.

    That's part of the reason for my exercise in doing this because I'd like to check each one of the "slides" in this presentation and then use it for a systematic presentation of the philosophy.

    So thank you!

    Quote

    As I write this I can't remember if I had a source for that particular version or just mashed them together in a way that seemed logical at the time

    I suspect it was this! When I searched for the exact wording of the quote the only two results are this thread and NewEpicurean.

    142-foundations-005-by-his-victory-religion-is-trampled-underfoot/

    Quote from Don

    And since Lucretius puts nos first, maybe the emphasis should be on us, accusative or not. My understanding is that the first word is used to denote emphasis.

    That is an example of the kind of homespun rules of construction that I think MUST be correct, and have to be important to follow.

    My reasoning for that is that the Romans were not any better mind-readers than we are. They HAD to be able to make sense of a spoken sentence AS THEY WERE HEARING IT, and they could not wait until the end of some monumentally long line to find the "verb" and then reorient everything and understand it only after they had heard the last word, like we are taught to do today.

    So i agree -- it may be helpful in some cases to move the words around so that we are more comfortable, but I think there is a good argument that we should leave them where they are and insert mentally whatever pronouns or gender or tense or filler concepts or whatever is necessary to make sense as written / as read.

    If the Romans thought it was perfectly adequate in the order they used then we can make sense of it too.

    Does anyone have an opinion as to how the Latin Library textstacks up against Perseus or other online sources of the Latin Lucretius?

    I don't think I have the resources to retype the whole thing so I will probably use the Latin Library text in my materials unless someone has a much better source?

    Back to the issue of paragraph numbering, I've always wanted to be able to swap back and forth from section to section (almost like Joshua's interlinear) so that means that I may take the Loeb paragraph numbers and eventually find a way to get them into my text of the Latin Library edition so at least we can crossreference passages.

    Any comment on that idea?

    Note: I see that the Latin Library has line numbers every five lines.

    1. Is there a way to consider that authoritative?
    2. I presume that goes with one particular exemplar of the poem but that the others don't follow that?
    3. So the Loeb is just making judgment calls on paragraphs and dividing the numbering that way?
    4. I think for readability purposes it IS necessary to divide up by "paragraphs" but that surely leads to problems with line numbers. That's why I am currently with the Loeb system and will probably stay there, but any comments on alternatives would be appreciated.
    Quote

    1. compare

    2. equal

    3. level, make even/straight

    4. reach as high or deep as

    Don Latin-Dictionary.net has these four variants under aequo. The poet in me rather likes number 4, for the 'reach' double-entendre I mentioned above.

    Edit;

    I had a long-suffering English professor in college who I think grew somewhat tired of my etymological leaps (reaches? 8) ); but even he was impressed when he put me on the spot in a close reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, and I was able to furnish a connection extemporaneously between "malice" and "apple" in the scene in the Garden of Eden.

    Malus is the Latin word, and still the scientific name for the "malicious" fruit.

    Quote from JJElbert

    In the Hymn to Venus "Aequora Ponti" is usually translated "waves [i.e. surface] of the sea

    That looks to be a separate but related word: aequor http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…Aentry%3Daequor

    Quote

    Esp., the even surface of the sea in its quiet state, the calm. smooth sea (“aequor mare appellatum, quod aequatum, cum commotum vento non est,” Varr. L. L. 7, § 23 Müll.: quid tam planum videtur quam mare? ex quo etiam aequor illud poëtae vocant, Cic. Ac. Fragm. ap. Non. 65, 2 (cf. πόντου πλάξ, Pind. P. 1, 24).— Also, in gen., the sea, even when agitated by storms, Lucr. 1, 719: “turbantibus aequora ventis,”

    Quote from JJElbert
    Quote

    That looks to be a separate but related word: aequor

    Aequor would be a noun adapted by metonymy from the adjective aequus, no? And aequo the same word as a verb.

    That's my take. All related but distinct words with their own connotations. Sorry. I love digging in the weeds of language!

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