Posts by Eikadistes

I think there's a subtle, nautical metaphor Epíkouros encrypted here.

I'm looking at the active particle (in the dative singular) τῷ ἐκπίπτοντι (tõi ekpíptonti), which Bailey translates as "him who errs". The phrase is referring to "the one doing the ekpíptō-ing", or "the one falling out of...", as in "...out of a boat", for example, "being cast ashore".

With this in mind, consider the second part of the prepositional phrase διʼ ἀοριστίαν (di' aoristían) that Bailey translates as "through excess". The word ἀοριστίαν (aoristían) comes from ἀ- ("not") and οριστικός ("definite"), which is the root word from which we receive "horizon" and "horizontal".

So, "the one doing the ekpíptō-ing" is doing so διά (diá) "by way of", "on account of", or "due to" something being "indefinite" (for example, a boundary, limit, or horizon). If there aren't any lighthouses, and the captain views an indefinite horizon, the boat is likely to crash.

I think he's calling someone who can't "live simply" a trainwreck, or in this case, a "ship-wreck".

Quote from Kalosyni

beautiful ancient Greek woman

I've been noticing that AI seems to default to people with Northern European features, even when given direction otherwise. I'm just wondering, what is that Valkyrie doing in Greece?

This is another issue I see with AI: It has beauty standards, subjective beauty standards. Someone is setting those standards, or else, it's being fed data that begs it to arrive at that conclusion.

It was asked to generate a beautiful Greek woman, and it rendered a blonde. It's like ... jeez, AI, tell us your PornHub categories without telling us your PornHub categories.

Quote from Don

Google's AI summaries at the top of ALL my searches are intrusive and far and away useless the large majority of the time. I still use Google, but I'm rapidly being more likely to use other search engines for this exact reason.

I feel you 1,000%.

Even on the Starship Enterprise, I would still fact check the computer.

How can we ever know, unless we are the ones doing the knowing?

Quote from Matteng

One must be careful not to create a false dichotomy like virtue vs. pleasure.

No doubt!

Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

Should we try to study Ecclesiastes from an Epicurean POV? Has it been done previously?

I'm re-visiting this now.

This question has a lot to do with dating.

The saturation of philosophical ideas initially lead me to believe that it should be dated to the Hellenistic period, but that may not be correct. For example, it doesn't contain any Greek loan words, but it does contain several Persian loan words, suggesting that it couldn't have been written earlier than the 5th-century BCE. If it were produced in this period, that negates any Greek influence.

At the same time, if the final form of the text were polished in the 2nd-century BCE, then I think it would be more appropriate to view Qoheleth as a sort of philosopher. That being said, though, I read the author to have more in common with the Cynics as opposed to the Epicureans.

Still there are a number of strong analogies to Epicurean Philosophy, most of which you have documented above (and thank you for doing so!)

I'm organizing some data here.

Speak of the devil: https://www.twentiers.com/commedia/

Quote from Kalosyni

For anyone who has an understanding of ancient Greek language ( Bryan   Don   Eikadistes ...would the Garden actually have been referred to as "Ho Kepos" or just "Kepos"?

The way I look at it (again, total amateur here), the article ὁ helps indicate that "the Garden" is a proper noun, the name of some unique place, as opposed to a "garden", which could be one of many. I imagine that Athenian Epicureans could have casually disregarded the article, but it's sort of like ... "The Beatles". You'll always put "The" in front of the brand unless you are referring to each "Beatle" individually, or the group of those four people as "Beatles", but the band, proper, is "The Beatles", and it indicates more than just a group of four people; it indicates their entire brand.

A passing thought I recently had about using AI:

I hear that a profuse change in the world disposes you toward generating content with AI. As long as you neither disregard practice and rehearsal, nor demand the respect of others, nor disrupt the artistic profitability of others, nor ruin your own reputation, nor profit from plagiarism, do as you please according to your own preference. It is impossible however not to be a little constrained by at least one of these complications; therefore AI is never advantageous, and desirable only if it has not caused harm.

Geez! This keeps happening.

I've managed to find a few of the 3-D printing .stl files. Not for this one (which I believe you can purchase elsewhere for $19.99), but I have three [1] Metródōros at Athens Archaeological Museum, [2] Epíkouros at the British Museum, and [3] the Double with Epíkouros and Metrodorus from the Vatican. They're just under 150 MBs together, in case anyone has a 3-D printer.

I'd like to get one and experiment, but it's not in my cards at the moment.

Quote from Don

In light of all that, is it a commentary having something to do about being concerned with what happens *after* one's death?

While doing some translating, I've been considering that láthe may have been employed to imply that "failing to escape notice", or "getting caught up in the affairs and politics of the polis" or "having great admiration based on being servile to a mob" is akin to death, or a kind of imprisonment.

I read the ancient idiom as "Escape notice [and] live!", which, I think, might also be read as "[If you don't] escape notice [you might not] live [proverbially or otherwise]!", either biologically, or socially, to be imprisoned or restrained, or legally restricted, "being disallowed to live a free life".

With that in mind, I think there's a criticism attached to the idiom láthe biōsas of the political life, and the celebrity lifestyle, and any livelihood that requires tolerance of excessive amounts of bullshit in the form of superficial conversations, shallow relationships, and unnatural goals.

I've been wondering lately if Cicero (or a translator) misrepresents the context of isonomy as a theological concept, where ancient Epicureans may have only meant it as a physical one.

I haven't looked yet ... just wondering.

(I need to scour our sources and answer this for myself: do we have any instances of any Epicureans ever employing this term, outside of the penmanship of Cicero? I'm always critical of him, though, he studied under an Epicurean scholarch, so the misunderstanding may very well be my own.)

I'm considering that it makes less sense if "immortals" means "deities" rather than "atoms/void".

This idea of "the balance of numerically distinct deities" always puzzled me. So, it makes less sense when I read "immortals" as "deities" rather than "particles and void" or even "laws of physics".

Within the context of "cosmic maintenance", it makes total sense to me if "immortals" were a reference to the "eternal, indestructible particles" and the "eternal, infinite void". In the context of physical cosmology, isonomy might be conceived of as the principle that dictates the balance that "there are p particles for every v volume of void. If p were too high, there'd be no room to move. If v were too high, there'd be no stuff. But there's stuff that moves, so, in principle, we live in a goldilocks zone were the metakosmíos is imbued with a balanced ration of particles-to-void; physical isonomy.

Lucretius compliments this physical isonomy (I'm appropriating the word here) with emotional and political isonomies, dramatized as a balance between the powers of Venus and Mavor. We could go on, identifying different binaries that require balance for a healthy state (of world, mind, friendships, etc.). I'm just wondering if the theological isonomy is the only kind every mentioned.

Here's a fun example, for anyone unaware; this tickled my mind – Lucifer.

In the beginning, we weren't sure that Venus was one thing, we saw it as (maybe) two, the Morning Star and the Evening Star. In Latin, one of those objects names was "Lucifer." It was literally just the name of a celestial object (Phosphoros in Greek, among a handful of other proper names).

There are a few ancient Hebrew (i.e. Canaanite) myths that associate the planet Venus with a god who attempted to usurp a supreme god's throne and became an underworld deity. As far as I knew, this isn't reflected in mainstream branches of Judaism; this is a relic of their days as polytheists.

Nonetheless, Latin Christians sure got a kick out of it, and incorporated that narrative into their mythos. To my knowledge, however, they did not make a association between "Lucifer" and "Satan". Those were two, separate mythical figures for hundreds of years of early Christianity.

I don't believe this association was popularized until Dante's fiction. Therein, the "Lucifer" we think of as the prideful pretty-boy who fell from heaven and took over a spicy underworld comes from medieval, Italian fiction. It has little to do with the myths of ancient Christianity.

I like to think of it like high school teachers. English teachers and History teachers both include Julius Caesar in their curriculum. English teachers (often, in my experience) base their understanding of Roman history on Shakespeare. History teachers base it off of Cicero, etc.

Unless you go to the source, it's some level of fan-fiction.

(Check me on some of those claims; I'm over-generalizing a bit, I know).

I think that parrhesia has a bit to do with it, too.

When your school sticks to frank speech, it becomes much more difficult to seduce with metaphor. Otherwise, when you use metaphor as the primary means of instruction (I'm looking at you and your fables, Jesus), then you guarantee that your teachings will be forever misunderstood.

If Epicurean philosophy weren't doctrinally "conservative" (in the sense of defending the original program), then I believe the Catholic Church would have re-purposed it by now.

Quote from TauPhi

Hiram Crespo's substack has 5 latest articles dedicated to Metrodorus. I haven't read them yet so I can't say if they are any good but if anyone's interested:

https://hiramcrespo.substack.com/

I know that Hiram has access to Les Epicuriens and finds significant resources in there for fragmentary writings from the other founders (Metrodoros in particular).

1. The works of Metródōros preserved in Herculaneum include:
   P.Herc. 200 (On Divinity)
   P.Herc. 255 (Against Dialecticians) ↩︎

That's awesome! Please share how it turns out.

I just received this bust from an Etsy seller, Kargar, owner of Selfix3D.

Quote from Bryan

Quote from Eikadistes

"to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?"

I am not seeing a reference to fears

Yeah, no explicit reference to that word, just the general idea of dismissing death.

Quote from Bryan

(Although, of course, τὸ ζῆν is more "living" than "life")

I'm glad you brought this up because I want your take on it. I read ζῆν as an infinitive, so, even though its awkward, I try to squeeze a "to..." into the sentence ... but it never works, so I add fillers, and I'm never quite satisfied. I think most translators like reading the [article + infinitive] as a noun ("life")? That seems conceptually fair, but it's still a little bit different. The active participle tends to fit ("-ing"), though I recall seeing that somewhat less. I at least want to see it as a verb for the sake of coherence.

Quote from Cassius

How does this relate to the phrasing of the fragment translated as about spitting on good (or is it beauty?) unless it bring pleasure?

I'd say ... paraphrasing, it could mean, either: [1] we are to live while embracing the grand inevitability of death, or else, [2] we are to live while spitting upon the universal fear of death.

I just wanted to add another brief reflection on the "embracing" versus "spitting" nuance:

There are a variety of ways in which people seem to interface with death: fearing death, fleeing from death, fighting death, chasing immortality, damning life, welcoming death, accepting death, expressing gratitude for having lived, and plenty of other responses and orientations I'm not picturing. Adding another dimension (perhaps arbitrarily ... just thinking out loud) we can [1] lament life, and fear death, [2] lament life and accept death, [3] prize life but fear death, or [4] prize life and accept death. In Menoikeús, Epíkouros explicitly rejects [1 + 2] lamenting life in any capacity, and he rejects [3] fearing death in the first two Key Doctrines, so, in general (by this measurement), the appropriate Epicurean attitude would be to [4] prize life and accept the inevitable necessity of death.

I think that concept reinforces what (I believe) I'm seeing, visually. No spitting.