Posts by Don

Quote from Cassius

AUDIO Miris - C. P. Cavafy - Read By Elli Pensa

That was great! Thanks Cassius for sharing Elli 's wonderful, heartfelt recitation! I've heard of Cavafy by name but was unfamiliar with his work. Time to investigate!

I would agree with Joshua . Lucretius knew what he was doing. Venus aka Aphrodite is the goddess of eros, sexual desire/lust, from which all life is born. You can't have babies and successive generations without the - let's say - pleasurable procreative act. This is *the* act of the creation of life.

I also wanted to weigh in on Elli's note about VS 78 if anyone is confused by her "noble/brave" comment:

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78. The noble/brave soul is devoted most of all to wisdom and to friendship — one a mortal good, the other immortal. ὁ γενναῖος περὶ σοφίαν καὶ φιλίαν μάλιστα γίγνεται, ὧν τὸ μέν ἐστι θνητὸν ἀγαθόν, τὸ δὲ ἀθάνατον.

Epicurus's word in question is ὁ γενναῖος. Elli is absolutely correct that in modern Greek ὁ γενναῖος means "brave" https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?ti…&oldid=54707874

However, in Ancient Greek the meaning was connected with "being true to one's birth or descent" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…entry=gennai=os It's easy to see how this came down to modern times with the meaning "brave" (i.e., noble, high-born people were supposed to be brave). Words change meaning over time, sometimes in much more surprising ways like English "sad" which used to mean "satisfied, sated, full" https://www.etymonline.com/word/sad#etymonline_v_22587

Here's another TED Talk about the capuchin monkey experiment with grapes and cucumbers:

I'd suggest when viewing, substitute "just" for "fair" and "justice" for "fairness." That certainly looks like some basic innate characteristics to me from way back in our evolutionary inheritance.

Quote from JJElbert

Hippocrates' understanding of internal medicine, and its supposed foundation in the fluctuations of the four 'humors', is so wrong that it can be difficult for us to appreciate how much progress he had made toward being right.

That is a very important statement right there. Well put, Joshua !

JCRAGO You may be interested in the thread where I'm sharing my notes on Obbink's work on Philodemus's On Piety: Philodemus On Piety

One of the key words in the Latin is on line 131:

sponte

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l…129&i=1#lexicon

So images/idols/eidōlon/simulacra can interact with each other: horse eidōlon + human eidōlon = centaur eidōlon.

I also had second... third... I lost count... thoughts on that self-generated images section from the beginning of Book IV. I saw another few translations at work today. Now I'm wondering if the images are there, in the air, but the reason we see them is because they interact with the clouds. It isn't that the clouds form images/idols/simulacra of their own accord. The cloud takes on an image when an existing image in the air interacts with the cloud then fades away as the image/eidola/simulacra moves on thru the air.

I wanted to add my two cents on the "self-generated" images. As soon as I heard that, I immediately thought of the idealist view of the gods. And I agree with Cassius that these "images" would spontaneously occur from particles at random. And these would arguably be so fine that they would only be perceived by the mind not the physical senses. I don't agree that he's talking about pictures we see in clouds. (*See addendum below)

I also think that Epicurus via Lucretius is adamant about receiving particles *from* bodies to contrast with other philosophers that said vision was possible by something coming from the viewer (like a flashlight).

Addendum: Finished the full episode: Now I'm not so sure about the self-begotten. On second hearing and doing some reading, it seems he might be talking about the images we see in clouds and how we may *see* giants et al but there aren't giants shedding their images for us to see. We are perceiving giants where none exist. This whole thing is more subtle than my perfunctory post let on. But I think it may still have wider implications. I'm going to delve into the Latin a little although I am woefully ill-equipped to say anything about that. Full disclosure there

Addendum 2: Checked Stallings, and, yeah, she does a good job of clearing up the ambiguity in the other translations. It's the faces in clouds. But in Loeb, it also references the section on centaurs and other mythological creatures. So there's more going on with the eidola/simulacra/images/idols here. Looks like an interesting ride coming up in DRN!

For various reasons, I'm reluctant to commit to any group projects in the near future. However, I am more than happy to share any progress on personal projects (On Piety, Letter to Menoikeus, Epicurean practices experiments, etc.).

Quote from Cassius

Thanks for reminding us of the upcoming birthday! Every year we go through this same issue. Let's make a new thread for this and talk about how to commemorate it.

I also posted this at facebook to see if the Greeks who check that page come up with a different calculation.

It looks like Takis and the Hellenion calendars corroborate each other.

So, January's 20th actually coincides with Epicurus's birthday on the 7th of Gamelion! That seems to be a significant coincidence (not cosmically but at least an interesting one).

Here's a corrected link for the Numachi site: http://www.numachi.com/~ccount/hmepa/calendars/699.html

[ADMIN EDIT: I will update this first post in this thread for what we conclude. I see Don calculates Jan 24, but last year Takis calculated January 20th, so it's not clear to me yet as I type this what the correct date should be.}

I went back and looked at a previous thread on Epicurus's birthday calculations and found this was the best source for Ancient > Modern calendar calculations:

http://www.hellenion.org/calendar/

So, Epicurus's birthday (7 Gamelion) "falls on" Thurs., Jan. 21 this year.

I realize trying to line up Ancient calendars with modern ones is a tricky business and involves some guesswork, but this one seems to use the best current scholarship (even though it's a neo pagan organization). I also found this particular calendar interesting in light of my recent delving into On Piety with its commentary on Epicurus's participation in all the festivals... which are noted on this calendar.

Even if only used for entertainment, enjoy!

*So, Takis and this calendar coincide:

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7 Gamelion is "afternoon of 20 January until next afternoon 21 January."

Καλή χρονιά!! Happy New Year!

Carpe annum!

Quote from Godfrey

This is most interesting for me the bigger the time gap: a way to imagine how much information Diogenes of O or Diogenes L may have had regarding Epicurus. Some sense can be had based on what we know of Columbus, etc. Of course there are lots of differences but it's a nice visualization tool.

Exactly. It's easier to visualize how far away some people were to each other without the bother of the negative BCE dates then moving into CE dates. And we can more intuitively understand how far away they're from each other.

This idea grows out of those factoids like "The Egyptian Pyramids were as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us."

Quote from Cassius

So it simply says "be cheerful' or "in good cheer' and does NOT say "live your life"?

Right, as far as I can tell.

I also just realized that that's one of the "kinetic" pleasures along with χαρά:

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ἡ δὲ χαρὰ καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.

Quote from JJElbert

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/04/skeleton-mosaic-turkey/

Scrolling down that same page, I saw a link to this other interesting article!

That's great!

FYI the word at the skeleton's head is εὐφρόσυνος which translates literally as "In good cheer!"

Here's another link about the mural https://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-fo…pic.php?t=64949

I've recently been intrigued by online timelines that translate historical dates into more relatable contemporary chronologies to get a better handle on context of historical figures. So, my little project today was putting some Epicurean history into our own timeline.

Since I'm more familiar with American history, I picked 1492 CE as Epicurus's birthdate and put everything in reference to that. So, for example, in 2020, Diogenes Laertius just turned 7 or 8 years old. It'll be awhile until her writes his Lives. I plan to expand this with more dates and people but thought I'd share the work in progress:

If Epicurus was born the year that Christopher Columbus "discovered" North America, then...

• Socrates (1363-1434)
  Democritus (b.1373)
• Plato (1405-1485)
  Aristotle (1449-1511)
  Pyrrho (1472-1562)
  Chrysippus (1483-1556)
  Epicurus (1492-1562)
  Zeno of Citium (1499-1571)
• Metrodorus of Lampsacus (1502-1556)
  Hermarchus (1508-1583)
• Apollodorus fl. mid-1600s (succeeded by Zeno as Scholarch of the Athenian Garden)
  Zeno of Sidon (1683-1758)
• Philodemus (1723-1798)
  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1727-1790)
  Titus Lucretius Carus (b. 1739-)
  Quintus Horatius Flaccus ("Horace") (1768-1825)
• Epictetus (1888-1968)
• Diogenes of Oenoanda (wall dated 1950 to 1990)
  Marcus Aurelius (1954-2013)
  Lucian of Samosata (1958-after 2013)
• Diogenes Laërtius (b. 2013) would now be around 8 years old. He will begin writing his famous Lives within the next 20-30 years.

And, just theorizing here, if there are an innumerable number of worlds in the cosmos with an innumerable number of beings that means there would potentially be an innumerable number of "blessed and incorruptible gods" "existing", potentially one for each being (if all the beings were Epicureans, of course).

I think Sedley's idea is that the gods are incorruptible since they're created out of mental images which can't be destroyed (until, of course, I'd say when the person holding that view of a god had died).

Quote from Godfrey

Don that Sedley sounds worth reading! Any idea what it's titled or where to find it?

I've seen it elsewhere, but it's explicitly in here on pp.51-2, last paragraph on 51. You can search "singular" to find it, too.

Matt is absolutely correct that the singular θεός (accusative sing. θεόν) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…057:entry=qeo/s is used in a number of places in classical Epicurean texts just as the plural is used in other places. The singular should in no way make people think Epicurus or other writers were endorsing a monotheistic theology like Christianity, Judaism, etc. The capitalized God in translations is misleading.

The singular can also refer to "gods" in general or the concept of divinity.

One interesting idea in a Sedley essay (I *think*) I've read is that the singular was used to refer to each individual Epicurean's image of the divine. Each person creates their individual concept of a blessed and incorruptible "god" for themselves from the "images" available to him or her in their mind.