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To say a little more about the plan for the Usener material
Sounds great Cassius! Thanks for putting it together, and I am looking forward to studying those fragments.
One more night of Vatican Sayings - tonight! ...and then on to all new material next week!
Tonight at 8pm ET - Vatican Sayings 80 & 81...This will be the last meeting on the Vatican Sayings.
Open to Level 03+ members and Level 01 by pre-approval of the moderating team.
Agenda:
VS80. The first measure of security is to watch over one’s youth, and to guard against what makes havoc of all by means of maddening desires.
VS81. The disturbance of the soul cannot be ended, nor true joy created, either by the possession of the greatest wealth, or by honor and respect in the eyes of the mob, or by anything else that is associated with, or caused by, unlimited desire.
Coming up on Wednesday April 3rd - the first night of Usener fragments discussion. We are going through the full Erik Anderson list and pulling out those which will best be suited for the zoom meetings, and if you have any suggestions for additions to or deletions from the list please use the comment feature on the page where we are setting this up. A full announcement on this will go up on the forum soon. A curated list can be found here.
Would these be akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
The idea of the pyramid is to present information in a manner which gives more weight and importance to the base, and each "good" builds upon the level below it. It is a guide to Epicurean eudaimonia, so different than Maslow's pyramid.
Thinking further about well-being, I made this very tenative graphic to think about the importance of "goods" in relation to happiness and well-being. The base of the pyramid is the most important, and the "goods" are pursued because they bring both "pleasure" and well-being.
Perhaps these could be organized by category...and not limited to ten quotes. Here are some suggestions.
--On the gods
--On natural physics
--On the criteria for truth
--On pleasure
--On the telos
--On happiness
--On justice
--On choices and avoidances
...etc...
here is Butterfield's mapping of Oblongus and Quadratus.
Looks complicated, lots of codes and symbols...but you can see how all stems from one manuscript.
The various translations into English would add in a whole other dimension, for both DRN and Diogenes Book 10
Thus Usener has edited Book X. in Epicurea (1887)"
It almost seems like we need a flowchart showing how we got to what we have available in English to us now.
The article seems to say that "B" is the best manuscript:
"What is most necessary now is an edition such as has been long promised, showing the true tradition of the text when BPFCo (and any other good MSS.) have been stripped of the interpolations introduced by Byzantine or Italian scholars. The effect of interpolation superimposed on multifarious errors due to careless copyists is a diversity more apparent than real, which deceives only superficial examination. For we may reasonably assume that a single stray copy, brought to light in the ninth century, was the parent of all extant MSS.2 The true text, it is agreed, is often preserved by B alone ; yet F, on which Cobet relied, is not seldom right, though it also palms off makeshift conjectures. Whether the class of inferior or interpolated MSS. supplies any genuine readings independent of BPF is a question sometimes raised ; in any case, not much is to be expected from this quarter. All that can be done by the most careful collation of MSS. has already been done for the more valuable part of Laertius—I mean the fragments of other authors with which his work is filled. Thus Usener has edited Book X. in Epicurea (1887)"
τὸν θεὸν ζῷον "the god (is a) blessed and imperishable ζῷον. But what is a ζῷον?
First, note the singular "god." Not gods. This use of the singular - a god,
Possibility of transcription error? Perhaps it was originally plural.
We must have already discussed this in a thread somewhere (perhaps it is as yet unfiled). The article talks about the various manuscripts.
Nor was the tenth book left much longer without a commentator. In due time the energies of Gassendi were concentrated upon it. Both the physical speculations and the ethical doctrine of Epicurus attracted him, and there appeared at Leyden in 1649 Animadversiones in librum X Diogenis Laertii, with a companion volume, De vita et moribus Epicuri. A second edition followed, and a third (Leyden, 1675), in which the two parts, Epicuri philosophiae per Petrum Gassendum, tomus primus, and Epicuri ethicae per Petrum Gassendum, tomus secundus, were united. Gassendi depended less upon MSS. than upon common sense and his own reasoning powers ; nevertheless to him, as to his predecessors, Stephanus, Casaubon, and Aldobrandinus, are due some conjectural restorations of the text which subsequent editors accept without reserve ; for example, there are three such in x. 83.
Diogenes Laertius: the Manuscripts of "The Lives of Eminent Philosphers"
Bryan just posted (over in the thread "On Nature, Book 28") that "Epicurus and Metrodorus originally took a fully conventionalist view of language".
That got me thinking about how different translations of Lucretius, and how words influence feelings and poetic words can push a feeling response.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the opening of Book 1, between Leonard and Humphries, and you can see that there are very different poetic flourishes in each one (and which that makes me wonder about what the original Latin is actually like).
Leonard says: "the first fowls of the air, smit to the heart by thee foretoken thy approach"
Humphries says: "high in the sky the happy-hearted birds, responsive to your coming, call and cry"
Leonard:
For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
For soon as comes the springtime face of day,
And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,
First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,
Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,
Humphries:
For you that sweet artificer, the earth,
Submits her flowers, and for you the deep
Of ocean smiles, and the calm heaven shines
With shoreless light.
Ah, goddess, when the spring
Makes clear its daytime, and a warmer wind
Stirs from the west, a procreative air,
High in the sky the happy-hearted birds,
Responsive to your coming, call and cry,
Collage I created using art from The Sistine Chapel, The Last Supper, and The Annunciation -- Imagining the eternal bliss of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and Mary the Mother (or Mary as the "Holy Spirit").
Regarding the article I linked to in post 1 above, I am not saying that all of the proposed exercises in the article are "correct" or should be done.
Edit note: moved quoted material up into post one above.
I am considering this with regard to Easter, since this suggests the practice of deconstructing false conceptions of the gods.
This article on Contemplation on the Gods brings up the practice of thinking about the gods as blissful. For some people this may not be necessary, but for others who were brought up with the idea of a punishing god, then it might be helpful (as the things we were taught as children can linger on in the back of the mind).
The article lists the following exercises to deconstruct false conceptions of the gods:
First lesson: change how we think of the divine. ...Instead, think of the god as a supremely happy biological entity existing within our universe, not above it.
Second lesson: let’s imagine ourselves as living amongst the gods.
Third lesson: picture multiple gods.
Fourth lesson: view the gods as embodiments of happiness. ...we ought to make statues of the gods genial and smiling, so that we may smile back at them rather than be afraid of them.
The proposed exercises in the article suggest a jump off point and give some food for thought. It does bring up in my mind questions about what exactly Philodemus said about "placing before the eyes" practices.
Our natures are "saved by pleasures" but "destroyed by pains"
Thinking more correct to say: destroyed by excessive and unnecessary pains.
Important to remember the Letter to Menoeceus says:
"...we pass up many pleasures when we will gain more of what we need from doing so. And we consider many pains to be better than pleasures, if we experience a greater pleasure for a long time from having endured those pains. So every pleasure is a good thing because its nature is favorable to us, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen — just as every pain is a bad thing, yet not every pain is always to be shunned." (...since we are also aiming for health of the body and happiness of the soul).
I moved some threads around and so further advanced language studies on ancient Greek can be found over in this thread, cross-referencing:
Happy Pi Day!
Oh yay! Looked it up...today is the day to celebrate math and eat pie! 
Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Pi Day is an annual opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the infinite digits of Pi, talk to their friends about math, and eat pie.
Here is a website with pie recipes, just in case
Tonight 8pm ET - Vatican Sayings 78 & 79!
Open to Level 03+ members and Level 01 by pre-approval of the moderating team.
Agenda:
VS78. The truly noble man busies himself chiefly with wisdom and friendship, of which the one is an understandable good but the other is immortal. Note 78. See this discussion here for the reason "understandable" is superior to "immortal" as the best translation. Bailey has: "The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these, the one is a mortal good, the other immortal."
VS79. The man who is serene causes no disturbance to himself or to another.
*Note: No discussion on the Vatican Sayings on March 20th.
Upcoming meetings for Wednesday night:
March 13 - VS 78 & 79
March 27 - VS 80 & 81
April 3 - First night of Usener fragments discussion - curated list is here. We are going through the full Erik Anderson list and pulling out those which will best be suited for the zoom meetings, and if you have any suggestions for additions to or deletions from the list please use the comment feature on the page where we are setting this up.
The master of this world will soon come after you and crucify you.
I believe that this poetic metaphor (and some of the other ideas in the above post) doesn't lead to finding good health and happiness of the soul. In fact it distracts from seeing the world "as it is". The best way to do that is start with your own life, and ask yourself: are you feeling more pleasure than pain? If not, why not? And what can you do to make your life more pleasant? And then remember that there will always be problems in the world, but if you say to yourself that you can't live a good life until all problems in the world are solved, then you will miss out on your one opportunity to experience what Nature endowed us with: the ability to experience pleasure. And we maximize it by using prudence, which also means that we "choose our fights" as some things just beyond our influence or our control. Don't miss out on making this one life as best as it can be - we only live once - and look for the goodness and pleasure that you can experience while you are yet alive. 
