Posts by Joshua

Welcome! I also found the forum after reading The Swerve. Stephen Greenblatt did a lecture at the Getty Villa that I still watch from time to time.

PBS Wisconsin has a good video on the Myth of Prometheus, who was Lucretius' inspiration for the passage in Book I on Epicurus raising his eyes up to the heavens to stare down the gods.

https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/fate-fabled/why-prometheus-risked-everything-for-humans-hxztyl/

This passage is from Stephen Fry's Mythos, which I recommend for an excellent refresher on Greek mythology;

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Prometheus shaded his eyes and looked up. He saw the three Cyclops standing on a great sloping wall of rock that formed one side of the tallest mountain. ´I know you´re good at climbing up the sides of mountains,´ Zeus said with what he hoped was icy sarcasm, but which emerged even to his ears as something more like sulky muttering. ´So climb.´ When Prometheus reached the place where the Cyclops were, they bound and fettered him and stretched him out on his back, hammering his shackles into the rock with mighty pegs of unbreakable iron. Two beautiful eagles swept down from the sky and glided close to Prometheus, blocking the sunlight. He could hear the hot wind ruffling their feathers. Zeus called up to him. ´You will lie chained to this rock forever. There is no hope of escape or forgiveness, not in all perpetuity. Each day these eagles will come to tear out your liver, just like you tore out my heart. They will eat it in front of your eyes. Since you are immortal it will grow back every night. This torture will never end. Each day the agony will seem greater. You will have nothing but time in which to consider the enormity of your crime and the folly of your actions. You who were named ´foresight´ showed none when you defied the King of the Gods.´ Zeus´s voice rang from the canyons and ravines. ´Well? Have you nothing to say? Prometheus sighed. ´You are wrong, Zeus,´ he said. ´I thought my actions through with great care. I weighted my comfort against the future of the race of man. I see now that they will flourish and prosper independently of any immortals, even you. Knowing this is balm for any pain.´

Zeus stared at his formed friend for a long time before speaking. ´You are not worth eagles,´ he said with an awful coldness. ´Let them be vultures.´ The two eagles immediately changed into rank, ugly vultures who circled the outstretched body once before falling upon it. Their razor-sharp talons sliced open the Titan´s side and with hideous screeches of triumph they began to feast. Prometheus, mankind´s chief creator, advocate and friend, taught us, stole for us and sacrificed himself for us. We all possess our share of Promethean fire, without it we would not be human. It is right to pity and admire him but, unlike the jealous and selfish gods he would never ask to be worshipped, praised and adored. And it might make you happy to know that, despite the eternal punishment to which he was doomed, one day a hero would arise powerful enough to defy Zeus, unbind humanity´s champion and set him free.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has many good passages relevant to this question. There are probably more passages than these to examine.

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Casca Indeed, they say the senators to-morrow

Mean to establish Cæsar as a king;

And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,

In every place save here in Italy.

Cassius I know where I will wear this dagger then;

Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.

Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;

Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,

Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,

Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;

But life, being weary of these worldly bars,

Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

If I know this, know all the world besides,

That part of tyranny that I do bear

I can shake off at pleasure.

[Thunder still]

Casca
So can I:

So every bondman in his own hand bears

The power to cancel his captivity.

**************************************

Casca Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life

Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

Brutus Grant that, and then is death a benefit:

So we are Cæsar's friends, that have abridg'd

His time of fearing death.

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• Agraulus
  • Daughter of a legendary founder of Athens
• Enyalius
  • Either a title or an attendant of Ares
• Ares
  • God of war
• Zeus
  • King of the gods
• Thallo
  • One of the Horae, a personification of Spring
• Auxo
  • One of the Horae, a personification of Summer
    • Also, one of the Charites or Graces local to Athens
• Hegemone
  • One of the Horae, a personification of Autumn
    • Also, one of the Charites or Graces local to Athens

Diogenes Laertius records that Epicurus first traveled to Athens at the age of 18, and that Herodotus wrote a text On the Training of Epicurus as a Cadet. Wikipedia furnishes the following information about the cadets, or ἔφηβοι;

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Though the word ephebos (from epi "upon" + hebe "youth", "early manhood"[3]) can simply refer to the adolescent age of young men of training age, its main use is for the members, exclusively from that age group, of an official institution (ephebia) that saw to building them into citizens, but especially to training them as soldiers, sometimes already sent into the field; the Greek city states (poleis) mainly depended (like the Roman Republic) on its militia of citizens for defense.

In the time of Aristotle (384–322 BC), Athens engraved the names of the enrolled ephebi on a bronze pillar (formerly on wooden tablets) in front of the council-chamber. After admission to the college, the ephebus took the oath of allegiance (as recorded in histories by Pollux and Stobaeus—but not in Aristotle) in the temple of Aglaurus and was sent to Munichia or Acte as a member of the garrison. At the end of the first year of training the ephebi were reviewed; if their performance was satisfactory, the state provided each with a spear and a shield, which, together with the chlamys (cloak) and petasos (broad-brimmed hat), made up their equipment. In their second year they were transferred to other garrisons in Attica, patrolled the frontiers, and on occasion took an active part in war. During these two years they remained free from taxation, and were generally not allowed to appear in the law courts as plaintiffs or defendants. The ephebi took part in some of the most important Athenian festivals. Thus during the Eleusinian Mysteries they were sent to fetch the sacred objects from Eleusis and to escort the image of Iacchus on the sacred way. They also performed police duty at the meetings of the ecclesia.

And here is the text of the Ephebic Oath, which was in active use at the time Epicurus was in training;

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"The ephebic oath was an oath sworn by young men of Classical Athens, typically eighteen-year-old sons of Athenian citizens, upon induction into the military academy, the Ephebic College, graduation from which was required to attain status as citizens. The applicant would have been dressed in full armour, shield and spear in his left hand, his right hand raised and touching the right hand of the moderator. The oath was quoted by the Attic orator Lycurgus, in his work Against Leocrates (4th century BC), though it is certainly archaic (5th century BC). The Ephebate, an organization for training the young men of Athens, chiefly in military matters, had existed since the 5th century but was reorganized by Lycurgus. The oath was taken in the temple of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, probably at the age of eighteen when the youth underwent an examination (Greek: δοκιμασία) and had his name entered on the deme register. He was then an ephebos until the age of twenty.

The ephebic oath is preserved on an inscription from Acharnae, which was written in the mid-fourth century BC. Other versions of the oath are preserved in the works of Stobaeus and Pollux."

Greek text
This is the oath, as preserved by Stobaeus.

"Οὐ καταισχυνῶ τὰ ὅπλα τὰ ἱερὰ, οὐδ' ἐγκαταλείψω τὸν παραστάτην ὅτῳ ἂν στοιχήσω· ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἱερῶν καὶ ὁσίων καὶ μόνος καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν. καὶ τὴν πατρίδα οὐκ ἐλάσσω παραδώσω, πλείω δὲ καὶ ἀρείω ὅσης ἂν παραδέξωμαι. καὶ εὐηκοήσω τῶν ἀεὶ κραινόντων ἐμφρόνως καὶ τοῖς θεσμοῖς τοῖς ἰδρυμένοις πείσομαι καὶ οὕστινας ἂν ἄλλους τὸ πλῆθος ἰδρύσηται ὁμοφρόνως·καὶ ἂν τις ἀναιρῇ τοὺς θεσμοὺς ἢ μὴ πείθηται οὐκ ἐπιτρέψω, ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ μόνος καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν. καὶ ἱερὰ τὰ πάτρια τιμήσω. ἵστορες τούτων Ἄγλαυρος, Ἐνυάλιος, Ἄρης, Ζεύς, Θαλλώ, Αὐξώ, Ἡγεμόνη.

English translation
I will never bring reproach upon my hallowed arms, nor will I desert the comrade at whose side I stand, but I will defend our altars and our hearths, single-handed or supported by many. My native land I will not leave a diminished heritage but greater and better than when I received it. I will obey whoever is in authority and submit to the established laws and all others which the people shall harmoniously enact. If anyone tries to overthrow the constitution or disobeys it, I will not permit him, but will come to its defense, single-handed or with the support of all. I will honor the religion of my fathers. Let the gods be my witness, Agraulus, Enyalius, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.

Mount Etna is on the island of Sicily, not in Greece as I mistakenly said in this episode. Mea culpa!

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As to pleasure the philosophers of old expressed varying opinions. Epicurus makes pleasure the highest good, but defines it as σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα, or "a well-balanced condition of body." Antisthenes the Socratic calls it the greatest evil; for this is the expression he uses: μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην; that is to say, "may I go mad rather than feel pleasure." Speusippus and all the old Academy declare that pleasure and pain are two evils opposed to each other, but that what lay midway between the two was the good. Zeno thought that pleasure was indifferent, that is neutral, neither good nor evil, that, p171 namely, which he called by the Greek term ἀδιάφορον. Critolaus the Peripatetic declares that pleasure is an evil and gives birth to many other evils: injustice, sloth, forget­fulness, and cowardice. Earlier than all these Plato discoursed in so many and varied ways about pleasure, that all those opinions which I have set forth may seem to have flowed from the founts of his discourses; for he makes use of each one of them according to the suggestion offered by the nature of pleasure itself, which is manifold, and according to the demands made by the character of the topics which he is treating and of the effect that he wishes to produce. But our countryman Taurus, whenever mention was made of Epicurus, always had on his lips and tongue these words of Hierocles the Stoic, a man of righteousness and dignity: "Pleasure an end, a harlot's creed; there is no Providence, not even a harlot's creed."

-Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights Book IX

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The first item in the delicate balance to which I referred earlier is, thus, the
positive desirability for an Epicurean of extending the duration of pleasure, if
possible to the natural length of a full human life. I now turn to the second
item. Although staying alive longer is recommended, and may well enhance
the blessedness of one’s life, Epicurus is equally committed to the converse
principle that dying sooner is in no way an evil. Contrary to a widespread
assumption, it could not be an evil, for the simple reason that pain is the only
evil, whereas being dead is painless, and therefore hedonically neutral, lacking
pleasure and pain alike. It is natural to fear what you consider bad, but not to
fear what you consider value-neutral.

-David Sedley, Epicurean vs Cyrenaic Happiness

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Cassius have you already consulted Sedley's "Epicurean vs Cyrenaic Happiness", published 2016? I haven't seen it referenced in this thread and I think you'll want to take a look at that.

Edit to add;

Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill

is a collection of new and original essays in honor of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. All of the essays…

www.amazon.com

Quote from Epicurus and His Philosophy, by Norman DeWitt

[Epicurus'] finding is that time is "an accident of accidents," and, if his reasoning be closely scrutinized, time seems to be even less than this.

The line of reasoning may be sketched as follows: a human being is susceptible of sickness but sickness is not a permanent attribute, only a temporary condition, that is, an accident. Sickness in its turn may be long or short, but this quality of length or brevity is not a permanent attribute but an accident. Therefore it is an accident of an accident. Next, by analogy, since we associate time with states of health or sickness, the time of their duration is said to be long or short. Thus long and short become predicates of time while in reality they apply only to states of health or sickness. This amounts to saying that in the phrases "a long time" or "a short time" the adjectives are transferred epithets.

Incidentally, in the text of Epicurus this paragraph on the topic of time follows immediately upon the discussion of attributes and accidents. This juxtaposition confirms the assumption that the prolepsis is rightly interpreted as an anticipatory notion of the essential attributes of the subject of examination.

pp. 147-148

Following this line of thinking moves us firmly into Bryan's area, so perhaps he can comment.

Page 229 begins the subsection "Pleasure not increased by Immortality", which he ends thus;

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The attainment to this state [the limit of pleasure], he now declares, is a condition of one dimension. He seems to think of it as an Alpinist would regard the ascent of an arduous mountain peak. The pleasure would not be increased by remaining on the peak.

Also, Cassius :

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So Mitsis thinks that Epicurus would not say that if one has an option to choose between a long happy life and a short happy one he would choose the longer?

In fairness to Mitsis, I do not think this is his conclusion in the passage you quoted. If anything, Mitsis is saying that Epicurus would choose the long happy life over the short happy life, and that this choice involves him in a paradox.

That looks substantially more complete, thank you Don!

Welcome! You paint a pleasant picture.

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Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

- Constantine P. Cavafy, from Ithaka

(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

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And hey, why not:

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Oh, but I just thought you might want something fine

Made of silver or of golden

Either from the mountains of Madrid

Or from the coast of Barcelona

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Epicurus, as you yourself were saying, maintains that long duration can not add anything to happiness, and that as much pleasure is enjoyed in a brief span of time as if pleasure were everlasting.

I have to say, this does not appear to me to be a very literal translation. I'll look into this.

I still tend to think Epicurus was responding to Plato's Philebus in his discussion of limits, duration, and death. I'll have to review that dialogue.

Carpe Diem: Odes 1:11 - Horace — COONEYCLASSICS

Everyone knows the phrase “Carpe Diem,” or “seize the day,” but did you know where it comes from? The well-known Roman poet, Horace, gave the phrase its…

www.cooneyclassics.org

Horace's 11th ode gives us the phrase carpe diem, and a great many others carried the theme.

Usually it involves the speaker of the poem trying to seduce a woman;

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven,…

www.poetryfoundation.org

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled…

www.poetryfoundation.org

To His Coy Mistress

My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to…

www.poetryfoundation.org

Here is that passage from Candide:

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Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit, who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus.[3] For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am dying."

"Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the Devil the original stock of it?"

"Not at all," replied this great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source of life, frequently even[Pg 16] hinders generation, and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the Japanese, know nothing of it; but there is a sufficient reason for believing that they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. In the meantime, it has made marvellous progress among us, especially in those great armies composed of honest well-disciplined hirelings, who decide the destiny of states; for we may safely affirm that when an army of thirty thousand men fights another of an equal number, there are about twenty thousand of them p-x-d on each side."

Ha! That genuinely made me laugh. I haven't read that text since...2019, so I'll need to refresh my memory.

Syphilis was endemic to the Americas, and was introduced into Europe by Columbus on his return. Well, Columbus and his men. I suppose I can't blame him personally. Voltaire discusses this in his Candide, which is the only thing I remember about that book; Syphilis is the price of getting chocolate, which was also exclusive to the Americas. Amerigo Vespucci wrote a few letters about his travels to the New World, and in one of them he says this about the native inhabitants:

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We did not find that these people had any laws; they cannot be called Moors nor Jews, but worse than Gentiles. For we did not see that they offered any sacrifices, nor have they any place of worship. I judge their lives to be Epicurean. Their habitations are in common. Their dwellings, are like huts, but strongly built of very large trees, and covered with palm leaves, secure from tempests and winds. In some places they are of such length and width that we found 600 souls in one single house. We found villages of only thirteen houses where there were 4,000 inhabitants. They build the villages every eight or ten years, and when asked why they did this, they replied that it was because the soil was corrupted and infected, and caused diseases in their bodies, so they chose a new site. Their wealth consists of the feathers of birds of many colours, or "paternosters" made of the fins of fishes, or of white or green stones, which they wear on their necks, lips, and ears; and of many other things which have no value for us. They have no commerce, and neither buy nor sell. In conclusion, they live, and are content with what nature has given them.

Erasmus will certainly have read these letters. Not only were they sensationally popular, but Erasmus' close friend Thomas More used the voyages of Vespucci as the frame narrative for his Utopia. I explored this connection in tedious length in another thread here.

I think in some respects this text might bear fruitful comparison with The Epicurean, a dialogue by Desiderius Erasmus. Erasmus has his interlocutor make the claim that "If we will speak the truth none are greater Epicureans than those Christians that live a pious life." I see that I started a thread on this text in December of 2019.

Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (Wikipedia), a didactic poem written in four 'epistles', touches somewhat inscrutably on many of the questions we deal with in our discussions here. This poem is well known for two quotations which have passed so far into common usage as to be justly called proverbs. From the first epistle comes the line "Hope springs eternal in the human breast", and at the opening of the second epistle is Pope's summary of the main thrust of the poem; "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; //
The proper study of Mankind is Man."

In an essay entitled Some Thoughts on the Remembering (and Dismembering) of Lucretius’s De rerum natura in Translations, Commentaries, and Philosophical Poems, 1650-1750, John Baker writes as follows;

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What Hardie identifies in Milton and Lucretius recalls Miriam Leranbaum’s reading and description of Pope’s Essay on Man as “the reversing of Lucretius” (58).14 Lucretius’s arguments and positions are both contested and rejected, either explicitly and totally, as with Blackmore, or implicitly and partially, as is the case with Pope, but remain present. The two poems can be read as diametrically opposed examples of this imitation-through-opposition strategy. The dismemberment in the sense of outright refutation in Blackmore is systematic and repetitive. In the case of Pope one has the impression that Lucretius is often at the back (or indeed the front) of his mind despite the manifest presence of multiple other sources that have been signaled and discussed by commentators over the years, and that are flagged up in the editions of the Essay by Maynard Mack (1950) and, more recently, by Tom Jones (2016). David B. Morris asserts that “Pope’s primary model for An Essay on Man was undoubtedly Lucretius,” referring to him as “the classical prototype of the philosophical poet” (1984, 156).

Here are some of the relevant excerpts: I will caution readers not to assume that they have understood his views based on the following passages, for as I said, his philosophy is somewhat inscrutable without deeper study. I do not pretend to understand half of what he is saying here myself! Here are the opening lines;

Epistle I

• Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
  To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
  Let us (since life can little more supply
  Than just to look about us and to die)
  Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;
  A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
  A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;
  Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.
  Together let us beat this ample field,
  Try what the open, what the covert yield;
  The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
  Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
  Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
  And catch the manners living as they rise;
  Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
  But vindicate the ways of God to man.

That last line is taken nearly verbatim from John Milton's Paradise Lost.

• Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
  All but the page prescribed, their present state:
  From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
  Or who could suffer being here below?
  The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
  Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
  Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
  And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
  Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
  That each may fill the circle, marked by Heaven:
  Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
  A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
  Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
  And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
  Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;
  Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
  What future bliss, He gives not thee to know,
  But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
  Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
  Man never is, but always to be blest:
  The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
  Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

This section is interesting. Heaven is hidden from us, but, thinks Pope, we have good reason to hope for it. God sees all - including atoms and worlds made of atoms hurled into ruin.

• Yet cry, if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust;
  If man alone engross not Heaven’s high care,
  Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
  Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
  Re-judge His justice, be the God of God.
  In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
  All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
  Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
  Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
  Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
  Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
  And who but wishes to invert the laws
  Of order, sins against the Eternal Cause.

In spite of what is to come in this poem, the poet establishes himself as pious in his religious views.

• Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
  Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
  That never air or ocean felt the wind;
  That never passion discomposed the mind.
  But all subsists by elemental strife;
  And passions are the elements of life.
  The general order, since the whole began,
  Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

Two lines of interest here. The first bears some similarity to this passage from Tennyson's Lucretius;

The Gods, who haunt
The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of mow
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm!

The second line - "But all subsist by elemental strife" - recalls the Empedoclean view of nature as bound by the competing forces of Love and Strife.

Epistle II

Here are the opening lines of the second epistle, and they summarize the main points of his ethical philosophy. The stoics and the sceptics both come in for some criticism.

• Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
  The proper study of mankind is man.
  Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
  A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
  With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
  With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
  He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
  In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
  In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
  Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
  Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
  Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
  Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
  Still by himself abused, or disabused;
  Created half to rise, and half to fall;
  Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
  Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
  The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
  Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
  Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
  Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
  Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
  Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
  To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
  Or tread the mazy round his followers trod*,
  And quitting sense call imitating God;
  As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
  And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
  Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
  Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

*A reference to the Peripatetics, perhaps? The line about imitating God smacks of Aristotle.

• Two principles in human nature reign;
  Self-love to urge, and reason, to restrain;
  Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,
  Each works its end, to move or govern all
  And to their proper operation still,
  Ascribe all good; to their improper, ill.
  Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
  Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole.

Here Pope outlines the two principles which "in human nature reign" - not Empedoclean Love vs Strife, but self-love and reason.

• Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends (i.e. self-love and reason) to fight,
  More studious to divide than to unite;
  And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,
  With all the rash dexterity of wit.
  Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
  Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
  Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
  Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire;
  But greedy that, its object would devour,
  This taste the honey, and not wound the flower:
  Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
  Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

Now things are getting interesting. Pope seems to say here that self-love and reason, the guiding principles of human life, have a common end or telos; pleasure and the absence of pain. However, pleasure wrongly understood may well be the greatest evil; it is only pleasure rightly understood which is the greatest good.

• In lazy apathy let stoics boast
  Their virtue fixed; ’tis fixed as in a frost;
  Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
  But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
  The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
  Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
  On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,
  Reason the card (compass card?), but passion is the gale;
  Nor God alone in the still calm we find,
  He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.

Here we have another surprising dig at stoicism.

• Suffice that Reason keep to Nature’s road,
  Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
  Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train,
  Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain,
  These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined,
  Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
  The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
  Gives all the strength and colour of our life.
  Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
  And when in act they cease, in prospect rise:
  Present to grasp, and future still to find,
  The whole employ of body and of mind.
  All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
  On different senses different objects strike;
  Hence different passions more or less inflame,
  As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;

And this passage continues the discussion of pleasure and pain. Also, we there is a line regarding sensation - different objects strike on different senses. This passage is followed by an extended meditation on vice and virtue, which I have skimmed. Read it yourself if you care so much!

Epistle III

Here are the opening lines of the third epistle. Earlier in the poem (in a passage which I did not quote) Pope has laid forth his explanation of the Great Chain of Being, and in this passage he reinforces the general idea. There is also another reference to atoms.

• Here, then, we rest: “The Universal Cause
  Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.”
  In all the madness of superfluous health,
  The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,
  Let this great truth be present night and day;
  But most be present, if we preach or pray.
  Look round our world; behold the chain of love
  Combining all below and all above.
  See plastic Nature working to this end,
  The single atoms each to other tend,
  Attract, attracted to, the next in place
  Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace.
  See matter next, with various life endued,
  Press to one centre still, the general good.
  See dying vegetables life sustain,
  See life dissolving vegetate again:
  All forms that perish other forms supply
  (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die),
  Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
  They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
  Nothing is foreign: parts relate to whole;
  One all-extending, all-preserving soul
  Connects each being, greatest with the least;
  Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
  All served, all serving: nothing stands alone;
  The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

This next passage stands in profound contrast to Lucretius' understanding of human prehistory;

• Who taught the nations of the field and wood
  To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
  Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
  Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
  Who made the spider parallels design,
  Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line?
  Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore
  Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?
  Who calls the council, states the certain day,
  Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
• III. God in the nature of each being founds
  Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
  But as He framed a whole, the whole to bless,
  On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
  So from the first, eternal order ran,
  And creature linked to creature, man to man.

While Lucretius held that language, fire, agriculture, and civilization arose gradually out of primitive conditions by human effort alone, Pope believes that God endowed man with the capacity for these things and that nature instructed man in the use of that capacity. I have excerpted only a tiny portion of his argument here, which is rather long and rambling. He ends this epistle with the following couplet; "Thus God and Nature linked the general frame, // And bade self-love and social be the same."

Epistle IV

• Oh, happiness, our being’s end and aim!
  Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name:
  That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
  For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
  Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
  O’erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
  Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
  Say, in what mortal soil thou deign’st to grow?
  Fair opening to some Court’s propitious shine,
  Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
  Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
  Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
  Where grows?—where grows it not? If vain our toil,
  We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
  Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere,
  ’Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;
  ’Tis never to be bought, but always free,
  And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
  Ask of the learned the way? The learned are blind;
  This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
  Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
  Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
  Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
  Some, swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain;
  Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
  To trust in everything, or doubt of all.
  Who thus define it, say they more or less
  Than this, that happiness is happiness?

These are the opening lines of the fourth epistle, in which the poet reiterates that 'happiness', also variously called good, or pleasure, is "our being's end and aim". Pleasure or happiness is the telos, but "the learned are blind" and cannot expound on this pleasure or happiness without falling into error. He does come close to explaining himself, however, which is a mercy;

• Know, all the good that individuals find,
  Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind,
  Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
  Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence.
  But health consists with temperance alone;
  And peace, oh, virtue! peace is all thy own.
  The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
  But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
  Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
  Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right;
  Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed,
  Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
  Count all the advantage prosperous vice attains,
  ’Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains:
  And grant the bad what happiness they would,
  One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
  Oh, blind to truth, and God’s whole scheme below,
  Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
  Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
  Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.
  But fools the good alone unhappy call,
  For ills or accidents that chance to all.

Pleasure consists of health, peace, and competence, and each of these rest on virtue. Only fools think that good people are unhappy.

• “But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed.”
  What then? Is the reward of virtue bread?
  That, vice may merit, ’tis the price of toil;
  The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil,
  The knave deserves it, when he tempts the main,
  Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
  The good man may be weak, be indolent;
  Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.

^Here we have more on the same theme.

The poet then goes on to explain that wealth, fame, power, etc only really give benefit to the good and wise. He then ends the poem with a prayer.

As a medieval scribe once wrote in the margin of a manuscript, “Now I’ve written the whole thing. For Christ’s sake give me a drink.”

Serafino de' Serafini, Allegory of St. Augustine as Master of the Order

St. Augustine as Master of the Order

Nature's God; The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Cicero, On Ends

Quote

It is however my opinion that if I shew there is something moral, which is essentially desirable by reason of its inherent qualities and for its own sake, all the doctrines of your school are over- thrown. So when I have once briefly, as our time requires, determined the nature of this object, I will touch upon all your statements, Torquatus, unless perchance my recollection fails me. Well, by what is moral we understand something of such a nature that, even if absolutely deprived of utility, it may with justice be eulogized for its own qualities, apart from all rewards or advantages. Now the nature of this object cannot be so easily understood from the definition I have adopted (though to a considerable extent it can) as from the general verdict of all mankind, and the inclinations and actions of all the best men, who do very many things for the sole reason that they are seemly, right and moral, though they see that no profit will follow.

*************

‘How I wish, said he, ‘that you had felt a bent towards the Stoic school! It was surely to be expected of you, if of any one, that you would place in the category of good nothing but virtue.’ ‘Look well to it, said I; ‘perhaps it was rather to be expected of you, inasmuch as your views substantially agreed with mine, that you would not force upon the doctrines new titles. Our principles are at one, and only our language is at variance.’ ‘Our principles are very far from being at one,’ said he, ‘for whatever that thing may be over and above morality, which you declare to be desirable, and reckon among things good, you thereby quench morality itself, which we may liken to the light cast by virtue, and virtue too you utterly overthrow.’ ‘ Your words, Cato,’ said I, ‘are grandiose; but do you not see that you share your high- sounding phraseology with Pyrrho and Aristo, who are thorough- going levellers? I should like to know what you think of them.’ ‘Do you ask what I think of them?’ said he. ‘I think that all the good staunch upright soberminded statesmen of whom we have been told, or whom we have ourselves seen, who without any learning and merely following nature’s guidance, have performed many meritorious exploits, were better trained by nature than they could possibly have been trained by philosophy, if they had accepted any other doctrine than that which regards nothing save morality as belonging to the category of good, and as belonging to the category of evil nothing save baseness; as to the remaining philosophical systems which, no doubt in different degrees, but still all of them to some extent count as good or as evil some object unconnected with virtue, they, as I think, not only fail to aid us or strengthen us in the struggle to become better, but actually corrupt nature.

-Translated James Reid

My chart on Ethics

Diogenes of Oenoanda

Quote

If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end. Let us therefore now state that this is true, making it our starting-point.

Suppose, then, someone were to ask someone, though it is a naive question, «who is it whom these virtues benefit?», obviously the answer will be «man.» The virtues certainly do not make provision for these birds flying past, enabling them to fly well, or for each of the other animals: they do not desert the nature with which they live and by which they have been engendered; rather it is for the sake of this nature that the virtues do everything and exist.

Diogenes of Oinoanda Fragment 32 (Martin Ferguson Smith)