New ebook text of "Marius the Epicurean" by Walter Pater

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    I don't know how many of you are familiar with Standard Ebooks, but it is a nonprofit which produces carefully edited, nicely produced editions of classic public domain texts. When I am looking for a public domain book, I generally look there first. Completely unrelated to my interest in Epicureanism, I love Sinclair Lewis, and the site has four of his classic novels.

    Anyway, I am on the email list which announces new Standard Ebook titles each month and one of the new ones for August is

    Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater, which as the title suggests is an historical novel about a man in the Roman Empire who is particularly interested in Epicureanism but also explores other philosophies; the Wikipedia article on the book may be useful for anyone trying to decide whether to read it.

    Amazon's send to Kindle feature now supports ePub, one of Standard Ebooks' file formats, and there are nice ereaders for smartphones, such as ReadEra, which is my favorite.

    In my unreletenting quest to be positive and upbeat I always encourage everyone to read everything they can. It's been a long while since I first read "Marius the Epicurean" but I think I recall being profoundly disappointed in it. :) I hope the experience of others is more positive, but I better throw this into the mix - I will see if I can find my prior posting and perhaps link it here. But by all means I do encourage everyone to read whatever strikes their attention, because it will add to the fullness of your perspective whatever conclusion you reach about it! ;)

    Here's the earlier thread with some of my comments. It seems I remember being much more negative, either on Facebook or in private discussions.

    Thread

    Pater (Walter) - "Marius the Epicurean"

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4057?fb…0VaOv6GVZTgDNQk

    I believe I looked into this some years ago but came away very disappointed. Hopefully my memory is faulty. If you get a chance to post any kind of commentary on it that would be much appreciated.

    However I just did a word search in the Gutenberg edition for "Epicurus" and came up with exactly ONE results. On the other hand, a search for AURELIUS comes up with FIFTY-SIX results. Maybe my memory is not so bad after all.

    If it is just a rehash…
    Cassius
    May 13, 2019 at 9:10 AM


    What I seem to remember most today is that I believe I came across this about the time that I came across Francis Wright's "A Few Days In Athens." I read Frances Wright first and was blown away by the depth of her presentation of Epicurus. Then I read Marius, and the contrast was - to say the least - striking. And in the balance of the two, "A Few Days In Athens" is by far the better quality work for understanding Epicurus. But that's just the balance of the two, and reading Marius produced very beneficial results for me -- in making me realize how disappointing something can be even though it has "Epicurean" in the title.

    Your mileage may vary!!!

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