VS26 - Source in Vat.gr.1950 with some commentary

I agree there is probably more going on here too. Isn't there a parallel reference somewhere (Lucretius?) to different birds using different types of calls? I could see potentially some context of discussion of language or even the "frank speech" issue being involved here too. I would generally expect a deeper philosophic point than Bailey seems to be accepting in order for a passage to make the cut into a collection.

Quote from Don

Seems to me this would be talking about epitomes and summaries vs full lectures and books, e.g., letter to Herodotus vs the books of On Nature.

Yes I'd say it "could," but if I were collecting maxims of the golden words of Epicurus I suspect I would have found one a little more useful about pleasure or death or the gods to include, and left that one out

HA! Not ONLY of Plato:

Lucretius Book Three¶

O Epicurus, who could first strike so clear a light from so great darkness, and direct us in the proper advantages of life, Thee, the glory of the Grecian name, I follow. Thy steps I closely trace with mine, not so much from a desire to rival thee, as from the love I bear, and the ardent passion I profess to imitate thee. For how can the swallow contend in singing with the swan? Or what can kids, with feeble limbs, perform in running with the noble horse's speed?

Thou great Father, founder of philosophy! Thou with paternal precepts dost inspire thy sons, and from thy writings, most illustrious chief, as bees such honey from the flowery fields, we feed upon thy golden sentences - golden, and fit eternally to live. For when thy reason first began to prove that Nature was not formed by powers divine, the terrors of the mind all fled, the walls of this great world lie open, and I see how things are managed through the mighty void. The deity of the gods, their calm abodes appear, which neither winds disturb, nor clouds overflow with showers, nor the white-falling snow, congealed by sharpest frost, does spoil; but the unclouded air surrounds them always, and smiles on them fully with diffused light. Nature in every thing supplies their wants; nothing at any time destroys their peace. But the wide tracts of Hell are nowhere seen, nor does the interposing Earth prevent our sight, but we discover what beneath our feet is doing in the space below. In these pursuits a certain divine pleasure spreads round me, and I stand amazed, that by thy strength of mind, all nature every way lies naked to our view.

Unfortunately there was a second "golden" reference that I wanted but could not find quickly enough - the one in which Cicero describes the canon - if I recall correctly - as if let down from heaven on a golden rope. But I may be wrong about that one, and its context may have been sarcastic.

EDIT: OOPS SORRY = it fell from heaven, not let down on a golden rope!

[63] It was indeed excellently said by Epicurus that fortune only in a small degree crosses the wise man’s path, and that his greatest and most important undertakings are executed in accordance with his own design and his own principles, and that no greater pleasure can be reaped from a life which is without end in time, than is reaped from this which we know to have its allotted end. He judged that the logic of your school possesses no efficacy either for the amelioration of life or for the facilitation of debate. He laid the greatest stress on natural science. That branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions; and when we have learned the constitution of the universe we are relieved of superstition, are emancipated from the dread of death, are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena, from which ignorance, more than any thing else, terrible panics often arise ; finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves. Then again if we grasp a firm knowledge of phenomena, and uphold that canon, which almost fell from heaven into human ken, that test to which we are to bring all our judgments concerning things, we shall never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinions.

It just occurred to me that that might be a reference to the Palladium;

Quote

The Trojan Palladium was said to be a wooden image of Pallas (whom the Greeks identified with Athena and the Romans with Minerva) and to have fallen from heaven in answer to the prayer of Ilus, the founder of Troy.