VS47 - Source in Vat.gr.1950 and elsewhere

In the meantime here is the Epicurism.info version with the Greek:

Vatican Saying 47 - Epicurus Wiki

Quote from Kalosyni

VS47. "I have anticipated thee, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks. And I will not give myself up as captive to thee or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for me to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who vainly cling to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph-song that I have lived well." (Bailey translation)

I am wondering if it literally says "spitting contempt on life" or what exactly it said?

Don  Bryan  Eikadistes

Great question!

I found differing renderings from different authors. Bailey seems to be an outlier in his transposition; note the verb προπτύσαντες (proptúsantes) versus προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes).

Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 10.33.27 AM.png

The first rendering προπτύσαντες (proptúsantes) is (I believe) the aorist active participle of the verb προπτύω (proptúo), meaning something like "having spit out" ... or else, the "-αντες" ending refers to a plural, active participle, meaning "you [all] are spitting out"? (...I wasn't really sure).

The second rendering προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes) is the aorist active participle of the verb προσπτύσσομαι (prosptússomai), meaning "having received", "embraced", or "folded to oneself" ... or else, here again, it might be the plural active participle, meaning "you [all] are embracing".

Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 10.34.36 AM.png

... it looks like the second one to me, with the extra sigma, προσπτύσαντες (prosptúsantes).

...ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν ἡμᾶς τὸ χρεὼν ἐξάγῃ
μέγα προ[σ]πτύσαντες τῷ ζῆν καὶ...

A directly-transposed translation might be something like (it's clunky, but...) either:

...but when, [for] us, a [life full] of necessities recedes,
[the] great [thing], [subjects] are spitting out, then, to live, and...

or perhaps:

...but when, [for] us, a [life full] of necessities recedes,
[the] great [thing], [subjects] are embracing, then, to live, and...

So the question I then struggle with, is to decide "to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?" Are people vomiting (rejecting?) their natural impulse to live? Or are necessities vomiting (killing?) people from life? Otherwise (I think this is the case based on the screenshots above) people must be embracing the necessary end to living (i.e. accepting death).

...but could be totally wrong. 100% amateur here.

If we take the sigma, I think we have προσπτύω. Given the active form of προσπτύσαντες, it is difficult to pair with προσπτύσσομαι.

I just wanted to add another brief reflection on the "embracing" versus "spitting" nuance:

There are a variety of ways in which people seem to interface with death: fearing death, fleeing from death, fighting death, chasing immortality, damning life, welcoming death, accepting death, expressing gratitude for having lived, and plenty of other responses and orientations I'm not picturing. Adding another dimension (perhaps arbitrarily ... just thinking out loud) we can [1] lament life, and fear death, [2] lament life and accept death, [3] prize life but fear death, or [4] prize life and accept death. In Menoikeús, Epíkouros explicitly rejects [1 + 2] lamenting life in any capacity, and he rejects [3] fearing death in the first two Key Doctrines, so, in general (by this measurement), the appropriate Epicurean attitude would be to [4] prize life and accept the inevitable necessity of death.

I think that concept reinforces what (I believe) I'm seeing, visually. No spitting.

How does this relate to the phrasing of the fragment translated as about spitting on good (or is it beauty?) unless it bring pleasure?

Quote from Cassius

spitting on good (or is it beauty?)

We do have Johannes Stobaeus (_{fl. f.} 450 ^CE) in his Anthology: volume 3, chapter 17, section 24 quoting Epicurus: "I teem with what is pleasant for this little body – using only water and bread – and I spit on the pleasures from extravagances: not because of them, but because of what is difficult that follows from them"

[Ἐπικούρου] "Βρυάζω τῷ κατὰ τὸ σωμάτιον ἡδεῖ – ὕδατι καὶ ἄρτῳ χρώμενος – καὶ Προσπτύω ταῖς ἐκ πολυτελείας ἡδοναῖς: οὐ δἰ αὐτάς, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξακολουθοῦντα αὐταῖς δυσχερῆ"

Comments please.

I've come across the following post questioning the attribution of VS 47 to Epicurus himself: VS 47" I have anticipated thee, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to thee or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well."

SOURCE: https://www.epicurism.info/etexts/VS.html#**

Quote from Cassius

How does this relate to the phrasing of the fragment translated as about spitting on good (or is it beauty?) unless it bring pleasure?

I'd say ... paraphrasing, it could mean, either: [1] we are to live while embracing the grand inevitability of death, or else, [2] we are to live while spitting upon the universal fear of death.

Quote from Eikadistes

"to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?"

I am not seeing a reference to fears. I am seeing "...but whenever what must happen (τὸ χρεών) leads us out: having greatly spat on life and on those who cling to it in vain, we go out of life..."

(Although, of course, τὸ ζῆν is more "living" than "life")

Quote from Bryan

Quote from Eikadistes

"to which of the implied subject(s)/object(s) do the articles/pronouns refer?"

I am not seeing a reference to fears

Yeah, no explicit reference to that word, just the general idea of dismissing death.

Quote from Bryan

(Although, of course, τὸ ζῆν is more "living" than "life")

I'm glad you brought this up because I want your take on it. I read ζῆν as an infinitive, so, even though its awkward, I try to squeeze a "to..." into the sentence ... but it never works, so I add fillers, and I'm never quite satisfied. I think most translators like reading the [article + infinitive] as a noun ("life")? That seems conceptually fair, but it's still a little bit different. The active participle tends to fit ("-ing"), though I recall seeing that somewhat less. I at least want to see it as a verb for the sake of coherence.

Quote from Don

It's πλειονος.

Although I think that would require adding τοῦ before καλοῦ, giving μετὰ [τοῦ] καλοῦ πλείονος, but even then we would expect μετὰ πλείονος [τοῦ] καλοῦ -- all of which is more of a change than from πλειονος to παιωνος.

In further support of this, we do have "τοῦ καλοῦ πλείονος" used here (which is an Usener Edition). I have not been able to find both adjectives put together (but only καλός being made substantive by adding an article).