Sunday, December 14 - Zoom Meeting - 12:30 PM - Topic: Lucretius Book Review - Lines 62 -100

Sunday December 14th - This week we will pick up discussion with line 62 and continue on. We will likely also address the question recently raised by Dave: Was Lucretius more hostile to religion than was Epicurus himself?

This meeting is open to Level 03 and above, and please go ahead and drop in even if you missed previous sessions.

To join: Please RSVP if you haven't previously attended Sunday Zooms so that we can get the link to you.

Absolutely Dave as we go through this I'll try to call out the relevant other texts, and everyone should feel free to do that as well. I know that there are some "concordances" where people have laid out corresponding sections of Lucretius and the Letter to Herodotus and perhaps other sources. It's possible I'm thinking of Sedley's "Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom" or it may be in Sedley and Long's "The Hellenistic Philosophers" but if anyone remembers where a chart like that is please post.

Today we spent almost all the session discussing the lines 62-80 (the discussion of the significance of Epicurus' accomplishments.

Next week is our "Fourth Sunday" and we'll have a special topic (Emily Austin's article "Epicurus and tThe Politics of Death." The week after, we'll come back and begin with what is approximately line 80:

Lucretius Side-by-Side

Quote

Herein I have one fear, lest perchance you think that you are starting on the principles of some unholy reasoning, and setting foot upon the path of sin. Nay, but on the other hand, again and again our foe, religion, has given birth to deeds sinful and unholy. Even as at Aulis the chosen chieftains of the Danai, the first of all the host, foully stained with the blood of Iphianassa the altar of the Virgin of the Cross-Roads. For as soon as the band braided about her virgin locks streamed from her either cheek in equal lengths, as soon as she saw her sorrowing sire stand at the altar’s side, and near him the attendants hiding their knives, and her countrymen shedding tears at the sight of her, tongue-tied with terror, sinking on her knees she fell to earth. Nor could it avail the luckless maid at such a time that she first had given the name of father to the king. For seized by men’s hands, all trembling was she led to the altars, not that, when the ancient rite of sacrifice was fulfilled, she might be escorted by the clear cry of ‘Hymen’, but in the very moment of marriage, a pure victim she might foully fall, sorrowing beneath a father’s slaughtering stroke, that a happy and hallowed starting might be granted to the fleet. Such evil deeds could religion prompt.