Posts by Cassius

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  • Episode 306 - To Be Recorded

    Welcome to Episode 306 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

    This week we continue covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean perspective. Today we continue our discussion with section 9 of Part 5 as to virtue alone allegedly being sufficient for happiness.


    We'll start with this on Theophrastus, who was apparently one of the most famous to take the position that "I'd rather be lucky than smart"!

    Quote

    This is the point which Theophrastus was unable to maintain: for after he had once laid down the position, that stripes, torments, tortures, the ruin of one's country, banishment, the loss of children, had great influence on men's living miserably and unhappily, he durst not any longer use any high and lofty expressions, when he was so low and abject in his opinion. How right he was is not the question; he certainly was consistent. Therefore I am not for objecting to consequences where the premises are admitted. But this most elegant and learned of all the philosophers, is not taken to task very severely when he asserts his three kinds of good; but he is attacked by every one for that book which he wrote on a happy life, in which book he has many arguments, why one who is tortured and racked cannot be happy. For in that book he is supposed to say, that a man who is placed on the wheel, (that is a kind of torture in use among the Greeks,) cannot attain to a completely happy life. He nowhere, indeed, says so absolutely, but what he says amounts to the same thing. Can I, then, find fault with him; after having allowed, that pains of the body are evils, that the ruin of a man's fortunes is an evil, if he should say that every good man is not happy, when all those things which he reckons as evils may befal a good man? The same Theophrastus is found fault with by all the books and schools of the philosophers, for commending that sentence in his Callisthenes:

    Fortune, not wisdom, rules the life of man.

  • Velleius - Epicurus On The True Nature Of Divinity - New Home Page Video

    Thanks for the input Steve, It's my intent to lower expectations to reduce disappointment, but yes it's already much better than the older TTS i used some years ago. And it's just going to get better over time. In the meantime, as we listen to this one, I am hoping we can catch significant errors or questionable word choices in the text so that the text part gets better over time too.

    And it's also relevant that I am targeting this for easy access by "newcomers" who want an introduciton perhaps while they are driving or have time to listen to something rather than sitting down to pore through a book.

  • Stoic view of passions / patheia vs the Epicurean view

    That is an excellent question Matt and I like that you posted the link that Joshua mentioned in the podcast.

    It's a deep subject that I suspect others are better equipped than me to deep dive on, but in the last analysis it seems to me that the Stoics have decided that "reason" and "logic" are the hill that they are going to die on, and just as with Mr. Spock no emotion of any kind is going to be approved of as all emotion is illogical if logic itself is the highest good.

    They can dance all they like around phrasing that arguably indicates that they are ok with some types of emotions, but for someone who thinks that the summit of virtue is the only part that counts, and focused on how you can down even just below the surface of the water, the implications of the bottom line are clear - there is no kind of pleasure that that are going to consider as good, and no kinds of pain that they are going to consider go be evil.

  • Updates To Side-By-Side Lucretius Page

    This week we have updated the Side-By-Side Lucretius, which contains the Latin along with translations by Bailey, Dunster, and Munro. The old topical guide page will remain available, but now that outline has been incorporated into the side by side version. Pick the columns you wish to see using the "hamburger" menu icon at the top right. Also added is the ability to resize the columns, so now you can pick the ones you want and then resize them for best reading. Let us know in this thread if you have any issues using the page.

    Lucretius Side-by-Side


  • Self-Study Materials - Master Thread and Introductory Course Organization Plan

    We've had numerous request about what self-study materials are available here, and in this thread i will pull together what is available now in other threads, plus maintain this first post in this thread as a marker of several key points.

    First, we've had numerous past questions about reading lists, and we've had several organized "book study" Zoom meeting series, such as we did on "A Few Days In Athens" and Emily Austin's "Living For Pleasure" and DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy." The threads discussing those are scattered across the forums, and while they contain some interesting material they aren't organized in a fashion I would recommend someone go to for the best way to organize their study.

    Of the material we have on the forum, the best organized relates to the list of major Doctrines of Epicurus that we feature on the front page. For each of those, we have a specific Lucretius Today podcast episode devoted to the topic, as well as some written outline materials. As a result that forms the best basis from which we could begin to pull together a more organized presentation.

    Those materials are summarized on the page below. Under each section is a link both to the Podcast devoted to that topic and a Discussion Guide of materials to review on each topic. If we were going to announce an "Epicurean Introductory Course" next month - and maybe we should - if would be very logical to simply devote one session to each of these topics, suggest that the podcast be reviewed beforehand, and then use the Discussion Guides to organize a Zoom discussion of each one.

    Article

    The Major Doctrines Of Classical Epicurean Philosophy

    This page presents a summary of Classical Epicurean Philosophy . For additional citations to Epicurean texts, click here.


    Nothing Can Be Created From Nothing

    Working solely with the science available two thousand years ago, Epicurus observed that nothing ever arises from nothing, and nothing is ever completely destroyed to nothing. From this Epicurus deduced the existence of atoms - elemental particles moving through empty space from which over time all things are made and return. Given that…
    Cassius
    May 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM


  • Velleius - Epicurus On The True Nature Of Divinity - New Home Page Video

    Today we're introducing the second new home page attraction - a media presentation of Velleius' speech explaining Epicurus' view of divinity from Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods. I'll repeat what I said about the current state of both this and the other text-to-speech production:

    1. This audio voice is far from perfect. {Actually, I think this one is better than the Torquatus version, for some strange reason, as they were produced in the same way.) Much effort has been put into this version, but the AI voice has a long way to go, so lower your expectations. We want the best, but we also want to reach as many people with this information as possible. If we wait for perfection, some will miss having this available to him that might otherwise see it.
    2. The text is adapted from the same versions that we already have on the website, but it needs to be improved. i will be placing this text on "Github," a public site where text can be edited in a collaborative manner. I will appreciate submissions for corrections and will get them up as soon as possible. Again, the tradeoff here is that if we wait for perfection before we publish this, some will miss it who might otherwise profit from it.
    3. One merit of this audio voice is that it is entirely in the public domain. We can continue to work on improving it and distribute this with no copyright concerns whatsoever.
    4. It will be desirable to add graphics throughout the video to illustrate the text. That will be a huge task , and suggestions on how to do that will be appreciated.
    5. As this text is not copyrighted, anyone who wants to proceed on their own to produce a better version is welcome to do so. Our goal is to promote the philosophy of Epicurus with the best material available, not to promote the graphics skill of me (which are obviously poor) or of anyone else.
    6. Check THIS POST for more technical info.
    7. We will be regularly updating this to improve the text and presentation quality. One side effect of that, however, is that it is not possible to proofread a new version, without watching the whole thing. That means regression errors may creep into another part of the file as a result of editing an existing error. Please feel free to report any and all errors anytime you observe one, as we may not already be aware of it for this reason.


  • Welcome AthenianGarden!

    Welcome AthenianGarden !

    There is one last step to complete your registration:

    All new registrants must post a response to this message here in this welcome thread (we do this in order to minimize spam registrations).

    You must post your response within 24 hours, or your account will be subject to deletion.

    Please say "Hello" by introducing yourself, tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.

    This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards and associated Terms of Use. Please be sure to read that document to understand our ground rules.

    Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.

    All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from most other philosophies, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit of truth and happy living through pleasure as explained in the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

    One way you can be assured of your time here will be productive is to tell us a little about yourself and your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you already have.

    You can also check out our Getting Started page for ideas on how to use this website.

    We have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

    "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt

    The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.

    "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"

    "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky

    The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."

    Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

    Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

    The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

    A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

    Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus

    Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

    "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

    It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

    And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

    (If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).

    Welcome to the forum!

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  • Torquatus - In Defense of Epicurus - New Home Page Video

    Latest version updated to main page and posted to Facebook with this intro:

    Here is a new audio-with-text version of Torquatus' Defense of Epicurus from Cicero's "On Ends," delivered by the Roman Senator and Praetor (military commander) Lucius Manlius Torquatus. For two thousand years this has been one of the most clear, concise, and compelling explanations of Epicurean Philosophy available anywhere. As many people know, portions of Torquatus' speech were coded into the "Res Ipsum" jumble of Latin that publishers use for "dummy" text. It seems likely that the decision to choose this text, even in jumbled form, reflects an understanding of the desirability of preserving the memory of this text forever. Over time we will continue to work to improve the quality of rendering of this voice and media. In the meantime this present version can be shared and referenced whenever you need access to the strongest and most unapologetic defense of the Epicurean way of life that has been delivered since the days of the original Garden.

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  • Side By Side Torquatus Defense of Epicurus

    To accompany the new Torquatus audio version I have now completed a side-by-side Latin and English version of the main Torquatus narrative. This version contains the Latin alongside the Yonge, Reid, and Rackham versions, followed by the modified Rackham which is the basis for the Text-To-Speech version. This will assist in helping us check to be sure that current and future text-to-speech versions stay compatible with the older public domain translations even as we convert it into more-widely-usable modern American English.

    Here's the main link, and it can also be found in the right-hand navigation column alongside the side by side versions of Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius:

    EpicureanFriends Side-By-Side Torquatus


    I do my best to keep these as accurate as possible while still getting them out in a reasonable time frame, but I am sure there are some typos so always feel free to point those out when convenient.

  • Torquatus - In Defense of Epicurus - New Home Page Video

    Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately individual voice contributions will not help much, for a couple of reasons:

    • The material that I am trying to make use of now is generally an hour or more long. including such things as the Velleius section of On the Nature of the Gods, and long sections of Cicero's other works where Epicurus is mentioned, and even the entire Lucretius poem, so those are also going to be long.
    • I want to target long term constant improvement, meaning constantly improving both the audio and video with better voices and eventually illustrations and moving pictures to stay on top of the latest technology.
    • I've been thinking about what "we" bring to the table in this kind of project, and it seems to me that what no one else is likely to duplicate is to prepare modern American English versions of these based on the public domain translations. There are many people who can do this kind of technology, but IMHO not many who are well equipped to judge what the texts "should" say in modern American english, just as you've done with Menoeceus. We CANNOT let the perfect be the enemy of the good because we'll never reach perfection, but we can produce reasonably accurate modern English versions that will be useable for people who will simply never be willing to read Bailey or the others. And in truth there's no reason to use 18th or 19th century phrasing in these renderings anyway.
    • And our goal ougt to be something that can be TOTALLY freely distributed, both as to the text and to the final media form. As to the text, posting it on github makes clear that anyone can use the text as a base, even if they don't want to cooperate with us.
    • I am also going to post this following paragraph in the first post to document the public domain engine that I'm using now. Hopefully we will have some techies who know how to do this better than I do, and they can help us improve the voice rendering faster. But at the moment, the current engine works well enough to allow us to run the texts through them and proof the results. The renderings will get better and better as the technology improves, but the texts won't improve unless we take the time to have people who "understand" them supervise the texts that are input.
    • Even the current Coqui TTS engine can no doubt be better in more competent hands than mine. I feel sure I am not optimizing my settings correctly , as some of the text sounds fine while in other sections the model goes wild with emotion. To some extent i am addressing those problems with word choice and order, but there are technical issues too that I don't understand yet.
    Quote

    This project employs the Coqui TTS open-source text-to-speech engine, specifically the multilingual, multi-speaker “XTTS-v2” model. XTTS-v2 is a transformer-based neural network designed for expressive, natural-sounding speech generation across many languages and voices. It reproduces human intonation and rhythm by processing text at the sentence level and synthesizing waveforms directly from the model’s internal acoustic representations. The implementation uses the Python Coqui-TTS library, running locally in CPU mode for portability and stability, with customized parameters to control pace and clarity—such as a sampling rate of 22.05 kHz, a pause duration of 0.25 seconds between segments, and a neutral male speaker profile known as “Craig Gutsy.” Audio segments are generated sequentially, merged into continuous narration, and paired with synchronized subtitles and a video overlay produced through FFmpeg. The entire process is fully open-source, requiring no external API calls, and emphasizes reproducibility, offline privacy, and fine control over both narration and presentation.

    The Coqui TTS engine and its included models are distributed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0), a permissive open-source license that allows free use, modification, and redistribution of the software, provided that source-code changes remain publicly available under the same terms. This ensures that all derivative works remain part of the open research ecosystem while allowing commercial and non-commercial use alike.

  • Torquatus - In Defense of Epicurus - New Home Page Video

    The latest revision is up. The text of this version will be on github in just a few minutes. While the voice still needs much improvement, I think most of the major audio bugs have been swatted. I just discovered one at 30:47 - please report others if you come across them. I am thinking that the text is coming together and most if not all obvious typos are completed, so it will soon be time to move from focusing on the text to focusing on the voice. I will post details on how this is being generated so anyone with technical aptitude can perhaps contribute to that side.

    Improving the test accuracy and wording will continue to be desirable, so don't hesitate to make suggestions there.

Unread Threads

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    2. The Nature of the Mind, the Spirit, and Death 1

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    2. What Are Some Epicurean Tips to Deal With Anxiety Over Painful Scenarios? 4

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    2. New Youtube Video - "Epicurus Responding to His Haters" - October 2025 4

      • Cassius
      • October 17, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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    4. Cassius

      October 17, 2025 at 10:39 AM

    2. Preparing A Public Domain Audio And Text Version Lucretius In Modern American English 4

      • Cassius
      • October 16, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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      4
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      680
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    4. Cassius

      October 16, 2025 at 3:24 PM

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