Posts by Cassius

I am going to attach here a Google Translate French to english conversion of theJulie Giovacchini document Don linked above. I am just starting to read it so not sure how useful it will be, but on first glance appears reasonable.

TETRAFRENCH.fr.en2.pdf

For some reason I am just seeing these posts. Thanks for finding this material Don!

I really want to try to get the sense of that French article so I will see what I can do.

Also although I really admire Diskin Clay I think I have to side with the Germans and take the position that the PD as we have them was probably not organized and published by Epicurus himself.

Welcome to Episode 186 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only 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 you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. We are now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."

This week we begin our discussion of Chapter 15, entitled "Extension, Submergence, and Revival."

Chapter XV - Extension, Submergence, And Revival

• General Evidence of Popularity
• Fortunes of the Parent School
• The Beginning of Stoic Hostility
• The School In Antioch
• Epicureans In the New Testament
• The School In Alexandria
• Epicureanism In Italy
• Epicureanism In Rome
• The Reaction Against Epicureanism
• Epicureanism In The Early Empire
• Plutarch, Anti-Epicurean
• Epicureanism In The Graeco-Roman World
• Third And Fourth Centuries
• Epicureanism In the Middle Ages
• The Epicurean Revival

What you're talking about as the immediate flash connotation of the word is definitely a problem. How to solve the problem is a very difficult question, and yes "life' helps, in my view, but it also then needs to be tempered by the observation that the 'longest' is not necessarily the 'best'

Episode 185 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available!

Ok thanks again. This is really interesting, in addition to being a good use of "sidenotes" we've discussed recently:

So this reference to the Galen and the Stoics does not refer explicitly or implicitly to our Philodemus reference (?) but to an independent Stoic concern for what happens to individual elements when they are mixed. So this reference appears to be a true discussion of physical medicine and is not related to our medicine for the "soul."

So there is apparently a reference to it in Cicero that we don't yet have nailed down (per the Gordon reference in wikipedia).

Quote

The point that might seem somewhat confusing is that, despite the process of fusion, the initial ingredients nevertheless always keep in a pharmacopoeia a form of presence, even if only etiological; we cannot explain the action of the tetrapharmakos only by the virtues of the ingredients which compose it, just as one can explain nature only by the action of primordial principles which however no longer exist as such in the bodies of which they are causes. To really understand the scope of the argument, it is necessary to return to the distinction to be made between this type of fused mixture and the mixture of moods, which does not eliminate the identity of the elements which compose it. This distinction can allow us to underline the all-out very paradoxical relationship of Galien to Stoic physics. This provides him, with the total mixture, with an epistemological model almost perfect for thinking of the humoral mixture (crash), and this even though: 1) the physical background explicitly claimed by Galien is not Stoic but Aristotelian and 2) metaphysical reflection upstream of the properly physical content of From elementis uses, to think of the disciplinary division between physics, medicine and metaphysics, an example of mixture which is not total but fused30.

Thanks Don!

So I suppose we are looking for this so would need to figure out wha "Ph.1.433" references as well as Gal.1.242 - but I presume those are about the drug - unless Meno is as to the drug and Ph.1 is not.

I don't see what he is citing as a reference for the usage as to Epicurus two except the text from Philodemus, so is one of these words transcribed above translated as tetrapharmakos? That wikipedia entry doesn't look like it has a word for word transcription such as the epicurus wiki offers for other texts, which would be desirable.

A.compounded of four drugs:—as Subst., τετραφάρμακος, ἡ, a compound of wax, tallow, pitch, resin, Meno Iatr. 14.19, Ph.1.433 (= Stoic.2.154), Gal.1.242; also -κον, τό, Id.12.328.
II. -κος, ἡ, metaph., of the first four Κύριαι Δόξαι of Epicurus, Phld.Herc.1005.4.

Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Don given that you are adept at Perseus, does this reference at Wikipedia mean that someone thinks there is a "page" at Perseus where we can find references in the ancient texts where the term tetrapharmakos is used? When you have time could you link that entry here? My first effort turned up nothing. Thanks.

We definitely need to expand options for those whose schedules don't meet the "USA Weeknight" paradigm.

What times of day / days of week would work best? Especially if they coincide with a time that Europeans are awake I think we really want to consider adding that.

One of the things that came up in this session was discussion of the recent work by Don and Nate and others on how to number/organize/present the Principal Doctrines. Seems like we are closer but not actually there yet to pin down when the numbering was "first" added and by whom.

A related question came up of "who was the first" to apply the label "tetrapharmakos" to the four statements that are preserved apparently by Philosdemus in the Herculaneum papyrus.

This seems to be the record on which everything is based:

Principal Doctrines - Wikipedia

The "tetrapharmakos" was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Roman-era Epicureans^[5] to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul.^[6]

Those notes are to Pamela Gordon who says this cannot be traced further back than Cicero (and doesn't in this source refer to anyone else who used the term):

And Liddel and Scott:

Those references would be interesting to track down to see how many "friendly" references to the term can be documented, or whether it was used disparagingly, especially in light of the ability to interpret it as disparaging or trivializing, as DeWitt hints here:

Quote from Randall Moose

Nature provides water, food, shelter, friends, and wisdom.

Consistent with some of the other thoughts you have been expressing about friendship, this sentence causes me to reflect about the general point. More generally, the point that seems to go with this is that nature generally "makes available relatively easily" these things, but that for each of them we do still have to act to go after them. Also important would seem to be that success in obtaining them is not guaranteed (at least not in the sense that death is guaranteed).

The passage that goes with this is apparently:

U469 Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, XVII.23: “Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary.”

We discussed this last night and it seems like most feel like recording would hinder the free flow of the conversation, so we better evaluate alternatives before implementing something like this. Probably the answer is alternative days and times that accommodate more people, or turning on the recorder during a "presentation" part of the session rather than the discussion part. We can continue to brainstorm alternatives.

Of course no one of a certain age is going to forget the top 40 music version....

That's an idea -- an unedited audio is a lot less intimidating than video, and probably would capture much of the benefit.

Quote from Don

Tufte's the Big Dog when it comes to data visualization.

Thanks for letting me know that as I shall now try to read further into it.

"Data visualization" is a term that seems closely related to what we need to do to effectually drive home the big picture lessons.

For what it is worth, I recently came across this "side-note" formatting popularized by someone named Tufte that apparently has a following, and can also be implemented in web formats:

Tufte CSS

A la tufte

GitHub - edwardtufte/tufte-css: Style your webpage like Edward Tufte’s handouts.

Style your webpage like Edward Tufte’s handouts. Contribute to edwardtufte/tufte-css development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Apparently a lot of the steam behind Tufte-style formatting is that "sidenotes" are easier to reference without losing one's place in the text than are footnotes or endnotes. Makes sense.

Same issues go with the letters to Herodotus and Pythocles. They cry out for some kind of organizational headings, but we face the same decisions. Not really suggesting this but perhaps the formats some of the older books use where they put italicized headings in the right or left margin, which isolates them from the text?

Sort of like this from Bailey's Lucretius:

The format is definitely gorgeous. The only real apprehension I have is to the use of headings. No doubt at all they are useful, but in getting rid of the issues that come from extreme segmentation, it would be good not to introduce another potential source of prejudice to the texts with our selection of headings that might make sense to us but might not ring exactly true ---- but which in any case were not in the original.

Probably on balance some kind of headings are appropriate, but it probably makes sense to be very conservative in labeling.

Of course anyone putting together their own format can and should make any design decisions that they feel is appropriate. I'm making this post not to criticize anything I see in the mockup but mainly to be sure that this aspect gets the discussion it deserves too.

Looks great!