Posts by Cassius

Again thank you for all the work spent in doing that Don!

Joshua is amazing, and his breadth of information is a large part of the reason I take the time to edit each episode so closely. The stuff we are talking about has been talked about for more than 2000 years already, and is truly "evergreen," so I would like to think that these episodes can be listened to for many years to come. If we store them right they will be useful long after this website and HTML are obsolete.

We about to close out forty some episodes going through the book, and I don't feel like we've nearly exhausted the subject.

In fact I am more enthusiastic than ever to tackle Cicero's arguments against Epicurus in "On Ends." Those have been out there tearing down Epicurus for 2000 years, and it's time to make an organized effort to make a dent in them. And given the lengthy time we've spent on Lucretius, Epicurus' letters, and now on a book devoted to the whole philosophy, I feel like we have a good group of people positioned to tackle them. And note that I say "group of people" because it really helps to have the input of Martin, Kalosyni, Don (who I hope will occasionally appear) and many others. As we go through books one and two of On Ends we ought to be able to map out and outline the arguments that Cicero was summarizing as the key attacks on Epicurus, and we need all hands on deck to go through them and refute them.

When we finish book two of On Ends we get (if I recall) to the end of the section specifically devoted to Epicurus, so we will then make an executive decision and decide whether to go over Cicero's attacks on Stoicism (worthwhile but possibly tedious) or switch over to the Epicurean section of "On the Nature of the Gods," which the podcast Don recently linked in another post was talking about.

For a full size version in landscape orientation, click here or on the graphic below.

Today we are launching a new feature for the front page of the forum - a "Navigation Map" with clickable boxes to take you to the relevant sections of the forum. This is only a first version and will no doubt go through lots of iterations, but this is intended to be a help for everyone (old and new here at the forum) in finding some of the most important subforums and seeing their relevance to each other.

The version below is not clickable or well zoomable, but the version on the front page is an SVG graphic that is fully zoomable to any size and remains sharp. Click over to that one and you can zoom in and out to your heart's content.

It is formatted in "portrait" since most people are using phones and devices of similar format to access the forum. We can probably do a "landscape" version as well if we can figure a way to display the correct one for the correct screen size.

Thanks for responding and very glad to have you!

Welcome burninglights !

Note: In order to minimize spam registrations, all new registrants must respond in this thread to this welcome message within 72 hours of its posting, or their account is subject to deletion. All that is required is a "Hello!" but of course we hope you will introduce yourself -- tell us a little about yourself and what prompted your interest in Epicureanism -- 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 / Rules of the Forum our Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean and our Posting Policy statements and associated posts.

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 some 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 other viewpoints, 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 by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be most assured of your time here being productive is to tell us a little about yourself and personal 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 have which would help us make sure that your questions and thoughts are addressed.

In that regard 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.

1. "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
2. The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
3. "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
4. "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
5. The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
6. Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
7. Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
8. The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
9. A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
10. Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
11. Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
12. "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.

Click HERE for a full list of our community standards. 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!

Welcome to Episode 188 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 continue our discussion of Chapter 15, entitled "Extension, Submergence, and Revival."

Chapter XV - Extension, Submergence, And Revival

• 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

Episode 187 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available!

I have added another address that hopefully is easy to remember in case of outage.

Anytime we have an outage first try "backup.epicureanfriends.com" and that should get you to the same page for the latest update information.

Given that backup.epicureanfriends.com is tied to the same domain, however, and might be subject to the same problem as the main website, you can always resort to cassiusamicus.com which is hosted on completely separate servers.

New post with additional thoughts on backup platforms:

Post

RE: Social Media - Instant Messaging (Telegram, Matrix, Threema)

This subject comes to mind again due to our recent outage on 8/17/23.

The big issues in choosing an alternate communication platform is something that is actually used by a significant number of people. If people don't have the platform loaded on their telephone then they won't get notifications, and it will take much longer to notify people of outages and get back in communication if something significant takes down the forum for more than a few hours.

I'd be happy to hear latest thoughts from…

Cassius

August 17, 2023 at 10:03 AM

This subject comes to mind again due to our recent outage on 8/17/23.

The big issues in choosing an alternate communication platform is something that is actually used by a significant number of people. If people don't have the platform loaded on their telephone then they won't get notifications, and it will take much longer to notify people of outages and get back in communication if something significant takes down the forum for more than a few hours.

I'd be happy to hear latest thoughts from anyone but especially from EricR , TauPhi, Cleveland Okie, and others who are into the FOSS options. I don't want to tie us to a major platform where we are subject to content-based censorship, even for backup communications. Right now that doesn't seem to be an issue at all, and hopefully it will never be, but let's plan for the future.

Each of the options discussed in this subforum is probably viable and workable, but none stand out to me as the obvious choice. For purposes of backup communication and regrouping if the server suffers a catastrophic failure, it's more important to be easy to remember and easy to get to and easy to use than it is to be super-secret or encrypted. For those who know what it is I am tempted to set up an IRC channel as the easiest and most flexible, but there are many options, including some kind of public xmpp location, which is the protocol which our friend stpeter helped popularize.

So it seems to me that the main criteria for a backup communication platform would include:

1. Necessary: Free / Open Source
2. Necessary: Easy to remember web address (we can set up a domain to point there too)
3. Necessary: Quick and easy to sign up and use without using a dedicated app
4. Necessary: Allows basic moderation (keeps a list of users and potentially allows them to save an email which could be used as an emergency contact).
5. Necessary: Very simple and does not have a lot of complicated features (unlike Matrix)
6. Necessary: Not a full forum or replacement for Epicureanfriends but just a place to hold a running exchange of users where info about outages etc can be posted.
7. Necessary: Not video or audio - chat only (rules out zoom and jitsi etc)
8. Necessary: Not a high profile service run by google or facebook or twitter or reasonably likely to be under the direct control of a state-sponsored security agency. Every service is subject to that problem, but some more than others, and the more features that a service offers while still being "free" the more it is likely that the security of communications and user data is compromised. Related to this would be - not a service aligned with an overt political or religious agenda (which would also make it more likely to be subject to attack or compromise).
9. Desirable but not necessary: Some ability to provide phone notification to users of new messages. This is the main thing that apps like Telegram and Whatsapp offer, but the problems that come with this probably make it preferable to have an easy simple web domain that can be remembered so everyone knows "If Epicureanfriends is down all I do is go here _______"

Another alternative is a simple "mailing list manager" where people can register their emergency contact email addresses, and then when we have a problem we can email that group. But if we go that route we would want some ability for members of the group to contact each other, in case is not just with the server being indisposed but with Cassius himself being indisposed!

Strodach option now added to the poll.

We have just returned from a several hour outage this morning. It appears that little or nothing has been lost from recent postings, but if you are aware of anything lost or other issues please post here.

As per the info in the right-hand panel, our first line of backup is checking in at http://www.cassiusamicus.com where I will post updates as to what is going on and suggestions for places to talk while the main site is down.

We need further backup channels and I will post further about ideas on that.

Sorry for the absence but glad to be back!

Thanks for the link and yes that part is great!

He's reinforcing in my mind how useful a resource Cicero is in both On the Nature of the Gods and On Ends too.

I am really looking forward to going through both in detail. I think going through On Ends is going to clarify in our minds a lot of the things we have been discussing as to what a lot of these debates were about.

Just like that podcast is saying Cicero, allows us to get into the minds of the 2000 year old debaters and in doing so I think we will see a lot that we don't currently see.

Ha - Their "over the top" video -

List of Links from that page:

I would like to read the works that have been recovered from the scrolls so far, where I can I find them?

Most are by Philodemus. This is a list of English translations we have found so far:

• Philodemus: On Anger. (2020), David Armstrong & Michael McOsker. SBL. ISBN 1628372699
• Philodemus: On Death. (2009), W. Benjamin Henry. SBL. ISBN 1-58983-446-1
• Philodemus: On Frank Criticism. (1998), David Konstan, Diskin Clay, Clarence, E. Glad. SBL. ISBN 1-58983-292-2
• Philodemus, On Piety, Part 1. (1996). Critical Text with Commentary by Dirk Obbink. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-815008-3
• Philodemus, On Poems, Book 1. (2001). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-815041-5
• Philodemus, On Poems, Book 2, with the fragments of Heracleodorus and Pausimachus. (2020). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198835080
• Philodemus, On Poems, Books 3-4, with the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets. (2010). Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Janko. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-957207-0
• Philodemus, On Property Management. (2013), Voula Tsouna. SBL. ISBN 1-58983-667-7
• Philodemus, On Rhetoric Books 1 and 2: Translation and Exegetical Essays. (2005). Clive Chandler (editor). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-97611-1
• David Sider, (1997), The Epigrams of Philodemos. Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509982-6
• Philodemus: On Methods of Inference. 2nd edition. (1978). Phillip Howard De Lacy, Estelle Allen De Lacy. Bibliopolis.

I think we've probably posted this link before, but this is the page for the "Vesuvius Challenge" mentioned in the video.

Vesuvius Challenge

A $1,000,000+ machine learning and computer vision competition

scrollprize.org

It's also interesting that starting around 22 minutes in the video Dr Seales says that a part of his interest is his desire to uncover early Christian material since he is a Christian himself. I wonder if he's read "St Paul and Epicurus."

Thank you again AaronSF! People keep talking about progress over the years, but it seems progress is disappointingly slow. It helps all of us to keep up with the latest news on this issue. (This is from March 16, 2023)

Thank you for this post AaronSF. You are new here and I am not sure of your interests, but if you are knowledgeable about Stoicism or just interested in helping catalog characters such as Balbus I hope you will continue, because I think this kind of thing is very useful.

One day I would like to see us construct sort of a "mind map" listing all these ancient characters so we can put them in perspective timewise and also where they stand philosophically.

That's similar to a project I worked on years ago in mapping the characters in "A Few Days In Athens"

A Map through A Few Days In Athens and the World of Epicurus

A Mind Map about A Map through A Few Days In Athens and the World of Epicurus submitted by CassiusAmicus on Nov 18, 2013. Created with Xmind.

xmind.app

It looks like Xmind has restricted what its free tier can do, and the mind map doesn't seem to allow embedding anymore, so I need to redo this map too at some point.

While Epicurean philosophy can be relatively simple at the highest levels, I think it really helps to draw "mind maps" to see how the details connect, and I hope to work on more of these in the future both as to people and also to show how the ideas fit together.

Thanks Kalosyni - see everyone tonight!

Poll Question