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The Poetic versions that seem to be best liked today are Humphries and Stallings,
Stallings renders it "crafty" -
The winds flee from you, Goddess, your arrival puts to flight
The clouds of heaven. For you, the crafty earth contrives sweet flowers,
For you, the oceans laugh, the skies grow peaceful after showers,
This is interesting - never heard of this either but seems easy to think that there's some relation to the latin. Sounds like maybe Munro got his "cunning artificer" this way?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to searchFor the ancient city, see Daedala (city).
In Ancient Greece, the Daedala (Greek: δαίδαλα) was a festival of reconciliation that was held every few years in honor of Hera, consort of the supreme god Zeus at Plataea, in Boeotia, being one of the major cults of the city.
According to Pausanias, there was a "lesser Daedala" (Δαίδαλα μικρά), celebrated every four years or so exclusively by the Plataeans, and a "greater Daedala" (Δαίδαλα μεγάλα), celebrated by all of Boeotians every fourteen cycles (approx. 60 years).
In the lesser Daedala, the people of Plataea went to an ancient oak grove and exposed pieces of cooked meat to ravens, attentively watching upon which tree any of the birds, after taking a piece of meat, would settle. Out of this tree they carved an image, and having it dressed as a bride, they set it on a bullock cart with a bridesmaid beside it. The image seems then to have been drawn to the bank of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a cheering crowd.[1]
These adorned xoana were also called "daidala" (δάιδαλα or δαιδάλεια),[2] with the connotation that they were "crafted" or "fashioned" (compare Daedalus, "daidalos" (δαίδαλος) meaning "cunning worker").
Ah that word IS in the Latin! So I suppose maybe I can ratchet down some of my criticism ---
However ultimately if the point of a translation is to be understandble in the common language I am afraid I still have to rate this choice a failure. I just don't recognize any form of "daedala" as coming down to us in modern English well enough to make this a workable choice. Anyone using that word or a form of it in daily life other than Don? 
The only thing it conveys to me the nonsense word "diddle" which is pretty far from the intended meaning, I gather.
I expect to be forever identified with "Daedal" from now on --- but that reminds me I wanted to check the Latin to see if there is possibly an excuse for that word there....
I AM GLAD YOU ASKED THAT Don !
I did mention Perseus at this page at the very top: https://epicuruscollege.com/coursematerial/Map-Lucretius-DRN/
But i have to say I am prejudiced against the Leonard edition because it's the first one I tried to read, for years, and always found it too "flowery" (maybe "poetic" is the word).
And I confess further you have hit a raw nerve. For some reason I cannot get out of my mind an unforgiveable choice of words that I always choke over, right at the beginning of Book One:
"For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers...."
That just does it for me for the whole translation. With ALL the intricacy of the Roman allusions, with ALL the difficulty of the text, with ALL the difficulty of the subject matter, do we have to dredge up an obscure word like DAEDAL which no one translator uses?
BROWN: Thee, Goddess, Thee the winds avoid; the clouds fly Thee and Thy approach. With various art the Earth, for Thee, affords her sweetest flowers;
MUNRO: Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven, before thee and thy advent; for thee earth, manifold in works, puts forth sweet-smelling flowers...
BAILEY: Thou, goddess, thou dost turn to flight the winds and the clouds of heaven, thou at thy coming; for thee earth, the quaint artificer, puts forth her sweet-scented flowers; for thee the levels of ocean smile, and the sky,
MARTIN FERGUSON SMITH: You, goddess, at your coming hush the winds and scatter the clouds; for you the creative earth thrusts up fragrant flowers; for you the smooth stretches of the ocean smile, and the sky, tranquil now, is flooded with effulgent light.
HUMPHRIES: All things conceived, all things that face the light
In their bright visit, the grain-bearing fields,
The marinered oceans, where the wind and cloud
Are quiet in your presence - all proclaim
Your gift, without which they are nothingness.
For you that sweet artificer, the earth,
Submits her flowers, and for you the deep
Of ocean smiles, and the calm heaven shines
With shoreless light.
I can handle "quaint artificer," I can handle "sweet artificer," I can handle "manifold in works" and all the rest.
But darn it do NOT ask me to go looking up the meaning of some obscure ENGLISH word just because you want to make your version of Lucretius sound poetic!
And if already in the first paragraph I can't trust Leonard to play fair with me, then I'm sorry, I can't ask anyone else to wade through that nonsense.
I will admit only that in recent years since I've found that he's at Perseus I sometimes am willing to use him now, but I can't do it with confidence because I never know when another of those darn DAEDALS is going to turn up!
I am trying to upgrade the website's connections to good copies of Lucretius, and also to provide a "table of contents" to the important topics.
I am working on that at the following link, which as of now has better material than the corresponding pages on the wiki site: Lucretius At the "Epicurus College" Course Materials page.
This site now contains the Brown, Munro, and Bailey public domain versions, with paragraph numbers set to correspond to the Loeb edition.
The "Table of Topics" needs refinement, and each point needs to begin with a paragraph section where the reference can be found.
Don were you making a comment or just updating the thread with the current graphic?
Eikadistes I forgot until now to post that this "Oasis" graphic came up in discussion last night on Zoom and the person who brought it up mentioned that they got a lot of use out of it and appreciated it!
We haven't talked about this graphic much lately but we continue to feature it on the front page and I feel sure it continues to be helpful especially to newer people.
So thanks again for creating it!
Threadstarter post
This link comes from Wikipedia on Thomas Young:
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&context=english_theses
(However this sounds like the writer's overlay rather than a cite to Epicurus.)
Another: Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Thomas Young
For me, the real litmus test of whether someone was an "Epicurean Influencer" often comes down to: Did they embrace eternal universe rather than a Deistic clockmaker model? Unless they embrace eternal universe they are hedging on key doctrine. (I don't apply that test quite the same way to people today, because I know that advanced physics has people turned in so many directions its hard to know what to believe anymore. But until that phenomena happened, seems to me the only legitimate position was Epicurus' own position - and of course I myself continue to think it's the best one even now. )
It would be really interesting to know how far Thomas Young went in endorsing Epicurus rather than just a generic deist/clockmaker/materialism model.
Because of course materialism doesn't confirm whether they embraced "Pleasure" as the ultimate goal rather than virtue or some other form of idealism. Thomas Cooper wrote an essay, for instance, giving a way to reconcile materialism with Christianity.
Also interesting that several of these type people were "doctors," including Joseph Priestley and Thomas Cooper.
A long time ago I put together using the website XMINDS this chart of the major figures referenced in "A Few Days In Athens."
Over time it would be a great project to put together something similar (better!) illustrating the web of relationships among those who were "significant contributors to the transmission of Epicurean Philosophy" in the English-speaking world.
Not everyone has need for this kind of thing, especially outside the USA, but I think that there are many people in the initial stages of considering their viewpoints about Epicurus, and discussing him with other people, who would profit a lot from having a ready reference to a diagram of past "luminaries" who have embraced Epicurean philosophy.
Labelling Thomas Young as more radical increases the odds he was affirmatively Epicurean. We need to investigate and find out what texts are available!
This is the section I need to reorganize and expand that has this kind of material already:
Nate thanks for that reference:
Thomas Young, organizer of the Boston Tea Party,
Back when I was researching that period years of go I started with Paine's Age of Reason and from Paine and found Ethan Allen's book (Reason the Only Oracle of Man) which is a little rough compared to Paine). I also found Elihu Palmer's "Principles of Nature" and the writings of Thomas Cooper.
But I never found a reference to "Thomas Young." Do you know if he wrote anything worth reading? Probably this list of books here deserves a thread of its own for people who would like to research and cite "Founding Fathers" of the USA for reference in advocating Epicurean viewpoints. Even if they were "deists" or didn't mention Epicurus specifically I can imagine this kind of material being useful to lots of people. I didn't orginally consider it but of course now in retrospect I should include Frances Wrights AFDIA in that list too.
Absolutely right to link to Nate's text whenever possible. What you're seeing in some posts going on now is an attempt to reorganize and make it easier to find the forum threads on the individual doctrines such as this one. I added a new link under the "special resources" section on the first place, as currently it's probably not highlighted well enough that these are available. We have the lists of texts under the "Texts" menu, but it's not easy to find the individual forum threads, and we want to avoid too much detail being put in the "comments" section of each doctrine in the "Lexicon." I am trying to add a notice to that effect under each doctrine such as you see now in PD09, but I am afraid that leaves 39 to go and I don't have the time to add those immediately to every Doctrine, Saying, and Fundamental. Will get that done when I can.
But to wind back to Cassius, I could see a "Sunday School" curriculum being helpful. Some kind of supplemental home study.
Right! Supplemental home study is the main thing I was thinking about, at least for most of us. As usual, depends on the context and what options are available.
But it shouldn't necessarily be imposed on one's children.
I agree with that and the rest of the paragraph as well. But to some extent we do make lots of choices for our children, so choosing to address the subject shouldn't be ignored. An interesting example to include in a discussion of that would be the example of "Hedea" in "A Few Days In Athens" who seems to stand for the position that formal instruction might not be necessary, but perhaps that is a very unusual case.
Yes we discussed the murkiness of PD09 last night. Anyone else who has a current take on the meaning of PD09 is welcome to join in here. I think Kalosyni is right that there is an "ultimate point" which the doctrine is making beyond the words that are on the paper.
I am not even sure that i have seen many articles on this topic but we need good review of it:
I do find that my older child is benefitting from me trying to help him understand the world rather than thinking magically, but also I worry it will make him an odd child in a very religious society like the one my family lives in. He's definitely not going to catholic school, and I found a school that is more in line with humanism values, so there's hope there.
I have no expertise in this subject whatsoever, so take this with that caveat. And I would not send a child to a religious school, all things being equal. But I question whether many "public" schools are any better. I would think the end result is that parents have to devote a lot of attention to "deprogramming" whatever is being taught to their children. An Epicurean "home schooling curriculum" for young people (or for any age ) would be highly desirable and ought to be a long term goal.
Another good meeting with two new visitors - thanks everyone!
Welcome to Episode One Hundred Twenty Seven 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.
I am your host Cassius, and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the ancient Epicurean texts, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.
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.
Today we continue Epicurus' Letter to Pythocles, with a look at the formation of "worlds." Joshua is away today, so let's now join Don reading today's text:
BAILEY
A world is a circumscribed portion of sky, containing heavenly bodies and an earth and all the heavenly phenomena, whose dissolution will cause all within it to fall into confusion: it is a piece cut off from the infinite and ends in a boundary either rare or dense, either revolving or stationary: its outline may be spherical or three-cornered, or any kind of shape. For all such conditions are possible, seeing that no phenomenon is evidence against this in our world, in which it is not possible to perceive an ending.
[89] And that such worlds are infinite in number we can be sure, and also that such a world may come into being both inside another world and in an interworld, by which we mean a space between worlds; it will be in a place with much void, and not in a large empty space quite void, as some say: this occurs when seeds of the right kind have rushed in from a single world or interworld, or from several: little by little they make junctions and articulations, and cause changes of position to another place, as it may happen, and produce irrigations of the appropriate matter until the period of completion and stability, which lasts as long as the underlying foundations are capable of receiving additions.
[90] For it is not merely necessary for a gathering of atoms to take place, nor indeed for a whirl and nothing more to be set in motion, as is supposed, by necessity, in an empty space in which it is possible for a world to come into being, nor can the world go on increasing until it collides with another world, as one of the so-called physical philosophers says. For this is a contradiction of phenomena.
Sun and moon and the other stars were not created by themselves and subsequently taken in by the world, but were fashioned in it from the first and gradually grew in size by the aggregations and whirlings of bodies of minute parts, either windy or fiery or both, for this is what our sensation suggests.
HICKS
A world is a circumscribed portion of the universe, which contains stars and earth and all other visible things, cut off from the infinite, and terminating [and terminating in a boundary which may be either thick or thin, a boundary whose dissolution will bring about the wreck of all within it] in an exterior which may either revolve or be at rest, and be round or triangular or of any other shape whatever. All these alternatives are possible: they are contradicted by none of the facts in this world, in which an extremity can nowhere be discerned.
[89] That there is an infinite number of such worlds can be perceived, and that such a world may arise in a world or in one of the intermundia (by which term we mean the spaces between worlds) in a tolerably empty space and not, as some maintain, in a vast space perfectly clear and void. It arises when certain suitable seeds rush in from a single world or intermundium, or from several, and undergo gradual additions or articulations or changes of place, it may be, and waterings from appropriate sources, until they are matured and firmly settled in so far as the foundations laid can receive them. For it is not enough that there should be an aggregation or a vortex in the empty space in which a world may arise, as the necessitarians hold, and may grow until it collide with another, as one of the so-called physicists says. For this is in conflict with facts.
"The sun and moon and the stars generally were not of independent origin and later absorbed within our world, [such parts of it at least as serve at all for its defence]; but they at once began to take form and grow [and so too did earth and sea] by the accretions and whirling motions of certain substances of finest texture, of the nature either of wind or fire, or of both; for thus sense itself suggests.
