Posts by Joshua

Polyenphysiszodeism.

Innumerable gods who are living beings and have their existence entirely in nature, but stand aloof from human affairs.

I hold a copyright on that term!

Beavers are discussed on this episode of QI starting at around 34:07.

Also make sure you watch the quantum levitation experiment at 35:40!

In this article, Tim O'Keefe argues that the quasi-body and quasi-blood of the gods is evidence for the Idealist view.

Here, Hegel is incomprehensible on the same subject.

And Dewitt, on page 261, is atypically cautious;

Quote

It is not on record whether Epicurus adduced logical grounds for denying flesh and blood to the bodies of the gods. We are informed that he wrote of them as having "a sort of blood and a sort of body, lacking solidity such as characterizes ordinary bodies." It is quite possible that he was rationalizing a tradition, represented by Homer, who also denied blood to the bodies of the gods. Instead of blood there was in their veins a liquid called ichor, which in later Greek signified the straw-colored residue of blood called serum. As for the unsubstantial nature of the divine body, this was only what the general belief of the Greeks assumed to be true. As already mentioned, Epicurus preferred to follow tradition where permissible and was not bent upon introducing new gods, which was an indictable offense, but aimed rather to rationalize existing beliefs and recall his countrymen to true piety.

In this thread for Episode 226 I laid out my alternative to the Ontological argument. That is a work in progress, but in its current state it should be enough to call into question the validity of producing a being into nature a priori.

Quote

(NOTE: No mention of "planet" other than the one on which the beings - human beings in this case - stand)

The planets are stars in this analysis--they are the "wandering stars" spoken of in the Letter to Pythocles;

Quote

That some of the stars should wander in their course, if indeed it is the case that their movements are such, while others do not move in this manner, may be due to the reason that from the first as they moved in their circles they were so constrained by necessity that some of them move along the same regular orbit, and others along one which is associated with certain irregularities: or it may be that among the regions to which they are carried in some places there are regular tracts of air which urge them on successively in the same direction and provide flame for them regularly, while in other places the tracts are irregular, so that the aberrations which we observe result.

***

τινὰ τῶν ἄστρων πλανᾶσθαι, εἰ οὕτω ταῖς κινήσεσι χρώμενα συμβαίνει, τινὰ δὲ ὁμαλῶς κινεῖσθαι, 177 [113] ἐνδέχεται μὲν καὶ παρὰ τὸ κύκλῳ κινούμενα ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὕτω κατηναγκάσθαι, ὥστε τὰ μὲν κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν δίνην φέρεσθαι ὁμαλῆ οὖσαν, τὰ δὲ κατά τιν᾽ ἄλλην τισὶν ἀνωμαλίαις χρωμένην.

ἄστρων πλανᾶσθαι, astron planasthai, wandering stars. Planet means 'wanderer'.

The rules of pig-Latin;

Pig Latin

I'd like to develop a thesis that I'm working toward, and that I briefly mentioned on Sunday because it only then occurred to me;

Quote from Letter To Menoeceus, Yonge Translation

First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, thou shalt not affirm of him aught that is foreign to his immortality or that agrees not with blessedness, but shalt believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious.

It's always struck me as odd that Epicurus' first use of god (θεὸν) is singular, and in subsequent usage he employs the plural. Some of the translators (as Yonge here) actually translate this as God, giving entirely the wrong impression.

I was struck by the similarity between this passage in Epicurus, and the opening words of Torquatus in De Finibus;

Quote from Cicero, On Ends, Reid Translation

The problem before us then is, what is the climax and standard of things good, and this in the opinion of all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. Epicurus places this standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil; and he founds his proof of this on the following considerations.

Notice that Torquatus in this passage is not saying that pleasure is the good because that is the "opinion of all philosophers"; Torquatus is relying on the "opinion of all philosophers" in order to establish a barebones definition of the good as such. What makes something the good? Something is the good because we test all things by it, but the good itself by nothing.

In the Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus seems to be doing the same thing. Before we can even discuss the gods, we need a working definition of what a god really is. Notice how this interpretation of the passage perfectly explains the use of the singular.

Person A: I have three pet marmots at home that I need to go take care of, but after that I'm good for whatever.

Person B: ...What the hell is a marmot?

No one would ever follow up the initial statement with the question, "what are three marmots?" When we ask for a definition, we ask in the singular. When Epicurus speaks on the gods, he first offers a definition, and his definition is also in the singular. And like Torquatus, who relies on the opinion of all philosophers when defining the good, Epicurus invokes the common opinion of mankind when defining a god.

He does not use the common opinion of mankind to justify his own belief that the gods exist. He thinks the gods exist because of images that impinge, because of prolepsis, because of the principle of isonomia, and perhaps other considerations as well. But he thinks that the gods are blessed and incorruptible because this is the definition of a god; if a god is neither blessed nor incorruptible, it isn't a god.

I have very little facility with the Greek, but I've never seen this interpretation set forth and I find that it solves two thorny problems at one go.

From the whole surface of the Earth there are less than 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye--out of something like 100 billion stars in our galaxy.

Yeah, I still prefer the Epistle of Horace to Juvenal here. I mentioned after the recording that my interest in Roman history pretty much flatlines after the assassination of Julius Caesar, so we are dealing with a sweeping period of ignorance on my part.

Quote

You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.

Display More

Listening to the episode now, I think I was perhaps a little uncharitable to Juvenal here. While the emphasis on virtue as the "only road" to peace does strike the wrong note for me (even considering what Epicurus said about living wisely, honorably, and justly), Juvenal is clear in the second to last line that one doesn't need a gift from the gods to secure these things. The mention of Hercules does read to me as a nod to Stoicism, but even Lucretius uses Hercules as a metaphor in praising Epicurus for his philosophical labor.

Mea culpa!

Analogy compares things which are alike in relationship, cause, operation, throughput, etc. Similarity compares things which are alike in nature, shape, size, origin, and so on.

The way in which ocean liners transport people is similar to the way in which cargo ships transport goods; both vessels collect their payload from land-based ports, and carry them over water to their destination.

The way in which cargo ships transport goods is analogous to the way in which red blood cells transport oxygen. Red blood cells collect oxygen at the port (the alveoli in the lungs) and carry that oxygen through shipping channels (the blood vessels) until they reach their destination (the cells of the body).

I'm thinking out loud, don't take this too seriously!

Yeah, Cicero makes that case in book one of On Ends when he says that Epicurus would have known that atoms had to be divisible if only he had 'learned geometry from Polyaenus, instead of making him unlearn everything he knew'.

A comparison can be made with fractals; while, mathematically, images produced from fractal sets contain infinite detail in a finite space, Epicurus would say that nature itself has a lower limit in the atom.

Funnily enough, the very first thing Lucretius says to his readers is "empty your ears!"

quod superest, vacuas auris; "As for the rest (of you), ears empty"...

Lucretius offers a glimpse of the life of the gods in this passage in Book I;

Here is the long-awaited (by Cassius, if no one else!) research on this edition of Lucretius!

Here is that text on archive.org

Quote

I would love to read what Dunster wrote about eternality. I want to know what "Drexelius" said too (don't know who that is at this point) but I would expect Dunster to have wanted to follow up on many of the leads that we are following today.

I attached a link into the quote above.

I know this text survives and I read it in full several months ago; my memory is that this is a very clerical work that didn't offer anything of interest. I'll let you know when I find it again!

I added more to post #2, which some of you may have read in an earlier version.

Edit; Have fun chewing on all of that!

And speaking of Thomas Creech, he crops up again in the Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth Century Satire;

Quote

"Creech typically translated Horace closely, but when he encountered an Epicurean passage, whether atheist or hedonist, he often acted as a commentator instead, repressing it, softening it,leaving it prominently in place, or even seeming to justify and explain it. We see a striking example in epistle 1.6. Meanwhile, the translation of the lyrics organized by William Oldisworth (1712-13) appeared with Horace's Latin on the facing page. The device was likely encouraged by the popularity of Dacier's edition, although Richard Fanshawe had one the same. Dunster, faced with the philosophy of the hexameter poems, often rendered literally some extremely heterodox passages; yet even he could sometimes shield them from full view in time-honoured ways."

A digital scan of Rev. Samuel Dunster's Last Will and Testament, dated 22nd October 1751, is in my possession, though I cannot at present find the link at the National Archive website (The National Archives' reference PROB 11/810/394). In any case, the book containing his biography by Raines also contains a text of this Will; one entry reads as follows:

Quote

To Mr. Joseph Haigh (my curate) all my MS. sermons, my new black gown and bands, and neck cloths, my Virgil and Horace, with my MS. notes in three volumes;

This work on Virgil is given the following shelf-mark at Chetham's Library:

There is also a very interesting letter recorded by Raines:

This letter dated 1734 would seem to suggest that Dunster has given up any rigorous work in the field of classics, but the quoted epistle from Horace gives some insight into his ongoing pursuits. Here is a comment on that epistle from Mark Morford.

Quote

In the midst of everything you will read, and you will ask your
teachers by what system you may pass your life gently. Ask
whether desire (that always needs more) should trouble and disturb you; whether fear and hope for things that are not advantageous; whether philosophy or nature will give you virtue; what
will lessen anxiety, what will make you a friend to yourself,
what will bring you simple tranquillity—whether it is public honours or the pleasure of profits or the secret way and the path of a
life hidden from others. As for me, when I am refreshed by the
cold stream of Digentia, which Mandela drinks, a village furrowed with cold, what do you think is my opinion, my friend,
what do you believe is my prayer? “Let me keep what I have
now, or even less, so that I can live out the rest of my life (if the
gods wish me to live longer) for myself. Let me have a good supply of books and a year’s supply of food, and may I not float
hanging on the hopes of an uncertain hour.” Well, it is enough to
ask Jupiter for what he gives and takes away. He may grant me
life, he may grant me wealth: I myself will provide a mind free
from anxiety (aequum animum).

These beautiful and famous lines are the final expression of Horace’s
ethics. Although they are only indirectly concerned with pleasure and
although they suggest that prayer to the gods is efficacious, they are
fundamentally Epicurean. They are based on the maxim, “live unobtrusively”, and they suggest the moderate enjoyment of moderate pleasures. Their goal is a life free from mental disturbance, the achievement of ataraxia that is as much Stoic as Epicurean. Finally, they suggest that happiness is ours to achieve through control of our will, whatever the gods may give, good or ill. Here Horace agrees with the Stoics, and this doctrine will prove to be the foundation of the ethics of Epictetus.

-The Roman Philosophers; from the Time of Cato the Censor to the Death of Marcus Aurelius by Mark Morford

Display More

As TauPhi has alluded to in another thread, Juvenal's tenth satire touches on similar themes. If Dunster is our translator of both Juvenal (1739) and Lucretius (1743), he would have been working on one or both of them at the the time of this letter (1734).

Only two things more remain to be said. Rev. Dunster's personal library went to auction in November of 1754 with the personal libraries of a handful of others. A catalogue in two volumes (I, II) was made available, and among the collections listed in Volume II were translations of Lucretius by Creech and Evelyn.

It is impossible, of course, to know whether they belonged to Dunster or one of the others. A search of the collection also brings up several books ancient and modern on astronomy. In the 1743 edition of Lucretius, a series of footnotes in Book V on pages 171-175 provide an extensive explanation of the movement of the heavenly bodies.

I have tried to accumulate here all of the sources and citations that I have been sitting on for the better part of a year. The evidence, as the reader will observe, is inconclusive and circumstantial at best. However, I am going to propose on the basis of this inconclusive evidence that Reverend Samuel Dunster, D.D., Rector of Hartley and Gravesend, Prebendary at the Cathedrals of Salisbury and Lincoln, and Vicar of Rochdale, is a promising candidate for the anonymous translator of the 1743 translation of De Rerum Natura, printed for Daniel Brown, bookseller, at the sign of the Black Swan without Temple-Bar, London.

Finis

© National Portrait Gallery, London

The translation of Horace before mentioned was the work of an Anglican prelate named Samuel Dunster (1675-1754), who went on to earn a Doctorate in Divinity, and served for many years as Vicar of Rochdale in the vicinity of Manchester. The most extensive biography available is in The Vicars of Rochdale: Vol. 1 by Francis Robert Raines. Dunster published a series of works in his early career, beginning with

Quote

a curious and somewhat interesting account of the shires and principal towns in England, under the title of Anglia Rediviva, 8vo., London, 1699.

He further published a sermon on the book of Proverbs, advocating in defense of public education, in 1708. In 1709-1710 there appeared two translations; The Considerations of Drexelius on Eternity, which ran through a number of subsequent editions, and the volume of Horace's Satires and Epistles now under consideration. This latter work also went through several editions, but there is some evidence that the literary establishment of the day disapproved of Dunster's prose version. A friend of Jonathan Swift's wrote a few stinging couplets at Dunster's expense, which he sent to the famous poet;

Quote

Attack'd, by slow-devouring moths,
By rage of barb'rous Huns and Goths:
By Bentley's notes, my deadliest foes,
By Creech's rhimes and Dunster's prose;
I found my boasted wit and fire
In their rude hands almost expire:

-John Sican, 1712-1753

Another couplet appeared from the hand of a Professor of Greek at Cambridge;

Quote

O'er Tibur's swan the muses wept in vain,
and mourn'd their Bard by cruel Dunster slain.

-Prof. Thomas Francklin, Cambridge University

There was a kind of mania, not to say insanity, inherent to this view of things. In the frontmatter to his translation of Juvenal, John Dryden had stated his intention to "make [the poet] speak that kind of English, which he would have spoken had he lived in England, and had he written to this Age". Had Juvenal lived not in Rome but in London, in other words, and in the late 17th and early 18th century, he would have written in rhymed couplets.

In the wake of these criticisms in his early career, Samuel Dunster did one of two things. Either he never published another translation from Latin ever again, or else he continued to publish translations from Latin and he did so anonymously. There is scant evidence in favor of either proposition.

In 1739 there appeared an anonymous prose translation of the Satires of Juvenal, and this work has diversely been attributed to one of two men; Reverends Samuel Dunster and Thomas Sheridan. Column 2259 of the third volume of Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain (1882-1888) attributes a 1777 reprint of this work to "Samuel [?] Dunster".

Contrarily, the Dictionary of National Biography records the following;

Quote

[Thomas] Sheridan wrote much and published little. Translations of the ‘Satyrs of Persius’ (1728, 8vo) and ‘Satires of Juvenal’ (1739, 8vo), both of which had several editions, and the ‘Philoctetes’ of Sophocles (1725) were the most noteworthy of his productions.

The Persius and the Juvenal were both to be found in the bookseller's shop of Daniel Brown near Temple-Bar. In the 1743 edition of Lucretius the following advertisement lists all three of these works--Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.

Which of these men was actually responsible for the translation of Juvenal? And even more interestingly, could these two names hold the key to the prose translation of Lucretius?

The flourishing of human talent that blossomed among the Anglican clergy during the 18th and early 19th centuries is a matter of record, and I would point to Bill Bryson's At Home, a rather discursive account of his time spent living in an old rectory in the English countryside, as offering an exemplary look into this interesting world. The upshot is that when a huge number of educated people are given leisure time and an income, their output may be prodigious. The Reverends Dunster and Sheridan are no more than typical of their set; their occupation was minimal, their free time extensive.

Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) was, among other things, an essayist, playwright, poet, and a close personal friend of Jonathan Swift. His Satyrs of Persius stand somewhat apart from the Horace, Juvenal, and Lucretius linked to above; in the first place, the translator has given us no preface. The prologue which you shall see before the first Satire is not Sheridan's; it was written by the poet Aulus Persius Flaccus himself, and has merely been translated.

By contrast, the three prose translations under consideration all have features common to each of their prefaces. All three of them contain;

1. A self-effacing references to the translator's own language or abilities.
2. A justification for translating verse into prose.
3. A defense against those who would lay the sins of the Roman poet at the feet of the English translator.

Here's how this works in practice.

1. A self-effacing reference to the translator's own abilities.

Dunster's Horace:

Quote

This was the motive which induced me attempt the following translation; I am very sensible, that the Grace and Delicacy of the Latin Can't be turn'd into Engish; but our Language is not without its beauties, which perhaps are no less pleasing and delightful.

Anonymous Juvenal:

Quote

I have attempted a Just and Intelligible Translation of Juvenal's Satires, and offer them to be read, without the alluring Jingle of poetic Trappings, in a plain and simple Dress, with nothing besides their own native Worth and Excellency to recommend them.

Anonymous Lucretius:

Quote

I have endeavoured (because disencumber'd from the Fetters of Poetry) faithfully to disclose his Meaning in his own Terms, and to shew him whole and intire ; I have followed the different Readings and Explications of the best Expositors, but whether agreeable to the Mind of the Author or no, Comparison only can discover.

2. A justification for translating verse into prose.

Dunster's Horace:

Quote

This I thought the most likely way to make him intelligible, which, is much better done in Prose than Verse; the Restraint of Rhime is no ordinary Difficulty, it too often forces the ingenious Translator to abandon the true Sense of the Poet, and for the sake of a sounding Word, put in something of his own.

Anonymous Juvenal:

Quote

However, let these Poetical translations enjoy undisturbed the Glory they have acquired: it will be Fame and Reward sufficient for me to render this Great Author more familiar, to shew him as he really is, and endeavour that the English Readers of both Sexes may not continue unacquainted with the true Value and the just undisguised Merit of Juvenal's Satires.

Anonymous Lucretius:

Quote

This is no wonder; for the Poet he [Creech] undertook is not to be confined and shackled by the Rules of Rhyme; his Verse is nearest, and runs more naturally into Prose than any other, Juvenal and Horace only excepted, among all the Classicks.

3. A defense against those who would lay the sins of the Roman poet at the feet of the English translator

Dunster's Horace:

Quote

Having given this Account of the following Version, I must advertise the Reader of one thing more, and that is, that I have castrated our Poet, in translating nothing that border'd on Obscenity, or that was contrary to the Rules of Decency and good Manners ; insomuch that the most modest Person may now safely read his Satires and Epistles, and not run the risque of endangering his Vertue.

Anonymous Juvenal:

Quote

Some perhaps may conceive, that Juvenal is an Author of too free a Character, and too loose a Manner to appear in a plain and natural Translation ; but to censure the most severe and pungent Satires against Vice, as the strongest Incentives to the Commission of it, betrays a Narrowness of Mind, which I think deserves no Answer.

Anonymous Lucretius:

Quote

And here I would have it be understood, that I translate Lucretius only as a Classick Writer of the first Rank, and one of the Venerable Fathers of Latin Poetry, without thinking myself accountable for his Principles, or justifying his System; and whoever apprehends the Design of this Work, in any other View, is a Person of narrow and stinted Conceptions; he is a precise Fanatick in the Republick of Letters, and a secret and ignorant Enemy to Human Learning.

The reader will perceive that the earliest translation takes a milder approach, and the latter a more combative one. Note also the reference in the preface to Lucretius, that "his Verse is nearest, and runs more naturally into Prose than any other, Juvenal and Horace only excepted, among all the Classicks."

If Thomas Sheridan translated the Satires of Juvenal, why do they contain this prefatory material while his Persius does not? There is, moreover, criticism of Thomas Creech in the preface to both Horace and Lucretius.