Posts by Joshua

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Did Epicurus structure the Garden as a cult to himself? Well... He did institute the celebration of his birthday during his lifetime. He did institute the 20th celebration each month as a celebration of himself and Metrodorus... like the other monthly celebrations of the gods like Apollo, Aphrodite, etc. The question would have to be asked if he instituted those celebrations at the request of his students or did his student request to celebrate him and he provided a structure for them.

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A quick thought prompted by Don's post: did Epicurus create a cult around himself?

Did Plato? Aristotle? Epictetus? (&c) They were all the commanding personalities of their schools. Was Epicurus perhaps making his school friendlier, less intimidating? One way of doing that may have been the practice of monthly celebrations. In other words, practices that may seem cultish today may have served functions of which we are completely unaware.

I was somewhat interested to learn, after reading Cicero's condemnation on this point, that Plotinus--the founder of Neoplatonism in the 3rd century AD--was adamant that his birthday not be celebrated, and that his portrait not be carved or painted;

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Plotinus, the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body.

So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.

He showed, too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a painter of a sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, 'Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desired spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?'

In view of this determined refusal Amelius brought his friend Carterius, the best artist of the day, to the Conferences, which were open to every comer, and saw to it that by long observation of the philosopher he caught his most striking personal traits. From the impressions thus stored in mind the artist drew a first sketch; Amelius made various suggestions towards bringing our the resemblance, and in this way, without the knowledge of Plotinus, the genius of Carterius gave us a lifelike portrait. [...] Counting sixty-six years back from the second year of Claudius, we can fix Plotinus' birth at the thirteenth year of Severus (A.D. 204-5); but he never disclosed the month or day. This was because he did not desire any birthday sacrifice or feast; yet he himself sacrificed on the traditional birthdays of Plato and of Socrates, afterwards giving a banquet at which every member of the circle who was able was expected to deliver an address.

--Porphyry, De Vita Plotini

Jehovah's Witnesses also refrain from the celebration of birthdays, and this includes declining to celebrate Christmas.

Another thing I'd like to discuss during this series is John Mason Good's introduction to his translation of Lucretius. He genuinely makes the claim that Lucretius believed in an intelligent creator, someone who set the atoms into motion. I'll post more on that after work.

Siege of Athens and Piraeus (87–86 BC) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

He encircled the city and the port. This would involve constructing a defensible palisade out of local timber, stone, brick, and whatever else was at hand.

Caesar's seige of Alesia is a well-attested example--there he used a double-encirclement, with the inner palisade protecting against sallies from the city itself and the outer palisade protecting against sympathetic armies that might try to lift the seige.

So Sulla's destruction of the Academy may have been incidental to his larger engineering project; he needed the trees and the rubble. I don't know one way or the other.

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Why don't you ever discuss "meaningfulness" because I've been convinced that's what I should want out of life?

The phrase "meaning of life" first appears in the record of the English language in 1834. 18 years after the invention of the heliotype, 3 years earlier than the invention of the telegraph.

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"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,—must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper?

"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,—should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors!—Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes—of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"

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there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him."

--Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

The meaning of this 'meaning of life' is as elusive as the claims of the snake-oil salesman, because that's exactly what it is; an imaginary cure to what is not, in fact, a disease. The 'disease' is explicitly atheism and hedonism, and to sell the cure one must first sell the idea that the disease is real and shameful. When they tell you that your life without gods is without meaning, they are you telling you to feel ashamed.

Don't.

In response to Cicero's question--'what happens to a society when everyone pursues pleasure as the goal'--I quoted the following from Christopher Hitchens;

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You find me a state or a society that threw off theocracy, and threw off religion. And said: ‘we adopt the teachings of Lucretius, and Democritus, and Galileo, and Spinoza, and Darwin, and Russell, and Jefferson, and Thomas Paine; and we make those what we teach our children. And we make that, scientific and rational humanism, our teaching.’ And you find me that state that did that and fell into tyranny, and slavery, and famine, and torture, and then we’ll be on a level playing field.

Since today (April 19th) is the anniversary of Lord Byron's death, I thought to include here several of his passages on pleasure and Epicureanism, which are mostly hostile;

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Thou mak’st philosophers; there’s Epicurus
And Aristippus, a material crew!
Who to immoral courses would allure us
By theories quite practicable too;
If only from the devil they would insure us,
How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new),
‘Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?’
So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.

* * *

His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their Aeneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.

Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with ‘Formosum Pastor Corydon.’

Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong,
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?

* * *

Man ’s a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
’Tis pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure;
Few mortals know what end they would be at,
But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,
The path is through perplexing ways, and when
The goal is gain’d, we die, you know—and then—

What then?—I do not know, no more do you—
And so good night.

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Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, Dies at 82

Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural…

www.nytimes.com

One of the less well-known among the so-called New Atheists, prof. Dennett has had a rich career working on problems relating to free will, evolutionary biology, and the origin of consciousness.

I actually haven't read any of his books, but I do pause to note his passing. When I was around the age of 16 and Youtube was then brand new, videos of him and others helped me navigate my way out of Catholicism.

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Ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ· τὸ δ’ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς.

I have used that in English as well. I once locked myself out of my apartment wearing shorts and flip flops in chilly weather, and had to walk fourteen blocks at night to my sister's place to get the spare key. I spent the time explaining the Tetrapharmakos to an imaginary audience in my head, and passed the time pleasantly enough.

I memorized it in Latin, and Latin Per Diem on YouTube is a great place to start. I do NOT read Latin. I can read this particular short section of this one text in Latin because I've worked on it, just like your average Catholic in the days before Vatican II could read the Nicene creed in Latin--engaged repitition and familiarity over time lends itself to understanding.

However, memorizing English texts is also helpful; in college I spent a good deal of time committing literature to memory, so that 15 years later I can still recall several pages of Tennyson, Keats, Frost, Burns and Shakespeare, among others. If you think about the hours and hours of song lyrics that most dedicated listeners can call upon, 75 lines of Lucretius is small potatoes, yet very rewarding.

My favorite verse translation is Rolfe Humphries. I'm less picky when it comes to prose.

The other question is one of risk; if I take risk x, it may provide both mild immediate pleasure and mild immediate pain, but the rest of the calculus is marked by an unavoidable ambiguity. The risk could either result in pleasureable success y, or painful failure z. Unlike a hangover, neither eventuality is easily predictable.

Looks great, thank you Cassius!

I think the linked article is quite good. I haven't read the whole series, but it's a promising start, heavy on quotations to the relevant source texts.

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Before we start exploring this conception of divinity and how it leads to the Epicurean ideal of friendship, we should clarify a few things: the object of this article is not to defend the existence of the Epicurean gods, for which there is obviously no evidence, nor point out any potential inconsistencies in their arguments concerning the gods.[4] In order to move forward, we can simply think of these gods as part of an ethical thought experiment that will lead to practical results on how we think about and experience our lives and our relationships.[5]

We start with a tentatively idealist approach to the question of the gods, which I think is more than fair. I know, for example, that a marble bust of Epicurus is of course not Epicurus himself, but it is nevertheless useful as a stimulant to thought and introspection. I'm happy to engage with the gods on this ground, and happy also to acknowledge that this is, for me, as far as it goes. The Iliad is a penetrating and insightful epic, resplendent with pride and pathos, even if every word of it is fiction; and I would be a beggarly wretch indeed if robbed of this and other literary majesties.

After some further comment, we get on to the bit about deconstructing our previous conceptions of the divine--and here I think there is a fork in the road. People are not all the same, and what works for one may be of little use to another; I think I am that kind of person for whom theory is more elemental, and even more real and tangible, than practice. This is paradox, of course, but I can summon to my defense in this case no other than the renowned Anglican apologist C. S. Lewis:

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I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

-On the Incarnation

As it happens, every word of this, right down to my former use of the tobacco pipe, is true to my experience.

Now I do not say that this is the best way to deconstruct one's former faith, but it is the one that works best for me. What we really need is an increased appreciation for the fact that people suffer and heal differently, stress and thrive differently, and that in the matter of a living philosophy one outline or summary or presentation rarely fits all.

All that being said, I think the article and the exercises are both good. (Again, I haven't read past the first linked page in the 5-part series.)

This is a long passage from Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, in which Ingrid D. Rowland's translation of Giordano Bruno takes to task the claim of divine providence by elevating it to the level of the absurd. It is very long, and I hope the 'spoiler' effect shortens it. In any case, it goes a long way toward deconstructing one of the central misconceptions of the gods, and the last paragraph is excellent.

Very cool! There are some good articles in that book, I'm happy to see it accessible to a wider audience!

I think this is a very interesting question, and any attempt at an answer will probably be frustrated by the lack of surviving evidence. It's true that the Greeks were a very sporting people; so much so that they quite literally set their clocks by it. The four year Olympiad, coupled with other lesser Panhellenic games, gave structure to their reckoning of years in much the same way that the Romans used Consulships, the English used reigns, and we use decades.

Tertullian, in his contemptible joy and relish upon imagining the fate of the damned in hell, derides various mainstays of Classical culture;

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How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? what my derision? Which sight gives me joy? which rouses me to exultation?--as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world's wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in ought that is sublunary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the [comic] play-actors, much more "dissolute" in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows; unless even then I shall not care to attend to such ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose fury vented itself against the Lord. (De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX)

This from the group that claims to have 'built Western civilization'.

Among the classes of people condemned by Tertullian, there were, of course, people who took to more than one discipline. Cleanthes, successor to Zeno, was a wrestler before he turned philosopher. Socrates, in an often paraphrased quotation from Xenophon's Memorabilia, had this to say;

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It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden.

Lucretius does have Epicurus 'lifting up his eyes', but to a different purpose;

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Humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret
in terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat
65horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra;
quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti
murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem
70inritat animi virtutem, effringere ut arta
naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret.

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When human life, all too conspicuous,
Lay foully groveling on earth, weighed down
By grim Religion looming from the skies,
Horribly threatening mortal men, a man,
A Greek, first raised his mortal eyes
Bravely against this menace. No report
Of gods, no lightning-flash, no thunder-peal
Made this man cower, but drove him all the more
With passionate manliness of mind and will
To be the first to spring the tight-barred gates
Of Nature’s hold asunder.

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I should rather, if I accuse anyone, accuse them of self-neglect who have been inattentive about sharpening their minds, the stakes are so much higher.

Epicurus may have been in ill health for a good part of his life, a sure sign of moral corruption to those who misconstrued man's relationship with nature.

Lucretius does mention bodily strength several times, most notably in Book 5 in his discussion of primitive humans, but there gain he comes back around to the faculty he deems more important;

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Kings began to build cities and to found citadels, to be for themselves a stronghold and a refuge; and they parceled out and gave flocks and fields to each man for his beauty or his strength or understanding; for beauty was then of much avail, and strength stood high. Thereafter property was invented and gold found, which easily robbed the strong and beautiful of honor; for, for the most part, however strong men are born, however beautiful their body, they follow the lead of the richer man. Yet if a man would steer his life by true reasoning, it is great riches to a man to live thriftily with calm mind; for never can he lack for a little.

The other side of the story is that people in Lucretius' day were likely far more active than most of us in developed countries today. I have no doubt than many an old bread-kneading and water-carrying granny could put my forearms to shame.

Some day I'll stop quoting Thoreau, but it is not this day;

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“If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!”

Your mileage may vary.

I felt I should bump this thread in honor of Albert Einstein's 145th birthday! See @Nate's post above for the English text of Enistein's introduction to a German edition of Lucretius.

This is an interesting document. The whole document seems to turn on the question of just and honorable authority. First, there is the connection between the names Timocrates and Timarchus.

τιμή- "Honor"

-κρατία "Power, Rule"

-ἀρχός "Ruler, leader, Prince"

In the story, Leontion shuns Epicurus for Timarchus, 'honorable ruler'. Timocrates, 'honorable power', comes to their defense. Epicurus, by contrast, is called Atreus, a king from a cursed royal House descended from the damned king Tantalus and reaching its climax in the aftermath of the Trojan war with Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra, and their children; among whom were Orestes and Iphiginia.

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The House of Atreus begins with Tantalus. Tantalus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto, enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience.

Tantalus' crime was partly murder, but also partly impiety. His punishment was to be vexed forever by terrible hunger and thirst.

Leontion calls upon Demeter to give her over to Timarchus. She chose the right goddess for the job, as Demeter, distracted as she was by the kidnapping of her daughter by Hades, was the only one at the table to consume a part of Pelops.

Atreus himself then repeats the evil deed;

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Atreus then learned of Thyestes' and Aerope's adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes' sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet.

So Epicurus is a stand-in for a bad ruler, from a cursed lineage of rulers, and a rival to Timarchus, 'honorable ruler', who has as she says the "juster claim".

And then we have the comparison of Epicurus and Pythocles to Socrates and Alcibiades;

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Plato presents Alcibiades as a youthful student and lover of Socrates who would, in time to come, be the ruin of Athens through his change of allegiance in war.[6] Because of the high level of esteem for the community in ancient Greece, Alcibiades’ betrayal of his fellow soldiers ensures that he is looked down upon in all of Plato’s writings.

In summary, Epicurus is an immoral and hedonistic ruler from a foul and accursed lineage, a lice-ridden and itchy lecher and pederast, a tyrant with his pupils, a threat as well as a laughingstock to the people of Athens, and a dotard who speaks neither like a citizen nor like a philosopher, but like a clown.

He is, in short, all bad things to all people. As satire goes this is a job well done, and Alciphron has been compared with Lucian on that front.

Since the letter is fictional and satirical, we can dismiss without evidence what has been asserted without evidence.

There might be something to this "no partisan politics" rule after all! It's a pity that the surviving correspondence between Atticus and Cicero is entirely one-sided, his viewpoint would be invaluable. We're also missing William Short's letters to Thomas Jefferson in which he declares himself to be an Epicurean.

Joshua created a new event:

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Death of Titus Pomponius Atticus, 32 BC

The death of Titus Pomponius Atticus;

[…]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Pomponius_Atticus

Sun, Mar 31st 2024

Joshua

March 3, 2024 at 11:16 AM

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The death of Titus Pomponius Atticus;

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Atticus lived out the remainder of his life in Rome. Just after his 77th birthday he fell ill, and at first his ailment appeared minor. But after three months his health suddenly deteriorated. Deciding to accelerate the inevitable, he abstained from ingesting any nourishment, starving himself to death, and dying on the fifth day of such fasting, "which was the 31st March, in the consulship of Cn. Domitius and C. Sosius", that is in the year 32 BC. He was buried at the family tomb located at the Fifth Mile of the Appian Way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Pomponius_Atticus