Posts by Joshua

© 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

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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;

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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;

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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;

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[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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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.

In a forum thread from 2018, Cassius raised the question of authorship as to the translator of the prose edition of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura that was printed in London "for Daniel Brown (sometimes Browne), at the sign of the Black Swan without Temple-Bar." Cassius has prepared a copy of the text for the forum, derived from the PDF version at Internet Archive (archive.org).

The translation in question was printed with facing Latin and English text in two volumes, octavo size, "adorned with copper plates, curiously engraved by GUERNIER, and others". The copy that was digitized at Internet Archive was previously owned by American President John Adams, and is now in his collection at the Boston Public Library.

There has been a great deal of confusion about the identity of the translator. The ambiguity of the title page has led some, including later Lucretian scholar John Mason Good, to conclude that Guernier was himself the translator. This is certainly not the case; Louis du Guernier was a French engraver who relocated to England, and died "probably around 1735" at the latest. Furthermore, the translator in page v of his preface refers to English as "our language"; an odd thing to say for a Frenchman. No, this translation is not the work of du Guernier, and the true identity of the person responsible has never been known.

"I hated the very idea of the eighteenth century, with all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so dead keen on reason."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The two titans of English verse in the first half of the 18th century were the Englishman Alexander Pope and the Irishman Jonathan Swift. This period saw the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, a time which

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featured a range of social ideas centered on the value of knowledge learned by way of rationalism and of empiricism and political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity, constitutional government and the formal separation of church and state.

The previous century in England had been an eventful one. It started with the death of the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1603; a year after Shakespeare's Hamlet was first registered for publication. Following the unwed and childless Queen's death, her cousin King James VI of Scotland acceded to the throne of England as James I in the Union of the Crowns. The reign of King James VI and I saw the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a new translation of the Bible into English in 1611, the death of William Shakespeare in 1616, and the outbreak of the devastating Thirty Year's War in Europe in 1618. At his death in 1625, he was succeeded by his son Charles I.

The reign of Charles I saw the birth of John Dryden, England's first poet laureate, in 1631. The King quarreled extensively with Parliament over the limits of power, failed to quell surging religious factional resentments, provoked a Civil War which he lost, and was executed in 1649. Between his death and the restoration of his son Charles II in 1660, England fell under the control of dissident Puritans in a period known as the Interregnum. A republic was estblished called the Commonwealth of England, Oliver Cromwell took over as Lord Protector, and Lucy Hutchinson began work on the first translation of Lucretius into English.

The return of Charles II and the Restoration of the Monarchy followed the first general election in nearly twenty years. A general amnesty was proclaimed, but Cromwell's inner circle was exempted; Lucy Hutchinson's husband Col. John Hutchinson was among those exempted, and he was imprisoned and died in custody in 1664.

The following two years were disastrous;

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In 1665, the Great Plague of London began, peaking in September with up to 7,000 deaths per week. Charles, his family, and the court fled London in July to Salisbury; Parliament met in Oxford. Plague cases ebbed over the winter, and Charles returned to London in February 1666.

After a long spell of hot and dry weather through mid-1666, the Great Fire of London started on 2 September 1666 in Pudding Lane. Fanned by strong winds and fed by wood and fuel stockpiled for winter, the fire destroyed about 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral. Charles and his brother James joined and directed the firefighting effort. The public blamed Catholic conspirators for the fire.

-Wikipedia

In 1668, John Dryden was appointed Poet Laureate by the King. While Shakespeare and his contemporaries had preferred unrhymed iambic verse, John Dryden's work saw a return to the meter of Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales of the 14th century were written in Middle English in Heroic couplets. In a passage rich with allusions to Lucretius' hymn to Venus, Chaucer writes;

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Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So Priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

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John Dryden's own translation of Lucretius opens thus;

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Delight of humankind, and Gods above,
Parent of Rome; propitious Queen of Love,
Whose vital pow’r, Air, Earth, and Sea supplies,
And breeds what e’r is born beneath the rolling skies:
For every kind, by thy prolific might,
Springs, and beholds the regions of the light.
Thee, Goddess, thee the clouds and tempests fear,
And at thy pleasing presence disappear:
For thee the land in fragrant flow’rs is dress’d;
For thee the Ocean smiles, and smooths her wavy breast;
And heav’n it self with more serene and purer light is blest.
For when the rising Spring adorns the Mead,
And a new Scene of Nature stands display’d,
When teeming buds, and cheerful greens appear,
And Western gales unlock the lazy year:
The joyous Birds thy welcome first express;
Whose native Songs thy genial fire confess;
Then salvage Beasts bound o’re their slighted food,
Strook with thy darts, and tempt the raging flood.
All Nature is thy Gift; Earth, Air, and Sea:
Of all that breaths, the various progeny,
Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee.
O’re barren Mountains, o’re the flowery Plain,
The leafy Forest, and the liquid Main
Extends thy uncontroll’d and boundless reign.

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Dryden's influence on the poetry of the 18th century can hardly be overstated. Alexander Pope wrote that "Dryden taught to join / The varying pause, the full resounding line, / The long majestic march, and energy divine". Samuel Johnson recorded that "the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry".

Until the godsend publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798, heroic couplets would be the order of the day.

Blech.

It is perhaps not altogether unsurprising, then, that these 'smug men writing tight little couplets' had no appreciation for the new prose translations that were starting to come out. We will be looking at three such translations, all printed for Daniel Brown in London.

• "The Satires and Epistles of Horace, Done into English with Notes", in several editions, first printed in 1709; translated by Rev. Samuel Dunster, M.A. The second edition featuring Dunster's portrait appeared in 1712, and included Horace's Ars Poetica, or Art of Poetry.
• "The Satires of Juvenal Translated: with Explanatory and Classical Notes, Relating to the Laws and Customs of the Greeks and Romans". The second edition was printed for Daniel Brown in 1745.
• "T. Lucretius Carus of the Nature of Things, in Six Books. Illustrated with proper and useful notes. Adorned with copper plates, curiously engraved by Guernier, and others", printed in 1743.

The latter two translations were both published anonymously.

Alfred Tennyson, Lucretius

Horace, Ode I.34

I rather like the story of Ariadne, who challenged Athena to a weaving contest. In one telling of the myth, Ariadne wove a series of panels depicting all of the stories in which the gods had behaved barbarically to mortals. She hanged herself after the contest, but Athena was moved by her talent, and perhaps also by the righteousness of her indignation, and so turned Ariadne into a spider-- permitted to weave beautifully until the end of time.

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Joshua can you remind me what you said about the history of the question of the meaning of life?

The phrase meaning of life first appears in the record of English literature in a work of Thomas Carlyle called Sartor Resartus, published in 1833, and in the same text the speaker denounces atheism and hedonism.

Now if we take the telos of the greeks to signify 'meaning', the conversation is of course far older. I think this is a mistaken view of telos, but the real problem is that philosophical systems that value meaning are frequently vague about the term.

In my view, 'meaning' is nothing other than an alleged disease for which one purports to offer a cure. This blog (which I just discovered 5 seconds ago) is a nearly perfect explanation of my own view. Quote;

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I’d maintain that, based on my casual observation, very few people conceive of a “meaning” to their lives, but simply, when asked the question, confect one post facto. That is, if asked that question, I would blather on about science, my friends, teaching evolution, traveling and seeing the world to enlarge my experience, and so on. But what I am doing is simply articulating the things that I like to do. I never think of these as the “meaning” of my life. In fact, I never think about that at all.

The pursuit of "meaning" is itself meaningless, in exactly the same way that repenting of "sin" is meaningless. Meaning isn't real, sin isn't real, the thetans of Scientology aren't real. Don't allow yourself to be made distressed by things that aren't real!

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The modern science should take precedence over Epicurean metaphysics so far as the goal is to understand the nature of the universe to dispel fears, but Epicurean metaphysics should be also be given due consideration so far as to understand the Epicurean thought and it's implications on the rest of his philosophy.

I'm happy to see you've isolated this point of tension, and I think the approach is a good one. We've been talking a lot about prolepsis lately and I think in order to understand that we need to understand what Epicurus also had to say about the nature of the soul, about 'films', 'images', or 'eidola', and much more.

Epicurus certainly knew that humans would gradually acquire more and better knowledge about the cosmos, and that, as he suggests in the Letter to Pythocles, we should withhold judgment in certain areas where our knowledge is still tentative at best.

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks Cassius !

Quote from Bryan

Hello Remus, welcome!

I am not familiar with the Memoria Press version, but I would like to recommend Hans H. Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata series (link). Everything is in Latin from the beginning, but illustrated and simple.

Ha! I had already grabbed a link to drop here before I saw your post.

I, too, recommend this as the best introduction. I also recommend reading the late Prof. William Harris' Homeric Prolegomena, but since his website at Middlebury College seems to be no longer operational, I'll see if I can attach a copy.

It seems the PDF is too large. Here is a download link;

Wormhole - Simple, private file sharing

Wormhole lets you share files with end-to-end encryption and a link that automatically expires.

wormhole.app

Note to Cassius , it would be good to have a copy of this on the filebase here at the forum.

We discussed this very briefly in September in this thread, maybe we can combine that thread into this one.

Something like that!

Looks great!

I'm reminded of a guy several years ago on the Stoicism subreddit. He got--or thought he got--a tattoo of Epictetus, but the bust he chose was actually one of Epicurus 😁

And I can't resist this poem from Robert Frost!

The three books I can think of that are absent from your list are;

• A Few Days in Athens by Frances Wright, a fictional story set in the Garden
• Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom by David Sedley, an in depth exploration of how Lucretius interpreted Epicurus
• The Sculpted Word by Bernard Frischer, a study of Epicurean bronzes and marbles from the ancient world

I would also glance over the following essays/lectures/letters and see if they catch your eye;

• John Tyndall's Belfast Address
• An essay on Lucretius from George Santayana's Three Philosophical Poets
• Prof. Ian Johnston's Lecture on Lucretius
• Lucy Hutchinson's Letter to the Earl of Anglesey, disavowing her very early translation of Lucretius

And it's sometimes fruitful to read the introductions to the various translations, even if you have no intention of reading the translation itself.

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But Lucretius was not a mere poet, casting into graceful language the interesting results of thought. He was a real student both of nature and man, and from his stores of information we may learn not only his errors but the happy guesses and pregnant suggestions of ancient science. Thus, for instance, his doctrines of elemental atoms and images have a real relation to the more substantial theories of modern times. Moreover, the questions vitally affecting the position of man in the world, which are suggested or discussed by Lucretius, are parallel to questions which have risen into prominence in connection with the increasing study of nature. Most conspicuous among these, is the relation of physical inquiry to religious belief. Objections were urged against such inquiry in ancient times, on the ground of its impiety and unbelief. Just as there are found in modern times those who reprobate the audacity and insufficiency of reason, there were those in the time of Lucretius who denounced the inquiries into physical phenomena as dishonoring immortal things by mortal words.

The views of Lucretius on the nature and origin of life, the progressive advance of man from the rudest condition, by the exercise of his senses and accumulated experience, his denial of final causes, his resolution of all knowledge into the intimations of sense, his materialism and consequent denial of immortality, and his utilitarianism in morals, all present striking parallels to the opinions of one of the great schools of modern thought, and one passage on the preservation and destruction of species looks like a faint poetic anticipation of a theory which has attracted much notice in the present day.

I can cite this example from Charles Frederick Johnson, published 11 years after Darwin's Origin of Species, when questions relating to teleology in nature were more urgent than they seem to us now. When Lucretius writes about the development of the eye and other organs, it's easy to gloss over what is really a full frontal assault against Aristotle. I probably wouldn't have picked up on that before reading this passage from Johnson.

Then there is this paragraph from Cyril Bailey;

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But it would be the greatest mistake to think of Lucretius or his master as the author of a mere polemic against religion. Still less is Epicurus justly represented—as has sometimes been the case—as patching together from various sources a crude piecemeal view of the world to combat superstition and afford a plausible basis for a moral theory of doubtful moral tendency. If there is one point that modern work at Epicureanism tends to reveal, it is that it was a serious philosophy, a consistent whole derived from a single starting-point and following step by step with logical precision. As such Lucretius had learnt it, and as such he intended to present it, and many of the difficulties which modern critics have found in his detail, many of the puerilities at which they have scoffed, are to be explained by the perfectly consistent and relentless application of his fundamental principles. He has seemed trivial or inconsistent or obscure to his critics, because they would not take him seriously enough.

So there is occasionally good fruit in these introductions (which are, I'll be the first to admit, just as often repetitive and tiresome). I don't have a favorite, but John Mason Good's is singularly bad.

Thank you Godfrey, it is Inspire, not Aspire

I do see it--between 'Aspire Red' and 'Modern Flat UI'.

😬

I did discover poking around in DRN the other day that Yellow River could be translated as flauus fluuius in Latin, which gave me no end of pleasure!

I have started a thread summarizing my current understanding of this issue here, and I will try to keep the top post there as accurate and up to date as I can.

In a thread started by Cassius in December of 2021, it was noted that David Sedley makes reference to a bust of Zeno of Sidon. Sedley relates the story of the discovery of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, and on page 96 he writes;

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"As Piaggio's work proceeded with agonising slowness, excitement mounted in the learned circles of Europe. There were expectations of a second Renaissance. Surely the lost poetry of Sappho, or some exquisite play by Menander, was about to come to light. These expectations turned to bafflement and disappointment when rumours started to emerge from Piaggio's workshop at Portici that the first columns deciphered contained a Greek prose text in which harmful effects of music were criticised. A flattering mention of 'Zeno' led to reports that the author was a Stoic. But when after nearly two years the unrolling was completed, the title given at the end turned out to be 'Philodemus, On music', and this Philodemus was soon identified as the Epicurean philosopher of that name, already known as the author of some attractive epigrams. The Zeno whom he praised was not the Stoic Zeno of Citium, but the Epicurean Zeno of Sidon, whose bust was among those found in the villa's library. It has since come to be generally accepted that the library was that of Philodemus' school."

--page 96, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, by David Sedley

The bust in question is in bronze, and the name ΖΗΝΩΝ is inscribed on a round base.

File:Zeno - portrait for a library, Colosseum.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

This photograph of the bust, released by the photographer into the public domain, is accompanied by a citation directing the reader to The Sculpted Word, Bernard Frischer's seminal text on Epicurean iconography. In footnote 100 on page 123 Frischer writes;

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"The same method [of identifying Epicurean busts by their marked resemblance to Epicurus himself] applied, e.g., to the problem of whether the bust of Zeno found in the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum represents the famous Stoic philosopher or his later Epicurean namesake confirms the communis opinio that it is the former, not the later, since this Zeno does not look at all like an Epicurean."

Frischer offers several citations to follow up on this line of inquiry (Richter; Schefold; F. Poulsen; Pandermalis). I shall try to examine these sources in time, and keep this post up to date.

The bust found in Herculaneum does bear an unmistakable resemblance to another bust, this one discovered in Italy and thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original.

File:Paolo Monti - Servizio fotografico (Napoli, 1969) - BEIC 6353768.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

File:Zeno of Citium - Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

Both of the above photographs are released under a Creative Commons license.

Category:Zeno of Citium bust, Farnese collection (Naples) - Wikimedia Commons

This bust, certainly the most famous bust alleged to be of Zeno of Citium, likewise bears the inscription ΖΗΝΩΝ. The second link includes a note that runs as follows;

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Marble bust of Zeno of Citium. Farnese Collection, National Archaeological Museum of Naples (cat. no. 6128). By comparison with the bronze bust from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, it was established that this portrait is that of the Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium, and not Zeno of Elea or Zeno of Sidon.

You can view the more detailed timeline compiled by Eikadistes  here.

Zeno of Elea (c.490-c.430 BC) was a pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century in the Eleatic school, and was a student of Parmenides. He is notable for his work on paradoxes.

Zeno of Citium (c.334-c.262 BC), the founder of Stoicism, was an approximate contemporary of Epicurus, younger than him by perhaps seven years and outliving him by perhaps 8 years.

Zeno of Sidon (c. 150-c.75 BC ) was the seventh Scholarch of the Epicurean Garden just outside Athens, excluding both Epicurus and Metrodorus (who predeceased the founder). When Philodemus was a young man, it was the scholarch Zeno who trained him in philosophy, and Cicero himself heard Zeno lecture when the future statesman was in his twenties.

Wikipedia has a disambiguation page listing other notable figures from the ancient world sharing the name Zeno.

Given my historically lax approach to completing research tasks, Cassius has wisely suggested that I start a thread to get the basic facts on record and invite assistance and commentary. I am not on the point of suggesting that the two busts in question are portraits of Zeno of Sidon, and not Zeno of Citium as has been alleged. But I am suggesting that the opinion of Bernard Frischer and those he cites should not necessarily be taken as the last word on the subject. Neither bust can be positively identified with either philosopher; it is a question of weighing the circumstantial evidence, and remaining open to any fresh evidence that should come to light. The praxis of identifying hitherto unknown Epicurean busts and icons by studying them in comparison with known Epicurean busts and icons offers one such line of circumstantial evidence.

Another line of inquiry may place more emphasis on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the bronze bust; 1.) in a villa owned by an Epicurean, 2.) in a specialized library in that villa, devoted to housing the scrolls of Philodemus, and to the philosophy of Epicurus, and 3.) bearing an inscription of a name held in high esteem by the author of those scrolls and the students of that philosophy.

There remain several gaps in my knowledge, which I list here in no particular order.

• How do we account for the 122 years between the death of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, owner of the villa and patron of Philodemus, and the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD that led to the preservation of the library and busts? Who owned the villa after he died, and why did they preserve the library?
• Are there any busts known to depict Zeno of Elea?
• Do the sources cited by Frischer go deeper in their analysis than he does in the footnote quoted above?

So I naturally assumed that there was a bust known with certainty to be that of Zeno of Citium, but the fact is that apart from the inscription Ζήνων there is no positive identification on any of them to suggest which of the philosophers who held that name were sculpted. It could be Zeno of Citium, Zeno of Sidon, or Zeno of Elea (student of Parmenides and author of Zeno's Paradox).

Piso died in Italy ~30 years after Zeno of Sidon died in Athens. There are 122 years between Piso and Vesuvius--who lived there in the meantime? Why did they preserve Philodemus' library? Were they Epicurean? If so, why is there a bust of the founder of Stoicism in the Villa? Perhaps Piso or his successors thought it was Zeno of Sidon.

I'll need to review Frischer's book. This kind of blows my mind--Philodemus studied under Zeno of Sidon, a bust of someone named Zeno is in the Villa that houses his library, and yet the whole world over knows it as a bust of Zeno of Citium...because it doesnt look Epicurean enough! If Bernard Frischer's is the last word on this subject, I don't think this investigation is over yet.

https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/villa_papiri/downloads/villa_papyri_objects.pdf

This PDF from the Getty Museum (page 14) suggests that a bust of Zeno of Citium might have been mistaken for a bust of Zeno of Sidon.

Edit; This text mentions a bust of Zeno of Sidon (control+f search 'sidon').

And this page from Wikimedia Commons quotes Bernard Frischer of The Sculpted Word as writing that "this Zeno does not look at all like an Epicurean."