Posts by Joshua

Yes, it definitely dovetails with what DeWitt says about the Summum Bonum as it relates to pleasure and life. For clarity's sake it makes sense to say that pleasure is the highest good, but pleasure is inseparable from life both superficially (in the 'duh' sense) and at a very deep level.

I almost quibbled with the sentence "There is no Truth", except that by capitalizing the word the author makes a very important and, as I think, philosophically sound point; that capital-T "Truth" does not exist in the abstract apart from fact, physical nature, human understanding, etc.

I wouldn't dispense with the list altogether, it's too historically ingrained. But a prose version in parallel is definitely worthwhile.

I'd actually be curious to know what a trained classicist with no knowledge of the text would do with it if you handed them a lump of Greek capital letters with no numbering or paragraphs. But of course the first thing they would likely do is consult earlier scholarship.

Very interesting, thank you Eric!

You can look at the dates for that festival on the calendar at;

Calendar – Hellenion

It will occur in August on our calendar.

This Attic month (Hekatombaion) also includes the annual festival of the Panathenaea, which Don mentioned in his Video on the location of the Garden outside the walls of ancient Athens.

This being the third year of the Olympiad, the Pythian games would have commenced with the first full moon of the New Year, which will be August 1st. However, since the calendar is lunisolar, and the moon cycle changes relative to the solstice, there is some debate as to whether they would push it back another moon to wait out the harvest. Wikipedia says the games would occur in late August, which would coincide with the second full moon this year. Difficult to say--the Athenians would add an extra month every so often to bring the months back in line with the seasons.

There's an old rumor, by the way, that some of the Russian athletes were two weeks late to the 1908 Olympics because they were still using the Julian calendar and most of Europe was using the modern Gregorian calendar.

Both calendars are named after the potentates who instituted them, but of course it was the astronomers of each age who actually designed them--the Gregorian calendar by 16th century Italian astronomer and philosopher named Luigi Lilio, and the Julian calendar by the scholars at the Library and Museum of Alexandria.

That is one of the many things I learned spending too much time playing video games!

Horace, on his father;

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If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son. Satires 1.6.65–92

Joshua started a new event:

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Happy Athenian New Year!

Happy New Year! This is the first full day of the third year of the 700th Olympiad.

Wed, Jul 19th 2023

Joshua

July 16, 2023 at 7:35 PM

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Happy New Year! This is the first full day of the third year of the 700th Olympiad.

Joshua started a new event:

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The Sliver of the New Moon at Nightfall

The Attic New Year of the third year of the 700th Olympiad will commence with the sighting of the first sliver of the New Moon.

Tue, Jul 18th 2023, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm

Joshua

July 16, 2023 at 7:32 PM

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The Attic New Year of the third year of the 700th Olympiad will commence with the sighting of the first sliver of the New Moon.

Joshua started a new event:

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The First New Moon After the Summer Solstice

The modern attempt at reconstructing one of the ancient Attic Calendars has the New Year beginning with the month of Hekatombaion, and "with the first sighting of the new moon after the summer solstice. Ideally, the solstice would occur toward the end of Skirophorion, the final month of the year." That New Moon will occur on July 17th this year. The year has its start when the first sliver of the New Moon becomes visible.

The Calendar at Hellenion.org has the 1st of Hekatombaion taking place on…

Mon, Jul 17th 2023

Joshua

July 16, 2023 at 7:29 PM

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The modern attempt at reconstructing one of the ancient Attic Calendars has the New Year beginning with the month of Hekatombaion, and "with the first sighting of the new moon after the summer solstice. Ideally, the solstice would occur toward the end of Skirophorion, the final month of the year." That New Moon will occur on July 17th this year. The year has its start when the first sliver of the New Moon becomes visible.

The Calendar at Hellenion.org has the 1st of Hekatombaion taking place on Wednesday the 19th, though Tuesday the 18th after nightfall will mark the change. This coming year will be the 3rd year of the 700th Olympiad.

VS62 also relates to the issue of honesty and frankness of speech, and when it is best to hold back; "If the anger of parents against their children is justified, it is quite pointless for the children to resist it and to fail to ask forgiveness. If the anger is not justified but is unreasonable, it is folly for an irrational child to appeal to someone deaf to appeals and not to try to turn it aside in other directions by a display of good will."

Show Notes:

Footnote 22, and why it's easy to relate good news. Dewitt cites Exordium by the Athenian statesman Demosthenes:

Demosthenes, Exordia, exordium 54

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It is just and right and important, men of Athens, that we too should exercise care, as you are accustomed, that our relations with the gods shall be piously maintained. Therefore our commission has been duly discharged for you, for we have sacrificed to Zeus the Saviour and to Athena and to Victory, and these sacrifices have been auspicious and salutary for you. We have also sacrificed to Persuasion and to the Mother of the Gods and to Apollo, and here also we had favorable omens. And the sacrifices made to the other gods portended for you security and stability and prosperity and safety. Do you, therefore, accept the blessings which the gods bestow.

The Grey-Rock method; when honesty is not the best policy

When Dealing With a Narcissist, the “Gray Rock” Approach Might Help

Acting dull and uninteresting can undermine a narcissist’s attempts to control.

www.psychologytoday.com

Lucy Hutchinson on why she translated Lucretius, in her letter to the Earl of Anglesey

Full text | Lucy Hutchinson's letter to Lord Anglesey (1675)

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So I beseech your Lordship to reward my obedience, by indulging me the further honor to preserve, wherever your Lordship shall dispose this booke, this record with it, that I abhorre all the Atheismes and impieties in it, and translated it only out of youthfull curiositie, to understand things I heard so much discourse of at second hand, but without the least inclination to propagate any of the wicked pernitious doctrines in it.

On Shooting the Messenger;

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 An early literary citing of "killing the messenger" is in Plutarch's 'Lives': "The first messenger that gave notice of [the Roman general] Lucullus' coming was so far from pleasing [the Armenian king] Tigranes that he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man dared to bring further information. Without any intelligence at all, Tigranes sat while war was already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him".

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2, on the difficulty of frank speech:

CLEOPATRA

I dreamt there was an emperor Antony.

O, such another sleep, that I might see

But such another man.

DOLABELLA If it might please you—

CLEOPATRA

His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck

A sun and moon, which kept their course and

lighted

The little O, the Earth.

DOLABELLA Most sovereign creature—

CLEOPATRA

His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm

Crested the world. His voice was propertied

As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands

were

As plates dropped from his pocket.

DOLABELLA Cleopatra—

CLEOPATRA

Think you there was, or might be, such a man

As this I dreamt of?

DOLABELLA Gentle madam, no.

CLEOPATRA

You lie up to the hearing of the gods!

But if there be nor ever were one such,

It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff

To vie strange forms with fancy, yet t’ imagine

An Antony were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy,

Condemning shadows quite.

DOLABELLA Hear me, good madam.

Your loss is as yourself, great; and you bear it

As answering to the weight. Would I might never

O’ertake pursued success but I do feel,

By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites

My very heart at root.

CLEOPATRA I thank you, sir.

Know you what Caesar [Augustus] means to do with me?

DOLABELLA

I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.

CLEOPATRA

Nay, pray you, sir.

DOLABELLA Though he be honorable—

CLEOPATRA He’ll lead me, then, in triumph.

DOLABELLA Madam, he will. I know ’t.

"Natural philosophy", at least in the English of the 19th century, did not contain just physics but also botany (Joseph Banks), biology (Charles Darwin), geology (Charles Lyell), astronomy (Edwin Hubble), anatomy and physiology (Henry Gray), and so on.

Here I have fleshed out most of the middle of the pack, but neither the lower end--the inconstant Horace? The youthful Epicurean Virgil contrasted with the grave imperialist Stoic poet of his maturity?--nor, with the exception of Lucretius, the top of the class; Epicurus, Metrodorus, Hermarchus, Polyaenus.

I'll sketch out my thoughts, but I have nothing solid.

• Polyaenus: "a kindly and just man" (D. L.), and a mathematician. The scales of justice, and the Canon, or measuring rod, for the geometer gone "rogue"?
• Hermarchus: the rooster and the archway; the rooster was the Greek symbol of the island of Lesbos where Hermarchus was born, and in mythology was once a young soldier whom Ares had posted at the door of the room where he and Aphrodite were otherwise occupied (some Lucretian imagery there). When Hephaistos found them out, Ares cursed the young soldier by turning him into a rooster, to raise the alarm forever at the coming of day. Hermarchus was the successor to Epicurus in the garden--the sentinel posted during a period of transition, as represented by a garden archway.
• Metrodorus: the guttered candle and the double herm. Metrodorus was born in Lampsacus on the Hellespont, the same strait of water made famous in the story of Hero and Leander, who lived on opposite sides. Every night Hero would light her lamp, and Leander would use it as a guide to swim across the sea. One night the wind guttered the lamp, and Leander lost his way and drowned. The double-herm of Epicurus and Metrodorus represents their close connection, and the guttered candle his untimely death.
• Horace: the pig and goblet. "Fat and sleek", wine-sodden poet....you get the idea.
• Plotina: the dove and the diadem. The dove as a symbol of both Venus and peace (her intercession on behalf of the Epicurean school), the diadem signifying royalty

Epicurus himself. The trickiest of the lot. Personally I like ⟐ as previously proposed here on the forum (not by me), representing atoms (the dot), void (the empty space), and the tetrapharmakos (the four sides of the diamond, and the four surviving letters of the man himself--Herodotus, Pythocles, Menoeceus, and Idomeneus). Coins of Samos often featured a lion, but more typically a bull and peacock (symbols of patron goddess Hera), and an amphora of their legendary wine.

A boat or ferry, not to shepherd souls to the underworld, but to a life beyond fear of death; a skull or memento mori, a mortar and pestle, a piglet or wild boar, a fig tree or the myrtle of Aphrodite, an Ionic column, the shattered fetterlock, or the eye raised to the heavens as in Lucretius.

The greatest symbol of all was his own portrait.

Philodemus of Gadara

Proposed Emblems: Vesuvius and Papyrus

(Papyrus plants)

"To-morrow, dearest Piso, your friend, beloved by the Muses, who keeps our annual feast of the twentieth * invites you to come after the ninth hour to his simple cottage. If you miss udders and draughts of Chian wine, you will see at least sincere friends and you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians. But if you ever cast your eyes on me, Piso, we shall celebrate the twentieth richly instead of simply."

If Leontion's pencil in the metaphor came silver from the fire, it is all the more remarkable that Philodemus' scrolls survived it intact--the largest library of its kind to survive in one great lump from the ancient world.

Diogenes of Oenoanda

Proposed Emblems: Hammer, Chisel, Carven Stone

"Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a larger number of people, I wished to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test; for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute."

As a Roman-era evangelist of Epicureanism, Diogenes is second only to Lucretius in the scale of his ambition; but where the latter drew on his experience of nature to compose an intricate poem in the small hours by candlelight, the former staked out the contours of his project in the public square, hiring stonemasons to carve his inscription into a wall of rock.

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On a more prosaic note: is "dissolved" the most accurate English word? It's in most of the translations, but I keep associating it with dissolving something in water. Resolved into its elements, dispersed, dispersed into elements, broken down into atoms seem to work. Especially "dispersed into elements".

"Who ever saw his old clothes--his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less?" -Thoreau, Walden