Posts by Joshua

Regarding pronunciation, what you'll hear is that Latin had a very regular phonology. Each letter makes one sound. The C is a K sound, never an S sound--G is always hard as in 'got', never like J as in 'gentle'.

I don't know if that's true, and it's slightly beside the point anyway. There are a series of long-standing conventions regarding the English pronunciation of Latin names and words, and even these conventions vary between English speaking countries. And some of them are outdated but not thoroughly so, adding to the confusion. For example, it was once thought proper to anglicize Tullius into Tully, and Plinius into Pliny. But Tully has generally been dropped in favor of Cicero, and Pliny has been kept.

So even if Latin phonology is highly regular, English pronunciation of those words and names is scattershot. We say Seezer instead of Kaiser, but Carpay instead of Sarpay.

And for the record, I have never not heard it pronounced ORE-eh-gin (...and tonic)

Quote

I actually think Horace has some lovely descriptions of friendship and wider Epicurean concerns in his works, so I'd argue against him being to blame. Here he is on friendship, from Satire 1.3

Horace is devilishly difficult to pin down, unfortunately. But first, a chronology;

[Assassination of Caesar, 44 BC]

[Battle of Philippi, 42 BC]

[Lepidus Exiled, 36 BC]

Satires 1 (c. 35–34 BC)

[Battle of Actium, 31 BC]

Satires 2 (c. 30 BC)

Epodes (30 BC)

[Reign of Augustus Begins, 27 BC, followed by military adventuring. Returns to Rome 24 BC]

Odes 1–3 (c. 23 BC)

Epistles 1 (c. 21 BC)

Carmen Saeculare (17 BC)

Epistles 2 (c. 11 BC)

Odes 4 (c. 11 BC)

Ars Poetica (c. 10–8 BC)

Now then. Between Philippi and Actium Horace wrote his first book of Satires, with distinct Epicurean themes and borrowed Lucretian diction; according to Wikipedia, "Lucretian stock phrases such as nunc ad rem redeo ("now I return to the matter at hand") give Horace's philosophical "conversations" (Sermones) a subtly Lucretian flavor." In the fifth Satire of the first book, he paraphrases the Epicureans on the nature of the gods;

Quote

Hence we came to Rubi, fatigued: because we made a long journey, and it was rendered still more troublesome by the rains. Next day the weather was better, the road worse, even to the very walls of Barium that abounds in fish. In the next place Egnatia, which [seems to have] been built on troubled waters, gave us occasion for jests and laughter; for they wanted to persuade us, that at this sacred portal the incense melted without fire. The Jew Apella may believe this, not I. For I have learned, that the gods dwell in a state of tranquillity; nor, if nature effect any wonder, that the anxious gods send it from the high canopy of the heavens.

In 30 BC come the Epodes, and the ninth in the set has Horace (a former officer in the Republican Army) toasting assiduously the victory of Octavian at Actium, and likewise condemning Cleopatra as an Egyptian seductress when she was, in fact, a Macedonian heiress and a student of several languages who conversed with her Latin conquerors in Greek.

Quote

When, O happy Maecenas, shall I, overjoyed at Caesar's being victorious, drink with you under the stately dome (for so it pleases Jove) the Caecuban reserved for festal entertainments, while the lyre plays a tune, accompanied with flutes, that in the Doric, these in the Phrygian measure? As lately, when the Neptunian admiral, driven from the sea, and his navy burned, fled, after having menaced those chains to Rome, which, like a friend, he had taken off from perfidious slaves. The Roman soldiers (alas! ye, our posterity, will deny the fact), enslaved to a woman, carry palisadoes and arms, and can be subservient to haggard eunuchs; and among the military standards, oh shame! the sun beholds an [Egyptian] canopy.

Following Augustus' return to Rome in 24 BC as Imperator, Horace published his first book of Odes and begins in the same vein;

Quote

[...] If thou, the winged son of gentle Maia, by changing thy figure, personate a youth upon earth, submitting to be called the avenger of Caesar; late mayest thou return to the skies, and long mayest thou joyously be present to the Roman people; nor may an untimely blast transport thee from us, offended at our crimes. Here mayest thou rather delight in magnificent triumphs, and to be called father and prince: nor suffer the Parthians with impunity to make incursions, you, O Caesar, being our general.

And in the 34th Ode in the same book, there is a direct repudiation of Lucretius. In his sixth book, Lucretius strove by several arguments to make the case that lightning did not come from the gods. One of the arguments he made was that if lightning came from Jupiter, then Jupiter had no need of cloud to let fly the bolt--so why is it that lightning is not seen on a cloudless day?

"But if Jupiter and other gods shake

bright heavenly spaces with dreadful noise

and hurl down fire to any place at all,

according to what each of them desires,

why do they not see to it that those men

who in their recklessness have committed

abominable acts are struck and stink

of lightning fires from hearts pierced by the bolt,

a bitter precedent for mortal men?

Why instead is the man who is aware

he himself has committed no wrong act

in his innocence entangled and wrapped

in flames, snatched up in fiery hurricanes

suddenly sent down from heaven? Besides,

why do they target isolated places

and work so hard for nothing? Or are they

exercising limbs, toning their muscles?

Why do they allow their father’s weapon

to be blunted on the earth? Why does he

let that happen and not save the lightning

for his enemies? Why does Jupiter

never hurl down his lightning bolt on earth

or let his thunder peal when skies are clear

in all directions? Or as soon as clouds

appear, does he himself go down to them,

so that from there he may guide the impact

his weapons make from close at hand? And why

does he send them into the sea? What charges

does he bring against that liquid mass of waves,

those fields of water? And if he wants us

to beware the stroke of his thunderbolt,

why is he reluctant to arrange things

so we can see it as he hurls it down?

But if he wishes to overwhelm us

with his lightning when we are unaware,

why does he thunder from that area,

so we can guard against it? Why does he

first stir up darkness, noises, and rumbling?

And how can you believe he discharges

lightning to many places all at once?

Would you dare to say it never happens

that many strikes occur at the same time?

But that has happened very frequently

and must take place—just as rain and showers

fall in many spots, so numerous thunderbolts

are formed at the same time. And finally,

why does he destroy the sacred temples

of the gods and his own splendid dwellings

with hostile lightning and smash to pieces

well fashioned idols of the gods, robbing

his own images of their dignity

with a violent wound? Why for the most part

does he aim at high places, for we see

most traces of his fire on mountain tops?"

I cannot claim to know why or what it means, but Horace latches on to this argument in order to make the reverse case; lightning has struck on a cloudless day, therefore Lucretius was wrong about the gods. To tell the truth, it's always difficult to know with Horace whether he's being completely serious. But the final quote that I will share here is often repeated, and this Ode seldom taken into consideration;

Quote

A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken. The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed it on another.

What's strange is that two years later he publishes his first book of epistles, and with it the most famous Epicurean quote in his whole body of work.

Quote

Albius, thou candid critic of my discourses, what shall I say you are now doing in the country about Pedum? Writing what may excel the works of Cassius Parmensis; or sauntering silently among the healthful groves, concerning yourself about every thing worthy a wise and good man? You were not a body without a mind. The gods have given you a beautiful form, the gods [have given] you wealth, and the faculty of enjoying it.

What greater blessing could a nurse solicit for her beloved child, than that he might be wise, and able to express his sentiments; and that respect, reputation, health might happen to him in abundance, and decent living, with a never-failing purse?

In the midst of hope and care, in the midst of fears and disquietudes, think every day that shines upon you is the last. [Thus] the hour, which shall not be expected, will come upon you an agreeable addition.

When you have a mind to laugh, you shall see me fat and sleek with good keeping, a hog of Epicurus' herd.

It is noteworthy that this reference to Epicurus comes immediately on the heels of a short passage on death. Perhaps that was the connection with Epicureanism that mattered to him most.

Thank you both, that is an excellent suggestion!

H. G. Wells; The New Machiavelli; 1911; An autobiographical novel whose themes (according to Wikipedia) are sex and politics, and whose chief polemical target was Victorian and Edwardian moralism.

Quote

And we also began, it was certainly before we were sixteen, to write, for the sake of writing. We liked writing. We had discovered Lamb and the best of the middle articles in such weeklies as the SATURDAY GAZETTE, and we imitated them. Our minds were full of dim uncertain things we wanted to drag out into the light of expression. Britten had got hold of IN MEMORIAM, and I had disinterred Pope's ESSAY ON MAN and RABBI BEN EZRA, and these things had set our theological and cosmic solicitudes talking. I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, I know, when he and I walked along the Thames Embankment confessing shamefully to one another that we had never read Lucretius. We thought every one who mattered had read Lucretius.

Yes, this is the fresco in question. At the center top is St. Augustine. At his right hand is the original ΙΧΘΥΣ symbol--a wheel of eight spokes made by combining the 5 letters together (but with a Lunate Sigma--C instead of Σ). This design evidently predates the fish symbol, and it has been argued that the resulting circle was so made because it looks like bread.

At his left hand is a representation of the 10 celestial spheres, and below it the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Epicurus is on the far right, in maroon or burgundy--you can just make out part of his name. And because I hate to leave the reader with a load of drivel, here's Thoreau;

Quote

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

Thank you for letting us know, AaronSF! We'll have to go through and fix those this week.

Thank you, Don! I thought it was written relatively late, but no one should be surprised by my ignorance of biblical chronology at this point...

Christopher Hitchens on Hellenized Judaism

Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness.

High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." How do such...

slate.com

Quote

Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or “Epicurean”—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah.

Don's video on the location of the garden;

Nate's map of ancient Epicurean communities;

Thread

Epicurean Communities of the Ancient World

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/2790/

School at LAMPSACUS (modern Northwestern Turkey) Founded by Epicurus

The GARDEN (O KHΠOΣ) of ATHENS (Central Greece) Founded by Epicurus

Community in CORINTH (Peloponnese peninsula, Greece)

Community in CHALCIS (Euboea island, Greece)

Community in THEBES (Boeotia, Central Greece)

Community in THESSALONIKI (Macedonia region, Greece)

Community in KOS (Southeastern island of Greece)

School at RHODES (Southeastern island of Greece)

School at AMASTRIS (Northern…

Eikadistes

June 6, 2022 at 4:34 PM

Correction; Ecclesiastes is not the last book of the Old Testament.

At around 38:40 I accidentally said "Cicero" instead of "Horace". Mea Culpa!

Quote

An educated young Roman could begin military service high in the ranks and Horace was made tribunus militum (one of six senior officers of a typical legion), a post usually reserved for men of senatorial or equestrian rank and which seems to have inspired jealousy among his well-born confederates.[24][25] He learned the basics of military life while on the march, particularly in the wilds of northern Greece, whose rugged scenery became a backdrop to some of his later poems.

-Wikipedia

That is a fascinating story, Godfrey.

Quote

He responded, while noticeably tensing up, that an afterlife was "a line in the sand" for him: he couldn't consider any philosophy as legitimate that didn't include an afterlife.

I also have a line in the sand, which I have called "the principle of the cockroach"; any account of humanity and its fate that fails to take into account other species of animal (of which we are one) must necessarily be incomplete.

I was reading Macbeth last night and was struck by these lines (written about an executed traitor, but never the less);

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it. He died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he [owned]

As ’twere a careless trifle.

To be a student of one's own mortality, and neither dreading the day nor wishing for it, is a consistent theme in Epicurean texts.

Quote

I'm curious what y'all think about this question, "What place do games have in Epicurean philosophy?"

I think that's a very good question, though it may be difficult to answer fully--although I think Don's answer settles the main point.

The Greeks were to a remarkable extent a gaming civilization--so much so that they literally set their calendars by it. They valued their games--Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean, and other local affairs--for some of the same reasons we do; in the first place, because they helped to foster a unified and pan-Hellenic cultural identity. They aided in cultivating good relationships between City States.

In a remarkable passage in Xenophon's Anabasis, a mercenary army of 10,000 free Greeks that has just been marching for months overland across the whole length and breadth of hostile Persia finally reaches safety in the Greek colonies on the coast of the Black Sea, and they celebrate their immense good fortune by playing games! Extraordinary! I think if it were me I would have collapsed in a chair and not stirred for three months. The ended a forced march across difficult and dangerous terrain by celebrating with foot races, wrestling, discus and javelin.

So what did Epicurus think about all of this? On the question of Epicurus' alleged rejection of Greek culture Norman DeWitt has this to say;

Quote

This Platonic program consisted of music and gymnastic, inherited

from the Athenian past; of rhetoric, which had been introduced by the

sophists; and of dialectic and mathematics, especially geometry, which

were the addition of Plato himself.

Toward every component of this prevailing education the attitude of

Epicurus was determined by the nature of the objective adopted for his

own program. This objective was not the production of a good citizen

but a happy and contented man. For practical purposes this happiness

was defined as health of mind and health of body. The famous prayer

for mens Sana in corpore sano, “a sound mind in a sound body,” recom¬

mended by Juvenal, is genuine Epicureanism.

This being the case, there was no reason for rejecting physical training,

and approval of it was the easier not only because the laws required

it — and Epicurus recommended obedience to the laws — but also for the

reason that the amateur athlete and the citizen soldier were being

replaced by the professional athlete and the professional soldier. Thus

the rigors of the required exercises could be relaxed.

As for music, there need be little doubt that the approval of Epicurus

was enthusiastic. His own capacity for appreciating good music seems to

have been keen. It is told of him that he would arise early in the morning

and trudge to the theater to enjoy the performance

Display More

And then are there the tabletop games of Ancient Greece, most of which were distinguished by the common feature of gambling on chance. I suspect that Epicurus would have cautioned against gambling, though of course I don't know that.

In any case, playing a game for the game's own sake is a very human pasttime, enjoyed among friends, and yielding pleasure--and for those reasons is very much worth doing. Play like the Greeks!

DeWitt can be intentionally classicizing in his prose, as here in his description of Canada:

Since he published this article in The Classical Weekly his intended readers cannot have failed to notice the allusion. It is to Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico, "Of the War in Gaul":

Quote

All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws.

What exactly did he mean to convey by this? Perhaps that Canada and its partially French (i.e. Gallic) heritage stand in relation to a southern empire governed as a republic, and that both province and empire are removed from the real seat of culture--for Rome, Greece; for North America, Europe.

The University of Toronto from which he writes is then a frontier outpost of Classical studies with only a nominal connection to the old ways, and has a decision to make about its future. Much like the New England of the preceding century--the New England of Emerson and Thoreau and their classically trained fellows.

Quote

Are the Latin translations varying dramatically such as modern translations of Lucretius into English do, or do they tend to be largely latin word for latin word consistent?

That's a good question that I don't have an answer to. In one of Poggio's letters to Niccolo Niccoli, the writer apologizes for his style--he was stuck in England reading Ecclesiastical Latin and did not, at the time, have access to the high Classical Latin of Cicero, Varro, Lucretius, Virgil, etc. So a Poggio or a Niccoli at the height of their powers would have attempted as far as possible to consciously imitate the style of the Late Republic, while many of their contemporaries will have written in a less polished register. This difference would affect everything from grammar and sentence structure to diction and spelling.

Montaigne, whose native language was Latin due to an unusual upbringing, complained that the Latin of the Renaissance had fallen so far below that of its antecedents.

Quote

When I consider this, reiicit, pascit, inhians, molli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and this noble circumfusa, mother of gentle infusus, I am vexed at these small points and verball allusions, which since have sprung up. To those well-meaning [ancient] people there needed no sharpe encounter or witty equivocation: their speech is altogether full and massie, with a naturall and constant vigor: they are all epigram, not only taile, but head, stomacke, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing wrested, nothing limping; all marcheth with like tenour.

He was referring to this passage from Lucretius:

-----belli fera munera Mavors

Armipotens regit, in gremium qui saepe tuum se

Reiicit, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris:

Pascit amore aridos inhians in te Dea visus,

Eque tuo endet resupini spiritus ore:

Hunc tu Diva tuo recubantem corpore sancto

Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas

Funde.

Mars, mighty arm'd, rules the fierce feats of armes,

Yet often casts himselfe into thine armes,

Oblig'd thereto by endlesse wounds of love,

Gaping on thee feeds greedy sight with love,

His breath hangs at thy mouth who upward lies,

Goddesse thou circling him, while he so lies,

With thy celestiall body, speeches sweet

Montaigne continues:

Quote

This is not a soft quaint eloquence, and only without offence; it is sinnowie, materiall, and solid; not so much delighting, as filling and ravishing, and ravisheth most the strongest wits, the wittiest conceits. When I behold these gallant formes of expressing, so lively, so nimble, so deepe, I say not this is to speake well, but to think well.

Translated into English by John Florio, 1603.

Yeah, the transmission of Greek texts from the Arab world back into Europe where Latin was the lingua franca of the educated meant that there was a great desire to translate Greek into Latin.

The great printer and book maker Aldus Manutius (c. 1450 to 1515) wrote that part of his goal was to "inundate the reading public with Greek" and not settle for Latin translation. He felt that too many people were relying on Latin translations.

Regarding suavity, Lucretius uses it in reference to 'sweet flowers'.

tibi suavis daedala tellus summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.

My rough translation:

"For you the clever Earth sends forth sweet flowers, for you laugh the waves of the sea, and the calm sky shines with diffuse light."

It was Pietro Redondi who put forward the thesis that atomism was at the center of the Galileo Trial because of its inherent challenge to the Eucharist. As I said, it is a very controversial claim. It is known that Galileo got into trouble with the Jesuits over atomism before his trial.

Good questions! I usually quote Johnston because it's easy to search for key-words and copy/paste. Perseus is a great resource but the chunks of text are often too small and it can be difficult to select text on mobile (although there are workarounds).

I also find Stallings to be a bit distracting, but some people are drawn to her style. My favorite verse translation is Rolfe Humphries, but he admits in his introduction that his focus was to capture the flavor of the poem rather than a literal rendition, which I think he succeeds at.

My best general advice for reading Lucretius is that contextualizing the poem can stave off boredom--we're so familiar with the idea that the earth is extremely old, that the universe is incomprehensibly large and ancient, that matter is made of little particles, that other worlds might potentially harbor life, and that nature is capable of sustaining a vacuum that reading about them in an old poem can seem rather dull. But if keep in mind how revolutionary these ideas really were, I think we can still capture a little bit of the magic.