Posts by Joshua

Last words of Brutus:

Note on the Last Words of Brutus – From Cassius Dio, Not Plutarch – NewEpicurean

And of course Lucretius, who starts his poem by asking Venus for the blessings of peace:

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Pour from those lips soft syllables to win

Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!

For in a season troublous to the state

Neither may I attend this task of mine

With thought untroubled, nor mid such events

The illustrious scion of the Memmian house

Neglect the civic cause.

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If Lucretius did die in 50 B.C. or just before that, then he narrowly escaped the seismic and bloody Roman Civil Wars of the 1st and 2nd triumvirates, 49-44 B.C.

In retrospect his plaintive call for peace on the eve of bitter war begins to assume dramatic and even tragic proportions.

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There remains a twofold question:

Are there (in the classical Epicurean corpus) any similar affirmative statements on: 1) where reasonably possible, to prevent or stop wrongful harm from being done to another (particularly someone outside our immediate friendship circle); and 2) to foster social conditions that are conducive to maximizing the possibility for enjoyment/pleasure by most people (including those that may be on the socioeconomic margins)?

Now these are somewhat more interesting questions at least to me. Per usual with Epicurus we are left with observations rather than commandments, as here;

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PD39: He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance.

And here;

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Diogenes of Oenoanda: So (to reiterate what I was saying) observing that these people are in this predicament, I bewailed their behaviour and wept over the wasting of their lives, and I considered it the responsibility of a good man to give benevolent assistance, to the utmost of one's ability, to those of them who are well-constituted. This is the first reason for the inscription.

Dioges of Oenoanda is generally the most explicit when it comes to answering your questions, Pacatus.

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I wanted, before being overtaken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But, as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep) moreover, it is right to help also generations to come (for they too belong to us, though they are still unborn) and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here.

VS10. Μέμνησο ὅτι θνητὸς ὧν τῇ φύσει καὶ λαβὼν χρόνον ὡρισμένον ἀνέβης τοῖς περὶ φύσεως διαλογισμοῖς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀπειρίαν καὶ τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ κατεῖδες τά τ᾽ ἐόντα τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα.

Bailey: "Remember that you are of mortal nature and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on nature for all time and eternity and have seen ‘things that are now and are to come and have been’."

• Bailey attributes VS10 to Metrodorus
• "things...have been." Quoted from the Iliad, Book I, line 70:
  • ἤτοι ὅ γ᾽ ὣς εἰπὼν κατ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἕζετο: τοῖσι δ᾽ ἀνέστη
    Κάλχας Θεστορίδης οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος, 70ὃς ᾔδη τά τ᾽ ἐόντα τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα, καὶ νήεσσ᾽ ἡγήσατ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν Ἴλιον εἴσω ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τήν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων
  • "When he had thus spoken he sat down, and among them arose Calchas son of Thestor, far the best of bird-diviners, who knew the things that were, and that were to be, and that had been before, [70] and who had guided the ships of the Achaeans to Ilios by his own prophetic powers which Phoebus Apollo had bestowed upon him." Perseus Tufts
  • Regarding oracles, compare VS29

VS11. τῶν πλείστων ἀνθρώπων τὸ μὲν ἡσυχάζον ναρκᾷ, τὸ δὲ κινούμενον λυττᾷ.

Bailey: "For most men rest is stagnation and activity madness."

For rest or leisure, see the Latin word Otium.

Discussion Notes:

Areopagus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Areopagetica by John Milton

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Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 17 (KJV)

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.

17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.

18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?

20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.

21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)

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Paradise Lost By John Milton

His Dark Materials, a fantasy trilogy by Philip Pullman on similar themes

Reverse Copyright and the Library of Alexandria

Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories (Ancient Wisdom)

Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories (Ancient Wisdom)

www.amazon.com

His book on Stoicism.

Meet the Ultimate Hedonist

Aristippus was far more radical than the more famous Epicurus.

www.psychologytoday.com

It probably makes sense to keep tabs on this sort of thing, especially when mention of Hegesias the "Death-Persuader" is mentioned in line with our somewhat recent discussions on that subject.

A thread on that is Here. This new article isn't going to break any new ground, and little common ground either since the author is a psychiatrist who has also written a book on Stoicism.

His article on Epicureanism is Here.

Thoreau on the subject:

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Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case. The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

-A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

From the Wikipedia page;

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Ancient Greece

The Golden Rule in its prohibitive (negative) form was a common principle in ancient Greek philosophy. Examples of the general concept include:

"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales[17] (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE)

"What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either." – Sextus the Pythagorean.[18] The oldest extant reference to Sextus is by Origen in the third century of the common era.[19]

"Ideally, no one should touch my property or tamper with it, unless I have given him some sort of permission, and, if I am sensible I shall treat the property of others with the same respect." – Plato[20] (c. 420 – c. 347 BCE)

"Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you." – Isocrates[21] (436–338 BCE)

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly." – Epicurus (341–270 BC) where "justly" refers to "an agreement made in reciprocal association ... against the infliction or suffering of harm."[22]

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That is excellent, Bryan, thank you! I really like how you use color and font to denote the most important parts of speech!

Lucretius, proem to Book III

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I see what is going on in all the void,

the majesty and calm habitations

of the gods reveal themselves in places

where no winds disturb, no clouds bring showers,

no white snow falls, congealed with bitter frost, [20]

to harm them, the always cloudless aether 30

vaults above, and they smile, as far and wide

the light spreads out.

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Seven Heavens:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_hea…20An%20and%20Ki.

Monty Python:

Thank you Cassius for another fine example of your editing wizardry!

I will join as well!

There are little differences in tone and emphasis even within languages, and certainly between them.

In American English we often mark a question with rising intonation toward the end of the sentence. Somewhere in the 80's to mid-90's it began to be observed that young Australians were using rising intonation in non-question sentences.

This is called High Rising Terminal or "uptalk" and is getting more prominent in English speaking countries around the world.

There is also a fourth line often added: "Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

We finished this chapter on Sunday and it's only occurring to me now that we never addressed the alleged Paradox of Epicurus. David Hume summarizes the passage from Lactantius:

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Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?

It's probably worth mentioning that the reason we never talk about this trilemma is that nothing similar to it survives in any ancient text prior to Lactantius in Late Antiquity. Scholars have also debated whether the paradox as expressed is even consistent with the texts that do survive.

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Augustine says against the Manichees [Cf. De Civ. Dei xviii, 1]: "In Christ's Church, those are heretics, who hold mischievous and erroneous opinions, and when rebuked that they may think soundly and rightly, offer a stubborn resistance, and, refusing to mend their pernicious and deadly doctrines, persist in defending them."

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I answer that, With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.

On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition," as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death.

-Thomas Aquinas

That's one of the more frustrating aspects of the response to Greenblatt's book. They downplay self-flagellation, which admittedly probably was restricted to the real hardliners, but take no account of the persecution of Heretical sects, the torture and murder of apostates, the relish of punishment of the damned in hell, the culture of fear and inquisition, the conversion of "heathens" at the point of a sword, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the hunting and burning of accused witches, and the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

One reviewer actually wrote this with a straight face;

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Indeed the Middle Ages are considered Europe’s most bookish era, a time when books — Christian, Greek and Roman alike — were accorded near totemic authority. Medieval readers and writers (not just clergy — lay culture was widely influenced by texts and documents, especially following the 10th century) were apt to believe anything they read in an old book just because it was old and from a book.

As if to say that that were a sign of literacy. Well I'm sorry, but a literate and literary society does not believe something just because they read it in a book. A literate society knows enough about books not to take them blindly or at face value. It is only credulity and ignorance and illiteracy that views books as 'totemic'.

But imagine someone saying or writing that in the middle ages--and about one book in particular--and then try pretending that we don't all know what would be done to them.

Well wide of the mark, Bishop.

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His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies - belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind - and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtue: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.

-John Stuart Mill, on his father

I had almost forgotten that Bishop Barron did a video on The Swerve several years ago:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_cha…20to%20minerals.

The Wikipedia page for the Scala naturae or "Great Chain of Being" is worth glancing at as we continue to talk about the place of the gods in Epicurus' universe.

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So he,

The master, then by his truth-speaking words,

Purged the breasts of men, and set the bounds

Of lust and terror, and exhibited

The supreme good whither we all endeavour,

And showed the path whereby we might arrive

Thereunto by a little cross-cut straight,

And what of ills in all affairs of mortals

Upsprang and flitted deviously about

(Whether by chance or force), since Nature thus

Had destined.

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I guess the problem at least in Lucretius is that "life itself" does not answer the question of "whither [do] we all endeavor?" Whither? To pleasure.