Posts by Joshua

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.

And (why not?) Edward Abbey, from his journal;

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My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

He writes at length about this in his essay On Fairy Stories.

I also quite like George R. R. Martin on fantasy:

On Fantasy | George R.R. Martin

See page two of my Interlinear Lucretius thread for that conversation.

Danish scholar Marcus Meibomius

An increasingly appealing option to me at the moment is to use Leonard's Latin text from Perseus instead of Bailey's, and proceed with the view that my interlinear text will serve as a Creative Commons companion to the Perseus Project as well as Smith's commentary. I could work quite rapidly under those terms and still produce something very useful.

Prepare to be underwhelmed! I have finished a draft of lines.....

...

1-5.

I stand now at a crossroads. The biggest obstacle right now is trying to verify the grammar notes, which sources disagree on, and which I am ill-equipped to offer any opinion on. One of the books I am consulting is Leonard and Smith's Lucretius from 1943, which is an extensive commentary on the Latin text of Lucretius. It lacks only two things; an interlinear translation, and grammar notation. My options at the moment are to:

• Keep things as they are. I do find this work rewarding, but progress is very slow.
• Double down on the Interlinear side and leave out grammar notes and all but the most basic commentary. This would be easy and I could work more quickly, but the process is fairly dull and mindless.
• A third option would be to find an existing public domain English language commentary, and import that wholesale into my interlinear text.

Regardless of anything I do, this monumental commentary by Stanley Barney Smith on Leonard's Latin text of Lucretius is excellent and very interesting. He downplays interest in the grammar in order to focus on linking passages in Lucretius to other sources in Classical literature for comparative purposes.

De Rerum Natura: The Latin Text of Lucretius (Latin and English Edition)

De Rerum Natura: The Latin Text of Lucretius (Latin and English Edition)

www.amazon.com

(The Amazon sample shown in "Look Inside" is of a different book entirely)

Show Notes:

Claudius Ptolemy, Almagest:

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“I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia

Ptolemy - Wikiquote

en.wikiquote.org

John Tyndall, Belfast Address

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Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 'nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not 'that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who wrings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?' Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life.

Address Delivered Before the British Association Assembled at Belfast, With Additions (1874)

Philip Larkin, Church Going

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A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

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Church Going, by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there’s nothing go… I step inside, letting the door th… Another church: matting, seats, an… And little books; sprawlings of fl… For Sunday,…

www.poeticous.com

Lucretius, Book V, Line 1200

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nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri

vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras

nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas

ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo

spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,

sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.

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Bailey:

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Nor is it piety at all to be seen often with veiled head turning towards a stone, and to draw near to every altar, no, nor to lie prostrate on the ground with outstretched palms before the shrines of the gods, nor to sprinkle the altars with the streaming blood of beasts, nor to link vow to vow, but rather to be able to contemplate all things with a mind at rest.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Act 1, Scene 5

Love to learn it.

myshakespeare.com