If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.
-Cato, in Cicero's De Senectute
Edit to add; this is the Perseus Project citation for that quote.
Welcome! I also found the forum after reading The Swerve. Stephen Greenblatt did a lecture at the Getty Villa that I still watch from time to time.
David Sedley attempts a reconstruction of Epicurus's On Nature in his book Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, and explores the Roman poet's reception and restructuring of the work of Epicurus as he wove it into his own poem. That would be the first place to look!
PBS Wisconsin has a good video on the Myth of Prometheus, who was Lucretius' inspiration for the passage in Book I on Epicurus raising his eyes up to the heavens to stare down the gods.
https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/fate-fabled/why-prometheus-risked-everything-for-humans-hxztyl/
This passage is from Stephen Fry's Mythos, which I recommend for an excellent refresher on Greek mythology;
Prometheus shaded his eyes and looked up. He saw the three Cyclops standing on a great sloping wall of rock that formed one side of the tallest mountain. ´I know you´re good at climbing up the sides of mountains,´ Zeus said with what he hoped was icy sarcasm, but which emerged even to his ears as something more like sulky muttering. ´So climb.´ When Prometheus reached the place where the Cyclops were, they bound and fettered him and stretched him out on his back, hammering his shackles into the rock with mighty pegs of unbreakable iron. Two beautiful eagles swept down from the sky and glided close to Prometheus, blocking the sunlight. He could hear the hot wind ruffling their feathers. Zeus called up to him. ´You will lie chained to this rock forever. There is no hope of escape or forgiveness, not in all perpetuity. Each day these eagles will come to tear out your liver, just like you tore out my heart. They will eat it in front of your eyes. Since you are immortal it will grow back every night. This torture will never end. Each day the agony will seem greater. You will have nothing but time in which to consider the enormity of your crime and the folly of your actions. You who were named ´foresight´ showed none when you defied the King of the Gods.´ Zeus´s voice rang from the canyons and ravines. ´Well? Have you nothing to say? Prometheus sighed. ´You are wrong, Zeus,´ he said. ´I thought my actions through with great care. I weighted my comfort against the future of the race of man. I see now that they will flourish and prosper independently of any immortals, even you. Knowing this is balm for any pain.´
Zeus stared at his formed friend for a long time before speaking. ´You are not worth eagles,´ he said with an awful coldness. ´Let them be vultures.´ The two eagles immediately changed into rank, ugly vultures who circled the outstretched body once before falling upon it. Their razor-sharp talons sliced open the Titan´s side and with hideous screeches of triumph they began to feast. Prometheus, mankind´s chief creator, advocate and friend, taught us, stole for us and sacrificed himself for us. We all possess our share of Promethean fire, without it we would not be human. It is right to pity and admire him but, unlike the jealous and selfish gods he would never ask to be worshipped, praised and adored. And it might make you happy to know that, despite the eternal punishment to which he was doomed, one day a hero would arise powerful enough to defy Zeus, unbind humanity´s champion and set him free.
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has many good passages relevant to this question. There are probably more passages than these to examine.
Casca Indeed, they say the senators to-morrow
Mean to establish Cæsar as a king;
And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,
In every place save here in Italy.
Cassius I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny that I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure.
[Thunder still]
Casca
So can I:So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
**************************************
Casca Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Brutus Grant that, and then is death a benefit:
So we are Cæsar's friends, that have abridg'd
His time of fearing death.
Diogenes Laertius records that Epicurus first traveled to Athens at the age of 18, and that Herodotus wrote a text On the Training of Epicurus as a Cadet. Wikipedia furnishes the following information about the cadets, or ἔφηβοι;
Though the word ephebos (from epi "upon" + hebe "youth", "early manhood"[3]) can simply refer to the adolescent age of young men of training age, its main use is for the members, exclusively from that age group, of an official institution (ephebia) that saw to building them into citizens, but especially to training them as soldiers, sometimes already sent into the field; the Greek city states (poleis) mainly depended (like the Roman Republic) on its militia of citizens for defense.
In the time of Aristotle (384–322 BC), Athens engraved the names of the enrolled ephebi on a bronze pillar (formerly on wooden tablets) in front of the council-chamber. After admission to the college, the ephebus took the oath of allegiance (as recorded in histories by Pollux and Stobaeus—but not in Aristotle) in the temple of Aglaurus and was sent to Munichia or Acte as a member of the garrison. At the end of the first year of training the ephebi were reviewed; if their performance was satisfactory, the state provided each with a spear and a shield, which, together with the chlamys (cloak) and petasos (broad-brimmed hat), made up their equipment. In their second year they were transferred to other garrisons in Attica, patrolled the frontiers, and on occasion took an active part in war. During these two years they remained free from taxation, and were generally not allowed to appear in the law courts as plaintiffs or defendants. The ephebi took part in some of the most important Athenian festivals. Thus during the Eleusinian Mysteries they were sent to fetch the sacred objects from Eleusis and to escort the image of Iacchus on the sacred way. They also performed police duty at the meetings of the ecclesia.
And here is the text of the Ephebic Oath, which was in active use at the time Epicurus was in training;
"The ephebic oath was an oath sworn by young men of Classical Athens, typically eighteen-year-old sons of Athenian citizens, upon induction into the military academy, the Ephebic College, graduation from which was required to attain status as citizens. The applicant would have been dressed in full armour, shield and spear in his left hand, his right hand raised and touching the right hand of the moderator. The oath was quoted by the Attic orator Lycurgus, in his work Against Leocrates (4th century BC), though it is certainly archaic (5th century BC). The Ephebate, an organization for training the young men of Athens, chiefly in military matters, had existed since the 5th century but was reorganized by Lycurgus. The oath was taken in the temple of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, probably at the age of eighteen when the youth underwent an examination (Greek: δοκιμασία) and had his name entered on the deme register. He was then an ephebos until the age of twenty.
The ephebic oath is preserved on an inscription from Acharnae, which was written in the mid-fourth century BC. Other versions of the oath are preserved in the works of Stobaeus and Pollux."
Greek text
This is the oath, as preserved by Stobaeus."Οὐ καταισχυνῶ τὰ ὅπλα τὰ ἱερὰ, οὐδ' ἐγκαταλείψω τὸν παραστάτην ὅτῳ ἂν στοιχήσω· ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἱερῶν καὶ ὁσίων καὶ μόνος καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν. καὶ τὴν πατρίδα οὐκ ἐλάσσω παραδώσω, πλείω δὲ καὶ ἀρείω ὅσης ἂν παραδέξωμαι. καὶ εὐηκοήσω τῶν ἀεὶ κραινόντων ἐμφρόνως καὶ τοῖς θεσμοῖς τοῖς ἰδρυμένοις πείσομαι καὶ οὕστινας ἂν ἄλλους τὸ πλῆθος ἰδρύσηται ὁμοφρόνως·καὶ ἂν τις ἀναιρῇ τοὺς θεσμοὺς ἢ μὴ πείθηται οὐκ ἐπιτρέψω, ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ μόνος καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν. καὶ ἱερὰ τὰ πάτρια τιμήσω. ἵστορες τούτων Ἄγλαυρος, Ἐνυάλιος, Ἄρης, Ζεύς, Θαλλώ, Αὐξώ, Ἡγεμόνη.
English translation
I will never bring reproach upon my hallowed arms, nor will I desert the comrade at whose side I stand, but I will defend our altars and our hearths, single-handed or supported by many. My native land I will not leave a diminished heritage but greater and better than when I received it. I will obey whoever is in authority and submit to the established laws and all others which the people shall harmoniously enact. If anyone tries to overthrow the constitution or disobeys it, I will not permit him, but will come to its defense, single-handed or with the support of all. I will honor the religion of my fathers. Let the gods be my witness, Agraulus, Enyalius, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.
Mount Etna is on the island of Sicily, not in Greece as I mistakenly said in this episode. Mea culpa!
As to pleasure the philosophers of old expressed varying opinions. Epicurus makes pleasure the highest good, but defines it as σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα, or "a well-balanced condition of body." Antisthenes the Socratic calls it the greatest evil; for this is the expression he uses: μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην; that is to say, "may I go mad rather than feel pleasure." Speusippus and all the old Academy declare that pleasure and pain are two evils opposed to each other, but that what lay midway between the two was the good. Zeno thought that pleasure was indifferent, that is neutral, neither good nor evil, that, p171 namely, which he called by the Greek term ἀδιάφορον. Critolaus the Peripatetic declares that pleasure is an evil and gives birth to many other evils: injustice, sloth, forgetfulness, and cowardice. Earlier than all these Plato discoursed in so many and varied ways about pleasure, that all those opinions which I have set forth may seem to have flowed from the founts of his discourses; for he makes use of each one of them according to the suggestion offered by the nature of pleasure itself, which is manifold, and according to the demands made by the character of the topics which he is treating and of the effect that he wishes to produce. But our countryman Taurus, whenever mention was made of Epicurus, always had on his lips and tongue these words of Hierocles the Stoic, a man of righteousness and dignity: "Pleasure an end, a harlot's creed; there is no Providence, not even a harlot's creed."
-Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights Book IX
The first item in the delicate balance to which I referred earlier is, thus, the
positive desirability for an Epicurean of extending the duration of pleasure, if
possible to the natural length of a full human life. I now turn to the second
item. Although staying alive longer is recommended, and may well enhance
the blessedness of one’s life, Epicurus is equally committed to the converse
principle that dying sooner is in no way an evil. Contrary to a widespread
assumption, it could not be an evil, for the simple reason that pain is the only
evil, whereas being dead is painless, and therefore hedonically neutral, lacking
pleasure and pain alike. It is natural to fear what you consider bad, but not to
fear what you consider value-neutral.-David Sedley, Epicurean vs Cyrenaic Happiness
Cassius have you already consulted Sedley's "Epicurean vs Cyrenaic Happiness", published 2016? I haven't seen it referenced in this thread and I think you'll want to take a look at that.
Edit to add;
[Epicurus'] finding is that time is "an accident of accidents," and, if his reasoning be closely scrutinized, time seems to be even less than this.
The line of reasoning may be sketched as follows: a human being is susceptible of sickness but sickness is not a permanent attribute, only a temporary condition, that is, an accident. Sickness in its turn may be long or short, but this quality of length or brevity is not a permanent attribute but an accident. Therefore it is an accident of an accident. Next, by analogy, since we associate time with states of health or sickness, the time of their duration is said to be long or short. Thus long and short become predicates of time while in reality they apply only to states of health or sickness. This amounts to saying that in the phrases "a long time" or "a short time" the adjectives are transferred epithets.
Incidentally, in the text of Epicurus this paragraph on the topic of time follows immediately upon the discussion of attributes and accidents. This juxtaposition confirms the assumption that the prolepsis is rightly interpreted as an anticipatory notion of the essential attributes of the subject of examination.
pp. 147-148
Following this line of thinking moves us firmly into Bryan's area, so perhaps he can comment.
Page 229 begins the subsection "Pleasure not increased by Immortality", which he ends thus;
The attainment to this state [the limit of pleasure], he now declares, is a condition of one dimension. He seems to think of it as an Alpinist would regard the ascent of an arduous mountain peak. The pleasure would not be increased by remaining on the peak.
Also, Cassius :
So Mitsis thinks that Epicurus would not say that if one has an option to choose between a long happy life and a short happy one he would choose the longer?
In fairness to Mitsis, I do not think this is his conclusion in the passage you quoted. If anything, Mitsis is saying that Epicurus would choose the long happy life over the short happy life, and that this choice involves him in a paradox.
That looks substantially more complete, thank you Don!
Welcome! You paint a pleasant picture.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.- Constantine P. Cavafy, from Ithaka
(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
And hey, why not:
Oh, but I just thought you might want something fine
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona
Epicurus, as you yourself were saying, maintains that long duration can not add anything to happiness, and that as much pleasure is enjoyed in a brief span of time as if pleasure were everlasting.
I have to say, this does not appear to me to be a very literal translation. I'll look into this.
I still tend to think Epicurus was responding to Plato's Philebus in his discussion of limits, duration, and death. I'll have to review that dialogue.
Horace's 11th ode gives us the phrase carpe diem, and a great many others carried the theme.
Usually it involves the speaker of the poem trying to seduce a woman;
Here is that passage from Candide:
Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit, who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus.[3] For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am dying."
"Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the Devil the original stock of it?"
"Not at all," replied this great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source of life, frequently even[Pg 16] hinders generation, and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the Japanese, know nothing of it; but there is a sufficient reason for believing that they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. In the meantime, it has made marvellous progress among us, especially in those great armies composed of honest well-disciplined hirelings, who decide the destiny of states; for we may safely affirm that when an army of thirty thousand men fights another of an equal number, there are about twenty thousand of them p-x-d on each side."
Ha! That genuinely made me laugh. I haven't read that text since...2019, so I'll need to refresh my memory.
Syphilis was endemic to the Americas, and was introduced into Europe by Columbus on his return. Well, Columbus and his men. I suppose I can't blame him personally. Voltaire discusses this in his Candide, which is the only thing I remember about that book; Syphilis is the price of getting chocolate, which was also exclusive to the Americas. Amerigo Vespucci wrote a few letters about his travels to the New World, and in one of them he says this about the native inhabitants:
We did not find that these people had any laws; they cannot be called Moors nor Jews, but worse than Gentiles. For we did not see that they offered any sacrifices, nor have they any place of worship. I judge their lives to be Epicurean. Their habitations are in common. Their dwellings, are like huts, but strongly built of very large trees, and covered with palm leaves, secure from tempests and winds. In some places they are of such length and width that we found 600 souls in one single house. We found villages of only thirteen houses where there were 4,000 inhabitants. They build the villages every eight or ten years, and when asked why they did this, they replied that it was because the soil was corrupted and infected, and caused diseases in their bodies, so they chose a new site. Their wealth consists of the feathers of birds of many colours, or "paternosters" made of the fins of fishes, or of white or green stones, which they wear on their necks, lips, and ears; and of many other things which have no value for us. They have no commerce, and neither buy nor sell. In conclusion, they live, and are content with what nature has given them.
Erasmus will certainly have read these letters. Not only were they sensationally popular, but Erasmus' close friend Thomas More used the voyages of Vespucci as the frame narrative for his Utopia. I explored this connection in tedious length in another thread here.
I think in some respects this text might bear fruitful comparison with The Epicurean, a dialogue by Desiderius Erasmus. Erasmus has his interlocutor make the claim that "If we will speak the truth none are greater Epicureans than those Christians that live a pious life." I see that I started a thread on this text in December of 2019.
