Posts by Joshua

Charles Lamb; Motes in the Sunbeams; 1775-1834; a poem referencing a well-known passage in Lucretius.

I am doggedly pursuing a poem that I remember from college but cannot find; during the chase I stumbled on this, which is mildly interesting:

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The motes up and down in the sun

Ever restlessly moving we see;

Whereas the great mountains stand still,

Unless terrible earthquakes there be.

If these atoms that move up and down

Were as useful as restless they are,

Than a mountain I rather would be

A mote in the sunbeam so fair.

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There's a long-standing tradition in British literature on the comparison of value between 'use' and 'beauty'. This seems to me a very muddled take on the matter.

Now, back into the salt mine!

I'll try to summarize what I recall to be the main points of the essay;

‐-------------‐

-Epicurus' primary interest in the size of the sun is to rule out the supernatural.

-A superficial reading of the passage will always be plagued with error.

-The author stresses the importance of considering the question in light of the whole philosophy.

-And that includes offering a few explanations, not just asserting one.

-Epicurus draws a distinction between how we interpret things that appear to our senses, and how those things actually are.

-The senses themselves are to Epicurus never wrong. Merely the judgment we make about sense-perception can be wrong, or not.

-The sun may be bigger or smaller than it appears, but it's not possible to know which (in the fourth century B.C) because we can never change our perspective by getting closer or going further away.

-The passages in both Pythocles and Lucretius are very noncommittal in their grammar and diction. Something like 8 subordinate clauses in five lines. So there's a resistance to speaking certainly about it. Nowhere does any Epicurean actually make a definite claim about the size of the sun.

-In the discussion on eclipses, the ancient sources seem to imply or suggest that the sun may be larger than the Earth. One of the explanations offered for eclipses is the interposition of the Earth between the sun and the moon.

-The author suggests that the sun-size issue is a didactic challenge to students and readers; like the plague at the end of Lucretius, it sets up a test to see how well you've grasped Epicurean method. The reader will come to that passage, and then feel compelled to review the other material to make sure they haven't missed something.

-The final suggestion the author makes is that the sun-size issue became a shibboleth for ancient Epicureans. That it became a way of 'sounding out' the Epicurean knowledge-base of the interlocutor. Cassius often says that hard cases make bad law. But the argument being made here is that this hard case is useful for determining how well other people really understand this. Useful for teachers with their students, or for scholarchs with their scholars.

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The essay does not make the following point, which I think is nevertheless important; namely, how stupid do people think Epicurus was to say that he thought the sun was the size of an orange!?

Certainly the sun is, at minimum, bigger than the biggest object that crosses it but fails to entirely eclipse it. A lifetime's accumulated experience would surely have been sufficient for Epicurus to know that the sun was bigger than a bird. Bigger than a horse, a house, a tree, a trireme--bigger than the better part of a mountain. Bigger than the moon.

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east-meets-west

For good reason!

Dionysus was thought for a very long time to be an Eastern import into the Greek pantheon. His mythological birthplace was Mt. Nysa, which was sometimes said to be in India.

Apparently modern scholarship and the discovery of certain references in Linear-B has led to a rethinking of this claim. I didn't know that part. Some very recent books still talk about him as a foreign and exotic god.

I've just received this collection of essays, published in February, with an excellent paper concerning the size of the sun by one T.H.M. Gellar-Goad.

I may attempt an outline; in the meantime, here's a good bit toward the end;

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By staking out a stance of aporia conditioned by sense-perception and reasoning thereupon, the Epicureans did in fact prove to be less wrong than everyone else [...] Epicurus and his school, in avoiding a concrete statement of the sun's size, avoided being concretely wrong, in contrast to Eudoxus and all the rest.

aporia; doubt, or a difficulty in resolving the available data into established truth.

The author is thoroughly familiar with Epicurean epistemology, and explores the question not on its face, but based on a careful understanding of the whole philosophy. I thought it was very well done.

If you can find a library copy, or get online access through an institution, you'll save a bit of coin--but it will be good to have read this as we move into the Letter to Pythocles on the podcast.

I don't know that I'll make this one.

Thoreau was talking about his townspeople that were inheriting or buying unproductive farms. He also wrote a lot about the condition of the Irish immigrants who were clearing bogs and laying in the railroads.

Thoreau was writing about 15 years after the invention and commercialization of the McCormick Reaper, an implement that was perfect for the rolling plains of the prairie states, but ill-suited for the rocky, mountainous and forested land of New England. The farmers in and around Concord were unable to compete with the Midwest, with the railroads ensuring that western crops could swiftly reach Eastern markets.

The result was too often debt and penury for the small-time landowners, and exploitation and abjection for the Irish laborers. Thoreau favored self-sufficiency as a mode of living, and abundant leisure time as its greatest fruit, and felt that others could profit by his example.

But of course he was Harvard educated, unmarried with no children, had the opportunity to stay with family, etc.

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The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.

-Thoreau, Walden

What a lovely photograph!

Show Notes:

Lucretius versus the Lake Poets

By Robert Frost

‘Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.’

Dean , adult education may seem silly.

What of it, though? I got some willy-nilly

The other evening at your college deanery.

And grateful for it (let's not be facetious!)

For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius

By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery.

But you say that in college nomenclature

The only meaning possible for Nature

In Landor's quatrain would be Pretty Scenery.

Which makes opposing it to Art absurd

I grant you—if you're sure about the word.

God bless the Dean and make his deanship plenary.

Thales and the Eclipse of 585 BC

The anniversary of this eclipse was yesterday, May 28th (sorry Don!)

Eclipse of Thales - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Lucretius and Natural Selection

Evolution and Paleontology in the Ancient World

Isonomia

I think the article I mentioned may have been "Animals in War and Isonomia" by K. L. McKay, but it's behind a paywall and I won't likely read it again.

Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Caustic vs Corrosive

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-corrosive-604961%23:~:text%3DCorrosive%2520Versus%2520Caustic%2520or%2520Irritant,chemical%2520acts%2520as%2520an%2520irritant.&ved=2ahUKEwiV8qzygYX4AhVyRDABHeG3B5wQFnoECA0QBQ&usg=AOvVaw3ZAiapcVHK1sS6Ic2van03

Thanks to Martin for correcting me!

Don I'm warning you, if you have anything to say about Thales today just keep it to yourself!

I think the fundamental problem is going to be this; while Christian Humanists have been quite happy to import Epicurean Ethics, they haven't been very interested in adopting his view of the gods. Epicureans and their fellow travelers, by contrast, have had little interest in the Christian God, and even less interest in Christian morality.

So you're looking for someone with one foot squarely planted in both worlds. The closest you're going to get to that (and it's far from a good fit) is probably the expelled and denounced Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza. He really was prepared to adopt materialism, at great personal risk, and to reject the supernatural entirely. His God is completely natural--nothing less than the sum of Nature and all her laws.

So I will amend my previous suggestion, and say: I'd start with Spinoza.

You may find this book useful; with the caveat, again, that I have not read it!

Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism

by Dimitris Vardoulakis

Gassendi supposedly produced a critical apparatus of Book X of Diogenes Laertius, with a view toward finding some level of compatibility with Christianity.

I would probably start there, although I cannot say what you will find--I haven't read his books.

😁

You had me slightly confused there!

I'm fresh off a review of the Philebus material, and wanted to have another look at Plato the "Golden".

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Plato's school he called "the toadies of Dionysius," their master himself the "golden" Plato, [...]

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τούς τε περὶ Πλάτωνα Διονυσοκόλακας καὶ αὐτὸν Πλάτωνα χρυσοῦν,

It seems that the word we're dealing with is χρυσοῦν. If that word is an adjective, and derives from χρύσεος, then it certainly does mean "golden". But if χρυσοῦν is a participle deriving from χρυσόω, then it may instead mean "gilded"--papered over with gold-leaf.

If my fanciful and doubtlessly flawed analysis has any weight, Epicurus may have been going for a pun here. Because "Plato" (Πλάτων) comes from the word platys (πλατύς), meaning variously broad, flat, level, etc.

If this was the intent of Epicurus' words, then Plato's goldenness was, as his own name suggests, just a false veneer, like the Platte River in Nebraska--a mile wide and an inch deep. All surface, and no substance.

Perhaps Don can come in here and bring me back to reality!

It would be difficulty to express it accurately and concisely, but here is my attempt:

Plato held that (1) the pursuit of pleasure could not be the best mode of life, because (2) pleasure has no limit--and (3) having no limit, the pursuit of limitless pleasure ends in wickedness.

(4) Virtue is the way to correct wickedness, (5) and Divine Law is the supernatural check against the heedless pursuit of pleasure.

But Epicurus thought (1) that the pursuit of pleasure was the best mode of life, because (2) the limit of the quantity of pleasure is the removal of all pain--and (3) culminating in the removal of all pain, the pursuit of pleasure does not lead to wickedness. (4) The wicked bring pain on themselves, (5) and pain is the natural check against the heedless pursuit of pleasure.

Principal Doctrine 3

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ὅρος τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἡδονῶν ἡ παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος ὑπεξαίρεσις. ὅπου δʼἂν τὸ ἡδόμενον ἐνῇ, καθʼὃν ἂν χρόνον ᾖ, ουκ ἔστι τὸ ἀλγοῦν ἢ λυπούμενον ἢ τὸ συναμφότερον.

Cyril Bailey:

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The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body nor of mind, nor of both at once.

Inwood and Gerson:

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The removal of all feeling of pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures. Wherever a pleasurable feeling is present, for as long as it is present, there is neither a feeling of pain nor a feeling of distress, nor both together.

Peter Saint-Andre

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The limit of enjoyment is the removal of all pains. Wherever and for however long pleasure is present, there is neither bodily pain nor mental distress.

from Plato's Philebus:

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Σωκράτης

καὶ ἄλλα γε δὴ μυρία ἐπιλείπω λέγων, οἷον μεθ᾽ ὑγιείας κάλλος καὶ ἰσχύν, καὶ ἐν ψυχαῖς αὖ πάμπολλα ἕτερα καὶ πάγκαλα. ὕβριν γάρ που καὶ σύμπασαν πάντων πονηρίαν αὕτη κατιδοῦσα ἡ θεός, ὦ καλὲ Φίληβε, πέρας οὔτε ἡδονῶν οὐδὲν οὔτε πλησμονῶν ἐνὸν ἐν αὐτοῖς, νόμον καὶ τάξιν πέρας ἔχοντ᾽ ἔθετο: καὶ σὺ μὲν ἀποκναῖσαι φῂς αὐτήν, ἐγὼ δὲ τοὐναντίον ἀποσῶσαι λέγω. σοὶ δέ, ὦ Πρώταρχε, πῶς φαίνεται;

Benjamin Jowett:

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Soc. I omit ten thousand other things, such as beauty and health and strength, and the many beauties and high perfections of the soul: O my beautiful Philebus, the goddess, methinks, seeing the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, and that there was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the limit of law and order, whereby, as you say, Philebus, she torments, or as I maintain, delivers the soul-What think you, Protarchus?

Harold Fowler:

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There are countless other things which I pass over, such as health, beauty, and strength of the body and the many glorious beauties of the soul. For this goddess,1 my fair Philebus, beholding the violence and universal wickedness which prevailed, since there was no limit of pleasures or of indulgence in them, established law and order, which contain a limit. You say she did harm; I say, on the contrary, she brought salvation. What do you think, Protarchus?

That was quick!

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RE: Getting Started - Initial Thoughts on 3D Printing

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1861/

(This passage does not describe the double-herm in question, but a separate herm bust now lost. Only the shaft with the inscription survives.)

Joshua

April 28, 2021 at 10:52 PM

We discuss the same problem in that thread.

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In ancient art, double herms were a common statue type. While in Greece they were displayed in public rooms, in the Roman empire they were shown in private spaces.

-Wikipedia

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Double herms were a creation of the imperial period and this example is one of four double herms found in the corners of the peristyle garden of the villa at Fondo Bottaro, one each corner.

That seems to me the best explanation. The floor-plan of these ancient villas was so thoroughly different to the way we do things now where everything gets shoved against wall. Their walls had frescoes, not televisions. Furniture and objects would be arranged in the center of the room. The perimeter of the room was for walking--a place where slaves would be on hand and free to move about, but of the way.

The "corners" of a peristyle courtyard would still be away from the walls some considerable distance, as a colonnade and covered walkway would surround the garden.

Everyone sitting down side by side and facing one wall is an artefact of the fireplace, and then the television. A Roman villa would use braziers, not a hearth.

Right hand sketch.

Another sketch...still looking.

The other possibility is that a bust was found without its plinth, and it was affixed to a different one.

There is a renaissance statue of Poggio Bracciolini that was found in a collection of statues portraying the Last Supper. The scholarship on this sort of thing wasn't particularly scrupulous for a long time.