Posts by Joshua
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The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Alison Brown
^another book
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Edward Ernest Sikes: Lucretius, Poet and Philosopher
^book I just found the title of. I know nothing else
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Classical:
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Statesman and Orator:
QuoteThe poems of Lucretius are as you write: they exhibit many flashes of genius, and yet show great mastership.
Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman Poet:
QuoteHappy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring Underworld.
Publius Ovidius Naso, Roman Poet:
QuoteThe verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a single day shall consign the world to destruction.
Late Antiquity/Medieval
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus, called Lactantius; Roman Christian Writer, advisor to Constantine the Great:
Quote"the most worthless of the poets"
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, called St. Jerome;
QuoteThe poet Titus Lucretius is born. He was later driven mad by a love philtre and, having composed between bouts of insanity several books (which Cicero afterwards corrected), committed suicide at the age of 44.
Renaissance:
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French Essayist and Philosopher
Quote‘Tis to much purpose that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more frail, more miserable, or more nothing?
QuoteBut, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest.
Lucy Hutchison, Puritan Homemaker
Quote"As by the study of these I grew in Light and Love, the little glory I had among some few of my intimate friends, for understanding this crabbed poet, became my shame, and I found I never understood him till I learnt to abhorre him, and dread a wanton dalliance with impious bookes. Then I reapd some profitt by it, for it shewd me that sencelesse superstitions drive carnall reason into Atheisme, which though Policy restreins some from avowing so impudently as this Dog, yet vast is their number, who make it a specious pretext within themselves, to thinke religion is nothing at all but an invention to reduce the ignorant vulgar into order and Government."
Enlightenment:
19th Century:
James Clark Caldwell, Confederate Soldier writing in a Union War Prison in Ohio:
John Tyndall, Irish Physicist;
QuoteIs 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.
20th Century to Present:
Albert Einstein, German-born Theoretical Physicist
W. B. Yeats, Irish Poet:
Quote"The finest description of sexual intercourse ever written."
Christopher Hitchens, Anglo-American Journalist, Polemicist, Public Intellectual
QuoteIn January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago.” This wish for a return to the era of philosophy would put Jefferson in the same period as Titus Lucretius Carus, thanks to whose six-volume poem De Rerum Naturum (On the Nature of Things) we have a distillation of the work of the first true materialists: Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. These men concluded that the world was composed of atoms in perpetual motion, and Epicurus, in particular, went on to argue that the gods, if they existed, played no part in human affairs. It followed that events like thunderstorms were natural and not supernatural, that ceremonies of worship and propitiation were a waste of time, and that there was nothing to be feared in death.
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I think this is something we have to consider in its context. What we now know is that the seat of consciousness is in the brain; the ancients, including the Epicureans, had other ideas. Some believed that the seat of the 'soul' was in the breast with the heart. It is easy to observe in oneself the quickening of the pulse in love or fear; more difficult, to intuit that this behavior is governed by signals from the nervous system.
The Epicureans thought that the 'soul'—call it what you will—consisted of a sort of skein of finer atoms spread throughout all the members. If a portion of this soul rests in the hand at any given point in time, and the soul's chief end is pleasure, perhaps the argument of Chrysippus makes a little more sense?
Of course the shift of the soul from the members or the breast to the brain simply shifts the problem. Does the brain feel the lack of the Supreme good? I think of the restlessness that Lucretius describes of the Roman nobility; in the city they wish they were in the country, and in the country they wish they were in the city.
One of Epicurus' achievements was to instruct us in how to tap new sources of pleasure—even something as simple as remembering past pleasures can be a constant source of genuine pleasure available to us whenever we need it.
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Last one for now...
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I can also see this becoming a huge waste of my time! 😄
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If I can get this right, it would pair well with an image of a young man and an old man, and Epicurus' quote that it is never too early or too late to study philosophy.
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Ambigrams read the same right-side-up or upside-down. Not a great example, but an interesting start!
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Quote
since I am prone to conspiracy theories, I don't even watch the news.
A mature and responsible decision!
QuoteI am working on getting government benefits so I don't have to work so much.
I don't have an opinion on government benefits.
Covid has given me some reservations about abundant free-time. Not everyone I know has handled it well. It may be helpful to explore the Roman concept of Otium—constructive leisure (which you've already hinted at). Come to think of it, we should have a thread on Otium.
Lurker or participant; either way, I wish you well!
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I was reading through r/AskReddit the other day and there was a thread titled something like "What was the closest you've ever come to suicide, and what was it that brought you back?" I clicked on it for the human interest angle, and read a post that said that 'studying stoicism really helped.'
Hey, if you're at that terrible point in your life, and stoicism is the one thing that pulls you through, that's great. I'm not going to argue or judge.
But is that the advice I would give to a friend? Sadly, no. Surely we can do better than to tell a suffering fellow human that the way to move beyond suicide ideation is to realize that life and its experiences are 'indifferent.'
I hope everyone in that thread is doing ok.
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My experience with the Humphries translation is very similar to Cassius'. The audible version is great! I also have and love the paperback. He somehow manages to strike the right chord every time.
I think you'll especially love his rendition of the hymn to Venus! As I type this, I can hear it in my head.
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Welcome, Patrick! DeWitt is an excellent start. If you want a few more good laughs, try Lucian's Alexander the Oracle-Monger.
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This is a wide subject! Allow me to narrow it through the lens of a few poems I like.
Romance:
QuoteDrink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
-Ben Jonson
simple hospitalities:
QuoteArrived there, the little house they fill, Ne looke for entertainement, where none was: Rest is their feast, and all things at their will; The noblest mind the best contentment has.
-Edmund Spencer
The countryside: (from a much longer poem)
Quote[...] Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.
-Ben Jonson
Wine: (from a much longer poem)
QuoteO, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
-John Keats
Traversing the landscape:
QuoteWhose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
-Robert Frost
Walking alone by night:
QuoteThe Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
-Thomas Gray
Thinking about nature and the cosmos:
QuoteThere is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
-Lord Byron
Finding a good translation of a classic text:
QuoteMuch have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
-John Keats
And now one or two of my own:
QuoteNo more! Aye, fly! Fly to thine pleasure
Great noble bird, sun-midst sailing,
Prow a-gleaming, southward seeking;
Seek thee still a sweeter shore
And I, a sweet philosophy.
Yet I will linger here a time
Tasting of the morning's fruits—
'Ere long the yawning sea shall call:
The tide shall fail, and then the light,
And we shall mingle, you and I
Void with void, and mote with mote.
And in lieu of a lucrative synecure for writing poetry: the pleasure of my day job, land-surveying!
QuoteThoreau and the Geometry of Misattribution: Field Notes
Mid-morning, June the twenty-fifth. Clear, calm;
The water's edge of Choctawhatchee Bay—
All glass and brass and darting precision—
Where little fins answer the noiseless psalm
Of some invisible magnetism.
Our survey maps the shore's meandering way
Easterly; thence perambulates this marsh
And cypress swamp. "Never look back unless
You are planning to go that way"? A harsh
And hollow saw; return is not regress—
A surveyor's first sight is his backsight.
That last one I sent off to the Walden Woods Project (Thoreau was a surveyor by trade), and they (allegedly) filed it away in their archives.
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Immutability of Epicurean school in ancient times 15
- TauPhi
July 28, 2025 at 8:44 PM - Uncategorized Discussion (General)
- TauPhi
September 10, 2025 at 7:08 AM
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Boris Nikolsky - Article On His Interest in Classical Philosophy (Original In Russian) 1
- Cassius
September 6, 2025 at 5:21 PM - Articles Prepared By Professional Academics
- Cassius
September 8, 2025 at 10:37 AM
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Boris Nikolsky's 2023 Summary Of His Thesis About Epicurus On Pleasure (From "Knife" Magazine)
- Cassius
September 6, 2025 at 5:32 PM - Articles Prepared By Professional Academics
- Cassius
September 6, 2025 at 5:32 PM
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Edward Abbey - My Favorite Quotes 4
- Joshua
July 11, 2019 at 7:57 PM - Uncategorized Discussion (General)
- Joshua
August 31, 2025 at 1:02 PM
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A Question About Hobbes From Facebook
- Cassius
August 24, 2025 at 9:11 AM - Uncategorized Discussion (General)
- Cassius
August 24, 2025 at 9:11 AM
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Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com
What's the best strategy for finding things on EpicureanFriends.com? Here's a suggested search strategy:
- First, familiarize yourself with the list of forums. The best way to find threads related to a particular topic is to look in the relevant forum. Over the years most people have tried to start threads according to forum topic, and we regularly move threads from our "general discussion" area over to forums with more descriptive titles.
- Use the "Search" facility at the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere." Also check the "Search Assistance" page.
- Use the "Tag" facility, starting with the "Key Tags By Topic" in the right hand navigation pane, or using the "Search By Tag" page, or the "Tag Overview" page which contains a list of all tags alphabetically. We curate the available tags to keep them to a manageable number that is descriptive of frequently-searched topics.