Posts by Joshua

Cassius, I have taken your transcription of the Reid translation and put it into a LaTeX editor for typesetting and cleaning up. Paragraph numbers are back in the margins, for example.

I'm attempting to upload the PDF here.

I am happy to have feedback or suggestions, but in lieu of that I propose we use this as a common "fair" copy; given the document's size, the pagination should help us find what we're talking about more easily.

Cicero.pdf

Edit; If someone prefers wider margins for note-taking, or line-separations between paragraphs, that's quite easy to accommodate.

I haven't read any of these yet...

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simple loving

I feel certain that he meant to type "Simple living".

The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Alison Brown

^another book

Edward Ernest Sikes: Lucretius, Poet and Philosopher

^book I just found the title of. I know nothing else

Classical:

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Statesman and Orator:

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The poems of Lucretius are as you write: they exhibit many flashes of genius, and yet show great mastership.

Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman Poet:

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Happy 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:

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The 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:

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"the most worthless of the poets"

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, called St. Jerome;

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The 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

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‘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?

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But, 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

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"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;

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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.

20th Century to Present:

Albert Einstein, German-born Theoretical Physicist

W. B. Yeats, Irish Poet:

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"The finest description of sexual intercourse ever written."

Christopher Hitchens, Anglo-American Journalist, Polemicist, Public Intellectual

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In 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.

This is a great resource, Nate! I like to have a handful of PDF's downloaded to my phone so that I have something to read even when I don't have reception, and these little bite-sized portions are perfect for that!

Interesting reading, Alex, thank you!

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.

Last one for now...

I can also see this becoming a huge waste of my time! 😄

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.

https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2009/01/12/princessbride.jpg

Ambigrams read the same right-side-up or upside-down. Not a great example, but an interesting start!

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since I am prone to conspiracy theories, I don't even watch the news.

A mature and responsible decision!

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I 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!

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.

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.

Welcome, Patrick! DeWitt is an excellent start. If you want a few more good laughs, try Lucian's Alexander the Oracle-Monger.

Lucian of Samosata : Alexander the False Prophet

Thank you all! I really enjoyed, I will be interested in doing it again!

This is a wide subject! Allow me to narrow it through the lens of a few poems I like.

Romance:

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Drink 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

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simple hospitalities:

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Arrived 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)

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[...] 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)

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O, 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:

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Whose 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:

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The 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:

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There 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

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Finding a good translation of a classic text:

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Much 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

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And now one or two of my own:

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No 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.

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And in lieu of a lucrative synecure for writing poetry: the pleasure of my day job, land-surveying!

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Thoreau 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.

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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.