Posts by Joshua

Thank you Don and Godfrey!

Good stuff, Cassius! I think we've talked about the "original" motion of the atoms recently–perhaps last twentieth? I certainly find it incredibly puzzling.

I'm sure I've read it somewhere, but I can't even think what the Greek word for clinamen would be. Maybe Don can shed some light on Bailey's translation at some point.

Citation here (scroll for quote).

I'll have to dig up a citation later, but Lucretius does indicate that the swerve (clinamen) is foundational to cosmology. This is the troubling bit about the "original" motion of the atoms as falling like rain through the void. The swerve comes in because a uniform and parallel "falling" of atoms at a constant rate of motion would preclude these atoms ever commingling. An indeterminate swerve is essential in order to get them bouncing off each other.

I haven't listened yet, you might have covered that already!

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Here's a note I am making while editing this week's podcast.

Well...I clearly cannot have listened yet!

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And there certainly have been "good" figures mixed in to the history of the catholic church (and the rest of organized religion), but I don't see that really changing its overall picture as machinery for manipulation and oppression of the "masses."

True, but what we would have to believe in this case is that for well over a thousand years–during many centuries of which humanist scholars (including men in holy orders) were rifling the libraries of Europe for pagan texts–a significant work by an important figure was hidden away in perfect secrecy. It's just that personally I find it more likely that the Church employed a more direct means of containment; by the classic expedient of feeding books to the fire.

As for surviving writings in the Vatican Library, I'm skeptical about that as well.

The Roman Pontiffs have been a strikingly varied lot. Some were pious, and many others have been corrupt. Some popes have been scholars of the highest learning (as in the case of Sylvester II), while at least four of the "Vicars of Christ" on earth have been illiterate! (Innocent VI is notable for his mistrust of the high literary ambitions of Petrarch, or so I have read.)

Nor was the Church uniformly hostile to all criticism. Our own Lorenzo Valla (later in life a contemporary and rival of Poggio Bracciolini at the Roman Curia) had made a name for himself early on when he proved using philology that the so-called "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. The Church had for centuries buttressed its own authority partially with this document. His scholarship put his life in danger–and yet when the mitre changed heads with the inauguration of Nicholas V, Valla was invited to a high position in the papal court.

It would strike me as odd if during all these centuries a major work from antiquity had been hidden away in the Vatican Library, with generations of humanists and scholars never revealing it. But it's even more unusual when I consider that in 1888 a small collection of maxims did emerge. I hardly see the point in letting those sayings out, and hiding the rest away; I don't suppose there can really be anything shocking or subversive in Epicurus beyond what we have record of elsewhere. Oddly enough, Lucretius was spared inclusion onto the infamous Index of Prohibited Books, supposedly by the intervention of one Cardinal Marcello Cervini.

So there's that. I certainly appreciate the work that Elli has done in developing her thesis. It would be great to see something new come to light in all of this.

I agree with most of what you've written here Cassius, but when it comes to what the Vatican knew or didn't know...well, I still can't quite get there.

Consider first that neither the Vatican nor anyone else even knows what Jesus or ANY of his disciples looked like. We have an apocryphal description of St. Paul that emerged in the second century (nearly a hundred years after his death), and it may or may not be accurate–no one will ever know. And...that's it. There's no biblical figure for whom a contemporary image survives.

It would be another hundred years after the apocryphal story of St. Paul until we finally got the first portrait of a Roman Pontiff. The likenesses of the ten predecessors of Pope Anicetus (and those of many of his successors) will forever remain obscure to history.

But look much more recently than that! Almost everyone who reads English Literature with any kind of depth will be familiar with the Shakespeare authorship dispute. While I personally believe that centuries of scholarship has settled that question, there is another debate that's almost as astonishing–no one can say for certain whether the Chandos Portrait, the bard's most well-known likeness, is actually him or someone else. We can't say for certain that any of the surviving and alleged portraits were made in his own lifetime.

We don't know for certain what Chaucer looked like; we don't know what the crowned heads of medieval Europe looked like.

As for my opinion on surviving writings...that will have to wait until after dinner!

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Wow that is beautiful! Now, even though, "death is nothing to us," you've got to be careful not only to take good care of it but to provide for its continued safety when, many years from now, you have to pass it down to new generations!

I've been doing a bit of research on that point, Cassius! I hope that Florida's humidity isn't a problem indoors. I may need to meet some special storage requirements apart from just dark, temperate, and stable.

I have been a pack-a-day smoker for several years now. For nearly as long as I have been addicted to cigarettes, I have also had the kind of niggling fear that makes me anxious to quit. A few times I've tried; but after a few days without a smoke, those nebulous ideas like "long-term health" or "savings of future earnings" start to lose their power to persuade.

Cigarettes–at least for this addict–will win that argument every time. What I needed was something real to lose; something coveted, and physical, and deeply inspiring. Something that belongs to the life of the man I want to be, instead of to the man I am. Were I stronger, the memory of Epicurus' school and its teachings would be enough.

But I've tried, and I simply didn't have it in me to quit smoking.

I've now done something supremely ridiculous; I spent the next three months of my cigarette money (~$650) on something I'd rather have instead–I ordered another copy of Lucretius.

I won't receive the book until the end of this week, but, in eager anticipation, I present it now!

I have bought a copy of the 1675 Latin Edition of De Rerum Natura, published—for the very first time in England—by John Hayes, printer to the University of Cambridge; itself a reprint of a French Edition (of the Latin Text), that published by Tanneguy Le Fèvre in 1662(?). Both versions based on Denis Lambin's influential 16th century scholarship and emmendations.

Published in 1675, this book is ~112 years older than the United States Constitution. Its printing was closer in time to Poggio Bracciolini and his rediscovery of the manuscript in 1417, than it is to me. It was set to paper in the same century in which Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Campo de Fiori in Rome. I'm so terribly excited I can hardly stand it!

There's one rule and it's very simple. If I want to pick up smoking again, I have to sell this book first. I threw away the last two cigarettes I had yesterday.

So there it is—my small, personal bribe; my little corruption, mingling the fates of a few leaves of tobacco and of antique paper, with a not-quite-insignificant sum of money.

-josh

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Condition of the book as described by the seller;

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Description:

Gordon 107. The Cambridge edition published by John Hayes. Contemporary Cambridge paneled calf. Title page in red and black, ruled in red ink; old owner's name to flyleaf. Inner hinges professionally repaired; endpapers stained. Mild even toning to text. A very sound and handsome copy.

My favorite quote on Lucretius comes from Ovid in his Amores.

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The verses of sublime Lucretius are destined to perish only when a single day will consign the world to destruction.

Cicero, in a letter to his brother;

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

Albert Einstein, in a preface to a German edition;

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For anyone who is not completely submerged in the spirit of our age, who feels instead like a spectator as the world goes past him, especially, from time to time, vis-à-vis the intellectual attitudes of his contemporaries — on him will Lucretius's poem work its magic

George Santayana;

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That things have their poetry, not because of what we make them symbols of, but because of their own movement and life, is what Lucretius proves once for all to mankind.

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Whether it be a wind blowing, a torrent rushing, a lamb bleating, the magic of love, genius achieving its purpose, or a war, or a pestilence, Lucretius sees everything in its causes, and in its total career. One breath of lavish creation, one iron law of change, runs through the whole, making all things kin in their inmost elements and in their last end. Here is the touch of nature indeed, her largeness and eternity. Here is the true echo of the life of matter.

And–why not! Lucy Hutchinson;

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[...] I found I never understood him till I learned to abhor him, and dread a wanton dalliance with impious books.

William Bligh's ring, revisited;

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Don: "Far be it from me to second guess the museum, but…"

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Me: "The ring was made by John Miers of London, "No. 111, Strand, opposite Exeter Change." Miers lived between 1758 and 1821."

I've been looking into this, and I am even more baffled than I was before.

I've spent hours chasing down examples of John Miers' work, and I've reached a startling conclusion–I don't think he made this ring.

John Miers was a sort of jeweller. He just wasn't really a jeweller who worked with...well, with jewels. John Miers was a profile painter who specialized in "Shades"–that is to say, in silhouettes. These were enormously popular, and he was and still is regarded as the finest painter of silhouette miniatures in his day. His miniatures adorned lockets, brooches, and rings. The bulk of his work was in framed wall hangings, usually a "his and hers" that would hang prominently in the house.

There are countless surviving examples of his profiles. He advertised in newspapers a 'sitting time' for a portrait of under a minute. Goodness knows how many thousands of silhouettes he and his associate John Field cranked out. And these specimens are highly regarded by collectors; several examples of his work hang in the National Portrait Gallery in London. It is all the more surprising, then, that I cannot find a single other example of a John Miers intaglio ring.

It strikes me now as increasingly plausible that the Bligh ring was simply tucked into an old ring-case for lack of anywhere else to put it. Which puts me even further to the wrong side of square one than I was when I started.

A detail of the wreathed figure from The School of Athens. Probably engraved c. 1800-1820 in Italy.

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“One of my most precious books is Lucretius. It was published in Venice in 1515 by Aldus Manutius, who was a Venice printer who published the equivalent of Penguin in paperbacks. All great classical authors, or most of them, were published by Aldus Manutius in a small book in a wonderfully elegant italic script typeface.”

I don't have time just now to follow up on this lead, but I did find this little snippet interesting.

I might also observe that when I do read customer reviews for books on Amazon, it seems there's always someone complaining about their ebook being badly formatted or otherwise unreadable. All that being said, I do have a kindle paperwhite packed away in a closet somewhere.

It's been a few years since I looked into the world of Ebooks, but in general outline the problems likely haven't changed; eReaders are shockingly niche products, which don't sell very well. This is partially because they last a long time (not for eReaders the 2-year obsolescence typical of smartphones), and partially because so few people really read. PDF's have meant that unscrupulous users can get the ebooks themselves for free, making the whole enterprise awfully unprofitable.

The upshot is that eReader manufacturers put precious little effort into delivering the kind of options that people want. It took Amazon 8 generations of the Kindle to finally make it water-resistant! Even by then, a user could read a book, OR listen to the audiobook (through audible), but they could never do both at the same time on the same device! Issues like text adjustment (alignment), file compatibility, and connectivity have all likewise been neglected for long periods of time.

The Barnes and Noble Nook is more or less dead as far as I can see. Amazon can afford to prop up the Kindle line probably indefinitely, but it's certainly not a focus. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has tried some of the other options.

Since we were on the subject of Hermes earlier, I thought I would post this. It's a passage from The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, quoting Giordano Bruno. Bruno was illustrating the silliness of the idea that human life is divinely ordained and influenced. Bruno himself, of course, was heavily influenced by Lucretius.

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"He has ordered that today at noon two of the melons in Father Franzino's melon patch will be perfectly ripe, but that they won't be picked until three days from now, when they will no longer be considered good to eat. He requests that at the same moment, on the jujube tree at the base of Monte Cicala in the house of Giovanni Bruno, thirty perfect jujubes will be picked, and he says that several shall fall to earth still green, and that fifteen shall be eaten by worms. That Vasta, wife of Albenzio Savolino, when she means to curl the hair at her temples, shall burn fifty-seven hairs for having let the curling iron get too hot, but she won't burn her scalp and hence shall not swear when she smells the stench, but shall endure it patiently. That from the dung of her ox two hundred and fifty-two dung beetles shall be born, of which fourteen shall be trampled and killed by Albenzio's foot, twenty-six shall die upside down, twenty-two shall live in a hole, eighty shall make a pilgrim's progress around the yard, forty-two shall retire to live under the stone by the door, sixteen shall roll their ball of dung wherever they please, and the rest shall scurry around at random."

This is by no means all that Mercury has to arrange.

"Laurenza, when she combs her hair, shall lose seventeen hairs and break thirteen, and of these, ten shall grow back within three days and seven shall never grow back at all. Antonio Savolino's b.i.t.c.h shall conceive five puppies, of which three shall live out their natural lifespan and two shall be thrown away, and of these three the first shall resemble its mother, the second shall be mongrel, and the third shall partly resemble the father and partly resemble Polidoro's dog. In that moment a cuckoo shall be heard from La Starza, cuckooing twelve times, no more and no fewer, whereupon it shall leave and fly to the ruins of Castle Cicala for eleven minutes, and then shall fly off to Scarvaita, and as for what happens next, we'll see to it later."

Mercury's work in this one tiny corner of a tiny corner of the Campagna is still not done.

"That the skirt Mastro Danese is cutting on his board shall come out crooked. That twelve bedbugs shall leave the slats of Costantino's bed and head toward the pillow: seven large ones, four small, and one middle-sized, and as for the one who shall survive until this evening's candlelight, we'll see to it. That fifteen minutes thereafter, because of the movement of her tongue, which she has pa.s.sed over her palate four times, the old lady of Fiurulo shall lose the third right molar in her lower jaw, and it shall fall without blood and without pain, because that molar has been loose for seventeen months. That Ambrogio on the one hundred twelfth thrust shall finally have driven home his business with his wife, but shall not impregnate her this time, but rather another, using the sperm into which the cooked leek that he has just eaten with millet and wine sauce shall have been converted. Martinello's son is beginning to grow hair on his chest, and his voice is beginning to crack. That Paulino, when he bends over to pick up a broken needle, shall snap the red drawstring of his underpants. . . ."

That's the claim Bernard Frischer makes several times in his book. Apparently there were several "candidate" busts conforming to various pet theories, but the conclusive evidence didn't come until 1742.

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

I say "peculiar interest of mine" because, for one thing, I am a land surveyor and these statues in their original forms were boundary stones. But I'm also beginning to think of Epicurean philosophy as, in a lot of interesting ways, a radical reinvention of limitations. There is Lucretius and his "deepset boundary stone" (alte terminus haerens), showing what can be and what cannot; there is the atom, a lower limit on the size and scale of the material; there is matter itself, without expiration and eternal; there is the void, infinite, without boundary; there is the limit of the scope of pleasure in the removal of all pain–not the highest pleasure, not the telos in itself–but the limit of its magnitude; there is the circumscription placed around the gods, bundled up and bounded off-oh, somewhere.

There is the utterly final boundary line of death, beyond which there is nothing. There is nothing itself, limited in its own way–for nothing can come from nothing.

These and many others have engaged my thinking for the last several weeks. Epicurus' philosophy is the result of his boundary survey of the whole of nature. He established new boundaries, removed those that were set wrongly before him, and rediscovered even older lines that were set rightly by others but had been forgotten or overlooked since.

When Thomas More in his Utopia wanted to explore Epicurean philosophy, he flung it out onto the very margins of the New World, at the far tip of the spear of human knowledge. He seems to have intuited what we know in any case: that it doesn't matter much where you put him, because Epicurus and his students are "at home" in the universe. Diogenes of Oenoanda grasped this plainly;

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Not least for those who are called foreigners, for they are not foreigners. For, while the various segments of the Earth give different people a different country, the whole compass of this world gives all people a single country, the entire Earth, and a single home, the world.