https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-1057
I have read Seven Volumes of De la Harpe in course, and the last Seven I have run through and searched but cannot find what I chiefly wanted, His Philosophy of the 18 Century from the Beginning to the End—that revival of the ineffable Nonsense of Epicurus as related by Lucretius not as explained by himself in his Letter in Diogenes Laertius.
I think I agree that DeWitt's reach exceeded his grasp on this point. It is far from settled, in my view, that "Peace and Safety" was a watchword among Epicureans. But it ought not be controversial that these were important, and they were often presented as a pair:
Peace and Safety
But nothing brings more joy than to live well
in serene high sanctuaries fortified
by wise men’s learning—where you can look down
on other men, see them wandering around
in all directions, roaming here and there,
looking for a path in life, competing
in their natural gifts, striving for honours,
seeking with all their effort night and day
to rise to the top, to win great power.
O wretched minds of men, O blinded hearts!
In what living darkness, what great dangers,
you spend your lives, however long they last!
Do you not notice nature barking out
her one demand, that pain be kept away,
divorced from body, so that, free from care,
free from fear, she may derive enjoyment
in her mind from a sense of pleasure?
Hence, we see that for our body’s nature
only a few things are truly needed—
the ones which do away with any pain.
-Lucretius
It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.
-VS 17
There is no advantage to obtaining protection from other men so long as we are alarmed by events above or below the earth or in general by whatever happens in the boundless universe.
-VS 72
And yes, Lucian;
The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquillity, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and inordinate desires, of the judgement and candour that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.
For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid;
-Letter to Menoeceus
And in a similar vein:
Know then, that the only aim of the knowledge of the heavenly phenomena, both those which are spoken of in contact with one another, and of those which have a spontaneous existence, is that freedom from anxiety, and that calmness which is derived from a firm belief; and this is the aim of every other science.
-Letter to Pythocles
This is the first zoom presentation I have watched involving presentation of a paper. She's basically reading large sections of it, but this will hopefully be followed by question and answer. What's the best format using zoom? Is it ok to basically read a paper as the main presentation? (thinking out loud)
I didn't watch any of this, but this question strikes me as interesting. I went to several book readings in college, mostly of poetry and nonfiction/essays. I always enjoyed the author reading selections from their own work, but the key word is selections! With poetry this is easy, but one essayist in particular does stand out in mind as having been totally captivating; but of course he was writing about his life, his students, his dying father...
An academic work must be more taxing to listen to, as well as to present.
The very best reading I ever attended was one of my professors'. I've never seen a man so completely alive to the power of language. He was also a jazz musician, and he enlisted a few students from that category for accompaniment, so the thematic range of the evening was truly powerful.
So how might we take this concept and make it more approachable... 
The oak wreath is also emblematic of a certain pope Julius II, who was a patron of the arts at this time.
OK so he's the ONLY figure in the fresco with a laurel wreath. The suggestion that laurel wreaths are identified with poets would go a long way toward helping with the identity of this figure if we are confident of that association.
It might...except that its not a laurel wreath! Bay Laurel is indeed associated with poets. But this is an oak wreath.
Keys to Preservation
Preserving rare or antique papers, manuscripts and books requires care and discipline, but the fundamentals of the practice are rather simple; if we can identify the factors that cause problems, we can establish a practice that incorporates their solutions. This essay will use the example of one antique book, and the solution arrived at for its continuous display.
Why Physical Texts Decay
Professor Stephen Greenblatt has surveyed the problem through the lens of metaphor–he describes the factors involved in the degradation of physical texts as "The Teeth of Time".
We shall focus on those "teeth" that are within the compass of the amateur collector. The key factors, in brief and in no particular order, are these:
-Mold
-Insects
-Sunfading
-Acidic Corrosion
-Water Damage
-Dessication
-Stressed Bindings
-Rough Handling
-Neglect
How to Protect Your Books
To outline the solutions to these problems, this essay will borrow the nomenclature of Workplace Safety. In that field, life-saving solutions are categorized according to their implementation.
Engineering Controls involve making changes to the work environment, i.e. with guardrails, hazard signs, safety paint, and the like.
Personal Protective Equipment can be worn by the workers, to place a barrier between them and the materials in the workplace.
Best Practices are behavioral standards implemented to get the job done safely.
Engineering Controls
When it comes to protecting books and papers, the most important step to take is to protect them in storage. An antique book will spend a tiny fraction of its life in the hands of a reader or admirer. It will be left sitting silently for months and years; the condition that the book is in when the reader returns to it will depend considerably on how it was stored.
Our example specimen is a Latin Edition of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, printed in Cambridge, England in 1675.
The volume is beautifully preserved–we certainly want to keep it that way. But we also want to see and appreciate old texts; we want to let them speak to us. So while tucking it away in an archival box is an option, what we'll be looking for is a clear display case. An archival, museum quality display case should be specifically engineered to safeguard the specimen against the "teeth of time"–those decay factors in the list above. It should have;
-Museum glass or acrylic, designed to reduce glare and severely restrict the passage of UV light
-Active or Passive humidity control
-A combination hygrometer/thermometer
-Inert materials, to prevent off-gassing and corrosion
A book storage solution does not need to be airtight, and in fact should not be airtight unless it incorporates active humidity control. Putting paper in airtight storage without controls is like locking the door when the enemy is inside with you!
In addition to the above, the storage solution should protect against variable temperature swings. A modern climate-controlled house will likely be sufficient–but don't put the case by a window or a radiator, or under a hot lamp, or in a cold basement or hot attic, or next to an exterior wall.
In Part II, we'll find a display/storage solution for Lucretius, and also consider the use and theory of Personal Protective Equipment (i.e. inert cotton gloves) and the implementation of Best Practices in handling the book itself–to include a note on legacy, and how to pass the book on to others when our time is done.
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!
Edit;
Here's a note I am making while editing this week's podcast.
Well...I clearly cannot have listened yet! 
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!
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
_______________________________________________
Condition of the book as described by the seller;
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.
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;
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;
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;
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.
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;
[...] 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;
Don: "Far be it from me to second guess the museum, but…"
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.
“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.
