Posts by Joshua

George Santayana discusses this question in his essay on Lucretius from Three Philosophical Poets;

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To a fortunate conjunction of atoms, a child owes his first being. To a propitious season and atmosphere, a poet owes his inspiration and his success. Conscious that his undertaking hangs upon these chance conjunctions, Lucretius begins by invoking the powers he is about to describe, that they may give him breath and genius enough to describe them. And at once these powers send him a happy inspiration, perhaps a happy reminiscence of Empedocles. There are two great perspectives which the moralist may distinguish in the universal drift of atoms,—a creative movement, producing what the moralist values, and a destructive movement, abolishing the same. Lucretius knows very well that this distinction is moral only, or as people now say, subjective. No one else has pointed out so often and so clearly as he that nothing arises in this world not helped to life by the death of some other thing; so that the destructive movement creates and the creative movement destroys. Yet from the point of view of any particular life or interest, the distinction between a creative force and a destructive force is real and all-important. To make it is not to deny the mechanical structure of nature, but only to show how this mechanical structure is fruitful morally, how the outlying parts of it are friendly or hostile to me or to you, its local and living products.

This double colouring of things is supremely interesting to the philosopher; so much so that before his physical science has reached the mechanical stage, he will doubtless regard the double aspect which things present to him as a dual principle in these things themselves. So Empedocles had spoken of Love and Strife as two forces which respectively gathered and disrupted the elements, so as to carry on between them the Penelope’s labour of the world, the one perpetually weaving fresh forms of life, and the other perpetually undoing them.

It needed but a slight concession to traditional rhetoric in order to exchange these names, Love and Strife, which designated divine powers in Empedocles, into the names of Venus and Mars, which designated the same influences in Roman mythology. The Mars and Venus of Lucretius are not moral forces, incompatible with the mechanism of atoms; they are this mechanism itself, in so far as it now produces and now destroys life, or any precious enterprise, like this of Lucretius in composing his saving poem. Mars and Venus, linked in each other’s arms, rule the universe together; nothing arises save by the death of some other thing. Yet when what arises is happier in itself, or more congenial to us, than what is destroyed, the poet says that Venus prevails, that she woos her captive lover to suspend his unprofitable raging. At such times it is spring on earth; the storms recede (I paraphrase the opening passage),[5] the fields are covered with flowers, the sunshine floods the serene sky, and all the tribes of animals feel the mighty impulse of Venus in their hearts.

The corn ripens in the plains, and even the sea bears in safety the fleets that traverse it.

Not least, however, of these works of Venus is the Roman people. Never was the formative power of nature better illustrated than in the vitality of this race, which conquered so many other races, or than in its assimilative power, which civilized and pacified them. Legend had made Venus the mother of Aeneas, and Aeneas the progenitor of the Romans. Lucretius seizes on this happy accident and identifies the Venus of fable with the true Venus, the propitious power in all nature, of which Rome was indeed a crowning work. But the poet’s work, also, if it is to be accomplished worthily, must look to the same propitious movement for its happy issue and for its power to persuade. Venus must be the patron of his art and philosophy. She must keep Memmius from the wars, that he may read, and be weaned from frivolous ambitions; and she must stop the tumult of constant sedition, that Lucretius may lend his undivided mind to the precepts of Epicurus, and his whole heart to a sublime friendship, which prompts him to devote to intense study all the watches of the starry night, plotting the course of each invisible atom, and mounting almost to the seat of the gods.[6]

This impersonation in the figure of Venus of whatever makes for life would not be legitimate—it would really contradict a mechanical view of nature—if it were not balanced by a figure representing the opposite tendency, the no less universal tendency towards death.

The Mars of the opening passage, subdued for a moment by the blandishments of love, is raging in all the rest of the poem in his irrepressible fury. These are the two sides of every transmutation, that in creating, one thing destroys another; and this transmutation being perpetual,—nothing being durable except the void, the atoms, and their motion,—it follows that the tendency towards death is, for any particular thing, the final and victorious tendency. The names of Venus and Mars, not being essential to the poet’s thought, are allowed to drop out, and the actual processes they stand for are described nakedly; yet, if the poem had ever been finished, and Lucretius had wished to make the end chime with the beginning, and represent, as it were, one great cycle of the world, it is conceivable that he might have placed at the close a mythical passage to match that at the beginning; and we might have seen Mars aroused from his luxurious lethargy, reasserting his immortal nature, and rushing, firebrand in hand, from the palace of love to spread destruction throughout the universe, till all things should burn fiercely, and be consumed together. Yet not quite all; for the goddess herself would remain, more divine and desirable than ever in her averted beauty. Instinctively into her bosom the God of War would sink again, when weary and drunk with slaughter; and a new world would arise from the scattered atoms of the old.

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And Stephen Greenblatt in The Swerve argues a similar case;

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Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and that they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in them a destructive relation to the environment in which they live the only lives that they have. These lives, like all other existing forms in the universe, are contingent and vulnerable; all things, including the earth itself, will eventually disintegrate and return to the constituent atoms from which they were composed and out of which other things will form in the perpetual dance of matter. But while we are alive, we should be filled with the deepest pleasure, for we are a small part of a vast process of world-making that Lucretius celebrated as essentially erotic.

Hence it is that, as a poet, a maker of metaphors, Lucretius could do something very strange, something that appears to violate his conviction that the gods are deaf to human petitions.

* * *

Neither creation nor destruction ever has the upper hand; the sum total of matter remains the same, and the balance between the living and the dead is always restored:

• And so the destructive motions cannot hold sway eternally and bury existence forever; nor again can the motions that cause life and growth preserve created things eternally. Thus, in this war that has been waged from time everlasting, the contest between the elements is an equal one: now here, now there, the vital forces conquer and, in turn, are conquered; with the funeral dirge mingles the wail that babies raise when they reach the shores of light; no night has followed day, and no dawn has followed night, which has not heard mingled with those woeful wails the lamentations that accompany death and the black funeral. (DRN 2.569–80 [Side-by-Side])

The Spanish-born Harvard philosopher George Santayana called this idea —the ceaseless mutation of forms composed of indestructible substances —“the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon.”

Glad you asked! Charlton Griffin on Audible reads the Humphries version. It is excellent.

μουσοφιλὴς, "beloved of the Muses", or something similar.

ἕταρος means companion.

I would say the translation is good; Philodemus is emphasizing his work as a poet: that is, a 'darling of the Muses'.

Thread

Epigram on the Twentieth

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 44 - Philodemus

[…]

Translated W. R. Paton

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1565/

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1566/

Joshua

December 10, 2020 at 10:11 PM

Edit; I had no idea I just linked to this thread, sorry about that!

Loeb edition by Rouse, and revised by Smith, is great for the Latin facing text alone.

Verse translation? Rolfe Humphries.

I should make a tier list one of these days.

Raimondi certainly had access to Diogenes Laertius, but knowledge of Greek was still rare even among the great Italian humanist of the Quattrocento. He probably only knew it in a Latin translation, if at all. He clearly had either DL, or Cicero, or both.

Part II is live. I'll try to finish today, but I do need a break for some good old-fashioned acediosus.

Prof. Dewitt cites the scriptures of the Christians many times in Epicurus and His Philosophy, but a longer and more focused treatment is in another work entitled St. Paul and Epicurus. Both were published in 1954, and, while a thorough critique of either text is well outside the scope of this investigation, it is clear that he must have had the latter text in mind while researching the former. His study of the 'Peace and Safety' question is in the section of that text entitled Thessalonians. The plain fact is that he does not substantiate his claim anywhere in these books; nevertheless, I include this here for those who wish to read further into his thoughts. Here is the passage in which he again asserts that Peace and Safety were catchwords;

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By good luck [Epicurus] arrived safely at the refuge of his choice, the city of Lampsacus on the Hellespont, now the Dardanelles; but on the way he was in danger of death by exposure or of capture by pirates, and he narrowly escaped shipwreck. This painful experience was taken to heart. Never again did he invite persecution.

Instead he took the determination to confine himself to peaceful methods and even prescribed rules of safety for his followers in his Authorized Doctrines. Thus the words Peace and Safety became catchwords of his sect and unless we are aware of this fact we shall fail to recognize the meaning of Paul in First Thessalonians 5:3: "For when they shall say Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them." This version, however, leaves something to be desired; it would be more accurate to read: "For at the very time that the words Peace and Safety are on their lips, sudden destruction is hanging over them."

And here, a further claim is used to justify his work to 'correct the translation'. If you read St. Paul and Epicurus, you will find a lot of correcting, emending, and substituting. I leave it to others to judge his translations of the New Testament; I pause only to note that there is again no evidence furnished to support the claim that Peace and Safety were catchwords.

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No person of ordinary intelligence at the date when the letter was written would have been ignorant that peace and safety were objectives of the Epicurean way of life. Recognition of this fact will enable us to correct the translation. To this end it must be remembered that the second coming and the destruction of unbelievers are events in the future but the threat is present and perpetual. With this knowledge kept well in mind we shall be able to set the tenses to rights: "At the very moment that they are saying 'peace and safety' sudden destruction is hanging over them."

Five of the ten endnotes cited above reference the New Testament, and three of the five cite St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 3:

Εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσφάλεια, pax et securitas, peace and safety. This is the verse on which Dewitt hangs his argument, and it is worth seeing where it leads. The Epistle does not contain any mention of Epicureanism, though there are references which might be taken as allusions; Dewitt has his own list, but these are mine. Chapter 2, verse 4 has Paul writing "not as trying to please human beings, but rather God, who judges our hearts." Chapter 4, verses 3-5 constitutes an exhortation for the readers to be chaste and take a wife, "not in the passion of lust like heathen." Verse 11 in the same chapter instructs the readers to "aspire to live a tranquil life [ἡσυχάζειν], to mind your own affairs, and to work with your [own] hands, as we instructed you," and verse 12, "conduct yourselves properly toward outsiders and not depend on anyone."

The problem with trying to connect any one of these to Epicureanism is that they are commonplaces in the writings of St. Paul, and only one of them (4:11, live quietly) is remotely specific enough even to explore further. Here is that full passage:

As you will perceive, there are superficial similarities between Paul's injunction to 'live quietly (ἡσυχάζειν)' and the Epicurean dictum 'live unknown (λάθε βιώσας)', as salvaged for us by Plutarch in fragment U551. The really striking thing about Dewitt's commentary on this verse is the total absence of any commentary on this verse. In St. Paul and Epicurus he writes the following, not in connection with this citation, but in general;

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The courts of law, [Epicurus] well knew, though ostensibly existing for the sake of justice, were only too often employed as an agency of envy to rob the rich of their wealth, politicians of their power, and famous men of their prestige. The obscure citizen was the safest. It was consequently his general advice "to live and die unknown," and in particular "to shun the political career."

So Dewitt does not claim that St. Paul instructed his readers to 'live unknown', and the reason, I think, is clear. Had St. Paul done so, it would seem to have been advised in open contradiction of the Great Commission, enshrined in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 16-20;

Is the advice of Epicurus to 'live unknown' in open contradiction of his own desire to bring the fruits of the philosophy to others? That question, too, is outside the scope of this investigation.

It will be enough to say here that neither Vatican Saying 67, nor Lucian's Alexander the Oracle-Monger, nor the remaining scriptural citations are of any real relevance to our main question. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations and Plutarch's Adversus Colotem are quoted by Dewitt. Cicero he uses to demonstrate that even hostile critics of Epicureanism could not, with reason or justice, admonish the behavior of the Epicureans, though they admonished the philosophy. Cicero is a reliable authority on this question, and he speaks against self-interest; I have no quarrel with Dewitt on this point.

His citation to Plutarch on forgiveness is confirmed by the Loeb edition of Adversus Colotem, edited and translated by Benedict Einarson and Philip Howard De Lacy, where a footnote in that text on page 259 in volume XIV suggests that Plutarch is indeed echoing Epicurus himself. The citation there is to Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, book 10, 118. This passage in Lives is on forgiving or excusing the mistakes or trespasses of slaves.

There is, I think, only one of the remaining endnotes meriting detailed exposition, and that is endnote 68 in Chapter IV. Here is the passage again:

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It was from this time that the word Safety, asphaleia [ἀσφάλεια] in Greek, attained the status of a watchword. Eventually it conferred a new vogue upon securitas [sēcūritās] in Latin,⁶⁸ as also upon praesidium [praesidium]. When the poet Horace in his first ode hails Maecenas as his praesidium, he recognizes him as the assurance of his safety from attacks by enemies.

It may be observed in passing that St. Paul quoted the words Peace and Safety as catchwords of the Epicureans, to whom he refused the honor of mention by name.⁶⁹ In this collocation Peace signified harmonious relations with neighbors while Safety meant the security of the man as a citizen, the sort of safety that Paul himself enjoyed by virtue of Roman citizenship.

* * *

⁶⁸ It may denote akedia [ἀκηδία, acēdia], freedom from a feeling of responsibility; aponia [ἀπονῐ́ᾱ], exemption from responsibility; or ataraxy, freedom from turmoil of soul. See Latin lexicon.

I claim the following insight as original, but concede that without Stephen Greenblatt's work in his book The Swerve I would not have hit upon it. Acedia, a kind of cabin fever, sometimes described as a state of listlessness or torpor, is a sin in the Christian religion, and connected with the sin of sloth. Why is Dewitt mentioning it here, as if it were a synonym of securitas or ἀσφάλεια? My answer; he is calling to mind this word specifically because it serves his purpose of delineating the boundary between Epicureanism and Christianity on the subject of safety, and between Epicureanism and Stoicism on the use of the word ataraxia (ἀταραξία). In acedia, he finds a word, in both Greek and Latin, that no one else will ever claim. This is not the eternal peace of the Christians which they claim is only found in Christ. It is not the apatheia of the Stoics, who will never tolerate idleness, nor is it the otium of the Roman elite, a kind of healthful leisure focused on restorative cultural pursuits. Neither does Dewitt mean to remind us of the negative meaning of acedia; he doesn't even mention that there is any other meaning.

Greenblatt touches on acedia in chapter 2 of The Swerve, which I think is worth quoting at length:

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Though in the most influential of all the monastic rules, written in the sixth century, St. Benedict did not similarly specify an explicit literacy requirement, he provided the equivalent of one by including a period each day for reading—“prayerful reading,” as he put it—as well as manual labor. “Idleness is the enemy of the soul,” the saint wrote, and he made certain that the hours would be filled up. Monks would be permitted to read at certain other times as well, though such voluntary reading would have to be conducted in strict silence. (In Benedict’s time, as throughout antiquity, reading was ordinarily performed audibly.) But about the prescribed reading times there was nothing voluntary.

The monks were to read, whether they felt like it or not, and the Rule called for careful supervision:

• Above all, one or two seniors must surely be deputed to make the rounds of the monastery while the brothers are reading. Their duty is to see that no brother is so acediosus as to waste time or engage in idle talk to the neglect of his reading, and so not only harm himself but also distract others. (49:17–18)

Acediosus, sometimes translated as “apathetic,” refers to an illness, specific to monastic communities, which had already been brilliantly diagnosed in the late fourth century by the Desert Father John Cassian. The monk in the grip of acedia would find it difficult or impossible to read. Looking away from his book, he might try to distract himself with gossip but would more likely glance in disgust at his surroundings and at his fellow monks. He would feel that things were better somewhere else, that he was wasting his life, that everything was stale and pointless, that he was suffocating.

• He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness.

Such a monk—and there were evidently many of them—had succumbed to what we would call a clinical state of depression.

Cassian called the disease “the noonday demon,” and the Benedictine Rule set a careful watch, especially at reading times, to detect anyone manifesting its symptoms.

• If such a monk is found—God forbid—he should be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend, he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule so that the others may have fear.

A refusal to read at the prescribed time—whether because of distraction, boredom, or despair—would thus be visited first by public criticism and then, if the refusal continued, by blows. The symptoms of psychic pain would be driven out by physical pain. And, suitably chastened, the distressed monk would return—in principle at least—to his “prayerful reading.”

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There is another passage which is of interest here, and it comes from the rediscovered library of Philodemus in Herculaneum. On a charred papyrus scroll, PHerc. 1005 Col. 4.2-18, he writes;

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He who claims to know us and to be instructed by us, who claims to be a genuine reader of various writings and of complete books, even if he says something correctly, he has only memorized various quotations and does not know the multitude of our thoughts. What he has to do, he looks up in summeries, like people who believe that they [can learn to be] steersman from books and [can cross every ocean].

In Dewitt's translation of acedia, it is a virtue, not a vice or sin. It becomes a state of mind and body uniquely Epicurean, where freedom from responsibility gives one time enough, room enough, and leisure enough to pursue pleasure and happiness according to the vera ratio or true philosophy, and where the best mode of life is most assuredly available to us.

So much for the endnotes. There is one mountain still unmined in the Bibliography to Dewitt's book, and after that I will present my own discoveries and, at last, reach a verdict and conclusion.

Item number 6 on the Getting Started page here at the forum reads as follows;

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Read The Two Books We Most Recommend - Epicurus and His Philosophy by Norman DeWitt, and Living For Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life by Emily Austin. Austin's book provides an attractive and practical introduction geared toward those who are just starting with the philosophy, and DeWitt's book provides a sweeping overview of the philosophy with many additional details.

We continue to recommend Norman Dewitt's book on Epicurus for many reasons, not least among them being, first, his comprehensive, well-ordered, and systematic treatment of the subject at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels, and, second, his rare, early, sustained defense of Epicurean philosophy against a parade of hostile critics stretching back into antiquity. That he achieves this while remaining both accessible and insightful is something to be remarked upon, and he has earned a small but devoted readership among us.

Nevertheless, the text does have weaknesses.

"You are too timid in drawing your inferences," says the scolding Sherlock Holmes to friend Watson. This is a charge that will never be laid at the feet of Prof. Dewitt. I said that his work was insightful; the truth is that his work is insightful in part because he is not timid in drawing his inferences. This is a problem in places, and the problem is compounded when his endnotes are less fulsomely thorough than we might hope, which, for some of us, is frequently. One area of particular contention is on the question of 'Peace and Safety'.

Epicurus and His Philosophy contains 18 mentions of the phrase 'Peace and Safety', with salient examples on pages 85, 189, 190, 194, 285, 304, and 338. Here is the passage (and associated endnotes) from page 85 in Chapter IV, Mytilene and Lampsacus:

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It was the mature judgment of Epicurus after his escape to Lampsacus that Peace and Safety were essential conditions not only for the tranquillity of the individual but also for the successful promulgation of a new philosophy. It was from this time that the word Safety, asphaleia [ᾰ̓σφᾰ́λειᾰ] in Greek, attained the status of a watchword. Eventually it conferred a new vogue upon securitas [sēcūritās] in Latin,⁶⁸ as also upon praesidium [praesidium]. When the poet Horace in his first ode hails Maecenas as his praesidium, he recognizes him as the assurance of his safety from attacks by enemies.

It may be observed in passing that St. Paul quoted the words Peace and Safety as catchwords of the Epicureans, to whom he refused the honor of mention by name.⁶⁹ In this collocation Peace signified harmonious relations with neighbors while Safety meant the security of the man as a citizen, the sort of safety that Paul himself enjoyed by virtue of Roman citizenship.

* * *

⁶⁸ It may denote akedia [ἀκηδία, acēdia], freedom from a feeling of responsibility; aponia [ἀπονῐ́ᾱ], exemption from responsibility; or ataraxy, freedom from turmoil of soul. See Latin lexicon.

⁶⁹ I Thess. 5:3. [I link to the USCCB only because it is the least user-hostile Bible reference website I can find.]

For the sake of completeness, I will include the following passages with their endnotes. First, page 190 in Chapter X, The New Freedom.

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It is also manifest that he looked chiefly to friendly diplomacy to keep the environment in control. Good will is a catchword of his creed no less than Peace and Safety. It is a precondition of Peace and Safety. He wrote, for instance: "A life of freedom cannot amass great wealth because of success in this being difficult apart from servitude to mobs or monarchs but it does enjoy all things in uninterrupted abundance; if, however, now and then great wealth does fall to its lot, it would gladly disburse this to win the good will of the neighbor." ⁵³

^{* * *}

⁵³ Ibid. 67. [Ibid here refers back to "SV", Sententiae Vaticanae - That is, the Vatican Sayings, number 67]

Next, page 194 in the same chapter.

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It is easy also to find place in this context for the calculus of advantage. Anger is a turmoil in the soul and as such is destructive of serenity or ataraxy. There is more to be said, however: angry reprisals invite reprisals and would be destructive of that peace and safety which Epicureans raised to the rank of a practical objective. As a sect, Cicero informs us, "they were to the least degree malicious." ⁶⁸ They were not revengeful; even while attacking them Plutarch ascribes to them the saying "Let this too meet with forgiveness." ⁶⁹

* * *

⁶⁸ Tusc. Disp. 3.21.50.

⁶⁹ Adv. Colot. 1118e.

Page 285 in Chapter XIII, The True Piety:

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The followers of Epicurus after his death, though diligent cultivators of peace and safety, continued to display the same belligerency as their founder. According to Lucian it was chiefly the Epicureans who summoned up courage to defy Alexander the False Prophet, and the only man to accuse him to his face on a specific charge was an Epicurean, who almost paid for his daring by his life.¹¹⁷ Upward of a century before the date of this alleged occurrence it was the Epicureans in Thessalonica who by their derision aroused the indignation of St. Paul, then prophesying the second coming of Christ. In his retort he denied them the honor of mention by name but identified them adequately by those catchwords of their creed, "Peace and Safety."¹¹⁸ It may be added that the Epicureans, as usual, were in the right; the prophecy was not fulfilled.

* * *

¹¹⁷ Alexander 25,44-46.

¹¹⁸ 1 Thess. 5:3.

Page 304 in Chapter XIV, The New Virtues:

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While this conjunction of faith in doctrine with faith in the leader introduces a dynamic emotional element, it still falls short of making a complete picture. The disciple cannot live to himself. Epicurus thought of his oracular teachings as "beneficial for all men," and he planned coherence for all the local brotherhoods in which his disciples were enrolled. All members depended upon one another for what St. Paul referred to as Peace and Safety. This means that the Epicurean must not only feel faith in doctrine and leader but also in friends and friendship. The authority for this is Vatican Saying 34, which exhibits a play upon words that is characteristic of the master's style: "We do not so much have need of help from friends in time of need as faith in help in time of need." This is an excellent commentary upon the words of St. Paul, "faith which worketh by love."⁴⁷

* * *

⁴⁷ Gal. 5:6.

Page 338 in Chapter XV, Extension, Submergence, and Revival:

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Both Thessalonica and Corinth must have been strongholds of Epicureanism. We must learn to read between the lines. Paul had been preaching at Thessalonica about the second coming of Christ, and prophecy always aroused the scorn of the Epicureans, who denied all participation of the gods in the affairs of man. The answer of Paul to these scoffers is to condemn them to instant annihilation: "For when they shall say Peace and Safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."³⁶ The Epicureans were not accorded the honor of mention by name, but Peace and Safety were catchwords of their sect. It was part of their ethics to live a retired life apart from the turmoil of the courts and the market place and so to seek security from the malice and injury of other men. Paul follows up the quarrel and predicts the coming of Antichrist, the model for which was Antiochus Epiphanes, the archenemy of his race and the patron of the hated Epicureans.³⁷

* * *

³⁶ I Thess. 5:3.

³⁷ II Thess. 2:3-4.

It will be shown that none of the texts cited in the endnotes are sufficient to satisfy the claim that 'Peace and Safety' were watchwords or catchwords among Epicureans, and that Dewitt does not offer substantial evidence in support of this claim.

However, as we move forward in this analysis we will explore sources hitherto unexamined in connection with this question, and these sources might give us a hint as to why Dewitt makes this claim - and why we should dismiss it.

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[...] The ultimate, most glorious restoration
would be to the golden age of King Arthur.

We get most of our sense of King Arthur from Geoffrey of Monmouth,
who completed his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of
Britain) in 1138, and from Sir Thomas Malory, whose fifteenth-century Le
Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur) was, in 1485, one of the first books
to be printed in England. That gave the Arthur myth wider circulation.
There’s now been so much talk about King Arthur over the centuries that
many people feel, like they do with ghosts, that ‘there must be something in
it’. There is: it just happens to be deep-seated psychological need rather
than historical reality.

The story of Arthur reflects our longing, as a species, for the ancient,
concealed and magical. Towards the end of Le Morte d’Arthur, Malory
suggests the title is not the spoiler it seems: ‘Yet some men say in many
parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had gone by the will of
our Lord Jesu into another place; and … many men say that there is written
upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque
futurus’ (Here lies Arthur, the once and future king).

-David Mitchell, Unruly

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Oh, and by the way Patrikios , I think the actual footnote is this;

image.png

So I don't think those passages that TauPhi pulled for us are relevant to the question.

Edit; I see what happened. In chapter 14 the footnote is 99, not 88;

So the text in question is Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum. In other words, Epicurus Actually Makes the Pleasant Life Impossible.

Patrikios , the reference there is to Usener fragment U68, quoted here from Attalus.

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[ U68 ]

Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 4, p. 1089D:

It is this, I believe, that has driven them, seeing for themselves the absurdities to which they were reduced, to take refuge in the "painlessness" and the "stable condition of the flesh," supposing that the pleasurable life is found in thinking of this state as about to occur in people or as being achieved; for the "stable and settled condition of the flesh," and the "trustworthy expectation" of this condition contain, they say, the highest and the most assured delight for men who are able to reflect. Now to begin with, observe their conduct here, how they keep decanting this "pleasure" or "painlessness" or "stable condition" of theirs back and forth, from body to mind and then once more from mind to body.

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, IX.5.2:

Epicurus makes pleasure the highest good but defines it as sarkos eustathes katastema, or "a well-balanced condition of the body."

That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible is part of Against Colotes (Adversus Colotem), which in turn is bundled up in a massive collection of Plutarch's works called Moralia. The Internet archive has the Loeb set of Moralia that runs to 16 volumes in modern print. This is from Volume 14;

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“It is this, I believe, that has driven them, seeing for themselves the absurdities to which they were reduced, to take refuge in the 'painlessness' and the 'stable condition of the flesh,' supposing that the pleasurable life is found in thinking of this state as about to occur in people or as being achieved; for the 'stable and settled condition of the flesh' and the 'trustworthy expectation' of this condition contain, they say, the highest and the most assured delight for men who are able to reflect. (5.) Now first observe their conduct here, how they keep decanting this 'pleasure' or 'painlessness' or 'stable condition' of theirs back and forth, from body to mind and then once more from mind to body, compelled, since pleasure is not retained in the mind but leaks and slips away, to attach it to its source, shoring up 'the pleasure of the body with the delight of the soul,' as Epicurus puts it, but in the end passing once more by anticipation from the delight to the pleasure.

***

And here is Peter Saint-Andre's text and translation at Monadnock;

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68. To those who are able to reason it out, the highest and surest joy is found in the stable health of the body and a firm confidence in keeping it.

τὸ γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα τὴν ἀκροτάτην χαρὰν καὶ βεβαιοτάτην ἔχει τοῖς ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυναμένοις.

δυναμένοις refers to capability, and ἐπιλογίζεσθαι (a word that also appears in the Principle Doctrine 22 and Vatican saying 35) seems to carry a meaning like 'reasoning it out'. This latter term might be an Epicurean neologism, and would possibly be a hapax if his works weren't frequently cited by friends and his critics alike.

So, 'those who are capable of reasoning/realizing/recognizing/figuring'...etc.

Cassius is correct that Dewitt thinks this is a jab at Plato, Timaeus 40d;

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The words "those who are capable of figuring the problem out" are a parody of Plato's Timaeus 40d, where the text reads "those who are incapable of making the calculations" and the reference is to mathematical calculations of the movements of the celestial bodies, which "bring fears and portents of future events" to the ignorant. Baiting the adversary was a favorite sport of Epicurus.

And here is Timaeus 40d;

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[40d] send upon men unable to calculate alarming portents of the things which shall come to pass hereafter,—to describe all this without an inspection of models1 of these movements would be labor in vain. Wherefore, let this account suffice us, and let our discourse concerning the nature of the visible and generated gods have an end.

***

μετὰ ταῦτα γενησομένων τοῖς οὐ δυναμένοις λογίζεσθαι πέμπουσιν, τὸ λέγειν ἄνευ δι᾽ ὄψεως τούτων αὖ τῶν μιμημάτων μάταιος ἂν εἴη πόνος: ἀλλὰ ταῦτά τε ἱκανῶς ἡμῖν ταύτῃ καὶ τὰ περὶ θεῶν ὁρατῶν καὶ γεννητῶν εἰρημένα φύσεως ἐχέτω τέλος.

Cicero makes that objection in book two of On Ends: this is from the Reid translation;

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But Epicurus, I imagine, neither lacks the desire to express himself lucidly and plainly, if he can, nor deals with dark subjects, as do the physical writers, nor with technical matters, like the mathematicians, but speaks on a doctrine which is perspicuous and easy and which has already spread itself abroad. Still you do not declare that we fail to understand what pleasure is, but what he says of it, whence it results not that we fail to under- stand the force of the word in question, but that he speaks after a fashion of his own and gives no heed to ours. If indeed his statement is identical with that of Hieronymus, who pronounces that supreme good consists in a life apart from all annoyance, why does he prefer to talk of pleasure rather than of freedom from pain, as Hieronymus does, who well understands what he is describing? And if he thinks he must add to this the pleasure which depends on agitation (for he thus speaks of this sweet kind of pleasure, as consisting in agitation, and of the other, felt by a man free from pain, as consisting in steadiness) why does he fight? He cannot bring it about that any man who knows him- self, I mean who has thoroughly examined his own constitution and his own senses, should think that freedom from pain is one and the same thing with pleasure. It is as good as doing violence to the senses, Torquatus, to uproot from our minds those notions of words which are ingrained in us. Why, who can fail to see that there are, in the nature of things, these three states, one when we are in pleasure, another when we are in pain, the third, the state in which I am now, and I suppose you too, when we are neither in pain nor in pleasure; thus he who is feasting is in pleasure, while he who is on the rack is in pain. But do you not see that between these extremes lies a great crowd of men who feel neither delight nor sorrow?’ ‘Not at all” said he; ‘and I affirm that all who are without pain are in pleasure and that the fullest possible.’ ‘Therefore he who, not thirsty himself, mixes mead for another, and he who, being thirsty, drinks the mead, are in just the same state of pleasure?’

And in the first book, the Epicurean Torquatus touches on the problem of "Chrysippus' Hand", which deals with the same question;

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Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension. But actually at Athens, as my father used to tell me, when he wittily and humorously ridiculed the Stoics, there is in the Ceramicus a statue of Chrysippus, sitting with his hand extended, which hand indicates that he was fond of the following little argument: Does your hand, being in its present condition, feel the lack af anything at all? Certainly of nothing. But if pleasure were the supreme good, it would feel a lack. I agree. Pleasure then is not the supreme good. - My father used to say that even a statue would not talk in that way, if it had power of speech. The inference is shrewd enough as against the Cyrenaics, but does not touch Epicurus. For if the only pleasure were that which, as it were, tickles the senses, if I may say so, and attended by sweetness overflows them and insinuates itself into them, neither the hand nor any other member would be able to rest satisfied with the absence of pain apart from a joyous activity of pleasure. But if it is the highest pleasure, as Epicurus believes, to be in no pain, then the first admission, that the hand in its then existing condition felt no lack, was properly made to you, Chrysippus, but the second improperly, I mean that it would have felt a lack had pleasure been the supreme good. It would certainly feel no lack, and on this ground, that anything which is cut off from the state of pain is in the state of pleasure.

XII. Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasures great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily, with no pain to thwart or threaten them; I ask what circumstances can we describe as more excellent than these or more desirable? A man whose circumstances are such must needs possess, as well as other things, a robust mind subject to no fear of death or pain, because death is apart from sensation, and pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance. When in addition we suppose that such a man is in no awe of the influence of the gods, and does not allow his past pleasures to slip away, but takes delight in constantly recalling them, what circumstance is it possible to add to these, to make his condition better? Imagine on the other hand a man worn by the greatest mental and bodily pains which can befall a human being, with no hope before him that his lot will ever be lighter, and moreover destitute of pleasure either actual or probable; what more pitiable object can be mentioned or imagined? But if a life replete with pains is above all things to be shunned, then assuredly the supreme evil is life accompanied by pain; and from this view it is a consistent inference that the climax of things good is life accompanied by pleasure.

We discussed the passage from book two in episode 201 of Lucretius Today, which I remember being one of our better efforts...

I thought of a poem during our conversation, but it took me ages to find it again. It's called "The Bloody Sire" by the American poet Robinson Jeffers:

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It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.

What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.

Who would remember Helen’s face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values.

Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.

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And here is Tennyson from In Memoriam:

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Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear;

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God;

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

LV

‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries ‘a thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

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Life without God is futile--we might say 'meaningless'--so where do we find hope? Beyond the veil of death and into new life.

This week's discussion will be on the concept of 'meaning'. I'm copying this post from another discussion;

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The first appearance of the phrase 'meaning of life' in the written record of the English language:

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CHAPTER IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA.
"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,—must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper?

"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,—should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors!—Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes—of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"

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On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him."

• SARTOR RESARTUS:
  The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh, by Thomas Carlyle, ~1831

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Note that this text is considered a parody of Hegel, and that modern scholars find Carlyle's own opinions difficult to isolate. Here is a quote from Carlyle himself in a letter:

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Finally assure yourself I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor circumcised Jew, but an unfortunate Christian individual resident at Chelsea in this year of Grace; neither Pantheist nor Pottheist¹, nor any Theist or ist whatsoever; having the most decided contem[pt] for all manner of System-builders and Sectfounders—as far as contempt may be com[patible] with so mild a nature; feeling well beforehand (taught by long experience) that all such are and even must be wrong. By God's blessing, one has got two eyes to look with; also a mind capable of knowing, of believing: that is all the creed I will at this time insist on.

¹'Pot-theist'; Carlyle was accused of pan-theism. Pot, pan, you get the idea

I've lived in 7 different places in the last 15 years, not counting the cab of a freightliner that I lived out of for two of them.

Looking back, there are things I wish I hadn't given away, things I wish I hadn't acquired, and things I would like to have but couldn't make practical use of in my current place.

It's unlikely that I'll ever own a house, but my experience has given me a good idea of what I'll want in it if I ever do.

Everything in it will be useful, practical, and optimized for utility.

For example; I once had a paper shredder with an irritatingly small bin that was a hassle to empty. So I took a wire rack shelving unit and cut out several wires from the surface of one shelf. I set the head of the paper shredder into the hole that this created, used a bent paper clip attached to the shelf to trigger the safety sensor, and put a large trash can with a can liner under the shelf. The paper shredder dropped the shredding directly into the can, and when I wanted to empty it I could just slide the can out and change the bag.

On the shelf there were two trays for sorting the mail. Once a week or so I could shred everything. The old system was troublesome, irritating, and messy. The new system was neat, tidy, efficient, and effortless.

Then I put a box of wine on the next shelf up with the spout hanging over the end, and a drip pan filled with corks hanging off the lower shelf to catch spills.

I put kitchen knives on a magnetic strip above the sink, with all my frying pans and small sauce pans hanging from hooks on the opposite wall. I don't want to pull everything out from the cabinet to get to the one sauce pan at the back.

So this is my advice; use a systems-based approach and optimize for an experience free of headache and hassle. I'm sure if I lived in that apartment any longer I would have had a mini-fridge next to my living room hammock. I still miss that hammock!

Julia, Don has a write-up that might be relevant to your question here.

And here is a thread where the question of Epicurus' birthday was raised in 2022.

Edit: another thread in the chain that led to the current paper by Don.

Dewitt's paper on this is only just over a page long, and he does point out that in Diogenes Laertius Timocrates is quoted claiming that Epicurus could not rise out of his chair.

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[7] further, [Timocrates asserts] that Epicurus's acquaintance with philosophy was small and his acquaintance with life even smaller ; that his bodily health was pitiful,12 so much so that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair ;

[7] τόν τε Ἐπίκουρον πολλὰ κατὰ τὸν λόγον ἠγνοηκέναι καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον κατὰ τὸν βίον, τό τε σῶμα ἐλεεινῶς διακεῖσθαι, ὡς πολλῶν ἐτῶν μὴ δύνασθαι ἀπὸ τοῦ φορείου διαναστῆναι

He also points out that the word ὠθεῖσθαι is "omitted by Bailey, and can only mean 'get myself pushed'".

So he suggests something like this;

“If you [plural], and Themista in particular invite me, I can have myself pushed in a three-wheeled cart to wherever you are”

He further suggests that this is not an offer to go there quickly. Dewitt thinks that a slow and laborious journey is signified, and that Epicurus is saying he would make that journey with all its hardships for his friends.

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Epicurus, however, was not a paralytic, and his conveyance was certainly "pushed."

(I have a feeling Don will enjoy that word 'certainly'...)

More on garlands;

Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Pife Impossible;

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No sufficient praise therefore or equivalent to their deserts can be given those who, for the restraining of such bestial passions, have set down laws, established policy and government of state, instituted magistrates and ordained good and wholesome laws. But who are they that utterly confound and abolish this? Are they not those who withdraw themselves and their followers from all part in the government? Are they not those who say that the garland (στέφανος [garland, wreath, chaplet, crown]) of tranquillity and a reposed life are far more valuable than all the kingdoms and principalities in the world? Are they not those who declare that reigning and being a king is a mistaking the path and straying from the right way of felicity? And they write in express terms: “We are to treat how a man may best keep and preserve the end of Nature, and how he may from the very beginning avoid entering of his own free will and voluntarily upon offices of magistracy, and government over the people.” And yet again, these other words are theirs: “There is no need at all that a man should tire out his mind and body to preserve the Greeks, and to obtain from them a crown of wisdom; but to eat and drink well, O Timocrates, without prejudicing, but rather pleasing the flesh.”