Posts by Joshua

I think that No. 72 by Menander is an encouraging sign of more fertile fields beyond. He was a comic playwright and a boyhood friend of Epicurus (serving alongside him in the mandatory two-year military training from age 18-20), and some of his works are even still being rediscovered. They were almost entirely lost in the middle ages, but a number of discoveries in the 19th and 20th centuries have brought back a few of his plays. In several instances the sheets of papyrus were found in the paper lining of mummy cases.

I'm finding quotations on the internet attributed to him that are thoroughly Epicurean (it is absurd to think that the gods answer prayers, for instance), but nothing authoritative. If a good online source can be found we will need to look into it.

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 44 - Philodemus

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"To-morrow, dearest Piso, your friend, beloved by the Muses, who keeps our annual feast of the twentieth invites you to come after the ninth hour to his simple cottage. If you miss udders and draughts of Chian wine, you will see at least sincere friends and you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians. But if you ever cast your eyes on me, Piso, we shall celebrate the twentieth richly instead of simply."

Translated W. R. Paton

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 249 - Lucilius

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"Menophanes bought a field, and from hunger hanged himself on another man's oak. When he was dead they had no earth to throw over him from above, but he was buried for payment in the ground of one of his neighbors. If Epicurus had known of Menophanes' field he would have said that everything is full of fields, not of atoms."

Translated W. R. Paton

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 103 - Lucilius

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Epicurus wrote that all the world consisted of atoms, thinking, Alcimus, that an atom was the most minute thing. But if Diophantus had existed then he would have written that it consisted of Diophantus, who is much more minute than the atoms. Or he would have written that other things were composed of atoms, but the atoms themselves, Alcimus, of Diophantus.

Translated W. R. Paton

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 93 - Lucilius

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"Lean Marcus once made a hole with his head in one of Epicurus' atoms and went through the middle of it."

Translated W. R. Paton

Book XI - Convivial and Satirical Epigrams

No. 50 - Automedon

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"Blest is he first who owes naught to anyone, next he who never married, and thirdly he who is childless. But if a man be mad enough to marry, it is a blessing for him if he buries his wife at once after getting a handsome dowry. Knowing this, be wise, and leave Epicurus to enquire in vain where is the void and what are the atoms."

Translated W. R. Paton

Book VII - Sepulchral Epigrams

No. 106 - Diogenes Laertius

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On Epicurus

"Adieu, and remember my doctrines," were Epicurus' last words to his friends when dying. For after entering a warm bath, he drank wine and then on the top of it he drank cold death."

Translated W. R. Paton

Book VII - Sepulchral Epigrams

No. 72 - Menander

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On Epicurus and Themistocles

"Hail, ye twin-born sons of Neocles, of whom the one saved his country from slavery the other from folly."

Translated W. R. Paton

I second what Don said re: singular/plural. Compare with the Hebrew Torah where "God"—clearly singular—is referred to sometimes by the plural.

The Greek Anthology

Anthologia - A Gathering of Flowers

The Greek Anthology is a collection of some 4,500 epigrams, poems, inscriptions, and proverbs of the Greek language, composed by several hundred authors, and compiled over a period of more than a thousand years. The chief feature of this unusual collection is its range and scope, covering as it does a great many people, places, historical periods, themes, and topics. The unifying characteristic of these texts is their brevity; most of the epigrams are only a few lines long. Each epigram is a narrow window onto the lives of antiquity. Altogether, they are an indispensable treasure trove of Ancient Greek thought and culture---the flotsam of a ship wrecked in Time.

The Purpose of This Subforum

There are no epigrams in this collection attributed to Epicurus himself. We are specifically interested in:

-Epigrams that mention Epicurus or his philosophy (including several on Democritus);

-Epigrams that speak to clear Epicurean themes;

-Epigrams that shed further light on their Epicurean authors (in the cases of Lucian and Philodemus).

Epigrams that touch on competing schools of philosophy, and on the rise of Christianity, will also be included.

The preference in all cases will be to include the original Greek text, and a public-domain English translation (e.g. W. R. Paton).

The Epigrams

The word epigram refers literally to an inscription, and many of the earliest texts in the collection are likely to be of that kind. These inscriptions--on statues, tombs, temples, and monuments--developed over time a style of their own, and this style eventually grew into a literary art-form. Most of the epigrams in the Anthology are not inscriptions at all, but merely poems or proverbs that follow the style. As Parmenion writes in book IX, no. 342:

"An epigram of many lines does not, I say, conform to the Muses' law. Seek not the long course in the short stadion. The long race has many rounds, but in the stadion sharp and short is the strain on the wind."

The Epigrammatists

Two of the important authors in the Anthology were Epicureans. Lucian of Samosata was a satirist of the second century, whose most important Epicurean work is "Alexander the False Prophet". Philodemus of Gadara was a philosopher and poet of the first century BCE, most notable as the author whose books survived the eruption of Vesuvius and were preserved beneath the ash in the ancient Roman villa known as the Villa of the Papyri. Both authors speak in this collection on a variety of themes, and not all of them will be relevant to Epicurean Philosophy.

A third author of note is Palladas. While not a confessed Epicurean, his epigrams are tinted with Epicurean themes. He is also important to us as one of the last great classically pagan witnesses to the Christianization of the Roman world--a trend he greatly abhorred.

I've finally just finished listening to this book. Only two or three mentions of Epicurean Philosophy, which I still think is remarkable. So there's nothing good there, but on the whole I very highly recommend it. A truly fascinating story of a grand old city.

I read Man's Search for Meaninga number of years ago. It's been long enough that I don't remember much; here's what I do remember.

The book is split into two parts. One is a Holocaust memoir from a man who lived it. The other is a philosophical discursion by way of an inquiry into Meaning.

Frankl opens the book by sharing an anecdote of his experience in the early days of Hitler's Austria. After a Synagogue had been razed as part of a spiraling anti-Jewish oppression, Frankl found his father seated at the kitchen table with a piece of the rubble. A part of the Decalogue, his father told him. Which one? The 5th. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the Earth." Victor Frankl was an academic who had acquired a work visa to teach abroad—In America, I think. It was a golden ticket to refuge and freedom. But when he heard those words, he decided to stay in Austria and face what was coming. He spent three years in the living hells of Auschwitz and Dachau. His father, mother, brother and wife were all killed.

Here are a few of my own thoughts.

The murdered Jews of Europe were subjected to torments that no human should ever be made to endure. The survivors emerged with the worst kinds of psychological trauma, which most of them must have borne the scars of until the end of their days. What these people were in need of was therapeutic psychiatry. Frankl was unusually placed in both circles. He was a survivor of Hitler's final solution, and also a psychiatrist. An inquiry into the meaning of life might well be indicated in cases of profound trauma; I do not know. I am far too ignorant both of psychiatry, and of horrific suffering to formulate an opinion on this point.

But speaking philosophically, I must say that I think that Frankl was asking entirely the wrong question.

What is it about human life that makes us think there is any value in asking about its 'Meaning'? You wouldn't ask, "what is the meaning of a rock? What is the meaning of a grasshopper? What is the meaning of a Lipizzaner pony?" Nothing of interest or use is ever likely to be resolved by these questions. People, like rocks and grasshoppers and ungulates, simply are. There's no justification to be speaking of meaning or purpose. When Lucretius said that "No bodily thing was born for us to use", he was hitting upon a real point:

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Nature had no such aim, but what was born creates the use. There could be no such thing as sight before the eyes were formed. No speech before the tongue was made, but tongues began long before speech were uttered.

Edward Abbey said that "From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm." I would strike even closer to the bone than that; I would point to the "appetite" of that great infinitesimal 'worm' that lies at the nucleus of every one of our cells, and whose sole ambition is to replicate. Through a series of random environmental pressures and selected adaptations, the worm of our DNA has arrived at the point where the whole architecture of the mind and body is necessary for the genetic code to reproduce itself. Good luck finding meaning or purpose there!

I cannot speak for any survivor of trauma, but for my own part I noticed that when I stopped asking fruitless questions about meaning and purpose, I was no longer asked to settle for bad answers.

Around the time I read this book, I also read The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell. I don't remember much of that either, but I seem to think that I found it far more useful and refreshing.

And now for something completely different! Walt Whitman, as read and interpreted by Robin Williams.

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At first I was thinking that taking the original seemed a little overboard, but I suppose in that day they were actually doing the owner a favor by giving them a newer version that might last longer?

Ha! No.

The Ptolemy's were very unscrupulous and underhanded about how they "acquired" books. In one instance they gave the city of Athens a large sum of silver as collateral to 'borrow' the original copies of several great Athenian playwrights. Upon receipt of the scrolls, they sent a message back—you keep the silver. We're keeping the books. Copying in the ancient world was often done by educated slaves, and was always prone to minor errors. Alexandria wanted to make sure it had the best and most accurate version of every text. I saw an article yesterday that referred to the practice as "reverse-copyright". The state 'owned' all writings from the moment of composition.

Crosspost; thank you Don!

Galen wrote this in the 2nd century AD; I don't know whether he is the only ancient source.

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Ptolemy the king of Egypt was so eager to collect books, that he ordered the books of everyone who sailed there to be brought to him. The books were then copied into new manuscripts. He gave the new copy to the owners, whose books had been brought to him after they sailed there, but he put the original copy in the library with the inscription "a [book] from the ships"

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Joshua what / who do they focus on instead? People like Pythagorus and Plato? Or do they just generally give little attention to philosophy?

I would say that the book focuses on the city itself in its several social and cultural dimensions;

-geopolitical—Alexander the Great, the Ptolemaic kings, Cleopatra and Caesar, etc

-philosophical—Empedocles and Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, Archimedes and Euclid, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, Ptolemy, etc (the book is very heavy on philosophy)

-cosmopolitan—nexus of all trade between India, Africa and Europe; civil strife between Greeks/Egyptians, and between Pagans/Christians/Jews

The 'conceit' of the book as outlined in the beginning is to let the ancients speak for themselves, as if one were walking through the great Library itself and pulling scrolls off of the shelf.

I did learn one fascinating thing! It was the law in Alexandria that every ship in the port would be inspected upon arrival and before departure. If the inbound ship was found to contain any books, they were seized by the port authority for copying. After the book was copied, the original would be sent to the Library, and the copy returned to the ship. Outgoing ships containing books not copied, or not catalogued for export, could be punished accordingly. This really was an entire city devoted to the project of compiling a collection of every book ever written by man. Epicurus was prolific and widely popular. His books must have been there. The thought of such a place makes me unreasonably giddy—and sad, for what we've lost.

I've been listening to this audiobook in the car, and on the whole I've been very pleased with it. It is one of the better popular histories of Classical Antiquity that I've read, and it has really helped to fill in some gaps in my historical knowledge. The authors' method is to let ancient texts do a good deal of the talking, and to fill in the blanks with narrative and commentary. I've found it incredibly engaging.

Unfortunately, I'm posting this thread in "celebration" of coming across the first mention of the Epicurean school—in Chapter 14. It really makes me appreciate what Stephen Greenblatt has given us in The Swerve. The story simply isn't told elsewhere.

I had thought that Democritus would get a mention in the chapter on physics and cosmology, but he did not. I had thought that Lucian would get a mention in the chapter on Oracles and their various frauds and mechanical deceptions in the ancient world, but he did not. The book is constantly tracing ideas back to their roots in Athens and the Aegean, but the story of atomic materialism and the pursuit of pleasure doesn't seem to the authors to warrant the treatment.

The lament of Palladas over the fate of Hellenism is too good not to use; but at this point I'm not counting on any mention of the Epicurean connection to his epigrams.

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Is it not true that we are dead, and living only in appearance,

We Hellenes, fallen on disaster,

Likening life to a dream, since we remain alive while

Our way of life is dead and gone?

Just to show a bit of my 'absent-minded philosopher' side in a slightly relevant anecdote:

Once when I lived in Iowa I found a bat hanging from the crown-moulding in my apartment bedroom, in a ninety-year-old building. I grabbed a chair and a towel, and some leather gloves, and deftly wrapped the bat in the towel. When I conducted him outside wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I neglected to leave the door open, and it locked. With neither phone nor keys, I was faced with the prospect of walking 17 blocks on a cold night to my sister's house.

I grumbled a bit at the way of the world–until I decided to distract myself by reciting under my breath the Principle Doctrines. By the time my walk was over, I found that I had been charmed by philosophy into an altogether different frame of mind!

I ought to be more diligent in my reading–there aren't many that I could recite now. I do carry a page or two of Lucretius' Latin in my mind, and would love to memorize more. There is an inexpressible value in having these things 'to hand'.

Apparently I've just been waiting for the right time and place to fume about that little dictum...Let's do it internet style!

10 Things I Hate about that Quote

With a countdown for dramatic effect!

10. It defines neither of its terms.

9. It has no descriptive power.

8. No real inferences can be made from it.

7. It often falsely implies in its speaker's argument a thorough review of ALL relevant facts.

6. And often falsely infers in the opponent's position an exclusively emotional appeal.

5. It's embarrassingly juvenile.

4. All while presuming to an unwarranted maturity.

3. It carries not a single drop of irony.

2. It is cheap, shabby and unbearably smug.

1. And, finally, it asks us to deny everything human in ourselves.

I'm listening to an audiobook called The Rise and Fall of Alexandria on my commute. I found something there worth adding here regarding the topic of 'reason'.

Pythagoras, as a philosopher and also a mathematician, seemed to believe that pure reason could be a bridge between mathematical fact and philosophical truth. It all had to do with the number 10.

If you plot one number in a given space, you have a point. If you plot 2 numbers, you have two points—therefore a line. Three points are needed to make a surface (or plane)—a triangle. Add a forth point, and you have a pyramid—that is, a solid.

The Pythagoreans reasoned that these four attributes were the ground of mathematics, that by adding them up you have the perfect number—1+2+3+4=10. Since the facts of cosmology are the reflections of pure geometric truth, the number 10 is the key to cosmology. From Encyclopedia Britannica:

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The Pythagoreans recognized the existence of nine heavenly bodies: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the so-called Central Fire. So important was the number 10 in their view of cosmology that they believed there was a tenth body, Counter-Earth, perpetually hidden from us by the Sun.

These 10 bodies were arranged in concentric celestial spheres. How wonderfully reasoned!

And, of course, total bullshit. (Who is laughing at Epicurus' Sun now!?)

Neither reason nor logic can ever be canonical, because in both cases you have to start with premises. Those premises might be conjectural, in which case the conclusion cannot be called knowledge; or they might be themselves conclusions of prior reasoning, in which case they are only as good as the original inputs; or they might be knowledge in themselves, derived canonically.

But reason can never be the starting point. It requires something to operate on. The belief that we can reason our way from nothing to anything is one of the central flaws of so much ancient philosophy.

As for the original quote, here's a tiny thought experiment:

Pompeii: "How did you beat me? My army had more foot, more cavalry, more supplies, better ground..."

Caesar: "And my army had the morale. Feelings don't care about your facts."