Posts by Joshua

Stallings' was the first version I read myself. I ordered it not long after reading Greenblatt. It's certainly a unique take; I find that with all of these old epics I prefer a prose translation, but it's always beneficial to look at it from another angle.

That must have been an interesting class, Don! It's increasingly looking like I'll have something worth casting here. I think I'll find a professional to help with that part.

Next steps:

1. Fine-finishing the wax: Every scratch will show in the casting, so I want to have it really smooth before I send it out. Apparently nylon stockings work well for this 🤷‍♂️.

2. Trace final portrait sketch and copy over to the ring surface.

3. Carve the figure. I haven't used the dremel tool yet, but it might be perfect for detail carving.

4. Finishing touches, 3D scan, and send it out for casting.

I have a long way to go on the portrait, but I'm at least confident that it will work on this scale. So tonight's project was to finish shaping the ring!

I needed to get the band substantially thinner, so I started with the wax carving tool. Here's what strikes me most about this project: I simply cannot believe how intuitive the shaping process has been the whole way through. Consider that I did not at any point sketch out the shape of the ring; I did not draw lines on the wax to tell me where to carve; I did not have a another ring on hand to compare with in three dimensions. Every step has been guided by one essential law, symmetry, and only the human eye to judge it by. I've been very pleased with the whole experience, and I can only dream that the portrait carving goes as smoothly!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After I scraped down far enough to make me nervous, I made the decision to put aside the tool and go slowly with the sandpaper.

The sandpaper makes quite a mess as you can see, but the ring is infinitely better for it. After sanding things down smooth and symmetrical, I used the mandrel and the sandpaper to widen the hole a bit more. After several days of sliding the ring on and off I decided to go for the middle finger instead of the ring finger, since this would look best with a proportionally large carving surface.

I know we're all more excited about the engraving itself when I get to that, but I'm very pleased just to have gotten this far. Thanks for following patiently--I hope to have more tomorrow.

I agree with Cassius that these portraits leave a lot to be desired, but that's a good find regardless. Thank you Charles!

The portrait of Horace is especially interesting. He is depicted not only as a boy, but as a free-born minor wearing the age-appropriate Toga Praetexta. Horace was free-born, which is a point worthy of note since his father endured some years of slavery.

He is also depicted with a bay leaf (or laurel, from bay laurel), which signifies poetry. In fact, Horace did not write poetry in his youth; he turned to it in later years after choosing the wrong side in the Roman Civil War and losing his father's estate in Venusia as part of Augustus' land seizures. Since Rome did boast a number of boy-poets--among them Lucan, died age 25, and Catullus, died age 30--it might seem an unusual choice for a portrait of Horace who lived to be nearly 60. Personally, my favorite portrait of Horace depicts him bald and squat, in middle age, with a glass of wine and a winning grin.

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But I have never heard, found or read "Bayle's magnificent article."

Pierre Bayle is the gentleman in question. France, 1647-1706. More in Charles' line, but I can look later as well.

One of his novels is called City of the Discreet, and it's protagonist Quentin is a young man who thinks of himself in his private thoughts as an Epicurean. Might be a good place to start!

Pío Baroja; Youth and Egolatry; 1889; Spanish Novelist who gladly adopts Horace's motto for himself—A swine out of Epicurus' herd.

Another new friend!

Pío Baroja (1872-1956) was a Spanish novelist of the last century who wrote the following in a text called Juventud, Egolatría (Youth and Egolatry):

Epicuri de Grege Porcum

I am also a swine of the herd of Epicurus; I, too, wax eloquent over this ancient philosopher, who conversed with his pupils in his garden. The very epithet of Horace, upon detaching himself from the Epicureans, Epicuri de grege porcum, is full of charm.

All noble minds have hymned Epicurus. "Hail Epicurus, thou honour of Greece!" Lucretius exclaims in the third book of his poem.

"I have sought to avenge Epicurus, that truly

holy philosopher, that divine genius," Lucian

tells us in his Alexander or the False Prophet.

Lange, in his History of Materialism sets down Epicurus as a disciple and imitator of Democritus.

I am not a man of sufficient classical culture to

be able to form an authoritative opinion of the merits of Epicurus as a philosopher. All my

knowledge of him, as well as of the other ancient philosophers, is derived from the book of Diogenes Laertius.

Concerning Epicurus, I have read Bayle's magnificent article in his Historical and Critical

Dictionary and Gassendi's work, De Vita et

Moribus Epicuri. With this equipment, I have become one of the disciples of the master.

Scholars may say that I have no right to enroll myself as one of the disciples of Epicurus,

but when I think of myself, spontaneously there comes to my mind the grotesque epithet which Horace applied to the Epicureans in his Epistles, a characterization which for my part I accept and regard as an honour: Swine of the herd of Epicurus, Epicuri de grege porcum.

[Translated from Spanish By JACOB S. FASSETT, Jr. and FRANCES L. PHILLIPS, in an edition presented by H.L. Mencken]

There are a few items of concern here. The word 'detaching' with reference to Horace is curious, but that may be a problem of translation.

And his praise for Gassendi's work is notable as well. Nevertheless, it's evident that he read Diogenes Laertius as well as Lucretius and Lucian, so that's enough to be getting on with.

I haven't read any of his novels, bit Hemingway praised him very highly, suggesting to him that he (and not Hemingway) should have won the Nobel prize in literature.

Handbook of Archaeology: Egyptian-Greek-Etruscan-Roman:

https://books.google.com/books?id=TLRGA…ngraver&f=false

Nearkos is listed here amongst other ancient artists. Also attributed to him are images of Sulla and Demetrius, which I suppose is how they date the gems?

OK, I found the reference;

"A Popular Handbook to the Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum"

edited by Sir Edward Tyas Cook

I'll try to find the reference, Cassius; it was in a GoogleBooks scan of an old doorstopper reference tome called--I don't know--"Collections of the British Museum: Volume 47" or whatever. The British Museum is like an iceberg. For every one piece on display for public viewing, 99 are gathering dust in a drawer somewhere.

And here's something before I forget; in my search for extant rings I didn't turn up anything new on Epicurus, but there is supposed to be a ring featuring a portrait of Horace carved in Topaz in the collections of the British Museum. So it would be great if we could track down a photograph of that.

That is a point of interest, Godfrey. The 18th or early 19th century William Bligh ring is more squat and nearly circular than the rings above from antiquity, and it's also the worst semblance. In part because the beard has been cropped so close.

Busy weekend, but back at it again this afternoon. There's still quite a lot of wax to be removed, but I decided that I'd like to have a clearer idea of the central figure before I went too much further. So I spent most of the evening sketching out profiles. I did up 20 or so, all using a penny as the template.

The limitations of working on this scale have quickly become apparent! I found myself getting slightly annoyed at how difficult it was to do a recognizeable profile in the space allowed.

Here's a sample of what I drew;

What I gradually realized was that the design choices were hugely informed by the tension between the circular template I was working in and the demands of Epicurus' full beard and 'long' face.

I think this last is the one I like best so far;

The next decision; do I carve the image above in a two-dimensional relief (like the tree ring), which might be easier and more appropriate for a signet ring, or do I carve a fully three-dimensional profile portrait like we see in all Epicurean rings from antiquity? I suspect that it will be my skill and patience that decide the question.

Very promising! This has been a perennially thorny subject around here for some time, and much of it stems from most of us having so little Greek.

Back to the workbench.

Yesterday I got as far as sizing the ring and roughing out the shoulders. This is where I picked up this afternoon;

Since the underside needs to be considerably narrower than the top for comfort and weight, I focused my attention there next. I picked up my carving tool and got back to work. Every time I start roughing out a new section, I get nervous about how janky everything looks;

But with patience I have so far been able to smooth things back in the direction of symmetry. On my way home from work today I stopped at Ace Hardware and picked up a few new files and some fresh sandpaper. The sandpaper is working small wonders!

Which become even more apparent when compared with the unsmoothed side shown here on the right;

After sanding both sides, I have a workable surface about the size of a penny.

And that's all for tonight! I doubt I'll get much done over the weekend, so look for an update early next week.

Thank you both for the encouragement! I'm still not sure what the endgame is here—whether I'll get the equipment and cast it myself, or take it to a custom jeweler. But I will absolutely produce scans of the wax before I do, as well as of the final product.

The last photo was a direct link to an outside site, which works well. I used to be able to do that from IMGUR if I accessed the photo in my phone's browser. Imgur no longer has a browser-accessible site on mobile. I'll shop around for another image hosting site.

I don't think it's a file-size problem since this forum isn't actually hosting the image, bit I could be wrong about that.

For reference, this is sort of what I'm going for (except with Epicurus' profile instead of a tree). All of the surviving rings from antiquity are carved stones set into metal rings. I'm making more of a signet ring than a proper cameo or intaglio ring.

Cassius: Ever since IMGUR abandoned their mobile site and corralled me into their really quite awful app, I've been struggling with images. Feel free to fix them if you can.

Our recent meeting of the Twentieth inspired me to finally make another attempt at ring carving. I tried this once before last fall, but I was living in a truck and the only tool I had was a pocket knife. I was rather frustrated.

Then life intervened; I moved to another state and started a new career, and haven't thought much about it since.

So let's try again! I've ordered the correct tools, and started the project last night.

https://i.imgur.com/PJoA3f9.jpg

The first thing I did was clamp the wax in a vise, using soft balsa wood to protect the wax from the metal. I then cut off a section with a jeweler's hacksaw. What a difference that made! This thing almost can't help but cut straight.

https://i.imgur.com/8ZLF7ux.jpg

I then applied a six-bladed steel ring-making mandrel to open up the hole. If possible, this tool is even more useful than the saw. Perfect symmetry.

https://i.imgur.com/OVlAYke.jpg

The first question was which digit I would size it to. I ended up on the ring finger basically by default; my mandrel doesn't cut any larger than that, which is my only complaint.

https://i.imgur.com/Xbwycay.jpg

I pretty quickly realized that I hadn't cut the wax wide enough, so I sawed off a larger section. I'll set aside the small one for another project.

https://i.imgur.com/aCqVH2H.jpg

After working this blank with the mandrel, I opened the little set of carving tools and set to work. It quickly became apparent that scraping was the right approach. Cutting, poking, stabbing—they all just created problems.

https://i.imgur.com/UQxAmNy.jpg

It's easy to get carried away with scraping. I had to become very disciplined in order to maintain symmetry. On the other hand, I don't want to become paralyzed by perfectionism. If this blank doesn't work out, I'll cut another one!

That's as far as I got last night. I'll continue to post updates. If I get something worth casting, that's where things will get really interesting.