Posts by Joshua

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.

Quote

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.

Oh, certainly it's worth exploring, Titus! In fact we ought to try to know as much as we can about it. Our critics will see a thread toward Marx as a weak point to begin with in unraveling the whole cloth.

Thanks also to Martin for his insight into the German. I should strive for Cassius' discipline when it comes to presenting multiple translations.

I wrote this post earlier. I wasn't sure if I should post it, since I'm largely out of my depth here. I'll drop it here anyway—think of it as the words of an overconfident contrarian interlocutor. It doesn't really feel like my voice when I read it again; I'm not even sure that it is actually my opinion.

——————

Quote

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

from Karl Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. I've highlighted in bold the passages where he departs significantly (in my view) from Lucretius.

It is true that Lucretius (and Epicurus) developed a critique of religion that derived in part from its role in biological and cultural evolution. But the urging to abandon religious fear—and, by extension, religion's false consolations—is an urging that Epicurus presents on its own foundation. The secondary case—the urging for Man to abandon his soulless economic conditions through revolution—is one that was never made; indeed, one that seems not to have been considered.

A clue to this may be found in Epicurus' refusal to instate in his Garden a Pythagorean-style 'commune', which he believed would betray a lack of trust among its members. Possibly Epicurus would not have been surprised by what followed. What Marx desired was to re-invert the mistaken inversion; to correct what was badly wrong in mankind's relationship with the material, both spiritually and economically—the halo, and the 'vale of tears'. Both of these were best represented in the ancient world by Platonism; it had a class or a caste system. It had an ethereal and incomprehensible metaphysic. It had a political theory, not only descriptive but prescriptive. That was the system Marx inverted. That was the original error whose over-correction and mirror-image was Marxism.

Where Marx and Plato sought to instruct nations, Epicurus addressed himself to individuals. Where Marx and Plato denied to the poor masses¹ the capacity to arrive at metaphysical truths, Epicurus taught even slaves.

Epicurus did not build castles in the air. He developed a philosophy on the ground that was prudent and practical, and tailored to lived experience. It didn't call for a revolution in political life—nor did it call for a philosopher king. It called only for the mental discipline of the student, and a willingness to try.

He didn't engineer a utopia; he plotted the course of a happy life. If he has an heir among political theorists, we should look not to Marx, but to Thomas Jefferson.

———

¹For Marx, the "oppressed"; for Plato, the 'baser metal'.

Yeah, when I was driving long-haul I wanted to make a point of visiting, but I never did get the chance.