Posts by Don

Quote from JJElbert

But Epicurus is known to have favored plainer speech. Further, he chose Athens, the beating heart of Greek culture. Samos off the coast of Asia was at a far greater remove from the Greek world.

Yes, I would concur, although Epicurus was an Athenian citizen by birth, too. I keep coming back to the fact that even Epicurus didn't "withdraw from the world." He's placed his Garden only a few stadia outside Athen's walls directly on the busy road that went past the Academy out to the rest of Attica. It makes more sense to me that he withdrew from there masses, the rat race, the hustle and bustle of City life. The Garden was a refuge of sorts but it wasn't isolated or inaccessible. The whole idea, as I understand, was to make it accessible to those who sought it out.

Quote from camotero

Well, the names in the cover are predominantly published in:

Brad Inwood: Stoicism

LP Gerson: Platonism

DS Hutchinson: Plato and Aristotle

So there's that. But perhaps this is common in all professional philosophers?

I guess the best advice is:

Proceed with caution.

Please do let us all know what you think of the book!!

"These women are making sexual pleasure a gender equality priority"

These women are making sexual pleasure a gender equality priority

Meet the women breaking long-standing taboos and empowering themselves and others by starting conversations about pleasure and power

www.cnn.com

Reading the article, I was immediately reminded of Epicurus's fragment 67:

I do not think I could conceive of the good without the joys of taste, of sex, of hearing, and without the pleasing motions caused by the sight of bodies and forms.

Yes, typhoon is the actual word! Τυφών http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…7:entry=*tufw=n

We're talking about this, right?

Quote from Epicurus

‘It is better to endorse the myths about the gods than to be enslaved to the ‘‘fate’’ of the natural philosophers.’

Yeah, I take this to mean, "Give me the myths believed by the hoi polloi any day over the determinism of the academics!" Not that he endorsed those myths! But, given those two options...

Quote from Cassius

...which I strongly believe was *not* Epicurus' viewpoint. I believe if forced to choose, Epicurus would take the "hoipolloi" over the "golden" academics most any day of the week, as would I!

Doesn't he say as much in the Letter to Menoikeus about accepting myths?

I don't get "retirement **from the world**" at all from ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν at all. It's literally "'withdrawal' from the hoi polloi." It doesn't say society, culture, world, etc. It's specifically referring to withdrawal from the masses, which is why I think "herd" is such a good choice. Those who want to assign ascetic or antisocial tendencies to Epicurus and his school are reading more into that hoi polloi than I think prudent.

Quote from AGB

Thanks Don for all the info and links. I'll look at the options.

You're welcome! As means of a disclaimer (since I appear to be talking to two lawyers ), I can't even see ancient Greek fluency from where I am, but I've learned enough and continue to learn to puzzle through the original texts. I find that quite pleasurable.

There are a lot of options out there now thanks to the internet. That's one positive of that technology

Quote from AGB

statutory construction skills).

Now, THAT'S a foreign language to me!

Χαιρε, AGB! Welcome!

I can't help too much with Latin, but I'd recommend taking a look at:

JACT Reading Greek collection. There are actually 3 books one needs: Reading Text, Exercises, Self-Learner Notes, so it can get a little pricey.

Teach Yourself Ancient Greek. I like this because it uses snippets and longer paragraphs of actual text right from the start.

There are some very good resources online as well, including:

Luke Ranieri's YouTube Channels: Scorpio Martianus especially his Ancient Greek in Action! series.

Textkit Greek and Latin Forum has recommendations and download for public domain books

I also can't say enough good things about the Perseus Digital Library's Greek and Latin texts. There are both original texts and English translations and the classical texts are clickable so each word will open up a dictionary entry. Great for puzzling through texts.

I hope that helps. Welcome aboard!

Here's my highly idiosyncratic paraphrase of PD14, incorporating the notes above:

"Up to a certain point, personal safety can be obtained by being powerful and wealthy, but the surest way to personal safety is from withdrawing from the hustle and bustle of the hoi polloi and from the peace gained from not meddling in the affairs of others."

I'm seeing "prosperity" simply as a paraphrase for εὐπορίᾳ

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=eu%29pori%2Fa%7C&la=greek&can=eu%29pori%2Fa%7C0&prior=kai\&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0257:book=10&i=1#lexicon

It's the opposite of πενία

Greek Word Study Tool

PS: "Up to a certain point, personal safety can be achieved by the power to repel and wealth, but the purest safety..."

My translation and interpretation are my own, informed by all the scholarly materials referenced above as well as Bailey's commentary on this Principal Doctrine in his Extant Remains.

I want to first look at several individual words.

ἀσφαλείας

"assurance from danger, personal safety"

ἀσφαλείας is about personal, individual safety from danger, one's own personal safety from harm. It's not an abstract concept of "Safety" or "Security" writ large. It asks, "How do I keep myself free from harm?"

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀσφάλ-εια

ἐξερειστικῇ & δυνάμει

Epicurus Wikis "the ability to repel" through one's own power/strength δυνάμει (dynamei, compare English dynamo, dynamite) is good.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, δύνα^μις

ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν

Epicurus Wiki has just "of withdrawal from the many." τῶν πολλῶν is simply the genitive plural of hoi polloi, the many, the rabble, colloquially the mass of average people out on the street. This is the exact phrase Epicurus uses to describe those who hold erroneous views about the gods in the Letter to Menoikeus.

ἐκχωρήσεως I found interesting after digging in. LSJ gives "retirement, withdrawal from" and even cites PD 14. But I tried to break it down further. ἐκ is the prefix for "out of, away from, etc." So if we take that off, we get χωρήσεως, which has to be a form of χωρέω "go, make way, make room, withdraw, etc." This verb is related to χώρα and χώρος (χῶρος (khôros, “place”) +‎ -έω (-éō)) that mean, as one of their senses, "land, country as opposed to the city; field, farm, estate."

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=xw%3dros1

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Χ χ, , χωλός , χώρα

This would relate right back to the characteristic of the sage in that they are fond of the country as opposed to the city. That uses a different word for "country'' but the connotation is exactly the same. In deference to Cassius, it's not a cave! It doesn't convey the mountains or wastelands. I'm seeing this more as connoting a country villa or retreat, maybe think Villa of the Papyri outside Herculaneum or The Garden. I would also note that the original Garden was not some remote location. It was just outside the city walls directly along the road to the Academy.

ἡσυχίας From Strong's: "descriptive of the life of one who stays at home doing his own work, and does not officiously meddle with the affairs of others," 2 Thessalonians 3:12 Thessalonians wasn't written until the mid-late 1st century CE, but the connotation would be there earlier, just maybe less emphatic. The LSJ has stillness, ease, leisure, rest, quiet.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἡσυ^χ-ία

I could see this as also referring to our being a synonym for ataraxia.

[NOTE: Aristophanes personifies Hesykhias Ησυχίας in line 1321 of The Birds, glossed here as "gentle peace." http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…1&lang=original ]

εἰλικρινεστάτη superlative, "most unmixed, purest"

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, εἰλικριν-ής

This aligns with the characteristics I included in my translation of the characteristics of the sage under the heading Living Unknown https://sites.google.com/view/epicurean…nown?authuser=0

In my opinion then, Bailey and Saint-Andre get closest to a literal translation adhering to the original Greek. I will say it can't be solitude PD14 is talking about since Epicurus stressed the importance of friendship. There's going to be people around you. But this PD seems to stress the quiet life, not being troubled by the hustle and bustle of the hoi polloi.

I was just about to post that too

Here's the link:

http://wiki.epicurism.info/Principal_Doctrine_14/

I think the commentary there is very good as well per their translation.*

The Greek above in #2 agrees with Bailey/Usener so I'm good with that.

*PS: I'll have something to say about some of their interpretation however.

In all honesty, my go-to resource is the Perseus Digital Library http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

Quote from camotero

How come it hadn't come up as one of the top recommendations?

I think one of the issues is that it's an anthology and all the texts are available elsewhere.

Quote from Cassius

. I always prefer the originals when possible.

That's why I liked the Internet Archive and HathiTrust so much. They have the originals

Quote from Cassius

The Epicurus reader is well respected

Agreed.

I'd be wary of Yonge and Hicks too, but all of them are going to have their idiosyncrasies per our conversation above. You can't rely on one translation, which is what makes the plethora of online editions so beneficial.

In listening to the podcast, I was reminded - in reference to the section on the gods and lightening - this seems to be an argument against the beliefs in the gods as held by the hoi polloi - the many - as mentioned in the Letter to Menoikeus. There, Epicurus writes about the gods - being good - bestow good things to good people and vice versa. This section in Lucretius is a direct attack on that view. And I really liked the fact that hoi polloi *is* what they're called: οι πολλοί. So that phrase was directly adopted into English.

Quote from Cassius

That might be better but I doubt it will suit us as a final position. This is something that is going to take some long thought and discussion probably.

As my high school English teacher told me:

"You can't revise something until you have something to revise." Consider this the VERY rough first draft.

Here's the moon video!