Posts by Don

Always the killjoy here at the forum ... I just made a post on the VS47 thread that the word "triumph-song" is not in the original manuscript... that's a "correction" by Usener. Feel free to continue the conversation over there:

Thread

VS47 - Source in Vat.gr.1950 and elsewhere

This saying is attributed to Metrodorus.

Here is the manuscript of VS47



(Source: Vat.gr.1950, part 2, 403verso)

And here is the text in Metrodori Epicurei Fragmenta collegit scriptoris incerti Epicurei Commentarium moralem, subiecit Alfredus Koerte (p.561)



That famous word "triumph-song" does not appear in the manuscript! It is a "correction" by Usener, clearly shown in the manuscript itself and in Note (5) in Metrodori...: 5) πλειονος V[atican]., corr[ected by] Us[ener]. Usener…

Don

May 23, 2024 at 6:46 AM

This saying is attributed to Metrodorus.

Here is the manuscript of VS47

(Source: Vat.gr.1950, part 2, 403verso)

And here is the text in Metrodori Epicurei Fragmenta collegit scriptoris incerti Epicurei Commentarium moralem, subiecit Alfredus Koerte (p.561)

That famous word "triumph-song" does not appear in the manuscript! It is a "correction" by Usener, clearly shown in the manuscript itself and in Note (5) in Metrodori...: 5) πλειονος V[atican]., corr[ected by] Us[ener]. Usener corrected the manuscript's πλειονος (more, comparative degree of πολύς (polys)) to the more dramatic παιωνος (a song of triumph after victory; a choral song addressed to Apollo or Artemis)

Epicurus Wiki has a nice breakdown of the saying (including Usener's "correction") that is helpful in providing context and appreciation of Metrodorus's contribution to our surviving texts.

I'd be curious what Bryan or Eikadistes or others make of the manuscript's πλειονος versus Usener's "correction." If we take the manuscript at its word, something like: we shall depart from life with/in the midst of/along with more beauty/nobility (μετα καλου πλειονος), exclaiming/proclaiming that we have lived well.

Or something like: We shall depart from life proclaiming that we have lived with more nobility (than others who didn't pursue pleasure?). ? Thoughts welcomed!

Quote from Cassius

when it is time for me to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who vainly cling to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph-song that I have lived well.

That's a good one. I have always interpreted this as being indicative of not clinging to life at the end. There's palliative care at the end of life; and there's "keep me alive at all costs" (literally and figuratively). If I have (decades and decades in the future ) a terminal dagnosis from a disease, I hope I can do what's feasible; then, at some point, help me with the pain and go out on my own terms... Knowing I lived well.

68. Nothing is enough to one for whom enough is very little.

I've always taken this one to simply mean "Don't go through life consistently dissatisfied with your life. Enjoy what you have!" I read this along with 35. "Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for."

This one is nice simple Greek, too.

οὐδὲν ἱκανὸν ᾧ ὀλίγον τὸ ἱκανόν.

ἱκανὸν "sufficient, adequate, enough, satisfactory"

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…04.0057:entry=i(kano/s

ὀλίγον (where we get oligarchy = "rule by the few"

Of small amount: few, little
Of small size: little, small
Of small degree: slight

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…04.0057:entry=o)li/gos

We're lucky to have On Piety, but Obbink's reconstruction of the text is speculative at best in some areas of the papyrus. Even the parts of the papyrus that are more complete often provide citations without much context. Obbink et al are more than happy to provide commentary, but much of that appears speculative. However, all that said, I need to dig deeper into Obbink's translation and commentary. One paragraph that caught my eye this morning was:

Fascinating stuff!

Quote from Little Rocker

I suppose what puzzles me about the idea that we should aim to be like the gods is that it might seem perfectly sufficient to aim to be like the *sage.* If, for example, the sage expresses gratitude, but the gods do not (KD 1), then shouldn't I want to be like the sage because I am human?

Great question. LOL! Maybe it's all marketing. "Be an Epicurean. Live the life of the gods!"

In a slightly more serious vein, maybe it's the self-sufficiency (autarkeia) aspect of the gods. By Epicurean definition, they neither expect praise nor dispense random punishment. They are always "blessed" and have an unshakable (incorrupible) blessed life. So a sage can live a god-like life in the here and now?

I'll have to give this one some more thought 🤔

The History And Science Of How We Talk To Ourselves

Hearing voices is often associated with mental illness. A British psychologist says this is a misunderstanding. He argues internal voices are actually the…

dianerehm.org

I haven't had a chance to read this or listen to the audio, but thought it could be relevant to the conversation.

I'm looking forward to looking through that paper at the link.

Talk of ancient human brains or minds being qualitatively different from later human brains/minds always makes me a little uneasy. I'm skeptical of them being qualitatively different but rather merely being lacking in the quantity of information available to them. I may be misremembering, but I think Gilgamesh was moved by the death of Enkidu and the subsequent thinking about his own mortality that drove him to seek out the secret to immortality.

But I am curious how the paper ran its analysis and came to their conclusions.

Fascinating topic!

At the risk of going further down the rabbit hole, I would say discussions about "consciousness" depend on how the term itself is defined in the discussion.

It seems to me "consciousness" is on a continuum among all living beings. I'll draw the line at "inanimate" objects having "consciousness."

By defining "consciousness" narrowly or broadly, two speakers using the same word can talk right past each other.

I'll admit that I hadn't heard the term "bicameral mind" before TauPhi 's post above. In looking at the Wikipedia articles (I know - deep research ) it strikes me as similar to the "Ancient Greeks couldn't see 'blue'" arguments because they wrote things like "wine-dark sea" (or that's how οἶνοψ πόντος has been traditionally translated; it has been convincingly stated that it doesn't refer to hue but rather to light/dark differentiation or other qualities). It also strikes me as similar to the discredited idea of the "triune brain" (reptile/mammal/human) that Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett (among others) has done such a good job debunking.

We use Temi for doing transcripts of our podcast at work. It's fairly accurate, but we still have to go through and correct names and other words. And it's not free, of course.

This is exactly why I'm in the "idealist" camp when it comes to this topic.

I find it hard to fathom that Epicurus really posited atomic beings existing outside his kosmos, between world-systems. Remember, the stars we see are part of our kosmos. The "intermundia" has no world, no stars, no moons. It is, as far as I can determine, an undefined soup of random atoms that haven't coalesced into an orderly kosmos. I see no way an atomic material being would even have a place to stand in such a region of the Universe!

Epicurus did posit "alien" life elsewhere in the Universe, but they lived in their own cosmos. Those other beings weren't the gods.

My understanding of the "idealist" position is that each person can have their own conception of the best blessed life possible, and that is *their* "god." That, to me, is part of the significance of those singular "god"'s in Menoikeus. That kind of "god" is deathless because you can't kill an idea. It goes on, being reconceived again and again

That's where my head is at currently on this topic.

Quote from Kalosyni

this could be part of a rhetorical ploy by Cicero

That would be my vote.

The mice are "ingesting" that malicious philosophy of pleasure! Time to clutch your pearls!

I take it as:

• The mice eat Epicurus's work on Pleasure.
• The mice become obsessed with the pleasure of the belly.
• The mice eat up all the grain in the market.
• Grain is scarce.
• The price goes up.

Well, if I remember, the Borg were finally defeated sort of, so maybe not a perfect analogy... but I knew my Star Trek analogy would get a reaction from Cassius . Mission accomplished. (I'll point out that Kirk changed the parameters of the Kobayashi Maru test, so he didn't really beat it as it was presented... He held the philosophical position that there were no un-winnable scenarios. For those non-Trekkies, Look it up )

Quote from Cassius

No it won't be recreated exactly - but it can be recreated in spirit and in new and even better ways if capable and dedicated people come along to work hard enough. All the primary elements survive and they provide the keys to reconstruct the rest

To take the attitude that failure is inevitable would be to give in to a fatalistic determinism that Epicurus was right in rejecting.

On a slightly more serious note: When this conversation bubbles up, I have to ask: What reconstruction or recreation are you envisioning or anticipating? To be perfectly clear, I'm not being snarky or sarcastic. I genuinely am not sure what we're talking about when this topic comes up? Here are some scenarios that everyone is welcome to respond to:

1. Are you (writ large , not referring to Cassius here) wanting a central authority to lay down Epicurean doctrine and practice? An institutional recreation?
2. Are you wanting a more widespread acknowledgement of Epicurean philosophy in the wider culture or popular mindset a la "Stoicism"?
3. Are you wanting local autonomous groups that live together in some kind of Epicurean "community" like the Amish do?
4. Are you wanting Epicurean as a checkbox on census forms or Epicurean "chaplains" in the armed forces? Social and official political recognition?

This is not an exhaustive list of questions, but I would sincerely like us to put some flesh on the Idea of a reconstructed/reinvigorated/recreated Epicurean School. Right now, even the modern Stoic groups don't agree with each other, and there are at least 3-4 Epicurean groups (online and in-person) that don't all agree with each other on certain points. How would each of those groups describe or envision a recreated or reconstructed Garden?

Quote from Cassius

failure is inevitable

Many Epicurean ideas continued and in many ways have actually won the day (atomism, material world, etc.) for many, many people. I'm not going to get into politics about the opposition to those ideas in the present. That 500 year run of Epicurus's philosophy being influential officially and the subsequent 1,800 years of "stealth" influence on the culture doesn't strike me as failure. Maybe that is what rankles me about talk of "reconstruction of The Garden." After 2,300 years, Epicurean philosophy hasn't gone anywhere. It's still here, still relevant, and still a force to be reckoned with... Even if it goes unnoticed.

Quote from Cassius

Apparently through as late as 40 or so BC in Cicero's time, and probably later, an argument could be made that Epicureanism and organized teaching of it was still very successful.

I would offer that that period of success extended from ~300 BCE when Epicurus was founding The Garden in Athens (after a successful period in Lampsacus) to the intervention of Pompeia Plotina in the 120s CE to allow Popillius Theotimus, the acting head of the Epicurean school in Athens, to become the official head *and* to allow subsequent scholarchs of The Garden to be either Greek or Roman. (See also) That's 400 years of fairly stable (it sounds like) succession and administration of The Garden, with evidence of Epicurean appreciation extending all the way into the 3rd c CE (200s CE) at Oenoanda in Asia Minor and then Diogenes Laertius (probably also from Asia Minor) was still writing approvingly of Epicurus in the early-mid 200s CE. So, around 500 years of solid pro-Epicurean evidence, well into the "Christian" era. Clement of Alexandria in Egypt (c. 150 – c. 215 AD) was also stealing Greek philosophical ideas for Christian doctrine.

The problem with the eventual downfall of a formal Epicurean school in Athens seems to have been common to many of the philosophical schools. So, I don't think we can look to something unique to the Epicureans, since the Academy, the Lyceum, etc. all met similar fates. Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and the Peripatetic philosophy could be incorporated into Christian doctrine, not by name, of course, but they could be co-opted to appeal to educated Greeks (and Romans). Epicurean philosophy was anathema to most Christians, so it was never incorporated with credit. Clement could define philosophy in a way that allowed for the Christians to incorporate what they wanted, cafeteria-style, and give no credit to the school: “By philosophy I do not mean the Stoic nor the Platonic, or the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but everything that has been well said by each of the schools and that teaches righteousness along with science marked by reverence; this eclectic whole I call philosophy” (Strom., i. 7. 732CD). I don't think it was a failure on the part of The Garden's scholarchs, adherents, or students or those flung across the Empire. They were all swept up in a world not of their making and hostile to their teachings. To paraphrase Star Trek's Borg "Resistance was futile."

All that said, the philosophy DID survive, underground, often unacknowledged, transmitted through the centuries, a fire then lit from a spark kept warm until the Renaissance. Dante had to include the Epicureans being punished in a book he wrote in the 1300s! They were still seen as a threat and had to be "put in their place" so to speak, inside a sealed coffin... and so we continue the story here on a digital forum in the 21st century. 2,300 years after the death of the school's founder!

Personally, I take inspiration from that story. Epicurus remains relevant after almost 2-1/2 millennia! We live in a world that seems ripe for the life-affirming message of Epicurus. I've said elsewhere that we will never reconstruct The Garden. We don't know enough to reconstruct the administration, structure, etc. nor do I think we want to. BUT we could take inspiration from the - let's call it - "Epicurean diaspora" in the ancient world.

.... And that's why it's so lucky that we have all these digitized resources available to us! For all its shortcomings, the Internet can be a wonderful thing!

I would have to check the sources, but my feeling is that after Epicurus, the Epicurean school became much more decentralized. During Epicurus's lifetime, he talks about far-flung students sending money to him (which I'm going to assume he used for the upkeep and running of his household and school). After his death, did students support the school and succeeding scholarchs in the same way? Or did they concentrate on their own local Epicurean efforts? For example, Diogenes didn't commission a stoa wall in Athens; he built one in his own hometown of Oenoanda. Philodemus, while he did study in Athens at THE Garden with THE scholarch, was active in Herculaneum not Athens. The Garden in Athens wasn't a Vatican. Maybe the decentralizion was both a strength and a weakness in the end, allowing the school to spread but not having a central "authority" by which to "impose its will" throughout, say, an Empire... Like certain later organizations.

These are great, TauPhi !! Well done and THANKS!!

To circle back to Bryan 's question: Both of those document χᾰρῐέστε[ρο]ς...

I've been looking for an image of P.Oxy.II 215 online for us to make up our own minds, but I've been unsuccessful thus far.