Episode 065 - Introducing a New Panelist (Don) and A Recap of the Opening of Book Five
Date: 04/09/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1932-episode-sixty-five-introducing-a-new-panelist-don-and-recapping-the-opening-of-b/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Don joins as a new panelist for Books 5 and 6, replacing Elaine (temporarily absent) and Charles (away). Don introduces himself: a forum member since early 2020, drawn to Epicurus after first exploring Stoicism, attracted particularly by Epicurus’s materialism, rejection of religion, and egalitarianism (welcoming women). He has the Stallings translation marked up alongside the Loeb Classical Library edition and has read the full poem. No reading this episode — the group revisits the opening 90 lines from Episode 64.
Discussion covers: worship vs. respect as the right frame for Epicurus being called “a god”; Don’s note that Lucretius specifically chose Hercules as the Stoic patron saint, making the comparison a backhanded rebuke of Stoicism; the comparative timeline of Epicurus, Zeno, and Chrysippus (roughly contemporary, Epicureans more mature before Stoics rose to prominence); Cicero’s critiques of Stoics in De Finibus as sharper than his critiques of Epicureans; Don’s observation about the Stallings “boundary stone” translation at line 90; the ataraxia/calm-seas metaphor in lines 10–13; and a preview of Book 5 topics — cosmos, human origins, language, civilization, and justice.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 65 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In this Episode 65, we introduce a new panelist to our discussions. Don will be joining us for the remainder of Books 5 and 6. So today we’re going to introduce Don and also step back to the very beginning of Book 5 and get Don’s take on where we’ve been and where we’re going.
In today’s episode we are going to depart from our normal format because we have with us today a new panel member, Don, who has been a member of the EpicureanFriends Forum for well over a year and been following along with all the podcasts we’ve recorded already. In last week’s episode we started Book 5 with Martin reading the first 90 lines or so. But for today’s episode, since we’re going to have Don joining us, we’ll go back and discuss this general significance of what we can expect to find in Book 5, where we are, what brought us to this position today, and talk about how we’ll move forward from here. For the time being, we’ll be proceeding without Elaine — we hope she’ll be joining us in the future — and Don will take a place for the time being. Don, please introduce yourself.
Don: I’ve been a member of the EpicureanFriends Forum since February of last year. I would describe myself as Epicurious — maybe not fully Epicurean yet, but getting there. Since 2016 I’ve been looking at the philosophy, and I was originally drawn to the Stoics because I think they get more airplay unfortunately right now, and I discovered Epicurus through them. What surprised me the most with Epicurus was the parallels with modern science — the materialistic worldview, the rejection of religion — and the fact that he was the only ancient Greek school that welcomed women, instead of, you know, other views on women back then. I think it was a really turning point for me. I thought that was an amazing sort of egalitarian perspective that he brought that really surprised me from ancient Greece.
Cassius: Don, people who have listened to earlier episodes of the podcast will know that we are not professional philosophers. Do you have professional training in philosophy?
Don: Oh, no, no. Other than just being a human being.
Cassius: All right. You’re self-taught and self-read in philosophy, just like most of us are.
Don: And self-read and self-taught for whatever basic ancient Greek I have as well. I’ve been playing around with that for a number of years, just on a very amateur level. But I will say that if you want to hear what ancient Greek sounded like and to get some ideas online, Luke Ranieri does a YouTube channel called Scorpio Martianus — and also Polymathy — and has some great ancient Greek and Latin tools to learn there. And there’s another YouTube channel called Podium Arts where the gentleman reads texts from ancient Greece in a conversational tone — it’s just amazing to listen to those. So those are two that I would recommend for anybody who’s interested in the languages themselves.
Cassius: Okay. I know in my own case, I think I probably was first drawn into philosophy through, as you said, the Stoic angle because they’re so much more well known. I personally was attracted to Cicero a long time ago and probably found out about Epicurus through Cicero as I was reading some of the Cicero material. Was there anything particular about the Greek philosophy that attracted you as opposed to just more modern philosophy?
Don: I think it’s a matter of looking back at the roots of philosophy and where modern civilization came from and that sort of thing. I think going back to the roots is always not a bad idea. It’s amazing because — you know what’s the saying, that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato or something like that. I went back and I looked at them and, man, Socrates was just a jerk. You read some of the stuff — the gadfly, and he was just terrible to his wife and his children and all this kind of stuff. The hero worship that comes with Socrates just sort of surprises me. And then you have Plato with all of the idealism and the forms and just completely disassociated from reality. You have Aristotle who seems — a fascinating character it looks like — but he seems a little bit elitist to me: well, not everybody can follow philosophy, and that sort of thing. And Epicurus just struck me as being very much more open and egalitarian, and just provided a philosophy for the common people to try and follow, but also that there’s a lot of erudite study and everything behind it as well. So it hit all the buttons that I found interesting.
Cassius: And Don, since obviously we’re doing a Lucretius podcast, how much reading into Lucretius have you done?
Don: Oh, I got my marked up paperback copy of Stallings here, sitting right beside me. I got the Loeb Classical Library edition. I’ve looked at some of the translations that you’ve posted online. So I’ve read the entire work at least once all the way through, and I go back and sort of make notes every once in a while. And it’s an amazing piece of work. And that’s one of the things — I know very little about Latin, but I think that it’s always interesting whenever you read a translation to go back to those original words that Lucretius actually used and find out what words he actually uses and the implications of those too. So I’m at least as far as I need to be for the podcast.
Cassius: Well, you’re going to be fine, I’m sure, especially with your knowledge and your interest in the Latin and Greek. Again, anybody who’s listened knows that we’re not experts on Lucretius, and in fact one of the attractions that I think we were kind of bringing to the way we were approaching it is that we’re not academics and we’re not trying to blaze any new trails in intellectualizing the details of Lucretius. We really are trying to make Lucretius understandable to modern people who are of relatively normal levels of education. So many of the things that we’ve been saying — as we’ve come across each passage, we haven’t done a lot of preparation — we really want to relate these things to the reaction that normal people would have. And I think you’ll certainly be fine doing that.
Cassius: Last week Martin read the opening of Book 5, but we didn’t have a chance, since you weren’t with us last week, to discuss your commentary on the first 90 lines of Book 5. So today, why don’t we drop back for just a few minutes and discuss that? Because there are several things in discussing Epicurean philosophy that will always get a rise out of people. When we posted about the podcast last week on the Facebook group, we had a conversation develop about it being improper to worship Epicurus — that we should not idealize the man, we should always put hero worship aside, and make sure that we don’t get confused about the merit of any one particular person and put too much emphasis on one particular pioneer in philosophy. So the whole issue of considering Epicurus to be godlike or as a god and so forth is something that produces a lot of discussion. So what is your perspective on: was Epicurus a god?
Don: Oh, good question. I think you have to draw a distinction between worship and respect. I think some people will say that the whole idea is that Epicurus brought out the material universe and nature and all this kind of — well, they’re just self-evident and everybody would know them. And the fact is not everybody did back then, and he was the one who really looked at things and tried to provide a basis for the entire philosophy from a materialistic worldview that was not exactly prevalent back then. So I think respecting him for his insights and for his ability to have a coherent system of philosophy — I don’t think there’s any problem with showing respect. Now as far as being a god — the Epicurean gods have varied and sundry definitions and ideas from people. Whether he was a god — of course he wasn’t a god in a supernatural sense, risen and all that sort of thing. But was he an Epicurean god in the sense that he was not worried by trivial matters? For lack of a better way to put it, he achieved some ataraxia in his life. The whole idea of worship versus respect is an important thing to keep in mind too, because people obviously had statues of him all over the place in the ancient world, so there was definitely respect and commemoration. He was memorialized and all that kind of thing.
Cassius: Martin, let me draw you back into the conversation right now. What is your viewpoint on whether there’s a problem out there in the discussions you see about Epicurus? What do you think the right balance is in terms of what kind of esteem or level of respect to show towards Epicurus personally?
Martin: I mean, everybody individually has their own taste, so I myself wouldn’t think of likening him to a god, but of course in the context of non-natural gods and what he wrote about how he sees the gods, then he was in some sense godlike in his definition of god. So I have no problem with that. If Epicurus and his friends call him like that — it’s just not my preference to use that description.
Don: I think it’s very interesting too. You had mentioned the mentions of Hercules in the text itself, and I found it interesting in the footnotes that Lucretius specifically used Hercules because he was sort of the hero — the quote-unquote patron saint of the Stoics. So he was drawing a parallel with the Stoics: well, the Stoics worship Hercules, he was a hero and he made himself a god and this kind of thing. And then he contrasts that with Epicurus, who was actually a real living human being who brought a way of life for people to make their lives better and try to find the path of pleasure. So I think the fact that he specifically used Hercules shows maybe how Lucretius was trying to characterize Epicurus himself — you know, you have supposedly a human being, Hercules was a legendary human being and Epicurus was an actual living human being, but they both did something that quote-unquote deified them. And he’s saying, well, you know, Hercules — all he did was clean out some stables and cut off some heads of monsters, whereas Epicurus actually provided something of help to humankind.
Cassius: One interesting aspect of that to me — I’m always confused about whether Hercules was actually a full god, or a legendary man — was one of his parents a god and one a human? Because you’re right, in comparing Epicurus to Hercules as opposed to Zeus or somebody else who really clearly was a supernatural god, it’s interesting to think about whether there are implications of that. So do you know, Don or Martin, what Hercules’s status was?
Don: If I remember correctly, yeah, so he was the son of Jupiter and a mortal woman, but from what I understand he had to prove his worthiness to become a god — and I may be getting confused between the actual myths and the Disney version, so let’s take that with a grain of salt. But I think you’re right, he was at most a half man, half god, and not a full god. And from what I remember, at some point he was accepted into the pantheon. The thing that gets me is — consider Herculaneum, where most of the largest trove of Epicurean texts have ever been found, and it’s named after Hercules. I find that kind of ironic.
Cassius: That’s right. Wasn’t Aeneas — who is referenced in the opening of Book 1, “Venus, mother of the Roman line” — wasn’t Aeneas the son of Venus and a human?
Don: Yes. At least according to Wikipedia, Aeneas was the son of a Trojan prince and Aphrodite — that is, Venus. Okay. So yeah, maybe there’s a parallel here in referring to Aeneas and Hercules, both of whom are not the full kind of supernatural gods that we normally think of when we think of a god. And I don’t think there’s any real implication that Aeneas became a full god when he died, although — gosh, when I bring that up, I don’t know what the answer is about what happened to Aeneas. But he wasn’t considered to be in the same rank as Hercules, I don’t think, because I think you’re right, Don, that Hercules eventually became a full god. And there were temples to Hercules and all that sort of thing. Whenever we visited France one time, we got to visit a place that had altars to Hercules in the ruins of a Greek town that was in France. But he was definitely someone you could ask for help, basically in that supernatural sense.
Cassius: Don, you made a comment on the forum that Hercules was somebody that the Stoics held in high regard. That’s not something I was particularly aware of.
Don: That was in the footnotes of the Loeb Classical Library Stallings that I had, which specifically mentioned that he was sort of the quote-unquote patron saint of the Stoics — because, you know, he stood up against adversity and all this sort of thing. So he was the Stoic example par excellence that they could point to. And I think that’s exactly the reason that Lucretius uses him — because the Stoics have been a thorn in the side, so to speak, of the Epicureans forever. So I think him using Hercules specifically to draw that distinction — well, you know, hey, Stoics, here’s your hero that you think is so great; check out my hero who plumbed the reaches of the universe and brought back how we can live a more pleasurable life.
Cassius: Yeah, you’re right — certainly by the time of Lucretius the Stoics were clearly the thorn in the side of the Epicureans. Now when you go back into Epicurus’s own time, I gather that there was a little bit of overlap between Epicurus and Zeno, but in reading the DeWitt material anyway, DeWitt kind of says that the Epicureans were fully grown before the Stoics really came onto the scene. Do you think that’s correct?
Don: That’s been my take too — that the Epicureans were a much more mature school before the Stoics really hit the ground running. I think they may have started around the same time generally speaking, but I think that the Stoics became stronger whenever things like Marcus Aurelius came about, because Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic — so it had to have been at least prominent enough for the emperor to take notice.
Cassius: How do you pronounce the word — Chrysippus? Which one of those do you say, Don?
Don: Let’s go with Chrysippus. He’s almost as famous as Zeno as one of the founders of Stoicism, I guess.
Cassius: And of course in Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens she has Epicurus and Zeno having a personal confrontation in the Agora. So unless she was manipulating the time frames, that’s some indication that maybe they might have lived at about the same time. But clearly they weren’t as famous at that point. And in all of Lucretius, I don’t know that he specifically mentions the Stoics by name. I think I’ve read that he doesn’t mention them by name, but there probably are instances like this — why give them the ink, man; you don’t have to. And that’s why I think the backhanded jab from using Hercules is significant, because it’s a way for him to mention the Stoics while not actually mentioning the Stoics.
Don: Right. I think if he was writing before the Stoics really existed as a developed school, he might not have known enough about them. I’m looking at my timeline I put together and posted on the forum — using Columbus’s date as sort of the starting point, so if Epicurus would have been born in 1492 equivalently, Chrysippus was born in 1483 and Zeno was born in 1499. So Epicurus comes right in between Zeno and Chrysippus. But Frances Wright then is legitimate in saying that they could have been adults around the same time period. Zeno was about seven years younger than Epicurus. And then Chrysippus was the student of Zeno, came after Zeno at some point. So Epicurus certainly knew of Zeno — they lived at the same time.
Martin: I still think that people might not have been aware of it because he studied philosophy when he was young, and I think once he moved to Athens he was basically at his garden. I don’t think he was still looking for other philosophers. So he might not have been aware of what the Stoics were doing.
Cassius: Yeah, Epicurus — didn’t he write something? I know that there are various texts of his recorded, at least by title — that he wrote against various schools, against this school and against that school. I don’t remember anything against the Stoics, so I would assume that they were not nearly as powerful as they would become later, when Philodemus and Lucretius and those people were writing. You know, something I think plays into all that — this was emphasized to me when I was reading Cicero’s De Finibus. I read his criticisms of the Stoics, which in my mind were even more powerful and persuasive than his criticisms of Epicurus were. Apparently at the time they were coming up, the Stoics were much more of a continuation of the Academy and a continuation of Plato than Epicurus was. So I kind of wonder if they even considered themselves initially to be a separate school — certainly they evolved into something very different. But their positions on virtue and on the gods and the universe being divinely directed are very consistent with Plato and Socrates.
Don: Yeah, they definitely see themselves as descended from Socrates.
Cassius: They’re like Socrates on steroids — they really double down on virtue and on reason and rationality in a way that — I’d really like to take the time at some point to go through some of Cicero’s criticisms in De Finibus of the Stoics, because like I say, they were very on point. A lot of it came down to: Stoics, why are you even bothering to say what you’re saying? Everything you’re saying that makes sense is already in Socrates and Plato and the Academy, and you’ve added nothing to the argument. That’s basically what Cicero was saying, which I think has a large merit of truth to it, at least from somebody who doesn’t like the Stoics like I consider myself now to be. But certainly by the time of Lucretius there was a well-developed Stoic school that was identified as being in opposition to the Epicureans, and they were fighting battles on virtue and reason and so forth at that point.
Don: Yeah, but like I said, I think it’s very interesting that he uses Hercules specifically — you know, as the example whenever he’s talking in this section extolling the importance of Epicurus and how he’s worthy of respect — and using Hercules as the foil against which to bring this to the fore. He can say that Hercules, the Stoics’ mythical person, isn’t worthy of respect in the same way — and hey, check out the guy that I respect. This is where it’s at.
Cassius: Well, Don, that almost brings us up to where we are from the end of last week. Before we leave the review of the first 90 lines or so, anything else about what you saw in last week’s text that we ought to add to this discussion?
Don: I noticed that the very final paragraph that we included last week — I remember thinking that that was kind of interesting to me, because he has come to the end of his comparison of Epicurus as a god, and he decides to make the point that he’s teaching things that are basically eternal and can’t break through the bonds that nature had fixed to their being. And what jumped out at me last week was that it’s interesting that he chose in the next sentence to emphasize two things. One of them was that the soul was mortal and could not be immortal because of its nature. And then the second thing he emphasized was that the images commonly deceive the mind in our dreams and we fancy we see a person that’s been long since dead. So it’s interesting to me that of all the things that he chose to start with as being particularly important about what he had taught, the mortality of the soul and the issue of how we should think about reason and the senses were the things he chose to emphasize there. I think it’s important too because he’s basically saying that Epicurus — he may have been a quote-unquote god and he’s worthy of respect, but he’s dead, he’s gone, and everybody else is going to be gone too. And that’s one of the important things that the philosophy sort of hammers home: no matter how important you are or what you bring, there’s a finite time to do it in.
Cassius: At this point in the poem we’re in Book 5, so we’ve really covered the basic physical principles that Epicurus asserted. And I think Books 5 and 6 as we continue to finish the poem are kind of more applications at this point, rather than putting out new material quite as much as we’ve been doing in the prior chapters. Don, do you have any thought about where we’ve been and where we’re going? I know you’ve said that you looked ahead into the topics that are going to be discussed in Book 5, so any more general comments from you on where we are and where we’re going?
Don: Yeah, I think that he’s really set the stage. One of the things I did want to say — and it looks like in line 90 or so — he talks about limits, and the Stallings actually uses the boundary stone analogy, “each thing’s power has to keep within certain limits and has its boundary stone set deep.” I think that’s interesting because of the whole use of limits and boundary stones in some of Epicurus’s own texts, that really sort of hammers home that idea that there are limits to things. But I think that as far as where we’ve been and where we’re going — Lucretius has definitely set the stage: it’s a material universe, everything is going to die eventually, there are certain principles that work no matter what in a material universe. And what he’s doing now from what I can see in Book 5 is going to talk about how those things manifest in the creation of the cosmos, where human beings came from, where language came from, how civilization started. And I think that’s also going to lead us into some discussion on laws and justice and righteousness and all those sorts of things that we’ve been discussing on the forum a little bit, so we have some juicy topics coming up.
Cassius: We do, we do. That brings to my mind that there are certain themes that we are seeing him hammer over and over again — in addition to the mortality aspect of the soul, there is this issue that everything proceeds naturally and without the guidance or the creation of supernatural gods. It’s kind of unfair to ask a question like this, but if you had to in 30 seconds give what you think the most important themes are of Epicurean philosophy that you’re seeing discussed in Lucretius — how would you express that, Don? Every time somebody asks me that question I answer it differently, so I expect you to answer it differently next week too — but what do you think are the major themes that you’re seeing developed as we read through Lucretius?
Don: We live in a material universe that is governed by regular laws with no supernatural intervention, and you have one life to live — and live it as pleasurably as you can.
Cassius: Yeah, the role of pleasure in that is clearly central as well. I found it interesting that one of the lines in the next section coming up — he hammers home that he realizes these things are hard to accept. Keep saying “I know this is hard, stick with me, this is important, but I know it’s hard to hear.” It goes back to the whole honey on the rim of the wormwood cup and that sort of stuff. And I think he turns almost immediately to the discussion of the universe ceasing to exist — the whole world’s going to explode in front of you — but don’t worry about it because you’re going to be okay because you’re going to be dead. Basically yes, there’s clearly that thread through all of this. People find disconcerting or unpleasant to think that they’re not going to be alive after they die. I don’t know whether the people that Lucretius was addressing really thought that they were going to spend an eternity in heaven like we do today in the modern Judeo-Christian viewpoint, but clearly he realized that there were bitter aspects to this doctrine that people needed to make sure that they thought about before they just rejected it.
Don: Well, you did have people making sacrifices at gravestones and memorializing family members and thinking there was some sort of way to communicate with them. I think there had to have been some sort of overarching thought that there’s some sort of existence after death. And he was definitely addressing that. I mean, even you look back at the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon graves they’ve found — with ochre and plants and things like that — there it’s an ingrained sort of thought that people have that there’s some existence after death. So for Epicurus to come out and say “wait a minute on that” — I mean, that was a radical sort of thing to say.
Cassius: Anything else you want to say about where we’ve been or where we’re going, or anything on this opening of Book 5?
Don: The only other note that I have written here to talk about was in lines around 10 to 13 — he talks about the calm seas and the fine weather and that sort of thing. And the notes I was seeing in the translations I have was that that refers to ataraxia — it’s a metaphor. The ataraxia itself is a metaphor for calm seas and calm weather and that sort of thing, which makes sense because the mind is not troubled and it’s easier to concentrate on things and concentrate on the philosophy. So I thought that was kind of interesting that he uses that as a metaphor in that particular line.
Cassius: Yeah, I kind of gather that they use that kind of metaphor in discussing the gods as well — whatever the circumstances are in the intermundia, it’s kind of a calm and brilliant light type of environment. And you were asking about the things that are hard to accept — I think it goes back to the fact that the poem itself, from what I can gather, even at the time that it was written — people like Cicero noted that it was an important, just finely crafted work, whether they agreed with the substance of it or not. Evidently the original Latin text is just something to behold. So I think that goes into the whole idea of: I’m going to talk about difficult things, but oh, it’s going to be so pretty to listen to whenever you hear it.
Don: Yeah, I wish I had the ability to appreciate the Latin text. Apparently it was read in a very rhythmic way of some kind. But my little mind is probably not going to be able to grasp that. I haven’t had the time to actually — or didn’t think of checking YouTube to see if there are any people reciting Lucretius in Latin, but that’s going to be the next thing I’m going to do now.
Cassius: Well, we have somebody on our forum who is very good at doing that, and I hope we can encourage Brian at some point to give us some more samples of that. Years ago — four or five years ago maybe when I first came into contact with Brian on the forum — I know he was doing that on a regular basis, reading Lucretius in the original metric format. He was very good at that. I don’t know if any of his materials are on YouTube or not, but we have at least one person we can refer to who’s able to reconstruct some of that himself.
Don: Oh, that’s great.
Cassius: Well, okay, Martin — I want to thank you for tolerating us sort of going back to the beginning of Book 5 today and taking the time to introduce Don as we move forward through the remaining two books. But we’re pretty much coming to the end of the episode time frame for today. Do you have any closing thoughts for today?
Martin: No, no closing thoughts.
Cassius: Okay, all right. And of course I should mention as well that Charles has been away and we hope Charles will be back next week. Don, again, thank you for agreeing to join us today and we hope to have you with us through the remainder of the book. Anything you’d like to say today as we begin to close?
Don: Thanks for inviting me. I’m honored by the opportunity to be a part of the conversation and I’m looking forward to seeing where we go in Book 5.
Cassius: Okay, that’s great. And so next week we’ll read the text as we intended to do for today, and if you’re okay with reading it, Don, we’ll just put you in the rotation. All right, well thanks everybody for your time today and we’ll come back and do it again next week, so thanks a lot and we’ll talk to you then.
Don: Sounds good. Thank you.
Martin: Thanks, and bye.
Cassius: Bye.