Episode 070 - More On The End Of The World
Date: 05/15/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1993-episode-seventy-more-on-the-end-of-the-world/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Charles reads Book Five lines ~324–415 with three arguments for the world’s eventual end: (1) lack of historical records before the Trojan War suggests the world is relatively new; even if prior civilizations were destroyed by fire or flood, that only strengthens the case; (2) a logical argument that only atoms, void, and the universe-as-a-whole are eternal — nothing composed of mortal seeds can resist destruction; (3) the four elements are in implacable war, illustrated by the Phaeton legend and a reference to a great flood. Discussion covers Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in Turkey, the Greek Dark Ages and Trojan Epic Cycle, and the weakness of the “no records before Troy” argument.
Don raises the key observation that this passage lists only three eternal things (atoms, void, universe) and conspicuously omits the Epicurean gods — Cassius argues this confirms DeWitt’s point that Epicurus never called his gods immortal by nature, only by their ability to maintain their atoms. Don analyzes the Latin leti (“gate of leti”) as meaning ruin and destruction, related to the Greek Lethe. Martin explains that while cosmic cycles are determined by physical law, the exact timing of catastrophic events involves genuine unpredictability at the atomic level.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 70 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’s 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 a 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 70 we’ll read approximately Latin lines 324 through 415 from Book Five. We’ll talk more about the end of the world, destruction by fire and water, and we’ll take an excursion into what this passage may mean about the immortality of the Epicurean gods. Now let’s join Charles reading today’s text.
Charles:
How came the exploits of so many heroes to be buried in oblivion, that none of their great actions are recorded in the eternal monuments of fame to live forever? For no other reason I conceive, that the world is of a late creation, that the substance of the world is new, and began not long ago. And therefore some arts are but lately known, others are polished and refined, many new discoveries are made in navigation, and the masters of music have but now brought sound and harmony to perfection. And in the last place, this very nature of things which I now write of, and the reasons of them, are but lately found out, and I call myself one of the first who have attempted to convey them to posterity in Latin verse. But if you think that these things were long before the same they are now, but that mankind was destroyed by the rage of fire, or cities were overwhelmed by earthquakes, the great terrors of the world, or that the rapid rivers by continual showers overflowed the earth and covered whole towns, you still have the more reason to be convinced and to allow that the earth and the heavens will at last be destroyed. For things were liable to feel so great convulsions and suffer so great dangers. It is plain if the cause of these ruins had been more violent, they must have perished, and have been utterly destroyed. Nor have we any other rule to judge that we ourselves are mortal and must die, but that we sicken with the same diseases as those whom death has removed from this life.
Besides, whatever is eternal must be so either because it consists of solid seeds, nor will it suffer anything to pierce it, to disunite the close contexture of its parts — of this sort are the seeds of matter, whose nature we have shown before — or things would remain forever because they are out of the power of stroke, as a void is, which is not to be touched nor can be affected by force; or because there is no extent of space about them into which their parts may fall when they are dissolved. For this reason, the universe, or all, is eternal. There is no place beyond where its scattered seeds may retire, nor are there any bodies to beat upon it and by violent blows break it into pieces. But, as I said, the substance of the world is not formed altogether of solid seeds, because a void is mixed with its parts. Nor is it wholly void, nor are there wanting bodies rising to strike and overthrow with mighty force this world, or to bring it into danger of ruin some other way. Nor is there any defect of place or space beyond into which the walls of the world may tumble down, or they may fall to pieces by some other force and be dissolved. The gate of death, therefore, is not barred against the heavens, nor the sun, nor the earth, nor the deep waters of the sea, but stands open with its wide and gaping jaws to receive them all. For these reasons it must needs be allowed that these things had a beginning — for whatever is formed of mortal seeds, it must die, could not from eternity resist the strong attacks of infinite age and the power of time.
Lastly, since the elements, the first principles of the world, are continually fighting and carrying on an implacable war among themselves, can there be no end to their long contests? If the fire, by sucking up all the moisture, should get the better — which they strive to do, but have not yet affected their design, such a constant supply do the rivers pour in — and the sea from its mighty deeps rather threatens to drown the world. But in vain: the brushing winds are continually licking up and lessening the tide, and the hot sun, with its rays, drinks up apart, and things rather seem in danger of being dried up than of perishing by a flood of waters. With such equal success is the war carried on, and their powers are so disputed with equal force. Yet time was when the rage of fire once prevailed over the world, and the water, as I say, once got the dominion and drowned the earth. The fire had the victory and set everything in a flame when the mad fury of the horses of the sun, flying out of their course, dragged the wretched Phaeton through the whole heavens and over all the regions of the world, put great Jupiter in his fierce rage — who suddenly struck the daring youth with a thunderbolt and tumbled him headlong from his horses to the earth — and Phoebus, meeting him as he fell, gathered up the scattered reins of the sun, the great luminary of the world, brought back the distracted horses and harnessed them trembling to the chariot again, and driving them in the right course, recovered things to their proper order. This tale the Grecian poets sang of old, which is absurd and against all belief; yet the fire may get the mastery if the large supplies of fiery seeds are brought from the great mass of matter into the world. The rage of these seeds must by some force be weakened and suppressed, or things by so scorching heats must perish and be burnt up. The water likewise prevailed once, as they say, when it overthrew many cities, but when the seeds that were supplied from the mass of matter were turned into some other channel, the rain ceased and the rivers flowed again within their banks.
Cassius:
Thanks, Charles, for reading that today, especially since you’re a little under the weather, but the reading went fine and we appreciate it. Today I think there are some very interesting arguments raised here — a combination of observation and getting back to our continual subject of the use of logic. Some of these are almost high-level logical arguments. But let’s start first with the practical one about why there’s no record of any heroic events before the Theban War and the destruction of Troy. Anybody have any thoughts on that?
Don:
Yeah, I think that’s one of his lesser convincing arguments there. I guess for the Greeks, that’s all they had, but certainly the Egyptians —
Cassius:
Or at least all they cared about.
Don:
Yeah. Egypt was right next to them. In fact, is Thebes part of Egypt?
Cassius:
There are two. There’s the one in Greece and one in Egypt. That’s my recollection. I don’t think it was called Thebes back then, though. Well, I suppose you could say that even the Greeks themselves should have had records further back. I guess you could ask why, but there’s certainly other people who had records they should have checked against as well.
Charles:
Well, they’re the Mycenaeans who account for that.
Martin:
But this is something we know today with the dating of archaeology. So it could pretty well be that at that time, that was the best knowledge of what they had — as far back as history went, so to speak. They didn’t have modern dating methods. So anything that was not written down, they had no means to tell how old it was.
Don:
And he’s sort of equating history with the actual existence of the world too. So the world existed long before there were things written down.
Martin:
Like I said, it seems to be one of his lesser convincing arguments. He somehow relates that once the world is there, soon after that mankind somehow showed up as well, and he just didn’t have the knowledge to recognize that there would be a very long time between that. I think lately he gets more specific — he goes into the point that people would think that in the past it was just the same, but we don’t have anything because it was destroyed. And compared to that, that is a bit more understandable.
Cassius:
Yeah, you still have that debated nowadays as well about whether there was the Atlantis and other types of prehistoric civilizations — whether they were somehow destroyed and their records were lost because they were destroyed and not because they didn’t exist. Right. Maybe we should take a tangent and discuss how many of us think that Atlantis really existed, or whether it was a creature of Plato entirely.
Don:
Oh god. I’ve met too many people who think Atlantis is real. I’m not sure that I’m not partly one of them, at least in the sense that some civilization existed that Plato was using as a model. But what do you think, Martin?
Martin:
This is a thing which can be stretched as far as you want. So if you find something that remotely resembles it, okay, then that was it. Whether Plato really had the knowledge to refer to that, we don’t know. We certainly know that a lot of ancient civilizations existed and disappeared without much of a trace.
Cassius:
In fact, I’m glad we have Martin here to comment on that, because it seems like many of the people who earlier said that they had discovered — I’m sorry, now I’m mixing Troy — well, Troy, I guess Troy fits the same category a little bit. Troy, most people I think would say, did exist, right? Not just a story. And there were — I don’t know whether it’s somebody named Schliemann — somebody who was famous as supposedly the discoverer of Troy?
Don:
Oh yeah, like the grandfather of archaeology. Yeah.
Martin:
Because there are certain layers, I think, of Troy. So there were multiple events which could be ascribed to this, and it really took some puzzling to figure out which of these layers was the one described in the poem.
Cassius:
You’re talking about Schliemann’s location — which was in Greece somewhere, if I remember correctly.
Martin:
No, no, no. It’s nowadays Turkey. But in the past, it belonged to Greece.
Cassius:
Turkey, okay. I suppose, Martin, that you would disagree with the recent guys who were speculating that Troy was really in England? Charles, have you seen that one?
Don:
Troy in England — there’s a lot of stuff on the internet about that.
Charles:
Not just on the internet. I did find something good though on the internet.
Cassius:
What’s that?
Charles:
It’s called the Greek Dark Ages. After the Mycenaean civilization ended, there’s a few centuries, kind of like a Dark Ages, if you will. And afterwards, there was a lot of oral tradition and history about hero cults and legends. It’s called the Trojan Epic Cycle. That’s sort of the origin of Homer’s stuff and all those other guys.
Cassius:
That sounds interesting. Homer had the Trojan War, I guess. Did he also do the Theban War material, or is that somebody else?
Charles:
That must be somebody else.
Don:
I looked up the Theban War, and it was in 378 BC — it was a revolt of the city of Thebes against Sparta. Sparta had taken over the city, and there was a revolt in 378 BC. So it would be much more recent than the Trojan War. What are you getting as an approximate date for the Trojan War on that? Isn’t it like 600 BC or something like that? According to the article, the ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC.
Cassius:
Okay, much further back. That coincided with the fall of the Mycenaeans, right. I wonder if there’s more than one Theban War, and they’re talking about one that’s much earlier. And whenever Charles brought up the couple centuries of oral tradition, it really sort of made me think — whenever we talk about, oh, there are a couple centuries here and a couple centuries there, this past year of the pandemic really brings to mind the fact that even ancient peoples experienced years the same as we do. And so whenever we say things happened for centuries, I mean, that’s a really long time for human experience too.
Charles:
No man, I thought it felt like a month.
Cassius:
That’s because you’re so young, Charles.
Don:
It was the same month over and over again.
Cassius:
Well, to try to keep moving — the first part of the argument in this first paragraph is that the lack of records and lack of history going back very far is an indication that the world, as we know it, is relatively new. And then he continues on into the argument that if you think that maybe the earth is much older but our records don’t reflect it because the prior civilizations were destroyed by fire or water — or men from Mars, he didn’t say that, but it’s the same kind of thing we run into today on the Atlantean material — he says that’s even more reason for you to believe in the ultimate destruction of the earth. Because if those destructions had been significantly worse than they were, the whole world would have been destroyed. And as it is, these legends are talking about tremendous destruction, so all that destruction would have had to be was a little bit worse and everything would have been gone. Which is not necessarily a point about the age of the earth, but his point where he’s always going is that things that come together get split apart, and this earth is not a god, this earth is not eternal, it’s eventually going to be destroyed as well.
Don:
Right. And I like the fact that that’s where he goes with that argument. Where he starts with the written records and stuff is a little weak, but I think he ends up on a strong point.
Cassius:
Exactly. “It is plain if the cause of these ruins had been more violent, they must have perished and been utterly dissolved. Nor have we any other rule to judge that we ourselves are mortal and must die, but that we sicken with the same diseases as those whom death has removed from this life.” So he’s taking it back to his ultimate point — it’s kind of an academic discussion as to how old the world is, but it’s a very personal issue that we ourselves are going to die.
Don:
Right, and that’s where you bring it back to real life.
Cassius:
All right. Any further comment on that? Because as we next move to the second paragraph, I think we move into what is much more of a logical argument that is only somewhat provable by observation. Anything else before we move on?
The second passage introduces the argument by saying that whatever is eternal must be so either because it is of solid seeds and cannot be broken by blows — which is the seeds of matter — or else that there’s no void around it into which it can be exploded, or that there’s no place beyond for the universe’s seeds to go. For that reason, he’s saying that the whole of everything — the universe — is eternal, because there’s no place beyond the universe whereby the universe’s seeds could be sent. That strikes me as a very high-level logical argument that would be almost impossible to prove by observation, but he’s asserting it as a piece of logic. What do you guys think about that?
Don:
I would agree with you. The thing that I found most interesting about this section is that it doesn’t seem to make room for the eternal gods that the Epicureans talk about. Because it says the only things that are eternal are the atoms, the void, and the universe itself. But of course the gods are within the universe. Now, the intermundia is between the worlds, but that’s not outside the universe, so you’re not really talking about that, are you, Don?
Don:
No, no, no — just the fact that the only things he says are eternal are the atoms themselves and the void that surrounds them and then the universe itself because there’s no place for it to go. And I just found it interesting that those are the only three things that he says are eternal or everlasting.
Cassius:
Okay, so my response and comment to that is that if I were Norman DeWitt I would therefore say this section is a citation you can use that the ancient Epicureans did not believe that their gods were necessarily immortal, but that they have the capacity for immortality by keeping their atoms together. But you’re right, Don — if there’s no listing here of the gods as necessarily immortal by nature, it’s only because they’re able to keep their seeds together.
Don:
Right, right. I thought if there was anything that was supposed to be eternal that he would mention something like that here, but he’s like — it’s atoms, it’s void, and the universe.
Cassius:
Yeah. I remember that well from the DeWitt book — he made the point that some of the other writers within the Epicurean tradition call the gods immortal, but that Epicurus himself never did. And if that’s the case, then this section might be sort of an example of that reasoning: they are not necessarily immortal because of their very nature. If they’re brought together from atoms, then they would fit under this general rule that what’s brought together can be broken apart. Exactly, exactly. And since it’s assumed that Lucretius was using Epicurus’s books of On Nature as his guide, then chances are this is right out of those. It’s a little bit of a tangent, but that’s one of the things that struck me directly when I read this section.
I’m talking too much. Martin, what do you think about this section?
Don:
I will say from a poetry standpoint, one of the lines that really struck me from this section was the “gate of death” and “gaping jaws” line. I thought that was just great.
Cassius:
Yeah. This is his ultimate argument that everything, including the world — when you consider that term to mean less than the universe itself — even the world, our earth, the solar system, the stars we see between us and the intermundia where the gods are — even that is going to be destroyed at some point, all of that. But not the universe itself.
Don:
Right, right. Because there’s no place for it to dissolve into or flee into. And it’s really a completely logical argument — there’s no way you can stand and see the universe as a whole, so you’d never be able to observe your conclusion here.
Martin:
And that’s literally true. We talk about the observable universe, and even scientists say we’re not quite sure how far it extends beyond what we can observe. That’s the only thing we have access to, so even from our scientific perspective we can only see, quote unquote, part of the universe.
Cassius:
While Martin is continuing to think, or Charles too — the end of this paragraph is the sentence that I’ve been talking about in several of the prior podcasts: “for whatever is formed of mortal seeds and must die, could not from eternity resist the strong attacks of infinite age and the power of time.” Every time I say this is the sentence I’m looking for, it’s probably a separate argument — basically a statement that whatever is formed of seeds cannot resist for eternity, just like we talked about last week about the stone being worn down and so forth. Only if it’s being replenished could it continue to exist in essentially its same form — and that would be the Epicurean god.
Don:
Exactly. There you go.
Charles:
I was wondering if maybe the inconsistency about the gods being immortal — is that just a slight word choice, on a similar level to the universe where it’s not really eternal but it may as well be, based on how long it’s going to be around?
Cassius:
I think I’m going to disagree at least slightly with that, because I think he is very firmly saying the universe itself is eternal and he’s not leaving any wiggle room there.
Charles:
That’s true. The “may as well” part was sort of a qualifier, yeah.
Martin:
The universe, his argument is, has no need to sustain itself because there’s nothing outside to which it can lose any particles, or which would need to wear it down. But the gods or anything that’s in the universe would constantly be under the blows of other atoms, and therefore would be constantly losing particles. So anything within the universe would need to have a way of constantly replenishing its substance in order to remain the same over time — I think that would be the distinction here.
Cassius:
And I’m thinking that if Lucretius were here in our discussion, I think they would argue that there’s a major distinction between the universe as a whole and then everything within it, even though it might effectively seem to be the same to us. They would argue there’s a logical distinction.
Martin:
Were you ready, Martin, to say anything?
Martin:
Actually, I didn’t find anything to say additionally — everything that makes sense has been said already.
Cassius:
Okay. Don, what were you about to say?
Don:
I just wanted to say I thought it was interesting whenever the various translators talk about the “gate of death” or the “door to death” and that sort of thing — the Latin word there, I expected it to be something like mortis or something we’re familiar with from “mortuary” and “mortician.” But the actual Latin word that’s used is leti, and I looked it up because I was not familiar with it, and it’s actually defined more as destruction and ruin. So it’s more than just dying in a passive sort of sense — it’s literally being torn apart, being destroyed. And so it’s a much stronger word than what I had expected the Latin to use.
Cassius:
That’s not a Latin word I’m familiar with either. And I don’t know what could derive from the word leti that would help us put it in perspective.
Don:
Well, Bailey says “gate of death” and so does Munro. Death is definitely one of the definitions in the LSJ, but it’s also much more sweeping. The LSJ also says, of inanimate subjects, it means ruin and destruction and those sorts of things — which is more appropriate when you’re talking about the world exploding. And they say that it’s related to the Greek Lethe — the forgetting and forgetfulness associated with death. I think there’s a river Lethe that the souls cross so that they forget all their former existence, that sort of thing.
Cassius:
That sounds reasonable. I was just surprised that that was the word — it wasn’t what I was expecting. Well, let’s move to the last paragraph, as we’re just about on time. He talks about the elements continually fighting each other in an implacable war, and then he calls up the legend about Phaeton — his chariot being struck out of the sky by Jupiter in a rage. And then Phoebus catching him — is that what he’s saying? That Phoebus gathers the reins back up?
Don:
Yeah, and Phoebus would be Apollo.
Cassius:
Okay. Apollo. This last paragraph seems to just kind of end without exactly a conclusion, other than citing that legend records either the sun and heat almost destroying the world or the water almost destroying the world. I find it interesting he talks about the water once getting dominion over the earth — because that’s sort of like the biblical flood and some of the other flood stories in mythology. But I concentrate on Phaeton and the chariot of the sun. I’m cursing my love of opera here because I can’t think of the original story rather than Lully’s Phaéton. But I see that next week he’s going to turn back to a discussion of how all this convulsion in the universe leads to the formation of worlds as well as the end of worlds. And maybe that’s going to launch him into the rest of the book and sort of human history. But at any rate, this is probably the end of this argument that the eventual destruction of the world is basically guaranteed. And you know, when I say that the destruction of the world is guaranteed, that reminds me of one of the points that I’ve always thought was important — that in the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus makes the point that in inanimate issues, in most things in the universe, most things are not obviously subjects of free will. They are determined from the beginning of their formation. So the cycle of destruction and then reformation is pretty much a deterministic one. When I say “guaranteed,” I guess that’s pretty much what it is.
Don:
Yeah, I think philosophical determinism really only has an impact whenever you talk about human actions and free will and that sort of thing. So I wouldn’t worry too much about the fact that we know that the physical universe was born, lives, and then will die.
Cassius:
But that’s kind of going on in the background of all these discussions here. Even though we talk about swerves as the basis for human agency, we still at the same time talk about many things in the universe being very predictable. In fact, the basic cycle of destruction and reformation of worlds is one of those things that’s very predictable — to the point of being certain — even though there’s no supernatural god or fate that forces it to happen.
Martin:
Yeah, but this is not really the case in the strict sense. What we have here is that even in inanimate nature the swerve still happens at the atomic level, but it just averages out, because a lot of atoms swerve. And for a macroscopic body which is not guided by some kind of vision, it typically averages out with respect to, for example, the mechanical movement. But for example, if something explodes — the exact timing of this one is not predetermined. So this is affected by the swerve as well.
Cassius:
I agree with that — when you talk about the exact time of something exploding, I presume you’re generally talking about like a star or something like that?
Martin:
Yes, something like that. So this is not determined from the beginning, at the time of the beginning of the star — it’s probably just when it happens, at the excursion. We can maybe calculate roughly the time, the age a star will reach. So we can calculate about how many more billion years our sun will be like it is now, and then it will change dramatically and very quickly compared to the billions of fairly constant behavior before. So that one we can roughly tell, but we cannot really do an exact time. It’s not predetermined like clockwork — it’s just predetermined in principle, but there’s leeway on how the actual timing happens. It’s the same thing if, for example, water freezes under very clean conditions. Then the formation of the first ice grains is kinetically inhibited, and this makes the onset of actually forming solid ice not exactly predetermined in time.
Cassius:
Martin, that might be a parallel that we ought to draw back to what we were talking about earlier. I was picking up in what you’re talking about that you’re making the point that it’s not really predictable in time, which would be something pretty easy to agree with. But if somebody would say — okay, you’re right, it can’t be predicted in terms of time, but you can predict that it will eventually happen — what do you say about that?
Martin:
Yes, this one is given by the laws of physics — that it will happen.
Cassius:
Okay, so there’s nothing you’re saying that would be in disagreement with his ultimate point then — that ultimately it’s baked in the cake that the cycle will continue, but in terms of exactly when and where and into what circumstances, it’s not.
Martin:
Give or take a billion years. So theoretically there can be a solid body out there in a cold part of the universe which can survive for an extremely long time, and there is no principle that something like a comet can’t just keep flying for a very long time without something happening to it. So for stars there is a cycle which is predictable, but smaller planetary or smaller celestial bodies can exist for a much longer time depending on where their flight path takes them and what else gets close to them. It’s just a statistical thing — which assemblies get blown apart over the course of say twenty billion years, and which keep going on for many more billion years.
Cassius:
Okay, well in terms of keeping going on for billions of years, we’re probably nearing the end of the time for this week’s podcast. Does anyone have a new topic or aspect of the discussion today to bring up before we talk about closing comments?
Don:
Something about Atlantis, but no.
Cassius:
That’s an hour-long show.
Don:
That’s an hour-long show. And then Chariots of the Gods.
Cassius:
I remember when I was in high school, Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken was a big book at that particular time. And somewhere along the line, years after that, I came across these guys who had this elaborate theory that because all of the features and even place names in England matched the stories in Homer, that’s where the treasure was. I don’t guess we really ever answered the question about whether we think there was an Atlantis that sank in an ocean somewhere, or whether that’s just Plato’s hypothetical ideal place.
Don:
Given the physical description of Atlantis that Plato provides, I’m going to say it’s an invention.
Cassius:
Yeah. I think the idea that it was beyond the Pillars of Hercules was always one of the big issues — that it meant it was outside the Mediterranean. All right, well let’s then turn to closing comments. Martin, do you have any closing thoughts for the overall passages this week?
Martin:
I think I’ve said everything I would think of on these three paragraphs.
Cassius:
Okay. And Charles, anything else?
Charles:
Mm-hmm.
Cassius:
Okay, all right. And Don?
Don:
I think I’m good. I’m less impressed with some of the arguments, but I think that even where he started out with the weaker one on history, he ended up on a strong note.
Cassius:
So with the ultimate point to bring it home for the podcast today being that we’re talking about the fact that everything points to the world itself having an end, even though it’s obviously very, very old — and the point being that in our own lives we have to understand that we’re going to come to an end as well. So all of the historical and physics speculation ultimately brings us back to that point: that one way or another, even if we’re able to sustain ourselves for thousands of years or longer, one way or another if we’re still here on the world, we’re going to be exploded with it when it goes up in flames. So whether that’s a happy thought or not is another question, but it calls always to mind that we have to use our lives and the time we have the best way we can.
Okay, unless I’ve said something there that sparks any further comments, we’ll close for the day. So thanks, and we’ll come back in about a week. Talk to you soon.
Don:
Bye-bye. Thanks everybody.