Episode 080 - The Development of Metallurgy And The Art of War
Date: 07/19/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2092-episode-eighty-the-development-of-metallurgy-and-the-art-of-war/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Don reads Book 5 lines 1226–1341 (Martin had technical difficulties and could not read). The admiral praying in vain during a storm, the fasces as symbol of Roman power, and the discovery of metals lead to Martin’s commentary on metallurgy: gold and copper can flow from ore in heat; iron does not occur as a free element; bronze (copper + tin) is more plausible than brass as an early naturally-occurring alloy.
The philosophical point that gold supplanted bronze’s utility reflects the Epicurean principle that nothing has inherent value — only pleasure is the measure. The animal-warfare passage (bulls, lions, bears, elephants) leads to Lucretius’s characteristic hedge: he doubts this ever happened on this earth and suggests it might have occurred in one of the infinite other worlds — a remark Cassius finds strikingly modern. Multiple translations compared (Munro, Bailey, Stallings, Martin Ferguson Smith).
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 80 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 Norman DeWitt. For anyone who’s not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at the Forum for more information. In this episode 80, we’ll read approximately Latin lines 1226 through 1341 of Book 5, and we’ll talk in this episode about the development of the art of war. Now let’s join Don reading today’s text.
Don:
And when the raging force of a violent storm upon the sea tosses the admiral of a fleet over the waves, with all his elephants and his stout legions about him, does not he fall to praying to the gods for pity? And trembling upon his knees begs a piece of the winds and a prosperous gale — in vain! For he is often snatched up by the violence of the hurricane, and carried with all his devotion to the Stygian ferryman. With such contempt does some hidden power continually trample upon human greatness, it treads with scorn upon the gaudy rods and the cruel axes, those ensigns of power, and makes a sport with them. For men, when the whole earth reels under our feet, and the cities are shaken and tumble about us, or at least threaten to fall — what wonder if men at such a time despise their own weak selves, and ascribe infinite power and irresistible force to the gods by which they direct and govern the world?
And last of all, brass and gold and iron were discovered, and the value of silver and the weight of lead. For when the whole forest upon the high hills were consumed by fire, whether it came by lightning from the heavens, or men carried on a war among themselves in the woods and set them in a blaze to terrify their enemies, or whether induced by the goodness of the soil they resolved to enlarge their fruitful fields and make pastures for their cattle, or whether it was to destroy the wild beasts and enrich themselves with their spoils — for the first way of taking the game was by pitfalls and fire before they surrounded the breaks with nets or hunted with dogs — however it was, or whatever was the cause of this raging fire that burnt up the woods to the very roots with frightful noise and set the earth up boiling with its heat, then streams of silver and gold, of brass and lead, flowed out of the burning veins into hollow places of the earth that were proper for them. And when the metal grew hard, and men observed it looking beautifully and shining bright upon the ground, they were charmed with its gay and sparkling luster, and dug it up. And finding that it received the exact shape of the hollow molds in which it lay, they concluded, when it was melted by the heat, it would run into any form and figure they pleased. And they might draw it into a sharp point or a fine edge, and make themselves tools to cut down the woods, to smooth, to square, to plane timber, to pierce, to hollow, and to bore. These instruments they attempted to make of silver and gold, no less than by powerful blows to form the stronger brass; but in vain, for the soft quality of those metals gave way and could not bear the force and violence of the stroke. And so brass was in most value, and gold was neglected as a blunt useless metal that would not hold an edge. But now brass is in no esteem, and gold succeeds in all its honors. And thus a course of flowing time changes the dignity of things. What was highly prized is now treated with contempt, and what was despised comes into its place, and is every day more eagerly pursued, is cried up with greatest applause, and receives the respect and admiration of mankind.
And now, my Memmius, you may easily of yourself perceive by what means the force of iron was discovered. The first weapons were hands, and nails, and teeth, and stones, and the broken boughs of trees, and then they learned to fight with fire and flame, and afterwards was the strength of iron and brass found out. But the use of brass was known before the benefit of iron was understood, for it was a metal more easy to work and in greater plenty. With brazen shares they plowed the ground, with arms of brass they carried on the rage of war and dealt deep wounds about and seized upon their neighbor’s cattle in their fields, for everything naked and unarmed was easily forced to give way. But the iron sword came gradually into use and instruments of brass were laid aside with contempt. And now they began to plow with iron and with weapons of iron to engage in the doubtful events of war.
And then first learned to mount the horse with their left hand to manage the reins and they fought with their right before they tried the dangers of war in a chariot drawn by two. They first used a chariot with a pair and then they harnessed four before they knew how to engage in chariots armed with scythes. The Carthaginians taught the Libyan elephants with their serpentine proboscis and the towers upon their backs to bear the smart of wounds and to disorder the embattled ranks of the enemy. And thus the rage of discord found out one art of slaughter after another, as the dreadful scourges of mankind, and increased the terrors of war every day. They tried the fury of bulls in their battles and drove boars against their cruel enemies. The Parthians placed roaring lions before their ranks with their armed keepers and fierce leaders to govern their rage and hold them in chains. In vain — for growing hot with the mixed blood they had tasted, they broke in their fury through the troops of friends and enemies without distinction, shaking their dreadful manes on every side. Nor could the horsemen cool their frightened horses, distracted with the roaring of the beasts, or turn them with reins against the foe. The lions with rage sprung out and threw their bodies every way and flew upon the faces that they met. Others they suddenly fell on behind and clasped with their paws, and with sore wounds overcome, they flung them to the ground and held them down with their strong teeth and with their crooked claws. The bulls would toss the boars and crush them with their feet, and with their horns would gore the sides and bellies of the horses, and in their rage bear them to earth. The bears with their strong teeth destroyed their friends and cruelly stained the unbroken darts with their masters’ blood. The darts that broke recoiled on those who threw them, and brought confused ruin upon man and horse — for though the horse by leaping aside would strive to fly the cruel biting of their teeth, or rearing up, pawed with their feet the yielding air, yet all in vain. You would see them, hamstrung by the beasts, fall down with their heavy weight, and shake the ground. These creatures, therefore, that men saw were tame at home, now brought into the war, maddened their masters with wounds, with noise, with flying, with terror in the tumult of the battle. Nor could they by any means be brought back or cooled again, but every kind flew wildly over the plains — as when a bull, not rightly struck by the sacrificing axe, breaks loose and makes much mischief to all about him.
These were the first arts of war, yet I cannot believe that the first inventors must consider and foresee the common evils and sad calamities they must occasion. This it is safer to say was the case in general in some of all the worlds that were created in various manners, than to be particular and fix it upon one only. But they made use of beasts in their wars not so much from a hope of victory as to annoy and torment their enemies, being themselves sure to die, because they distrusted their numbers and were unskilled in the use of arms.
Cassius:
Don, thank you for reading that for us today. Martin’s with us as well and was scheduled to read today, but we had some technical difficulties and so Don picked up the slack at the last minute. Today is interesting — it’s mostly devoted to the rise of warfare among early humans, but there are several interesting parts of it beyond that. And the best place to start is always at the beginning, and that’s approximately line 1226, which talks about the admiral of a fleet surrounded by his legions being tossed about in a storm and praying to the gods for relief, but often in vain, because he and his legions end up at the bottom of the ocean, or as Lucretius says, “carried with all his devotion to the Stygian ferryman.” I’m not very good on that allusion, but I guess that’s the ferryman that carries you across to the underworld.
Don:
Right, on the River Styx, yeah.
Cassius:
River Styx — and there’s a ferryman at the River Styx, right? What’s his name? Charon?
Don:
Yes, I think that’s right.
Cassius:
The point there being that “with such contempt does some hidden power continually trample upon human greatness and treads with scorn upon the gaudy rods and cruel axes.” Now, I’m interpreting that to mean the symbol of Roman power, which was the axes bound up between the rods, which I guess many of us know today as a sort of symbol associated with Mussolini. Does that have a name — fasces?
Cassius:
That may be where “fascism” comes from — is that the fasces, F-A-S-C-E-S, that bundle of sticks?
Don:
I think I remember from my Latin class that that was supposed to mean something — of course it was the instruments by which they punished people. Do you know the symbolism of it, Don? Thanks to Wikipedia: “A bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origins in Etruscan civilization, where it symbolized a magistrate’s power and jurisdiction. The axe, originally associated with the symbol, is one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization.”
Cassius:
Okay, I didn’t realize it was related to Greece, and I don’t think I’ve ever realized that it was displayed without the axe. It always seems like the axe is protruding from the rods.
Don:
“Oh, the symbolism of the fasces suggests strength through unity. A single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is very difficult to break.”
Cassius:
I hadn’t heard that, but that makes sense. So yeah, so definitely the symbol of power and bringing justice to society and all that sort of thing. There’s actually an extensive article on Wikipedia, so anybody who wants to look it up — F-A-S-C-E-S.
Cassius:
So these first two passages we have today — the second one ends this discussion — but it talks about how when the whole earth reels under our feet and the cities are shaking and tumble about us, why should we be surprised if men at such a time despise their own weak selves and ascribe infinite power and irresistible force to the gods by which they direct and govern the world? Now that’s one of the few times I think I’ve seen a specific reference to “infinite power and irresistible force.” That’s a more modern concept of a god than I sometimes think that the Romans and Greeks had.
Don:
And I think it goes back to what we were talking about last week too — the whole idea that the gods are in charge of the universe and so whenever something is going wrong, people look to these other powers to help them out of a jam. They maybe feel they had done something wrong themselves and were trying to propitiate the gods to bring things back into order — because you see the admiral of the fleet praying to the gods to deliver them from the hurricane, and the hurricane just sweeps them off the deck of the ship anyway. So I think what it shows, at least to me, is the tendency of people to look for that kind of guidance and help, and nature’s complete and utter lack of any kind of supernatural power that’s going to get you out of a hurricane, basically.
Cassius:
So this sort of ends the discussion we were having last week on the gods. This sort of puts a capstone on that discussion. Is that the way you saw that section?
Don:
Yes, that’s the way I see that. Yes.
Cassius:
Martin, any thoughts so far?
Martin:
Not at this time. No, no, not for this one. This is where you play later on the metallurgy and I may have a comment.
Cassius:
Absolutely. I was thinking about that when I was reading it, that this would be a good one to discuss. I suppose if we were looking at some of the commentators, I bet we would find some discussion about how there’s not a lot of transition here — it seems like he turns from this subject to the discovery of iron and use of metals. He seems to do a lot of that bullet-point kind of stuff. It’s like we’re going to talk about this for a little bit and now we’re going to this. But however that happened, this is the way we have it, and he turns the subject on a dime, so to speak, to discussing the development of metallurgy, as Martin just said. So this passage at 1241 is a pretty long paragraph about how early people would have observed how metal can be molded and therefore that it might be useful in the art of war. I was curious to ask Martin: is it a feasible sort of idea to think that forest fires could generate enough heat to make silver and gold and copper run out of the ground?
Martin:
I mean, if there is somewhere gold in that area, the gold can be liquefied by the forest fire, certainly. Also, gold is a noble metal — it will just stay a shiny metal. But silver is easily tarnished, so all you really need to do is go into that mine to get to fresh rocks to see the shiny silver. And copper occasionally occurs as a pure metal as well, but more typically already as a mineral where you can almost see it as a metal. And iron for sure — iron does not occur at least not anywhere where forest is; it would not occur in any elementary form, it will always be as a compound where it’s no more recognizable as a metal. So that means this is highly speculative what it says. Plus, brass is a mixture. So even though a lot of metals occur together, it might be by chance that they had approximately the right mixture between copper and zinc or whatever other additions. So that’s by chance if it worked out like that. But it’s more likely that they discovered them separately and then figured out how to improve the method by mixing the zinc and the copper. So the first thing they discovered among these was not even that, but bronze. So they mixed the copper with tin, and that one is then again more feasible, because tin with a thin oxide layer you can still recognize as a metal. Plus tin melts at a very low temperature comparably, so with a normal fire you can melt the tin.
Don:
That’s interesting. And I noticed with the translation we just read that he keeps using the word “brass,” and I just briefly looked in my Loeb translation — according to them the Latin word that’s used can actually mean either copper or bronze. So it’s interesting that there’s that sort of ambiguity there. It looks like the Loeb uses the translation of “copper” and then some other translators have decided to use “bronze.” But the whole idea that it’s an alloy between those two is an interesting point to make.
Don:
It’s not like you can find bronze out in nature.
Martin:
And the other thing is that people quite early also produced artifacts just from copper. So that means it was not only bronze — bronze was probably the first alloy then actually, more precisely, which found widespread use. But I think at the same time they already knew also how to use copper as a thing. The problem is with plain copper is that it’s too soft. So of course the applications they would want to use at that time — copper would not be that good. But maybe for artifacts it would have been nice. So that’s why. And of course for types of utensils which can afford to be soft, it would still be okay to use copper, because it’s easier to form than other forms of matter.
Cassius:
Okay, Martin — I could look this up on Wikipedia but you could explain it better. Just in case somebody who’s listening doesn’t know: what is brass, an alloy of?
Martin:
Normally of copper and zinc, but there can be other additions as well.
Cassius:
Okay, and what about bronze? What is bronze an alloy of?
Martin:
Yeah, bronze is more ambiguous — the original bronze is copper and tin, but there can be other additions as well. Plus the term “bronze” has been applied to all kinds of mixtures with metals.
Cassius:
Okay, so Munro and Bailey here in our example are using the word “copper,” which is an element and which would presumably be an example of what you would find flowing on the ground if it were hot enough. I presume you wouldn’t find either bronze or brass flowing on the ground because I don’t guess either of those are naturally occurring, are they?
Martin:
In an ore, so you need to extract them with a chemical reaction out of the ore — so that means you need to experiment a lot until you figure that out. In the case of copper, in most cases you will need to do the same. So it’s gold you can really get out of some mixture if you heat it up — then the gold will flow out.
Cassius:
Yeah, so it seems to me that Lucretius seems to know a little bit about how they were making bronze implements and how they would melt gold, and was sort of extrapolating backwards. But from what Martin’s been saying here, it sounds like that Lucretius’s ideas of how the forest fires would produce gold and silver and copper and those sorts of things — that’s not the way it really could have happened, because it just doesn’t naturally occur that way.
Martin:
Yeah, that I would expect. And of course this happened long before there were things written down about this, so that means it’s very unlikely that there was some chain of stories back to the ones who originally discovered it.
Don:
Exactly. I think that’s a good point — there was sort of a traditional account of where bronze came from. I guess he’s probably very reasonable in presuming that however the sequence occurred, people found that certain metals or alloys were softer than others, and that they needed to go for things that were harder if they’re going to make successful use of the instruments that they make out of them.
Cassius:
Exactly. And I think that makes sense, because what he’s doing is generally laying out the history of different metals being used in cultures and that sort of thing. So he didn’t get the details right again, but the general idea — that they would have wanted to have harder metals, so bronze would have been very popular, and then once they found out that they could make shiny things out of gold, that seems to have supplanted the utility of the other metals. The utility seems to be overshadowed by the shininess of the gold, basically.
Cassius:
Now I suspect that this is a long paragraph we’ve just been reading, and I suspect that he was at least as interested in the final couple of sentences as he was in that history part. Because I think he is making an alloy here that results in a philosophical conclusion that’s pretty important to him, about how gold succeeded to the honor of being more valuable even though gold is not useful for these instruments of war or boring or anything else. And he says, “and thus a course of flowing time changes the dignity of things — what was highly prized is now treated with contempt, and what was despised comes into its place, and is every day more eagerly pursued, and is cried up with the greatest applause, and receives the respect and admiration of mankind.” So I see that as a very important philosophic reflection of the point he’s made several times throughout the poem — that this is basically a circumstance, and the value of something comes from the circumstance and is not intrinsic to the thing itself.
Cassius:
It also seems to me to echo what he was talking about — that originally beauty and strength were valued, and now gold and things were valued over those natural occurring attributes of things. And again here the natural attributes of iron implements or bronze instruments were that they could cut and could be used in war and in agriculture. But then people found out about gold, and now gold has supplanted the utility of the other metals in people’s estimation.
Cassius:
This is a principle of wide application, and I see this as one of the really key aspects of Epicurean philosophy — that there’s nothing inherently good or desirable or evil or undesirable in something. It’s all a matter of the context and the times in which it’s arising. And if you think that something has an absolute value to it other than pleasure, then you’ve really got a problem to sort out with Epicurean philosophy, because I think we come to the conclusion very clearly throughout all of his reasoning that ultimately in human life it is pleasure that is valuable to us. And if it’s not something that is a function of pleasure, even the tool itself is not inherently valuable — the value of the tool is only in that it produces pleasure or relieves us of pain, which is essentially the same calculation in Epicurean philosophy.
Don:
And what he’s basically taken there is — it seems to me that whenever they found these metals and they could use them for different purposes, there was sort of a labor-saving-device quality to it. Before even in warfare they had to use their nails and hands and the boughs of trees, and then when they found these metals — oh hey, it’s easier to accomplish things now. Not necessarily a good thing for society, but at least they saw it as a way that they could save time and save energy. These metals are a means to the end.
Cassius:
Exactly. Exactly. That’s what I was trying to say in a roundabout way. Means to the end and not the end in itself. How many times we come back to that issue of whether virtue is its own reward or whether virtue is there because it brings pleasure — many many aspects of things come back to that question.
Cassius:
Okay, maybe we should move on. At line 1281 he talks about how Memmius can now by himself understand how the force of iron was discovered and supplanted the use of brass — which is another example of the changing circumstances. And he uses that observation to introduce the issue of how they began to plow with iron and with weapons of iron to engage in the doubtful events of war. And so now we turn to a long section of the development of war.
Don:
The use of various animals — he pulled out all the stops there. A lot of detailed explanation of why boars and bulls and lions have problems.
Cassius:
Yeah, lions have a problem with realizing who their friends and enemies are, apparently. Part of what caught my eye there was the part about how “these creatures therefore that men saw were tame at home, now brought into the war, maddened their masters with wounds and with the noise and with terror in the tumult of the battle.” And even after that they could not be calmed again, but flew wildly over the plains. So there’s maybe an aspect there of that same observation about how an animal that seemed tame enough under normal circumstances, in the middle of a war became just as much your enemy as it was a tool to attack the other.
Martin:
Other than that, I mean, these detailed descriptions — it looks almost like it must have been inspiration for the Lord of the Rings stories, where they also fight with various creatures.
Cassius:
Yeah, I guess — let’s see, he does talk about the elephants, so he’s got elephants and lions and bulls. And of course he’s talking about horses pretty regularly through here. And I think there’s boars in there. I don’t know whether he got the idea from an actual battle, or whether it was possibly from seeing animals fighting in the arena, because I believe the whole idea of fighting animals in the Colosseum was a regular occurrence in Rome. So he could possibly have seen people fighting animals and just seeing how they reacted in those situations, and sort of extrapolated that they might have used these in battle at some point.
Martin:
I read about animals which actually have been used in battle. Except in addition to horses, for some campaigns it was elephants and dogs — but not so much these other animals like lions and bears, or bulls. I think those would be rather impractical to use in battles.
Don:
Interestingly enough, from the Loeb translation that I have, the note for lines 1341 to 49 says that lines 1341 to 49 “confirmed that Lucretius did not invent the story of the experiments with wild animals but derived it from an Epicurean or historical source.”
Cassius:
How does it confirm it?
Don:
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to figure out as well. I guess his sentence — the sentence that the Loeb starts out with — is “if it really was true that they did it.” So he’s sort of positing that… you know if it sounds like that he read something and he said, “if it really was true that they did it, you know, then here’s what happened.” So yes, that would make sense — that would tell you that he’s looking at some other source and saying, “Well, if this is really true, here’s the consequence.”
Cassius:
I’m disappointed that he doesn’t mention here the dogs that you’re bringing up, Martin. Because of course I’ve got in my mind the gladiator movie, where the big scene is maybe in one of the forests in Germany, and there’s a big battle scene and the general in Gladiator has a German Shepherd that’s following him around through the battle. But you’re right — I would think dogs among all animals would be the most successful in battle because they’d be more intelligent and would be able to better determine who their friends and foes were — at least they’d know their masters.
Martin:
The German Shepherd as a breed is about a hundred years old.
Cassius:
Do you know the scene I’m talking about, Martin? I can’t remember the name of the actor or the battle he’s supposed to be in or anything.
Don:
Yeah, I was like — that’s the one that started the movie out, right?
Cassius:
I always root for the Germans in that one. It’s an interesting scene though, just to see how the Roman lines were organized.
Martin:
That’s not certain. I don’t know — I want to say Teutoburg Forest or something… but that was much later than the one depicted there. So the one depicted there was actually with Marcus Aurelius, and that must have been near Vienna or somewhere like that. Marcus Aurelius was challenged two times by uprisings by the most powerful Germanic tribe at that time, which lived around the predecessor of today’s Austria. And he defeated them twice — both in his youth, and only when he was old and on the way back from the victory did he die of typhus.
Cassius:
Yeah, Teutoburg was whenever the Romans got their butts handed to them. So that was earlier, right?
Don:
Is it that was — I think nine after Christ.
Martin:
It’s actually Teutoburg Forest — it’s still not fully clear where it was, somewhere probably not far from that area. But they haven’t found it — they’ve found a couple of battle scenes, even one which is not recorded, near the Harz Mountains. But from what they’re finding it’s clear there was a fairly big Roman army apparently defeated.
Cassius:
You know, the time frame was not all that long after Lucretius. I was thinking, Martin, that there was a famous history about that battle where the emperor — and I thought it was Augustus — said “Varus, give me back my legions,” or something like that.
Martin:
You’re right. Yes, that matches. Then Augustus died 14 after Christ, and that would be five years after that battle. And then his adoptive son — Tiberius — he was then from 14 to 37.
Cassius:
Okay, so this was really very close to Lucretius’s time frame. And then Marcus Aurelius was a hundred years or so later? Around 180 was that?
Cassius:
I think when he died it was 180, and then Commodus took over — so almost 200 years later than Lucretius’s time. Okay, that’s kind of an excursion into Roman history there. And I’ll make one more excursion — over the years I would get Lucan and Lucretius confused. So at some point I’ve read the Lucan poem Pharsalia. There’s Lucan, there’s Lucian, and Lucretius, right?
Don:
That’s right. That’s right.
Cassius:
Lucian is our very Epicurean satirist, right, and who we talk about a lot. Lucan as far as I remember doesn’t have that much reference to Epicurean philosophy. The only reason I mention him now is because Pharsalia being about that time period — of course when Lucretius was alive. But what I remember from Pharsalia is how it just has paragraph after paragraph of all this extensive gory battle scene stuff, a lot like this paragraph 1308 we’re talking about here.
Cassius:
So just to bring this back — I thought it was interesting, just in the translation that we read, that “these were the first arts of war” — after we talked about all the animals and stuff — “yet I cannot believe but the first inventors must consider and foresee the common evils and sad calamities they must occasion.” But I think it’s interesting that “it is safer to say this was the case in general in some of all the worlds that were created in various manners, than to be particular and fix it upon one only.” Which I think is a really interesting alternative-universe sort of perspective that just came about completely unexpected whenever I read this. I was like — because he’s basically talking about alternative-history, or alternative-world ideas here.
Don:
Right, right. Not alternative universe in the sense of different dimensions or alternatives of this world, but an observation that relates back to his earlier observation about how the universe itself is populated with basically unlimited numbers of other planets that have life on them. So if it could happen, it probably did happen somewhere.
Cassius:
Yeah, that would definitely be a sentence to look at. Let’s look at some of the other translations of that sentence just to be sure that we’re not putting too much emphasis on it. I noted before we started the podcast today that that particular phrase does not appear to be in the Munro version that I have transcribed, and I’m not quite sure why that would be. But it is in Bailey, and it’s in the Loeb. I thought Stallings has an interesting take on it as well. The way that she does it is: “that the calamitous debacle they thus called down on the head of one and all — it’s easier to imagine that instead this happens somewhere in the universe among the many worlds constructed in various ways, rather than in any one particular earth you fancy.”
Cassius:
Oh boy, that is a very close approximation of the Bailey version there. So yes, she does the poetic interpretation. But I have Bailey in front of me — it says: “and you could more readily maintain that this was done somewhere in the universe in the diverse worlds fashioned in diverse fashion than on any one determined earth.”
Don:
That was very close to that. And Martin Ferguson Smith has: “I must confess that I find it almost incredible that they were unable to anticipate and imagine the consequences of their action before the dreadful common disaster occurred, and it would be easier to maintain that it happened somewhere in the universe of various worlds variously formed than to assign it to any one specific earth.”
Cassius:
Interesting. Yeah, because the Latin has variis mundi for the various worlds, and then uno terrarum for “one earth,” as you mentioned. So they are talking about the various worlds and then instead of one earth. And of course the Loeb edition — Martin Ferguson Smith’s most recent edition is a variation of his work, but he started on the Loeb version, and I think as time passes he sometimes realizes something new about what it may mean and uses slightly different words. And this might be a good example. I particularly agree with kind of the way he’s translated this one. I like the fact that he’s like, you know, “surely they could have thought that bears are not going to work in battle.”
Don:
I’m glad you said that, because I was getting confused about what he was talking about in terms of what they were unable to anticipate. I was kind of thinking that he was just talking about the horrors of war in general. But I believe you’re right — he’s talking about the use of animals.
Don:
Yeah, I mean — couldn’t you think, you know, that the lions and bears are not going to follow the lead of their trainers in the middle of battle? Couldn’t you have thought of this?
Cassius:
That’s exactly right. And in fact if you go back to the beginning of that passage he says “but did people really make this experiment?” And to me that makes it clear what he’s saying. It almost strikes me as like a line from Herodotus, where he’ll talk about a particular story from a particular area of the world and he’s like, “Well, some people are telling me this, but I’m just going to tell you the story and you can decide whether you believe it yourself or not.”
Don:
Yeah, reading Martin Ferguson Smith’s version of paragraph 1340 just kind of puts a whole different spin on it for me, because the way Martin Ferguson Smith writes it, it’s clear that the whole passage is really basically a statement that Lucretius is saying he finds it hard to believe that they really ever experimented with animals like that, because they should have foreseen what would happen. And it would be easier to believe that people on some other planet did it than to assign it to this earth. And then certainly the experiment must have been inspired not so much by hope of victory but by desire to give the enemy cause for sorrow — even at the cost of self-destruction.
Cassius:
Exactly — in a situation involving people who distrusted their numbers and were short of arms. Right. So he’s almost saying that it was a desperate measure to try and win a battle because they were either outnumbered or didn’t have enough weapons, and “let’s let some wild animals loose and see what happens.” And Stallings does the same thing with hedging her bets too, because her first line in that paragraph at 1341 is “if people ever actually tried such things!” — with an exclamation point at the end. And then, “but as for me, I find it difficult to think that they could not foresee the calamitous debacle.”
Cassius:
Yeah, this is an example to me of how useful it is to read multiple translations at the same time whenever there’s any confusion about what’s being discussed.
Don:
Yeah, I think it’s fascinating that he talks about these sorts of things, but it’s obviously, you know — here’s what could have happened — he’s not necessarily saying this is what happened, but this is basically what he’s heard.
Don:
And even the Latin in the Loeb seems to be that that first “if it really happened” is basically its own sentence. So it is set off from the rest of the paragraph. If I remember correctly, it’s something like si fuit ut facerent — “if it was that they did it.” So he’s definitely hedging his bets. He’s reporting, but it’s like, “well, maybe not.” Let me read the Martin Ferguson Smith footnote to 1341. He says: “Lucretius sensibly finds it hard to believe that people could have been so foolish as to fail to foresee the disastrous consequences of their experiment. In an infinite universe containing an infinite number of worlds, there are an infinite number of chances, and such an event might have occurred sometime, somewhere. But if so, only in a situation where people were desperate and wanted to sell their lives as dearly as possible.”
Cassius:
I’ll buy that. Yeah, yeah. I think that’s a pretty good summary of that. Yeah. Last passage — of course the part that interests me, being always ready to take something off in a direction of Star Trek — is this discussion, like you said, of the infinite worlds and how it might have happened somewhere else. It’s interesting to me that just in passing he can throw that kind of a reference in without really considering it to be particularly controversial. Within the Epicurean context, it’s just a natural observation that something like this could be going on throughout the universe.
Cassius:
That is definitely one of the things that fascinates me about the philosophy as a whole — that you have somebody from maybe 100–200 BC, if we’re talking about Epicurus himself, and then working the whole way up through Lucretius, that they can just throw those things out — it’s like, “oh yeah, there are an infinite number of worlds, and you know this could have been happening somewhere in the universe.” And it just sounds such like such a modern way of thinking to me. It’s one of the things that struck me right from the very beginning in reading some of the things from Epicurus and Lucretius. It just astounded me.
Cassius:
You know, one other word that appears a couple times in the text today — “Lucanian” — “Lucanian oxen.” That’s obviously not a reference to Lucan the poet. Is that a reference to a location?
Don:
I don’t know. I would assume so — Lucania is a region of southern Italy. So evidently maybe they were renowned for their oxen down there.
Cassius:
Well, glancing ahead, I see that we’re going to sort of have a similar presentation next week talking about progression of planting and potentially clothing as well. We can of course come back and deal with that next week. We’re probably at the end of a normal time frame today. So let’s talk about whether anybody has any summary thoughts on today. And as always, it’s best to start with Martin.
Martin:
Well, I’ve nothing else yet.
Cassius:
All right. Don, anything from you that we haven’t covered?
Don:
I think I think we had a nice little discussion on that last paragraph there. That was an interesting way to end. I believe.
Cassius:
Right. I see exactly the same thing. Okay, well maybe that’s a good place for us to stop, and we’ll come back in a week and go further from there. So thanks everybody, we’ll talk to you next week.
Don:
Sounds good. Have a good weekend.
Cassius:
Okay, thanks. Bye.