Episode 081 - Development of the Arts And The End of Book Five
Date: 07/31/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2109-episode-eighty-one-development-of-the-arts-the-end-of-book-five/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads Book 5 lines 1350 through the end of the book. Topics include weaving technology (treadles, spindles, and the archaic 1743 word “shittles”), whether Lucretius was being satirical or accurate in saying men invented weaving first, nature as teacher of agriculture (philogeorgos — a single Greek word for “lover of the country”), and music and dancing as kinetic pleasures. An apparently out-of-place sentence, “thus time by degrees draws everything into use,” appears in the 1743 Brown edition but is bracketed in the Loeb as a likely transcription error — it turns up again verbatim at the very end of the book.
Discussion covers the acorns passage (things we prize become odious; we fight over gold and purple rather than necessity), the Loeb’s rendering of “they fix no limit to what they possess,” whether writing was discovered or invented (reperta in Latin), Martin’s parallel with Chinese oracle-bone script, and the closing in luminis erigit oras (shores of light) / cacumen (summit — last word of Book Five). Book Five ends here.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 81 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 we’ll 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 is not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com. If you have any questions about the podcast, please be sure to contact us at the Forum for more information. In this episode 81, we’ll start at approximately Latin line 1350 of Book 5, and we’ll go through the end of the book. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
The garments were skins of beasts, pinned together with thorns before they had learned to weave. The art of weaving came in after the discovery of iron, for their tools were made of that matter, nor could the smooth treadles, the spindles, the shittles, and the rattling beams be formed any other way. But nature at first compelled the men to card and spin before the women undertook the trade, for men by far exceed the other sex in the invention of arts and work with greater skill. The sturdy peasants at length reproached these male spinners and obliged them to give up the business into the women’s hands, and then they betook themselves to more laborious employments and hardened their limbs and their hands with rougher work.
But nature herself, the great mother of all things, first taught men to sow and to graft. For the berries and the acorns that fell from the trees, they observed, produced young shoots underneath in a proper season of the year, and hence they began to graft fruit slips into boughs and to plant young stalks over the fields. Then they tried every other art to improve the kindly soil, and they found the wild fruits grew sweet and large by enriching the earth and dressing it with great care. They employed themselves continually in reducing the woods to narrow bounds upon the hills and to cultivate the lower places for corn and fruits. Thus they had the benefit of meadows, of lakes, of rivers, of corn fields and pleasant vineyards upon the side of the hills, and in the dales and of green rows of olives regularly running between upon the rising grounds and in the valleys and spread all over the plains. As you see, our country farms now laid out in all the variety of beauty, where the sweet apples are intermixed and adorn the scene, and fruitful trees are delightfully planted around all the fields.
And men attempt to imitate by the mouth the charming voice of birds before they tried to sing or to delight the ear with tuneful notes, and the soft movements of the reeds, moved by a gentle gale, first taught them how to blow the hollow reed, and by degrees to learn the tender notes, such as the pipe by nimble fingers pressed sent out when sweetly sung to — the pipe that now is heard in all the woods and groves and all the lawns, where shepherds take their solitary walks, and spend their days in innocence and ease. Thus music softened and relieved the minds of these rude swains after their rural feasts. For then their hearts at ease, and then they sweetly indulged their bodies, as they lay together on the soft grass, some by a riverside, under the boughs of some high tree, without a heap of woe. Chiefly when the spring smiles, and the season of the year sprinkles their verdant fields with flowery pride. Then jests and smart conceits and the loud laugh went round. And then the rustic music rang out, and gay and jocund in their hearts they crowned their heads, and on their shoulders hung garlands of flowers and leaves. And with unequal steps they rudely moved their limbs, and shook their mother earth with their hard feet. And then the laugh began, and pleased grins at these strange gambols, never seen before. And thus they kept awake, and refreshed as by a comfortable sleep, they spent a night in trolling country songs, and making mouths to many an awkward tune, and running over the reeds with crooked lips. These are the pleasures now our watchful youth pursue, who sit up all the night; they learn to dance and measure, but receive no more delights than did the rustic race of earth-born swains so long ago. For while we know no better and enjoy a present good, it wonderfully pleases and delights us above all things. But when we discover something more agreeable, this destroys and changes the relish of what went before.
So acorns became odious to the palate, and the beds of grass and leaves were laid aside, and skins went out of use, and that savage sort of clothing was despised. And yet I think he that first wore it raised such envy to himself that he was treacherously slain, he was torn to pieces, and his leather garment stained with his own blood. Nor was he suffered to enjoy the fruit of his own invention. At that time men fought for skins, but now gold and purple employ their cares, and set them together by the ears. And I think we are much more to blame of the two. For without the use of skins, the cold would have been very grievous to those poor wretches, but we suffer nothing if we go without purple or clothes of gold embroidered in the richest figures, since a mean address would as well secure us against the cold.
Wretches therefore and vain are the troubles of mankind. They spend their whole life in the pursuit of empty cares. And no wonder, since they fix no limit to what they possess, and know nothing how far the bounds of true pleasure may extend. And this ignorance carries them by degrees into a sea of evils, and raises the most violent storms of wars throughout the world. But the wakeful sun and moon, surveying with their light the great and rolling skies, have taught men that the seasons of the year are turned about, and that things are carried on by certain rules and in a fixed order.
And now mankind enclosed themselves and lived in castles. The lands were parted out, and each enjoyed his own. The sea was sailed over by crewed ships, and men joined together for defense, and formed alliances by certain bonds. So poets then began to celebrate in verse the great exploits, and letters were not long before discovered. What was transacted many ages past, those times knew nothing of, but what their reason darkly traced out.
Use therefore and the experience of an inquiring mind led men by degrees into the knowledge of navigation, of agriculture, taught them to build walls, to make laws, arms, public ways, garments, and other things of the same nature, made them acquainted with poetry, painting, and statuary. Thus time gradually produces everything into use and reason shows it in a clear light. One art we observe is refined and polished by another, till they arrive at the highest point of perfection.
Cassius:
Martin, thank you for reading that today. We’ve arrived at the highest point of perfection and also the end of Book Five with your reading that for us today. A little bit longer than normal text, but it does end Book Five, so it’s a good one to try to do all at one time today if we possibly can.
Martin:
Did you pay attention to the reading? I think I corrected three times — auto-correct by reading, so to say.
Cassius:
What was it?
Martin:
I saw that too. Well done. These corrections I made were actual corrections to be made. Correct.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s the way I would have read it so, yep. Unfortunately, I didn’t make as many notes there as I should have because I was consumed. I wanted to come to your defense, Martin, and make sure that everybody understood that when you read the first paragraph and talked about the implements of weaving that we were talking about — treadles, spindles — and in fact, the 1743 edition does say “the shittles.” I was sure that after I heard you say that, that it must be “shuttles,” but no, unless it’s a typo in the 1743, then “shittle” is what it refers to there as one of the implements of weaving. So I guess if we start back in that first paragraph we’re talking about, and I don’t want to make it into a discussion of the technology of weaving, but I’ve in my own experience heard the word “carding” over the years and never really understood what that meant. Martin, have you heard the word “card” in relation to weaving or textiles?
Don:
This is the first time that — actually, my great-great-grandfather was a weaver, but of course that’s the one I go to that I carry on no knowledge of.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s one of those things about having lost the knowledge of really turning cotton and so forth into thread and then weaving it. But the textile plants around the area where I’ve lived in much of my life, I would hear people talk about. I worked in the card room, and it always used to seem to me, “Well, you guys must have played a lot of rummy and poker and so forth,” but apparently a card is one of the first things you do with the fibers of an animal.
Don:
Yeah, like wool and things like that. I believe what it is — whenever you initially have a wad of wool, you have two cards with little pins on them and you do them back and forth to straighten out the threads in the natural fiber.
Martin:
It’s something like combing then.
Don:
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I found it interesting here with his thing about the weaving. The knotted garments I thought was interesting because if you knot together different things, that makes sense that that would come first. But weaving itself goes back, I mean, I was seeing things like 10,000 years ago, that sort of thing. And you see vertical looms that just have weights hanging on the bottom that other cultures and ancient cultures use. So the whole idea of having the treadles and the spindles and the shittles and the beams and stuff — it seems like he’s using the idea that weaving as it existed in his time was how it started, and that’s obviously not the way it started.
Martin:
That means that even before iron tools, there were no metal parts available there. It must have been by wood, bone, or stone.
Don:
Exactly. Yeah. They’re like heavy stones hanging from the threads so that they stayed vertical, and then you could weave in among them.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, now that we’ve finished talking about the technology of weaving, we could probably just skip right over this next section that talks about how men work harder than women. But I suspect that some of the listeners would like to hear us talk about that. So who would like to jump on the question of how nature first compelled men to card and spin before women undertook the trade? For men by far exceed the other sex in the invention of arts and work with greater skill. Who wants to attack that?
Don:
I’ll wade into the water. I think I posted something on the forum saying I couldn’t decide whether he was being misogynistic or whether he was being satirical, because I could see it going either way. And he’s addressing sort of the stereotypical view prevalent in his time. The thing that strikes me is that throughout Epicurus’s writings and the other parts of Lucretius’s poem, the sexes are seen as much more equal and much more worthy of respect than they were in any other sort of context in the ancient world, it seems to me. And the fact that he just sort of throws this in almost as a non sequitur just seemed kind of odd to me.
Cassius:
Right. It doesn’t seem to be essential to the narrative or really advance the proposition that much. So I have to wonder too if it’s not as much something that he thought was sort of witty. I know that as we get down to what we have today as paragraph 1390, when he talks about what the rustic people used to do out in the fields, he says that “jests and smart conceits and the loud laugh went round.” And I have to wonder in my own mind if he’s not potentially smiling or realizing the significance of what he’s saying when he says this. And even the whole idea that the farmers were the ones that made fun of the men who were weaving — there would be no reason to make fun of them for weaving if it wasn’t already considered the work that women had done in the first place. And the whole structure of that little paragraph just doesn’t really make a lot of sense if you try and look at it as an indictment of the weaving trade, because weaving was so important to everything they did.
Martin:
I think this is again a speculation on the part of Lucretius, because like you mentioned, this weaving was invented a long time before. And then he just in passing thought this up, so it’s not that he knew this — it’s just something that he thought it was like that.
Cassius:
And I have to wonder too if he didn’t throw it in there since — I mean, he’s nominally dedicating the poem to Memmius — is he throwing this in as a bone to Memmius, like, “oh yeah, men are so much better at coming up with things”? And you know, that’s sort of placating his supposedly quote-unquote audience.
Don:
Right. Actually, in the past there may have been something in it. I mean I wouldn’t say completely, but typically women would get married at a younger age than men and they would practically immediately get pregnant and then have to take care of kids. If you take care of kids you tend to become more conservative typically, so you stick to what is known and to apply this. And then you see that the husband, instead of working hard, is just playing around — then this is something women at that time would not imagine or would not like. And similarly also today, when men do more on leisure than the women like them to do. And this is what you need to do an invention — you need time to think about and play around and try things out. So under the conditions of the actual legal conditions of men and women, and the differences which were imposed by what was practiced in society, it appears to me logical that in the past men were more likely to make inventions.
Don:
So I’ve also heard that women would have come up with weaving and things like that because they needed bags and baskets and things like that whenever they were doing the gathering of plants and berries — they needed something to put them in. So it was a logical extension for them to come up with ways to carry more things back to the camp whenever they were out in the fields.
Cassius:
And then the last sentence makes reference to the obvious point as well when it says that the sturdy peasants obliged them to give up the business, and they took themselves to more laborious employments and hardened their limbs and their hands with rougher work. I mean, there’s certainly the physical aspect of things that men are in general more able to do harder physical labor.
Don:
Yeah, and oddly enough, the word used right there in the Latin is agricoli, and so it’s literally “the farmers were the ones that made fun of the men that were weaving.” So I find it interesting that they’re literally talking about the people that tilled the earth were like, “You know, come on out here and work with us — we’re doing the manly work.”
Cassius:
Yeah, yeah, I guess that’s part of the old ways of looking at things — like the mountain versus the hill people, and the farmers versus the weavers.
Cassius:
I get this impression — what’s a tanner? A tanner is somebody who takes leather, right?
Don:
Right. And makes clothing out of that.
Cassius:
I remember reading some of the references to the excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and it seems like several of the buildings were like tanneries or something like that.
Don:
To produce leather from the animals.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, if we move to the next paragraph — “nature herself, the mother of all things, taught” — sounds like we’re going to go into farming here. Which is not as much of a bullet-point change as what Lucretius has done in the past, since he at least says, you know, that the farmers told the men to come out and work in the fields and make themselves sturdy. And now we’re moving into the actual agricultural sorts of stuff.
Don:
Right. They found that the fruits would grow sweeter and larger by enriching the earth and dressing it with greater care. He’s very pleased with the outcome of how — “and you see our country farms now laid out in all the variety of beauty, where the sweet apples are intermixed and adorn the scene, and fruitful trees are delightfully planted around all the fields.”
Cassius:
In fact, if I remember correctly from Diogenes Laertius, it’s a very short reference, but it says something about Epicurus saying that the wise man will be fond of the country. To some extent this may be a reflection of that part as well. That’s one of my favorite words in that whole tenth book of Diogenes — that it’s one word. “To love the country” is one word. Philogeorgos, I believe, is what it is — to love the field.
Don:
Oh really? Okay, I haven’t heard of that. It’s only one word in the Greek.
Martin:
In hindsight I’m really upset about how agriculture has gone. Because seventy years ago it was still like that in Germany. We had apple trees all over the countryside. When the kids were roaming around if they were hungry they could just pick an apple. And these trees have all been cut down about sixty years ago.
Don:
Oh, wow. Well, there’s the — in the United States at least, Cassius will know this — the legend of, well, it’s not a legend: Johnny Appleseed went into the western areas of the early United States and planted apple orchards for the settlers that were going to be coming afterwards.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ve always read that. Are there any — is there any residue of that still around, from what you know?
Don:
I would assume so. I don’t know for sure, but I think from what I remember he planted just acres and acres of them, so there have to be at least a few that are left over. He was a weird guy though — I would encourage people to Wikipedia him, and he had some weird things going on.
Cassius:
I guess related to the same issue, Don — this is something that you may know. What is Georgics? Isn’t Georgics supposed to be about the attractiveness of the agricultural life or something like that?
Don:
I believe so, yeah. The Georgics are — and I’m going to defer to Wikipedia here — as the name suggests, from the Greek word georgica, which would probably in English be “agricultural things.” So the subject of the poem is agricultural.
Cassius:
Well, that’s what always struck me — I never could associate the word “George” in my mind with agriculture. So when I hear the word Georgics as an extremely famous Roman poem, it never evokes any meaning when I hear that term. But so I didn’t realize that till just now — so Georgics is a reference to agriculture.
Don:
Yep, yep, from the Greek.
Cassius:
Okay, well, so we turn from agriculture to imitating the charming voice of birds and singing and playing reeds. I’m not sure what more we can get out of that other than that’s a nicely phrased paragraph.
Don:
Yeah, I think the fact that — I mean, I would go back to the whole thing about the kinetic and static pleasures. You know, my mind is blanking on the catastrophic and the static pleasures — the kinetic and the static pleasures — but this is definitely an endorsement here of the kinetic pleasures.
Cassius:
Right, and it gets even more so as we go through this, in terms of dancing and singing and so forth.
Don:
Yeah, exactly. You cannot conceive of the pleasure without the pleasures of movement and so forth.
Cassius:
You know, sometimes it’s irritating to me when I look from translation to translation and try to find an equivalent sentence. I was about to say that the last sentence here we have for 1379 sounds like it’s kind of philosophical: “Thus time by degrees draws everything into use, and skill and ingenuity raise it to perfection.” So I cast my eye on the Bailey translation and I see nothing that looks like that. I don’t know whether it’s in Martin Ferguson Smith or not.
Don:
No, I don’t see that there either. I don’t know where that comes from. And what line were you looking at?
Cassius:
Well, the very last sentence we have there on 1379, right before 1390 — it says “thus time by degrees draws everything into use.” It certainly sounds like it was written there, but I don’t see it in Martin Ferguson Smith either. Let me see if it’s in Munro.
Don:
No.
Cassius:
Interesting.
Martin:
This point is again mentioned at the very end.
Don:
I was just going to say the same thing. Yeah. Well, there’s something that’s transposed in one either translation or some manuscript copy.
Martin:
Yes.
Cassius:
I hope it wasn’t transmitted by me when I was doing the typing. But I’m pretty sure it — let me look. Well, if it was, you were just doing it as a demonstration of the problems that arise over multiple centuries and different translations.
Don:
So yes.
Cassius:
No, no, here it is on page 223 of the PDF of the 1743 edition. He just has that sentence right there in the middle of his paragraph, right before he says “thus music softened and relieved the minds of these rude swains.”
Don:
Yeah. And I think the softening there too is reminiscent of some of the things that he’s talked about in the past, too — where whenever we as humans were originally made out of the earth, we were rugged and lived a hard life. And then we moved into doing agriculture and moved into civilizations, and it softened us, and we took care of our children and all that sort of thing. So it seems to echo that sort of idea of the softening. And the softening is not necessarily a negative thing either.
Cassius:
Right. It doesn’t have a negative connotation necessarily.
Don:
Exactly. Which is interesting because if you go back to the earlier paragraph about talking about the manly men getting out into the field and making their hands rough and doing the manly work and that sort of thing — it’s almost juxtaposed against that.
Cassius:
Right. And so as we go into this, what we have is paragraph 1390. This one really just emphasizes to me what you said earlier, Don, about how this one’s devoted to the music and the gay and jocund in their sports — crowning their heads and hanging garlands of flowers and leaves and then basically dancing and so forth. This is clearly a kinetic activity.
Don:
Diogenes Laertius says that Epicurus embraced both kinds of pleasure, not just —
Cassius:
Exactly, exactly. The other kind. I find it interesting — the word that jumps out at me was “these are the pleasures now our watchful youth pursue.” You know, the word “wanton” has sort of a negative connotation, but I don’t get an idea that he has a negative connotation of these activities, just from the way that he’s rhapsodizing about them in the rest of the paragraph.
Don:
It’s a pun against that use — in indulging in this, because he puts them on the level of the ancient swains.
Cassius:
Ah, okay, okay. I’ll go with that. Again, I’m looking for that one in Bailey or Munro, and I don’t see it. Well, now Munro does have: “okay, even at the present day, watchmen observe these traditions and have lately learned to keep the proper tune, and yet for all this received not a jot more of enjoyment than the rugged race of sons of earth received.”
Don:
Yeah, I see the watchmen in the Loeb translation too. “Once even now, the watchmen keep up the tradition and they have learned how to keep the various kinds of rhythms, yet for all that they have no more profit and enjoyment than the woodland people who were born of the earth.”
Martin:
Watchmen — I’m not familiar with it, but I don’t get it from you. I don’t understand either where the watchmen are coming from.
Cassius:
Yeah, actually it sounds more like the 1743 might be actually correct, because he’s talking about people who stay up all night who learn to dance and measure. So a watchman or night watchman or gatekeeper or whatever would not normally be staying up late to learn to dance. I wonder, if we could find the Latin quickly enough, that would figure it out — we’d have to go to Loeb.
Don:
I’m looking at the Loeb translation trying to figure out which line it is here. It looks like it’s right before 1412.
Cassius:
Okay, so it looks like it is vigiles or vigiles if you use the V pronunciation.
Don:
Because that one gives you “those awake, on watch, a watchman or sentinel.” Of such vigiles there were in Rome from the time of Augustus seven divisions with their prefects and sub-prefects, constituting a regularly organized night police.
Cassius:
So you’re right, so it does seem to be talking about the night watchman. Why would the night watchman keep up the tradition of dancing unless they’re doing it under cover of darkness?
Cassius:
Oh, I will accept that! That’s — yeah, okay. That’s at least an effort. Yeah, yeah, yeah, although it doesn’t really —
Martin:
Or maybe that’s why people who are really into this say they can go four nights in a row by doing this partying. And apparently that really helps to keep awake.
Cassius:
Oh, okay, okay. That’s as good an idea as I’ve heard yet. And I find it interesting that they have “learned how to keep the various kinds of rhythms with it, so the watchmen have learned to keep the various kinds of rhythm.” Yet for all that they have no more profit and enjoyment than the woodland people who were born of the earth. So what he’s saying there is that the current people who are dancing the dances and singing the songs are getting as much enjoyment out of it as we did whenever we were living in the woods and just coming into civilization. Which sort of gives at least to my eye the continuity that those are natural pleasures that should be enjoyed, and they can be enjoyed in the far past or even in what he’s talking about as the present.
Don:
Yeah, that’s clearly got to be the main point of this whole section here — this reference that just because we may have more technology or more money or nicer clothing or things like that, we don’t get any more enjoyment out of the basic things of life than somebody a thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago enjoying the same things.
Cassius:
And I give Martin the kudos for coming up with the “staying awake with the dancing” — that’s the interpretation I’m going with.
Cassius:
Yeah, now I don’t dispute that, but I would have thought — now this is something else I associate with Martin and the Germans — I’m thinking about marching. Maybe if you’re a watchman you stay awake by cadences, or just when you’re patrolling.
Martin:
I don’t know, but I’ve been told — yeah, that’s true, that’s true too.
Don:
Okay, well, we probably ought to move on. But now that I have my Loeb edition out in front of me, I want to come to the defense of the 1743 translation and say that that sentence that I couldn’t find is right there in the Loeb, but with brackets around it: “so by degrees time brings up before us every single thing and reason lifts it into the precincts of light.” So the fact that the Loeb edition has that in brackets right before line 1390 at least gives us some confidence that the 1743 translator didn’t just invent things.
Cassius:
Oh, I see that as well. I see the brackets now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Martin:
But it’s all what’s inserted there. I mean, if you take it out, the sentence before and the first sentence of the next paragraph just goes mostly on the same theme.
Cassius:
Yeah, and the sentence is basically an interruption of that line of thought. Yeah, so it’s got to be one of those situations Don mentioned where one of the manuscripts must have somehow gotten that in the middle there, and everybody after that nowadays considers it to be a transcription error. And if they include it they mark it with brackets or footnotes or something like that. But it must have made it into one of the transcriptions. If you look at the Loeb translation, that second sentence at the very end of the book is an exact repetition of that part that’s in the brackets.
Cassius:
Uh-huh, exactly. So — well, let me read you the one on 1389, and let me read the one that’s at the end of the book, and you tell me if it’s the same, because I can’t keep flipping pages back and forth very well. So the one at the very end of the book is: “so by degrees time brings up before us every single thing and reason lifts it into the precincts of light.”
Don:
Well, now that may be — maybe we’re looking at different Loeb editions, but my final sentence of the Loeb edition says “for they saw one thing…” Oh, the sentence right before that — the penultimate sentence.
Cassius:
Yes, yes, yes, you’re right — that is exactly the same sentence. So I could very easily see somebody transcribing this and flipping pages and forgetting to flip them back on the other side, or something, and that would be a transcription error.
Don:
Yeah, having those two sentences right together at the end of the book almost looks like it’s redundant, because those two sentences are pretty closely related. It seems like one is a repetition.
Cassius:
Okay, well, maybe we should move on to get to that point, but that’s interesting. All right, so where are we? So we’re checking off — it’s okay to enjoy kinetic pleasures. Yes! And that’s a huge check right there. And then we go back in 1412 to talking about how our observation and appreciation of things doesn’t always last, and how in fact it can deteriorate even though we’re able to appreciate some of these simpler and more basic pleasures — we get tired of it, like acorns. So “acorns became odious to the palate and the beds of grass and leaves were laid aside and skins went out of use and savage sort of clothing was despised.” And in fact he goes on — this is an interesting part — about how even the very first person who developed that was torn to pieces treacherously by his associates, who stole his leather garment, stained with his own blood. And now even we don’t fight for skins anymore, but for gold. And of course “purple” is always a reference, I guess within the Roman context, to indications of power. And I think it’s interesting that the next sentence right there is “and I think we are much more to blame of the two.” So he’s actually saying that he could at least understand somebody trying to steal somebody’s garment back whenever we lived in the fields and not everybody knew how to make clothing, and if somebody had something that was going to keep them warmer, they would kill the person and take it. But now the gold and the purple — we don’t need those to stay warm, and it seems superfluous to fight over things like that.
Cassius:
And then this next sentence after that is probably a very good summary of one of the main points: “Wretched therefore and vain are the troubles of mankind. They spend their whole life in the pursuit of empty cares, and no wonder, since they fix no limit to what they possess, and know nothing how far the bounds of true pleasure may extend. And this ignorance carries them by degrees into a sea of evils, and raises the most violent storms of war throughout the world.” That’s a very good summary of one of these major points of Epicurean philosophy, which I think we probably bear repeating — does not necessarily mean that we aim to live in the cave at the lowest possible subsistence level, but that we don’t have to be rich and powerful and glamorous and have all sorts of fame in order to be happy.
Don:
Yeah, and the whole idea that — with “fixing no limit” — the whole idea that I get from that and from other texts as well is that there is no limit to power. You can always have more power and more power and more power. And if you strive for that, you’re never going to be satisfied.
Cassius:
Yeah, and life itself — if we spend our time obsessing over the fact that we’re not immortal, that we’re going to die at some point, then we’re reaching for something that just — to say that you’d like to live another day has no end to it. So that’s why it’s important to think about what life is about and how you don’t need an unlimited time in order to achieve what is appropriate for a human to achieve. Because if you’re always looking for tomorrow, you never concentrate on what’s going on today.
Cassius:
Right. “They fix no limit to what they possess, and they know nothing how far the bounds of true pleasure may extend.” That’s said a little bit differently but I think it’s basically the same issue — you have to identify mentally the appropriate amount. And in order to identify the appropriate amount, you have to decide what the goal of what you’re doing is. It’s not possessions in themselves — that is the important thing. It is pleasure and being alive to experience pleasure that’s the important thing. If you’re always striving for something you don’t have, you can never be satisfied with what you do have — just as a dictionary definition of the issue.
Don:
Yes, right. You’re locking yourself into eternal frustration. There you go.
Cassius:
Exactly. Yeah. Well, because the things you don’t have you’ll never have, by definition. Is it a Vatican Saying or a fragment that’s — you know, “the things that you have are the things that you did wish for at one time”?
Don:
I think that’s a Vatican Saying. It’s pretty easy to understand — or for us to think we understand — what he means when he says “they fix no limit to what they possess.” But the second phrase again strikes me as the more important or intricate of the two: “they know nothing how far the bounds of true pleasure may extend.” That’s not the way that most people in the world today generally evaluate the question. It seems to me that they look at just simply how much money do you have and kind of stop at that analysis. But in terms of discussing “how far the bounds of true pleasure may extend” — that’s the more difficult part, I think.
Don:
I thought the Loeb translation has an interesting take on those lines: “therefore mankind labors always in vain and to no purpose, consuming its days in empty cares, plainly because it does not know the limit of possession, and how far it is ever possible for real pleasure to grow; and this little by little has carried life out into the deep sea, and has stirred up from the bottom the great billows of war.”
Cassius:
Yeah, that phrase “does not know the limit of possession” — I think is an interesting way to phrase that. Because if you think that you can accumulate infinite power and you’re always striving for that, or infinite wealth, or infinite whatever — you can only possess so much. Or even the fact of the limit of the meaning of what it means to possess something, because right — you’ve got the standard observation that you can’t take it with you. So you may think that you possess your computer or your land or your money or whatever, but really it’s just something you’ve got temporary possession of, because you’re not going to have it forever.
Don:
Right, right. Okay, we probably ought to plow on to the end here.
Cassius:
And “the wakeful sun and moon taught men that the seasons of the year are turned around.” And then mankind enclosed themselves and lived in castles, and parted out the land to each other. I think it’s interesting — that last line that you sort of skipped over there — “things are carried on by certain rules and in a fixed order” — goes back to so much stuff that he’s already mentioned in the previous parts of the poem, that there’s a fixed order to the universe and there’s nobody in charge of it, but that’s just the way things are.
Don:
Yeah, you’re definitely right. I shouldn’t have skipped over that. The observation that things exist in a certain rule and in a fixed order — that’s one of the things to keep in mind as we talk about the swerve and the free will aspect of Epicurus. While the swerve exists, while people have a certain agency over things, there are certain rules and a fixed order that govern an awful lot of the universe — the majority of the universe, basically — which we can deduce by just simply looking at the sun and the moon and realizing that things do continue on year after year in the same sequence.
Cassius:
So I’m sorry, I interrupted you please.
Don:
Well, I was looking for another stopping point, so that was a good place to stop there. Because then line 1440 continues to talk about the developments of things — how the sea was sailed over by ships, and men joined together for defense and formed alliances by certain bonds. Except of course the Epicureans who all stayed alone in their caves and never had any alliances or contracts at all.
Cassius:
Let’s always keep that in mind for those modern interpreters of Epicurus who think that’s what Epicurus required. Then the poets began to celebrate the great exploits and letters were not long before discovered. And then “what was transacted many ages past, these times knew nothing of, but what their reason darkly traced out.” So I would say that’s kind of an admission of the speculative nature of some of what we’ve read.
Don:
I was going to say exactly the same thing, yep, exactly the same thing. That both Brown and Bailey translate “the letters were discovered,” whereas Munro has “invented.”
Cassius:
So is there any ambiguity in the Latin between discovering and inventing?
Don:
That’s a very good point with the Latin word there. It’s going to be at the end of 1440. You see anything, Don? That’s what I’m looking for here. So it should be right before 1448. I think at the end of line 1445: reperta. Reperta is defined as “to find again, find, meet with, find out, discover.”
Cassius:
Okay, reperta then would be the word to focus on. So re means “they did it again,” presumably — but what does parta mean?
Don:
Yeah, according to the dictionary definition here, we have “to procure, find again, find, meet with, find out, either by searching or by accident.” Then that tends more towards discovery rather than invention. But then down here on the second line of the definitions, it also has “to find out, hit upon, invent, devise, or discover.” So “invent” and “discover” are literally in the same definition line. So yeah, it looks like it has to do with the grammar of the way it’s used in the sentence too. So it looks like it can mean either devise or discover.
Martin:
This is quite interesting because in some ways, the Chinese characters were discovered, so to say. Because from what I read, the origin of the Chinese writing system is that the priests would do oracles on turtle shells, put in fire. So they would crack, and from these cracks they tried to predict the future. And then from these crack patterns they developed the script. So in that sense, the Chinese characters were discovered.
Don:
But I like your idea of how things can both be discovered and invented. Because it would not be probably appropriate to say — if we’re talking about letters being discovered — that the art of writing and reading, well, that’s more invented, right?
Cassius:
Well, I mean, you also —
Martin:
Oh, go ahead.
Don:
Yeah, well, normally yes, except for this case where, like, this Chinese group, no? And that is then the question — what is the real origin of the letter in Greek? Because when they also have earlier examples, I think they’ve been developed of the Sumerian script. But the question is then, how did this Sumerian script arise?
Don:
I think it also goes back to his talk about the origins of language, too — that language started out rudimentary with sounds that everybody sort of agreed on, and then it developed into actual spoken language. So was that discovered or was it invented? It seems like there’s a little aspect of both, even in the origin of language itself.
Martin:
Yes, in some way, yes, but I would say it’s predominantly invented.
Cassius:
I would agree. I think to formalize it and to codify it — when we start talking about grammar and syntax, those things have to be invented. You can have natural things that feed into them, but there has to be some sort of rules in fixed order to actually codify the language itself. In the same way with writing systems.
Martin:
You can discover what kind of sounds you can do with your voice, but then to give to the sounds meaning — this is rather an invention.
Cassius:
Right.
Don:
I would agree. That’s a good way to put it.
Cassius:
And I would say if we’re keeping our traditional enemies in mind, the important point would be to say that God did not give us writing or language, nor is there a dimension of ideal forms that Plato has, such that these things were just existing out in the universe until we somehow discovered them.
Don:
Yes — discovered that through the use of geometry.
Cassius:
And so that’s the issue. I guess that is the issue that we’re talking about here in trying to fine-tune discovery versus invention. The art of writing in Latin, or any language, was not floating out in space somewhere waiting for a discoverer to open the first grammar book. It’s something that had to be developed.
Cassius:
Okay, with that let’s go to the very last passage we have for today.
Don:
Yes, indeed. And for Book Five. So here at the end of Book Five, we’ve come to the conclusion: “use therefore and the experience of an inquiring mind led men by degrees into the knowledge of navigation, of agriculture, taught them to build walls, to make laws, arms, public ways, garments” — and that’s kind of an interesting list of things — “and such other things of the same nature, and made them acquainted with poetry, painting, and statuary. Thus time gradually produces everything into use and reason shows it in a clear light. One art we observe is refined and polished by another, till they arrive at the highest point of perfection.”
Don:
How is that the conclusion of Book Five? Well, I think you hit on part of it with the whole — the experience of an inquiring mind shows that there were no gods that gave us agriculture or taught us how to build walls, no gods that gave us laws. It was all through the human intellect and human reasoning and human invention that these things came about.
Cassius:
Yeah, I do think that’s right. I’m going back to the beginning of Book Five to see where we started and try to glance at some of the topics that we covered. But basically that has been the development of Book Five, I think. This is sort of the rise of humanity from the beginning of the book to the end. And probably one of the big super important points he wants to emphasize is that this rise of humanity has not come from the gods or come from any kind of divine guidance whatsoever. It’s just — at least with humans — it’s the experience of the inquiring mind, the actual events that occurred leading from one to another.
Cassius:
Yeah, and I don’t want to forget this part that I raised in a note this past week either — this one is also where the reference is made to the borders or the shores of light. The Munro version says “this time by degrees brings each several thing before men’s eyes and reason raises it up into the borders of light,” and then Bailey says “so little by little time brings out each several thing into view and reason raises it up into the coast of light.” So presuming that Bailey and Munro both are being the most literal here, there’s this reference to the coasts or the shores of light that I think we’ve seen before in the book, which strikes me as an interesting analogy that probably meant something to the Epicureans.
Don:
Yeah, there’s a lot of talk in the Epicureans too, I think, about safe harbors and calm seas and that sort of thing. So this is an extension of that, I think.
Don:
Right, that’s right. Yeah, the Latin there is in luminis erigit oras, and oras is the one that is an extremity, border, brim, the edge, the margin, the boundary, the limit. So before it was in darkness, and now it’s brought into the light, and then you can actually work with it. And if you can see it and work with it, then it can be used — as he says, “one art sharpens another,” basically.
Cassius:
You know, looking at Bailey in front of me now, where it says “thus time by degrees brings each several thing forth before men’s eyes” — I’m presuming that “before men’s eyes” would be ante oculos, which is always a phrase that sticks in my mind as being a part of the opening of Book One when he first starts talking about Epicurus. The little part of this that I’ve memorized over the years is that that passage starts “humana ante oculos.” I always tried to reason out how to translate humana ante oculos. But at any rate, I wonder if that’s potentially an echo of that.
Don:
And you bringing up ante oculos — I think is interesting because in reading some of the things about Philodemus’s writings, he talks about the exercise of bringing things before the eyes too. If you’re trying to control your anger, you imagine what it’s like to be angry in the situation, and you bring it before your eyes and you can assess it in a more reasoned way.
Cassius:
I think that’s got to be some kind of an Epicurean idiom as well. Because “before eyes” could presumably mean “clearly” or “obviously” or something like that. And it would pretty clearly be a hint back at the standard of proof, because that’s such a big important aspect of Epicurean philosophy — there is no higher standard of proof than to be basically right in front of you for your eyes and your other sense faculties to be able to sense.
Don:
“For things must be brought to light one after the other, and in due order, in the different arts, until these have reached their highest point of development” — that’s Munro. And Bailey makes it more specific by saying — he makes it kind of historical: “for they saw one thing after another grow clear in their mind until by their arts they reach the topmost pinnacle.”
Cassius:
That’s pretty different from what Munro has. Munro’s making a more generic philosophical statement when he says “for things must be brought to light one after the other.” That would be the one, especially since we’re ending Book Five, to think about.
Don:
I think he’s talking about the regular order of things — that you can’t jump to weaving, you know, before you have leather garments, and you can’t have music until you try to imitate the birds. There’s a regular progression of things that will work through to get to where you want to go.
Cassius:
Yeah. And of course he’s seeing Roman culture there as the topmost pinnacle too — he’s seeing his civilization as the best example so far that we’ve had. He’s using them as the exemplar of “look how far we’ve come, look at all the things we have, look at the agriculture and the ships and the navigation.” You know, “check us out.”
Cassius:
Do you have any of the other versions, Don? Convenient like Stallings?
Cassius:
I do think that you’ve raised some really good points about what these last two sentences mean, why they’re not just sort of a “and this is the way it happened” kind of statement. It’s much deeper than saying that.
Don:
Yeah, so Stallings has the last two sentences as: “So incrementally time brings all things within our sight, and reason lifts them up into the boundaries of light, for men saw one thing after another clearly in their hearts till they ascended to the very summit of the arts.”
Cassius:
Well now that really emphasizes what you just said about him being very pleased with the state of civilization at that particular point. And that could be part of it, or maybe it’s all of it. I think the Munro version is what got me interested in whether it’s more of a philosophic statement, because “things must be brought to light one after another and in due order until these have reached the highest point of development” — that’s more of a lesson as opposed to a history statement.
Don:
And interestingly enough, the very last word in the Latin for the book is cacumen, which is defined as “an extremity of point, the summit, the top.” So I find it interesting that’s the last word — because he knew what he wanted to end the book with — so he is stopping at the top. And it can be used for the summits of mountains or the points at the end of a blade of grass, and so he’s literally at the extreme top of whatever.
Cassius:
Right, right. And I’m looking at the Loeb edition and I see that the Latin word right above cacumen — what I’m looking at — is videbunt, which I presume means “they saw” or “they will see.” So the “they saw” structure is probably part of it here.
Don:
And the dictionary actually cites Lucretius at ad summum donec venere cacumen — “until they came to the very summit of perfection” — which is similar to what’s at the end of Book Five, which is actually exactly what’s at the end of Book Five.
Cassius:
Okay, okay. Well, we’ve reached the height of perfection. All right, we’ve reached the height of perfection at the end of the book, and closing in on the end of the episode here. We’re probably running actually slightly long today, so let’s talk about anything you want to say to end the episode or to end Book Five. And we can go back and forth since we’re at the end of the book, but we can start with Martin as usual.
Martin:
And as most of the time, I have nothing to add.
Don:
Okay. As far as I’m concerned, I mean, we’ve had a lot of speculation in Book Five, a lot of maybe a little bit of revisionist history, some satire, and some historical notes. But I think it’s been interesting to see how Lucretius — and by extension I would think some of the ancients — saw the way that things developed in their civilization and in civilization in general.
Cassius:
Right. Well, unfortunately my eye falls on something that I want to add before we finish. Here in the Loeb edition there’s a footnote going back to the either the watchful sentinels or the wanton youth discussion we had earlier. I see that probably Smith back in the original Loeb edition cites a reference to Thomas Campbell’s “The Soldier’s Dream” and he quotes, “and the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky.” And he says the idea of calling the sun and the moon vigiles mundi was probably suggested by the mention of the human vigilis in line 1408. And so that line has spurred significant comment and makes reference here in the Loeb edition to some other works to read as well. But at any rate, being vigiles is part of what we’ve talked about today. And does that mean “vigilant” or does that mean something totally different?
Cassius:
Surely it gave rise to “vigilant.” But whether it means exactly what we think it does — I was still, regardless of whether it actually means “vigilant,” going to say that the ending here is reminding us to be vigilant in remembering that things happen over time in a natural sequence of things, and not because of the will of gods or because of fate or because of chaos really, but because there is a natural order that arises from the elemental particles and void which form the basis of everything.
Cassius:
Okay, so I hope I haven’t wandered too far there at the very end. Does that spur any comment from anybody?
Don:
Looking forward to Book Six.
Cassius:
Right. Book Six is going to start out, as each book starts out, in a very interesting ethical and sort of summary fashion, and then unfortunately we turn to the facts of death and destruction in the plague of Athens. So we’ll have presumably at least ten more weeks or fifteen more weeks of episodes, and then we’ll be needing to recap the whole book. It’s good that we finished another one here at Book Five. Appreciate everybody’s time, and we’ll come back next week and start Book Six. So thanks.
Don:
All right. See you next week.
Cassius:
All right. Bye. Bye.