Episode 082 - Lucretius - Book Six Opening of Book Six - Restatement of Goal of Poem

Date: 08/06/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2127-episode-eighty-two-the-opening-of-book-six-restatement-of-the-goal-of-the-poem/

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Summary

Cassius, Don, and Martin begin Book Six. Don reads the opening hymn to Epicurus and Athens, and the panel discusses why Lucretius names Epicurus only once in the entire poem (Book 3, line 1042, at his death). They examine the vessel/pot metaphor for the corrupted mind, the summum bonum, the repeated “boys trembling in the dark” analogy, and the Latin naturae species ratioque — comparing Brown, the Loeb, Munro, and Bailey on whether ratio means “reason” or “law.”

Don brings in Empedocles Fragment 4’s chariot metaphor (paralleling Lucretius’s own), notes that Calliope means “beautiful-voiced,” and closes with Empedocles Fragments 57–61, which confirm that Empedocles literally described heads budding without necks and arms wandering shoulderless — the very idea Lucretius rejected.

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Transcript

Cassius: Welcome to Episode 82 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 not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com where you’ll find much more information about our goals and ground rules. If you have any questions, please contact us at the forum and leave your comments in the thread for this episode. In Episode 82 we will begin reading Book Six of the poem and discuss Lucretius’s restatement of the significance of Epicurus and the benefit of his philosophy. Now let’s join Don reading today’s text.

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Don: He — renowned Athens — first to wretched man gave the sweet fruits and human life refreshed, and published laws; but comforts nobler far than all the rest she gave went to the world — she showed great Epicurus, formed with such a soul, who from his mouth delivered sublime truths as from an oracle, whose fame for such divine discoveries dispersed every way abroad, and was raised after death above the skies. For when he saw how little would suffice for necessary use, and by what provisions life might be preserved, that nature had prepared everything ready to support mankind, that men abounded with wealth and were loaded with honor and applause, and happy in their private concerns, in the good character of their children — and yet their minds were restless at home, complaining and lamenting the misery of their condition — he perceived the vessel itself (the mind) was the cause of the calamity, and by the corruption of that, everything, though ever so good, that was poured into it was tainted; it was full of holes and ran out, and so could never by any means be filled; and whatever it received within, it infected with a stinking smell. And therefore he purged the mind by true philosophy, and set bounds to our desires and our fears; he laid open to us the chief good — that point of happiness we all aim at — in what it consists, and showed us the direct way that leads to it, and puts us into the straight road to obtain it. He taught what misfortunes commonly attend human life, whether they flow from the laws of nature or from chance, whether from necessity or by accident, and by what means we are to oppose those evils and strive against them. And he has fully proved that men torment themselves in vain, and are tossed about in a tempestuous ocean of cares to no purpose. For as boys tremble and fear everything in the dark night, so we in open day fear things as vain and little to be dreaded, and those that children quake at in the dark and fancy advancing towards them. This terror of the mind, this darkness, then — not the sun’s beams or the bright rays of day — can scatter, but the light of nature and the rules of reason; and therefore I shall the more readily proceed to execute what I have begun. And since I taught the fabric of the world was mortal, and that the heavens are formed of corruptible seeds, and whatever they do or ever will contain must necessarily be dissolved, attend now to what remains — especially since the hope of carrying the prize has encouraged me to ascend the chariot and engage in so noble a race. And since the difficulties that once attended the course are removed, and the roughness of the way is made favorable and easy, the various wonders men behold in the earth and in the heavens perplex their minds, trembling and in suspense, and make them humble with the fear of the gods and press them groveling to the ground. And being ignorant of the cause of these events, they are forced to confess the sovereignty and give up everything to the command of these deities; and the effects they are unable to account for by reason, they imagine were brought about by the influence of the gods. For such as well know that the gods lead a life of tranquility and ease, if they should still wonder by what power the world has carried on, especially in the things they see over their heads in the heavens above, they relapse again into their old superstition. They raise over themselves a set of cruel tyrants who, the wretches fancy, can do all things because they know nothing of what can or cannot be, or by what means a finite power is fixed to every being and a boundary immovable which it cannot pass. Such are more liable to mistakes and to be carried widely from the right way — unless you purge your mind of such conceits and banish them from your breast, and forbear to think unworthily of the gods by charging them with things that break their peace. Those sacred deities who will believe are always angry and offended with you — not that the supreme power of the gods can be so ruffled as to be eager to punish severely in their resentments, but because you fancy those beings who enjoy perfect peace in themselves are subject to anger and the extravagances of revenge. And therefore you will no more approach their shrines with an easy mind; no more in tranquility and peace will you be able to receive the images, the representations of their divine forms, that form from their pure bodies and strike powerfully upon the minds of men. From hence you may collect what a wretched life you are to lead. That the rules therefore of right reason may keep these evils at the greatest distance from us — though I have offered many things upon this subject before, yet much still remains to be observed, which I shall adorn with the smoothest verse. And first, the nature and phenomena of the heavens must be explained. And now I sing of tempests and the flaming blasts of lightning, how they fly and from what cause they dart through all the air, lest when you view the several parts of heaven you tremble and, mad with superstition, ask: whence comes this winged fire? And to what quarter of heaven does it direct its course? How does it pierce through walls of stone? And having spent its rage, goes out again — the causes of which events, since men cannot assign by the laws of reason, they must, they suppose, be affected by the power of the gods. And thou, Calliope, my skillful muse, the joy of men and pleasure of the gods, lead on the course and guide me to the goal, that by thy conduct I may gain a crown and end the race with glory.

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Cassius: Don, thank you for reading that today. As usual at the beginning of each book we have a very interesting — and I should say inspiring — section talking about the role of Epicurus generally and what he has done for us, how significant he is in history. There’s a lot in this section today; I guess we’ll see if we finish it. There’s so much that he covers in the beginning of each of these six books that there’s always a lot to talk about. I find it interesting that the translation here includes the name of Epicurus, but that’s not actually in the original Latin. I checked, and the only place he’s named by name in the whole poem is in Book Three, line 1042: “Epicurus himself died when the light of life had run its course.” So that’s the only place where his name actually appears in the whole poem.

Don: Now that’s an interesting bit of trivia I was not aware of — very interesting. So he names him only whenever he talks about the fact that he died.

Cassius: Well then that’s another example of how the translators feel they have the right to add things in and change Lucretius’s decisions. So it’s always good to keep those things in mind. This would almost certainly be a non-controversial insertion, because surely he’s not talking about anybody but Epicurus — but sometimes it’s not so clear.

Don: Exactly, and I think you’re absolutely right. That’s why the translators would put it in — if they just said “the man from Athens” or something like that, the person reading it might ask who they’re talking about. So they just stick it in there as almost a parenthetical statement. But the fact that it’s not in the Latin is maybe not significant but at least interesting, because like I said, the only time he uses the name is when he talks about his dying — which just hammers home that everybody’s going to die, even Epicurus.

Cassius: I was going to just skip over that, but maybe we shouldn’t. I wonder why Lucretius would use the device of not naming Epicurus when it’s clear that’s who he’s talking about.

Don: To avoid repetition — if you just keep repeating his name it just sounds annoying. But by the way, what metaphor is used here in this passage for Epicurus?

Cassius: Yeah, what metaphor is used? How do the other translations handle that particular section, right at the beginning?

Don: I’m looking at the Loeb edition, and the Loeb says: “Athens first gave his sweet constellations of life, when she brought forth a man endowed with such wisdom.” So just “a man.”

Cassius: And that’s the general method that appears everywhere, except the position you mentioned earlier, Don. Is the context in which he’s writing just so clear that he feels absolutely no reason to name him? Or is there some sense of — well, some religions don’t name their deity — I wouldn’t think there’s any of that here, but I can imagine somebody asking. I don’t know about the repetition argument, Martin; he doesn’t really come up that often even at the beginning of each book.

Don: If you think about it, the section in Book Three where he’s named is the one where Lucretius is talking about all the people who have died — Ancus the Good, Scipio, Homer, Democritus, and Epicurus himself — making the point that you’re not going to live forever either. But in the proems, the hymns to Epicurus at the beginning of each book, he doesn’t name him. Whenever he lists him among others he’s just one of many, but whenever he’s singing the praises of Epicurus he doesn’t use his name.

Cassius: Well, that’s why I’m bringing it up. Even in the very beginning of Book One, you’d think he might mention Epicurus once by name — “here’s who we’re talking about” — and then not repeat it out of concern for repetition. But I would have thought the first time he might have used the name. Any other possible reason besides repetition? I guess it does have the connotation of: we all know who we’re talking about here. And he may not be a god — though they do compare him to a god in one of the preambles. I don’t know whether any religions of that time were known for not pronouncing the name of their god or not. Anyway, I don’t have a better solution — just food for thought. I’d be interested if anybody has any ideas and wants to post on the forum.

Don: And in that first section he talks about how “his fame for such divine discoveries has dispersed every way abroad, and has been raised after death above the skies.” That took me by surprise — it’s almost a semi-religious reference. Is he talking about the intermundia with the other Epicurean gods?

Cassius: I think when you combine “above the skies” with “divine discoveries” you really are getting that same allusion he’s made in one of the other proems — I forget whether it was Book Four or Book Five — where he actually says Epicurus was a god. It’s interesting that our translation has “raised above the skies” but the Loeb has “now exalted to the skies” — a whole different connotation. And the Latin is just ad caelum — “to the skies,” like ad astra and that sort of thing.

Don: The vicissitudes of translation, once again.

Cassius: Indeed. And then this next section — paragraph 9 — is one I regularly refer to as one of the best summaries of the significance of Epicurus and why he’s important. I think it’s a good solid summary. This is by far not the most significant thing, but the thing you mentioned earlier, Don, about how translators insert a word — we’ve got one of those situations here when he talks about the vessel. This translation has put parentheses around “(the mind).” The Loeb does a footnote instead and doesn’t put “the mind” in the text. It hasn’t always been obvious to me that we should necessarily assume the vessel is a reference to the mind — it’s also possible he could be talking about the person’s philosophy, religion, or their whole way of thinking. Any of those could be things that corrupt everything poured into them.

Don: Yeah, it’s like the vessel itself is not necessarily the problem — he’s talking about it being full of holes. It sounds like the vessel needs to be repaired, and Epicurus brought the tools to repair it.

Cassius: I guess it’s possible to construe it as him saying the human mind in its natural state is somehow inclined to this kind of corruption — or the opposite, that the vessel in its natural state is a good thing but has become corrupted and gotten holes in it and needs to be returned to its natural state. Martin, you got any thoughts on that? It’s always been an interesting question in my mind how to read that passage, because he says “he purged the mind by true philosophy.”

Martin: I wonder if the mind is the vessel — it’s like he flushed it out, which says to me potentially that what he’s flushing out is false philosophy. If he says he purged the mind by true philosophy, maybe he’s just replacing the false with the true. But I know there is a connotation of holes in the vessel — I’m not sure that’s a good analogy for philosophy.

Don: Well, I think — I’m sorry if I’m talking over Martin — the holes are like the corrosive philosophy: superstition and religion and bad reasoning and other philosophies that have corroded it. Think of it as a pot that had some sort of corrosive substance in it, got holes in it, is all slimy inside. Epicurus comes along, pours out the bad stuff, patches the holes, and then you can actually fill it — that’s the whole idea you’ve talked about with the limits of pleasure and the full vessel, that sort of thing.

Cassius: Well, just to go to Martin here — I’m reading the Loeb, and it says “he understood that the pot itself made the flaw.” Martin, do you think he’s talking about something humans are born with, or corruption that came after birth?

Martin: The word “corruption” implies something that happened — by nature it’s not like that. The false goals given by the environment let people grow the wrong concepts in their mind and get these holes. So that analogy is a bit weird; I cannot really fully grasp the advantage of it. But calling a mind “corrupted” makes sense. And the leaky vessel analogy — Don, that’s more your department. That’s a particular Greek allusion, right? The maidens sentenced to fill leaky vessels that can never be full.

Cassius: There’s that Bible parable too, if I remember correctly, about leaky vessels or something like that.

Don: Yeah — now wash your mouth out and let’s go back to true philosophy and not the wrong aspects of Western civilization. But I always think it’s interesting to look at Stallings’ translation because she takes poetic license sometimes, but it’s helpful to get a different perspective. Her translation of that section goes: “He understood it was the vessel itself that was to blame, and that by means of its internal flaw all things that came inside it from without, however sweet at first, went sour. Partly he saw since it had holes and leaked, and by no power could anything fill it; partly since when anything was placed inside the vessel it was corrupted with an evil taste.”

Cassius: Yeah, that’s the opposite of what I was thinking. I find it difficult — maybe even impossible — to think that Epicurus would say the way the mind was born is the cause. Is it the Danaïds? That’s in my mind because of one of the other translations. Maybe there’s a clue there — I don’t know whether their vessels were already leaking from the very beginning, or whether they were pierced as part of their sentence.

Don: Relying on Wikipedia, unfortunately. So: they killed their husbands on their wedding nights and were condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or a perforated device. They were specifically made leaky so their task could never be done — sentenced to that as punishment for a crime, by the gods presumably.

Cassius: So maybe the Danaïds are an example of a gods’ punishment for doing something wrong, and you might immediately jump to the conclusion that it’s something about the gods he’s condemning. Originally I was leaning toward the mind in its natural state being the good thing. But maybe it’s the whole idea that people, not knowing the causes of things, are naturally inclined to look for the gods as the reason. Maybe that’s the leaky vessel: you put stuff in and it becomes corrupted — a precursor to the natural inclination to ascribe things to the gods.

Cassius: Yeah, I think we’ve probably hit that hard enough — it’s probably some combination of all these things. But in the same section: “he therefore purged the mind by true philosophy.” Now the phrase “true philosophy” — and “true reason” — sometimes appears in Lucretius if I remember correctly, and it would be important to note whether that’s in the Loeb and in the original. If he does say “right reason” or “true philosophy,” I like to bring out that it’s not philosophy in general — there can be philosophy that’s wrong and damaging. If it does say “true philosophy,” that would be significant.

Don: The Loeb goes the whole poetical route here: “therefore with truth-telling words he scourged the heart.” So “truth-telling words” is the sense — as opposed to lie-telling or false or misleading words.

Cassius: Okay — truth-telling as opposed to false or misleading words. And I see something else worth commenting on — looking at the Loeb, right after what you just read, he says he “put a limit to desire and fear” and then “he showed what was that chief good to which we all move and pointed the way.” We’ve been discussing recently on the forum the issue of “limit” in the sense of boundary and “end” in the sense of goal or target. Here’s a sample where the translation uses both analogies right next to each other — “pointed the way, a straight and narrow path by which we might run thither without turning.” He’s showing us both the goals of life and the limits of things.

Don: Whenever I hear the word “limit” I think about speed limits, and I’ve always wanted to drive faster than the speed limit — it’s more of a suggestion in terms of speed. I’ve always wanted to live in Germany like Martin, so I could drive on the Autobahn where there’s no speed limit. Is that still the case, Martin?

Martin: Yes, it’s still the case. There are some parties wanting to put a stop to it, but others defend it — we’ll see how long it’s kept. It’s not everywhere; where it would be too dangerous there are speed limits. Around Cologne, for instance, everything has limits because of all the crossings and traffic. But on long stretches through the countryside, yes, there’s no speed limit.

Cassius: Okay. There’s just so much in this paragraph. “He laid open to us the chief good — that point of happiness we all aim at — in what it consists, and showed us the direct way that leads to it.” That’s the Brown version; worth comparing with other translations.

Don: I have the Loeb here: “He showed what was that chief good to which we all move, and pointed the way, that straight and narrow path by which we might run thither without turning.”

Cassius: So the word “happiness” is not in the Loeb — and presumably not in the original. Brown says “that point of happiness we all aim at.” Is that an example of him putting a parenthetical gloss in the text itself rather than as a footnote? That’s always something I consider dangerous. On the other hand, I generally like the Brown rendition of things. I think he’s probably right that the chief good is happiness — but of course you get into the debate about that versus pleasure.

Don: And the Latin just has summum bonum — just “the chief good.” I believe that’s the word Cicero uses as well. But it’s not necessarily what is in the Letter to Menoeceus or in Epicurus’ writing; as I remember, they’re usually a little more specific.

Cassius: And “in what it consists” — is that part there in the Loeb?

Don: No — “He showed what was that chief good to which we all move, and pointed the way.” But the part about the straight and narrow path does appear to be there in virtually every translation. And then, of course, we could continue through this paragraph noting the misfortunes that commonly attend human life, “whether they flow from the laws of nature or from chance, whether from necessity or by accident, and by what means we are to oppose those evils and strive against them.” Somebody who wants to go down the rabbit hole of hard determinism, agency, and free will would want to refer to this statement.

Cassius: Yeah, and we’ve had some interesting conversations recently about free will on the forum as well. Maybe if there’s a central point to summarize, it’s that Epicurus held that some things are within our control and some are not. He would not be someone you’d put into a religious free-will framework where everything in life can be affected by you — but he firmly acknowledges that some things can be changed by you, that you do have some degree of agency. And as Daniel Dennett has argued, it’s very important to at least think you have control —

Don: — to be held responsible for your actions. If we say that nobody has free will, then nobody can be held responsible for their actions. And I know there are people who say that. But Epicurus definitely seems to come down on the side that you are responsible for the actions you take that are within your control.

Cassius: Right. With the practical issue being that if you get convinced you can’t have any control over your life, many people find that — and I think they naturally would — a very dispiriting, demoralizing, and fatalistic attitude that does not tend toward greater happiness.

Don: And I find it interesting that with the whole idea of things you can control and things you can’t, the Stoics seem to have talked as though they cornered the market on that idea — but it comes up over and over again in Epicurus’ writing. The Stoics use it as their big idea, but it’s not their own — it’s held by other schools and Epicurus obviously taught the same thing, and much more consistently. Because if you really get into the Stoic original viewpoint on the universe, you get all tied up in fate and everything being the result of what God set in motion — and it’s hard to reconcile that with the idea that some things are within your control. If God controls everything then everything is at God’s will and out of your hands. Whereas Epicurus sets the stage for there being a mechanism for some degree of agency.

Cassius: Which is why the Stoics were allowed to have their writings transferred through the early Christian church and things like that. I’m just throwing it out there — some people’s philosophy is easier to turn to the work of oppression and mind control than others’. Just making an observation, not pointing in any particular direction.

Don: No, no, no.

Cassius: Okay. Well, you’re right — there’s more in this section than I thought there would be.

Don: This beginning of Book Six has been one of my favorite sections of the whole of Lucretius ever since I started reading it — primarily for this discussion, because it’s one of the clearest statements of how significant Epicurus was. When you read about Epicurus in the world today you get such a loose, vague feeling about what he was interested in — whether it’s pleasure, or physics, or epistemology. But when Lucretius lays it out like this it really helps put it in perspective and shows that everything hangs together. I know when I first became interested in the philosophy I thought the physics was just old pre-science. But if you look at it, it builds the foundation for everything that comes after. It’s such a coherent, solidly built system that by the time he gets to the capstone on the pyramid, it’s like: yeah, okay, I get it now.

Cassius: Right. And we might as well enjoy these sections because, man, we’ve got a lot of wind and thunder and lightning coming up — and death and destruction and plague. So let’s enjoy these opening hymns while we can.

Don: I was reading ahead and looking at the thunder and lightning and wind and I’m like, oh, man.

Cassius: Oh, you were looking at the death as a relief from the thunder.

Don: Exactly.

Cassius: Well, that’s definitely part of a lesson, I think. You know, Don, I don’t know that you’ve been with us when we’ve run into this analogy to boys trembling and fearing everything in the dark night. I know it appears at least once earlier, if not twice, but this may be the first time you’ve been with us for it. He uses it so frequently — comparing men who torment themselves in vain, “tossed about in a tempestuous ocean of cares to no purpose,” to boys or children who tremble at everything in the dark. So we in open day fear things as vain and little to be dreaded, like children dreaming about monsters in the dark. Many of the real problems and torments of life are things we have no reason to fear whatsoever; they’re just made up by us.

Don: Childish fears and that sort of thing. I guess you could put all of religion into that category — that’s basically the way he’s analyzing it. It’s all made up, like little children dreaming about monsters in the dark.

Cassius: And then the very last sentence of this passage — it’s one of those that is repeated so often: “this terror of the mind, this darkness, not the sun’s beams nor the bright rays of day can scatter, but the light of nature and the rules of reason.” I’ve always thought it’s worth making the point that it’s not just the rules of reason and it’s not just the light of nature that he’s referring to — he’s talking about both. There’s something to be drilled home about that: it’s not just necessarily seeing something, but you also have to have a framework for understanding things. And I don’t know what Latin is used there for “rules of reason.”

Don: The Loeb says “by the aspect and law of nature.” The Latin is sed naturae species ratioque. So naturae and species — looks like “species” in English.

Cassius: But I heard you say ratioque — that would be reason.

Don: Well, here in the Loeb he’s not using the word “reason” — he translates that phrase as “by the aspect and law of nature.” And ratioque — let me check. So sed is of course “but.” Naturae is “of nature.” Species — the initial definition is a sight, look, view, appearance, or aspect. And ratioque — looking at Lewis and Short: “reckoning, number, calculation.” Also “the faculty of the mind which forms the basis of computation and calculation and hence of mental action in general — judgment, understanding, reason.”

Cassius: Yeah, it certainly seems to me that it’s got some kind of mental-processing implication, and “law of nature” would not be the same thing at all. Brown might be giving a little editorial opinion, but he might actually be closer to the idea.

Don: I’m surprised to see that Munro says “law of nature.” But then Bailey — who does weird things sometimes — comes up with “but by the outer view and the inner law of nature.” Outer view and inner law — I don’t know that I see that.

Cassius: Yeah, to me Brown’s rendition is probably superior.

Don: I would agree. Parsing the Latin is always an art and not a science.

Cassius: Right. Okay — I have successfully slowed us down to the point where we’ve got only about two paragraphs done and we’re almost at the end of a normal-length session. Since I recall that Martin’s great-grandfather was a weaver, maybe we can at least touch on that section where it says “I taught the fabric of the world was mortal, and the heavens were formed of corruptible seeds.”

Don: Yeah, this was definitely going to carry us at least to the end of the day — because this is one of those things that has always been important to me about the necessity that everything will be dissolved. That observation that everything that comes together eventually splits apart is a pretty significant thing. And look, he just seems to do this from time to time — just sort of summarize what he’s talked about in the last two, three, four books. He’s reminding people: here are my bullet points again, here’s what I covered, because we’re going to build on that.

Cassius: Yeah. That reminds me — in my early reading and listening to Lucretius, I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoyed the Charlton Griffin version on Audible. And one of the things I did in my early years was go through each of the six books, chop off the rest, and just keep these opening sections — and I listened to them over and over, because there’s just so much in them. “Attend now to what remains, especially since the hope of carrying the prize has encouraged me to ascend the chariot and engage in so noble a race.” I kind of like to think that’s what we’re doing in our Lucretius podcast, don’t you? We have been encouraged to ascend the chariot and engage in the noble race of identifying the nature of things and the summum bonum.

Don: I thought it was interesting — the Loeb gives a footnote there about the chariot, that Empedocles also used the metaphor of the poet and the chariot bringing the light of truth to the world, in his Fragment 4.

Cassius: Is that the Phaethon chariot, or the sun?

Don: Not necessarily — it sounds like it’s its own chariot. The Empedocles translation in one place goes: “O white-armed maiden, muse, thee I approach — drive and send to me meek piety’s well-reined chariot of song.” So there’s an analogy of poets using chariots as well. He’s asking the muse to send him the chariot to do his work. It was interesting that the Loeb mentions Empedocles — and Parmenides as well — because Lucretius has mentioned Empedocles positively in a couple of other sections too. And later on, when Lucretius brings up Calliope, Empedocles also references Calliope in another fragment: “Calliope of the beautiful dear voice, be near me now beseeching I, whilst I speak excelling thoughts about the blessed gods.”

Cassius: So Calliope is obviously the muse of inspiration there. We’re not going to get to the Calliope passage today because this is the very end of our session, but that word has always been fascinating to me. It refers to a musical instrument, doesn’t it? Don, do you know what Calliope means? It’s obviously the original name of one of the Muses, but it’s also a musical instrument — isn’t it the one they use in the circus?

Don: There’s something about a circus — is it the merry-go-round? Or a keyboard instrument? Martin, do you know what a Calliope is?

Martin: No, I’m just looking it up for you. A keyboard instrument resembling an organ, but with notes produced by steam whistles, used chiefly on showboats and in traveling fairs.

Don: Okay, but it is a musical instrument. And Calliope was the eldest of the Muses — the goddess of eloquence, who bestowed her gifts on kings and princes. The Wikipedia entry says “so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice,” and Hesiod and Ovid called her the chief of all the Muses.

Cassius: There you go. So the literal meaning of her name is “beautiful-voiced” — if you’re a poet and you want to call on a Muse, she’s the one to get. It’s also worth noting that he says “since the difficulties that once attended the course are removed” — I would certainly say that’s a reference to all the points he’s made in the past and all the things you’re supposed to remember from what you’ve been taught. There’s a line in Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens that evokes in my mind a similar reference to how, if you figure it out according to true philosophy, the way of life is in many ways an easy life.

Don: Oh, that’s the whole “what is necessary is easy to get,” and all that sort of thing.

Cassius: Right. And then he makes the comment that “the wonders men behold in the earth and the heavens perplex their minds, trembling and in suspense, and make them humble with the fear of the gods and press them groveling to the ground.” I got into a debate on Facebook recently about whether religion causes people to be oppressed and grovel to the ground — but this is another reference in Lucretius. There’s no doubt about his attitude toward religion, it’s in the opening of Book One as well. Tantum religio, man.

Don: Yes.

Cassius: “Being ignorant of the causes of these events, they are forced to confess the sovereignty and give up everything to the command of these deities.” And here’s that leaky corrupting vessel again — the minds are obviously inclined to move in that direction, it seems to me. And you know, on that same point, Don — back in Cicero’s On Ends, the Torquatus section begins with him talking about how Epicurus looked to young animals before they are corrupted as the example of —

Don: Yeah, which I think is odd. Sorry to circle back around to this, but I think it’s odd that he uses babies and children as the models for how we should approach pleasure and pain, but then he’s saying the mind or the vessel is corrupted in and of itself and needs to be repaired.

Cassius: That is exactly why I don’t think —

Don: I’ve got some cognitive dissonance on that one.

Cassius: Yeah — that’s why I think he’s not talking about the vessel itself. He’s talking about the corruption, maybe the effect of everything as you grow up and are corrupted by false philosophies and false religions. He may be talking about just the disposition we have because we don’t know everything and because we want to know everything — that that can lead us in that direction. But to call the mind at birth something already corrupted — I doubt that’s what he would have meant. He would have been focused on the forces that corrupt as you grow up. As you just said, he says to look to young things before they are corrupted to determine what nature’s goal is.

Don: This might be a good point to go back and really dig into the Latin and look at various translations. I find it hard to believe that’s what he’s saying — that the vessel, the mind itself, is the problem. And he doesn’t say “the mind” — he says the pot, the vessel — and so it’s left to us to figure out what it means. Frankly, a vessel or a pot is something that carries something within it; it’s not the thing itself.

Cassius: “They raise over themselves a set of cruel tyrants who, the wretches fancy, can do all things, because they know nothing of what can be or cannot be, or by what means a finite power is fixed to every being and a boundary immovable which it cannot pass.” So anybody who wants to say it doesn’t matter if we study Epicurus’s physics — “all he cared about was pleasure, you don’t need to worry about his views of nature” — I think Epicurus would be the first one to say that’s ridiculous. He wrote 35 books on nature. The limitations and the way that the world works is the whole foundation of the philosophy, and you would not come to the ethical conclusions you come to if you didn’t have significantly similar views of the nature of things. Because if you’re not aware of those things, you “are more liable to mistakes and to be carried widely from the right way.” Lucretius has just spent five books laying it all out for you.

So, Martin — since this is another one of those days where I’ve talked too much and haven’t gotten enough out of you — as we begin to close, what do you think about what we’ve talked about today?

Martin: It was all agreeable, and I did not really have much to say, so that was the reason I kept so quiet.

Cassius: Well, I think part of what was in my mind was — like I said — I’ve always particularly enjoyed the beginnings of these books. But I’m also thinking about the fact that in a couple of weeks we’re going to be spending week after week going through the plague of Athens, and we’ll have a whole lot to deal with. We’ve got a lot of wind and rain and thunder to get through before we even get to the plague.

Don: That’s right — the world completely being destroyed comes before that.

Cassius: Okay, well Don, do you have any summary thoughts today?

Don: No — oh, the only other thing I thought was really interesting: I found those fragments from Empedocles. If I can briefly revisit — whenever we were talking about evolution and about beings sprung from the ground, Lucretius was arguing against the Empedoclean idea that individual body parts came first and then the body parts assembled themselves. Well, sure enough, in the collection of Empedocles fragments — if anybody looks it up online, it’s Empedocles Fragments 57 to 61 — Fragment 57 starts out: “There budded many a head without a neck, and arms were roaming shoulderless and bare, and eyes that wanted foreheads drifted by.” And later: “creatures of countless hands and trailing feet.” So there’s the whole idea of individual body parts looking for each other to become assembled. Empedocles was indeed talking about heads without necks and shoulderless arms and eyes without foreheads. So there you go — that’s the origin of that one.

Cassius: Wow. So there was certainly good reason for Lucretius and Epicurus to be making allusions to that. It’s like: Empedocles, you got a basic idea right —

Don: Yeah, things did evolve from other things, but there were no arms and eyes roaming around by themselves. We’re going to draw the line on that one and put the boundary stone there. And Empedocles — was he Greek or Italian? I have it in my mind he’s Italian. He was definitely one of the pre-Socratics, so wherever it was — the coast of Asia Minor, Greece, Syracuse, one of the other Greek colonies.

Cassius: Who was the poet that Lucretius spoke about in Book One, about having a green wreath or something like that — wasn’t there someone in particular? Is that Empedocles? You’ve stumped the panel on that one. All right, well — that section may well not make the final cut for this edit, because I may be thinking about the Masters Golf Tournament rather than Empedocles. We are running long and it’s going to take me a while to edit this one this week. Does anybody have anything else before we bring it to an end?

Don: No, I’m fine.

Cassius: Okay, very good. All right then, let’s close for the day and we will be back next week. Thanks again for your time.

Don: Sounds good. Always a pleasure, gentlemen.

Martin: Have a good weekend.