Episode 087 - Earthquakes and The Water Cycle
Date: 09/05/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2173-episode-eight-seven-earthquakes-and-the-water-cycle-the-reason-the-seas-never-fi/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads Book 6, lines 527–700+, covering earthquakes (underground caverns and winds, cave-ins as a localized mechanism — though Martin clarifies that tectonic plates are the real cause), the water cycle and why the sea never overflows, and Mt. Etna. The panel also examines Lucretius’s “holy fire” (sacer ignis) as ergot poisoning or erysipelas, and the Epicurean distinction between the mortal world and the eternal universe.
A lengthy digression develops around the Chicken Little / Henny Penny folk tale — whether its moral is about fear mongering or improper logical extrapolation — tracing it through the Brothers Grimm and an 1823 Danish version by Just Mathias Thiele. The episode closes with Cassius quoting Torquatus in Cicero’s De Finibus on the shame of learning Epicurean basics only in old age.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 87 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’s poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about the podcast, please be sure to contact us at the Forum for more information.
In this episode 87, we’ll read approximately Latin lines 527 through 700, as we discuss rains and storms and earthquakes and similar geological phenomena. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
Learn now the cause of earthquakes. And first you are to suppose that the earth is the same below as it is above, that it is every way full of winds and caverns, and that it holds within its bowels many lakes and pools and rocks and broken stones. You must believe that many hidden rivers flow with rapid waves within and roll the jagged rocks along their tide, for the laws of nature require that the earth within and without should be the same.
This being premised and supposed, the earth trembles and shakes above with dreadful ruin when age has tumbled in these mighty caverns, for then whole mountains sink, and in a moment with the horrid shock spread frightful tremblings all abroad. And no wonder, since whole houses by the highway side will quake as carts with no great weight pass through the streets, and so they shake as chariots swiftly drive with iron-shod horses. They shake at every jumping of the wheel.
This happens likewise when great masses of earth, loosened by time, plunge down into these deep and mighty lakes, for then the waters rage and the earth reels and staggers with a shock, as a vessel on the ground cannot stand firm unless a liquid ceases to ferment and toss within. Besides, when winds collected in the caverns of the earth direct their force one way and beat with fury on these hollow places, the earth inclines that way where the winds point their stroke, and our buildings raised above incline that way too. The heights shake the most, the hanging beams start from the wall and threaten to fly out. And yet men are afraid to think that nature has fixed a fatal time when this great world shall be destroyed and fall to ruin, although they see the heavy mounts of earth leaning and tumbling to pieces.
And did not the winds take time to breathe, nothing could check their fury or keep them from destroying everything before them. But since they cease by turns, then rage again and storm with double force and are again repelled, hence it is that the earth often threatens us with ruin, then actually effects it. It inclines only and then falls back, and so moved aside, settles all its weight again in its former place. For this reason all our houses tremble and rear — the highest shakes the most, the middle less, the lowest little or nothing.
The great trembling of the earth may arise yet from another cause, when wind or violent blast, raised either from without or within the earth itself, throws itself furiously into these hollow caverns, and in these vast dens roars and tosses about, and when it has roared within and raged with all its might, it breaks abroad at last and cleaves the solid earth and makes a hideous chasm. This happened at Sidon, a city of the Phoenicians, and at Aegae in the Peloponnese. What cities has this eruption of the wind destroyed? What earthquakes has it produced? At land, the walls of many towns have tumbled down by these violent concussions. Many cities, with all their inhabitants, have sunk together into the sea.
But if the wind does not break through, yet the fury and raging force of its blast are scattered through the many pores of the earth like a shivering cold and cause a shuddering in its bowels. As the cold, when it seizes upon our limbs, makes us shake against our will and tremble all over. That means stagger with doubtful fear in all the cities. They are in dread of their houses above them and of the earth under their feet, lest nature should instantly break to pieces the caverns below, lest the divided earth should open wide its jaws and fill them with the utter desolation of men and houses. Even those who think the heavens and the earth are eternal and will be preserved safe forever — yet the present dread of impending danger staggers them and raises terrible apprehensions, lest the earth should instantly fall under their feet and sink into the great abyss, lest the dissolution of the universe from the very foundation should follow and the fabric of the world should fall into ruin and confusion.
And now we are out to account why the waters of the sea are never increased. And first men wonder that nature does not enlarge the bounds of the sea in proportion to the forms of water, and the streams of so many rivers that from all parts flow into it. Besides the wandering showers and flying storms that pour down and discharge themselves upon lands and seas, you may add the fountains and springs likewise. But all these, compared to the vastness of the sea, are hardly more than one drop of water, and therefore can contribute little to its increase. No wonder then that the wide sea rolls within the same bounds.
And then the sun licks up a great part of its water with its heat, for we see the sun dries a garment dripping wet with its burning rays, and the sea we know is widely spread and exposed to the influence of its beams. And though the sun draws up very little quantity of moisture from every part of the sea, yet with so vast a circumference a great store of water must be drawn off. The winds likewise brushing over the surface of the sea carry off a large part, for we observe the roads are frequently dried in one night and the soft dirt grows hard. Besides, I have shown that the clouds suck up a great deal of moisture from the wide sea and then scatter it down over the whole earth when the rain falls and the wind drives the clouds through the sky. Lastly, since the earth is of a rare contexture and full of pores and everywhere surrounds the body of the sea which joins to it, it follows that as the waters flow from the earth into the sea, so there must return from thence into the earth again. In these subterranean passages the saline particles are strained off and the waters flow back and unite together at the fountainheads, from whence they glide sweetly with their collected strength over the earth through those channels where the streams first cut their liquid wake.
Now learn the cause why fires break out with so much fury from the jaws of Mount Etna. For we are not to suppose such a tempest of fire rages over the plains of Sicily and brings such destruction with it from the gods, as if it only raised the admiration of all the neighboring people, who seeing the whole heavens sparkling with fire and full of smoke trembled with anxious concern and wondered what new phenomenon nature was going to produce. The reason of these events requires a deeper and wider search. You must enter fully into all their parts, and then you will recollect that the universe of things is infinite, and observe how small a part — scarce one of a thousand — is one heaven in comparison of the whole, and what a poor pittance of the whole earth is one man.
If you consider this well and observe closely, you will cease wondering at many things which now raise your admiration. For where is the wonder if a man receives the burning heat of a fever within his veins, or feels the anguish of any other disease in his limbs? For our foot often swells of a sudden, a sharp pain frequently seizes upon our teeth and attacks our eyes. There is such a thing as the holy fire over the body and burns the part it fixes upon, and creeps over the limbs — nothing strange, for the seeds of things are in great abundance, and the earth and the heavens afford sufficient supplies of morbid seeds from whence the sharpest diseases may be produced in us. And therefore you must think that large store of seeds may flow from the infinite space and supply the earth and the whole heavens. These may cause those sudden and violent tremblings of the earth, that rapid whirlwinds scour along the land and sea, and that there is abundant fuel for the flames of Etna, and that the sky is all in a blaze. For this happens and the heavens are on fire when the seeds of flame unite, as the storms of rain are the more violent when the seeds of water are collected and joined together.
But you will say the fire of Etna is too great and impetuous. But by the same rule, a river not very large appears a mighty stream to one who never saw a greater. And so a man or a tree that seems prodigious, and all other bodies that we see, we imagine are extraordinary, when alas all beings — with the heavens, the earth, and the sea together — are nothing to the vast universe of all.
And now I shall explain by what means a raging flame bursts suddenly abroad from the vast cavities and channels of this mountain. And first, nature has formed the whole mountain hollow within and supports these cavities by arches of stone. Now all caverns are filled with wind and air, for air, when it is violently moved, becomes wind. And this wind, when it is grown hot and furiously whirling about, has inflamed the stones and the earth by beating upon them, and from them has struck out sparks of fire with rapid flight. Then it raises itself up, it throws itself violently out of the open jaws at the top into the air. Then it pours the fire abroad and spreads the burning embers all about, and belches dusty clouds of rolling smoke and shoots out rocks of wondrous weight. This no doubt is done by furious blasts of wind within.
Besides, the sea for a great way dashes its waves against the roots of this mountain, and then again sucks back its tide. The waters press into these caverns that lie directly under those open jaws. These caverns allow the water in, and the flames yielding to the driving floods there force their passage out and fly abroad and cast the fire on high, and throw out rocks and rays, whole clouds of sand. For on the summit there are certain basins where wind is generated. The Greeks call them so; we call them mouths and jaws.
Cassius:
Martin, thank you for reading such a long section today. We decided to take a longer section because the topics seemed to flow together from start to finish — earthquakes and things that go on below the surface, including what sounds like volcanoes. But there are also mixed into this section some pretty interesting assertions about logic and the way we should think about things. So there’s plenty to talk about here today. Going back to the beginning, line 535 — Don, do you have any comments on the opening section?
Don:
Oh, I thought it was interesting the way he talks about what’s underneath the earth. He talks about the lakes and the pools and the rocks and the broken stones, so he’s obviously aware — or has talked to people that have been down in caverns and caves and those kinds of things. I think that’s kind of interesting the way he brings that all in: hidden rivers flow with rapid waves and this kind of thing. He definitely has some understanding of what’s going on geologically under the earth.
Cassius:
Well, we are going to have to have a special session on the topic that I’m about to bring up, and I’m not going to go into it very far because I promised I would not. But when I look at the last passage of this first section where it says “for the laws of nature require that the earth within and without should be the same” — I read that as a reference to the very important Epicurean method of reasoning and use of logic that distinguishes Epicurus from Plato and Aristotle and many others.
I noticed just checking the other translations: I see that Munro renders that as “for the very nature of the case requires it to be throughout like to itself,” and Bailey renders that as “for clear fact demands that it should be in all parts like itself.” I bet you we could have a podcast devoted entirely to that assertion right there, because it seems to me that’s a pretty profound logical assertion that I think Martin will be the first among us to point out has some limitations to it. And yet in looking at the way Lucretius and Epicurus are reasoning here, I think there’s a lot to learn from it. Martin, what do you think about that passage in line 535?
Martin:
Yeah, so this generalization — it’s the same pattern as the isonomy applied to conclude that there are other worlds as well. But now looking at something specific, this may not necessarily apply, because the surface is exposed to different environmental conditions than the deep inside. So that means it may be possible that we have something different deeper inside.
And he would certainly have been aware of caves which are easily accessible. But at some point they would have had limitations to go much deeper than that. Nowadays, especially since there was a Russian expedition a couple of years ago, I think they went nearly two kilometers down along one crack. And they really encountered something like this — quite deep down there was suddenly a pool of water where they had to take out their diving gear and dive through it. Some of the descriptions he has here do hold. But in most cases we don’t have those deep cracks, and the solid part of the Earth is pretty much under high pressure — there are not a lot of caves.
What we know now is that a major mechanism of earthquakes is different from what he presents: it’s just the movement of the tectonic plates. This is known only for about a hundred years or so. And of course, when these plates move against each other, some caverns may be produced. But the deeper you go, the higher the pressure, and any cavities are very likely to get filled. Also, further down is the transition between the crust and where the rock is liquid — we’ll see later that this is what comes out of the volcano. So there will certainly not be big cavities, because under that high pressure any cavities are likely to be crushed. Of course, if it’s a gas assembling into a bubble, that may be the case.
Cassius:
That’s a really good point, Martin. Whenever he would have known about caves that were easily accessible, he’s trying to extrapolate — I can go down in caves, I can talk to people that have gone down in caves, and obviously caves go down as far as we can tell, because what else could be there? I think that’s what’s in his mind. And so he’s trying to come up with ideas for the reason for earthquakes that involve caves and winds and waters, and would have had no inkling about tectonic plates and shifting of the crust. He’s trying to extrapolate from what he knows to something bigger, and there’s no way he’s going to get from caves to tectonic plates just by that kind of reasoning.
Martin:
Yes, but then actually there are cave-ins, so a minor cause of local earthquakes is actually what he thinks about — that the portion above a cave falls into the cave. So if that happens suddenly, we will have a local earthquake. So this is a mechanism for earthquakes which actually does happen.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s true. Like sinkholes and things like that. It seems to me he’s taking those localized or smaller-scale phenomena and extrapolating them to larger, city-destroying earthquakes.
Martin:
Yes, and especially for a big aspect when we have a lot of movement — the rim between two tectonic plates. Then you can see what happens: you have the external observation that where these plates move against each other, one part is moved up, the other one is pushed down, or actually a crack may open and widen. This all suggests from the simple idea — like what you said before — you get this idea that there are caves below which the material redistributes into, and that may cause the shaking.
Cassius:
Exactly. I think he’s just trying to extrapolate from those smaller scales that he’s seen and knows about to larger-scale things. I think we’ve even said before — and I think you’ve said in the podcast before — that you can’t necessarily take a localized or smaller phenomenon and extrapolate into something bigger. And that is exactly the point that I’m not going to belabor today, but we need to come back to again and again — in other formats as well — because it clearly is inherent in the Epicurean reasoning system that we’re going to base our conclusions on the things that we can observe locally, and we’re going to give those local observations significant weight as we extrapolate out into the things that we cannot observe locally. And that process has hazards and limitations within it — but hazards and limitations that are a whole lot better than relying on the gods, or on fate, or on formal logic that is not necessarily connected with reality.
We’ll come back to all that on another day, but I want to continue to maintain that approach to thinking, which I think is elaborated in much more detail in the Philodemus On Methods of Inference — or On Signs, depending on what you think the title of that scroll really is — and that’s just one of the most fascinating and important issues in Epicurean philosophy. But we’re not going to solve that in one podcast today.
So let’s move a little further. One of the lines I liked from that earlier section was: “the earth oftener threatens us with ruin than actually effects it.” Yeah, that was kind of a fun little line there — it’s not always going to kill you, but you’re going to think it is.
Don:
Well, did you pick that up — is it 557 or 552 you’re looking at correctly?
Cassius:
Okay, so if we go to 557, where I’m looking at the moment — I think that’s connected with this idea that “yet men are afraid to think that nature has fixed a fatal time when this great world shall be destroyed and fall to ruin.” That seems to be another one of those themes he comes back to regularly: that our world had a point in time that it originated and it’s going to have a point in time that it ends. Basically everything has that, just like the human soul — every human has a point of origination and a point of ending. So you connect these issues.
I remember there’s a section — I can’t remember if it’s in Peter or one of the books of the New Testament — where there’s a reference to certain people arguing that things are the same as they’ve always been. And I guess it’s easy to get wrapped up in: if you think God created the universe and put the Earth in the center of the universe, and everything here is set up in the best possible way for men to survive, and you think it’s all going to be permanent, then you resist the idea that the Earth could be destroyed by meteor or be destroyed in some other way.
Don:
Yeah, I agree with you. I like that line there: “men are afraid to think that nature has fixed a fatal time when this great world should be destroyed.” That’s a good line. It’s not that they just don’t think it, but they’re afraid to think it.
Cassius:
Exactly. And the same way with the whole Epicurean attitude towards death itself — look at it square in the face and say, “I’m not going to exist, so there’s no reason to be afraid of it.” Same thing here: people are just even afraid to think of the fact that the world may not exist, and so they’re going to shy away from it.
Don:
Right, right.
Cassius:
Now as we move forward to 577 and 591 — I may be the one who probably spends too much time watching YouTube videos on the lost civilization of Atlantis and things like that — but we know that Plato had a lot of material; I guess it’s the Timaeus that talks about the destruction of Atlantis. And of course Lucretius doesn’t mention anything like Atlantis; he just talks about real-world cities that have been destroyed by earthquakes or by sinking into the sea.
While Martin was reading, I noticed the mention of the city of Sidon there, and I tried to find quickly what earthquake Lucretius was talking about for that particular city. I came across so many mentions of earthquakes that I couldn’t find anything contemporaneous with him — it seemed like every other article I looked at was, “Oh, it was destroyed in this year, and it was destroyed again in this year, and by the way it was destroyed again in this year.” So evidently there’s been a lot of earthquakes in that area. I don’t even know where Sidon is — is it in Syria?
Don:
Yeah, yeah, that’s at least what I could find.
Cassius:
And I guess he’s talking about Aegae in the Peloponnese — that’s obviously some part of the Greek mainland. The Peloponnese is where Sparta is and that area.
You know, I regularly think about how irritating it is to me that so many Greek and Roman temples and so forth have presumably been destroyed by the Christians over the years. But sounds like there’s also a lot of attrition due to earthquakes over the years as well.
Don:
And then earthquakes and lightning bolts, according to the last session.
Cassius:
Yes, that’s right, that’s right. Both of them have taken their toll on those temples over the years, evidently.
Don:
The gods want to remodel a lot.
Cassius:
Yeah, and it’s not all a matter of removing the stone so we can build churches and the Vatican and so forth.
Don:
Yeah, Zeus wants a new temple.
Cassius:
Okay, let’s see. I don’t want to move too fast. Anything else buried in those passages? He’s basically making the point too that we ought to be able to observe — since our local towns and cities and so forth have been destroyed by earthquakes and maybe even floods over time — that if the damage had been just somewhat stronger, maybe the whole earth would have been destroyed. So the local instances of disasters are an example to us that the disaster could be even stronger and take out the whole thing. And actually I think that may be one of the real arguments he’s making here — in addition to just explaining how these happen naturally — that we can look at these examples of devastation and realize that the whole earth is subject to the same thing.
Don:
I thought it was interesting in paragraph 591, where he’s equating a person with some sort of condition or disease that seizes upon our limbs and makes us shake against our will and tremble all over. So he’s — not equating, but using the metaphor of — the human body as the earth itself. You know, you might have a cold or a fever or something and you’re shaking and shivering; it’s the same sort of thing: something happens in one part of the earth and it causes everything to shake and shiver.
Cassius:
Yeah, he’s analogizing it. And when I first read that I thought, “My gosh, this is ridiculous.” But the more I thought about it, I’m not so sure it is so ridiculous, because you do start to shiver and shake.
Don:
Oh yeah, yeah, when you get a bad flu bug or something like that — my heavens.
Cassius:
Then I noticed that your Brown translation has “Cold” capitalized, and I wasn’t quite sure whether that’s referring to some sort of specific condition, or whether — let me go ahead and explain that capitalization.
Don:
Okay, let me make clear again — I’ve probably done this in the past — but the Brown translation uses this archaic text format where not only does he capitalize seemingly random words in the middle of the sentence, but he’s got the old “f” character instead of “s.”
Cassius:
Yeah, the long s — the long s, right?
Don:
Yes. But what we’re talking about right now — I don’t know whether he capitalizes a word in the middle of a sentence for emphasis or what he means. But unfortunately, for better or worse, as I transcribe these I often just don’t follow that capitalization in the middle, so what you see there is probably just an example of how I happened to pick up that particular one. But why he said that is — I’m just curious whether — I was trying to dig up the Latin here real quick, but I can’t put my finger on it right away. How does Munro render that, and Bailey? Is there an equivalent translation there at 591?
Cassius:
Just as “cold” — so it’s certainly the word “cold” does appear there according to Munro.
Don:
Yeah. So it may just be: whenever you’re cold and shivering from having a fever or something like that.
Cassius:
Yeah, yeah. I don’t see either of them has marked it off as a special case or anything.
Don:
It probably is just Brown using some kind of emphasis, or maybe he’s capitalizing the nouns when he gets to them, or something. I don’t understand his system.
Cassius:
Then 601 goes back to the comment we were making a minute ago: “even those who think the heavens and earth are eternal and will be preserved safe forever, yet they dread the impending danger” of these issues that we’re talking about. So he’s again referring to people who think that the heavens and the earth are eternal, which presumably means created divinely — as opposed to his own view, of course, which is that the universe is eternal but not that the worlds within it are eternal.
Don:
Right, right. So we’ve got to be careful describing that.
Cassius:
Yeah. I love the way he talks about people being afraid that “the earth should instantly fall under their feet and sink into the great abyss” — that’s almost like a Chicken Little sort of story there. And so it says, “lest the dissolution of the universe from the very foundation should follow and the fabric of the world should fall into ruin.” So I presume what he’s going to be doing — whether he’s doing it clearly here or not — is: the world will be destroyed and come to an end, but the universe itself will never come to an end. And that was an important part of their physics, so he would presumably want to hammer that point in when he had a chance — there’s the big distinction between the universe itself and our local world.
Don:
Exactly.
Cassius:
I’m just curious, from a purely cultural point of view — does Martin know the story of Chicken Little?
Martin:
I didn’t watch it, but this is a cinema from several years ago.
Don:
No — oh, that’s right, it was made into a movie. That’s right.
Cassius:
I’m not aware of it — Chicken Little was made into a movie?
Don:
Yeah, it was an animated movie, I believe. I watched scenes of it but only brief ones from commercials. I don’t know the story itself very well.
Cassius:
Very briefly — I think it might actually be applicable here, surprisingly enough: the little chicken is out one day and gets hit on the head by an acorn or something that falls off a tree, and he thinks that the sky itself is falling. And so he runs around and tries to convince everybody the sky is falling, and everybody makes a big fuss and all the farm animals are in an uproar. And one of them finally takes him back to the tree and the acorn is on the ground. They realize that the sky itself is not falling — it’s just an acorn that hit him on the head. And so he was just overexcited about the whole idea and got carried away with himself. I think that has some sort of application to people who take a little piece of information and extrapolate from there — but in a religious sense — you have something that happened to you and you suddenly give it a much wider significance than it actually has.
Don:
Cassius, I was mashing Chicken Little and “the boy who cried wolf” and somehow coming up with only one when there’s definitely two. The boy who cried wolf is the Cassandra type thing — you keep making predictions of bad things to come and then nobody believes you when you do have a good reason to say bad things are coming. So the Chicken Little story may be exactly on point then.
Cassius:
If that’s the point… I don’t remember how the Chicken Little thing resolved itself.
Don:
I think I remember: they finally took him back and said, “There’s what hit you on the head right there — it was an acorn. The sky isn’t falling. And now you’ve got us all in an uproar, and you need to stop that.”
Cassius:
Is there a memorable line or moral or summary? I’m not even sure where the story came from originally, because I just remember it from literally from my childhood. I would have expected Martin to know that because many of our fables come from Nasty Stop — but who’s the — Grimm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Yeah, wasn’t there two brothers — the Brothers Grimm?
Martin:
Yes. The Brothers Grimm — Jacob and Wilhelm.
Cassius:
Jacob and Wilhelm — that’s it. Okay, well, Chicken Little could be right on point. I’ll have to look into that. I think it’s from the Brothers Grimm.
Martin:
I think this story is too good — I would have overlooked it. So I think this is really an American story. Someone up in America, I guess. No, because within Europe, or older Europe, people would exchange their stories, so most of the Grimm stories you find all the versions in France, in Spain, in the UK. Those stories were exchanged across Europe. But the United States produced some newer stories which didn’t sink back into Europe in the collection of tales.
Cassius:
Okay, well — Wikipedia: “Henny Penny is a European folktale with a moral, in the form of a chicken who believes the world is coming to an end.”
Don:
But do you see where it comes from? It says “European,” but the story is listed as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 20C, which includes international samples.
Cassius:
“History: the story was part of the oral folk tradition and only began to appear in print after the Brothers Grimm had set a European example with their collection of German tales. ‘Oh, my heavens! There was once a little chick named Cluck’ — that’s the beginning of the 1823 Danish version of the story.”
Don:
So that’s the Danish version.
Cassius:
“One of the earliest to collect tales from Scandinavian sources was Just Mathias Thiele, who in 1823 published an early version of the Henny Penny story in the Danish language.” And I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but I wonder if this comes to a conclusion — is there a line or something at the very end that summarizes what the chicken learned? I don’t think it’s really an issue of fear mongering.
Don:
I see “fear mongering” listed in the Wikipedia article. It sounds like to me it is more an issue of the improper deduction of something general from something specific. And I think it’s fear mongering in the sense that Chicken Little tried to recruit everybody else to their way of thinking — trying to convince everybody else that the sky was falling — and everybody was running off helter-skelter.
Cassius:
Okay, probably enough on Chicken Little. And as I remember, there’s a Buddhist version too, where I believe it’s a rabbit that tries to convince everybody that something catastrophic is coming — either they feel the earth tremble from an elephant walking by, or something hits him on the head. And the animals are all running towards a cliff in a panic, and a lion jumps in front of them and stops them from running over the cliff. And of course the lion is the personification of the Buddha, and he tells them that what you think is going to happen is not going to happen, and you need to look at how things actually are.
The more I think about it, it may have been a false path to take, because I’m thinking more and more that it’s about fear mongering as the lesson of Chicken Little — like it is on several of those fables — when it ought to have been written as an issue of logic. So I’ll have to work on a better version of the Chicken Little story for the future.
Martin:
Okay, well, I’ll just wait for you to insert the word “logic” into every other sentence whenever we’re talking here.
Cassius:
Exactly. That’s what I’m attempting to do. Okay, where are we — 668? So now we’ve finished the earthquake section, and the next passage gives a very nice description of what has actually happened with the water cycle. So apart from the observations and what he concludes there, the water cycle appears all accurate to me.
Don:
I agree. I agree. Yes, that’s very good.
Martin:
Yes.
Cassius:
I love the way he keeps talking about — it’s like the water that’s pulled off is such a minuscule amount, that with “so vast a circumference a great store of water must be drawn off.” So if you’d take off enough to actually see it, you know it would just be a ridiculous amount of water. It’s just a continuous cycle.
Don:
Yeah, of course he’s also framing that in terms of why the sea never overflows.
Cassius:
Exactly — “now we are to account why the waters of the sea are never increased, because men wonder that nature doesn’t enlarge the bounds with the streams of so many rivers.” Yeah, I love that line about “all these, compared to the vastness of the sea, are hardly more than one drop of water.” So he has a good concept of how huge the seas and oceans actually are.
All right, after the water cycle discussion comes fires breaking out from Etna — probably a little bit less accurate in his description of the working of volcanoes here, but still a natural explanation for it.
I was making notes real quickly whenever we were going through there, and he talks about “the holy fire.” “There is such a thing as the holy fire over the body and burns the part it fixes upon, and creeps over the limbs.” I looked it up — the Latin is literally “holy fire,” sacer ignis — and they looked it up and said that it’s either St. Anthony’s Fire, the condition from eating ergot mushrooms, or it’s some sort of fever that will come over you and cause a rash — sounds like a terrible sort of thing. So it’s either an acute infection that typically causes a skin rash, or it’s the effects of ergot poisoning from mushrooms. And there is actually a sacer entry in Lewis and Short that gives both of those possible meanings for that phrase.
Don:
Interesting. So I guess the point being that you can actually feel it moving from one part of your limbs to another?
Cassius:
No, it just feels — yeah, I assume it’s a high fever, and that’s the reason they’re equating it with fire. And there are a couple of other things — of course they wouldn’t call it St. Anthony’s Fire because St. Anthony was not around when he was writing this — but they also said that it could possibly refer to shingles as well.
Don:
You know, Cassius, you pointed out earlier the comment about the vastness of the seas and so forth. This episode is covering some texts that I might think of as the Carl Sagan section — here in Book 6, around line 673: “all beings, with the heavens, the earth, and the sea together, are nothing to the vast universe of all.” I can hear that ringing in Carl Sagan’s voice about billions and billions of worlds, and how small we are in relation to that.
Cassius:
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Okay, Martin, you want to comment on the cavities and arches of stone that are beneath the surface, and how caverns are filled with wind and air? That part was a little bit off base, I’m afraid.
Martin:
Yeah, somewhat. I mean, it misses some points which they couldn’t have known at that time. Not that there are no caverns, but this builds up this tectonic movement, and then eventually the pressure will push it out through a volcano. But of course then with these cavities — if you look into a volcano, you see there is this gaping hole, and there can also be cracks; in addition to that one big crater you may have other holes where lava or gas or smoke or dust is coming out.
I mean, nearby Cologne in the past we had phenomena of that type — a gas explosion that drove out a lot of rocks. But this doesn’t form those nice craters you see, for example in Japan with certain volcanic features, or probably also with Etna in Sicily as discussed here. These give rise rather to shallow lakes, which we have in that area, which have been created by those gases.
Cassius:
I guess they certainly would have had observations of lava flows, but they don’t seem to be talking about flows of liquid — more wind. He keeps talking about the wind as what’s forcing the stuff out of the ground, if I’m reading that correctly.
Martin:
Yeah.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, we’ve successfully made it mostly through the end here. I’ll comment in addition that we made the decision to read a longer section today because the texts seem to flow together. When I was putting the outline together, I was seriously thinking about going on to line 703, though we can reserve that for next week. But it’s probably good to remind ourselves today as well that the very next thing out of Lucretius’s mouth is going to be another restatement of the issue that for some things one cause is not enough, and we have to go to more than one possible cause and consider that more than one thing can be going on at the same time.
So that’s what he’s done throughout the sections we’ve been reading for the last several weeks — talking about several possible causes, all of which are natural, none of which are supernatural, and all of which are easy to understand once we apply that the natural processes: an understanding of atoms and void, and all the things that arise from them.
Okay, so we’re probably at the end of today’s session. What closing thoughts would you have today, Martin?
Martin:
I have nothing to add to what I said.
Cassius:
Okay, very good. Don, closing thoughts?
Don:
I think I’ve used up my allotment with my Chicken Little story, so I think I’m good.
Cassius:
All right, well, we will come back next week and talk about the Nile and additional geological phenomena. So we have several more weeks before we get there. And at the same time we’ll do our best to relate these issues to some of the larger questions — such as, as Don has pointed out, the Chicken Little story, which is hard to pass over. I bet those fables as they arise have tremendous value. I bet there are some fables directly on point with some of the logic issues we’re talking about — maybe we can come up with some of those.
Don:
There you go, there’s the start of it.
Cassius:
Yes, if they’re in children’s books then we can — yeah, exactly. I’ll be doing a retelling of the fables.
The line that will never ever leave my mind from Torquatus in Cicero’s De Finibus is that “we should be ashamed not to have learned these things when we were children.” And I’ll never live down the infamy that here we are, some of us on the very doorsteps of death in declining age, and still learning the basics that we should have been taught in a better world if the Epicureans were still around and continued their school. So wait — wait — to end the podcast!
Don:
Yeah, exactly.
Cassius:
But that’s what we’re doing now — we’re going to make that easier for future generations to come back and teach their children what they need to be taught.
Don:
There you go.
Cassius:
Want to top that, Don or Martin, for closing today, or shall we close?
Don:
You win.
Martin:
You win.
Cassius:
Okay, all right. Thanks a lot, we’ll talk again in a week or so. Appreciate it. Bye bye.
Don:
Thanks and bye.