Episode 141 - Diogenes of Oinoanda (Part 1) The Inscription
Date: 09/28/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2672-episode-one-hundred-forty-one-proclaiming-epicurus-to-the-world-diogenes-of-oino/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads the opening fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda’s inscription — “I wanted to refute those who accuse natural science of being unable to be of any benefit to us… having reached the sunset of my life, being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age, I wanted before being overtaken by death to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure… observing that these people are in this predicament, I bewailed their behavior and wept over the wasting of their lives” — and the episode devotes much of its time to historical context and to the question of why an Epicurean would take the trouble to proclaim philosophy publicly. Joshua traces the Epicurean geography of Asia Minor from Samos (Epicurus’s birthplace, just off the Turkish coast), through Miletus (origin of the pre-Socratic natural philosophers Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes), to Lampsacus on the Hellespont where Epicurus ran his school, to Oenoanda in the southwest and Abanoteichus on the north coast where Lucian wrote his account of Alexander the Oracle Monger, citing Norman DeWitt’s observation that Epicureanism found the field most favorable for expansion in the East, especially Asia Minor and Palestine; the inscription dates from roughly AD 120-150 in the era of Hadrian, written in Greek, roughly 262 feet long and 8 feet tall, in a public piazza where any passerby — including foreigners — could read it. The primary translation resource is Martin Ferguson Smith’s authoritative edition, supplemented over the years as new fragments are recovered; Smith also produced the standard Hackett edition of Lucretius; the website oenoanda.cat maintained by Harold Worg from Catalonia gathers the best available materials. Fragment 4 records the Socratic/Platonist charge that natural science is superfluous and unprofitable, and Fragment 5 targets Aristotle and the Peripatetics who say that things are in constant flux and nothing is scientifically knowable — the same paradox Lucretius refutes by noting that the person who claims nothing is knowable must have prior knowledge of white and black to know what they mean. The central discussion turns on why an Epicurean would inscribe philosophy on a public wall: Cassius argues it is the same force that drives EpicureanFriends.com — the personal pleasure of helping, the pain of seeing people in distress, and the practical need for a community of like-minded friends; Callistheni notes from a Buddhist perspective that concern for the well-being of others is itself a source of one’s own happiness; and Cassius pushes back on the charge of Epicurean selfishness by citing the Torquatus material’s argument that friendship grounded in pleasure and mutual benefit has a more coherent basis than friendship commanded by an abstract ideal or a supernatural authority. Callistheni closes with a sharp textual observation: Fragment 1 speaks of “pains that are groundless” being completely excised, whereas the Principal Doctrines use the word desires rather than pains — a potentially significant difference flagged for future forum investigation.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 141 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius. We’ve now worked through both Lucretius and the major letters of Epicurus and will now turn our attention to one of the other leading advocates of Epicurus in the ancient world, Diogenes of Oenoanda. We use both the translation by Martin Ferguson Smith and the translation by C.W. Chilton as our texts, and we highly recommend the website devoted to the inscription from Catalonia, linked in the show notes. Let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin: I wanted to refute those who accuse natural science of being unable to be of any benefit to us. In this way, even though I am not engaging in public affairs, I say these things through the inscription just as if I were taking action, and in an endeavor to prove that what benefits our nature, namely freedom from disturbance, is identical to one and all. Having already reached the sunset of my life, being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age, I wanted before being overtaken by death to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six, or any larger number you choose provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I would address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing, for by mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another like sheep. Moreover, it is right to help also generations to come, for they too belong to us though they are still unborn, and besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here. Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a larger number of people, I wish to use this tool to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test, for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum. I bewailed their behavior and wept over the wasting of their lives, and I considered it the responsibility of a good man to give benevolent assistance to the utmost of one’s ability to those of them who are well-constituted. This is the first reason for the inscription. I declare that the vain fear of death and the gods do harm to many of us, and that joy of real value is generated not by theatres and baths and perfumes and ointments which we leave to the masses, but by natural science.
Cassius: Thank you, Martin. Those are very elegant formulations. Before we get into the text, Joshua, give us the historical and geographical context for this inscription.
Joshua: The Epicurean geography of Asia Minor really starts with Epicurus himself. He was born on the island of Samos, which is a Greek island just off the coast of what is now Turkey. The cluster of Greek culture in this era is along the shores of the Mediterranean — not so much the Greek mainland but the coastlines of the Aegean and the broader Mediterranean. Before Athens became the center of philosophy, Miletus was the center of philosophical inquiry, and it is from Miletus that you get the very first efforts to understand the world in natural rather than theological terms: Thales, who said the foundational element of everything is water; Anaximander; Anaximenes. Even though their specific theories are outmoded, as efforts to understand nature through her own principles rather than through divine intervention they begin a tradition that Epicurus continues. So it is no coincidence that Epicurus’s philosophy has its early flourishing in Asia Minor. Norman DeWitt wrote in his Notes on the History of Epicureanism that Epicureanism found the field most favorable for expansion in the East, especially Asia Minor and Palestine, and that it was late arriving in Italy but spread rapidly in the last century of the Republic.
Cassius: And Oenoanda specifically — where is it and when is the inscription?
Joshua: Oenoanda is in the southwest of Asia Minor, not far from the Mediterranean coast. The inscription dates from roughly the era of Hadrian, somewhere around AD 120 to 150, so this is roughly 400 years after Epicurus. By then the Seleucid Empire has given way to the Romans, but it is still a heavily Greek-speaking culture and the inscription is written in Greek, not Latin. The space covered is thought to be about 80 meters long and about 2.37 meters high — so approximately 262 feet long and nearly eight feet tall. That is an eight-foot-high wall running for over a quarter of a football field and covered completely with Epicurean philosophy inscribed for the benefit of any passerby. It was set in a piazza — a public open space where trade was conducted, roughly equivalent to a small agora. Diogenes of Oenoanda must have been a wealthy man to have bought the property and paid the scribes to fill it.
Cassius: And what resources are available for studying it?
Joshua: The best place to start is the website oenoanda.cat, maintained by Harold Worg from Catalonia. He has videos and background on the site and features the best available translation by Martin Ferguson Smith, who is probably the premier living authority on the inscription. Smith has supplemented his translation over the years as new fragments have been recovered — some sections of the original wall were used in building foundations of later houses, some are buried, some are in very poor condition. What you will see when you study the inscription is that many phrases appear in brackets — that indicates Smith’s best reconstruction of text that is no longer clearly legible. Those reconstructions are subject to error even from the best authority. There is an older translation by C.W. Chilton but it does not include the most recently discovered fragments. Smith is also the author of the current standard edition of Lucretius published by Hackett, so he has immersed himself thoroughly in Epicurean philosophy.
Cassius: What did the inscription contain besides the opening material we have read today?
Joshua: It is thought to have contained at least three treatises written by Diogenes himself — on ethics, on physics, and on old age — plus letters that Diogenes wrote to Epicurean communities in the major cities around Asia Minor, and letters from Epicurus himself, including one to his mother on the subject of dreams. The whole thing is enormously ambitious and unlike anything else that survives from the ancient world — no other school of philosophy took this method of inscribing their philosophy on a public wall of this scale.
Cassius: Let me come back to something you mentioned in the text, Joshua, about what Diogenes is writing against. Fragment 4 and Fragment 5 are relevant here.
Joshua: Fragment 4 records the Socratic and Platonist charge that natural science is superfluous and unprofitable — that it is a waste of time and that serious philosophers do not even deign to concern themselves with such matters. Fragment 5 attacks Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that things are in such constant flux that nothing is scientifically knowable by sense perception. Diogenes responds with the same argument Lucretius uses: the very people who claim nothing can be known must at some point have known the difference between white and black in order to say that one thing is white and another is black. If they had no prior knowledge of the nature of white and black they could never even form the claim that knowledge is impossible. So even Diogenes, writing so late in the tradition, begins his inscription not with ethics but with epistemology — with the question of whether it is even possible to know anything at all. You have to establish that knowledge through natural science is possible before you can offer any of the medicines he is about to prescribe.
Cassius: And this opening statement — that he wanted to refute those who accuse natural science of being unable to be of any benefit to us — is modeled closely on the opening of Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus, which says it is precisely the study of natural science that is the source of tranquility and happiness in our lives.
Martin: The biggest advantage in Epicurean philosophy is precisely this understanding. Originally sorted out by Epicurus, it was natural science — not metaphysical speculation — that built the philosophy. Everything was derived through thinking about observations and keeping speculation to a minimum. That approach gives us an understanding that helps us not to fear the gods and not to fear destiny.
Cassius: Now the question that comes up here: why would an Epicurean bother to inscribe this on a public wall at all? If the happy life involves some withdrawal from public affairs and avoiding crowds of confused people, why inject yourself back into society by proclaiming this information to strangers?
Joshua: Diogenes answers the question himself. He says he observed these people in their predicament, bewailed their behavior, and wept over the wasting of their lives. He considered it the responsibility of a good man to give benevolent assistance to those who are well-constituted. He is not doing it because god told him to. He is not doing it because an abstract ideal requires it. He is doing it because he experiences the pain of seeing people in distress around him, and he derives pleasure from the idea of helping them.
Cassius: And there is a very practical dimension as well. Principal Doctrine 27 says that of all the things wisdom provides for the complete happiness of one’s entire life, the greatest is friendship. In order to live successfully and happily, you need people around you who see the world as you do. If you observe that the number of people who are lost in false beliefs is increasing — catching the disease from one another like sheep — then in order to secure your own community of friends you have a practical interest in trying to spread the ideas that make genuine friendship possible.
Callistheni: I find this passage important from a Buddhist perspective as well. The concern he expresses for others — including generations to come and even foreigners who happen to pass by — takes the attention outward. That outward motion is itself a source of happiness. Increasing the well-being of others increases your own well-being. That is something he seems to have understood and to have lived.
Cassius: And this addresses the frequent accusation that Epicureans are coldly self-interested and incapable of genuine friendship. The Torquatus material in Cicero addresses this directly: Torquatus argues that friendship grounded in mutual pleasure and benefit is in fact the only coherent basis for friendship. The Platonist or religious view tells you to have friends because an abstract good or a god requires it. But the Epicurean view says: the person who lives happily is the person surrounded by friends who like them and whom they like, and so caring for others is not a sacrifice of self-interest but the fullest expression of it.
Joshua: I would add one thing. Diogenes says: love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here. That is not restricted to townspeople or to Greek speakers or to people who already share his outlook. It extends to all humans. He is more explicit about this than Lucretius is, though I think the same concern is implicit in Lucretius. For people who worry that Epicureanism is too focused on the self, Diogenes of Oenoanda is the best corrective.
Callistheni: I wanted to mention something I noticed in this fragment. He says pains that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum. In the Principal Doctrines it is desires that are described as vain or groundless, not pains. That phrasing is slightly different and I wonder what it means — whether these are the same concept expressed differently, or whether he is making a distinct point.
Cassius: That is a sharp observation and it is exactly the kind of question that needs to be brought to Don and Godfrey on the forum. Are those the same Greek word or different words? Is he talking about a kind of mental pain that follows from vain desires? Or is he drawing a distinction Epicurus himself does not draw? We will want to look at that carefully as we go forward in the inscription. Very good. Let’s close there for today. We have set the stage and in the weeks ahead we will go through the fragments that Diogenes chose to highlight. Thank you all.
Joshua: Goodbye.
Martin: Bye.
Callistheni: Goodbye.