Episode 264 - "Bread and Water!!?? Debunking The Myth of Epicurean Asceticism"

Date: 01/17/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4226-episode-264-bread-and-water-debunking-the-myth-of-epicurean-asceticism/

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Transcript

Cassius: Welcome to episode 264 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean text and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week we have a special episode in which our podcaster co-host Dawn, will give a talk entitled Bread and Water, debunking the Myth of Epicurean Asceticism. This talk was given on January the 19th, 2025 as part of our first Epicurean Friends live stream. We’ll post a link to the slideshow presentation and the show notes to this episode, but you can view it anytime@epicureanfriends.com by clicking on the featured videos link at the top of our website At the same location, we also have a link to Don’s other video entitled, where Was The Garden of Epicurus? Isolated or Near the Center of Things In that Talk, just as in this new bread and water program, Don Debunks myths that have grown up around Epicurean philosophy in which Epicurus has mistakenly been labeled as an aesthetic or as an isolationist. Don does great work on these episodes and we’re proud to have him as part of our podcast family. Next week we’ll be back with a regular Lucious today episode. Until then, enjoy Dawn on the topic Bread and water debunking the myth of Epicurean Asceticism,

Don: Words have meaning and one word that often gets attached to epicures is aesthetic. Doing a Google search for Epicurus aesthetic quickly provides numerous examples, including phrases like it is too often forgotten that Epicurus himself was an unimpeachable aesthetic or Epicurus position was to establish an aesthetic detachment from material conditions or Epicurus hedonism has strong stoic or aesthetic tendencies, and finally, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly aesthetic way of life. These are examples from only the first few sets of results in that Google search. So did Epicurus advocate for an aesthetic way of life or not? My contention is that he did not using that term aesthetic distorts what Epicurus taught and attempts to shove his philosophy into a box in which it does not fit. This presentation will attempt to provide a more accurate picture of the way of life that Epicureanism offers and to encourage people to leave behind the label of aesthetic. To begin, we need to define what we mean when we say someone is an aesthetic. The Oxford English dictionary defines an aesthetic as one who is extremely rigorous in the practice of self-denial, whether by seclusion or by abstinence from creature comforts. The official Merriam Webster website provides a more expansive explanation. Aesthetic comes from a Greek adjective, meaning laborious, and its earliest meaning in English implies the labor involved in abstention from pleasure, comfort, and self-indulgence as a spiritual discipline These days, aesthetic is also used to describe anyone or anything demonstrating marked restraint, plainness, or simplicity even when no appeals to the divine or spiritual are attached, making it not unlike another adjective with connections to ancient Greece, Spartan. An aesthetic then is someone who practices self-denial rigorously abstains from pleasure, comfort, and self-indulgence and lives a Spartan existence. However, Merriam Webster’s watered down connotation of an aesthetic as exhibiting restraint. Plaintiffs or simplicity seems too broad as to be almost meaningless to me, and I would suspect to many others. The word aesthetic and Spartan convey self-denial, ab stemness, and purposefully denying one’s self comfort and pleasure. That’s the meaning we’ll be exploring in this presentation and as we’ll see, Epicurus may have exercised restraint, but it was far from living a life of self-denial. So where does the whole idea of Epicurus was an aesthetic come from? Well, the Oxford English dictionary mentions the aesthetic characteristic of self-denial by seclusion, and there is a very durable myth that Epicurus Garden was in a secluded location and that Epicureans lived cutoff from society. I debunked this myth previously with a paper posted last year to epicurean friends.com entitled Where was The Garden of Epicurus? If you’re interested in having that aspect of Epicurus supposed asceticism debunked, I recommend taking a look at that paper and the accompanying impromptu presentation I gave in an online 20th celebration. This presentation is going to look at the ascetic characteristic of self-denial in eating, particularly the myth that Epicurus allowed himself only the most meager of meals. So how did this myth get established? Most people start and end with epic’s own words from his letter to his student. Mannos bread and water give the highest pleasure when someone in need partakes of them, and this indeed seems to be where many people stop, including scholars. Epicures diet equals bread plus water. That’s it. One huge problem with this formulation is that we, modern readers often see bread and water as being the stereotypical punishment fed to those arrested for various crimes. In fact, the US Navy used three days of bread and water confinement for various low level infractions until 2019. When someone reads consistently that Epicurus only lived on bread and water, they see it as Epicurus basically demanding that he and his students punish themselves. And how could that be an attractive way to live one’s life? Let’s take a closer look at what bread and water means when the culture in which Epicurus actually lived. Epicurus is not obligated to align with our preconceived notions of the punitive connotations of bread and water. So let’s explore what the ancient Greeks were eating before we try to stereotype Epicurus as so-called acetic diet. Let’s start with bread. It has been estimated that cereal grains, primarily wheat and barley provided up to 70% of the caloric intake of the ancient Greeks. In fact, Homer’s Odysseus says he far excels everyone else in the whole world of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth still eats bread refers to the fact that they’re still alive, the ones that are still eating their bread. Homer uses the word Seton referring to food made either of wheat or barley, but barley, however, it was much more plentiful than wheat, making the raised loaves of wheat bread more of a luxury item. Barley is one of the oldest grains known in antiquity and was drought tolerant, making it especially suited to Greece. The barley was often roasted to maketa, which could be grounded to meal and needed with water or milk or oil, and since the grain was already cooked, it didn’t need any additional baking and could be eaten wet or dry, making these barley cakes or maza very convenient and not requiring any great skill or clay ovens to make. Unlike the Ryn loaves of wheat bread, Maza could also be made into a porridge. It’s barley that tele amicus takes with him on his ship when he sets out to find information about his father Odysseus. It’s za that Hess extols in works in days when describing the good life at this time. At long last, let there be a shady place upon a rock wine from bilos barley cake soaked in milk, the milk of goats that are reaching their end of lactation and the meat of a cow fed in the woods, one that has not yet caved and of firstborn kid goats. That is the time to drink bright colored wine sitting in the shade, having one’s hearts with food turning one’s face towards the cooling Zephyr. So bread was the staple of the ancient Greek diet with maza being very common. In fact, a sixth century BCE law of solon required Athenian brides to bring a barley roaster with them to their new household meat, especially roasted meat was only eaten during elaborate feasts or at festivals, the sacrificial animals being roasted on the altar with the meat being shared. Then with the celebrants fish, either salted or fresh appears to have been seen as more of a delicacy. Fruits eaten by the ancient Greeks included grapes, figs, apples, pears and dates with wildly harvested nuts also being consumed, and these ladders would’ve included almonds and walnuts and hazelnuts and chestnuts. Vegetables were popular. They included cabbages, asparagus, carrots, radishes, and celery along with onions, garlic, and olives eaten in large quantities. The primary source of fat was olive oil, as butter was seen as a barbaric food, so no butter on the bread for the Greeks. So that gives us a look at what the common and some elite ancient Greeks were eating. I want to emphasize again that the estimate is that 70% of calories were coming from grains in the form of breads and porridges. Turning back to Epic’s letter to eu, what kind of bread was Epicurus mentioning when he writes Bread and water give the highest pleasure when someone in need partakes of them? The word translated bread there is in fact maza. The most convenient and common cake or porridge made from roasted barley and barley seems to have been the favored grain in the garden according to a number of sources across the centuries. Seneca writing a little over 300 years after Epic’s death uses the word polenta, which was used to translate the Greek Mazda in the form of barley porridge into Latin when he wrote in his letters to lucilius about epic. Here’s garden, the caretaker of that abode. A friendly host will be ready for you. He will welcome you with barley meal and serve you water also in abundance around a hundred ce just a little later than Seneca plu tar throws this little curve when he writes in his essay entitled that Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, what appears to be an additional addition, the diet of the garden. So Plutarch is complaining as he does that Epicurus is definition of pleasure, makes no sense, and he writes for the pleasures of the body, our nature requires costly provision and that the most pleasant enjoyment is not to be found in barley cake and lentil soup, but that the appetite of the sensuous demand succulent, vons and Foss and wine and perfumes. That’s how I imagine Plutarch’s voice in my head. The barley cake is our familiar Mazda. The other dish mentioned out of the blue is F, which is a lentil soup, so maybe we can add lentil soup to the menu of the garden. Since plu tar is using both maza and F to say that pleasure seekers desires can’t possibly be satisfied by barley porridge and lentil soup around a century. After plu Tar di composed his seminal work, the lies of the eminent philosophers to which we owe the preservation of epic’s letters. In addition to those letters, DIY says that Epicurus himself mentions that he was content with plain bread and water, and in that bread and water phrase, DIY uses the phrase STOs, which you’ll see S again as it means frugal, simple, plain, and inexpensive. Artos on the other hand, refers to a cake or loaf, specifically made of wheat. Our toast is the better stuff, not the quick and easy Mazda. So maybe the epicureans did eat some of the good stuff every once in a while too. The important thing is they’re still eating bread as a major component of their diet just like everyone else. Poor fiery writing in the third century CE in his abstinence from eating animals writes for most of the epicurean, starting with their leader appear to be satisfied with barley bread and fruit, and they have filled treatises with arguments that nature needs little and that its requirements are adequately met by simple available food. Here again, we find Mazda, but now we’ve added fruit to the epicurean table. So what kind of fruit? Well, the word used is AUA or fruits produced in the upper bowels of trees, and there have been various interpretations of this word and they’ve included pomegranates, wild nuts and almonds and possibly apples and pears and even edible acorns. Lactus in his divine institutes written around the late third or early fourth century. CE includes one who is too stingy, learns from Epicurus that life can be endured on water and barley. And again, we have the Latin polenta referring to the barley porridge there. The last source I’ll mention written 600 years after Epicurus died is a letter entitled to the uneducated cynics by the Roman emperor Julian, who’s often referred to as the apostate by Christians, and we find in this letter Epicurus says that if he has bred enough to spare, he is not inferior to the gods on the score of happiness. That word translated as bred. There is once again Maza. Before we go further, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the whole water in the bread and water phrase. Bread and water either in Greek or in Latin is often seen in the source is talking about epicurus, but water was readily available. The garden was a garden after all, actually probably more of an orchard or a small farm, and so it likely had a spring or a steady source of clean drinking water in it, so why not take advantage of that? However, diodes LA does write Diese in the third book of his epitome says they were content with a small cup of light wine and all the rest of their drink was water. Let’s dissect that just a little bit. The small light wine refers to ion, which I take to be simply analogous to small beer, which is a term that would just refer to the fact that it would be a young wine with a lower alcohol content. So it could very well be referring to freshly pressed grapes with little time to ferment, and the small cup translates an ancient Greek measurement that was right around a half a pint. So really not a lot different than all the other inhabitants of ancient Greece. The reason for that in-depth look at barley bread, Maza polenta, and a quick look at wine is to show that bread and wine featured in Epicures declaration, not because it was punitive, not because he was denying himself, but because that was the regular daily meal of the average ancient Greek. There’s nothing special about it. One’s hunger need not be satisfied with a fancy food or a feast or delicacies. Epicurus is telling us to pay attention to our regular meal right in front of us as long as it satisfies our hunger and quenches our thirst, our everyday meal, which can be as simple as nourishing, hearty barley, por, and cool spring water that meal is worth paying attention to and that it can satisfy our hunger and thirst as well as any costly or hard to prepare feast. Now, you may remember that Epicurus also made a request in another letter for some cheese, which people seem to imply with some sort of secret guilty pleasure that Epicurus a allowed himself to have said, send me a little pot of cheese that when I like I may fare sumptuously, and the cheese there by the way, is Ros, which was a sheep or goat cheese. So our epicurean table has been set with an abundance of barley bread or barley porridge, as much spring water as you like, maybe a little low alcohol wine every once in a while, some goat cheese, some wheat bread, lentil stew fruits and nuts, and it doesn’t sound too bad to me, and I find it somewhat amusing that that word that Epicurus is request for cheese has in it. That’s translated as sumptuously also has the connotation of lavishly or extravagantly according to Liddell and Scott and can be coupled with Atos, which is the word that’s often translated as profligate and was used by Epicurus when he says that whenever we say repeatedly that pleasure is the goal, we do not say the pleasure of those who are profligate. This seems significant since Epicurus is literally saying that he enjoys cheese every once in a while and uses the word that actually means extravagantly, which sounds to me like a natural but unnecessary desire. Is Epicurus saying we can enjoy those desires too and not just the natural unnecessary desires. Oh my. How can that be? I thought he said, we can only partake of the natural and necessaries. I’m clutching my pearls. So I think that’s exactly what this and other passages imply. Part of the aesthetic myth associated with Epicurus is that people say he taught that his students could only follow the natural and necessary desires. Now, for a very quick refresher, epic categorize desires, desires, not pleasures into four broad categories. According to principle doctrine, 29 among desires, some are natural and necessary, some are natural and unnecessary, and some are unnatural and unnecessary arising from groundless opinion. The prevailing position among scholars and popular risers of epic curing philosophy has been to filter this through a stoic lens and say that epicure only fulfilled the natural and necessary. I contend this is fundamentally wrong from my perspective. Dr. Emily Austin got this exactly right in her book, living for Pleasure and Epic Curing Guide to Life published in 2023. Her terms necessary desires, extravagant desires, corrosive desires really hit the mark. I think. Now I’m not going to belabor this point and I recommend you read her book, but her contention and mine is that Epicurus did not condemn or deny or disallow extravagant desires. Epicure says that those who least need extravagance and enjoy it most that doesn’t strike me as a prohibition. He said he couldn’t conceive of the good without the joys of taste, of sex, of hearing, and of without the pleasing motions caused by the sight of bodies and forms. Now, did Epicurus and the Epicurean follow a simple, plain frugal lifestyle? Yeah, from all descriptions, they appear to have lived a simple, plain, frugal lifestyle, not unlike other average ancient Greeks of the time. Not Spartan, not aesthetic, not a life of self-denial. Simple, plain, frugal. Frugal doesn’t mean self-denial. Some words and phrases along these lines that are often associated with the school in various writings throughout the centuries is that they let a simple, plain way of life. They had simple, inexpensive, frugal flavors and tastes. Philas describes his apartments in the lavish estate of Pizo as a simple cottage, a ada, and they’re said to have lead one’s life in a manner that was easily paid for and simple, inexpensive, and frugal. To me, this doesn’t sound like self denial or cynicism. It sounds like common sense. It sounds like Epicurus is reminding people to live within their means, translating this into a modern sense. Can a modern epicure and go out to dinner once in a while to a fancy restaurant? Of course, as long as you’re not neglecting or overextending your budget, can you drink that quality IPA or fancy wine offered you at a dinner party? Sure. Just don’t drink to excess and make a fool out of yourself. One passage from Seneca that gets overlooked in my opinion, is even Epicurus. The teacher of pleasure used to observe stated intervals during which he satisfied his hunger in sparingly fashion. He wished to see whether he thereby fell short of full and complete happiness, and if so, by what amount he fell short, and whether this amount was worth purchasing at the price of great effort. At any rate, he makes such a statement in the well-known letter to Polyus in the Arcon ship of Corina. Indeed, he boast that he himself lived on less than a penny, but that metro Doris, whose progress was not yet so great, needed a whole penny. This passage could have a whole presentation on it, including looking at what ancient Greek or Roman currency is being translated as Penny and half Penny there. But that phrase I want to emphasize in closing is stated intervals in Seneca is Latin Caritas Diaz. Certain days from this, it would appear that Epicurus tested himself on certain days to see how much food would really satisfy his hunger. We so often mindlessly eat our meals, scrolling our phones, talking with others, snacking on that basket of taco chips and salsa that we don’t even know how much we’re eating, and then we end the meal rubbing our bellies and groaning. Epicurus knew how much would satisfy him if the need arose, and so he didn’t have any anxiety or fear around the availability of food and drink. That does not mean he denied himself pleasure. That does not mean he felt guilty for indulging in wine and cheese. That does not mean he went around hungry and living a Spartan existence. That does not mean he lived like an aesthetic. Epicurus calls us to a life of common sense to taking responsibility for our actions and to living life to its fullest through the use of prudent choices. So go ahead, live a little and enjoy those extravagant pleasures when you can trust me, Epicurus would smile on you.

Thank you.