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Epicurus Today

Zoom of 26-01-04

Sunday January 4,2026 - Zoom Discussion 12:30 PM EST - Lucretius Discussion - Book 1:102

Section titled “Sunday January 4,2026 - Zoom Discussion 12:30 PM EST - Lucretius Discussion - Book 1:102”

  1. Welcome and news / requests for new topics. We’ll continue to deal with individual topics as they occur. Just message me and we will set up an agenda each week that allows for new topics.

  2. Every session let’s try to cover questions like:

    1. Why was this section included?
    2. Why was this section included at this point in the presentation?
    3. What are the major points Lucretius is making?
    4. What are the significant implications of these points?

  3. This week we will continue further into Lucretius starting at line 102.

  4. Raphael’s post with video - consciousness

  5. Epicurus differentiated himself from Democritus and said that reality exists on both atomic and emergent levels. Book 25 of On Nature.

    1-102

    Section titled “1-102”

You yourself sometime vanquished by the fearsome threats of the seer’s sayings, will seek to desert from us. Nay indeed, how many a dream may they even now conjure up before you, which might avail to overthrow your schemes of life, and confound in fear all your fortunes.

And justly so: for if men could see that there is a fixed limit to their sorrows, then with some reason they might have the strength to stand against the scruples of religion, and the threats of seers. As it is there is no means, no power to withstand, since everlasting is the punishment they must fear in death. For they know not what is the nature of the soul, whether it is born or else finds its way into them at their birth, and again whether it is torn apart by death and perishes with us, or goes to see the shades of Orcus and his waste pools, or by the gods’ will implants itself in other breasts, as our own Ennius sang, who first bore down from pleasant Helicon the wreath of deathless leaves, to win bright fame among the tribes of Italian peoples. And yet despite this, Ennius sets forth in the discourse of his immortal verse that there is besides a realm of Acheron, where neither our souls nor bodies endure, but as it were images pale in wondrous wise; and thence he tells that the form of Homer, ever green and fresh, rose to him, and began to shed salt tears, and in converse to reveal the nature of things.

Notes: