1. Hesiod, Theogony, 116 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureanism
Found in books: Bremmer (2008), Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East, 7; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 56
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116 ἦ τοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετʼ, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα'' None | sup>
116 A pleasing song and laud the company'' None |
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2. Herodotus, Histories, 1.44.2 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 237; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 237
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1.44.2 and in his great and terrible grief at this mischance he called on Zeus by three names—Zeus the Purifier, Zeus of the Hearth, Zeus of Comrades: the first, because he wanted the god to know what evil his guest had done him; the second, because he had received the guest into his house and thus unwittingly entertained the murderer of his son; and the third, because he had found his worst enemy in the man whom he had sent as a protector. '' None |
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3. Plato, Phaedo, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 9, 13; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 9, 13
| 118a ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἔφη. ΦΑΙΔ. καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο αὖθις τὰς κνήμας: καὶ ἐπανιὼν οὕτως ἡμῖν ἐπεδείκνυτο ὅτι ψύχοιτό τε καὶ πήγνυτο. καὶ αὐτὸς ἥπτετο καὶ εἶπεν ὅτι, ἐπειδὰν πρὸς τῇ καρδίᾳ γένηται αὐτῷ, τότε οἰχήσεται. unit="para"/ἤδη οὖν σχεδόν τι αὐτοῦ ἦν τὰ περὶ τὸ ἦτρον ψυχόμενα, καὶ ἐκκαλυψάμενος — ἐνεκεκάλυπτο γάρ — εἶπεν — ὃ δὴ τελευταῖον ἐφθέγξατο — ὦ Κρίτων, ἔφη, τῷ Ἀσκληπιῷ ὀφείλομεν ἀλεκτρυόνα: ἀλλὰ ἀπόδοτε καὶ μὴ ἀμελήσητε. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα, ἔφη, ἔσται, ὁ Κρίτων : ἀλλ᾽ ὅρα εἴ τι ἄλλο λέγεις. ταῦτα ἐρομένου αὐτοῦ οὐδὲν ἔτι ἀπεκρίνατο, ἀλλ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον διαλιπὼν ἐκινήθη τε καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐξεκάλυψεν αὐτόν, καὶ ὃς τὰ ὄμματα ἔστησεν: ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Κρίτων συνέλαβε τὸ στόμα καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς. ἥδε ἡ τελευτή, ὦ Ἐχέκρατες, τοῦ ἑταίρου ἡμῖν ἐγένετο, ἀνδρός, ὡς ἡμεῖς φαῖμεν ἄν, τῶν τότε ὧν ἐπειράθημεν ἀρίστου καὶ ἄλλως φρονιμωτάτου καὶ δικαιοτάτου.' ' None | 118a his thighs; and passing upwards in this way he showed us that he was growing cold and rigid. And again he touched him and said that when it reached his heart, he would be gone. The chill had now reached the region about the groin, and uncovering his face, which had been covered, he said—and these were his last words— Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Pay it and do not neglect it. That, said Crito, shall be done; but see if you have anything else to say. To this question he made no reply, but after a little while he moved; the attendant uncovered him; his eyes were fixed. And Crito when he saw it, closed his mouth and eyes.Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, who was, as we may say, of all those of his time whom we have known, the best and wisest and most righteous man.' ' None |
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4. Xenophon, Memoirs, 1.4.2, 1.4.4-1.4.18 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus and Epicureanism • Epicurus, and prayer • Epicurus, divination, rejection of • Epicurus, gods of • Epicurus, on charis • Epicurus, on sacrifices • divination, Epicurus on • prayers, Epicurus on • sacrifices, Epicurus on
Found in books: Mikalson (2010), Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, 44, 59, 110, 230; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 45
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1.4.2 λέξω δὲ πρῶτον ἅ ποτε αὐτοῦ ἤκουσα περὶ τοῦ δαιμονίου διαλεγομένου πρὸς Ἀριστόδημον τὸν μικρὸν ἐπικαλούμενον. καταμαθὼν γὰρ αὐτὸν οὔτε θύοντα τοῖς θεοῖς οὔτε μαντικῇ χρώμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ποιούντων ταῦτα καταγελῶντα, εἰπέ μοι, ἔφη, ὦ Ἀριστόδημε, ἔστιν οὕστινας ἀνθρώπους τεθαύμακας ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ; ἔγωγʼ, ἔφη.
1.4.4 πότερά σοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ ἀπεργαζόμενοι εἴδωλα ἄφρονά τε καὶ ἀκίνητα ἀξιοθαυμαστότεροι εἶναι ἢ οἱ ζῷα ἔμφρονά τε καὶ ἐνεργά; πολὺ νὴ Δία οἱ ζῷα, εἴπερ γε μὴ τύχῃ τινί, ἀλλʼ ὑπὸ γνώμης ταῦτα γίγνεται. τῶν δὲ ἀτεκμάρτως ἐχόντων ὅτου ἕνεκα ἔστι καὶ τῶν φανερῶς ἐπʼ ὠφελείᾳ ὄντων πότερα τύχης καὶ πότερα γνώμης ἔργα κρίνεις; πρέπει μὲν τὰ ἐπʼ ὠφελείᾳ γιγνόμενα γνώμης εἶναι ἔργα. 1.4.5 οὐκοῦν δοκεῖ σοι ὁ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ποιῶν ἀνθρώπους ἐπʼ ὠφελείᾳ προσθεῖναι αὐτοῖς διʼ ὧν αἰσθάνονται ἕκαστα, ὀφθαλμοὺς μὲν ὥσθʼ ὁρᾶν τὰ ὁρατά, ὦτα δὲ ὥστʼ ἀκούειν τὰ ἀκουστά; ὀσμῶν γε μήν, εἰ μὴ ῥῖνες προσετέθησαν, τί ἂν ἡμῖν ὄφελος ἦν; τίς δʼ ἂν αἴσθησις ἦν γλυκέων καὶ δριμέων καὶ πάντων τῶν διὰ στόματος ἡδέων, εἰ μὴ γλῶττα τούτων γνώμων ἐνειργάσθη; 1.4.6 πρὸς δὲ τούτοις οὐ δοκεῖ σοι καὶ τάδε προνοίας ἔργοις ἐοικέναι, τὸ ἐπεὶ ἀσθενὴς μέν ἐστιν ἡ ὄψις, βλεφάροις αὐτὴν θυρῶσαι, ἅ, ὅταν μὲν αὐτῇ χρῆσθαί τι δέῃ, ἀναπετάννυται, ἐν δὲ τῷ ὕπνῳ συγκλείεται, ὡς δʼ ἂν μηδὲ ἄνεμοι βλάπτωσιν, ἡθμὸν βλεφαρίδας ἐμφῦσαι, ὀφρύσι τε ἀπογεισῶσαι τὰ ὑπὲρ τῶν ὀμμάτων, ὡς μηδʼ ὁ ἐκ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἱδρὼς κακουργῇ· τὸ δὲ τὴν ἀκοὴν δέχεσθαι μὲν πάσας φωνάς, ἐμπίμπλασθαι δὲ μήποτε· καὶ τοὺς μὲν πρόσθεν ὀδόντας πᾶσι ζῴοις οἵους τέμνειν εἶναι, τοὺς δὲ γομφίους οἵους παρὰ τούτων δεξαμένους λεαίνειν· καὶ στόμα μέν, διʼ οὗ ὧν ἐπιθυμεῖ τὰ ζῷα εἰσπέμπεται, πλησίον ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ ῥινῶν καταθεῖναι· ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ ἀποχωροῦντα δυσχερῆ, ἀποστρέψαι τοὺς τούτων ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀπενεγκεῖν ᾗ δυνατὸν προσωτάτω ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθήσεων· ταῦτα οὕτω προνοητικῶς πεπραγμένα ἀπορεῖς πότερα τύχης ἢ γνώμης ἔργα ἐστίν; 1.4.7 οὐ μὰ τὸν Δίʼ, ἔφη, ἀλλʼ οὕτω γε σκοπουμένῳ πάνυ ἔοικε ταῦτα σοφοῦ τινος δημιουργοῦ καὶ φιλοζῴου τεχνήμασι. τὸ δὲ ἐμφῦσαι μὲν ἔρωτα τῆς τεκνοποιίας, ἐμφῦσαι δὲ ταῖς γειναμέναις ἔρωτα τοῦ ἐκτρέφειν, τοῖς δὲ τραφεῖσι μέγιστον μὲν πόθον τοῦ ζῆν, μέγιστον δὲ φόβον τοῦ θανάτου; ἀμέλει καὶ ταῦτα ἔοικε μηχανήμασί τινος ζῷα εἶναι βουλευσαμένου. 1.4.8 σὺ δὲ σαυτῷ δοκεῖς τι φρόνιμον ἔχειν; ἐρώτα γοῦν καὶ ἀποκρινοῦμαι. ἄλλοθι δὲ οὐδαμοῦ οὐδὲν οἴει φρόνιμον εἶναι; καὶ ταῦτʼ εἰδὼς ὅτι γῆς τε μικρὸν μέρος ἐν τῷ σώματι πολλῆς οὔσης ἔχεις καὶ ὑγροῦ βραχὺ πολλοῦ ὄντος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δήπου μεγάλων ὄντων ἑκάστου μικρὸν μέρος λαβόντι τὸ σῶμα συνήρμοσταί σοι· νοῦν δὲ μόνον ἄρα οὐδαμοῦ ὄντα σε εὐτυχῶς πως δοκεῖς συναρπάσαι, καὶ τάδε τὰ ὑπερμεγέθη καὶ πλῆθος ἄπειρα διʼ ἀφροσύνην τινά, ὡς οἴει, εὐτάκτως ἔχειν; 1.4.9 μὰ Δίʼ οὐ γὰρ ὁρῶ τοὺς κυρίους, ὥσπερ τῶν ἐνθάδε γιγνομένων τοὺς δημιουργούς. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὴν σαυτοῦ σύγε ψυχὴν ὁρᾷς, ἣ τοῦ σώματος κυρία ἐστίν· ὥστε κατά γε τοῦτο ἔξεστί σοι λέγειν, ὅτι οὐδὲν γνώμῃ, ἀλλὰ τύχῃ πάντα πράττεις. 1.4.10 καὶ ὁ Ἀριστόδημος, οὔτοι, ἔφη, ἐγώ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὑπερορῶ τὸ δαιμόνιον, ἀλλʼ ἐκεῖνο μεγαλοπρεπέστερον ἡγοῦμαι ἢ ὡς τῆς ἐμῆς θεραπείας προσδεῖσθαι. οὐκοῦν, ἔφη, ὅσῳ μεγαλοπρεπέστερον ὂν ἀξιοῖ σε θεραπεύειν, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον τιμητέον αὐτό. 1.4.11 εὖ ἴσθι, ἔφη, ὅτι, εἰ νομίζοιμι θεοὺς ἀνθρώπων τι φροντίζειν, οὐκ ἂν ἀμελοίην αὐτῶν. ἔπειτʼ οὐκ οἴει φροντίζειν; οἳ πρῶτον μὲν μόνον τῶν ζῴων ἄνθρωπον ὀρθὸν ἀνέστησαν· ἡ δὲ ὀρθότης καὶ προορᾶν πλέον ποιεῖ δύνασθαι καὶ τὰ ὕπερθεν μᾶλλον θεᾶσθαι καὶ ἧττον κακοπαθεῖν καὶ ὄψιν καὶ ἀκοὴν καὶ στόμα ἐνεποίησαν· ἔπειτα τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἑρπετοῖς πόδας ἔδωκαν, οἳ τὸ πορεύεσθαι μόνον παρέχουσιν, ἀνθρώπῳ δὲ καὶ χεῖρας προσέθεσαν, αἳ τὰ πλεῖστα οἷς εὐδαιμονέστεροι ἐκείνων ἐσμὲν ἐξεργάζονται. 1.4.12 καὶ μὴν γλῶττάν γε πάντων τῶν ζῴων ἐχόντων, μόνην τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησαν οἵαν ἄλλοτε ἀλλαχῇ ψαύουσαν τοῦ στόματος ἀρθροῦν τε τὴν φωνὴν καὶ σημαίνειν πάντα ἀλλήλοις ἃ βουλόμεθα. τὸ δὲ καὶ τὰς τῶν ἀφροδισίων ἡδονὰς τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ζῴοις δοῦναι περιγράψαντας τοῦ ἔτους χρόνον, ἡμῖν δὲ συνεχῶς μέχρι γήρως ταῦτα παρέχειν. 1.4.13 οὐ τοίνυν μόνον ἤρκεσε τῷ θεῷ τοῦ σώματος ἐπιμεληθῆναι, ἀλλʼ, ὅπερ μέγιστόν ἐστι, καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν κρατίστην τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐνέφυσε. τίνος γὰρ ἄλλου ζῴου ψυχὴ πρῶτα μὲν θεῶν τῶν τὰ μέγιστα καὶ κάλλιστα συνταξάντων ᾔσθηται ὅτι εἰσί; τί δὲ φῦλον ἄλλο ἢ ἄνθρωποι θεοὺς θεραπεύουσι; ποία δὲ ψυχὴ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἱκανωτέρα προφυλάττεσθαι ἢ λιμὸν ἢ δίψος ἢ ψύχη ἢ θάλπη, ἢ νόσοις ἐπικουρῆσαι, ἢ ῥώμην ἀσκῆσαι, ἢ πρὸς μάθησιν ἐκπονῆσαι, ἢ ὅσα ἂν ἀκούσῃ ἢ ἴδῃ ἢ μάθῃ ἱκανωτέρα ἐστὶ διαμεμνῆσθαι; 1.4.14 οὐ γὰρ πάνυ σοι κατάδηλον ὅτι παρὰ τἆλλα ζῷα ὥσπερ θεοὶ ἄνθρωποι βιοτεύουσι, φύσει καὶ τῷ σώματι καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ κρατιστεύοντες; οὔτε γὰρ βοὸς ἂν ἔχων σῶμα, ἀνθρώπου δὲ γνώμην ἐδύνατʼ ἂν πράττειν ἃ ἐβούλετο, οὔθʼ ὅσα χεῖρας ἔχει, ἄφρονα δʼ ἐστί, πλέον οὐδὲν ἔχει. σὺ δʼ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν πλείστου ἀξίων τετυχηκὼς οὐκ οἴει σοῦ θεοὺς ἐπιμελεῖσθαι; ἀλλʼ ὅταν τί ποιήσωσι, νομιεῖς αὐτοὺς σοῦ φροντίζειν; 1.4.15 ὅταν πέμπωσιν, ὥσπερ σὺ φὴς πέμπειν αὐτούς, συμβούλους ὅ τι χρὴ ποιεῖν καὶ μὴ ποιεῖν. ὅταν δὲ Ἀθηναίοις, ἔφη, πυνθανομένοις τι διὰ μαντικῆς φράζωσιν, οὐ καὶ σοὶ δοκεῖς φράζειν αὐτούς, οὐδʼ ὅταν τοῖς Ἕλλησι τέρατα πέμποντες προσημαίνωσιν, οὐδʼ ὅταν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ἀλλὰ μόνον σὲ ἐξαιροῦντες ἐν ἀμελείᾳ κατατίθενται; 1.4.16 οἴει δʼ ἂν τοὺς θεοὺς τοῖς ἀνθρώποις δόξαν ἐμφῦσαι ὡς ἱκανοί εἰσιν εὖ καὶ κακῶς ποιεῖν, εἰ μὴ δυνατοὶ ἦσαν, καὶ ἀνθρώπους ἐξαπατωμένους τὸν πάντα χρόνον οὐδέποτʼ ἂν αἰσθέσθαι; οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὅτι τὰ πολυχρονιώτατα καὶ σοφώτατα τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, πόλεις καὶ ἔθνη, θεοσεβέστατά ἐστι, καὶ αἱ φρονιμώταται ἡλικίαι θεῶν ἐπιμελέσταται; 1.4.17 ὠγαθέ, ἔφη, κατάμαθε ὅτι καὶ ὁ σὸς νοῦς ἐνὼν τὸ σὸν σῶμα ὅπως βούλεται μεταχειρίζεται. οἴεσθαι οὖν χρὴ καὶ τὴν ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησιν τὰ πάντα, ὅπως ἂν αὐτῇ ἡδὺ ᾖ, οὕτω τίθεσθαι, καὶ μὴ τὸ σὸν μὲν ὄμμα δύνασθαι ἐπὶ πολλὰ στάδια ἐξικνεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ ὀφθαλμὸν ἀδύνατον εἶναι ἅμα πάντα ὁρᾶν, μηδὲ τὴν σὴν μὲν ψυχὴν καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ ἐν Σικελίᾳ δύνασθαι φροντίζειν, τὴν δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ φρόνησιν μὴ ἱκανὴν εἶναι ἅμα πάντων ἐπιμελεῖσθαι. 1.4.18 ἂν μέντοι, ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπους θεραπεύων γιγνώσκεις τοὺς ἀντιθεραπεύειν ἐθέλοντας καὶ χαριζόμενος τοὺς ἀντιχαριζομένους καὶ συμβουλευόμενος καταμανθάνεις τοὺς φρονίμους, οὕτω καὶ τῶν θεῶν πεῖραν λαμβάνῃς θεραπεύων, εἴ τί σοι θελήσουσι περὶ τῶν ἀδήλων ἀνθρώποις συμβουλεύειν, γνώσει τὸ θεῖον ὅτι τοσοῦτον καὶ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν ὥσθʼ ἅμα πάντα ὁρᾶν καὶ πάντα ἀκούειν καὶ πανταχοῦ παρεῖναι καὶ ἅμα πάντων ἐπιμελεῖσθαι αὐτούς .'' 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1.4.2 I will first state what I once heard him say about the godhead in conversation with Aristodemus the dwarf, as he was called. On learning that he was not known to sacrifice or pray or use divination, and actually made a mock of those who did so, he said: Tell me, Aristodemus, do you admire any human beings for wisdom? I do, he answered.
1.4.4 Which, think you, deserve the greater admiration, the creators of phantoms without sense and motion, or the creators of living, intelligent, and active beings? Oh, of living beings, by far, provided only they are created by design and not mere chance. Suppose that it is impossible to guess the purpose of one creature’s existence, and obvious that another’s serves a useful end, which, in your judgment, is the work of chance, and which of design? Presumably the creature that serves some useful end is the work of design. 1.4.5 Do you not think then that he who created man from the beginning had some useful end in view when he endowed him with his several senses, giving eyes to see visible objects, ears to hear sounds? Would odours again be of any use to us had we not been endowed with nostrils? What perception should we have of sweet and bitter and all things pleasant to the palate had we no tongue in our mouth to discriminate between them? 1.4.6 Besides these, are there not other contrivances that look like the results of forethought? Thus the eyeballs, being weak, are set behind eyelids, that open like doors when we want to see, and close when we sleep: on the lids grow lashes through which the very winds filter harmlessly: above the eyes is a coping of brows that lets no drop of sweat from the head hurt them. The ears catch all sounds, but are never choked with them. Again, the incisors of all creatures are adapted for cutting, the molars for receiving food from them and grinding it. And again, the mouth, through which the food they want goes in, is set near the eyes and nostrils; but since what goes out is unpleasant, the ducts through which it passes are turned away and removed as far as possible from the organs of sense. With such signs of forethought in these arrangements, can you doubt whether they are the works of chance or design? No, of course not. 1.4.7 When I regard them in this light they do look very like the handiwork of a wise and loving creator. What of the natural desire to beget children, the mother’s desire to rear her babe, the child’s strong will to live and strong fear of death? Undoubtedly these, too, look like the contrivances of one who deliberately willed the existence of living creatures. 1.4.8 Do you think you have any wisdom yourself? Oh! Ask me a question and judge from my answer. And do you suppose that wisdom is nowhere else to be found, although you know that you have a mere speck of all the earth in your body and a mere drop of all the water, and that of all the other mighty elements you received, I suppose, just a scrap towards the fashioning of your body? But as for mind, which alone, it seems, is without mass, do you think that you snapped it up by a lucky accident, and that the orderly ranks of all these huge masses, infinite in number, are due, forsooth, to a sort of absurdity? 1.4.9 Yes; for I don’t see the master hand, whereas I see the makers of things in this world. Neither do you see your own soul, Cyropaedia VIII. Vii. 17. which has the mastery of the body; so that, as far as that goes, you may say that you do nothing by design, but everything by chance. Here Aristodemus exclaimed: 1.4.10 Really, Socrates, I don’t despise the godhead. But I think it is too great to need my service. Then the greater the power that deigns to serve you, the more honour it demands of you. 1.4.11 I assure you, that if I believed that the gods pay any heed to man, I would not neglect them. Then do you think them unheeding? In the first place, man is the only living creature that they have caused to stand upright; and the upright position gives him a wider range of vision in front and a better view of things above, and exposes him less to injury. Secondly, to grovelling creatures they have given feet that afford only the power of moving, whereas they have endowed man with hands, which are the instruments to which we chiefly owe our greater happiness. 1.4.12 Again, though all creatures have a tongue, the tongue of man alone has been formed by them to be capable of contact with different parts of the mouth, so as to enable us to articulate the voice and express all our wants to one another. Once more, for all other creatures they have prescribed a fixed season of sexual indulgence; in our case the only time limit they have set is old age. 1.4.13 Nor was the deity content to care for man’s body. What is of yet higher moment, he has implanted in him the noblest type of soul. For in the first place what other creature’s soul has apprehended the existence of gods who set in order the universe, greatest and fairest of things? And what race of living things other than man worships gods? And what soul is more apt than man’s to make provision against hunger and thirst, cold and heat, to relieve sickness and promote health, to acquire knowledge by toil, and to remember accurately all that is heard, seen, or learned? 1.4.14 For is it not obvious to you that, in comparison with the other animals, men live like gods, by nature peerless both in body and in soul? For with a man’s reason and the body of an ox we could not carry out our wishes, and the possession of hands without reason is of little worth. Do you, then, having received the two most precious gifts, yet think that the gods take no care of you? What are they to do, to make you believe that they are heedful of you? 1.4.15 I will believe when they send counsellors, as you declare they do, saying, Do this, avoid that. But when the Athenians inquire of them by divination and they reply, do you not suppose that to you, too, the answer is given? Or when they send portents for warning to the Greeks, or to all the world? Are you their one exception, the only one consigned to neglect? 1.4.16 Or do you suppose that the gods would have put into man a belief in their ability to help and harm, if they had not that power; and that man throughout the ages would never have detected the fraud? Do you not see that the wisest and most enduring of human institutions, cities and nations, are most god-fearing, and that the most thoughtful period of life is the most religious? 1.4.17 Be well assured, my good friend, that the mind within you directs your body according to its will; and equally you must think that Thought indwelling in the Universal disposes all things according to its pleasure. For think not that your eye can travel over many furlongs and yet god’s eye cannot see the the whole world at once; that your soul can ponder on things in Egypt and in Sicily, and god’s thought is not sufficient to pay heed to the whole world at once. 1.4.18 Nay, but just as by serving men you find out who is willing to serve you in return, by being kind who will be kind to you in return, and by taking counsel, discover the masters of thought, so try the gods by serving them, and see whether they will vouchsafe to counsel you in matters hidden from man. Then you will know that such is the greatness and such the nature of the deity that he sees all things Cyropaedia VIII. vii. 22. and hears all things alike, and is present in all places and heedful of all things. '' None |
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5. None, None, nan (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, as model
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 71; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 7
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6. None, None, nan (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus (and Epicurean)
Found in books: Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 30; Keith and Myers (2023), Vergil and Elegy. 7
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7. None, None, nan (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • deification, of Epicurus
Found in books: Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 36; Xinyue (2022), Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry, 93
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8. None, None, nan (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Sex natural but necessary and tends to harm • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, Wise will marry only in special circumstances • Love, Against erotic love, Antisthenes, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aristippus, Cynics, Epictetus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life
Found in books: Huffman (2019), A History of Pythagoreanism, 198; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 201, 283
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9. Cicero, On Divination, 1.3.5-1.3.6, 2.40, 2.137 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus and Epicureanism • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, divination, rejection of • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • divination, Epicurus on
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 230, 233; Mikalson (2010), Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, 110, 111, 124; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 104, 105; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 230, 233
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2.137 Quem enim tu Marium visum a me putas? Speciem, credo, eius et imaginem, ut Democrito videtur. Unde profectam imaginem? a corporibus enim solidis et a certis figuris vult fluere imagines; quod igitur Marii corpus erat? Ex eo, inquit, quod fuerat. Ista igitur me imago Marii in campum Atinatem persequebatur?—Plena sunt imaginum omnia; nulla enim species cogitari potest nisi pulsu imaginum.' ' None | sup>
1.3.5 And, indeed, what colony did Greece ever send into Aeolia, Ionia, Asia, Sicily, or Italy without consulting the Pythian or Dodonian oracle, or that of Jupiter Hammon? Or what war did she ever undertake without first seeking the counsel of the gods? 2 Nor is it only one single mode of divination that has been employed in public and in private. For, to say nothing of other nations, how many our own people have embraced! In the first place, according to tradition, Romulus, the father of this City, not only founded it in obedience to the auspices, but was himself a most skilful augur. Next, the other Roman kings employed augurs; and, again, after the expulsion of the kings, no public business was ever transacted at home or abroad without first taking the auspices. Furthermore, since our forefathers believed that the soothsayers art had great efficacy in seeking for omens and advice, as well as in cases where prodigies were to be interpreted and their effects averted, they gradually introduced that art in its entirety from Etruria, lest it should appear that any kind of divination had been disregarded by them.
1.3.5 Therefore Ateius, by his announcement, did not create the cause of the disaster; but having observed the sign he simply advised Crassus what the result would be if the warning was ignored. It follows, then, that the announcement by Ateius of the unfavourable augury had no effect; or if it did, as Appius thinks, then the sin is not in him who gave the warning, but in him who disregarded it.17 And whence, pray, did you augurs derive that staff, which is the most conspicuous mark of your priestly office? It is the very one, indeed with which Romulus marked out the quarter for taking observations when he founded the city. Now this staffe is a crooked wand, slightly curved at the top, and, because of its resemblance to a trumpet, derives its name from the Latin word meaning the trumpet with which the battle-charge is sounded. It was placed in the temple of the Salii on the Palatine hill and, though the temple was burned, the staff was found uninjured.
2.137 Now what Marius do you think it was I saw? His likeness or phantom, I suppose — at least that is what Democritus thinks. Whence did the phantom come? He would have it that phantoms emanate from material bodies and from actual forms. Then, it was the body of Marius from which my phantom came? No, says Democritus, but from his body that was. So that phantom of Marius was pursuing me to the plains of Atina? Oh, but the universe is full of phantoms; no picture of anything can be formed in the mind except as the result of the impact of phantoms. ' ' None |
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10. Cicero, De Finibus, 1.29, 1.37, 2.9, 2.75, 2.96, 5.1.3, 5.2.4-5.2.5, 5.17 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Memory of past, value of • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 471; Konig and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 215, 216; König and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 215, 216; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 187; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 96; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 165, 201, 233; Tsouni (2019), Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics, 61, 62; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Wolfsdorf (2020), Early Greek Ethics, 407
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2.9 \xa0"He thinks that pleasure is not desirable in itself." "Then in his opinion to feel pleasure is a different thing from not feeling pain?" "Yes," he said, "and there he is seriously mistaken, since, as I\xa0have just shown, the complete removal of pain is the limit of the increase of pleasure." "Oh," I\xa0said, "as for the formula \'freedom from pain,\' I\xa0will consider its meaning later on; but unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that \'freedom from pain\' does not mean the same as \'pleasure.\'\xa0" "Well, but on this point you will find me obstinate," said he; "for it is as true as any proposition can be." "Pray," said\xa0I, "when a man is thirsty, is there any pleasure in the act of drinking?" "That is undeniable," he answered. "Is it the same pleasure as the pleasure of having quenched one\'s thirst?" "No, it is a different kind of pleasure. For the pleasure of having quenched one\'s thirst is a \'static\' pleasure, but the pleasure of actually quenching it is a \'kinetic\' pleasure." "Why then," I\xa0asked, "do you call two such different things by the same name?" <
2.75 \xa0"But let us grant your position. The actual word \'pleasure\' has not a lofty sound; and perhaps we do not understand its significance: you are always repeating that we do not understand what you mean by pleasure. As though it were a difficult or recondite notion! If we understand you when you talk of \'indivisible atoms\' and \'cosmic interspaces,\' things that don\'t exist and never can exist, is our intelligence incapable of grasping the meaning of pleasure, a feeling known to every sparrow? What if I\xa0force you to admit that I\xa0do know not only what pleasure really is (it is an agreeable activity of the sense), but also what you mean by it? For at one moment you mean by it the feeling that I\xa0have just defined, and this you entitle \'kinetic\' pleasure, as producing a definite change of feeling, but at another moment you say it is quite a different feeling, which is the acme and climax of pleasure, but yet consists merely in the complete absence of pain; this you call \'static\' pleasure. <
2.96 \xa0"But I\xa0must not digress too far. Let me repeat the dying words of Epicurus, to prove to you the discrepancy between his practice and his principles: \'Epicurus to Hermarchus, greeting. I\xa0write these words,\' he says, \'on the happiest, and the last, day of my life. I\xa0am suffering from diseases of the bladder and intestines, which are of the utmost possible severity.\' Unhappy creature! If pain is the Chief Evil, that is the only thing to be said. But let us hear his own words. \'Yet all my sufferings,\' he continues, \'are counterbalanced by the joy which I\xa0derive from remembering my theories and discoveries. I\xa0charge you, by the devotion which from your youth up you have displayed towards myself and towards philosophy, to protect the children of Metrodorus.\' <' "
5.1.3 \xa0My dear Brutus, â\x80\x94 Once I\xa0had been attending a lecture of Antiochus, as I\xa0was in the habit of doing, with Marcus Piso, in the building called the School of Ptolemy; and with us were my brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and Lucius Cicero, whom I\xa0loved as a brother but who was really my first cousin. We arranged to take our afternoon stroll in the Academy, chiefly because the place would be quiet and deserted at that hour of the day. Accordingly at the time appointed we met at our rendezvous, Piso's lodgings, and starting out beguiled with conversation on various subjects the three-quarters of a\xa0mile from the Dipylon Gate. When we reached the walks of the Academy, which are so deservedly famous, we had them entirely to ourselves, as we had hoped. <" 5.2.4 \xa0Thereupon Piso remarked: "Whether it is a natural instinct or a mere illusion, I\xa0can\'t say; but one\'s emotions are more strongly aroused by seeing the places that tradition records to have been the favourite resort of men of note in former days, than by hearing about their deeds or reading their writings. My own feelings at the present moment are a case in point. I\xa0am reminded of Plato, the first philosopher, so we are told, that made a practice of holding discussions in this place; and indeed the garden close at hand yonder not only recalls his memory but seems to bring the actual man before my eyes. This was the haunt of Speusippus, of Xenocrates, and of Xenocrates\' pupil Polemo, who used to sit on the very seat we see over there. For my own part even the sight of our senate-house at home (I\xa0mean the Curia Hostilia, not the present new building, which looks to my eyes smaller since its enlargement) used to call up to me thoughts of Scipio, Cato, Laelius, and chief of all, my grandfather; such powers of suggestion do places possess. No wonder the scientific training of the memory is based upon locality." <
5.17 \xa0Now practically all have agreed that the subject with which Prudence is occupied and the end which it desires to attain is bound to be something intimately adapted to our nature; it must be capable of directly arousing and awakening an impulse of desire, what in Greek is called hormÄ\x93. But what it is that at the first moment of our existence excites in our nature this impulse of desire â\x80\x94 as to this there is no agreement. It is at this point that all the difference of opinion among students of the ethical problem arises. of the whole inquiry into the Ends of Goods and Evils and the question which among them is ultimate and final, the fountain-head is to be found in the earliest instincts of nature; discover these and you have the source of the stream, the starting-point of the debate as to the Chief Good and Evil. <' ' None |
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11. Cicero, On The Ends of Good And Evil, 1.29, 1.37, 1.42, 1.46-1.47, 1.49, 1.63, 1.66, 1.69, 1.71, 2.9, 2.75, 2.96, 5.1.3, 5.2.4-5.2.5, 5.3, 5.17 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Memory of past, value of • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, on friendship/patronage • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, theology • Epikouros (Epicurus) • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life • Pomponius Atticus, T., admires Epicurus
Found in books: Brenk and Lanzillotta (2023), Plutarch on Literature, Graeco-Roman Religion, Jews and Christians, 266; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 471; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 101; Konig and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 215, 216; König and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 215, 216; Liatsi (2021), Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature: Aspects of Ethical Reasoning from Homer to Aristotle and Beyond, 201; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 20, 187, 189; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 121, 129, 130, 139; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 8; Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 144; Rutledge (2012), Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting, 85; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 96; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 165, 201, 233; Tsouni (2019), Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics, 61, 62, 93; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Wolfsdorf (2020), Early Greek Ethics, 407; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 139, 164, 165
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2.9 Negat esse eam, inquit, propter se expetendam. Aliud igitur esse censet gaudere, aliud non dolere. Et quidem, inquit, vehementer errat; nam, ut paulo ante paulo ante I 37—39 docui, augendae voluptatis finis est doloris omnis amotio. Non Non cum non RN' tum non N 2 tum vero (~uo) V; tuum non dolere Lamb. dolere, inquam, istud quam vim habeat postea videro; aliam vero vim voluptatis esse, aliam nihil dolendi, nisi valde pertinax fueris, concedas necesse est. Atqui reperies, inquit, in hoc quidem pertinacem; dici enim nihil potest verius. Estne, quaeso, inquam, sitienti in bibendo voluptas? Quis istud possit, inquit, negare? Eademne, quae restincta siti? Immo alio genere; restincta enim sitis enim om. RN (siti immo alio genere restincta enim om. V) stabilitatem voluptatis habet, inquit, inquit om. BE illa autem voluptas ipsius restinctionis in motu est. Cur igitur, inquam, res tam dissimiles dissimiles ( etiam A 2 ) difficiles A 1 eodem nomine appellas? Quid paulo ante, paulo ante p. 17, 17 sqq. inquit, dixerim nonne meministi, cum omnis dolor detractus esset, variari, non augeri voluptatem?" "
2.75 Verum esto: verbum ipsum voluptatis non habet dignitatem, nec nos fortasse intellegimus. hoc enim identidem dicitis, non intellegere nos quam dicatis voluptatem. rem videlicet videlicet P. Man. vides difficilem et obscuram! individua cum dicitis et intermundia, quae nec sunt ulla nec possunt esse, intellegimus, voluptas, quae passeribus omnibus nota est, nota est omnibus A a nobis intellegi non potest? quid, si efficio ut fateare me non modo quid sit voluptas scire—est enim iucundus motus in sensu—, sed etiam quid eam tu velis velis tu eam BE esse? tum enim eam ipsam vis, quam modo ego dixi, dixi ego BE et nomen inponis, in motu ut sit et faciat aliquam varietatem, tum aliam quandam summam voluptatem, quo quo ARN qua BE cui V Mdv. ('quo et qua orta puto ex quoi') addi nihil possit; eam tum adesse, cum dolor omnis absit; eam stabilem appellas." "
2.96 Audi, ne longe abeam, moriens quid dicat Epicurus, ut intellegas intellegas (intellig.) BEA 2 intellegat A 1 intelligat R intelligantur N intelligatur V facta eius cum dictis discrepare: 'Epicurus Hermarcho salutem. Cum ageremus', inquit, vitae beatum et eundem supremum diem, scribebamus haec. tanti autem autem om. A aderant aderant om. BE vesicae et torminum morbi, ut nihil ad eorum magnitudinem posset accedere. Miserum hominem! Si dolor summum malum est, dici aliter non potest. sed audiamus ipsum: 'Compensabatur', inquit, tamen cum his omnibus animi laetitia, quam capiebam memoria rationum inventorumque nostrorum. sed tu, ut dignum est tua erga me et philosophiam me et philosophiam Bai. me (ne R) et philosophia A 1 RN me philosophia BE me et philosophia et A 2 V voluntate ab adolescentulo suscepta, fac ut Metrodori tueare liberos." 5.3 Tum Quintus: Est plane, Piso, ut dicis, inquit. nam me ipsum huc modo venientem convertebat ad sese Coloneus ille locus, locus lucus Valckenarius ad Callimach. p. 216 cf. Va. II p. 545 sqq. cuius incola Sophocles ob oculos versabatur, quem scis quam admirer quamque eo delecter. me quidem ad altiorem memoriam Oedipodis huc venientis et illo mollissimo carmine quaenam essent ipsa haec hec ipsa BE loca requirentis species quaedam commovit, iiter scilicet, sed commovit tamen. Tum Pomponius: At ego, quem vos ut deditum Epicuro insectari soletis, sum multum equidem cum Phaedro, quem unice diligo, ut scitis, in Epicuri hortis, quos modo praeteribamus, praeteribamus edd. praeteriebamus sed veteris proverbii admonitu vivorum memini, nec tamen Epicuri epicureum Non. licet oblivisci, si cupiam, cuius imaginem non modo in tabulis nostri familiares, sed etiam in poculis et in anulis nec tamen ... anulis habent Non. p. 70 anulis anellis Non. anelis R ambus anulis V habent. habebant Non.
5.17 constitit autem fere inter omnes id, in quo prudentia versaretur et quod assequi vellet, aptum et accommodatum naturae esse oportere et tale, ut ipsum per se invitaret et alliceret appetitum animi, quem o(rmh\\n o(rmh/n bonū R Graeci vocant. quid autem sit, quod ita moveat itaque a natura in primo ortu appetatur, non constat, deque eo est inter philosophos, cum summum bonum exquiritur, omnis dissensio. totius enim quaestionis eius, quae habetur de finibus bonorum et malorum, cum quaeritur, in his quid sit extremum et ultimum, et quid ultimum BE fons reperiendus est, in quo sint prima invitamenta naturae; quo invento omnis ab eo quasi capite de summo bono et malo disputatio ducitur. Voluptatis alii primum appetitum putant et primam depulsionem doloris. vacuitatem doloris alii censent primum ascitam ascitam cod. Glogav., Mdv. ; ascitum RV as|scitum N assertum BE et primum declinatum dolorem.'" None | sup>
2.9 \xa0"He thinks that pleasure is not desirable in itself." "Then in his opinion to feel pleasure is a different thing from not feeling pain?" "Yes," he said, "and there he is seriously mistaken, since, as I\xa0have just shown, the complete removal of pain is the limit of the increase of pleasure." "Oh," I\xa0said, "as for the formula \'freedom from pain,\' I\xa0will consider its meaning later on; but unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that \'freedom from pain\' does not mean the same as \'pleasure.\'\xa0" "Well, but on this point you will find me obstinate," said he; "for it is as true as any proposition can be." "Pray," said\xa0I, "when a man is thirsty, is there any pleasure in the act of drinking?" "That is undeniable," he answered. "Is it the same pleasure as the pleasure of having quenched one\'s thirst?" "No, it is a different kind of pleasure. For the pleasure of having quenched one\'s thirst is a \'static\' pleasure, but the pleasure of actually quenching it is a \'kinetic\' pleasure." "Why then," I\xa0asked, "do you call two such different things by the same name?" <
2.75 \xa0"But let us grant your position. The actual word \'pleasure\' has not a lofty sound; and perhaps we do not understand its significance: you are always repeating that we do not understand what you mean by pleasure. As though it were a difficult or recondite notion! If we understand you when you talk of \'indivisible atoms\' and \'cosmic interspaces,\' things that don\'t exist and never can exist, is our intelligence incapable of grasping the meaning of pleasure, a feeling known to every sparrow? What if I\xa0force you to admit that I\xa0do know not only what pleasure really is (it is an agreeable activity of the sense), but also what you mean by it? For at one moment you mean by it the feeling that I\xa0have just defined, and this you entitle \'kinetic\' pleasure, as producing a definite change of feeling, but at another moment you say it is quite a different feeling, which is the acme and climax of pleasure, but yet consists merely in the complete absence of pain; this you call \'static\' pleasure. <
2.96 \xa0"But I\xa0must not digress too far. Let me repeat the dying words of Epicurus, to prove to you the discrepancy between his practice and his principles: \'Epicurus to Hermarchus, greeting. I\xa0write these words,\' he says, \'on the happiest, and the last, day of my life. I\xa0am suffering from diseases of the bladder and intestines, which are of the utmost possible severity.\' Unhappy creature! If pain is the Chief Evil, that is the only thing to be said. But let us hear his own words. \'Yet all my sufferings,\' he continues, \'are counterbalanced by the joy which I\xa0derive from remembering my theories and discoveries. I\xa0charge you, by the devotion which from your youth up you have displayed towards myself and towards philosophy, to protect the children of Metrodorus.\' <' "
5.1.3 \xa0My dear Brutus, â\x80\x94 Once I\xa0had been attending a lecture of Antiochus, as I\xa0was in the habit of doing, with Marcus Piso, in the building called the School of Ptolemy; and with us were my brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and Lucius Cicero, whom I\xa0loved as a brother but who was really my first cousin. We arranged to take our afternoon stroll in the Academy, chiefly because the place would be quiet and deserted at that hour of the day. Accordingly at the time appointed we met at our rendezvous, Piso's lodgings, and starting out beguiled with conversation on various subjects the three-quarters of a\xa0mile from the Dipylon Gate. When we reached the walks of the Academy, which are so deservedly famous, we had them entirely to ourselves, as we had hoped. <" 5.2.4 \xa0Thereupon Piso remarked: "Whether it is a natural instinct or a mere illusion, I\xa0can\'t say; but one\'s emotions are more strongly aroused by seeing the places that tradition records to have been the favourite resort of men of note in former days, than by hearing about their deeds or reading their writings. My own feelings at the present moment are a case in point. I\xa0am reminded of Plato, the first philosopher, so we are told, that made a practice of holding discussions in this place; and indeed the garden close at hand yonder not only recalls his memory but seems to bring the actual man before my eyes. This was the haunt of Speusippus, of Xenocrates, and of Xenocrates\' pupil Polemo, who used to sit on the very seat we see over there. For my own part even the sight of our senate-house at home (I\xa0mean the Curia Hostilia, not the present new building, which looks to my eyes smaller since its enlargement) used to call up to me thoughts of Scipio, Cato, Laelius, and chief of all, my grandfather; such powers of suggestion do places possess. No wonder the scientific training of the memory is based upon locality." <
5.3 \xa0"Perfectly true, Piso," rejoined Quintus. "I\xa0myself on the way here just now noticed yonder village of Colonus, and it brought to my imagination Sophocles who resided there, and who is as you know my great admiration and delight. Indeed my memory took me further back; for I\xa0had a vision of Oedipus, advancing towards this very spot and asking in those most tender verses, \'What place is this?\' â\x80\x94 a\xa0mere fancy no doubt, yet still it affected me strongly." "For my part," said Pomponius, "you are fond of attacking me as a devotee of Epicurus, and I\xa0do spend much of my time with Phaedrus, who as you know is my dearest friend, in Epicurus\'s Gardens which we passed just now; but I\xa0obey the old saw: I\xa0\'think of those that are alive.\' Still I\xa0could not forget Epicurus, even if I\xa0wanted; the members of our body not only have pictures of him, but even have his likeness on their drinking-cups and rings." <
5.17 \xa0Now practically all have agreed that the subject with which Prudence is occupied and the end which it desires to attain is bound to be something intimately adapted to our nature; it must be capable of directly arousing and awakening an impulse of desire, what in Greek is called hormÄ\x93. But what it is that at the first moment of our existence excites in our nature this impulse of desire â\x80\x94 as to this there is no agreement. It is at this point that all the difference of opinion among students of the ethical problem arises. of the whole inquiry into the Ends of Goods and Evils and the question which among them is ultimate and final, the fountain-head is to be found in the earliest instincts of nature; discover these and you have the source of the stream, the starting-point of the debate as to the Chief Good and Evil. <' ' None |
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12. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, None (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, • Epicurus, and emergence • Epicurus, and ethics gods • Epicurus, and mechanism • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, criticisms of • Epicurus, doctrine of death • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, theology • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, and the swerve (παρέγκλισις, declinatio) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on fate (εἱμαρμένη) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on providence (πρόνοια) • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Pamphilus (Epicurus’ teacher) • Plotinus, and Epicurus • fate (εἱμαρμένη), Epicurus on • free/freedom (ἐλεύθερος/ἐλευθερία, liber/libertas), Epicurus on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις) • predestination (προόρισις), Epicurus on • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, Cicero and
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 57, 61, 77; Atkins (2021), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy 125, 126; Bowen and Rochberg (2020), Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its contexts, 609; Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 5, 66, 233; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 225, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 237, 240; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 480; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 17; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 1, 86, 100, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 213, 216, 218; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 104; Gilbert, Graver and McConnell (2023), Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy. 86; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 76, 88; Hankinson (1998), Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, 221; Leão and Lanzillotta (2019), A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic, 217; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 117, 157, 158, 210; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 71; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 218; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 7, 8; Rosa and Santangelo (2020), Cicero and Roman Religion: Eight Studies, 128; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 225, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 237, 240
| 1.18 Hereupon Velleius began, in the confident manner (I need not say) that is customary with Epicureans, afraid of nothing so much as lest he should appear to have doubts about anything. One would have supposed he had just come down from the assembly of the gods in the intermundane spaces of Epicurus! "I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisan deity and world-builder of Plato\'s Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortune-teller, the Pronoia (which we may render \'Providence\') of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotatory god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream. 1.19 What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to descry the vast and elaborate architectural process which, as he makes out, the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe? What method of engineering was employed? What tools and levers and derricks? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking? And how were air, fire, water and earth enabled to obey and execute the will of the architect? How did the five regular solids, which are the basis of all other forms of matter, come into existence so nicely adapted to make impressions on our minds and produce sensations? It would be a lengthy task to advert upon every detail of a system that is such as to seem the result of idle theorizing rather than of real research; ' "1.20 but the prize example is that the thinker who represented the world not merely as having had an origin but even as almost made by hand, also declared that it will exist for ever. Can you suppose that a man can have even dipped into natural philosophy if he imagines that anything that has come into being can be eternal? What composite whole is not capable of dissolution? What thing is there that has a beginning but not an end? While as for your Stoic Providence, Lucilius, if it is the same thing as Plato's creator, I repeat my previous questions, what were its agents and instruments, and how was the entire undertaking planned out and carried though? If on the contrary it is something different, I ask why it made the world mortal, and not everlasting as did Plato's divine creator? " '1.21 Moreover I would put to both of you the question, why did these deities suddenly awake into activity as world-builders after countless ages of slumber? for though the world did not exist, it does not follow that ages did not exist — meaning by ages, not periods made up of a number of days and nights in annual courses, for ages in this sense I admit could not have been produced without the circular motion of the firmament; but from the infinite past there has existed an eternity not measured by limited divisions of time, but of a nature intelligible in terms of extension; since it is inconceivable that there was ever a time when time did not exist. 1.22 Well then, Balbus, what I ask is, why did your Providence remain idle all through that extent of time of which you speak? Was it in order to avoid fatigue? But god cannot know fatigue; and also there was no fatigue in question, since all the elements, sky, fire, earth and sea, were obedient to the divine will. Also, why should god take a fancy to decorate the firmament with figures and illuminations, like an aedile? If it was to embellish his own abode, then it seems that he had previously between dwelling for an infinite time in a dark and gloomy hovel! And are we to suppose that thenceforward the varied beauties which we see adorning earth and sky have afforded him pleasure? How can a god take pleasure in things of this sort? And if he did, he could not have dispensed with it so long. ' "1.23 Or were these beauties designed for the sake of men, as your school usually maintains? For the sake of wise men? If so, all this vast effort of construction took place on account of a handful of people. For the sake of fools then? But in the first place there was no reason for god to do a service to the wicked and secondly, what good did he do? inasmuch as all fools are beyond question extremely miserable, precisely because they are fools (for what can be mentioned more miserable than folly?), and in the second place because there are so many troubles in life that, though wise men can assuage them by balancing against them life's advantages, fools can neither avoid their approach nor endure their presence. Those on the other hand who said that the world is itself endowed with life and with wisdom, failed entirely to discern what shape the nature of an intelligent living being could conceivably possess. I will touch on this a little later; " "1.24 for the present I will confine myself to expressing my surprise at their stupidity in holding that a being who is immortal and also blessed is of a spherical shape, merely on the ground that Plato pronounces a sphere to be the most beautiful of all figures. For my own part, on the score of appearance I prefer either a cylinder or a cube or a cone or a pyramid. Then, what mode of existence is assigned to their spherical deity? Why, he is in a state of rotation, spinning round with a velocity that surpasses all powers of conception. But what room there can be in such an existence for steadfastness of mind and for happiness, I cannot see. Also, why should a condition that is painful in the human body, if even the smallest part of it is affected, be supposed to be painless in the deity? Now clearly the earth, being a part of the world, is also a part of god. Yet we see that vast portions of the earth's surface are uninhabitable deserts, being either scorched by the sun's proximity, or frost-bound and covered with snow owing to its extreme remoteness. But if the world is god, these, being parts of the world, must be regarded as limbs of god, undergoing the extremes of heat and cold respectively. " '1.25 "So much, Lucilius, for the doctrines of your school. To show what the older systems are like, I will trace their history from the remotest of your predecessors. Thales of Miletus, who was the first person to investigate these matters, said that water was the first principle of things, but that god was the mind that moulded all things out of water — supposing that gods can exist without sensation; and why did he make mind an adjunct of water, if mind can exist by itself, devoid of body? The view of Anaximander is that the gods are not everlasting but are born and perish at long intervals of time, and that they are worlds, countless in number. But how we conceive of god save as living for ever? 1.26 Next, Anaximenes held that air is god, and that it has a beginning in time, and is immeasurable and infinite in extent, and is always in motion; just as if formless air could be god, especially seeing that it is proper to god to possess not merely some shape but the most beautiful shape; or as if anything that has had a beginning must not necessarily be mortal. Then there is Anaxagoras, the successor of Anaximenes; he was the first thinker to hold that the orderly disposition of the universe is designed and perfected by the rational power of an infinite mind. But in saying this he failed to see that there can be no such thing as sentient and continuous activity in that which is infinite, and that sensation in general can only occur when the subject itself becomes sentient by the impact of a sensation. Further, if he intended his infinite mind to be a definite living creature, it must have some inner principle of life to justify the name. But mind is itself the innermost principle. Mind therefore will have an outer integument of body. 1.27 But this Anaxagoras will not allow; yet mind naked and simple, without any material adjunct to serve as an organ of sensation, seems to elude the capacity of our understanding. Alcmaeon of Croton, who attributed divinity to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, and also to the soul, did not perceive that he was bestowing immortality on things that are mortal. As for Pythagoras, who believed that the entire substance of the universe is penetrated and pervaded by a soul of which our souls are fragments, he failed to notice that this severance of the souls of men from the world-soul means the dismemberment and rending asunder of god; and that when their souls are unhappy, as happens to most men, then a portion of god is unhappy; which is impossible. 1.28 Again, if the soul of man is divine, why is it not omniscient? Moreover, if the Pythagorean god is pure soul, how is he implanted in, or diffused throughout, the world? Next, Xenophanes endowed the universe with mind, and held that, as being infinite, it was god. His view of mind is as open to objection as that of the rest; but on the subject of infinity he incurs still severer criticism, for the infinite can have no sensation and no contact with anything outside. As for Parmenides, he invents a purely fanciful something resembling a crown — stephanè is his name for it —, an unbroken ring of glowing lights, encircling the sky, which he entitles god; but no one can imagine this to possess divine form, or sensation. He also has many other portentous notions; he deifies war, strife, lust and the like, things which can be destroyed by disease or sleep or forgetfulness or lapse of time; and he also deifies the stars, but this has been criticized in another philosopher and need not be dealt with now in the case of Parmenides. ' "1.29 Empedocles again among many other blunders comes to grief most disgracefully in his theology. He assigns divinity to the four substances which in his system are the constituent elements of the universe, although manifestly these substances both come into and pass out of existence, and are entirely devoid of sensation. Protagoras also, who declares he has no clear views whatever about the gods, whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like, seems to have no notion at all of the divine nature. Then in what a maze of error is Democritus involved, who at one moment ranks as gods his roving 'images,' at another the substance that emits and radiates these images, and at another again the scientific intelligence of man! At the same time his denial of immutability and therefore of eternity, to everything whatsoever surely involves a repudiation of deity so absolute as to leave no conception of a divine be remaining! Diogenes of Apollonia makes air a god; but how can air have sensation, or divinity in any shape? " '1.30 The inconsistencies of Plato are a long story. In the Timaeus he says that it is impossible to name the father of this universe; and in the Laws he deprecates all inquiry into the nature of the deity. Again, he holds that god is entirely incorporeal (in Greek, asomatos); but divine incorporeity is inconceivable, for an incorporeal deity would necessarily be incapable of sensation, and also of practical wisdom, and of pleasure, all of which are attributes essential to our conception of deity. Yet both in the Timaeus and the Laws he says that the world, the sky, the stars, the earth and our souls are gods, in addition to those in whom we have been taught to believe; but it is obvious that these propositions are both inherently false and mutually destructive. 1.31 Xenophon also commits almost the same errors, though in fewer words; for in his memoir of the sayings of Socrates he represents Socrates as arguing that it is wrong to inquire about the form of god, but also as saying that both the sun and the soul are god, and as speaking at one moment of a single god and at another of several: utterances that involve almost the same mistakes as do those which we quoted from Plato. 1.32 Antisthenes also, in his book entitled The Natural Philosopher, says that while there are many gods of popular belief, there is one god in nature, so depriving divinity of all meaning or substance. Very similarly Speusippus, following his uncle Plato, and speaking of a certain force that governs all things and is endowed with life, does his best to root out the notion of deity from our minds altogether. 1.33 And Aristotle in the Third Book of his Philosophy has a great many confused notions, not disagreeing with the doctrines of his master Plato; at one moment he assigns divinity exclusively to the intellect, at another he says that the world is itself a god, then again he puts some other being over the world, and assigns to this being the rôle of regulating and sustaining the world-motion by means of a sort of inverse rotation; then he says that the celestial heat is god — not realizing that the heavens are a part of that world which elsewhere he himself has entitled god. But how could the divine consciousness which he assigns to the heavens persist in a state of such rapid motion? Where moreover are all the gods of accepted belief, if we count the heavens also as a god? Again, in maintaining that god is incorporeal, he robs him entirely of sensation, and also of wisdom. Moreover, how is motion possible for an incorporeal being, and how, if he is always in motion, can he enjoy tranquillity and bliss? 1.34 Nor was his fellow-pupil Xenocrates any wiser on this subject. His volumes On the Nature of the Gods give no intelligible account of the divine form; for he states that there are eight gods: five inhabiting the planets, and in a state of motion; one consisting of all the fixed stars, which are to be regarded as separate members constituting a single deity; seventh he adds the sun, and eighth the moon. But what sensation of bliss these things can enjoy it is impossible to conceive. Another member of the school of Plato, Heracleides of Pontus, filled volume after volume with childish fictions; at one moment he deems the world divine, at another the intellect; he also assigns divinity to the planets, and holds that the deity is devoid of sensation and mutable of form; and again in the same volume he reckons earth and sky as gods. 1.35 Theophrastus also is intolerably inconsistent; at one moment he assigns divine pre‑eminence to mind, at another to the heavens, and then again to the constellations and stars in the heavens. Nor is his pupil, Strato, surnamed the Natural Philosopher, worthy of attention; in his view the sole repository of divine power is nature, which contains in itself the causes of birth, growth and decay, but is entirely devoid of sensation and of form. 1.36 "Lastly, Balbus, I come to your Stoic school. Zeno\'s view is that the law of nature is divine, and that its function is to command what is right and to forbid the opposite. How he makes out this law to be alive passes our comprehension; yet we undoubtedly expect god to be a living being. In another passage however Zeno declares that the aether is god — if there is any meaning in a god without sensation, a form of deity that never presents itself to us when we offer up our prayers and supplications and make our vows. And in other books again he holds the view that a \'reason\' which pervades all nature is possessed of divine power. He likewise attributes the same powers to the stars, or at another time to the years, the months and the seasons. Again, in his interpretation of Hesiod\'s Theogony (or Origin of the Gods) he does away with the customary and received ideas of the gods altogether, for he does not reckon either Jupiter, Juno or Vesta as gods, or any being that bears a personal name, but teaches that these names have been assigned allegorically to dumb and lifeless things. ' "1.37 Zeno's pupil Aristo holds equally mistaken views. He thinks that the form of the deity cannot be comprehended, and he denies the gods sensation, and in fact is uncertain whether god is a living being at all. Cleanthes, who attended Zeno's lectures at the same time as the last-named, at one moment says that the world itself is god, at another gives this name to the mind and soul of the universe, and at another decides that the most unquestionable deity is that remote all‑surrounding fiery atmosphere called the aether, which encircles and embraces the universe on its outer side at an exceedingly lofty altitude; while in the books that he wrote to combat hedonism he babbles like one demented, now imagining gods of some definite shape and form, now assigning full divinity to the stars, now pronouncing that nothing is more divine than reason. The result is that the god whom we apprehend by our intelligence, and desire to make to correspond with a mental concept as a seal tallies with its impression, has utterly and entirely vanished. " '1.38 Persaeus, another pupil of Zeno, says that men have deified those persons who have made some discovery of special utility for civilization, and that useful and health-giving things have themselves been called by divine names; he did not even say that they were discoveries of the gods, but speaks of them as actually divine. But what could be more ridiculous than to award divine honours to things mean and ugly, or to give the rank of gods to men now dead and gone, whose worship could only take the form of lamentation? 1.39 Chrysippus, who is deemed to be the most skilful interpreter of the Stoic dreams, musters an enormous mob of unknown gods — so utterly unknown that even imagination cannot guess at their form and nature, although our mind appears capable of visualizing anything; for he says that divine power resides in reason, and in the soul and mind of the universe; he calls the world itself a god, and also the all‑pervading world-soul, and again the guiding principle of that soul, which operates in the intellect and reason, and the common and all‑embracing nature of things; beside this, the fire that I previously termed aether; and also the power of Fate, and the Necessity that governs future events; and also all fluid and soluble substances, such as water, earth, air, the sun, moon and stars, and the all‑embracing unity of things; and even those human beings who have attained immortality. 1.40 He also argues that the god whom men call Jupiter is the aether, and that Neptune is the air which permeates the sea, and the goddess called Ceres the earth; and he deals in the same way with the whole series of the names of the other gods. He also identifies Jupiter with the mighty Law, everlasting and eternal, which is our guide of life and instructress in duty, and which he entitles Necessity or Fate, and the Everlasting Truth of future events; none of which conceptions is of such a nature as to be deemed to possess divinity. 1.41 This is what is contained in his Nature of the Gods, Book I. In Book II he aims at reconciling the myths of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer with his own theology as enunciated in Book I, and so makes out that even the earliest poets of antiquity, who had no notion of these doctrines, were really Stoics. In this he is followed by Diogenes of Babylon, who in his book entitled Minerva rationalizes the myth of the birth of the virgin goddess from Jove by explaining it as an allegory of the processes of nature. 1.42 "I have given a rough account of what are more like the dreams of madmen than the considered opinions of philosophers. For they are little less absurd than the outpourings of the poets, harmful as these have been owing to the mere charm of their style. The poets have represented the gods as inflamed by anger and maddened by lust, and have displayed to our gaze their wars and battles, their fights and wounds, their hatreds, enmities and quarrels, their births and deaths, their complaints and lamentations, the utter and unbridled licence of their passions, their adulteries and imprisonments, their unions with human beings and the birth of mortal progeny from an immortal parent. 1.43 With the errors of the poets may be classed the monstrous doctrines of the magi and the insane mythology of Egypt, and also the popular beliefs, which are a mere mass of inconsistencies sprung from ignorance. "Anyone pondering on the baseless and irrational character of these doctrines ought to regard Epicurus with reverence, and to rank him as one of the very gods about whom we are inquiring. For he alone perceived, first, that the gods exist, because nature herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds of all mankind. For what nation or what tribe is there but possesses untaught some \'preconception\' of the gods? Such notions Epicurus designates by the word prolepsis, that is, a sort of preconceived mental picture of a thing, without which nothing can be understood or investigated or discussed. The force and value of this argument we learn in that work of genius, Epicurus\'s Rule or Standard of Judgement. ' "1.44 You see therefore that the foundation (for such it is) of our inquiry has been well and truly laid. For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the uimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist. And since this truth is almost universally accepted not only among philosophers but also among the unlearned, we must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a 'preconception,' as I called it above, or 'prior notion,' of the gods. (For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense in which no one had ever used it before.) " '1.45 We have then a preconception of such a nature that we believe the gods to be blessed and immortal. For nature, which bestowed upon us an idea of the gods themselves, also engraved on our minds the belief that they are eternal and blessed. If this is so, the famous maxim of Epicurus truthfully enunciates that \'that which is blessed and eternal can neither know trouble itself nor cause trouble to another, and accordingly cannot feel either anger or favour, since all such things belong only to the weak.\' "If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshipping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man\'s pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favour alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence. 1.46 "For the divine form we have the hints of nature supplemented by the teachings of reason. From nature all men of all races derive the notion of gods as having human shape and none other; for in what other shape do they ever appear to anyone, awake or asleep? But not to make primary concepts the sole test of all things, reason itself delivers the same pronouncement. 1.47 For it seems appropriate that the being who is the most exalted, whether by reason of his happiness or his eternity, should also be the most beautiful; but what disposition of the limbs, what cast of features, what shape or outline can be more beautiful than the human form? You Stoics at least, Lucilius, (for my friend Cotta says one thing at one time and another at another) are wont to portray the skill of the divine creator by enlarging on the beauty as well as the utility of design displayed in all parts of the human figure. 1.48 But if the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all; and since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man. 1.49 Yet their form is not corporeal, but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood, but the semblance of blood. "These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind\'s eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, our minds with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal. 1.52 This is the god whom we should call happy in the proper sense of the term; your Stoic god seems to us to be grievously overworked. If the world itself is god, what can be less restful than to revolve at incredible speed round the axis of the heavens without a single moment of respite? but repose is an essential condition of happiness. If on the other hand some god resides within the world as its governor and pilot, maintaining the courses of the stars, the changes of the seasons and all the ordered process of creation, and keeping a watch on land and sea to guard the interests and lives of men, why, what a bondage of irksome and laborious business is his! 1.53 We for our part deem happiness to consist in tranquillity of mind and entire exemption from all duties. For he who taught us all the rest has also taught us that the world was made by nature, without needing an artificer to construct it, and that the act of creation, which according to you cannot be performed without divine skill, is so easy, that nature will create, is creating and has created worlds without number. You on the contrary cannot see how nature can achieve all this without the aid of some intelligence, and so, like the tragic poets, being unable to bring the plot of your drama to a dénouement, you have recourse to a god; ' "1.60 Not that I propose at the moment to contribute something better of my own. As I said just now, in almost all subjects, but especially in natural philosophy, I am more ready to say what is not true than what is. Inquire of me as to the being and nature of god, and I shall follow the example of Simonides, who having the same question put to him by the great Hiero, requested a day's grace for consideration; next day, when Hiero repeated the question, he asked for two days, and so went on several times multiplying the number of days by two; and when Hiero in surprise asked why he did so, he replied, 'Because the longer I deliberate the more obscure the matter seems to me.' But Simonides is recorded to have been not only a charming poet but also a man of learning and wisdom in other fields, and I suppose that so many acute and subtle ideas came into his mind that he could not decide which of them was truest, and therefore despaired of truth altogether. " "1.63 Again, did not Diagoras, called the Atheist, and later Theodorus openly deny the divine existence? Since as for Protagoras of Abdera, the greatest sophist of that age, to whom you just now alluded, for beginning a book with the words 'About the gods I am unable to affirm either how they exist or how they do not exist,' he was sentenced by a decree of the Athenian assembly to be banished from the city and from the country, and to have his books burnt in the market-place: an example that I can well believe has discouraged many people since from professing atheism, since the mere expression of doubt did not succeed in escaping punishment. What are we to say about the men guilty of sacrilege or impiety or perjury? Suppose that ever Lucius Tubulus, Lupus or Carbo, or some son of Neptune, as Lucilius has it, had believed in the gods, would he have been such a perjurer and scoundrel? " '1.69 "This is a very common practice with your school. You advance a paradox, and then, when you want to escape censure, you adduce in support of it some absolute impossibility; so that you would have done better to abandon the point in dispute rather than to offer so shameless a defence. For instance, Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight, we should have no freedom of the will, since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism (the point had apparently escaped the notice of Democritus): he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to the side. 1.71 "He does the same as regards the nature of the gods. In his desire to avoid the assumption of a dense cluster of atoms, which would involve the possibility of destruction and dissipation, he says that the gods have not a body but a semblance of body, and not blood but a semblance of blood. It is thought surprising that an augur can see an augur without smiling; but it is more surprising that you Epicureans keep a grave face when by yourselves. \'It is not body but a semblance of body.\' I could understand what this supposition meant if it related to waxen images or figures of earthenware, but what \'a semblance of body\' or \'a semblance of blood\' may mean in the case of god, I cannot understand; nor can you either, Velleius, only you won\'t admit it. ' "1.73 However Epicurus pours endless scorn on this Platonist, so afraid is he of appearing ever to have learnt anything from a teacher. He stands convicted in the case of Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus, whom he does not deny he heard lecture, but whom nevertheless he assails with every sort of abuse. Yet if he had not heard from him these doctrines of Democritus, what had he heard? for what is there in Epicurus's natural philosophy that does not come from Democritus? Since even if he introduced some alterations, for instance the swerve of the atoms, of which I spoke just now, yet most of his system is the same, the atoms, the void, the images, the infinity of space, and the countless number of worlds, their births and their destructions, in fact almost everything that is comprised in natural science. " '1.74 "As to your formula \'a semblance of body\' and \'a semblance of blood,\' what meaning do you attach to it? That you have a better knowledge of the matter than I have I freely admit, and what is more, am quite content that this should be so; but once it is expressed in words, why should one of us be able to understand it and not the other? Well then, I do understand what body is and what blood is, but what \'a semblance of body\' and \'a semblance of blood\' are I don\'t understand in the very least. You are not trying to hide the truth from me, as Pythagoras used to hide it from strangers, nor yet are you speaking obscurely on purpose like Heraclitus, but (to speak candidly between ourselves) you don\'t understand it yourself any more than I do. ' "1.85 Well then, if the gods do not possess the appearance of men, as I have proved, nor some such form as that of the heavenly bodies, as you are convinced, why do you hesitate to deny their existence? You do not dare to. Well, that is no doubt wise — although in this matter it is not the public that you fear, but the gods themselves: I personally am acquainted with Epicureans who worship every paltry image, albeit I am aware that according to some people's view Epicurus really abolished the gods, but nominally retained them in order not to offend the people of Athens. Thus the first of his selected aphorisms or maxims, which you call the Kyriai Doxai, runs, I believe, thus: That which is blessed and immortal neither experiences trouble nor causes it to anyone. Now there are people who think that the wording of this maxim was intentional, though really it was due to the author's inability to express himself clearly; their suspicion does an injustice to the most guileless of mankind. " '1.93 "Was it dreams like these that not only encouraged Epicurus and Metrodorus and Hermarchus to contradict Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, but actually emboldened a loose woman like Leontium to write a book refuting Theophrastus? Her style no doubt is the neatest of Attic, but all the same! — such was the licence that prevailed in the Garden of Epicurus. And yet you are touchy yourselves, indeed Zeno actually used to invoke the law. I need not mention Albucius. As for Phaedrus, though he was the most refined and courteous of old gentlemen, he used to lose his temper if I spoke too harshly; although Epicurus attacked Aristotle in the most insulting manner, abused Socrates\' pupil Phaedo quite outrageously, devoted whole volumes to an onslaught on Timocrates, the brother of his own associate Metrodorus, for differing from him on some point or other of philosophy, showed no gratitude toward Democritus himself, whose system he adopted, and treated so badly his own master Nausiphanes, from whom he had learnt a considerable amount. As for Zeno, he aimed the shafts of his abuse not only at his contemporaries, Apollodorus, Silus and the rest, but Socrates himself, the father of philosophy, he declared to have been the Attic equivalent of our Roman buffoons; and he always alluded to Chrysippus in the feminine gender. ' "1.96 Your only answer is: 'I have never seen a happy sun or world.' Well, but have you ever seen any other world but this one? No, you will reply. Then why did you venture to assert the existence of, not thousands and thousands, but a countless number of worlds? 'That is what reason teaches.' Then will not reason teach you that when we seek to find a being who shall be supremely excellent, and happy and eternal as well — and nothing else constitutes divinity —, even as that being will surpass us in immortality, so also will it surpass us in mental excellence, and even as in mental excellence, so also in bodily. Why then, if we are inferior to god in all else, are we his equals in form? for man came nearer to the divine image in virtue than in outward aspect. " '1.100 "Then you censured those who argued from the splendour and the beauty of creation, and who, observing the world itself, and the parts of the world, the sky and earth and sea, and the sun, moon and stars that adorn them, and discovering the laws of the seasons and their periodic successions, conjectured that there must exist some supreme and transcendent being who had created these things, and who imparted motion to them and guided and governed them. Though this guess may be wide of the mark, I can see what they are after; but as for you, what mighty masterpiece pray do you adduce as apparently the creation of divine intelligence, leading you to conjecture that gods exist? \'We have an idea of god implanted in our minds,\' you say. Yes, and an idea of Jupiter with a beard, and Minerva in a helmet; but do you therefore believe that those deities are really like that? 1.105 Your assertion was that the form of god is perceived by thought and not by the senses, that it has no solidity nor numerical persistence, and that our perception of it is such that it is seen owing to similarity and succession, a never-ceasing stream of similar forms arriving continually from the infinite number of atoms, and that thus it results that our mind, when its attention is fixed on these forms, conceives the divine nature to be happy and eternal. Now in the name of the very gods about whom we are talking, what can possibly be the meaning of this? If the gods only appeal to the faculty of thought, and have no solidity or definite outline, what difference does it make whether we think of a god or of a hippocentaur? Such mental pictures are called by all other philosophers mere empty imaginations, but you say they are the arrival and entrance into our minds of certain images. ' "1.109 And how extravagantly! There is a constant passage or stream of visual presentations which collectively produce a single visual impression. I should be ashamed to say that I do not understand the doctrine, if you who maintain it understood it yourselves! How can you prove that the stream of images is continuous, or if it is, how are the images eternal? You say that there is an innumerable supply of atoms. Are you going to argue then that everything is eternal, for the same reason? You take refuge in the principle of 'equilibrium' (for so with your consent we will translate isonomia), and you say that because there is mortal substance there must also be immortal substance. On that showing, because there are mortal men, there are also some that are immortal, and because there are men born on land, there are men born in the water. 'And because there are forces of destruction, there are also forces of preservation.' Suppose there were, they would only preserve things that already exist; but I am not aware that your gods do exist. " "1.114 'But they are free from pain.' Does that satisfy the ideal of perfect bliss, overflowing with good things? 'God is engaged (they say) in ceaseless contemplation of his own happiness, for he has no other object for his thoughts.' I beg of you to realize in your imagination a vivid picture of a deity solely occupied for all eternity in reflecting 'What a good time I am having! How happy I am!' And yet I can't see how this happy god of yours is not to fear destruction, since he is subjected without a moment's respite to the buffeting and jostling of a horde of atoms that eternally assail him, while from his own person a ceaseless stream of images is given off. Your god is therefore neither happy nor eternal. " "1.116 'But deity possesses an excellence and pre‑eminence which must of its own nature attract the worship of the wise.' Now how can there be any excellence in a being so engrossed in the delights of his own pleasure that he always has been, is, and will continue to be entirely idle and inactive? Furthermore how can you owe piety to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you? or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods; but how can any claims of justice exist between us and them, if god and man have nothing in common? Holiness is the science of divine worship; but I fail to see why the gods should be worshipped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them. " '1.123 Epicurus is making fun of us, though he is not so much a humorist as a loose and careless writer. For how can holiness exist if the gods pay no heed to man\'s affairs? Yet what is the meaning of an animate being that pays no heed to anything? "It is doubtless therefore truer to say, as the good friend of us all, Posidonius, argued in the fifth book of his On the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus does not really believe in the gods at all, and that he said what he did about the immortal gods only for the sake of deprecating popular odium. Indeed he could not have been so senseless as really to imagine god to be like a feeble human being, but resembling him only in outline and surface, not in solid substance, and possessing all man\'s limbs but entirely incapable of using them, an emaciated and transparent being, showing no kindness or beneficence to anybody, caring for nothing and doing nothing at all. In the first place, a being of this nature is an absolute impossibility, and Epicurus was aware of this, and so actually abolishes the gods, although professedly retaining them. 2.93 "At this point must I not marvel that there should be anyone who can persuade himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles of matter borne along by the force of gravity, and that the fortuitous collision of those particles produces this elaborate and beautiful world? I cannot understand why he who considers it possible for this to have occurred should not all think that, if a counts number of copies of the one-and‑twenty letters of alphabet, made of gold or what you will, were thrown together into some receptacle and then shaken out on the ground, it would be possible that they should produce the Annals of Ennius, all ready for the reader. I doubt whether chance could possibly succeed in producing even a single verse! ' ' None |
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13. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicureans, authority of Epicurus • Epicurus, • Epicurus, on nature and the self
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 244; Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 180; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 225; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 244
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14. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, and action • Epicurus, and bivalence • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, and the swerve (παρέγκλισις, declinatio) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on fate (εἱμαρμένη) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις) • fate (εἱμαρμένη), Epicurus on • free/freedom (ἐλεύθερος/ἐλευθερία, liber/libertas), Epicurus on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις)
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 5, 7; Hankinson (1998), Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, 224, 225; Masterson (2016), Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood. 157
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15. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, • Epicurus, economic commentary • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Ovid, and Epicurus
Found in books: Atkins (2021), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy 40; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 65; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 29
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16. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, Epicureanism, Epicureans
Found in books: Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 162; Schaaf (2019), Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Anthropozoological Aspects in the Late Antique World. 134
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17. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 232; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 232
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18. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, • Epicurus, appearance of • Epicurus, on friendship/patronage
Found in books: Atkins (2021), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy 63; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 189; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 149, 164; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 54
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19. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus
Found in books: Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 189; Trettel (2019), Desires in Paradise: An Interpretative Study of Augustine's City of God 14, 25
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20. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus, • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus, Memorization of his doctrines • Epicurus, Memory of past, value of • Epicurus, On the End • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Rejects anticipating future misfortune • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, criticisms of • Epicurus, doctrine of death • Epicurus, illness of • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, on pain • Epicurus, view of pleasure • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Epicurus/Epicureanism, love and sex • Epikouros (Epicurus) • Hope, Epicurus • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Ovid, and Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life
Found in books: Atkins (2021), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy 33, 162; Brenk and Lanzillotta (2023), Plutarch on Literature, Graeco-Roman Religion, Jews and Christians, 268; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 10, 225; Gilbert, Graver and McConnell (2023), Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy. 82, 87, 88; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 111; Leão and Lanzillotta (2019), A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic, 223; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 7, 178, 190, 204; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 90; Merz and Tieleman (2012), Ambrosiaster's Political Theology, 193; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 102; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 165, 177, 233, 235, 237; Trettel (2019), Desires in Paradise: An Interpretative Study of Augustine's City of God 14, 26; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 10, 225; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 65, 68, 137
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21. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, and festivals • Epicurus, religious observance • festivals, Epicurus on
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 76; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 240, 242; Mikalson (2010), Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, 95
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22. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, socio-economic location • Epicurus/Epicureanism, parrhesia
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 46, 73; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 85
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23. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, socio-economic location
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 51, 71; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 141
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24. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus
Found in books: Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 242; Naiden (2013), Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman Periods, 282
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25. Horace, Sermones, 1.2.78-1.2.79, 1.5.101 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, on sensory perception • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, gods detached in intermundia • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Ovid, and Epicurus
Found in books: Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 70, 79, 205; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 15, 143
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1.2.78 However, since I observe a considerable number of people giving ear to the reproaches that are laid against us by those who bear ill will to us, and will not believe what I have written concerning the antiquity of our nation, while they take it for a plain sign that our nation is of a late date, because they are not so much as vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historiographers among the Grecians,
1.2.78 Moreover, he attests that we Jews, went as auxiliaries along with king Alexander, and after him with his successors. I will add farther what he says he learned when he was himself with the same army, concerning the actions of a man that was a Jew. His words are these:—
1.2.78 for if we remember, that in the beginning the Greeks had taken no care to have public records of their several transactions preserved, this must for certain have afforded those that would afterward write about those ancient transactions, the opportunity of making mistakes, and the power of making lies also;
1.5.101 Afterward I got leisure at Rome; and when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue, and by these means I composed the history of those transactions; and I was so well assured of the truth of what I related, that I first of all appealed to those that had the supreme command in that war, Vespasian and Titus, as witnesses for me, 1.5.101 I shall also endeavor to give an account of the reasons why it hath so happened, that there hath not been a great number of Greeks who have made mention of our nation in their histories. I will, however, bring those Grecians to light who have not omitted such our history, for the sake of those that either do not know them, or pretend not to know them already. |
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26. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.35-1.38 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, Against erotic love • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Love, Against erotic love, Antisthenes, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aristippus, Cynics, Epictetus • Ovid, and Epicurus
Found in books: Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 279; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 69
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1.35 Principio, quod amare velis, reperire labora, 1.36 rend= 1.37 Proximus huic labor est placitam exorare puellam: 1.38 rend='' None | sup>
1.35 Far hence ye vestals be, who bind your hair; The author forewarns all virgins, and chaste persons, not to follow, in all things, the precepts of his book. 1.36 And wives, who gowns below your ancles wear.' "1.37 I sing the brothels loose and unconfin'd," "1.38 Th' unpunishable pleasures of the kind;"' None |
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27. Philo of Alexandria, On Drunkenness, 166, 169-202 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus
Found in books: Geljon and Runia (2013), Philo of Alexandria: On Cultivation: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, 30; Geljon and Runia (2019), Philo of Alexandria: On Planting: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, 284; Russell and Nesselrath (2014), On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination: Synesius, De insomniis, 183
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166 But sober reasoning does not admit these things, but only that reasoning does so which is overcome with wine, and, as it were, drunk. XLI. On which account it is said, "They made their father drink Wine," That is to say, they brought complete insensibility on the mind, so that it fancied itself competent by its own abilities to judge what was expedient, and to assent to all sorts of apparent facts, as if they really had solid truth in them; human nature being by no means and under no circumstances competent either to ascertain the truth by consideration, or to choose real truth and advantage, or to reject what is false and the cause of injury; 169 Accordingly we must, on these accounts, remind the man who gives himself airs by reason of his power of deliberating, or of wisely choosing one kind of objects and avoiding others, that if the same unalterable perceptions of the same things always occurred to us, it might perhaps be requisite to admire the two faculties of judging which are implanted in us by nature, namely, the outward senses and the intellect, as unerring and incorruptible, and never to doubt or hesitate about anything, but trusting in every first appearance to choose one kind of thing and to reject the contrary kind. 170 But since we are found to be influenced in different manners by the same things at different times, we should have nothing positive to assert about anything, inasmuch as what appears has no settled or stationary existence, but is subject to various, and multiform, and ever-recurring changes. XLII. For it follows of necessity, since the imagination is unstable, that the judgment formed by it must be unstable likewise; 171 and there are many reasons for this. In the first place, the differences which exist in animals are not in one particular only, but are unspeakable in point of number, extending through every part, having reference both to their creation and to the way in which they are furnished with their different faculties, and to their way of being supported and their habits, and to the manner in which they choose and avoid different things, and to the energies and motions of the outward senses, and to the peculiar properties of the endless passions affecting both the soul and body. 172 For without mentioning those animals which have the faculty of judgment, consider also some of those which are the objects of judgment, such as the chameleon and the polypus; for they say that the former of these animals changes his complexion so as to resemble the soils over which he is accustomed to creep, and that the other is like the rocks of the sea-shore to which it clings, nature herself, perhaps, being their saviour, and endowing them with a quality to protect them from being caught, namely, with that of changing to all kinds of complexions, as a defence against evil. 173 Again, have you never perceived the neck of the dove changing colour so as to assume a countless variety of hues in the rays of the sun? is it not by turns red, and purple and fiery coloured, and cinereous, and again pale, and ruddy, and every other variety of colour, the very names of which it is not easy to enumerate? 174 They say indeed that among the Scythians, among that tribe which is called the Geloni, most marvellous things happen, rarely indeed, but nevertheless it does happen; namely that there is a beast seen which is called the tarandus, not much less than an ox in size, and exceedingly like a stag in the character of his face. The story goes that this animal continually changes his coat according to the place in which he is, or the trees which he is near, and that in short he always resembles whatever he is near, so that through the similarity of his colour he escapes the notice of those who fall in with him, and that it is owing to this, rather than to any vigour of body, that he is hard to catch. 175 Now these facts and others which resemble them are visible proofs of our inability to comprehend everything. XLIII. In the next place, not only are there all these variations with respect to animals, but there are also innumerable changes and varieties in men, and great differences between one man and another. 176 For not only do they form different opinions respecting the same things at different times, but different men also judge in different manners, some looking on things as pleasures, which others on the contrary regard as annoyances. For the things with which some persons are sometimes vexed, others delight in, and on the contrary the things, which some persons are eager to acquire and look upon as pleasant and suitable, those very same things others reject and drive to a distance as unsuitable and ill-omened. 177 At all events I have before now often seen in the theatre, when I have been there, some persons influenced by a melody of those who were exhibiting on the stage, whether dramatists or musicians, as to be excited and to join in the music, uttering encomiums without intending it; and I have seen others at the same time so unmoved that you would think there was not the least difference between them and the iimate seats on which they were sitting; and others again so disgusted that they have even gone away and quitted the spectacle, stopping their ears with their hands, lest some atom of a sound being left behind and still sounding in them should inflict annoyance on their morose and unpleasable souls. 178 And yet why do I say this? Every single individual among us (which is the most surprising thing of all) is subject to infinite changes and variations both in body and soul, and sometimes chooses and sometimes rejects things which are subject to no changes themselves, but which by their intrinsic nature do always remain in the same condition. 179 For the same fancies do not strike the same men when they are well and when they are ill, nor when they are awake and when they are asleep, nor when they are young and when they are old. And a man who is standing still often conceives different ideas from those which he entertains when he is in motion; and also when he is courageous, or when he is alarmed; again when he is grieved, or when he is delighted, and when he is in love, he feels differently from what he does when he is full of hatred. 180 And why need I be prolix and deep dwelling on these points? For in short every motion of both body and soul, whether in accordance with nature or in opposition to nature, is the cause of a great variation and change respecting the appearances which present themselves to us; from which all sorts of inconsistent and opposite dreams arise to occupy our minds. XLIV. ' "181 And that is not the least influential cause of the instability of one's perceptions which arises from the position of the objects, from their distance, and from the places by which they are each of them surrounded. " '182 Do we not see that the fishes in the sea, when they stretch out their fins and swim about, do always appear larger than their real natural size? And oars too, even though they are very straight, look as if they were broken when they are under water; and things at a great distance display false appearances to our eyes, and in this way do frequently deceive the mind. 183 For at times iimate objects have been imagined to be alive, and on the contrary living animals have been considered to be lifeless; sometimes again stationary things appear to be in motion, and things in motion appear to be standing still: even things which are approaching towards us do sometimes appear to be retreating from us, and things which are going away do on the other hand appear to be approaching. At times very short things seem to be exceedingly long, and things which have many angles appear to be circular. There is also an infinite number of other things of which a false impression is given though they are open to the sight, which however no man in his senses would subscribe to as certain. XLV. 184 What again are we to say of the quantities occurring in things compounded? For it is through the admixture of a greater or a lesser quantity that great injury or good is often done, as in many other instances, so most especially in the case of medicines compounded by medical science. 185 For quantity in such compounds is measured by fixed limits and rules, and it is not safe either to stop short before one has reached them, nor to advance beyond them. For if too little be applied, it relaxes, and if too much, it strains the natural powers; and each extremity is mischievous, the one from its impotence being capable of producing any effect at all, and the other by reason of its exceeding strength being necessarily hurtful. Again it is very plain with reference to smoothness, and roughness, and thickness, and close compression, or on the other hand leanness and slackness, how very much influence all these differences have in respect of doing good or harm. 186 Nor indeed is any one ignorant that scarcely anything whatever of existing things, if you consider it in itself and by itself, is accurately understood; but by comparing it with its opposite, then we arrive at a knowledge of its true nature. As for instance, we comprehend what is meant by little by placing it in juxta-position with what is great; we understand what dry is by comparing it with wet, cold by comparing it with heat, light by comparing it with heavy, black by contrasting it with white, weak by contrasting it with strong, and few by comparing it with many. In the same way also, in whatever is referred to virtue or to vice, 187 what is advantageous is recognised by a comparison with what is injurious, what is beautiful by a comparison with what is unseemly, what is just and generally good, by placing it in juxta-position with what is unjust and bad. And, indeed, if any one considers everything that there is in the world, he will be able to arrive at a proper estimate of its character, by taking it in the same manner; for each separate thing is by itself incomprehensible, but by a comparison with another thing, is easy to understand it. 188 Now, that which is unable to bear witness to itself, but which stands in need of the advocacy of something else, is not to be trusted or thought steady. So that in this way those men are convicted who say that they have no difficulty in assenting to or denying propositions about anything. 189 And why need we wonder? For any one who advances far into matters, and who contemplates them in an unmixed state will know this, that nothing is ever presented to our view according to its real plain nature, but that everything has the most various possible mixtures and combinations. XLVI. 190 Some one will say, We at once comprehend colours. How so? Do we not do so by means of the external things, air and light, and also by the moisture which exists in our eyes themselves? And in what way are sweet and bitter comprehended? Is it apart from the moisture in our mouths? And as to all the flavours which are in accordance with, or at variance with nature, are not they in the same case? What, again, are we to say of the smells arising from perfumes which are burnt? Do they exhibit plain unmixed simple natures, or rather qualities compounded of themselves and of the air, and sometimes also of the fire which consumes their bodies, and also of the faculty existing in our own nostrils? 191 From all this we collect the inference that we have neither any proper comprehension of colours, not only of the combination which consists of the objects submitted to our view and of light; nor of smells, but only of the mixture which consists of that which flows from substances and the all-receiving air; nor of tastes, but only of the union which arises from the tasteable object presented to us, and the moist substance in our mouths. XLVII. 192 Since, then, this is the state of affairs with respect to these matters, it is worth while to appreciate correctly the simplicity, or rashness, or impudence of those who pretend to be able with ease to form an opinion, so as to assent to or deny what is stated with respect to anything whatever. For if the simple faculties are wanting, but the mingled powers and those which are formed by contributions from many sources are within sight, and if it is impossible for those which are invisible to be seen, and if we are unable to comprehend separately the character of all the component parts which are united to make up each faculty, then what remains except that we must think it necessary to suspend our judgment? 193 And then, too, do not those facts which are diffused over nearly the whole world, and which have caused both to Greeks and barbarians such erroneous judgments, exhort us not to be too ready in giving our credence to what is not seen? And what are these facts? Surely they are the instructions which we have received from our childhood, and our national customs and ancient laws, of which it is admitted that there is not a single one which is of equal force among all people; but it is notorious that they vary according to the different countries, and nations, and cities, aye, and even still more, in every village and private house, and even with respect to men, and women, and infant children, in almost every point. 194 At all events, what are accounted disgraceful actions among us, are by others looked upon as honourable; what we think becoming, others call unseemly; what we pronounce just, others renounce as iniquitous; others think our holy actions impious, our lawful deeds lawless: and further, what we think praiseworthy, they find fault with; what we think worthy of all honour, is, in the eyes of others, deserving of punishment; and, in fact, they think most things to be of a contrary character to what we think. 195 And why need I be prolix and dwell further on this subject, when I am called off by other more important points? If then, any one, leaving out of the question all other more remarkable subjects of speculation, were to choose to devote his time to an investigation of the subject here proposed, namely, to examine the education, and customs, and laws of every different nation, and country, and place, and city; of all subjects and rulers; of all men, whether renowned or inglorious, whether free or slaves, whether ignorant or endowed with knowledge, he would spend not one day or two, nor a month, nor even a year, but his whole life, even though he were to reach a great age, in the investigation; and he would nevertheless still leave a vast number of subjects unexamined, uninvestigated, and unmentioned, without perceiving it. 196 Therefore, since there are some persons and things removed from other persons and things, not by a short distance only, but since they are utterly different, it then follows of necessity that the perceptions which occur to men of different things must also differ, and that their opinions must be at variance with one another. XLVIII. 197 And since this is the case, who is so foolish and ridiculous as to affirm positively that such and such a thing is just, or wise, or honourable, or expedient? For whatever this man defines as such, some one else, who from his childhood, has learnt a contrary lesson, will be sure to deny. 198 But I am not surprised if a confused and mixed multitude, being the inglorious slave of customs and laws, however introduced and established, accustomed from its very cradle to obey them as if they were masters and tyrants, having their souls beaten and buffeted, as it were, and utterly unable to conceive any lofty or magimous thoughts, believes at once every tradition which is represented to it, and leaving its mind without any proper training, assents to and denies propositions without examination and without deliberation. But even if the multitude of those who are called philosophers, pretending that they are really seeking for certainty and accuracy in things, being divided into ranks and companies, come to discordant, and often even to diametrically opposite decisions, and that too, not about some one accidental matter, but about almost everything, whether great or small, with respect to which any discussion can arise. 199 For when some persons affirm that the world is infinite, while others pronounce it to be confined within limits; or while some look upon the world as uncreated, and others assert that it is created; or when some persons look upon it as destitute of any ruler and superintendent, attributing to it a motion, deprived of reason, and proceeding on some independent internal impulse, while others think that there is a care of and providence, which looks over the whole and its parts of marvellous power and wisdom, God ruling and governing the whole, in a manner free from all stumbling, and full of protection. How is it possible for any one to affirm that the comprehension of such objects as are brought before them, is the same in all men? 200 And again, the imaginations which are occupied with the consideration of what is good, are not they compelled to suspend their judgment rather than to agree? While some think that it is only what is good that is beautiful, and treasure that up in the soul, and others divide it into numbers of minute particles, and extend it as far as the body and external circumstances. 201 These men affirm that such pieces of prosperity as are granted by fortune, are the body-guards of the body, namely strength and good health, and that the integrity and sound condition of the organs of the external senses, and all things of that kind, are the guards of that princess, the soul; for since the nature of good is divided according to three divisions, the third and outermost is the champion and defender of the second and yielding one, and the second in its turn is a great bulwark and protection to the first; 202 and about these very things, and about the different ways of life, and about the ends to which all actions ought to be referred, and about ten thousand other things which logical, and moral, and natural philosophy comprehends, there have been an unspeakable number of discussions, as to which, up to the present time, there is no agreement whatever among all these philosophers who have examined into such subject. XLIX. ' None |
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28. Philo of Alexandria, On The Creation of The World, 8-9 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on providence (πρόνοια) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on the indestructibility of the world • predestination (προόρισις), Epicurus on
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 65, 66, 70; Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 251
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8 But Moses, who had early reached the very summits of philosophy, and who had learnt from the oracles of God the most numerous and important of the principles of nature, was well aware that it is indispensable that in all existing things there must be an active cause, and a passive subject; and that the active cause is the intellect of the universe, thoroughly unadulterated and thoroughly unmixed, superior to virtue and superior to science, superior even to abstract good or abstract beauty; '9 while the passive subject is something iimate and incapable of motion by any intrinsic power of its own, but having been set in motion, and fashioned, and endowed with life by the intellect, became transformed into that most perfect work, this world. And those who describe it as being uncreated, do, without being aware of it, cut off the most useful and necessary of all the qualities which tend to produce piety, namely, providence: ' None |
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29. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus (and Epicurean)
Found in books: Jenkyns (2013), God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination, 52; Keith and Myers (2023), Vergil and Elegy. 47
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30. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus (and Epicurean) • Epicurus , epicureanism • Epicurus and Epicureanism • Epicurus and Epicureanism, • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, • Epicurus, Because of us (par' hēmas) • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus, Epicurean • Epicurus, Epicureanism • Epicurus, Epicureanism, Epicureans • Epicurus, Freedom from any master (adespoton) • Epicurus, Heracles • Epicurus, Memorization of his doctrines • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Rejects anticipating future misfortune • Epicurus, Sex natural but necessary and tends to harm • Epicurus, Wise will marry only in special circumstances • Epicurus, and Archestratus of Gela • Epicurus, and Sardanapallus • Epicurus, and action • Epicurus, and bivalence • Epicurus, and carpe diem • Epicurus, and emergence • Epicurus, and linguistic theory • Epicurus, and mechanism • Epicurus, appearance of • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, as patriarch • Epicurus, atomism of • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, clothing of • Epicurus, concept of death • Epicurus, deification • Epicurus, doctrine of death • Epicurus, misrepresentation of • Epicurus, on divine kindness • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, on sensory perception • Epicurus, theology • Epicurus, view of security • Epicurus/Epicurean/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, ambivalence about marriage • Epicurus/Epicureanism, atheistic strictures • Epicurus/Epicureanism, gods detached in intermundia • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Epicurus/Epicureanism, love and sex • Epicurus/Epicureanism, parrhesia • Epicurus/Epicureanism, pleasure • Epicurus/Epicureanism, utilitas • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, and Celsus • Epicurus’ surviving works, Lucretius’ paean of Epicurus • Epikouros (Epicurus) • Eyes, Epicurus • Hope, Epicurus • Kyriae doxai (Epicurus) • Love, Against erotic love, Antisthenes, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aristippus, Cynics, Epictetus • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Ovid, and Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life • atomism, Epicurus • carpe diem, and Epicurus • deification, of Epicurus • linguistic theory, of Epicurus • mind, Epicurus • nan, and Epicurus • religion, Lucretius’ religious devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 73; Athanassaki and Titchener (2022), Plutarch's Cities, 301; Augoustakis (2014), Flavian Poetry and its Greek Past, 288; Ayres and Ward (2021), The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual, 188, 189; Bett (2019), How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism, 63; Brenk and Lanzillotta (2023), Plutarch on Literature, Graeco-Roman Religion, Jews and Christians, 266, 268; Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 279; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241; Cain (2023), Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God, 29, 30, 50, 51; Clay and Vergados (2022), Teaching through Images: Imagery in Greco-Roman Didactic Poetry, 141, 143, 150, 155, 156, 157, 159, 198, 199, 201, 209, 211, 218, 328; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 481; Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138; Dillon and Timotin (2015), Platonic Theories of Prayer, 91; Edelmann-Singer et al. (2020), Sceptic and Believer in Ancient Mediterranean Religions, 82; Fowler (2014), Plato in the Third Sophistic, 271; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 69; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 7, 10, 13, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 36, 44, 48, 66, 70, 82, 104, 105, 118, 121, 128, 139, 147, 153, 162, 192, 196, 197, 198, 236, 237, 239, 244, 254; Gee (2013), Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition, 68, 72, 135; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 148, 161; Hankinson (1998), Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, 219, 220, 222, 230, 231; Jenkyns (2013), God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination, 55, 251; Kazantzidis (2021), Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in "De rerum natura", 127; Keith and Myers (2023), Vergil and Elegy. 48, 49, 55; Kirichenko (2022), Greek Literature and the Ideal: The Pragmatics of Space from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Age, 166; Leão and Lanzillotta (2019), A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic, 217; Liatsi (2021), Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature: Aspects of Ethical Reasoning from Homer to Aristotle and Beyond, 186, 187, 199; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 158, 159, 160, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 179, 185, 196, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 216; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 76, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 136; Luck (2006), Arcana mundi: magic and the occult in the Greek and Roman worlds: a collection of ancient texts, 292; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 214, 218, 231, 234, 236, 242; Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 370, 655; Masterson (2016), Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood. 157; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 8; Nuno et al. (2021), SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism, 36, 39, 45, 62, 63; Perkell (1989), The Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics, 110, 153, 168, 169, 172, 177; Rohland (2022), Carpe Diem: The Poetics of Presence in Greek and Latin Literature, 20, 67, 119; Santangelo (2013), Roman Frugality: Modes of Moderation from the Archaic Age to the Early Empire and Beyond, 45, 170; Schaaf (2019), Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Anthropozoological Aspects in the Late Antique World. 134; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 82, 96; Simmons(1995), Arnobius of Sicca: Religious Conflict and Competition in the Age of Diocletian, 139, 147, 252; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 27, 235, 237, 275, 283, 333; Thorsen et al. (2021), Greek and Latin Love: The Poetic Connection, 109; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 46; Verhagen (2022), Security and Credit in Roman Law: The Historical Evolution of Pignus and Hypotheca, 288; Volk and Williams (2006), Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics, 2; Waldner et al. (2016), Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire, 74; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 76, 77, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 137, 167, 168, 169, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 205, 293; Xinyue (2022), Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry, 41, 93, 94; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 15, 143
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31. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus (and Epicurean) • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Epicurus/Epicureanism, parrhesia • Ovid, and Epicurus
Found in books: Keith and Myers (2023), Vergil and Elegy. 47; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 11, 61
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32. Epictetus, Discourses, 3.3.14-3.3.15 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus/Epicureans
Found in books: Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 144; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 216; Wilson (2022), Paul and the Jewish Law: A Stoic Ethical Perspective on his Inconsistency, 33
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3.3.14 THE material for the wise and good man is his own ruling faculty: and the body is the material for the physician and the aliptes (the man who oils persons); the land is the matter for the husbandman. The business of the wise and good man is to use appearances conformably to nature: and as it is the nature of every soul to assent to the truth, to dissent from the false, and to remain in suspense as to that which is uncertain; so it is its nature to be moved towards the desire of the good, and to aversion from the evil; and with respect to that which is neither good nor bad it feels indifferent. For as the money-changer (banker) is not allowed to reject Caesar’s coin, nor the seller of herbs, but if you show the coin, whether he chooses or not, he must give up what is sold for the coin; so it is also in the matter of the soul. When the good appears, it immediately attracts to itself; the evil repels from itself. But the soul will never reject the manifest appearance of the good, any more than persons will reject Caesar’s coin. On this principle depends every movement both of man and God. For this reason the good is preferred to every intimate relationship (obligation). There is no intimate relationship between me and my father, but there is between me and the good. Are you so hard-hearted? Yes, for such is my nature; and this is the coin which God has given me. For this reason if the good is something different from the beautiful and the just, both father is gone (neglected), and brother and country, and every thing. But shall I overlook my own good, in order that you may have it, and shall I give it up to you? Why? I am your father. But you are not my good. I am your brother. But you are not my good. But if we place the good in a right determination of the will, the very observance of the relations of life is good, and accordingly he who gives up any external things, obtains that which is good. Your father takes away your property. But he does not injure you. Your brother will have the greater part of the estate in land. Let him have as much as he chooses. Will he then have a greater share of modesty, of fidelity, of brotherly affection? For who will eject you from this possession? Not even Zeus, for neither has he chosen to do so; but he has made this in my own power, and he has given it to me just as he possessed it himself, free from hindrance, compulsion, and impediment. When then the coin which another uses is a different coin, if a man presents this coin, be receives that which is sold for it. Suppose that there comes into the province a thievish proconsul, what coin does he use? Silver coin. Show it to him, and carry off what you please. Suppose one comes who is an adulterer: what coin does he use? Little girls. Take, a man says, the coin, and sell me the small thing. Give, says the seller, and buy what you want. Another is eager to possess boys. Give him the coin, and receive what you wish. Another is fond of hunting: give him a fine nag or a dog. Though he groans and laments, be will sell for it that which you want. For another compels him from within, he who has fixed determined) this coin. Mrs. Carter compares the Epistle to the Romans, vii. 21–23. Schweighaeuser says, the man either sees that the thing which he is doing is bad or unjust, or for any other reason he does not do the thing willingly; but he is compelled, and allows himself to be carried away by the passion which rules him. The another who compels is God, Schweig. says, who has made the nature of man such, that he must postpone every thing else to that thing in which he places his Good: and he adds, that it is man’s fault if he places his good in that thing, in which God has not placed it. Some persons will not consider this to be satisfactory. The man is compelled and allows himself to be carried away, etc. The notion of compulsion is inconsistent with the exercise of the will. The man is unlucky. He is like him who sees, as the Latin poet says, the better things and approves of them, but follows the worse. Against (or with respect to) this kind of thing chiefly a man should exercise himself. As soon as you go out in the morning, examine every man whom you see, every man whom you hear; answer as to a question, What have you seen? A handsome man or woman? Apply the rule. Is this independent of the will, or dependent? Independent. Take it away. What have you seen? A man lamenting over the death of a child. Apply the rule. Death is a thing independent of the will. Take it away. Has the proconsul met you? Apply the rule. What kind of thing is a proconsul’s office? Independent of the will, or dependent on it? Independent. Take this away also: it does not stand examination: cast it away: it is nothing to you. If we practised this and exercised ourselves in it daily from morning to night, something indeed would be done. But now we are forthwith caught half asleep by every appearance, and it is only, if ever, that in the school we are roused a little. Then when we go out, if we see a man lamenting, we say, He is undone. If we see a consul, we say, He is happy. If we see an exiled man, we say, He is miserable. If we see a poor man, we say, He is wretched: he has nothing to eat. We ought then to eradicate these bad opinions, and to this end we should direct all our efforts. For what is weeping and lamenting? Opinion. What is bad fortune? Opinion. What is civil sedition, what is divided opinion, what is blame, what is accusation, what is impiety, what is trifling?. All these things are opinions, and nothing more, and opinions about things independent of the will, as if they were good and bad. Let a man transfer these opinions to things dependent on the will, and I engage for him that he will be firm and constant, whatever may be the state of things around him. Such as is a dish of water, such is the soul. Such as is the ray of light which falls on the water, such are the appearances. When the water is moved, the ray also seems to be moved, yet it is not moved. And when then a man is seized with giddiness, it is not the arts and the virtues which are confounded, but the spirit (the nervous power) on which they are impressed; but if the spirit be restored to its settled state, those things also are restored. 3.3.15 THE material for the wise and good man is his own ruling faculty: and the body is the material for the physician and the aliptes (the man who oils persons); the land is the matter for the husbandman. The business of the wise and good man is to use appearances conformably to nature: and as it is the nature of every soul to assent to the truth, to dissent from the false, and to remain in suspense as to that which is uncertain; so it is its nature to be moved towards the desire of the good, and to aversion from the evil; and with respect to that which is neither good nor bad it feels indifferent. For as the money-changer (banker) is not allowed to reject Caesar’s coin, nor the seller of herbs, but if you show the coin, whether he chooses or not, he must give up what is sold for the coin; so it is also in the matter of the soul. When the good appears, it immediately attracts to itself; the evil repels from itself. But the soul will never reject the manifest appearance of the good, any more than persons will reject Caesar’s coin. On this principle depends every movement both of man and God. For this reason the good is preferred to every intimate relationship (obligation). There is no intimate relationship between me and my father, but there is between me and the good. Are you so hard-hearted? Yes, for such is my nature; and this is the coin which God has given me. For this reason if the good is something different from the beautiful and the just, both father is gone (neglected), and brother and country, and every thing. But shall I overlook my own good, in order that you may have it, and shall I give it up to you? Why? I am your father. But you are not my good. I am your brother. But you are not my good. But if we place the good in a right determination of the will, the very observance of the relations of life is good, and accordingly he who gives up any external things, obtains that which is good. Your father takes away your property. But he does not injure you. Your brother will have the greater part of the estate in land. Let him have as much as he chooses. Will he then have a greater share of modesty, of fidelity, of brotherly affection? For who will eject you from this possession? Not even Zeus, for neither has he chosen to do so; but he has made this in my own power, and he has given it to me just as he possessed it himself, free from hindrance, compulsion, and impediment. When then the coin which another uses is a different coin, if a man presents this coin, be receives that which is sold for it. Suppose that there comes into the province a thievish proconsul, what coin does he use? Silver coin. Show it to him, and carry off what you please. Suppose one comes who is an adulterer: what coin does he use? Little girls. Take, a man says, the coin, and sell me the small thing. Give, says the seller, and buy what you want. Another is eager to possess boys. Give him the coin, and receive what you wish. Another is fond of hunting: give him a fine nag or a dog. Though he groans and laments, be will sell for it that which you want. For another compels him from within, he who has fixed determined) this coin. Mrs. Carter compares the Epistle to the Romans, vii. 21–23. Schweighaeuser says, the man either sees that the thing which he is doing is bad or unjust, or for any other reason he does not do the thing willingly; but he is compelled, and allows himself to be carried away by the passion which rules him. The another who compels is God, Schweig. says, who has made the nature of man such, that he must postpone every thing else to that thing in which he places his Good: and he adds, that it is man’s fault if he places his good in that thing, in which God has not placed it. Some persons will not consider this to be satisfactory. The man is compelled and allows himself to be carried away, etc. The notion of compulsion is inconsistent with the exercise of the will. The man is unlucky. He is like him who sees, as the Latin poet says, the better things and approves of them, but follows the worse. Against (or with respect to) this kind of thing chiefly a man should exercise himself. As soon as you go out in the morning, examine every man whom you see, every man whom you hear; answer as to a question, What have you seen? A handsome man or woman? Apply the rule. Is this independent of the will, or dependent? Independent. Take it away. What have you seen? A man lamenting over the death of a child. Apply the rule. Death is a thing independent of the will. Take it away. Has the proconsul met you? Apply the rule. What kind of thing is a proconsul’s office? Independent of the will, or dependent on it? Independent. Take this away also: it does not stand examination: cast it away: it is nothing to you. If we practised this and exercised ourselves in it daily from morning to night, something indeed would be done. But now we are forthwith caught half asleep by every appearance, and it is only, if ever, that in the school we are roused a little. Then when we go out, if we see a man lamenting, we say, He is undone. If we see a consul, we say, He is happy. If we see an exiled man, we say, He is miserable. If we see a poor man, we say, He is wretched: he has nothing to eat. We ought then to eradicate these bad opinions, and to this end we should direct all our efforts. For what is weeping and lamenting? Opinion. What is bad fortune? Opinion. What is civil sedition, what is divided opinion, what is blame, what is accusation, what is impiety, what is trifling?. All these things are opinions, and nothing more, and opinions about things independent of the will, as if they were good and bad. Let a man transfer these opinions to things dependent on the will, and I engage for him that he will be firm and constant, whatever may be the state of things around him. Such as is a dish of water, such is the soul. Such as is the ray of light which falls on the water, such are the appearances. When the water is moved, the ray also seems to be moved, yet it is not moved. And when then a man is seized with giddiness, it is not the arts and the virtues which are confounded, but the spirit (the nervous power) on which they are impressed; but if the spirit be restored to its settled state, those things also are restored.'' None |
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33. New Testament, 1 Corinthians, 2.10, 4.21 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, view of security
Found in books: Engberg-Pedersen (2010), Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit, 212; Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 173, 370
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2.10 ἡμῖν γὰρ ἀπεκάλυψεν ὁ θεὸς διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος, τὸ γὰρ πνεῦμα πάντα ἐραυνᾷ, καὶ τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ.
4.21 τί θέλετε; ἐν ῥάβδῳ ἔλθω πρὸς ὑμᾶς, ἢ ἐν ἀγάπῃ πνεύματί τε πραΰτητος;'' None | sup>
2.10 But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For theSpirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
4.21 What do you want? Shall I cometo you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?'' None |
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34. New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, 1.5-1.6, 4.8, 4.17 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, communities of • Epicurus, philanthrōpia • Epicurus, self-taught • Epicurus,example • reputation,of Epicurus
Found in books: Engberg-Pedersen (2010), Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit, 212; Gunderson (2022), The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians: Essays in Honor of L. Michael White, 115; Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 182, 206, 272, 368, 390
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1.5 ὅτι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἡμῶν οὐκ ἐγενήθη εἰς ὑμᾶς ἐν λόγῳ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν δυνάμει καὶ ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ πληροφορίᾳ πολλῇ, καθὼς οἴδατε οἷοι ἐγενήθημεν ὑμῖν διʼ ὑμᾶς· 1.6 καὶ ὑμεῖς μιμηταὶ ἡμῶν ἐγενήθητε καὶ τοῦ κυρίου, δεξάμενοι τὸν λόγον ἐν θλίψει πολλῇ μετὰ χαρᾶς πνεύματος ἁγίου,
4.8 τοιγαροῦν ὁ ἀθετῶν οὐκ ἄνθρωπον ἀθετεῖ ἀλλὰ τὸν θεὸν τὸνδιδόντα τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦτὸ ἅγιονεἰς ὑμᾶς.
4.17 ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁρπαγησόμεθα ἐν νεφέλαις εἰς ἀπάντησιν τοῦ κυρίου εἰς ἀέρα· καὶ οὕτως πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα.'' None | sup>
1.5 and that our gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and with much assurance. You know what kind of men we showed ourselves to be among you for your sake. 1.6 You became imitators of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit, ' "
4.8 Therefore he who rejects doesn't reject man, but God, who has also given his Holy Spirit to you. " 4.17 then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. So we will be with the Lord forever. '' None |
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35. New Testament, Acts, 17.16-17.18, 17.29 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Athens, Epicurus, Epicureans • Epicurus • Epicurus, communities of • Epicurus, “Death is nothing”
Found in books: Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 763; Potter Suh and Holladay (2021), Hellenistic Jewish Literature and the New Testament: Collected Essays, 612, 613, 634; Trettel (2019), Desires in Paradise: An Interpretative Study of Augustine's City of God 14, 25, 26
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17.16 Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Ἀθήναις ἐκδεχομένου αὐτοὺς τοῦ Παύλου, παρωξύνετο τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ θεωροῦντος κατείδωλον οὖσαν τὴν πόλιν. 17.17 διελέγετο μὲν οὖν ἐν τῇ συναγωγῇ τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις καὶ τοῖς σεβομένοις καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ κατὰ πᾶσαν ἡμέραν πρὸς τοὺς παρατυγχάνοντας. 17.18 τινὲς δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἐπικουρίων καὶ Στωικῶν φιλοσόφων συνέβαλλον αὐτῷ, καί τινες ἔλεγον Τί ἂν θέλοι ὁ σπερμολόγος οὗτος λέγειν; οἱ δέ Ξένων δαιμονίων δοκεῖ καταγγελεὺς εἶναι·
17.29 γένος οὖν ὑπάρχοντες τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ὀφείλομεν νομίζειν χρυσῷ ἢ ἀργύρῳ ἢ λίθῳ, χαράγματι τέχνής καὶ ἐνθυμήσεως ἀνθρώπου, τὸ θεῖον εἶναι ὅμοιον.'' None | sup>
17.16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols. 17.17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him. 17.18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him. Some said, "What does this babbler want to say?"Others said, "He seems to be advocating foreign demons," because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.
17.29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and device of man. '' None |
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36. New Testament, Galatians, 6.1 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, as model
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 187; Engberg-Pedersen (2010), Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit, 212
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6.1 Ἀδελφοί, ἐὰν καὶ προλημφθῇ ἄνθρωπος ἔν τινι παραπτώματι, ὑμεῖς οἱ πνευματικοὶ καταρτίζετε τὸν τοιοῦτον ἐν πνεύματι πραΰτητος, σκοπῶν σεαυτόν, μὴ καὶ σὺ πειρασθῇς.'' None | sup>
6.1 Brothers, even if a man is caught in some fault, you who arespiritual must restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking toyourself so that you also aren't tempted. "" None |
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37. New Testament, Romans, 1.20 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, “Death is nothing”
Found in books: Cain (2023), Mirrors of the Divine: Late Ancient Christianity and the Vision of God, 54; Potter Suh and Holladay (2021), Hellenistic Jewish Literature and the New Testament: Collected Essays, 634
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1.20 τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους,'' None | sup>
1.20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse. '' None |
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38. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 7.3.5 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229
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7.3.5 \xa0For the man who denies that god is a spirit permeating all things, assuredly asserts that the epithet "divine" is falsely applied to his nature, like Epicurus, who gives him a human form and makes him reside in the intermundane space. While both use the same term god, both have to employ conjecture to decide which of the two meanings is consistent with fact.'' None |
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39. Seneca The Younger, Letters, 11.8-11.10, 89.11, 98.9, 99.25 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, And of imagining advice from a respected figure • Epicurus,example • parts of philosophy, Epicurus on • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, Cicero and
Found in books: Brouwer (2013), The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates, 21; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 77; Jenkyns (2013), God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination, 15; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 75, 76, 115; Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 199, 390, 695; Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 144; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 220
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11.8 But my letter calls for its closing sentence. Hear and take to heart this useful and wholesome motto:1 "Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them." 11.9 Such, my dear Lucilius, is the counsel of Epicurus;2 he has quite properly given us a guardian and an attendant. We can get rid of most sins, if we have a witness who stands near us when we are likely to go wrong. The soul should have someone whom it can respect, – one by whose authority it may make even its inner shrine more hallowed.3 Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts! And happy also is he who can so revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind! One who can so revere another, will soon be himself worthy of reverence. 11.10 Choose therefore a Cato; or, if Cato seems too severe a model, choose some Laelius, a gentler spirit. Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler. Farewell.
98.9 For this very reason I regard as excellent the saying4 of Metrodorus, in a letter of consolation to his sister on the loss of her son, a lad of great promise: "All the Good of mortals is mortal." He is referring to those Goods towards which men rush in shoals. For the real Good does not perish; it is certain and lasting and it consists of wisdom and virtue; it is the only immortal thing that falls to mortal lot.
99.25 And in no wise do I approve of the remark of Metrodorus – that there is a certain pleasure akin to sadness, and that one should give chase thereto at such times as these. I am quoting the actual words of Metrodorus8' ' None |
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40. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229
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41. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, Memory of past, value of • Epicurus/Epicureans
Found in books: Linjamaa (2019), The Ethics of The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5): A Study of Determinism and Early Christian Philosophy of Ethics, 56; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 231
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42. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus
Found in books: Augoustakis (2014), Flavian Poetry and its Greek Past, 288; Verhagen (2022), Security and Credit in Roman Law: The Historical Evolution of Pignus and Hypotheca, 288
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43. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, as letter writer • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 86; Gunderson (2022), The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians: Essays in Honor of L. Michael White, 114
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44. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, socio-economic location
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 48; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 64, 214; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 76; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 76
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45. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 182; Gunderson (2022), The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians: Essays in Honor of L. Michael White, 113
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46. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, in Plutarch • philosophy, Epicurus/Epicurean
Found in books: Cosgrove (2022), Music at Social Meals in Greek and Roman Antiquity: From the Archaic Period to the Age of Augustine, 198; Wright (2015), The Letter of Aristeas : 'Aristeas to Philocrates' or 'On the Translation of the Law of the Jews' 421
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47. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, sagehood of • Epikouros (Epicurus) • Metrodorus, on Epicurus wisdom • related fabulously about, of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, Plutarch and • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Brenk and Lanzillotta (2023), Plutarch on Literature, Graeco-Roman Religion, Jews and Christians, 115; Brouwer (2013), The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates, 169, 170; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 223; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 93, 182
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48. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, Epicurean
Found in books: Athanassaki and Titchener (2022), Plutarch's Cities, 39; Leão and Lanzillotta (2019), A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic, 301
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49. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, view of pleasure
Found in books: Leão and Lanzillotta (2019), A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic, 222; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 129
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50. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureanism • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 230, 236; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 117, 226; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 216, 218; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 7; Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 144; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 46; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 230, 236
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51. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, on nature and the self
Found in books: Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 187; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 130
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52. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, and Celsus
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 122, 276; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 1, 16
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53. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 198; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 198
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54. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, Cicero and • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Bowie (2023), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels. 424; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 106
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55. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus
Found in books: Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 480; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 36
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56. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, divination, rejection of • divination, Epicurus on
Found in books: Bowie (2023), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels. 451; Mikalson (2010), Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, 111
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57. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 1.16, 1.19, 2.12, 2.86, 2.91, 7.1, 7.4-7.5, 7.28, 7.33, 7.38, 7.40-7.41, 7.88, 7.127, 7.130, 7.134, 7.136, 7.139, 7.142, 7.148-7.150, 7.160-7.167, 9.61, 9.67-9.69, 10.2-10.3, 10.5-10.8, 10.11, 10.16-10.22, 10.26-10.28, 10.32, 10.34-10.35, 10.113, 10.117-10.137, 10.139 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicureans, authority of Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureanism • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, • Epicurus, Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Epicurean philosophy • Epicurus, Memory of past, value of • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Sex natural but necessary and tends to harm • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, Wise will marry only in special circumstances • Epicurus, and Sardanapallus • Epicurus, and carpe diem • Epicurus, appearance of • Epicurus, as letter writer • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, as patriarch • Epicurus, atomism of • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, concept of death • Epicurus, economic commentary • Epicurus, illness of • Epicurus, letters • Epicurus, misrepresentation of • Epicurus, on divine kindness • Epicurus, on friendship/patronage • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, on sensory perception • Epicurus, on virtue • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, sagehood of • Epicurus, socio-economic location • Epicurus, theology • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Epicurus/Epicureanism, love and sex • Epicurus/Epicureans • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις) • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on up to us (παρ’ ἡμῖν) • Epikouros (Epicurus) • Kyriae doxai (Epicurus) • Love, Against erotic love, Antisthenes, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aristippus, Cynics, Epictetus • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Mys (servant of Epicurus) • Mys (servant of Epicurus), “natural wealth” • Ovid, and Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life • accusation,against Epicurus • free/freedom (ἐλεύθερος/ἐλευθερία, liber/libertas), Epicurus on free movement (ἐλευθέρα κείνησις) • luck/chance (τύχη), Epicurus on • philosophy, of Epicurus • related fabulously about, of Epicurus • up to us/depending on us/in our power (ἐφ’ ἡμῖν), Epicurus on • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, Cicero and • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 65, 71, 72; Ayres and Ward (2021), The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual, 156, 188, 189; Bett (2019), How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism, 62, 192, 193; Bowie (2023), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels. 424; Bremmer (2008), Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East, 7; Brenk and Lanzillotta (2023), Plutarch on Literature, Graeco-Roman Religion, Jews and Christians, 77, 79; Brouwer (2013), The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates, 109, 170; Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 6, 35; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 10, 230, 242, 243, 249; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 473, 474, 476; Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 130, 207; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 255; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 104, 153; Geljon and Runia (2019), Philo of Alexandria: On Planting: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, 256, 262; Gilbert, Graver and McConnell (2023), Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy. 113; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 12, 79, 82, 83, 84, 88, 97, 99, 151; Gunderson (2022), The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians: Essays in Honor of L. Michael White, 113, 114, 115; Jenkyns (2013), God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination, 231; König (2012), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, 238; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 17, 20, 73, 74, 76, 204; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 74, 118, 119, 138, 139; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 216; Malherbe et al. (2014), Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays of Abraham J, 48; Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 144; Rohland (2022), Carpe Diem: The Poetics of Presence in Greek and Latin Literature, 66; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 92, 93, 96, 132; Simmons(1995), Arnobius of Sicca: Religious Conflict and Competition in the Age of Diocletian, 139, 147, 252; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 134, 165, 201, 233, 275, 280, 283, 284; Tor (2017), Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology, 56; Vogt (2015), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius. 10, 56, 76, 105; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 10, 223, 230, 242, 243, 249; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 68, 191; Wilson (2022), Paul and the Jewish Law: A Stoic Ethical Perspective on his Inconsistency, 33; Wolfsdorf (2020), Early Greek Ethics, 382, 407; Xinyue (2022), Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry, 47; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 27, 30, 33, 38, 92, 139, 143, 165, 170, 292; Zanker (1996), The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, 123, 124
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2.12 and says that Anaxagoras declared the whole firmament to be made of stones; that the rapidity of rotation caused it to cohere; and that if this were relaxed it would fall.of the trial of Anaxagoras different accounts are given. Sotion in his Succession of the Philosophers says that he was indicted by Cleon on a charge of impiety, because he declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal; that his pupil Pericles defended him, and he was fined five talents and banished. Satyrus in his Lives says that the prosecutor was Thucydides, the opponent of Pericles, and the charge one of treasonable correspondence with Persia as well as of impiety; and that sentence of death was passed on Anaxagoras by default.' "
2.86 The case stands thus. The disciples of Aristippus were his daughter Arete, Aethiops of Ptolemais, and Antipater of Cyrene. The pupil of Arete was Aristippus, who went by the name of mother-taught, and his pupil was Theodorus, known as the atheist, subsequently as god. Antipater's pupil was Epitimides of Cyrene, his was Paraebates, and he had as pupils Hegesias, the advocate of suicide, and Anniceris, who ransomed Plato.Those then who adhered to the teaching of Aristippus and were known as Cyrenaics held the following opinions. They laid down that there are two states, pleasure and pain, the former a smooth, the latter a rough motion, and that pleasure does not differ from pleasure nor is one pleasure more pleasant than another." 2.91 They do not accept the doctrine that every wise man lives pleasantly and every fool painfully, but regard it as true for the most part only. It is sufficient even if we enjoy but each single pleasure as it comes. They say that prudence is a good, though desirable not in itself but on account of its consequences; that we make friends from interested motives, just as we cherish any part of the body so long as we have it; that some of the virtues are found even in the foolish; that bodily training contributes to the acquisition of virtue; that the sage will not give way to envy or love or superstition, since these weaknesses are due to mere empty opinion; he will, however, feel pain and fear, these being natural affections;
7.1 BOOK 7: 1. ZENOZeno, the son of Mnaseas (or Demeas), was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek city which had received Phoenician settlers. He had a wry neck, says Timotheus of Athens in his book On Lives. Moreover, Apollonius of Tyre says he was lean, fairly tall, and swarthy – hence some one called him an Egyptian vine-branch, according to Chrysippus in the first book of his Proverbs. He had thick legs; he was flabby and delicate. Hence Persaeus in his Convivial Reminiscences relates that he declined most invitations to dinner. They say he was fond of eating green figs and of basking in the sun.' "
7.4 For a certain space, then, he was instructed by Crates, and when at this time he had written his Republic, some said in jest that he had written it on Cynosura, i.e. on the dog's tail. Besides the Republic he wrote the following works:of Life according to Nature.of Impulse, or Human Nature.of Emotions.of Duty.of Law.of Greek Education.of Vision.of the Whole World.of Signs.Pythagorean Questions.Universals.of Varieties of Style.Homeric Problems, in five books.of the Reading of Poetry.There are also by him:A Handbook of Rhetoric.Solutions.Two books of Refutations.Recollections of Crates.Ethics.This is a list of his writings. But at last he left Crates, and the men above mentioned were his masters for twenty years. Hence he is reported to have said, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck. But others attribute this saying of his to the time when he was under Crates." '7.5 A different version of the story is that he was staying at Athens when he heard his ship was wrecked and said, It is well done of thee, Fortune, thus to drive me to philosophy. But some say that he disposed of his cargo in Athens, before he turned his attention to philosophy.He used then to discourse, pacing up and down in the Stoa Poikile, which is also called the stoa or Portico of Pisianax, but which received its name from the painting of Polygnotus; his object being to keep the spot clear of a concourse of idlers. It was the spot where in the time of the Thirty 1400 Athenian citizens had been put to death. Hither, then, people came henceforth to hear Zeno, and this is why they were known as men of the Stoa, or Stoics; and the same name was given to his followers, who had formerly been known as Zenonians. So it is stated by Epicurus in his letters. According to Eratosthenes in his eighth book On the Old Comedy, the name of Stoic had formerly been applied to the poets who passed their time there, and they had made the name of Stoic still more famous.
7.28 And in very truth in this species of virtue and in dignity he surpassed all mankind, ay, and in happiness; for he was ninety-eight when he died and had enjoyed good health without an ailment to the last. Persaeus, however, in his ethical lectures makes him die at the age of seventy-two, having come to Athens at the age of twenty-two. But Apollonius says that he presided over the school for fifty-eight years. The manner of his death was as follows. As he was leaving the school he tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe:I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?and died on the spot through holding his breath.
7.33 Again, in the Republic, making an invidious contrast, he declares the good alone to be true citizens or friends or kindred or free men; and accordingly in the view of the Stoics parents and children are enemies, not being wise. Again, it is objected, in the Republic he lays down community of wives, and at line 200 prohibits the building of sanctuaries, law-courts and gymnasia in cities; while as regards a currency he writes that we should not think it need be introduced either for purposes of exchange or for travelling abroad. Further, he bids men and women wear the same dress and keep no part of the body entirely covered.
7.38 And furthermore the following according to Hippobotus were pupils of Zeno: Philonides of Thebes; Callippus of Corinth; Posidonius of Alexandria; Athenodorus of Soli; and Zeno of Sidon.I have decided to give a general account of all the Stoic doctrines in the life of Zeno because he was the founder of the School. I have already given a list of his numerous writings, in which he has spoken as has no other of the Stoics. And his tenets in general are as follows. In accordance with my usual practice a summary statement must suffice.
7.40 Philosophy, they say, is like an animal, Logic corresponding to the bones and sinews, Ethics to the fleshy parts, Physics to the soul. Another simile they use is that of an egg: the shell is Logic, next comes the white, Ethics, and the yolk in the centre is Physics. Or, again, they liken Philosophy to a fertile field: Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil or the trees. Or, again, to a city strongly walled and governed by reason.No single part, some Stoics declare, is independent of any other part, but all blend together. Nor was it usual to teach them separately. Others, however, start their course with Logic, go on to Physics, and finish with Ethics; and among those who so do are Zeno in his treatise On Exposition, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Eudromus.
7.41 Diogenes of Ptolemas, it is true, begins with Ethics; but Apollodorus puts Ethics second, while Panaetius and Posidonius begin with Physics, as stated by Phanias, the pupil of Posidonius, in the first book of his Lectures of Posidonius. Cleanthes makes not three, but six parts, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, Physics, Theology. But others say that these are divisions not of philosophic exposition, but of philosophy itself: so, for instance, Zeno of Tarsus. Some divide the logical part of the system into the two sciences of rhetoric and dialectic; while some would add that which deals with definitions and another part concerning canons or criteria: some, however, dispense with the part about definitions.
7.88 And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe. Diogenes then expressly declares the end to be to act with good reason in the selection of what is natural. Archedemus says the end is to live in the performance of all befitting actions.
7.127 It is a tenet of theirs that between virtue and vice there is nothing intermediate, whereas according to the Peripatetics there is, namely, the state of moral improvement. For, say the Stoics, just as a stick must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just or unjust. Nor again are there degrees of justice and injustice; and the same rule applies to the other virtues. Further, while Chrysippus holds that virtue can be lost, Cleanthes maintains that it cannot. According to the former it may be lost in consequence of drunkenness or melancholy; the latter takes it to be inalienable owing to the certainty of our mental apprehension. And virtue in itself they hold to be worthy of choice for its own sake. At all events we are ashamed of bad conduct as if we knew that nothing is really good but the morally beautiful. Moreover, they hold that it is in itself sufficient to ensure well-being: thus Zeno, and Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Virtues, and Hecato in the second book of his treatise On Goods:' "
7.130 Their definition of love is an effort toward friendliness due to visible beauty appearing, its sole end being friendship, not bodily enjoyment. At all events, they allege that Thrasonides, although he had his mistress in his power, abstained from her because she hated him. By which it is shown, they think, that love depends upon regard, as Chrysippus says in his treatise of Love, and is not sent by the gods. And beauty they describe as the bloom or flower of virtue.of the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the practical, and the rational, they declare that we ought to choose the last, for that a rational being is expressly produced by nature for contemplation and for action. They tell us that the wise man will for reasonable cause make his own exit from life, on his country's behalf or for the sake of his friends, or if he suffer intolerable pain, mutilation, or incurable disease."
7.134 They hold that there are two principles in the universe, the active principle and the passive. The passive principle, then, is a substance without quality, i.e. matter, whereas the active is the reason inherent in this substance, that is God. For he is everlasting and is the artificer of each several thing throughout the whole extent of matter. This doctrine is laid down by Zeno of Citium in his treatise On Existence, Cleanthes in his work On Atoms, Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics towards the end, Archedemus in his treatise On Elements, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Exposition. There is a difference, according to them, between principles and elements; the former being without generation or destruction, whereas the elements are destroyed when all things are resolved into fire. Moreover, the principles are incorporeal and destitute of form, while the elements have been endowed with form.
7.136 In the beginning he was by himself; he transformed the whole of substance through air into water, and just as in animal generation the seed has a moist vehicle, so in cosmic moisture God, who is the seminal reason of the universe, remains behind in the moisture as such an agent, adapting matter to himself with a view to the next stage of creation. Thereupon he created first of all the four elements, fire, water, air, earth. They are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and by Archedemus in a work On Elements. An element is defined as that from which particular things first come to be at their birth and into which they are finally resolved.
7.139 For through some parts it passes as a hold or containing force, as is the case with our bones and sinews; while through others it passes as intelligence, as in the ruling part of the soul. Thus, then, the whole world is a living being, endowed with soul and reason, and having aether for its ruling principle: so says Antipater of Tyre in the eighth book of his treatise On the Cosmos. Chrysippus in the first book of his work On Providence and Posidonius in his book On the Gods say that the heaven, but Cleanthes that the sun, is the ruling power of the world. Chrysippus, however, in the course of the same work gives a somewhat different account, namely, that it is the purer part of the aether; the same which they declare to be preeminently God and always to have, as it were in sensible fashion, pervaded all that is in the air, all animals and plants, and also the earth itself, as a principle of cohesion.
7.142 The world, they hold, comes into being when its substance has first been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes on increasing till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their mixture. The generation and the destruction of the world are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, by Posidonius in the first book of his work On the Cosmos, by Cleanthes, and by Antipater in his tenth book On the Cosmos. Panaetius, however, maintained that the world is indestructible.The doctrine that the world is a living being, rational, animate and intelligent, is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Providence, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by Posidonius.
7.148 The substance of God is declared by Zeno to be the whole world and the heaven, as well as by Chrysippus in his first book of the Gods, and by Posidonius in his first book with the same title. Again, Antipater in the seventh book of his work On the Cosmos says that the substance of God is akin to air, while Boethus in his work On Nature speaks of the sphere of the fixed stars as the substance of God. Now the term Nature is used by them to mean sometimes that which holds the world together, sometimes that which causes terrestrial things to spring up. Nature is defined as a force moving of itself, producing and preserving in being its offspring in accordance with seminal principles within definite periods, and effecting results homogeneous with their sources.
7.149 Nature, they hold, aims both at utility and at pleasure, as is clear from the analogy of human craftsmanship. That all things happen by fate or destiny is maintained by Chrysippus in his treatise De fato, by Posidonius in his De fato, book ii., by Zeno and by Boethus in his De fato, book i. Fate is defined as an endless chain of causation, whereby things are, or as the reason or formula by which the world goes on. What is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno, Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any real existence.
7.150 The primary matter they make the substratum of all things: so Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and Zeno. By matter is meant that out of which anything whatsoever is produced. Both substance and matter are terms used in a twofold sense according as they signify (1) universal or (2) particular substance or matter. The former neither increases nor diminishes, while the matter of particular things both increases and diminishes. Body according to them is substance which is finite: so Antipater in his second book On Substance, and Apollodorus in his Physics. Matter can also be acted upon, as the same author says, for if it were immutable, the things which are produced would never have been produced out of it. Hence the further doctrine that matter is divisible ad infinitum. Chrysippus says that the division is not ad infinitum, but itself infinite; for there is nothing infinitely small to which the division can extend. But nevertheless the division goes on without ceasing.
7.160 2. ARISTONAriston the Bald, of Chios, who was also called the Siren, declared the end of action to be a life of perfect indifference to everything which is neither virtue nor vice; recognizing no distinction whatever in things indifferent, but treating them all alike. The wise man he compared to a good actor, who, if called upon to take the part of a Thersites or of an Agamemnon, will impersonate them both becomingly. He wished to discard both Logic and Physics, saying that Physics was beyond our reach and Logic did not concern us: all that did concern us was Ethics.' "
7.161 Dialectical reasonings, he said, are like spiders' webs, which, though they seem to display some artistic workmanship, are yet of no use. He would not admit a plurality of virtues with Zeno, nor again with the Megarians one single virtue called by many names; but he treated virtue in accordance with the category of relative modes. Teaching this sort of philosophy, and lecturing in the Cynosarges, he acquired such influence as to be called the founder of a sect. At any rate Miltiades and Diphilus were denominated Aristoneans. He was a plausible speaker and suited the taste of the general public. Hence Timon's verse about him:One who from wily Ariston's line boasts his descent." "
7.162 After meeting Polemo, says Diocles of Magnesia, while Zeno was suffering from a protracted illness, he recanted his views. The Stoic doctrine to which he attached most importance was the wise man's refusal to hold mere opinions. And against this doctrine Persaeus was contending when he induced one of a pair of twins to deposit a certain sum with Ariston and afterwards got the other to reclaim it. Ariston being thus reduced to perplexity was refuted. He was at variance with Arcesilaus; and one day when he saw an abortion in the shape of a bull with a uterus, he said, Alas, here Arcesilaus has had given into his hand an argument against the evidence of the senses." "
7.163 When some Academic alleged that he had no certainty of anything, Ariston said, Do you not even see your neighbour sitting by you? and when the other answered No, he rejoined,Who can have blinded you? who robbed you of luminous eyesight?The books attributed to him are as follows:Exhortations, two books.of Zeno's Doctrines.Dialogues.Lectures, six books.Dissertations on Philosophy, seven books.Dissertations on Love.Commonplaces on Vainglory.Notebooks, twenty-five volumes.Memorabilia, three books.Anecdotes, eleven books.Against the Rhetoricians.An Answer to the Counter-pleas of Alexinus.Against the Dialecticians, three books.Letters to Cleanthes, four books.Panaetius and Sosicrates consider the Letters to be alone genuine; all the other works named they attribute to Ariston the Peripatetic." 7.164 The story goes that being bald he had a sunstroke and so came to his end. I have composed a trifling poem upon him in limping iambics as follows:Wherefore, Ariston, when old and bald did you let the sun roast your forehead? Thus seeking warmth more than was reasonable, you lit unwillingly upon the chill reality of Death.There was also another Ariston, a native of Iulis; a third, a musician of Athens; a fourth, a tragic poet; a fifth, of Halae, author of treatises on rhetoric; a sixth, a Peripatetic philosopher of Alexandria.
7.165 3. HERILLUSHerillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge, that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects, as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in reply to Zeno.
7.166 He is said to have had many admirers when a boy; and as Zeno wished to drive them away, he compelled Herillus to have his head shaved, which disgusted them.His books are the following:of Training.of the Passions.Concerning Opinion or Belief.The Legislator.The Obstetrician.The Challenger.The Teacher.The Reviser.The Controller.Hermes.Medea.Dialogues.Ethical Themes.
7.167 4. DIONYSIUSDionysiusDionysius, the Renegade, declared that pleasure was the end of action; this under the trying circumstance of an attack of ophthalmia. For so violent was his suffering that he could not bring himself to call pain a thing indifferent.He was the son of Theophantus and a native of Heraclea. At first, as Diocles relates, he was a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Heraclides, next of Alexinus and Menedemus, and lastly of Zeno. At the outset of his career he was fond of literature and tried his hand at all kinds of poetry; afterwards he took Aratus for his model, whom he strove to imitate. When he fell away from Zeno, he went over to the Cyrenaics, and used to frequent houses of ill fame and indulge in all other excesses without disguise. After living till he was nearly eighty years of age, he committed suicide by starving himself.The following works are attributed to him:of Apathy, two booksOn Training, two books.of Pleasure, four books.of Wealth, Popularity and RevengeHow to live amongst Men.of Prosperity.of Ancient Kings.of those who are Praised.of the Customs of Barbarians.These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics. The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak.' "
9.61 11. PYRRHOPyrrho of Elis was the son of Pleistarchus, as Diocles relates. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he was first a painter; then he studied under Stilpo's son Bryson: thus Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers. Afterwards he joined Anaxarchus, whom he accompanied on his travels everywhere so that he even forgathered with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi. This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that." 9.67 They say that, when septic salves and surgical and caustic remedies were applied to a wound he had sustained, he did not so much as frown. Timon also portrays his disposition in the full account which he gives of him to Pytho. Philo of Athens, a friend of his, used to say that he was most fond of Democritus, and then of Homer, admiring him and continually repeating the lineAs leaves on trees, such is the life of man.He also admired Homer because he likened men to wasps, flies, and birds, and would quote these verses as well:Ay, friend, die thou; why thus thy fate deplore?Patroclus too, thy better, is no more,and all the passages which dwell on the unstable purpose, vain pursuits, and childish folly of man. 9.68 Posidonius, too, relates of him a story of this sort. When his fellow-passengers on board a ship were all unnerved by a storm, he kept calm and confident, pointing to a little pig in the ship that went on eating, and telling them that such was the unperturbed state in which the wise man should keep himself. Numenius alone attributes to him positive tenets. He had pupils of repute, in particular one Eurylochus, who fell short of his professions; for they say that he was once so angry that he seized the spit with the meat on it and chased his cook right into the market-place.' "9.69 Once in Elis he was so hard pressed by his pupils' questions that he stripped and swam across the Alpheus. Now he was, as Timon too says, most hostile to Sophists.Philo, again, who had a habit of very often talking to himself, is also referred to in the lines:Yea, him that is far away from men, at leisure to himself,Philo, who recks not of opinion or of wrangling.Besides these, Pyrrho's pupils included Hecataeus of Abdera, Timon of Phlius, author of the Silli, of whom more anon, and also Nausiphanes of Teos, said by some to have been a teacher of Epicurus. All these were called Pyrrhoneans after the name of their master, but Aporetics, Sceptics, Ephectics, and even Zetetics, from their principles, if we may call them such —" 10.2 For some time he stayed there and gathered disciples, but returned to Athens in the archonship of Anaxicrates. And for a while, it is said, he prosecuted his studies in common with the other philosophers, but afterwards put forward independent views by the foundation of the school called after him. He says himself that he first came into contact with philosophy at the age of fourteen. Apollodorus the Epicurean, in the first book of his Life of Epicurus, says that he turned to philosophy in disgust at the schoolmasters who could not tell him the meaning of chaos in Hesiod. According to Hermippus, however, he started as a schoolmaster, but on coming across the works of Democritus turned eagerly to philosophy.' "10.3 Hence the point of Timon's allusion in the lines:Again there is the latest and most shameless of the physicists, the schoolmaster's son from Samos, himself the most uneducated of mortals.At his instigation his three brothers, Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus, joined in his studies, according to Philodemus the Epicurean in the tenth book of his comprehensive work On Philosophers; furthermore his slave named Mys, as stated by Myronianus in his Historical Parallels. Diotimus the Stoic, who is hostile to him, has assailed him with bitter slanders, adducing fifty scandalous letters as written by Epicurus; and so too did the author who ascribed to Epicurus the epistles commonly attributed to Chrysippus." "
10.5 Furthermore that he extolled Idomeneus, Herodotus, and Timocrates, who had published his esoteric doctrines, and flattered them for that very reason. Also that in his letters he wrote to Leontion, O Lord Apollo, my dear little Leontion, with what tumultuous applause we were inspired as we read your letter. Then again to Themista, the wife of Leonteus: I am quite ready, if you do not come to see me, to spin thrice on my own axis and be propelled to any place that you, including Themista, agree upon; and to the beautiful Pythocles he writes: I will sit down and await thy divine advent, my heart's desire. And, as Theodorus says in the fourth book of his work, Against Epicurus, in another letter to Themista he thinks he preaches to her." '10.6 It is added that he corresponded with many courtesans, and especially with Leontion, of whom Metrodorus also was enamoured. It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these terms: I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form. And in his letter to Pythocles: Hoist all sail, my dear boy, and steer clear of all culture. Epictetus calls him preacher of effeminacy and showers abuse on him.Again there was Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his disciple and then left the school. He in the book entitled Merriment asserts that Epicurus vomited twice a day from over-indulgence, and goes on to say that he himself had much ado to escape from those notorious midnight philosophizings and the confraternity with all its secrets;' "10.7 further, that Epicurus's acquaintance with philosophy was small and his acquaintance with life even smaller; that his bodily health was pitiful, so much so that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair; and that he spent a whole mina daily on his table, as he himself says in his letter to Leontion and in that to the philosophers at Mitylene. Also that among other courtesans who consorted with him and Metrodorus were Mammarion and Hedia and Erotion and Nikidion. He alleges too that in his thirty-seven books On Nature Epicurus uses much repetition and writes largely in sheer opposition to others, especially to Nausiphanes, and here are his own words: Nay, let them go hang: for, when labouring with an idea, he too had the sophist's off-hand boastfulness like many another servile soul;" "10.8 besides, he himself in his letters says of Nausiphanes: This so maddened him that he abused me and called me pedagogue. Epicurus used to call this Nausiphanes jelly-fish, an illiterate, a fraud, and a trollop; Plato's school he called the toadies of Dionysius, their master himself the golden Plato, and Aristotle a profligate, who after devouring his patrimony took to soldiering and selling drugs; Protagoras a pack-carrier and the scribe of Democritus and village schoolmaster; Heraclitus a muddler; Democritus Lerocritus (the nonsense-monger); and Antidorus Sannidorus (fawning gift-bearer); the Cynics foes of Greece; the Dialecticians despoilers; and Pyrrho an ignorant boor." 10.11 This is stated by Apollodorus, who also says that he purchased the garden for eighty minae; and to the same effect Diocles in the third book of his Epitome speaks of them as living a very simple and frugal life; at all events they were content with half a pint of thin wine and were, for the rest, thorough-going water-drinkers. He further says that Epicurus did not think it right that their property should be held in common, as required by the maxim of Pythagoras about the goods of friends; such a practice in his opinion implied mistrust, and without confidence there is no friendship. In his correspondence he himself mentions that he was content with plain bread and water. And again: Send me a little pot of cheese, that, when I like, I may fare sumptuously. Such was the man who laid down that pleasure was the end of life. And here is the epigram in which Athenaeus eulogizes him:' "
10.16 and then, having bidden his friends remember his doctrines, breathed his last.Here is something of my own about him:Farewell, my friends; the truths I taught hold fast:Thus Epicurus spake, and breathed his last.He sat in a warm bath and neat wine quaff'd,And straightway found chill death in that same draught.Such was the life of the sage and such his end.His last will was as follows: On this wise I give and bequeath all my property to Amynomachus, son of Philocrates of Bate and Timocrates, son of Demetrius of Potamus, to each severally according to the items of the deed of gift laid up in the Metroon," '10.17 on condition that they shall place the garden and all that pertains to it at the disposal of Hermarchus, son of Agemortus, of Mitylene, and the members of his society, and those whom Hermarchus may leave as his successors, to live and study in. And I entrust to my School in perpetuity the task of aiding Amynomachus and Timocrates and their heirs to preserve to the best of their power the common life in the garden in whatever way is best, and that these also (the heirs of the trustees) may help to maintain the garden in the same way as those to whom our successors in the School may bequeath it. And let Amynomachus and Timocrates permit Hermarchus and his fellow-members to live in the house in Melite for the lifetime of Hermarchus. 10.18 And from the revenues made over by me to Amynomachus and Timocrates let them to the best of their power in consultation with Hermarchus make separate provision (1) for the funeral offerings to my father, mother, and brothers, and (2) for the customary celebration of my birthday on the tenth day of Gamelion in each year, and for the meeting of all my School held every month on the twentieth day to commemorate Metrodorus and myself according to the rules now in force. Let them also join in celebrating the day in Poseideon which commemorates my brothers, and likewise the day in Metageitnion which commemorates Polyaenus, as I have done hitherto.' "10.19 And let Amynomachus and Timocrates take care of Epicurus, the son of Metrodorus, and of the son of Polyaenus, so long as they study and live with Hermarchus. Letthem likewise provide for the maintece of Metrodorus's daughter, so long as she is well-ordered and obedient to Hermarchus; and, when she comes of age, give her in marriage to a husband selected by Hermarchus from among the members of the School; and out of the revenues accruing to me let Amynomachus and Timocrates in consultation with Hermarchus give to them as much as they think proper for their maintece year by year." 10.20 Let them make Hermarchus trustee of the funds along with themselves, in order that everything may be done in concert with him, who has grown old with me in philosophy and is left at the head of the School. And when the girl comes of age, let Amynomachus and Timocrates pay her dowry, taking from the property as much as circumstances allow, subject to the approval of Hermarchus. Let them provide for Nicanor as I have hitherto done, so that none of those members of the school who have rendered service to me in private life and have shown me kindness in every way and have chosen to grow old with me in the School should, so far as my means go, lack the necessaries of life.
10.21 All my books to be given to Hermarchus.And if anything should happen to Hermarchus before the children of Metrodorus grow up, Amynomachus and Timocrates shall give from the funds bequeathed by me, so far as possible, enough for their several needs, as long as they are well ordered. And let them provide for the rest according to my arrangements; that everything may be carried out, so far as it lies in their power. of my slaves I manumit Mys, Nicias, Lycon, and I also give Phaedrium her liberty.
10.22 And when near his end he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus:On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could augment them; but over against them all I set gladness of mind at the remembrance of our past conversations. But I would have you, as becomes your life-long attitude to me and to philosophy, watch over the children of Metrodorus.Such were the terms of his will.Among his disciples, of whom there were many, the following were eminent: Metrodorus, the son of Athenaeus (or of Timocrates) and of Sande, a citizen of Lampsacus, who from his first acquaintance with Epicurus never left him except once for six months spent on a visit to his native place, from which he returned to him again.
10.26 and Demetrius, who was called the Laconian; and Diogenes of Tarsus, who compiled the select lectures; and Orion, and others whom the genuine Epicureans call Sophists.There were three other men who bore the name of Epicurus: one the son of Leonteus and Themista; another a Magnesian by birth; and a third, a drill-sergeant.Epicurus was a most prolific author and eclipsed all before him in the number of his writings: for they amount to about three hundred rolls, and contain not a single citation from other authors; it is Epicurus himself who speaks throughout. Chrysippus tried to outdo him in authorship according to Carneades, who therefore calls him the literary parasite of Epicurus. For every subject treated by Epicurus, Chrysippus in his contentiousness must treat at equal length;
10.27 hence he has frequently repeated himself and set down the first thought that occurred to him, and in his haste has left things unrevised, and he has so many citations that they alone fill his books: nor is this unexampled in Zeno and Aristotle. Such, then, in number and character are the writings of Epicurus, the best of which are the following:of Nature, thirty-seven books.of Atoms and Void.of Love.Epitome of Objections to the Physicists.Against the Megarians.Problems.Sovran Maxims.of Choice and Avoidance.of the End.of the Standard, a work entitled Canon.Chaeredemus.of the Gods.of Piety.
10.28 Hegesianax.of Human Life, four books.of Just Dealing.Neocles: dedicated to Themista.Symposium.Eurylochus: dedicated to Metrodorus.of Vision.of the Angle in the Atom.of Touch.of Fate.Theories of the Feelings – against Timocrates.Discovery of the Future.Introduction to Philosophy.of Images.of Presentation.Aristobulus.of Music.of Justice and the other Virtues.of Benefits and Gratitude.Polymedes.Timocrates, three books.Metrodorus, five books.Antidorus, two books.Theories about Diseases (and Death) – to Mithras.Callistolas.of Kingship.Anaximenes.Correspondence.The views expressed in these works I will try to set forth by quoting three of his epistles, in which he has given an epitome of his whole system.
10.32 Nor is there anything which can refute sensations or convict them of error: one sensation cannot convict another and kindred sensation, for they are equally valid; nor can one sensation refute another which is not kindred but heterogeneous, for the objects which the two senses judge are not the same; nor again can reason refute them, for reason is wholly dependent on sensation; nor can one sense refute another, since we pay equal heed to all. And the reality of separate perceptions guarantees the truth of our senses. But seeing and hearing are just as real as feeling pain. Hence it is from plain facts that we must start when we draw inferences about the unknown. For all our notions are derived from perceptions, either by actual contact or by analogy, or resemblance, or composition, with some slight aid from reasoning. And the objects presented to mad-men and to people in dreams are true, for they produce effects – i.e. movements in the mind – which that which is unreal never does.
10.34 Opinion they also call conception or assumption, and declare it to be true and false; for it is true if it is subsequently confirmed or if it is not contradicted by evidence, and false if it is not subsequently confirmed or is contradicted by evidence. Hence the introduction of the phrase, that which awaits confirmation, e.g. to wait and get close to the tower and then learn what it looks like at close quarters.They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being, and that the one is favourable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined; and that there are two kinds of inquiry, the one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words. So much, then, for his division and criterion in their main outline.But we must return to the letter.Epicurus to Herodotus, greeting.
10.117 Such are his views on celestial phenomena.But as to the conduct of life, what we ought to avoid and what to choose, he writes as follows. Before quoting his words, however, let me go into the views of Epicurus himself and his school concerning the wise man.There are three motives to injurious acts among men – hatred, envy, and contempt; and these the wise man overcomes by reason. Moreover, he who has once become wise never more assumes the opposite habit, not even in semblance, if he can help it. He will be more susceptible of emotion than other men: that will be no hindrance to his wisdom. However, not every bodily constitution nor every nationality would permit a man to become wise.Even on the rack the wise man is happy. He alone will feel gratitude towards friends, present and absent alike, and show it by word and deed.' "
10.118 When on the rack, however, he will give vent to cries and groans. As regards women he will submit to the restrictions imposed by the law, as Diogenes says in his epitome of Epicurus' ethical doctrines. Nor will he punish his servants; rather he will pity them and make allowance on occasion for those who are of good character. The Epicureans do not suffer the wise man to fall in love; nor will he trouble himself about funeral rites; according to them love does not come by divine inspiration: so Diogenes in his twelfth book. The wise man will not make fine speeches. No one was ever the better for sexual indulgence, and it is well if he be not the worse." 10.119 Nor, again, will the wise man marry and rear a family: so Epicurus says in the Problems and in the De Natura. Occasionally he may marry owing to special circumstances in his life. Some too will turn aside from their purpose. Nor will he drivel, when drunken: so Epicurus says in the Symposium. Nor will he take part in politics, as is stated in the first book On Life; nor will he make himself a tyrant; nor will he turn Cynic (so the second book On Life tells us); nor will he be a mendicant. But even when he has lost his sight, he will not withdraw himself from life: this is stated in the same book. The wise man will also feel grief, according to Diogenes in the fifth book of his Epilecta. 10.122 Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it. 10.123 Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto thee, those do, and exercise thyself therein, holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, thou shalt not affirm of him aught that is foreign to his immortality or that agrees not with blessedness, but shalt believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. 10.124 For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favourable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like unto themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. 10.125 For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. 10.126 The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offence to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirableness of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. 10.127 For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. 10.128 He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. 10.129 It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but ofttimes pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And ofttimes we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is choiceworthy, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. 10.130 It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed,' "10.131 while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul." '10.132 It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. of all this the beginning and the greatest good is prudence. Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. 10.133 Who, then, is superior in thy judgement to such a man? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Destiny, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. 10.134 It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape if we honour the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is dispensed by chance to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. 10.135 It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance.Exercise thyself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by thyself and with him who is like unto thee; then never, either in waking or in dream, wilt thou be disturbed, but wilt live as a god among men. For man loses all semblance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.Elsewhere he rejects the whole of divination, as in the short epitome, and says, No means of predicting the future really exists, and if it did, we must regard what happens according to it as nothing to us.Such are his views on life and conduct; and he has discoursed upon them at greater length elsewhere. 10.136 He differs from the Cyrenaics with regard to pleasure. They do not include under the term the pleasure which is a state of rest, but only that which consists in motion. Epicurus admits both; also pleasure of mind as well as of body, as he states in his work On Choice and Avoidance and in that On the Ethical End, and in the first book of his work On Human Life and in the epistle to his philosopher friends in Mytilene. So also Diogenes in the seventeenth book of his Epilecta, and Metrodorus in his Timocrates, whose actual words are: Thus pleasure being conceived both as that species which consists in motion and that which is a state of rest. The words of Epicurus in his work On Choice are: Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures which imply a state of rest; joy and delight are seen to consist in motion and activity. 10.137 He further disagrees with the Cyrenaics in that they hold that pains of body are worse than mental pains; at all events evil-doers are made to suffer bodily punishment; whereas Epicurus holds the pains of the mind to be the worse; at any rate the flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present. In this way also he holds mental pleasures to be greater than those of the body. And as proof that pleasure is the end he adduces the fact that living things, so soon as they are born, are well content with pleasure and are at enmity with pain, by the prompting of nature and apart from reason. Left to our own feelings, then, we shun pain; as when even Heracles, devoured by the poisoned robe, cries aloud,And bites and yells, and rock to rock resounds,Headlands of Locris and Euboean cliffs.
10.139 A blessed and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness Elsewhere he says that the gods are discernible by reason alone, some being numerically distinct, while others result uniformly from the continuous influx of similar images directed to the same spot and in human form.Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us.The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together.' ' None |
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58. Porphyry, Letter To Marcella, 24 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, on divine kindness • Hope, Epicurus
Found in books: Simmons(1995), Arnobius of Sicca: Religious Conflict and Competition in the Age of Diocletian, 139; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 238
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24 No god is responsible for a man's evils, for he has chosen his lot himself. The prayer which is accompanied by base actions is impure, and |45 therefore not acceptable to God; but that which is accompanied by noble actions is pure, and at the same time acceptable. There are four first principles that must be upheld concerning God—faith, truth, love, hope. We must have faith that our only salvation is in turning to God. And having faith, we must strive with all our might to know the truth about God. And when we know this, we must love Him we do know. And when we love Him we must nourish our souls on good hopes for our life, for it is by their good hopes good men are superior to bad ones. Let then these four principles be firmly held."" None |
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59. None, None, nan (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, as denying providence • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, and Celsus
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 122, 276; Marmodoro and Prince (2015), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity, 38
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60. None, None, nan (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, • Epicurus, Epicureanism, Epicureans • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 131; Schaaf (2019), Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Anthropozoological Aspects in the Late Antique World. 133, 134, 138; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 223
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61. None, None, nan (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, Alexander's comment on • Epicurus/Epicurean/Epicureanism • Plotinus, and Epicurus
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 233; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 469, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 481; Edelmann-Singer et al. (2020), Sceptic and Believer in Ancient Mediterranean Religions, 237; Gerson and Wilberding (2022), The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 59, 269; Marmodoro and Prince (2015), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity, 42; Osborne (2001), Irenaeus of Lyons, 62; Pevarello (2013), The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism. 51
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62. None, None, nan (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, Epicurean philosophy
Found in books: König (2012), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, 223; Nuno et al. (2021), SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism, 45
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63. None, None, nan (7th cent. CE - 7th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 233, 234, 241; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 233, 234, 241
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64. Vergil, Georgics, 1.1-1.23, 1.41-1.42, 1.133, 1.145-1.146, 1.415, 1.464-1.497, 2.40, 2.475-2.482, 2.490, 3.242-3.283, 3.478-3.566
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus (and Epicurean) • Epicurus, on friendship/patronage • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, ambivalence about marriage • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Ovid, and Epicurus • deification, of Epicurus
Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022), Teaching through Images: Imagery in Greco-Roman Didactic Poetry, 218, 328; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 7, 10, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 36, 44, 48, 66, 70, 118, 121, 128, 139, 162, 245, 254; Keith and Myers (2023), Vergil and Elegy. 47; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 172; Perkell (1989), The Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics, 153, 172; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 77, 191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 281; Xinyue (2022), Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry, 93, 94; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 164
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1.1 Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram 1.2 vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vitis 1.3 conveniat, quae cura boum, qui cultus habendo 1.4 sit pecori, apibus quanta experientia parcis, 1.5 hinc canere incipiam. Vos, o clarissima mundi 1.6 lumina, labentem caelo quae ducitis annum, 1.7 Liber et alma Ceres, vestro si munere tellus 1.8 Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista, 1.9 poculaque inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis;
1.10 et vos, agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni,
1.11 ferte simul Faunique pedem Dryadesque puellae:
1.12 Munera vestra cano. Tuque o, cui prima frementem
1.13 fudit equum magno tellus percussa tridenti,
1.14 Neptune; et cultor nemorum, cui pinguia Ceae
1.15 ter centum nivei tondent dumeta iuvenci;
1.16 ipse nemus linquens patrium saltusque Lycaei,
1.17 Pan, ovium custos, tua si tibi Maenala curae,
1.18 adsis, o Tegeaee, favens, oleaeque Minerva
1.19 inventrix, uncique puer monstrator aratri, 1.20 et teneram ab radice ferens, Silvane, cupressum, 1.21 dique deaeque omnes, studium quibus arva tueri, 1.22 quique novas alitis non ullo semine fruges, 1.23 quique satis largum caelo demittitis imbrem;
1.41 ignarosque viae mecum miseratus agrestis 1.42 ingredere et votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari.
1.133 ut varias usus meditando extunderet artis
1.145 tum variae venere artes. Labor omnia vicit
1.146 inprobus et duris urgens in rebus egestas.
1.415 haud equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
1.464 audeat. Ille etiam caecos instare tumultus 1.465 saepe monet fraudemque et operta tumescere bella. 1.466 Ille etiam exstincto miseratus Caesare Romam, 1.467 cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit 1.468 inpiaque aeternam timuerunt saecula noctem. 1.469 Tempore quamquam illo tellus quoque et aequora ponti 1.470 obscenaeque canes inportunaeque volucres 1.471 signa dabant. Quotiens Cyclopum effervere in agros 1.472 vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Aetnam 1.473 flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa! 1.474 Armorum sonitum toto Germania caelo 1.475 audiit, insolitis tremuerunt motibus Alpes. 1.476 Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis 1.477 ingens et simulacra modis pallentia miris 1.478 visa sub obscurum noctis, pecudesque locutae, 1.479 infandum! sistunt amnes terraeque dehiscunt 1.480 et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur aeraque sudant. 1.481 Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas 1.482 fluviorum rex Eridanus camposque per omnis 1.483 cum stabulis armenta tulit. Nec tempore eodem 1.484 tristibus aut extis fibrae adparere minaces 1.485 aut puteis manare cruor cessavit et altae 1.486 per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes. 1.487 Non alias caelo ceciderunt plura sereno 1.488 fulgura nec diri totiens arsere cometae. 1.489 ergo inter sese paribus concurrere telis 1.490 Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi; 1.491 nec fuit indignum superis, bis sanguine nostro 1.492 Emathiam et latos Haemi pinguescere campos. 1.493 Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis 1.494 agricola incurvo terram molitus aratro 1.495 exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila 1.496 aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit iis 1.497 grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.
2.40 O decus, o famae merito pars maxima nostrae,
2.475 Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, 2.476 quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, 2.477 accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent, 2.478 defectus solis varios lunaeque labores; 2.479 unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant 2.480 obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant, 2.481 quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles 2.482 hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
2.490 Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
3.242 Omne adeo genus in terris hominumque ferarumque, 3.243 et genus aequoreum, pecudes pictaeque volucres, 3.244 in furias. ignemque ruunt. Amor omnibus idem. 3.245 Tempore non alio catulorum oblita leaena 3.246 saevior erravit campis, nec funera volgo 3.247 tam multa informes ursi stragemque dedere 3.248 per silvas; tum saevus aper, tum pessima tigris; 3.249 heu male tum Libyae solis erratur in agris. 3.250 Nonne vides, ut tota tremor pertemptet equorum 3.251 corpora, si tantum notas odor attulit auras? 3.252 Ac neque eos iam frena virum neque verbera saeva 3.253 non scopuli rupesque cavae atque obiecta retardant 3.254 flumina correptosque unda torquentia montis. 3.255 Ipse ruit dentesque Sabellicus exacuit sus 3.256 et pede prosubigit terram, fricat arbore costas 3.257 atque hinc atque illinc umeros ad volnera durat. 3.258 Quid iuvenis, magnum cui versat in ossibus ignem 3.259 durus amor? Nempe abruptis turbata procellis 3.260 nocte natat caeca serus freta; quem super ingens 3.261 porta tonat caeli et scopulis inlisa reclamant 3.262 aequora; nec miseri possunt revocare parentes 3.263 nec moritura super crudeli funere virgo. 3.264 Quid lynces Bacchi variae et genus acre luporum 3.265 atque canum? Quid, quae imbelles dant proelia cervi? 3.266 Scilicet ante omnis furor est insignis equarum; 3.267 et mentem Venus ipsa dedit, quo tempore Glauci 3.268 Potniades malis membra absumpsere quadrigae. 3.269 Illas ducit amor trans Gargara transque sotem 3.270 Ascanium; superant montis et flumina trat. 3.271 Continuoque avidis ubi subdita flamma medullis, 3.272 vere magis, quia vere calor redit ossibus: illae 3.273 ore omnes versae in Zephyrum stant rupibus altis, 3.274 exceptantque levis auras et saepe sine ullis 3.275 coniugiis vento gravidae, mirabile dictu, 3.276 saxa per et scopulos et depressas convallis 3.277 diffugiunt, non, Eure, tuos, neque solis ad ortus, 3.278 in Borean caurumque, aut unde nigerrimus auster 3.279 nascitur et pluvio contristat frigore caelum. 3.280 Hic demum, hippomanes vero quod nomine dicunt 3.281 pastores, lentum destillat ab inguine virus, 3.282 hippomanes, quod saepe malae legere novercae 3.283 miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba.
3.478 Hic quondam morbo caeli miseranda coorta est 3.479 tempestas totoque autumni incanduit aestu 3.480 et genus omne neci pecudum dedit, omne ferarum, 3.481 corrupitque lacus, infecit pabula tabo. 3.482 Nec via mortis erat simplex, sed ubi ignea venis 3.483 omnibus acta sitis miseros adduxerat artus, 3.484 rursus abundabat fluidus liquor omniaque in se 3.485 ossa minutatim morbo collapsa trahebat. 3.486 Saepe in honore deum medio stans hostia ad aram 3.487 lanea dum nivea circumdatur infula vitta, 3.488 inter cunctantis cecidit moribunda ministros. 3.489 Aut si quam ferro mactaverat ante sacerdos 3.490 inde neque impositis ardent altaria fibris 3.491 nec responsa potest consultus reddere vates, 3.492 ac vix suppositi tinguntur sanguine cultri 3.493 summaque ieiuna sanie infuscatur harena. 3.494 Hinc laetis vituli volgo moriuntur in herbis 3.495 et dulcis animas plena ad praesepia reddunt; 3.496 hinc canibus blandis rabies venit et quatit aegros 3.497 tussis anhela sues ac faucibus angit obesis. 3.498 Labitur infelix studiorum atque immemor herbae 3.499 victor equus fontisque avertitur et pede terram 3.500 crebra ferit; demissae aures, incertus ibidem 3.501 sudor et ille quidem morituris frigidus, aret 3.502 pellis et ad tactum tractanti dura resistit. 3.503 Haec ante exitium primis dant signa diebus; 3.504 sin in processu coepit crudescere morbus, 3.505 tum vero ardentes oculi atque attractus ab alto 3.506 spiritus, interdum gemitu gravis, imaque longo 3.507 ilia singultu tendunt, it naribus ater 3.508 sanguis et obsessas fauces premit aspera lingua. 3.509 Profuit inserto latices infundere cornu 3.510 Lenaeos; ea visa salus morientibus una; 3.511 mox erat hoc ipsum exitio, furiisque refecti 3.512 ardebant ipsique suos iam morte sub aegra, 3.513 di meliora piis erroremque hostibus illum, 3.514 discissos nudis laniabant dentibus artus. 3.515 Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere taurus 3.516 concidit et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem 3.517 extremosque ciet gemitus. It tristis arator 3.518 maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum, 3.519 atque opere in medio defixa relinquit aratra. 3.520 Non umbrae altorum nemorum, non mollia possunt 3.521 prata movere animum, non qui per saxa volutus 3.522 purior electro campum petit amnis; at ima 3.523 solvuntur latera atque oculos stupor urguet inertis 3.524 ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix. 3.525 Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? Quid vomere terras 3.526 invertisse gravis? Atqui non Massica Bacchi 3.527 munera, non illis epulae nocuere repostae: 3.528 frondibus et victu pascuntur simplicis herbae, 3.529 pocula sunt fontes liquidi atque exercita cursu 3.530 flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura salubris. 3.531 Tempore non alio dicunt regionibus illis 3.532 quaesitas ad sacra boves Iunonis et uris 3.533 imparibus ductos alta ad donaria currus. 3.534 Ergo aegre rastris terram rimantur et ipsis 3.535 unguibus infodiunt fruges montisque per altos 3.536 contenta cervice trahunt stridentia plaustra. 3.537 Non lupus insidias explorat ovilia circum 3.538 nec gregibus nocturnus obambulat; acrior illum 3.539 cura domat; timidi dammae cervique fugaces 3.540 nunc interque canes et circum tecta vagantur. 3.541 Iam maris immensi prolem et genus omne natantum 3.542 litore in extremo, ceu naufraga corpora, fluctus 3.543 proluit; insolitae fugiunt in flumina phocae. 3.544 Interit et curvis frustra defensa latebris 3.545 vipera et attoniti squamis adstantibus hydri. 3.546 Ipsis est aer avibus non aequus et illae 3.547 praecipites alta vitam sub nube relinquunt. 3.548 Praeterea iam nec mutari pabula refert 3.549 artes nocent quaesitaeque; cessere magistri 3.550 Phillyrides Chiron Amythaoniusque Melampus. 3.551 Saevit et in lucem Stygiis emissa tenebris 3.552 pallida Tisiphone Morbos agit ante Metumque, 3.553 inque dies avidum surgens caput altius effert: 3.554 Balatu pecorum et crebris mugitibus amnes 3.555 arentesque sot ripae collesque supini: 3.556 Iamque catervatim dat stragem atque aggerat ipsis 3.557 in stabulis turpi dilapsa cadavera tabo 3.558 donec humo tegere ac foveis abscondere discunt. 3.559 Nam neque erat coriis usus nec viscera quisquam 3.560 aut undis abolere potest aut vincere flamma; 3.561 ne tondere quidem morbo inluvieque peresa 3.562 vellera nec telas possunt attingere putris; 3.563 verum etiam invisos si quis temptarat amictus, 3.564 ardentes papulae atque immundus olentia sudor 3.565 membra sequebatur nec longo deinde moranti 3.566 tempore contactos artus sacer ignis edebat.' ' None | sup>
1.1 What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star 1.2 Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod 1.3 Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer; 1.4 What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof 1.5 of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;— 1.6 Such are my themes. O universal light 1.7 Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year 1.8 Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild, 1.9 If by your bounty holpen earth once changed
1.10 Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear,
1.11 And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift,
1.12 The draughts of Achelous; and ye Faun
1.13 To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Faun
1.14 And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.
1.15 And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first' "
1.16 Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke," 1.17 Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom
1.18 Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,
1.19 The fertile brakes of 1.20 Thy native forest and Lycean lawns, 1.21 Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love 1.22 of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear 1.23 And help, O lord of
1.41 With all her waves for dower; or as a star 1.42 Lend thy fresh beams our lagging months to cheer,
1.133 And when the parched field quivers, and all the blade
1.145 Holds all the country, whence the hollow dyke
1.146 Sweat steaming vapour?
1.415 Wields with red hand the levin; through all her bulk
1.464 From heaven shoot headlong, and through murky night 1.465 Long trails of fire white-glistening in their wake, 1.466 Or light chaff flit in air with fallen leaves, 1.467 Or feathers on the wave-top float and play. 1.468 But when from regions of the furious North 1.469 It lightens, and when thunder fills the hall 1.470 of Eurus and of Zephyr, all the field 1.471 With brimming dikes are flooded, and at sea 1.472 No mariner but furls his dripping sails. 1.473 Never at unawares did shower annoy: 1.474 Or, as it rises, the high-soaring crane 1.475 Flee to the vales before it, with face 1.476 Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale 1.477 Through gaping nostrils, or about the mere 1.478 Shrill-twittering flits the swallow, and the frog 1.479 Crouch in the mud and chant their dirge of old. 1.480 oft, too, the ant from out her inmost cells, 1.481 Fretting the narrow path, her eggs conveys; 1.482 Or the huge bow sucks moisture; or a host 1.483 of rooks from food returning in long line 1.484 Clamour with jostling wings. Now mayst thou see 1.485 The various ocean-fowl and those that pry 1.486 Round Asian meads within thy fresher-pools, 1.487 Cayster, as in eager rivalry, 1.488 About their shoulders dash the plenteous spray, 1.489 Now duck their head beneath the wave, now run 1.490 Into the billows, for sheer idle joy 1.491 of their mad bathing-revel. Then the crow 1.492 With full voice, good-for-naught, inviting rain, 1.493 Stalks on the dry sand mateless and alone.' "1.494 Nor e'en the maids, that card their nightly task," '1.495 Know not the storm-sign, when in blazing crock 1.496 They see the lamp-oil sputtering with a growth 1.497 of mouldy snuff-clots.
2.40 That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell,
2.475 So scathe it, as the flocks with venom-bite 2.476 of their hard tooth, whose gnawing scars the stem. 2.477 For no offence but this to Bacchus bleed 2.478 The goat at every altar, and old play 2.479 Upon the stage find entrance; therefore too 2.480 The sons of Theseus through the country-side— 2.481 Hamlet and crossway—set the prize of wit, 2.482 And on the smooth sward over oiled skin' "
2.490 Till hollow vale o'erflows, and gorge profound," 3.242 The north wind stoops, and scatters from his path 3.243 Dry clouds and storms of 3.245 A sound is heard among the forest-tops; 3.246 Long waves come racing shoreward: fast he flies, 3.247 With instant pinion sweeping earth and main. 3.248 A steed like this or on the mighty course 3.249 of 3.250 Red foam-flakes from his mouth, or, kindlier task, 3.251 With patient neck support the Belgian car. 3.252 Then, broken at last, let swell their burly frame 3.253 With fattening corn-mash, for, unbroke, they will 3.254 With pride wax wanton, and, when caught, refuse 3.255 Tough lash to brook or jagged curb obey. 3.256 But no device so fortifies their power' "3.257 As love's blind stings of passion to forefend," '3.258 Whether on steed or steer thy choice be set.' "3.259 Ay, therefore 'tis they banish bulls afar" '3.260 To solitary pastures, or behind 3.261 Some mountain-barrier, or broad streams beyond, 3.262 Or else in plenteous stalls pen fast at home. 3.263 For, even through sight of her, the female waste 3.264 His strength with smouldering fire, till he forget 3.265 Both grass and woodland. She indeed full oft 3.266 With her sweet charms can lovers proud compel 3.267 To battle for the conquest horn to horn.' "3.268 In Sila's forest feeds the heifer fair," '3.269 While each on each the furious rivals run; 3.270 Wound follows wound; the black blood laves their limbs; 3.271 Horns push and strive against opposing horns, 3.272 With mighty groaning; all the forest-side 3.273 And far 3.274 Nor wont the champions in one stall to couch;' "3.275 But he that's worsted hies him to strange clime" '3.276 Far off, an exile, moaning much the shame,' "3.277 The blows of that proud conqueror, then love's lo" '3.278 Avenged not; with one glance toward the byre, 3.279 His ancient royalties behind him lie. 3.280 So with all heed his strength he practiseth, 3.281 And nightlong makes the hard bare stones his bed, 3.282 And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush, 3.283 And proves himself, and butting at a tree
3.478 Many there be who from their mothers keep 3.479 The new-born kids, and straightway bind their mouth 3.480 With iron-tipped muzzles. What they milk at dawn, 3.481 Or in the daylight hours, at night they press; 3.482 What darkling or at sunset, this ere morn 3.483 They bear away in baskets—for to town 3.484 The shepherd hies him—or with dash of salt 3.485 Just sprinkle, and lay by for winter use. 3.486 Nor be thy dogs last cared for; but alike 3.487 Swift Spartan hounds and fierce Molossian feed 3.488 On fattening whey. Never, with these to watch, 3.489 Dread nightly thief afold and ravening wolves, 3.490 Or Spanish desperadoes in the rear. 3.491 And oft the shy wild asses thou wilt chase, 3.492 With hounds, too, hunt the hare, with hounds the doe; 3.493 oft from his woodland wallowing-den uprouse 3.494 The boar, and scare him with their baying, and drive,' "3.495 And o'er the mountains urge into the toil" '3.496 Some antlered monster to their chiming cry. 3.497 Learn also scented cedar-wood to burn 3.498 Within the stalls, and snakes of noxious smell 3.499 With fumes of galbanum to drive away. 3.500 oft under long-neglected cribs, or lurk 3.501 A viper ill to handle, that hath fled 3.502 The light in terror, or some snake, that wont' "3.503 'Neath shade and sheltering roof to creep, and shower" '3.504 Its bane among the cattle, hugs the ground, 3.505 Fell scourge of kine. Shepherd, seize stakes, seize stones! 3.506 And as he rears defiance, and puffs out 3.507 A hissing throat, down with him! see how low 3.508 That cowering crest is vailed in flight, the while, 3.509 His midmost coils and final sweep of tail 3.510 Relaxing, the last fold drags lingering spires. 3.511 Then that vile worm that in Calabrian glade 3.512 Uprears his breast, and wreathes a scaly back, 3.513 His length of belly pied with mighty spots— 3.514 While from their founts gush any streams, while yet 3.515 With showers of Spring and rainy south-winds earth 3.516 Is moistened, lo! he haunts the pools, and here 3.517 Housed in the banks, with fish and chattering frog 3.518 Crams the black void of his insatiate maw. 3.519 Soon as the fens are parched, and earth with heat 3.520 Is gaping, forth he darts into the dry, 3.521 Rolls eyes of fire and rages through the fields, 3.522 Furious from thirst and by the drought dismayed. 3.523 Me list not then beneath the open heaven 3.524 To snatch soft slumber, nor on forest-ridge 3.525 Lie stretched along the grass, when, slipped his slough, 3.526 To glittering youth transformed he winds his spires, 3.527 And eggs or younglings leaving in his lair, 3.528 Towers sunward, lightening with three-forked tongue. 3.529 of sickness, too, the causes and the sign' "3.530 I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep," '3.531 When chilly showers have probed them to the quick, 3.532 And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat 3.533 Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done, 3.534 And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it i 3.535 Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams, 3.536 While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, 3.537 The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide.' "3.538 Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er" '3.539 With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum 3.540 And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, 3.541 Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith 3.542 Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black.' "3.543 Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil," '3.544 Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance' "3.545 The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed" '3.546 And quickened by confinement; while the swain 3.547 His hand of healing from the wound withholds, 3.548 Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven.' "3.549 Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bone" '3.550 The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limb' "3.551 By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good" '3.552 To draw the enkindled heat therefrom, and pierce 3.553 Within the hoof-clefts a blood-bounding vein. 3.554 of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use, 3.555 And keen Gelonian, when to 3.556 He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk 3.557 With horse-blood curdled. Seest one far afield' "3.558 oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull" '3.559 The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag, 3.560 Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain, 3.561 At night retire belated and alone; 3.562 With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep 3.563 With dire contagion through the unwary herd. 3.564 Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours the main 3.565 With tempest in its wake, than swarm the plague 3.566 of cattle; nor seize they single lives alone,'' None |
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65. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • Epicureans, authority of Epicurus • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • luck/chance (τύχη), Epicurus on
Found in books: Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 35; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 242, 243; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 242, 243
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66. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus and Epicureans • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Memorization of his doctrines • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Rejects anticipating future misfortune • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, criticisms of • Epicurus, economic commentary • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, on pain • Epicurus, on sensory perception • Epicurus, on virtue • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, theology • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Hope, Epicurus • Kyriae doxai (Epicurus) • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Mys (servant of Epicurus), “natural wealth” • Ovid, and Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 60, 64, 66, 71; Ayres and Ward (2021), The Rise of the Early Christian Intellectual, 188, 189; Gilbert, Graver and McConnell (2023), Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy. 87, 107, 113; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 4, 184, 189; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 70, 71, 117, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 136, 139, 141, 165; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 214, 228; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 81, 82, 94, 98; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 26, 201, 237; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 236; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 185, 191; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 28, 29, 34, 38, 143, 236
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67. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • assimilation to God, in Epicurus and Lucretius
Found in books: Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 167, 217; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 214, 231
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68. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • End or goal of life (telos), Epicurus • Epicurus • Epicurus, Because of us (par' hēmas) • Epicurus, Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure • Epicurus, Freedom from any master (adespoton) • Epicurus, Natural and/or necessary desires • Epicurus, Pleasure goal of life • Epicurus, Static cannot be increased, only varied • Epicurus, Value of letters • Epicurus, and Archestratus of Gela • Epicurus, and Sardanapallus • Epicurus, and carpe diem • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, economic commentary • Epicurus, misrepresentation of • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, theology • Epicurus/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureanism, hedonic calculus • Epicurus/Epicureanism, pleasure • Epicurus/Epicureans • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism • Epicurus/Epicureans/Epicureanism, on up to us (παρ’ ἡμῖν) • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • Mys (servant of Epicurus), “natural wealth” • Ovid, and Epicurus • Pleasure, Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure • Pleasure, Epicurus, pleasure goal of life • fate (εἱμαρμένη), Epicurus on • luck/chance (τύχη), Epicurus on • nan, and Epicurus • up to us/depending on us/in our power (ἐφ’ ἡμῖν), Epicurus on • women associated with the school of Epicurus • women associated with the school of Epicurus, as hetaerae
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 60, 63, 71, 72; Brouwer and Vimercati (2020), Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, 174; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 225, 237, 241; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 186, 215, 217, 219, 220; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 104, 147; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 90; Huffman (2019), A History of Pythagoreanism, 198; Linjamaa (2019), The Ethics of The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5): A Study of Determinism and Early Christian Philosophy of Ethics, 75; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 114, 161, 179, 187, 188, 189, 200; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 70, 73, 74, 77, 118, 121, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 145, 165, 168; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 214, 218, 228, 240; Rohland (2022), Carpe Diem: The Poetics of Presence in Greek and Latin Literature, 67; Rosa and Santangelo (2020), Cicero and Roman Religion: Eight Studies, 94; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 81, 82, 96, 104; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 201, 217, 333; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 225, 237, 241; Williams and Vol (2022), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher, 64, 80, 184, 185; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 27, 28, 29, 30, 37, 40, 59, 92
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69. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, Value of letters • Epicurus, and emergence • Epicurus, and ethics gods • Epicurus, and mechanism • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, on sensory perception • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 60, 63, 64, 65; Bowen and Rochberg (2020), Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its contexts, 609; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229, 236, 239; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 473, 479, 480; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 219, 220; Hankinson (1998), Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, 213, 218, 219, 221; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 166, 167, 169, 170, 227; Long (2019), Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, 71, 116, 121, 122, 123, 136; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 228, 229, 240; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 82; Sorabji (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 217; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229, 236, 239; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 139, 143
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70. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, authority in the De Rerum Natura • Epicurus, divination, rejection of • Epicurus, on celestial bodies • Epicurus, on means of knowing gods • Epicurus, on nature and the self • Epicurus, religious observance • Epicurus, theology • Lucretius, devotion to Epicurus • celestial deities, Epicurus on • divination, Epicurus on
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 60, 65; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 478, 480, 481; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 255; Hankinson (1998), Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, 222; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 162, 168; Mackey (2022), Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, 228; Mikalson (2010), Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, 111, 236; Perkell (1989), The Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics, 168, 169; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 229; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 139
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71. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • Epicurus • Epicurus, as model • Epicurus, economic commentary • Epicurus, on friendship/patronage • Epicurus, on nature and the self
Found in books: Allison (2020), Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community, 71; Gale (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, 153; Huffman (2019), A History of Pythagoreanism, 198; Long (2006), From Epicurus to Epictetus Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 179, 180, 200, 207; Meister (2019), Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity, 7, 8; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 104; Yona (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire, 27, 31, 54, 160, 236
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