CLAS 353
November 12, 2024

Still life, Herculanaeum (1st century CE)

Examination #2 Key

• De Rerum Natura/On The Nature of Things: ambitious poem based on prose of Epicurus's (341-270 BCE) lost Concerning Nature (Peri Physeos) > translates highly technical philosophy of materialism into epic poetry
  
  On the Nature of Things 1.136-9 (Latin philosophical tradition & Lucretius's adaptation )
  Nor does it escape my thought that is difficult to throw light
  upon the obscure discoveries of the Greeks in Latin verses,
  especially since we must use new words for many things
  because of the poverty of our language and the newness of the subject matter.
  
  [Lucretius never borrows Greek word atomoi ("first/primary bodies", "seeds of things", "fixed seeds", "first beginnings" etc.)
  
  Epicurean Festival at Senigallia, Italy
  
  
• On the Nature of Things' first epic simile = destructive winds like flooding river (1.281ff.) > proof of invisible particles
  
  
• Epicureanism: developed from atomic theory of Democritus (5th century BCE); universe of indivisible & indestructible particles (atomoi, “un-cuttables”; cf. physics of On the Nature of Things 1); universe = random combinations of atoms made possible by “the swerve” (2.216-93); death/destruction = disintegration of our atoms by outside forces
  
  Stephen Greenblatt's 2012 bestselling The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
  
  
• fundamental Epicurean ideas: knowledge gained empirically through senses aided by reason, e.g. inference drawn from worn right-hands of bronze statues at city gates (1.305ff.)? > opposition to (unscientific) mythic & religious thinking
  
  
• Epicurus condemned poetry as language of myth (vs. reason); prose becomes language of Greek scientific enlightenment by 5th century BCE; Lucretius recalls Hesiod (didactic epic Theogony, Works & Days, 8th century BCE) & example of Empedocles's (ca. 492-432 BCE) lost On Nature
  
  Absinthe Plant (Lucretius's "loathsome wormwood")
  
  On the Nature of Things 1.935-47 (philosopher's choice of poetry; palatability)
  But just as when physicians try to give loathsome wormwood
  to children, they first touch the rim of the cup all
  around with the sweet, golden liquid of honey,
  so that the unsuspecting age of children may be tricked as far
  as their lips, and so that meanwhile the child might drink down
  the bitter wormwood juice and though deceived, be not deceased,
  but rather by such means be restored and become well,
  so I now, since this system seems for the most part to be
  too bitter to those who have not tried it and
  the common people shrink back from it, I wanted to explain
  our system to you in sweet-spoken Pierian song
  and touch it, so to speak, with the sweet honey of the Muses.
  
  
  Venus Fresco (Casa di Venus, Pompeii, 1st century CE)
  
  
• poetic hymn to Venus (poem's opening): poet asks "Mother of the descendants of Aeneas" to be his calming ally (Mars) "when our country is in trouble" (1.42); "you alone guide the nature of things" (1.21) – symbolic of nature's creative force?
  
  
  Baldone, Epicurus Breaking the Chains of Religion (2021)
  
  
• Epicurus's "epic" heroism: quest to liberate humanity from fear, ignorance, anxiety, etc.
  
  On the Nature of Things 1.62-79 (Epicurus's contribution to humankind)
  It used to be that human life, polluted, was lying
  in the dirt before our eyes, crushed by the weight of religion,
  which stretched out its head on display from the regions of heaven,
  threatening mortals from above with its horrible-looking face.
  It was a Greek man who first dared to raise his mortal eyes
  against religion, and who first fought back against it.
  Neither the stories about the gods, nor thunderbolts, nor the sky
  with its threatening rumbles held him back, but provoked
  all the more the fierce sharpness of his mind, so that he desired
  to be the first to shatter the imprisoning bolts of the gates of nature.
  As a result the vital force of his mind was victorious,
  and he traveled far beyond the flaming walls of the world
  and trekked throughout the measureless universe in mind and spirit.
  As victor he brings back from there the knowledge of what can come to be,
  what cannot, in short, by what process each thing
  has its power limited, and the deep-set boundary stone.
  And so the tables are turned. Religion lies crushed
  beneath our feet, and his victory raises us to the sky.
  
  Iphigenia’s Sacrifice (Pompeii, 1st century CE)
  
  
• traditional religion: superstition, impiousness
  
  On the Nature of Things 1.80ff. (calming the curious reader)
  I am afraid of one thing in all this: that you might think
  That you are starting on the first steps of an unholy system of thought,
  and are walking the path of crime. On the contrary, it has happened too often
  that this so-called religion has produced criminal and unholy actions.
  Thus was the case at Aulis when the chosen leaders of the Greeks,
  the first among men, foully defiled the altar
  of the virgin goddess of the crossroads with the blood of Iphianassa. . . .
  . . . All this so that a happy and auspicious departure might be granted to the fleet
  Such great evils could religion make seem advisable.
  
  
  
  
• nature (Latin natura = Greek physis): guiding scientific principle behind creation (physics) & Epicurean ethics > “pleasure” = absence of pain, natural life & therapeutic care of oneself with goal of ataraxia (“calm”); personifed Nature's rebuke of human fear of death and lack of presence & contentment (e.g. "why do you not depart like a banqueter who is sated with life", 3.931ff.)
  
  • immortal gods exist, but non-interventionist; no divine providence/plan
  
  On the Nature of Things 1.44-9 (the gods' detachment)
  For it must be that the entire nature of the gods
  spends everlasting time enjoying perfect peace,
  far removed and long separated from our concerns.
  For free from anxiety, free from dangers,
  powerful in its own resources, having no need of us,
  it is not won over by the good things we do nor touched by anger.
  
  On the Nature of Things 3.17-22 (gods glimpsed in Epicurean enlightenment)
  The divinity of the gods appears, and their quiet dwelling-places
  which neither winds buffet nor clouds soak with violent
  rains, nor does snow formed from biting frost, falling
  white, disturb them, but an always cloudless atmosphere
  spreads over them, and smiles with light diffused in all directions.
  
  
  Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
  

• infinite worlds within boundless universe (cf. multiverse theory): consequence of infinity of atoms & void, infinite random combinations, "there are other groupings of matter in other locations / like the one here which the aether holds in its greedy embrace" (2.1065-6); worlds decline & die (deficit/depletion of atoms)
  
  Roman Goddess Flora, Pompeii (1st century CE)

• Epicurean ethics: calm & simple life in accordance with nature; Epicureanism as "epic" liberating/therapeutic agent (contentment & presence)
  
  On the Nature of Things 2.1-33 (disconnecting from life's chaos; vs. traditional epic pursuits)
  Sweet it is, when the wind whips the water on the great sea,
  to gaze from the land upon the great struggles of another,
  not because it is a delightful pleasure for anyone to be distressed,
  but because it is sweet to observe those evils which you lack yourself.
  Sweet, too, to gaze upon the great contests of war
  staged on the plains, when you are free from all danger. [cf. Iliad]
  But nothing is more delightful than to possess sanctuaries
  which are lofty, peaceful, and well fortified by the teachings of the wise.
  From there you can look down upon others and see them lose
  their way here and there and wander, seeking a road through life,
  struggling with their wits, striving with their high birth,
  exerting themselves night and day with outstanding effort
  to rise to the level of the greatest wealth and to have mastery over things. [cf. Odyssey]
  O wretched minds of men, o blind hearts!
  In what darkness of life and in what great dangers
  this little span of life is spent! Don’t you see
  that nature cries out for nothing except that somehow
  pain be separated and absent from the body, and that she enjoy in the mind
  pleasant feelings, and be far from care and fear?
  Therefore we see that there is need for very little
  for our bodily nature, just enough to take away pain
  and also to spread out many delights before us.
  Nor does nature itself ever ask for anything more pleasing,
  if there are no golden statues of youths in the halls,
  holding fire-bearing torches in their right hands,
  so illumination can be supplied for banquets at nighttime,
  if the house does not gleam with silver and shine with gold, [cf. Odyssey 7.100ff., Phaeacians]
  and if the gilded and paneled roof timbers do not resound with the lyre,
  when nevertheless people lie in groups on the soft grass
  beside a stream of water beneath the branches of a tall tree
  and at little expense delightfully tend to their bodies,
  especially when the weather smiles and the seasons of the year
  sprinkle the green-growing grass with flowers.
  

• On the Nature of Things 3: opening praise of Epicurus > theme of fear of death (root of crime, including civil war's violations of pietas, 3.68ff.); ataraxia requires freedom from fear of death/afterlife
  
  
• end of On the Nature of Things 3: follows arguments on mortality of mind/soul complex (cf. brain & nervous system); life after death?
  
  
  L: Sisyphus; R: Ribera, Tityos (1632)
  
  
• rationalizing/psychologizing underworld myths (not literal re human afterlife): Tityos's liver (lover), Sisyphus's rock (politician)?
  
  On the Nature of Things 3.1011-23 (human projections of guilty conscience, anxiety, fear of death)
  Cerberus and the Furies, moreover, and the absence of light,
  Tartarus belching forth terrifying heat,
  these neither exist anywhere nor can they exist at all.
  But in this life there exists remarkable fear of punishment
  for remarkable misdeeds, and paying the price of crime,
  prison and a horrible casting down from the rock,
  whippings, executioners, the rack, pitch, hot-plates, torches.
  And even if these are absent, still the mind, aware of its misdeeds,
  fears in anticipation and goads and stings itself with whips,
  and fails to see meanwhile what the limit of its troubles
  can be and what the end of its punishments will be at last,
  and it fears that these same things will grow even greater in death.
  The life of fools at last becomes hell here on earth.