Two Horatian Epistles

Here are two poems that might make good companion pieces to read alongside Epicurus and Epictetus:

Horace, Epistles Book I: Epistle VI - Nil admirari

To marvel at nothing, Numicius, that’s almost
The only thing can make and maintain happiness.

Book I: Epistle XVI - Are you really wise, Quinctius?

To save you asking about my farm, dear Quinctius,
And whether its owner’s supported by the plough,
Or rich from olives, apples, meadows or vine-decked elms,
I’ll describe its nature at length, and the lie of the land.

Both poems are taken from Tony Kline's online edition of Horace's Odes, Satires and Epistles.

Anyone want to suggest others? The entire book of translations can be downloaded free from this page to an Adobe pdf file or Word doc.

A few resources on Epictetus and Epicurus

All of Epictetus that we have is online: Here are The Discourses in four books - again, composed by Arrian.

Google Book Edition of complete Epictetus, translated by Long.

Fragments attributed to Epictetus

Epicurus on Wikipedia

Quite a bit of background on Epicurus

Letter to Menoeceus

Ataraxy

Ataraxy: a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquillity. Origin: 1595–1605; atarák(tos) unmoved (a- a-⁶ + tarak-, var. s. of tarássein to disturb + -tos verbid suffix) + -s(is) -sis + -ia -ia]

Technorati Profile

Epictetus's Handbook

The Enchiridion

by Epictetus (c.55-135). Translated by Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806).

You can access a complete audio book of the Enchiridion here.

Epictetus (Greek: Επίκτητος; c.55–c.135) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. The name given by his parents, if one was given, is not known - the word epiktetos in Greek simply means “acquired.”

Epictetus spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a very wealthy freedman of Nero. Even as a slave, Epictetus used his time productively, studying Stoic Philosophy under Musonius Rufus. He was eventually freed and lived a relatively hard life in ill health in Rome.

So far as is known, Epictetus himself wrote nothing. All that we have of his work was transcribed by his pupil Arrian. The main work is The Discourses, four books of which have been preserved (out of an original eight). Arrian also compiled a popular digest, entitled the Enchiridion, or Handbook. In a preface to the Discourses, addressed to Lucius Gellius, Arrian states that “whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech”.

5. Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

7. Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should be unable to come in time.

27. As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.

"I follow cheerfully; and, did I not,
Wicked and wretched, I must follow still
Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed
Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven."
Euripides, Frag. 965

Thucydides in Twilight

It might be of interest to see the bit of Nietzsche cited in the previous post in its context in Twilight of the Idols:

From the Greeks I have not at all felt similarly strong impressions, and to be blunt, they cannot mean as much to me us the Romans. We do not learn from the Greeks — their manner is too foreign and too fluid to create a commanding, "classical" effect. Who could ever have learned to write from a Greek? Who could ever have learned to write without the Romans?

Please do not throw Plato at me. I am a complete skeptic about Plato, and I have never been able to join in the customary scholarly admiration for Plato the artist. The subtlest judges of taste among the ancients themselves are here on my side. Plato, it seems to me, throws all stylistic forms together and is thus a first-rate decadent in style: his responsibility is thus comparable to that of the Cynics, who invented the satura Menippea. To be attracted to the Platonic dialogue, this horribly self-satisfied and childish kind of dialectic, one must never have read good French writers — Fontenelle, for example. Plato is boring. In the end, my mistrust of Plato goes deep: he represents such an aberration from all the basic Greek instincts, is so moralistic, so pseudo-Christian (he already takes the concept of "the good" as the highest concept) that I would prefer the harsh phrase "higher swindle" or, if it sounds better, "idealism" for the whole phenomenon of Plato. We have paid dearly for the fact that this Athenian got his schooling from the Egyptians (or from the Jews in Egypt?). In that great calamity called Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an "ideal," which made it possible for the nobler spirits of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to set foot on the bridge leading to the Cross. And how much Plato there still is in the concept "church," in the construction, system, and practice of the church!

My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli's Il Principe are most closely related to me by the unconditional will not to delude oneself, but to see reason in reality — not in "reason," still less in "morality." For that wretched distortion of the Greeks into a cultural ideal, which the "classically educated" youth carries into life as a reward for all his classroom lessons, there is no more complete cure than Thucydides. One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression — this inestimable movement amid the moralistic and idealistic swindle set loose on all sides by the Socratic schools. Greek philosophy: the decadence of the Greek instinct. Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Greeks. In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from a man like Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things.

Some contextual resources for the Melian Dialogue

Though the Melians sent a contingent to the Greek fleet at Salamis, it held aloof from the Delian League, and sought to remain neutral during the Peloponnesian War. But in 415 BC, the Athenians, having attacked the island and compelled the Melians to surrender, slew all the men capable of bearing arms, made slaves of the women and children, and introduced 500 Athenian colonists. Thucydides made this event the occasion of one of the most impressive of the "speeches" in his history. (Melos)

The island of Melos, now called Milos.

From Wikipedia, Thucydides:

Thucydides' Melian dialogue is a lesson to reporters and to those who believe one's leaders are always acting with perfect integrity on the world stage.

Friedrich Nietzsche stated: "in Thucydides, the portrayer of man, that culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world finds its last glorious flower."

Nietzsche again, from Twilight of the Idols:

Courage in the face of reality ultimately distinguishes
such natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato
is a coward in the face of reality--consequently
he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has
himself under control--consequently he
retains control over things.

A brief overview of the Peloponneisian War is found here, and a glance at the Melian Dialogue is here.

Strange symbols?

If this blog looks like it's riddled with strange code, you are probably looking at it via the Internet Explorer Browser (IE) which comes with Microsoft Windows. IE fails to render certain pages as they should look.

Rest assured no content is missing, you're just seeing code which you would not see if you were to use Mozilla Firefox, a free alternative browser.

Firefox can be downloaded here.