SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above - Read the agenda for our December 14, 2025 meeting -- or find out how to attend.
Within the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius, it lists some of the books that Epicurus wrote, and "Of Love" is the third on the list. Is there anyway to track down if this was about "romance" or was it about all love in general? ( Don perhaps you might be able to help?)
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.
....(etc.)
Now when it comes to another adult person, they may not have come to this way of thinking and so they may feel great anxiety regarding death. However, perhaps children have a different perpective "on life and death" - often times they have a kind of fearlessness since they aren't fully enculturated yet (I base this on a story I heard of how a young girl with cancer was not afraid at all).
Instead of pity, it seems that the natural response that would arise, toward those we love, would be compassion and so we might want to comfort them if they feel anxiety toward the thought of dying. Also, parents who are about to lose a child (or have lost a child) might feel a lot of anguish, and there isn't much that we can do except to say "I am here for you if you need anything".
In my mind "pity" is somewhat artificial and based on abstracted ideas/ideals. Where as compassion that is directed toward action would be PD5 -- acting according to necessity for the best life.
I'll venture to say a few things "off-the-cuff" so to speak...
This is a "therapuetic" element of Epicurean philosophy which helps remove unnecessary anxiety. I would say that it is to be applied to oneself -- to one's own fears regarding one's own death. You aren't tamping down any feelings of fear, but rather reasoning through "what is" and this can take time. I think it could take several years of working with this to recalibrate your internal representation of "what death is". And notice how the Letter to Menoeceus says: "Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us."
The other part of this is understanding the nature of pleasure. When we correctly understand pleasure, and we see how our own life no matter how long or how short it is, is permeated by the correct understanding of pleasure and the correct practice of the enjoyments of life, then we don't need to feel sad if we ourselves are dying at a young age.
Now when it comes to another adult person, they may not have come to this way of thinking and so they may feel great anxiety regarding death. However, perhaps children have a different perpective "on life and death" - often times they have a kind of fearlessness since they aren't fully enculturated yet (I base this on a story I heard of how a young girl with cancer was not afraid at all).
On the one hand, in the case of other pursuits, the fruit comes for one only just upon complete perfection.
Don you are translating it as perfection, not completion?
This next Monday is our First Monday Zoom - meet-and-greet and philosophy discussion. This is a great way to meet others who are studying the philosophy of Epicurus and bring up any questions you might have. We welcome those who are new to the forum and also long-time members as well. If you haven't yet participated in a First Monday Zoom meeting, please message me for further info.
Agenda for the evening: We will run about an hour, and start with greetings. Then move to open discussion on Epicurean philosophy and Q&A for any who have questions.
And a possible discussion topic: The Epicurean lifestyle - implementing core Epicurean principals.
Hope to see you there! 
Red madder (a brick red, paler and browner)
Madder root can produce bright reds when mixed with mordants.
I am still mulling over what Epicurus might have worn. Would Epicurus have worn something that conveyed the image of status and wealth? I personally would think that he would have worn something more plain (but perhaps there were festival days in which a finer weave of cloth was worn).
I found an article "What Did Jesus Wear" which also talks about ancient Greek clothing, and you can see a picture of a sculpture of Demosthenes, which gives some insight into possible clothing of Epicurus.
And so of course this would have been a little later than Epicurus:
Much is now known about clothing in 1st and 2nd century Judaea, because
many fragments of the tunics worn by people then have been found in caves
and tombs bordering the Dead Sea, where the dry climate has allowed their
preservation. For example, picture 6 shows a tunic recovered from the Cave
of Letters, a burial site near the Dead Sea. From the archaeological remains,
and from comparable art from Egyptian mummy portraits, Pompeii and
elsewhere, we can visualise what people wore. It is clear that Judaeans were
part of the Mediterranean world and dressed much like everyone else.
An ordinary man in Jesus’ world would wear a short tunic, called a chiton,
in Greek (in Latin a tunica) and a woman would wear an ankle-length one.
The long version, the stole, in Greek (or stola in Latin), was understood to
be women’s clothing, when not worn by high-status men. A higher hemline
indicated masculine wear.
The long, rough mantle of some philosophers (worn without a tunic
underneath) could be called a tribon – literally a ‘worn thing’, or even a ‘rag’
– or a peribolaion, a ‘wrap’. Their garment, if a long diploida, a ‘double’ piece
of cloth, was distinguished by quality from the expensive type of wrap the
gods would wear. These were generally worn wrapped around the middle
of the body under the armpits and then slung over the left shoulder, as we
see in the sculpture of Demosthenes.
Regarding the Mediterranean (but not specifically Athens):
Colourful clothes, like long garments, were associated with women’s attire.
...However, one cannot be too absolute in an association between colour
and women’s wear. In Pompeian frescoes, both men and women are shown
with coloured tunics and mantles, even though the men are also dressed in
white or undyed tunics. Tough guys might choose to eschew colour, but
it was always a choice, and not a rule. One factor that could easily offset a
manly preference for undyed or white clothing was the concern to show
riches and status.
Clothing found in Masada and the caves by the Dead Sea is often highly
coloured: bright shades of red, yellow, orange, blue, green, and types of
purple, including bold, striped cloth for blankets and rugs. In visualising
clothes in Jesus’ time, these remains ask us to imagine people wearing a
kaleidoscope of hues. The question then is whether dyed clothes mainly
belonged to women? Or did these clothes sometimes belong to wealthy
men who wished to show they could afford expensive dyes,...
https://christianevidence.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/What-Did-Jesus-Wear.pdf
During the Archaic period, Greek men wore a long chiton; thereafter, except for charioteers, priests, and the elderly, they wore a knee-length version. Sleeved chitons were worn by actors and priests. Patterns and colours varied with the times and with the status of the wearer.
himation, mantle or wrap worn by Greek men and women from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods (c. 750–30 bce). A very large rectangle of fabric, the himation was draped in different ways—e.g., as a shawl, a cloak, or a head covering—during various periods.
Usually made of white wool, the version worn by women could be of coloured silk or cotton. A somewhat shorter Greek wrap was known as a chlamys.
From my reading...It seems that women sometimes wore three layers and men wore one or two layers of fabric.
Gen has been a digital artist for over a decade, so everything is done with a digital tools. However, she does neither use AI Optimization Enhancement tools nor does she use text-to-image designs.
Wow, that's great! I would guess perhaps she uses a stylus pen for digital drawing/painting.
Based on my understanding, the "white toga" is a bit of a historical misnomer. The toga is a Roman-specific piece of garb whereas the Greeks wore tunics and chitons (among a number of other styles). Clothing was typically colorful and included a variety of dyes, as much as people have always used dyes and pigmentation as an aesthetic. (Lee, Mireille M. Body, dress, and identity in ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Thank you, I realized I used "toga"...which is from the later Roman era. I can find a lot more on ancient Roman compared to ancient Greece. The toga virilis was white and senators also wore white. We now know that ancient sculptures were painted bright colors, but that doesn't really answer the question of what color robe Epicurus would have worn.
This is on ancient Roman clothing:
The boundaries between the different classes were strict and legally enforced: members of different classes even dressed differently. Only the emperor was allowed to wear a purple toga, while senators could wear a white toga with the latus clavus, a broad purple stripe along the edge. Equestrian togas had a narrow purple stripe (clavus augustus).
I am still doing more research on ancient Greece, such as finding out if certain colors where reserved for special festivals, in which ritual clothing (perhaps more colorful) was donned.
Also, certain color dyes were very costly. Red madder (a brick red, paler and browner) was less expensive than red kermes (more vibrant crimson red).
The question remains...what would a philosopher/teacher wear?
Eikadistes, thanks for sharing, very nice! Since the description doesn't say a print of an original oil or acrylic painting, then wondering if these are text-to-image designs?
Also, seeing Epicurus in a red toga got me curious, as I seem to remember reading that philosophers wore white...but I need to find a reference for that (so do not yet have reference source for that).
In post one above, I used the word "anxiety", but the word "stress" was actually more appropriate. Now that the situation has passed, I feel better - so it was definitely stress (and high cortisol levels).
This is a good comparison:
Stress and anxiety go together so often that the two terms are used interchangeably, but there are differences between the two. Stress is a normal bodily response cued by the brain and nervous system, and usually is triggered by an event or situation. Anxiety is a psychological condition that can develop when the stress response occurs too often, lasts too long, and is disproportionate to the situation.
In over the last two days have been feeling some anxiety. Have some brief downtime and then it occurred to me to try listen to some soothing music. Found this and it seemed really helpful (pentatonic music scale):
From cookie cutter to artisanal pastries, so to speak.
I was reading too fast and read: "cookie cutter artisanal pastries" - which made me think of how here in America some grocery stores turn out these "fake" artisanal breads and pastries (unlike the good quality that you find in Europe.) And then that had me thinking about how much comes out of "economies of scale" for the sake of efficiency and greater profits. So unless that shifts then we are stuck with things. Schools are run under the "economies of scale" mentality - with a focus almost like a "factory" setting. But I don't have school age kids, so probably a bit out of touch with things these days.
Here is an interesting article about wrongdoing and punishment, in ancient Athens...and excerpt:
The Athenians, then, punished in answer to someone’s anger, but to what end did they do so? If a modern citizen were to hear that someone, a parent or teacher, or a state, had punished out of anger, he would expect the motives of the punisher to be essentially vindictive. Anger, we think, leads directly to a desire for payback of the eye-for-an-eye variety. In contrast, the Athenians developed a far more nuanced view of what it meant to take anger as the starting point of punishment. Anger might be the origin of punishment, but they also conceded that it was a disease.
(I haven't yet read the whole article, but looks to be interesting).
often unforseeable and potentially unpleasant.
Some kind of retribution or revenge.
There isn't much in the extant texts about this truth: Any time you harm or kill another human there will be consequences - often unforseeable and potentially unpleasant.
PD5 is somewhat related to this: "It is not possible to live joyously without also living wisely and beautifully and rightly, nor to live wisely and beautifully and rightly without living joyously; and whoever lacks this cannot live joyously."
Here is a tough question: Can the killing of a another human being ever be justified under Epicurean philosophy? Thoughts?
Wishing you a Happy Birthday Joshua !
Tomorrow night, in our Zoom (Wednesday Oct. 25th) in addition to the Vatican Says 38 & 39, we will also have a chance to discuss the recent interview of Dr. Boeri:
