PD14 - Alternate Translations

"Supreme power and great wealth may, to some degree, protect us from other men; but security in general depends upon peace of mind and social detachment." PD14, Epicurus Wiki

I was just about to post that too

Here's the link:

http://wiki.epicurism.info/Principal_Doctrine_14/

I think the commentary there is very good as well per their translation.*

The Greek above in #2 agrees with Bailey/Usener so I'm good with that.

*PS: I'll have something to say about some of their interpretation however.

My translation and interpretation are my own, informed by all the scholarly materials referenced above as well as Bailey's commentary on this Principal Doctrine in his Extant Remains.

I want to first look at several individual words.

ἀσφαλείας

"assurance from danger, personal safety"

ἀσφαλείας is about personal, individual safety from danger, one's own personal safety from harm. It's not an abstract concept of "Safety" or "Security" writ large. It asks, "How do I keep myself free from harm?"

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀσφάλ-εια

ἐξερειστικῇ & δυνάμει

Epicurus Wikis "the ability to repel" through one's own power/strength δυνάμει (dynamei, compare English dynamo, dynamite) is good.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, δύνα^μις

ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν

Epicurus Wiki has just "of withdrawal from the many." τῶν πολλῶν is simply the genitive plural of hoi polloi, the many, the rabble, colloquially the mass of average people out on the street. This is the exact phrase Epicurus uses to describe those who hold erroneous views about the gods in the Letter to Menoikeus.

ἐκχωρήσεως I found interesting after digging in. LSJ gives "retirement, withdrawal from" and even cites PD 14. But I tried to break it down further. ἐκ is the prefix for "out of, away from, etc." So if we take that off, we get χωρήσεως, which has to be a form of χωρέω "go, make way, make room, withdraw, etc." This verb is related to χώρα and χώρος (χῶρος (khôros, “place”) +‎ -έω (-éō)) that mean, as one of their senses, "land, country as opposed to the city; field, farm, estate."

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=xw%3dros1

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Χ χ, , χωλός , χώρα

This would relate right back to the characteristic of the sage in that they are fond of the country as opposed to the city. That uses a different word for "country'' but the connotation is exactly the same. In deference to Cassius, it's not a cave! It doesn't convey the mountains or wastelands. I'm seeing this more as connoting a country villa or retreat, maybe think Villa of the Papyri outside Herculaneum or The Garden. I would also note that the original Garden was not some remote location. It was just outside the city walls directly along the road to the Academy.

ἡσυχίας From Strong's: "descriptive of the life of one who stays at home doing his own work, and does not officiously meddle with the affairs of others," 2 Thessalonians 3:12 Thessalonians wasn't written until the mid-late 1st century CE, but the connotation would be there earlier, just maybe less emphatic. The LSJ has stillness, ease, leisure, rest, quiet.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἡσυ^χ-ία

I could see this as also referring to our being a synonym for ataraxia.

[NOTE: Aristophanes personifies Hesykhias Ησυχίας in line 1321 of The Birds, glossed here as "gentle peace." http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…1&lang=original ]

εἰλικρινεστάτη superlative, "most unmixed, purest"

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, εἰλικριν-ής

This aligns with the characteristics I included in my translation of the characteristics of the sage under the heading Living Unknown https://sites.google.com/view/epicurean…nown?authuser=0

In my opinion then, Bailey and Saint-Andre get closest to a literal translation adhering to the original Greek. I will say it can't be solitude PD14 is talking about since Epicurus stressed the importance of friendship. There's going to be people around you. But this PD seems to stress the quiet life, not being troubled by the hustle and bustle of the hoi polloi.

I'm seeing "prosperity" simply as a paraphrase for εὐπορίᾳ

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=eu%29pori%2Fa%7C&la=greek&can=eu%29pori%2Fa%7C0&prior=kai\&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0257:book=10&i=1#lexicon

It's the opposite of πενία

Greek Word Study Tool

PS: "Up to a certain point, personal safety can be achieved by the power to repel and wealth, but the purest safety..."

Here's my highly idiosyncratic paraphrase of PD14, incorporating the notes above:

"Up to a certain point, personal safety can be obtained by being powerful and wealthy, but the surest way to personal safety is from withdrawing from the hustle and bustle of the hoi polloi and from the peace gained from not meddling in the affairs of others."

I noticed with other PD's, too, that Saint-Andre's translation appears to be the most consistent with Epicurus' philosophy as a whole as we usually interpret it here with quite some consensus.

I don't get "retirement **from the world**" at all from ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν at all. It's literally "'withdrawal' from the hoi polloi." It doesn't say society, culture, world, etc. It's specifically referring to withdrawal from the masses, which is why I think "herd" is such a good choice. Those who want to assign ascetic or antisocial tendencies to Epicurus and his school are reading more into that hoi polloi than I think prudent.

Quote from Cassius

...which I strongly believe was *not* Epicurus' viewpoint. I believe if forced to choose, Epicurus would take the "hoipolloi" over the "golden" academics most any day of the week, as would I!

Doesn't he say as much in the Letter to Menoikeus about accepting myths?

We're talking about this, right?

Quote from Epicurus

‘It is better to endorse the myths about the gods than to be enslaved to the ‘‘fate’’ of the natural philosophers.’

Yeah, I take this to mean, "Give me the myths believed by the hoi polloi any day over the determinism of the academics!" Not that he endorsed those myths! But, given those two options...

Quote

I don't get "retirement **from the world**" at all from ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν at all. It's literally "'withdrawal' from the hoi polloi."

Quote

OK I will say it:. The intersection of the viewpoint of many academics with their preferred translation may well be that the academics consider everyone but themselves to be hoi polloi, and thus they see no difference between "hoi polloi" and "the world.

A slightly more charitable interpretation (since their Greek is better than mine);

Some of the translators may be latching on to a punning connection between πολύς (many) and πόλις (city-state, or more poetically "the affairs of the world").

But Epicurus is known to have favored plainer speech. Further, he chose Athens, the beating heart of Greek culture. Samos off the coast of Asia was at a far greater remove from the Greek world.

Quote from JJElbert

But Epicurus is known to have favored plainer speech. Further, he chose Athens, the beating heart of Greek culture. Samos off the coast of Asia was at a far greater remove from the Greek world.

Yes, I would concur, although Epicurus was an Athenian citizen by birth, too. I keep coming back to the fact that even Epicurus didn't "withdraw from the world." He's placed his Garden only a few stadia outside Athen's walls directly on the busy road that went past the Academy out to the rest of Attica. It makes more sense to me that he withdrew from there masses, the rat race, the hustle and bustle of City life. The Garden was a refuge of sorts but it wasn't isolated or inaccessible. The whole idea, as I understand, was to make it accessible to those who sought it out.

Yes–by a modern (and U.S. centered) analogy, he set up shop in Central Park, not in Montana.

But I suspect that like Aristotle he would have found his way to Athens in any case. A century or two earlier, Miletus: a century or two later, perhaps Alexandria.