Welcome to Episode 186 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. We are now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."

This week we begin our discussion of Chapter 15, entitled "Extension, Submergence, and Revival."

Chapter XV - Extension, Submergence, And Revival

• General Evidence of Popularity
• Fortunes of the Parent School
• The Beginning of Stoic Hostility
• The School In Antioch
• Epicureans In the New Testament
• The School In Alexandria
• Epicureanism In Italy
• Epicureanism In Rome
• The Reaction Against Epicureanism
• Epicureanism In The Early Empire
• Plutarch, Anti-Epicurean
• Epicureanism In The Graeco-Roman World
• Third And Fourth Centuries
• Epicureanism In the Middle Ages
• The Epicurean Revival

Editing of this week's podcast has encountered some delays I was unable to avoid, but with any luck will be out tomorrow before we record our next episode.

Episode 186 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available!

Joshua is amazing, and his breadth of information is a large part of the reason I take the time to edit each episode so closely. The stuff we are talking about has been talked about for more than 2000 years already, and is truly "evergreen," so I would like to think that these episodes can be listened to for many years to come. If we store them right they will be useful long after this website and HTML are obsolete.

We about to close out forty some episodes going through the book, and I don't feel like we've nearly exhausted the subject.

In fact I am more enthusiastic than ever to tackle Cicero's arguments against Epicurus in "On Ends." Those have been out there tearing down Epicurus for 2000 years, and it's time to make an organized effort to make a dent in them. And given the lengthy time we've spent on Lucretius, Epicurus' letters, and now on a book devoted to the whole philosophy, I feel like we have a good group of people positioned to tackle them. And note that I say "group of people" because it really helps to have the input of Martin, Kalosyni, Don (who I hope will occasionally appear) and many others. As we go through books one and two of On Ends we ought to be able to map out and outline the arguments that Cicero was summarizing as the key attacks on Epicurus, and we need all hands on deck to go through them and refute them.

When we finish book two of On Ends we get (if I recall) to the end of the section specifically devoted to Epicurus, so we will then make an executive decision and decide whether to go over Cicero's attacks on Stoicism (worthwhile but possibly tedious) or switch over to the Epicurean section of "On the Nature of the Gods," which the podcast Don recently linked in another post was talking about.