20th of October, 2023 - Twentieth Gathering Via Zoom

Happy Twentieth of October!

Don't think that I'll be able to make it tomorrow, date night with wifey.

Happy Twentieth, all!

A joyous twentieth to everyone!

I'm keeping with one focus on C. Amafinius, here's what I found on some morning googling:

Until his own time, Cicero states, philosophy was available to the Romans only through Greek texts. 1 Those of his countrymen who had studied it were too intent on other matters to write about it in Latin; in consequence, only those of them who could travel to Athens or Rhodes, or who knew enough Greek to read that language easily, or who happened to make the acquaintance of wandering teachers were able to pursue philosophy. But while the other schools were producing nothing in Latin, the Epicurean C. Amafinius began to teach, orally at first. He presently published his books, which had many imitators; to his followers there flocked a great multitude from all over Italy.

Modern scholars have debated the date of this man; the consensus of opinion has been that he worked at the end of the second or the beginning of the first century. A few writers have believed that he was a contemporary of Lucretius-a conjecture which is, perhaps, more in accord with our scanty evidence. Most of the debate has been carried on by scholars of Lucretius, examining the claim he makes in the De Rerum Natura (I, 922-950, V, 335-337) to being the first to expound Epicurean doctrines in Latin. But there is another aspect to the matter; if Amafinius lived only a few years before the composition of Cicero's philosophical works, it follows that popular Epicureanism had a meteoric rise in those years, and that the vigor of Cicero's attacks on the philosophy reflects his alarm at a serious and pressing threat to his own ideas, political as well as philosophical. The attacks found in the late works are different both

in nature and intensity from those in the dialogues written before the Civil War; may not one of his purposes in writing the late dialogues have been to win over to the conservative cause a group of rich and influential Epicureans in the municipia of Italy?

Amafinius is coupled with C. Catius (Cicero, Ad Fam., XV, 19, 2) who died a little before 45 (Ad Fam., XV, 16, 1), and with one Rabirius (Acad., I, 5), in terms which imply a vient de paraitre. Cicero's expressions of time are vague, and the primus cum primis of Lucretius could mean " the first (in excellence) among the first (in time)," as well as "definitely the best," the usual rendering.

[Amafinius'] influence spread rapidly, so rapidly, indeed, that Cicero was moved only a decade later to attack their Epicureanism as a political danger. Thus the obscure and derided popularizer appears, not as a very minor

forerunner of Lucretius, but as the instigator of a philosophy which, being acceptable under contemporary political conditions, exercised for a time at least a considerable influence on Roman

history, and, by calling forth Cicero's counter-propaganda, on Roman letters.

Source (excerpts):

Amafinius, Lucretius, and Cicero

Author(s): Herbert M. Howe

Source: The American Journal of Philology , 1951, Vol. 72, No. 1 (1951), pp. 57-62

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/291962

Great clip Don, thank you! And I am beginning to think that I have underestimated how strong the Epicureans were and that this statement about a "meteroric rise" may be more true than I would have thought:

Quote from Don

it follows that popular Epicureanism had a meteoric rise in those years, and that the vigor of Cicero's attacks on the philosophy reflects his alarm at a serious and pressing threat to his own ideas, political as well as philosophical.

Quote from Kalosyni

ancient Greek dance, especially the circle dance, which I think illustrates well the following Vatican Saying:

VS 52: "Friendship dances around the world, announcing to each of us that we must awaken to happiness".

Absolutely! I always like to point out that the Greek in VS52 is "*dances around* the world" and not "dances *around the world*". The dancing is round, not the location in the world.

περιχορεύω to dance round

Thank you, Kalosyni.

Here, for anyone interested, is a paper by Maria Hnaraki – professor of anthropology, Greek culture, folklore and ethnomusicology at Drexel University – titled “Speaking Without Words: Zorba’s Dance.” (Academia.edu did not have a copy of this paper, but the author kindly provided a copy on request.)

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2742/debb72b0b…NzQ3Mi41OS4wLjA.

Quote from Kalosyni

Greek dancing (from "Zorba" yet likely has some basis in ancient Greek dance, especially the circle dance, which I think illustrates well the following Vatican Saying:

VS 52: "Friendship dances around the world, announcing to each of us that we must awaken to happiness".

What I like about this is that it gives a better sense of Epicurus (and the Garden) as celebrating the robust, pleasurable exuberance of life – rather than succumbing to a quiescent contemplative philosophy. To laugh and to dance (perhaps especially inside) is part and parcel of an Epicurean philosophy aimed at fulfilling pleasure and enjoyment in the tides of everyday life. (To draw on Nietschze’s formulation, cited by Hnaraki, the Dionysian is not simply sublimated into the more sedate Apollonian.) [And I always thought that Frances Wright captured this robustness better than many of the academic philosophers.] * / **

As Professor Hnaraki put it: “Greeks act life; indeed, as Zorba, their kinsman, they dance it as well. By doing so, Greeks subconsciously and creatively use dancing as a therapeutic means of self- and psychoanalysis, as they manage to liberate themselves by healing their egos. After all, the world of Greece is a world of culture, always with the human being centered.”

+++++++++++

* As an aside, I think this also goes to Don's objection to a word like “static” to translate katastematic pleasure, and (if I recall correctly) treating ataraxia as some kind of “tranquilized” state (as opposed to an active imperturbableness).

** A second aside: it also opposes any tendency to regard katastematic pleasures (and ataraxia) as somehow superior to kinetic pleasure, which sometimes seems to raise its head in the academic literature.