Phaedrus was a Scholarch of the Garden, a successor in a long line of leaders of the school of Epicurus. Philodemus was also a devoted member of the school, having studied under the Scholarch Zeno of Sidon.
Lucretius is probably the outlier here--a Roman among Greeks, as it were. He held orthodox beliefs about the gods, and was not an atheist, but he was more critical of cultural religious devotions than Epicurus was.
This is fundamentally the difference between a priori and a posteriori claims of knowledge, with Epicurus largely rejecting the former but endorsing his own philosophical interpretations of the latter.
More in response to Kalosyni's original question, I think Epicurus' view of 'reason' is complicated from our point of view by his eccentric approach to vocabulary as described in the Letter to Herodotus:
First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning.
[38] For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen.
And we can see this at work in the distinctly Lucretian phrase vera ratio, true reason or true philosophy.
Epicurus rejected reason as a criterion of epistemology, he rejected dialectic as a method of inquiry, and he was suspicious of the cult of formal logic. But in Lucretian terms, true reason is synonymous with Epicurean philosophy, and for Epicurus the outward expression of this true reason is the practical wisdom of φρόνησις, phronesis. The fruits of phronesis, in turn, are good choices and avoidances. This is fundamentally reason in service of the blessed life of pleasure (which again is to be considered according to his eccentric approach to vocabulary).
So far I've discussed the Epicurean view of reason as it relates to Canonics (where DeWitt says it has been "dethroned") and to Ethics, where it is part of practical philosophy. Reason obviously has a place also in the Physics, but I'll have to return to that later.
In fairness to Cicero, he is writing specifically in the context of courage. Livy's mythical story of the Lacus Curtius in the Roman Forum might shed some light on what he meant by the phrase;
The most popular story (~362 BCE), and also the one Livy deemed most likely, was a myth glorifying the nation: Rome was endangered when a great chasm opened on the Forum. An oracle directed the people to throw into the chasm “that what constituted the greatest strength of the Roman people,” and doing so would make the Roman nation last forever. After various things had been dropped into the ravine without result, a young horseman named Marcus Curtius (again, of the Curtia gens) saved the city by realizing that it was virtus that the Romans held most dear. In full armour on his horse, he jumped into the chasm whereupon the earth closed over him and Rome was saved.
Admin. Note: This post has been copied from thread Their God is Their Belly.
"earthly things"
I made a passing reference in episode 284 of the podcast (15:43 mark) to the connection between Cicero and Christianity on this point. Here is the passage from Tusculan Disputations, II, XIII:
For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or you must despise every kind of pain. Will you allow of such a virtue as prudence, without which no virtue whatever can even be conceived? What then? will that suffer you to labour and take pains to no purpose? Will temperance permit you to do anything to excess? Will it be possible for justice to be maintained by one who through the force of pain discovers secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things [rerum humanarum despicientiae]? Can you hear yourself called a great man, when you lie groveling, dejected, and deploring your condition, with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man, while in such a condition: you must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put out of the question.
"earthly things"
I made a passing reference in episode 284 of the podcast (15:43 mark) to the connection between Cicero and Christianity on this point. Here is the passage from Tusculan Disputations, II, XIII:
For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or you must despise every kind of pain. Will you allow of such a virtue as prudence, without which no virtue whatever can even be conceived? What then? will that suffer you to labour and take pains to no purpose? Will temperance permit you to do anything to excess? Will it be possible for justice to be maintained by one who through the force of pain discovers secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things [rerum humanarum despicientiae]? Can you hear yourself called a great man, when you lie groveling, dejected, and deploring your condition, with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man, while in such a condition: you must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put out of the question.
I recall we examined this thesis when I was in college, but I haven't got anything insightful to say about it just now. However, this two-part division of culture is interesting to me for another reason, and it is one expressed by Matthew Arnold in his Culture and Anarchy, in a section on Hebraism and Hellenism. Here he revisits Tertullian's ancient question: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? And I only just now noticed that in doing so he makes an allusion to Lucretius;
To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who refused themselves nothing, it showed one who refused himself everything; — "my Saviour banished joy" says George Herbert. When the alma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly cherished by the Pagan world, could not save her followers from self- dissatisfaction and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came bracingly and refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience".
Nietzsche it seems will have resented much of what Arnold panegyrized, but I will have to review The Birth of Tragedy before saying too much about the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
It is an outstanding resource!
These issues of recognizing more than one level of reality are discussed in similar manner in Sedley's "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism."
Thank you! I knew you had brought this up before, but I could not recall your source. Here is one relevant passage from Sedley;
Epicurus' response to this is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of his thought. It was to reject reductionist atomism. Almost uniquely among Greek philosophers he arrived at what is nowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science, that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles, and further very different truths at the phenomenal level; that the former must be capable of explaining the latter; but that neither level of description has a monopoly of truth. (The truth that sugar is sweet is not straightforwardly reducible to the truth that it has such and such a molecular structure, even though the latter truth may be required in order to explain the former). By establishing that cognitive scepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist atomism, is self-refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non-reductionist alternative, according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bona fide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them.
As part of our ongoing preparation for the podcast's return to Lucretius in late 2025/early 2026, I've been thinking about new ways to explain the core concepts efficiently. This is one recent idea I've been turning over in my head to that end.
Middle World
In a TED Talk delivered in 2005, the evolutionary biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins explored the ways in which humans understand nature at three different levels; first, at the microscopic level of atoms, and of microorganisms for whom surface tension is a more significant force than gravity. Second, the 'Middle World' that exists for us at the human level; a level in which human sense perception, and the human sense of the passage of time are dominant factors in coloring our impression and understanding of nature. Third, at the grandest scale of galaxies, of fathomless space, and of cosmic timescales.
I think a similar model of the human perception, experience, knowledge, and intimation of nature can be useful in the study of Epicurean physics. In the Epicurean view, this Middle World is defined by the limits of what we can perceive with our senses. When we venture into the lower or higher levels of reality, it becomes apparent that a veil has fallen over our eyes, and that the methods by which we attempt to penetrate that veil must necessarily be limited, too. The procedure is to reason from the known to the unknown, as Lucretius does when he suggests that space is boundless [I, line 968]
Again if for the moment all existing space be held to be bounded, supposing a man runs forward to its outside borders, and stands on the utmost verge and then throws a winged javelin, do you choose that when hurled with vigorous force it shall advance to the point to which it has been sent and fly to a distance, or do you decide that something can get in its way and stop it? For you must admit and adopt one of the two suppositions; either of which shuts you out from all escape and compels you to grant that the universe stretches without end. For whether there is something to get in its way and prevent its coming whither it was sent and placing itself in the point intended, or whether it is carried forward, in either case it has not started from the end. In this way I will go on and, wherever you have placed the outside borders, I will ask what then becomes of the javelin.
And the same procedure is at work in his investigation of the lower level of reality; for how can we be sure that these infinitesimal seeds of things actually exist? The answer is that while the atom itself is not individually perceptible by our senses, the movements of those atoms leave traces all over our Middle World. Exam the traces, and you will find evidence of the atoms [I, line 311]
Nay more, as the sun’s year rolls round again and again, the ring on the finger becomes thin beneath by wearing, the fall of dripping water hollows the stone, the bent iron ploughshare secretly grows smaller in the fields, and we see the paved stone streets worn away by the feet of the multitude; again, by the city-gates the brazen statues reveal that their right hands are wearing thin through the touch of those who greet them ever and again as they pass upon their way. All these things then we see grow less, as they are rubbed away: yet what particles leave them at each moment, the envious nature of our sight has shut us out from seeing.
Gradations Within Middle World
If this middle level of reality is bounded by the limits of what
the envious nature of our sight has shut us out from seeing,
it is nevertheless apparent that not everything in Middle World is equally perceptible to us. And while things immediately to hand can be examined closely, thoroughly, and minutely, other things in Middle World are perceptible only at a glance, or at a far remove. Epicurus describes the problem in his Letter to Pythocles;
Now all goes on without disturbance as far as regards each of those things which may be explained in several ways so as to harmonize with what we perceive, when one admits, as we are bound to do, probable theories about them. But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which harmonizes as well with the phenomenon, it is obvious that he altogether leaves the path of scientific inquiry and has recourse to myth. Now we can obtain indications of what happens above from some of the phenomena on earth: for we can observe how they come to pass, though we cannot observe the phenomena in the sky: for they may be produced in several ways.
Notice the old procedure at work again; even though the phenomena that appear in the sky do exist to our senses, we cannot take them in hand and scrutinize them closely. So we must once again reason from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar. However, Epicurus also adds a second procedure here, which he calls the 'method of manifold causes', and to which he opposes the faulty and unreliable 'method of the single cause'. When we do not know the cause of a given phenomena, like lightning for example, it would be wrong to pretend that we do know it. The method of manifold causes is a tool of Epistemological restraint; we can speculate about one or more possible causes, but we do not assert a thing to be the cause where we do not have knowledge.
In Reality?
Epicurus was not at all the first to notice these varying levels of perception, experience, knowledge, and understanding. But he was innovative in assigning reality as such to all levels. Some of his predecessors and contemporaries rejected sense perception entirely, some complained of the troublesome flux of matter through space and time and thought that such constant change made knowledge impossible, and some held that both time and motion were themselves illusory.
For Socrates, Middle World was a distortion and a lie, and the object of philosophy was to mentally transcend the world of the flickering shadows of the lie and achieve perfect clarity of understanding in the realm of pure being, where only the forms themselves were real and eternal. In a surviving fragment, Democritus seems to have dreamt not of an ascent but of a descent, down to the level of the atoms;
By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; in reality, atoms and void.
Cyril Bailey summarizes the contrasting Epicurean view in his book The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, page 293;
But this was by no means Epicurus’ view: the compound body to him was not a mere aggregate, but a new entity, an ‘organism’ almost (σύστημα), or, as Lucretius calls it again and again, a concilium. In the organism of the whole the atoms did collectively acquire new properties and characteristics which as detached individuals they could never possess: no number of independent atoms could have colour, but unite them in the new entity of the whole, and it acquired colour. The idea is important and fruitful and we shall meet it again in the Epicurean kinetics and psychology. Moreover this whole is a reality, not a delusion: its reality for sense is as great as the reality of the atoms for thought: it is directly grasped by sense-perception, as the atoms are by ‘mental apprehension’. And this carries with it the reality of its qualities: indeed, it is by the perception of its qualities that a thing’s existence is known. To argue then that no quality which is not possessed by the individual atoms is ‘real’ in the compound, is to misunderstand fundamentally the Epicurean position. There are two worlds, or rather two departments of the same world, the one known by sense, the other by ‘mental apprehension’; both are equally real, and in passing from the one to the other, matter acquires new qualities.
In the third chapter of this book, Greenblatt relates an anecdote which it has taken me ages to track down;
By the first century CE there were distinctive signs of the emergence of what we think of as a “literary culture.” At the games in the Colosseum one day, the historian Tacitus had a conversation on literature with a perfect stranger who turned out to have read his works. Culture was no longer located in close-knit circles of friends and acquaintances; Tacitus was encountering his “public” in the form of someone who had bought his book at a stall in the Forum or read it in a library. This broad commitment to reading, with its roots in the everyday lives of the Roman elite over many generations, explains why a pleasure palace like the Villa of the Papyri had a well-stocked library.
Looking at the print edition, I notice that he does include an endnote; 63 At the games in the Colosseum: Erich Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 237.
I didn't look up that citation (one of the pitfalls of preferring audiobooks), but I did finally find the ancient source of this anecdote, which appears in the letters of Pliny the Younger, book 9, letter 23 (To Maximus);
When I have been pleading, it has often happened that the centumviri, after strictly preserving for a long time their judicial dignity and gravity, have suddenly leaped to their feet en masse and applauded me, as if they could not help themselves but were obliged to do so. I have often again left the senate-house with just as much glory as I had hoped to obtain, but I never felt greater gratification than I did a little while ago at something which Cornelius Tacitus told me in conversation. He said that he was sitting by the side of a certain individual at the last Circensian games, and that, after they had had a long and learned talk on a variety of subjects, his acquaintance said to him:
"Are you from Italy or the provinces?" Tacitus replied:
"You know me quite well, and that from the books of mine you have read."
"Then," said the man, "you are either Tacitus or Pliny."
I cannot express to you how pleased I am that our names are, so to speak, the property of literature, that they are literary titles rather than the names of two men, and that both of us are familiar by our writings to persons who would otherwise know nothing of us. A similar incident happened a day or two before. That excellent man, Fadius Rufinus, was dining with me on the same couch, and next above him was a fellow-townsman of his who had just that day come to town for the first time. Rufinus, pointing me out to this man, said, "Do you see my friend here?" Then they spoke at length about my literary work, and the stranger remarked, "Surely, he is Pliny." I don't mind confessing that I think I am well repaid for my work, and if Demosthenes was justified in being pleased when an old woman of Attica recognised him with the words, "Why, here is Demosthenes,"1 ought not I too to be glad that my name is so widely known? As a matter of fact, I am glad and I say so, for I am not afraid of being considered boastful, when it is not my opinion about myself but that of others which I put forward, and especially when you are my confidant - you who grudge no one his fair praise, and are constantly doing what you can to increase my fame. Farewell.
1See Cicero, Tusc. v. (36)103.
would you want to add the word "bodily"?
I'm not sure, but perhaps not? I might consider friendship to be a necessary desire, and loneliness to be the contrary pain, for example. In fact, now that I look at it I notice that the two Principal Doctrines on friendship are sandwiched between Epicurus' commentary on the desires.
Here is a sample of the relevant texts:
PD26. Of desires, all that do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not satisfied, are not necessary, but involve a craving which is easily dispelled when the object is hard to procure, or they seem likely to produce harm.
PD29. Among desires, some are natural (and necessary, some natural) but not necessary, and others neither natural nor necessary, but due to idle imagination.
PD30. Wherever, in the case of desires which are physical, but do not lead to a sense of pain if they are not fulfilled, the effort is intense, such pleasures are due to idle imagination; and it is not owing to their own nature that they fail to be dispelled, but owing to the empty imaginings of the man.
Men. 127. We must consider that of desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others merely natural; and of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life.
Diog. Oen Fr. 32. Each (virtue?) therefore ............... means of (?) ... just as if a mother for whatever reasons sees that the possessing nature has been summoned there, it then being necessary to allow the court to asked what each (virtue?) is doing and for whom .................................... [We must show] both which of the desires are natural and which are not; and in general all things that [are included] in the [former category are easily attained] .....
Diog. Oen Fr. 34. Let us first discuss states, keeping an eye on the point that, when the emotions which disturb the soul are removed, those which produce pleasure enter into it to take their place.
Well, what are the disturbing emotions? [They are] fears —of the gods, of death, and of [pains]— and, besides [these], desires that [outrun] the limits fixed by nature. These are the roots of all evils, and, [unless] we cut them off, [a multitude] of evils will grow [upon] us.
Diog. Oen NF 131 = YF 189. Vain desires, like those for fame and such things, are not only vain, but, as well as being vain, also difficult to fulfil. It is not unlike drinking much, yet always being thirsty. To be master of Pella, but [to have troubles for company, is vain].
Diog. Oen Fr. 153. Of the desires some are vain, others natural. Now those that are natural seek after such things as [are necessary] for our nature’s enjoyment, [while those that are vain] ................................................................................... What [need to mention the] fabulous treasures of Croesus and his gold ingots or the rivers running with gold for him? What [benefit], father Zeus, [did he derive] from these [richness]?
DRN Book IV, ~1084. For therein there is hope that from the same body, whence comes the source of their flame, the fire may in turn be quenched. Yet nature protests that all this happens just the other way; and this is the one thing, whereof the more and more we have, the more does our heart burn with the cursed desire. For meat and drink are taken within the limbs; and since they are able to take up their abode in certain parts, thereby the desire for water and bread is easily sated. But from the face and beauteous bloom of man nothing passes into the body to be enjoyed save delicate images; and often this love-sick hope is scattered to the winds.
And here is how I would synthesize all of this information;
The test of whether a desire is necessary is in determining whether a feeling of pain results if that desire is not satisfied. If pain results, the desire is necessary. If pain does not result, the desire is unnecessary.
The test of whether a desire is natural is in determining whether there is a fixed limit in nature to which the object of desire is subjected. If there is a fixed limit in nature, the desire is natural. If there is not a fixed limit in nature, the desire is unnatural. Cassius is fond of quoting the dictum that hard cases make bad law, and we should probably be cautious when we approach the boundary between natural and unnatural desires. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is not to achieve a perfect score, or to make the grade, or to get on Santa's (or St. Peter's) nice list; the purpose is to secure a life of pleasure and to minimize, so far as it's reasonable to do so, the presence of pain.
Epicurus typically defines these terms in the negative, as in Principal Doctrine 26, and his advice to students on ethical questions is also offered in negative terms, as it is in Vatican Saying 51;
VS51. You tell me that the stimulus of the flesh makes you too prone to the pleasures of love. Provided that you do not break the laws, or good customs, and do not distress any of your neighbors, or do harm to your body, or squander your pittance, you may indulge your inclination as you please. Yet it is impossible not to come up against one or other of these barriers, for the pleasures of love never profited a man and he is lucky if they do him no harm.
You have to do the math yourself, for yourself!
I quoted from Montaigne's essays, here is the relevant passage;
Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they did not in time reconcile themselves to his favor: “Why, you pitiful fellow,” replied he, “what can they suffer who do not fear to die?” It being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? “Why,” said he, “by despising death.” These, and a thousand other sayings to the same purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient attending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several accidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by his master commanded to some base employment: “Thou shalt see,” says the boy, “whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty,” and having so said, threw himself from the top of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians, that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of his: “If thou threatenest us with more than death,” replied they, “we shall the more willingly die”; and to Philip, having written them word that he would frustrate all their enterprises: “What, wilt thou also hinder us from dying?” This is the meaning of the sentence, “That the wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the most obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all color of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon, but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus answered the Romans.” Why dost thou complain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
Yes, that fragment is remarkably well-attested:
[06] They say that he wrote to many other women of pleasure and particularly to Leontion, with whom Metrodorus was also in love; and that in the treatise On the End of Life he wrote, ‘I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight.’
-Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Bailey Translation
Thus you speak: “Nor can I form any notion of the chief good, abstracted from those pleasures which are perceived by taste, or from what depends on hearing music, or abstracted from ideas raised by external objects visible to the eye, or by agreeable motions, or from those other pleasures which are perceived by the whole man by means of any of his senses; nor can it possibly be said that the pleasures of the mind are excited only by what is good; for I have perceived men's minds to be pleased with the hopes of enjoying those things which I mentioned above, and with the idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain.” And these are his exact words, so that any one may understand what were the pleasures with which Epicurus was acquainted.
-Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Yonge Translation
I do not suppose, Velleius, that you are like some of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of those expressions of Epicurus, in which he openly avows that he has no idea of any good separate from wanton and obscene pleasures, which, without a blush, he names distinctly.
-Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Yonge Translation
For Epicurus says, without any concealment, but speaking with a loud voice, as it were, "For I am not able to distinguish what is good if you once take away the pleasure arising from sweet flavours, and if you also take away amatory pleasures." For this wise man thinks that even the life of the intemperate man is an unimpeachable one, if he enjoys an immunity from fear, and also mirth. On which account also the comic poets, running down the Epicureans, attack them as mere servants and ministers of pleasure and intemperance.
-Athenaeus, The Banquet of the Learned, Yonge Translation
Thank you all!
I dislike it when other people speculate about my motives in an attempt to prove a point, and I try--not always successfully--to refrain from doing this myself.
"You only left Christianity because you were hurt by people at church...You only deny God because you want to justify a life of sin...You only act morally because God's laws are written on your heart..."
Well, no. If they really wanted to know the answers to these questions, they could always ask. Be curious, as the man says:
Edit; yeesh, I forgot there's some strong language in that clip!
Don is right to mention the classical festivals of the dead, but it is worth noting that when Lucretius makes references to these practices (the feasts of Feralia, Parentalia, and Lemuria in Rome) it is generally to reveal the fear, foolishness, or hypocrisy of the people taking part. This is from Bailey's translation of the proem to Book three:
For, although men often declare that disease and a life of disgrace are more to be feared than the lower realm of death, and that they know that the soul’s nature is of blood, or else of wind, if by chance their whim so wills it, and that so they have no need at all of our philosophy, you may be sure by this that all is idly vaunted to win praise, and not because the truth is itself accepted. These same men, exiled from their country and banished far from the sight of men, stained with some foul crime, beset with every kind of care, live on all the same, and, spite of all, to whatever place they come in their misery, they make sacrifice to the dead [parentant], and slaughter black cattle and despatch offerings to the gods of the dead [manibus divis], and in their bitter plight far more keenly turn their hearts to religion. Wherefore it is more fitting to watch a man in doubt and danger, and to learn of what manner he is in adversity; for then at last a real cry is wrung from the bottom of his heart: the mask is torn off, and the truth remains behind.
Bailey's translation of section 123 of the Letter to Menoeceus is not to be relied upon, and I will always recommend reviewing Don's translation and commentary starting on page 29:
θεὸν is transliterated theon and is where English gets theology and atheist. τὸν θεὸν is singular, but, singular or plural, this can refer to a god, the gods, or the divine in general.
However, David Sedley in his paper "Epicurus' Theological Innatism" places significance on the singular construction. Sedley proposed each person creates their own "god" which is why he stressed the importance of the singular form. Sedley's paper is recommended reading. So, where the word is singular, I will try to translate it as such as to not obscure the semantics.
So I would amend Bailey's translation for clarity in the following way;
First of all believe that [a] god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to
him[such a being] anything alien tohis[its] immortality or ill-suited tohis[its] blessedness: but believe abouthim[such a being] everything that can upholdhis[its] blessedness and immortality.
Now, why does Epicurus use the singular here, and the plural subsequently? As Don points out, Dr. Sedley has a paper speaking to this question that I need to review. For now, I think we can look to the Letter to Herodotus for an answer:
First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning.
[38] For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen.
The"first mental image" of a god is of 'a being blessed and incorruptible', and that image is a type, according to one definition of that word:
2. a person or thing symbolizing or exemplifying the ideal or defining characteristics of something.
Now that we have this image in our minds, we can hold other claims, descriptors, delimiters, and representations up to it, to test whether they hold good or not. A jealous, petty, angry, vindictive god does not accord with the mental image of blessedness, and so we can disregard such a view of the gods.
Note, though, that the 'first mental image' of a thing is NOT an ideal platonic form of the class of things it represents, and it has no being outside of our minds. There is no perfect and unchanging realm of pure being. And our souls do not innately possess knowledge of these mental images to be 'recollected' through the study of logic and geometry; these mental images are formed as impressions by repeated exposure. They are a distillation of experience, and not something external and eternal that precedes experience.
If I've made a mistake here, I trust that Don and Bryan will correct me!
