Podcasts about laelius

Welcome to Episode 208 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most 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. This week we continue our discussion of Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which is largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done, and much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do. Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition. Check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.This week we move continue in Section XVIII:XVIII. But suppose that a man who does some unprincipled act is not only crafty, but also all-powerful, as was M. Crassus (who nevertheless used to rely on his own form of good) and as at the present time our friend Pompeius is, to whom we must feel obliged for his upright conduct, since he might have been as wicked as he pleased, without fear. Again how many unjust deeds may be committed, which no man is permitted to blame! If a friend of yours on his death-bed asks you to hand over his property to his daughter, and does not record the fact anywhere, as Fadius did, nor mention it to any one, what will you do? You, personally, would hand it over; possibly Epicurus himself would; so Sextus Peducaeus, the son of Sextus, who has left behind him a son, our friend, in whom are mirrored his culture and his integrity; he being not only a scholar, but the best and most just of men, though no one knew that such a request had been made to him by Gaius Plotius, a Roman knight of distinction belonging to Nursia, yet did actually come to the lady, and explained to her the husband's commission, when she had no suspicion of it, and then handed over to her the property. But, as you assuredly would have acted in the same way, I put the question to you whether you do not see how the power of nature is exalted by the fact that you, who determine all your actions by your own convenience and your own pleasure, as you your- selves declare, do in spite of that so act as to make it plain that you are guided not by pleasure but by duty, and that natural uprightness has more influence with you than your perverted philosophy? If, says Carneades, you know that a snake is concealed somewhere and that some one, by whose death you will gain, is intending to sit down on it unawares, you will do a rascally action, if you do not warn him not to sit down. But still, you would not be punished, for who could prove that you knew? But I am too diffuse, since it is clear that unless equity, faith and justice spring from nature, and if all these virtues be estimated by interest, a good man cannot anywhere be discovered, and enough has been said about this matter by Laelius in my volume about the commonwealth.

By now you may have read the viral story about the unexpected friendship between Charles Barkley and the late Lin Wang, a cat litter scientist from Iowa. It’s a pretty moving example of the power of connection, how one of the greatest basketball players of all time met and befriended a stranger in a hotel bar, and how despite their two very different lives, they became sources of great comfort and companionship to each other (and support too—as Wang attended the funeral of Barkley’s mother and Barkley later gave the eulogy at Wang’s funeral). The Stoics don’t talk enough about friendship, and that’s a shame, because friendship makes life worth living. Marcus speaks a lot about being kind to your fellow man—including all the jerks out there—but we don’t hear much about the pleasures of spending time in the company of people we love. He talks about avoiding false friendship but says less about the benefits of true friendship. From Seneca, we have many letters he wrote to a friend and we can see clearly how therapeutic and deep their relationship was. He writes occasionally on friendship in those letters and in essays, saying at one point that, “no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself.”It was Cicero, though, who wrote most eloquently on friendship, producing in 44 BC a fictional dialog between Gaius Laelius and his sons-in-law, where Laelius speaks movingly of his multi-decade friendship with the late Scipio Africanus (recently re-published by Princeton University Press as How To Be A Friend). Cicero, a lifelong student of the Stoics, knew the power of friendship, and we are lucky that his many letters to Atticus survive to us. Both are worth reading. Although Stoicism is a philosophy that stresses independence and strength, moral rectitude and inner-life, it’s essential that we don’t mistake this as a justification for isolation or loneliness. We are not islands, we are social animals. We need community, we need friends. We get something out of giving, and we are made better for caring and being cared for. That’s what this idea of sympatheia is really about—the warm, snug feeling of knowing you’re a part of a larger whole. Indeed, that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of creating Daily Stoic Life (which you can join here)—we’ve gotten to see Stoics meet and befriend people they didn’t even know lived near them. We’ve also gotten to see people reach out when they were in need or had problems and found support and acceptance. Friendship makes life worth living. It is key to a good life. Neglect it at your peril.

This week the African war really gets underway. Scipio, Laelius and Masinissa duel with Hasdrubal and Syphax around Utica, while things go badly for Hannibal in Italy.

This week we watch Scipio tie up all the loose ends in Spain before moving back to Italy to take the consulship.

This week the podcast returns to something resembling a normal schedule! We watch Scipio be victorious over Hasdrubal, who fled to Italy, and then over Gisco to win the Spanish theatre of the war.

This week we continue Scipio's adventures in Spain, focusing much of the episode on his brilliant capture of New Carthage. We also include a brief discussion on how inaccurate ancient sources are, specifically when they say Gaul had a population of two hundred million people.

This week we travel back to Spain to look at an incident between Nero and Hasdrubal, a prelude to the Metaurus. We then introduce Scipio Africanus into the narrative and take him to Spain, where he plans an attack on New Carthage.

Penultima e fantastica puntata di Pagine sommesse: oggi si parla di amicizia! Insieme ai grandi amici della letteratura (Achille-Patroclo, Athos-Porthos-Aramis, Holmes-Watson) e ai grandi teorici (Platone, Aristotele, Cicerone) vi accompagneremo in questa grande festa amicale. LETTURE DELLA PUNTATA Omero – Iliade Cicerone – Laelius de amicitia Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes Alexandre Dumas – […]