Episode 141 - Diogenes of Oinoanda (Part 1) The Inscription

Welcome to Episode One Hundred Forty-One 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.<br /><br />I am your host Cassius, and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the ancient Epicurean texts, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. 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.<br /><br />At this point in our podcast we have now examined both Lucretius and the major letters of Epicurus, and we will now turn our atttention to one of the other leading advocates of Epicurus in the ancient world: Diogenes of Oinanda. We won't make any effort to go through all the fragments, but we will look at what Diogenes chose to highlight as the key aspects of the philosophy that both he - and the ancient Epicureans as a whole - thought it most important for the world to know. We will use both the translation by Martin Ferguson Smith, as well as the translation by C. W. Chilton, and we highly recommend that you start your review of the inscription at the excellent site devoted to it from Catalonia which you will find linked in the show notes (<a href="https://Enoanda.cat" rel="noopener">https://Enoanda.cat</a>)<br /><br />Now let's join Martin reading today's text:<br /><br />Fr. 1 Diogenes the Oinoandian and friend of Athens. Epitome on nature.<br /><br />Fr. 3 [And I wanted to refute those who accuse natural science of being unable to be of any benefit to us.] In this way, [citizens], even though I am not engaging in public affairs, I say these things through the inscri