Ancient Philosophy - Blog Posts
Temple of Apollo Palatinus.
The greatness of Apollo in Rome was not just about arts, but politics and military, since he was tutelary deity of Republican Court.
When, in 36 bC, Octavian August won against Sexus Pompey's troops, he thanked Apollo for his providential action and so built a temple on Palatine Hill. The choice of the place upon which was guided by a divine manifastion, e.g in the same place where a lightning fell inside an August's property on Palatine Hill.
Inside the temple (it says that it had ivory doors and magnificent bas-reliefs) there was a sculptural group, object of worship: Apollo, his sister Diana and their mother Leto.
There were kept Sibylline Books, because Apollo was also God of Divination.
‹‹ Ό φίλος άλλος έαυτός ››
‹‹ The friend is another me. ›› said Phytagoras, showing a relationship of deep harmony between two persons, an unbreakable love and woven between the souls that melt inevitably.
Ancient greek world and its language descrive three different faces of love, all of them classifications that, according to Greeks, happen in human world: Ἔρως, Άγάπη, Φιλία (Eros, Agapee, Philia).
Eros means physical and passionable love, where it shows the desire to possess the other one and bases on a continuous give and receive.
Agape is, instead, celestial love, pure, bright that raises humans. A cosmic love that drive to desire the good for others before ours, that pushes to love every person beyond the fact that he/her/h* can deserve our love. It is, then, a love that sublimes, that makes you fly high, that asks for nothing in change because, as Kahlil Gibran said: "Love is enough for love" A disinterested love, trascendent and far from all selfishness. Near to charity, in fact, agape becomes God's love for the men, and from the men to God. It's a model of a relationship lighted by reciprocity, understood as overcoming of selfishness.
At the end, there's Philia, the friendship, brotherly love. A human love made of pure affection, attraction and sympathy, characterised by a feeling of joy that you can feel staying with the other. A love knows how to lull, confort and protect.
Greeks were very wise to distinguish every kind of love in a maniacal way.
here down different types for saying "I love you" in ancient greece.
Ψυχὴ καί Θανατος (psyche kai thanatos) would whisper uninhibited greek women during sex. The translation loses his meaning (You're my soul and my death), but along with aspirates and assonances, they made it a powerful aphrodisiac.
Διαπετομαι, "fly" or, as we say today, "cum". "To make love" can be translated with κατεύδειν.
Σοι φλήγω, "glow of love for you". It's a clue of strong passion, generally led by Eros. Then the fault is Eros': Ἔρως επὴ μοι κατεθεχατο τοχα καί ιὺς, for "Eros sharpened me with arches and arrows), but these are better for poetry than in the bed.
Τιτροσκώ συ πὸθω means "I'm pierced by desire for you". It means the moment of excitement before love.
Ση πειρώ, in military words can mean being pierced from side to side with a sword, then it specialized also in erotc sense, with the meaning of "I'm pierced of love for you".
The Theocritus Χος ιδον ος εμανην "As I saw you, I god mad" like the formula for "since I first saw you".
Μαινόμαι επή σὸι, "I'm crazy for you".
Σιουναρπαζεις, e.g "You stole my soul" express the strenght and the speed of amorous ignition that in an all-encompassing way hit the loved one.
But fortunately Love is not only pain and absolute passion: ιανεις καρδιαν , means "You warm my heart".
Σ'ηρώ is exactly our "I love you": commonly, less recent, more polyvalent: if instead of common feelings, you can say Σ'αγαπώ; in more carnal and heroic way (only Homer and Archilochus used it) you can say Σ'ηραμαι.
Σοι τερπομαι, means "I'm happy when I'm with you", to a friend, a son or a dear, you can name them with Σε φιλώ, e.g "I love you".
‹‹ Καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός ››
‹‹ beautiful and good ››
In Ancient Greece kindness and beauty go hand in hand. Valorous Heroes and Powerful Gods are always described with a particular beauty and their brightness is one of the most important characteristic.
In Homer's Greek, eyes are sparkling, the skin is bright and etc, those aspects are translated as "blue eyes", "milky white skin", "golden hair". Lexicon of the colours in ancient greek is also pretty problematic, more than the real shades of eyes and hair, in those texts what matters is properly the level of brightness, because Deities are associated to light, so that Gods and Demi-gods shine.
Also in the next eras the binomial "good and beautiful" benefits of great success: in the greek arts, where beauty canons require beautiful and regular lineaments, also in portraiture of real persons, who appear all uniformly beautiful, similar and without defects (wrinkles, moles, receding hairline...)
Pretty different is, however, Roman portraiture, that goes to realism and made it its main goal.
In Homeric Poems, ugliness and deformity are associated to the viles, untrustworthy, envious. Later, the discourse is modified, because ugliness becomes an allegory and is applied to monsters fought by heroes.
"The strenght of the good is refugee in the nature of the Beautiful", wrote Platon. The beauty of physique corresponds to the moral perfection, according ancient greeks.
πάθει μάθος
< paa-they maa-thos >
"Suffer to understand"
- Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Famous quotes expressed in a memorial way in Agamemnon of Aeschylus, when the chorus intones the famous Zeus' Hymn.
" But who to Zeus with joy raises the epinikion shout Will bring fully the widsom to Zeus who led the mortals to be wise, who put as solid law "widsom through pain" also in the sleep oozes before the heart an anguish mindful of sorrows: well as who does not, widsome comes. "
Aeschylus faces theme like evil, pain and fear that hit men in their intimacy relationships with Deities and society. According to a first conception of evil and pain, they were determined only by Gods' envy, the Hybris (hy-brys), but later they gained a new value, becoming an instrument to educate men to justice, since only through the pain they can ackwonledge deep inside themselves.
The tragic experience is, according to Greeks, internalization of knowledge. Aristotle few times emphasises how the pain leads the men "from no-knowledge to knowledge."
By the way, no one can escape from the face-off of the pain. How Greek widsome teaches us, one must be courageous and accept the involvement in it: what is next is the greatest mystery which we go against.
... Ἥρη δὲ κραιπνῶς προσεβήσετο Γάργαρον ἄκρον Ἴδης ὑψηλῆς· ἴδε δὲ νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς. ὡς δ' ἴδεν, ὥς μιν ἔρως πυκινὰς φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν, οἷον ὅτε πρῶτόν περ ἐμισγέσθην φιλότητι εἰς εὐνὴν φοιτῶντε, φίλους λήθοντε τοκῆας.....
---Hera reached quickly the top of Mount Gargano on the high Ida, and she saw Zeus gathering the clouds, and when he saw, passion (ἔρως) invaded his wise soul, as when for the first time they bonded in love and went to the bed, unknown to his parents----
(Illiad - XIV, 293-295)
Once Zeus took his power, decided to take to wife and noticed the beauty, worthy to became the Gods' Queen, in his sister Hera, who lived isolated in Eubea's Island, along with her nurse Makris, in the house of Thetis. Since it was very difficult getting close to her, because she watched assiduously over the nurse 'cause of her early age, in a cold winter day, when Hera were by chance alone and lost in a country roead, Zeus used a strategy and in the form of a cuckoo numb and shaking from cold, he leaned of her shoulder. The Goddess took pity and warmed him up with her robe, starting to caressing him. The cuckoo transformed himself in an handsome and attractive boy who made himself known as Zeus, who declared his love to the Goddess and asked her hand. Heca accepted, so the wedding were celebrated on the Olympus at all Gods presence. The wedding between Zeus and Hera is ofter told as an happy marriage even if Zeus had lot of nymphs and mortal women as lovers, whom in the end these unions were symbolics, for example to indicate what the Earth needed rains to be fecundated, or the Moon runs through the vault of heaven from east to west. These adventures sparked the jealousy of Hera and lot of poets attributed this kind of jealousy to heaven events, even it is told that the king and the queen of heaven, with their fights determinated rough hurricanes and cold winters. Despite everything, the divine lovers continued to be perhaps the only durable in the Olympus and from the marriage of Zeus and Hera were born four children: Hebe, Eileithyia, Ares and Hephestus
Νειλοθερής
Toasted by the sultry Egypt’s weather
Hekatombaia
Hekatombaia were festivities in honor of Apollo, God of Sun, in which were executed an enormous sacrifice of 100 bulls (here the name hekatombaia, in Italian "ecatombe"). Along with the bulls, also sheep and poultry were sacrificed and offered to people for feasting in God's bless. During the day also were performed musicals and poetics competitions.
In the beginning there were Chaos and Nyx and the black Erebus and the wide Tartarus, but there were not Earth, nor Air, nor Sky; and in the wide hole of Erebus, first of all Nyx of black wings created an egg raised by the wind, from where in the cyrcle returning seasons bloomed Eros the Desirable, with his refulgent back from two golden wings, similar to speedy whirlwinds. And he at night blending with winged Chaos, in the wide Tartarus, hatched our people, and firstly brought to the light. Until then there were not immortal seed, before Eros mixed everything; but being mixed each other, birthed Uranus and Oceanus, and Earth and seed without destruction of all blessed Gods.
Aristophanes, The Birds - 693-702
Apollo can dress and solve life's doubts giving responsa to whom ask; he arouses intellectual doubts and then offers men who have philosophical nature.
Plutarch, E of Delphi
🌿 © Publilius Syrus, “Moral Sayings” (ancient latin writer, formerly a slave brought to Roman Italy from Antioch, 85-43 BC).
🌿 © Publilius Syrus, “Moral Sayings” (ancient latin writer, formerly a slave brought to Roman Italy from Antioch, 85-43 BC).
🌿 © Publilius Syrus, “Moral Sayings”
(ancient latin writer, formerly a slave brought to Roman Italy from Antioch, 85-43 BC).
🌿“It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that. And this too: you don’t need much to live happily. And just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, achieving humility, serving others, obeying God.”
🌿© Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”.
🌿“The worst punishment for crime lies in the crime itself. You are mistaken, I maintain, if you propose to reserve your punishments for the hangman or the prison; the crime is punished immediately after it is committed; nay, rather, at the moment when it is committed. Hence, good does not spring from evil, any more than figs grow from olive-trees.”
🌿© Seneca, “Moral Letters to Lucilius”
🌿“This is God’s law and nature’s: ‘Let the best man win.’ But ‘best’ in his area of expertise. One body is stronger than another body, many bodies are stronger than one; a thief has the advantage here over one who is not a thief. This is how I came to lose my lamp: the thief was better than I am in staying awake. But he acquired the lamp at a price: he became a thief for its sake, for its sake, he lost his ability to be trusted, for a lamp he became a brute. And he imagined he came out ahead!
🌿Fine words, you may say – but now I have been seized by the cloak and am being dragged downtown. Bystanders shout, ‘Hey, philosopher, what good did your views do you after all? Look, you’re being hauled of to prison and soon will be beheaded.’
🌿Tell me, what Introduction to Philosophy could I have read that would have saved me from being dragged away if a stronger man grabs me by the cloak; or could have kept me out of prison if I am assaulted by a gang of ten? What philosophy has taught me, though, is to be indifferent to events beyond the will’s control. Haven’t you profited in this respect too? So don’t look for help from philosophy except in areas where you have learned that help from it can be found.”
🌿© Epictetus, “Discourses”.
Share your favorite poem below!
🌱“All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.” 🌱
🌿© Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”.
🌿"How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm. Show me how I may be able to see through this resemblance! An enemy comes to me full of compliments, in the guise of a friend. Vices creep into our hearts under the name of virtues, rashness lurks beneath the appellation of bravery, moderation is called sluggishness, and the coward is regarded as prudent; there is great danger if we go astray in these matters. So stamp them with special labels."🌿
🌿© Seneca, "Moral Letters to Lucilius".
"Beyond question the feeling of a lover has in it something akin to friendship; one might call it friendship run mad. But, though this is true, does anyone love for the sake of gain, or promotion, or renown? Pure love, careless of all other things, kindles the soul with desire for the beautiful object, not without the hope of a return of the affection." © Seneca, "Moral Letters to Lucilius".
"He who cannot distinguish good from bad, and things which are neither good nor bad from both, can he possess the power of loving? To love, then, is only in the power of the wise.” © Epictetus, “Discourses
🌿"Some men, indeed, only begin to live when it is time for them to leave off living. And if this seems surprising to you, I shall add that which will surprise you still more: "Some men have left off living before they have begun."
🌿
🌿 © Seneca, "Moral Letters to Lucilius"🌿
“Diogenes says that there is one way to freedom, and that is to die content: and he writes to the Persian king, "You cannot enslave the Athenian state any more than you can enslave fishes."
"How is that? Cannot I catch them?"
"If you catch them," says Diogenes, "they will immediately leave you, as fishes do; for if you catch a fish, it dies; and if these men that are caught shall die, of what use to you is the preparation for war?"
These are the words of a free man who had carefully examined the thing and, as was natural, had discovered it. But if you look for it in a different place from where it is, what wonder if you never find it?”
© Epictetus, “Discourses”.
“Awaken; return to yourself. Now, no longer asleep, knowing they were only dreams, clear-headed again, treat everything around you as a dream.” © Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”.
