Diskin Clay

The Silence of Hermippos: Greece in the Poetry of Cavafy

AbstractOn 29 April 1933 Cavafy died in Alexandria, the city in which he was born. There is some reason for satisfaction in this. Visitors to his apartment on the second floor of 10 Rue Lepsius knew how self-contained Cavafys small and familiar world in Alexandria was. Rue Lepsius was home for the last twenty-six years of Cavafys life: ‘Below, the brothel caters for the flesh. And there is the church [St. Savvass] which forgives sin. And there is the hospital where we die.’ The first floor of 10 Rue Lepsius never catered to Cavafys flesh, but the church forgave his sins, and he died in the hospital. He could have died in an hospital in Athens where he had gone the year before for treatment of cancer of the throat. He stayed there for a time at the Hutel Cosmopolite, and from Kifissia he found the sight of Hymettos and the mountains to the north ‘boring’. He returned home to die, ‘an Alexandrian of the Alexandrians’, an epitaph he very nearly composed for himself.

Philodemus On The Plain Speaking Of The Other Philosophers

Philodemus was the author of a history of philosophy entitled The Ordering of the Philosophers. Histories of the Academic and Stoic Philosophers are a part of this larger work. He was also the author of sharply polemical treatises against other philosophers, among which On the Stoics stands out for its hostile engagement and partisan sarcasm. Since Domenico Comparetti’s edition of Philodemus’ history of the Stoic philosophers, the contrast between his treatment of the Stoics in these two treatises has been well appreciated. What has not been appreciated is the explanation of this contrast. I argue that Philodemus’ twin treatises, Academicorum Historia and Stoicorum Historia, lack the polemical engagement and vigor of a work like On the Stoics because they reflect his interest in philosophical proselytizing and education so impressively displayed in his On Frank Criticism (Πeρi παρρησiας). This essay probes into the connections between this work and Philodemus’ histories—not of Academic and Stoic philosophy—but of the Academic and Stoic philosophers as educators and practitioners of the art of παρρησiα.

Epicurus’ Last Will and Testament

Kleon has brought me your letter in which you show your affection for us and worthily rcpay us for our concern for you. In it you tried sincerely to rehearse the arguments which have s their aim the life of happiness; and you asked me to send you a concise outline of my reasoning concerning thephenomena of the heavens s a help to keep these doctrines in mind. Elsewhere, you say, you found these matters difficult to remember even though, s you teil us, you study them constantly. (ad Pyth. 84)