Needless to say I had to go in to that... place, again with those... people. It's like Nevill Coghill and Richard Burton's production of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. "Come hither landlord, another butt of sack [wine] for myself and these... 'learned' colleagues of mine." Because all drinks have to be labelled, I label mine (in my not unattractive handwriting) as 'Maximus'. As a result, the Eastern European hoodlum boss began whipping me like a slave, in reminiscence of Ridley Scott's movie Gladiator.
Mundane concerns aside, I have been reading much about Fate, destiny and Fortune. There is one book which is particularly excellent on my shelf, it is the Aris and Phillips' critical edition of Cicero's On Fate (which contains a superb commentary), and also has quite a few testimonia. Along with R.W. Sharple's astute translation, there is also his accurate (yet prosaic) translation and commentary of Boethius' Philosophiae Consolationis (sections 4.5-7 to 5). Besides that, I have been reading another, really quite excellent book (though a secondary source), Esther Eidinow's Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy. This is also a superb work. She described it as her 'hobby horse' in the recent In Our Time episode on Herodotus. Although it covers some of the most crucial and important authors from the classical world, namely Herodotus, Thucydides and Demosthenes, it also covers certain pieces of archaeology. It does however, I feel, treat the role of Fortuna in Machiavelli's The Prince (one of my favourite books) rather unfairly. Fate (Fortuna) figures quite strongly in The Prince. In any case, it's still a good book, and worth reading.
Being something of a Hellenic specialist (and indeed editor of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, a very illustrious position), Esther Eidinow does actually neglect to mention the role of Fate in the Latin classical tradition. She does not mention a word of Cicero, Boethius, or indeed any of the hermetic texts (which I have translated) and where the idea of Fate features quite strongly.
While reading Aulus Gellius, citing Cicero's On Fate (which has come down to us in a fragmentary state), I discovered a quite important concordance regarding the hermetic perception of fate (which is closer to Chrysippus' view of Fate, or the ancient Egyptians, rather than Cicero's perspective). In the hermetic tradition, there is no such thing as coincidence: all things happen for a reason. Here, in Sharples' book (1991, pp.96-97 [Cicero: On Fate and Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy]) there is a curious section which relates to εἱμαρμένη as mentioned in the hermetic text the Asclepius (sections 39-40 of the Budé critical edition). It is from Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights 7.2.1. Sharple's translation reads as follows:
Fate, which the Greeks call heimarmené (εἱμαρμένη), Chrysippus the chief Stoic philosopher defines in approximately the following way: "Fate," he says, "is a certain everlasting and unalterable sequence and chaining of things, involving and entwining itself with itself through the eternal laws of sequence from which it is fitted and bound together." (Aulus Gellius 7.2.1 [trans. Sharples, 1991, p.97]).
None of this kind of thing is mentioned in Esther Eidinow's great work, unsurprisingly, as it discusses Greek not Latin ideas of Fate. There is a follow up to this, in the most excellent work by Christian H. Bull The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenised Wisdom (2018, pp.393-394). My translation of the Asclepius which was traditionally ascribed to Apuleius, reads as follows:
...This (εἱμαρμένη) is either a female maker of things or the Highest God, either from God Himself, which a second god had brought about, or having a solid education of all celestial and earthly things from divine laws. And so this εἱμαρμένη and necessity, both in turn are connected to an atom with glue, of which all things the former εἱμαρμένη creates a beginning. In truth, necessity drives them together to bring it about, which out of that, both depend on the origins. Order followed these things, that is, being connected and a regular order of time of things accomplished. For nothing exists without order’s composition. That perfect world is in everything. That order, or the whole world stands together out of order. Therefore these are three: εἱμαρμένη, that is, Fate, necessity, order, or most of all which had been brought about by God’s assent, who governs the world by his law and divine reason. Therefore to want and not want, from these things are divinely in opposition to what the whole is. For indeed neither are they moved violently by anger, nor are thanks crooked, but have to serve eternal reason: an eternity which is unalterable, immoveable and indestructable. Therefore the first is εἱμαρμένη just as I cast a seed of all future eventualities which raises offspring. [Apuleius], Asclepius 39-40 (trans. Latham, 2020, p.125).
The wording is curious, 'law', 'order', 'reason', it might even be oracular.
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment