Sunday, 09 August 2026

Amateur Idylls

• Spence read the beginning of his untitled idyllic epic
• Elisa had performed her idyllic dialogue Two Old Friends

Major works meeting

• Starting Hekale
• Finished the text, around fragment 58
• Next week:
  • we’ll read the epigrams of Callimachus,
  • as well as his hymns to Zeus and Apollo
  • optionally we’ll read any new or updated idylls

Minor works meeting

• Continuing Sophist
• Starting from 249 a
• Ending around 255 b
• Next week we’ll continue Sophist

Sophist reminder for next week:

[Spence] We picked up where we left off regarding the definition of capacity as it relates to the “earthers” ability to define the smallest possible of unit of existence being that which has the capacity to influence or in other words anything that can exist must have a capacity to influence other things. This was then differentiated by the philosophers who argue more from a standpoint of there being many things that do not materially exist, they don’t necessarily have capacity, but they are eternal, unchanging, and just as real if not more real than the many things that do have capacity and change.

Then the concept of “blending” is introduced which is the idea that there doesn’t really have to be a fixed oneness to everything or a duality of everything or a change to everything or a rest to everything but rather the whole itself can consist of blended components. Some are blended always, some are blended never, and many others are a mix. Then this ability to differentiate when one is one thing and another is another is thing is a consequence of knowledge and it takes an expert in knowledge to say so. This is what defines the philosophy

However, we have not yet still defined the Sophist, our original aim, and in anticipation of doing that the visitor began to enumerate 5 forms necessary for understanding being itself and we were about to continue there: change, rest, that which is, same and different were there names.