Lucretius

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Lucretius

Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 94 BC- c. 49 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things. Stylistically, most scholars attribute the full blossoming of Latin hexameter to Virgil. De Rerum Natura however, is of indisputable importance for the part it played in naturalizing Greek philosophical ideas and discourse in the Latin language and its influence on Virgil and other later poets.

The textual survival of the poem is remarkable considering the hostility of the Church, which was the main transmission channel for Latin writings, towards Lucretius and Epicurean ideas. The surviving manuscript tradition (accounts will be found in the references given below) is often mangled, and a great debt is owed by modern readers to the ingenious work of generations of scholars to produce a faithful, coherent, and readable text.

The main purpose of the work was to free men's minds of superstition and the fear of death. It achieves this through expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius apotheosizes. Lucretius identifies superstition with the notion that the gods/supernatural powers created our world or interfere with its operations in any way. Fear of such gods is banished by showing that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of the regular but purposeless motions of tiny atoms and agglomerations of atoms in interaction in empty space, instead of in terms of the will of the gods. The fear of death is banished by showing that death is the dissipation of a being's material mind, and so, as a simple ceasing-to-be, death can be neither good nor bad for this being. The value of life for a being is something that only matters to this being during its life. Fear of death is a projection of terrors experienced in life, of pain that only a living (intact) mind can feel. Lucretius also puts forward the 'symmetry argument' against the fear of death. In it, he says that people who fear the prospect of eternal non-existence after death should think back to the eternity of non-existence before their birth, which they probably do not fear.

Lucretius compares his work as a poet to that of a doctor: just as a doctor may put honey on the rim of a cup containing bitter but healing medicine, so too Lucretius coats hard philosophical truths in sweet verse to make them go down more easily. De Rerum Natura faithfully transmits Epicurean physics and psychology. Lucretius was one of the first Epicureans to write in Latin.

His hexameter is very individualistic and ruggedly distinct from the smooth urbanity of Virgil or Ovid. His use of heterodynes, assonance, and vigorously syncopated Latin forms create a harsh acoustic to some ears, although this is probably merely an impression created by contrast with later poets and general unfamiliarity with Latin poetry recited by skilled readers. John Donne has a similar reputation in English poetry because of his powerful and thought-laden discourse. The sustained energy of Lucretius' poetry (even when treating highly technical particularities, such as the movement of atoms through space or the films which give rise to vision when they strike the eye) is virtually unparallelled in Latin literature, with the possible exception of parts of Tacitus's Annals, or perhaps Books II and IV of the Aeneid. The six books contain many formulaic elements such as deliberately repeated lines and regularized emotional peaks.

Among many poetic high points a few should be mentioned. The introduction to Book I (the invocation to Venus and Spring) is unsurpassed, both in its initial ecstatic address to the life-force and regeneration, and in the celebration of the courage and clear-sightedness of Epicurus and the vitriolic polemic against superstition (Latin: "religio") which provide the bridge to the main didactic body of the poem. The opening sections of the various books emphasize the novelty of the undertaking Lucretius has set himself and the gratitude mankind owes to Epicurus for delivering it from unfounded terrors and an empty, joyless and servile life. And the great conclusions to Book III (on death and why it holds no terrors) and Book VI (on disease, especially the plague) are as graphic as anything in literature, as are various accounts throughout the poem of storms, battles, fire and flood.

The structure of the poem over the six books falls into two main parts. The first three books provide a fundamental account of being and nothingness, matter and space, the atoms and their movement, the infinity of the universe both as regards time and space, the regularity of reproduction (no prodigies, everything in its proper habitat), the nature of mind (animus, directing thought)and spirit (anima, sentience) as material bodily entities, and their mortality, since they and their functions (consciousness, pain) end with the bodies that contain them and with which they are interwoven. The last three books give an atomic and materialist explanation of phenomena preoccupying human reflection, such as vision and the senses, sex and reproduction, natural forces and agriculture, the heavens, and disease.

We know very little about Lucretius' life; one source of information (generally considered unreliable) is St. Jerome, who mentions Lucretius in the Chronica Eusebia. According to Jerome, Lucretius was born in 94 BC, and died at the age of 43. He claims that Lucretius was driven mad by a love philter and that the work was written during the intervals of his insanity, before he killed himself; and that the work was later corrected by Cicero ^[1].

These claims about Lucretius' life are not generally now believed, because:

First, the Epicurean philosophy expounded by Lucretius sets great store on reason and discourages romantic attachments.
Second, it would have been exceedingly difficult for Lucretius to compose a sustained poetic masterpiece if he were raving mad most of the time. As Cicero remarked to his brother Quintus in a letter, "The poems of Lucretius contain, as you say in your letter, many flashes of inspiration and also much poetic skill."
It is likely that Jerome, as one of the early church fathers, would have wanted to discredit Lucretius' philosophy, which includes disbelief in any kind of life after death and in any divinity concerned with man's welfare. This defamation involved ad hominen attacks imputing immorality, the use of witchcraft and insanity to the poet.
Finally, Virgil writes in the second book of his Georgics, clearly referencing Lucretius, "Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring Underworld" As M.F. Smith argues in his introduction to the Loeb edition of the poem, Virgil would have been a heartless sarcastic cynic to write such sublime lines about a man who had in fact taken his life in deranged depression. (John Goodwin)

Cicero implies in one of his letters to his brother that they had once read Lucretius' poem. This is the last mention of Lucretius until Aelius Donatus, in his Life of Virgil, while stating that Virgil assumed the toga virilis on October 15, 55 BC, adds "it happened on that very day Lucretius the poet died." If Jerome is accurate about Lucretius' age (44) when he died, then based on other evidence that confirms 55 BC as Lucretius' year of death we can then conclude he was born in 99 BC. Also, the work has several allusions to the tumultuous state of political affairs in Rome and its civil strife.

However, the only certain fact of Lucretius' life is that he was either a friend or a client of Gaius Memmius, to whom he dedicated De Rerum Natura. This poem is also thought to be unfinished, although Jerome says that Cicero "amended" it — which may mean he edited it for its eventual publication.

Cornelius Nepos, in his Life Of Atticus, mentions Lucretius as one of the greatest poets of his times.

In his Amores, Ovid writes: Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti / exitio terras cum dabit una dies (which means the verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a day will bring the end of the world).

Vitruvius (in the De Architectura), Quintilian (in his Institutiones Oratoriae) and Statius (in the Silvae) also show great admiration for the De Rerum Natura.

[edit] Notes

^ John Goodwin in the Introduction of the Penguin Classics De Rerum Natura

[edit] References

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. (3 vols. Latin text Books I-VI. Comprehensive commentary by Cyril Bailey), Oxford University Press 1947.
On the Nature of Things, (1951 verse translation by R. E. Latham), introduction and notes by John Godwin, Penguin revised edition 1994, ISBN 0-14-044610-9
Lucretius (1971). De Rerum Natura Book III. (Latin version of Book III only– 37 pp., with extensive commentary by E. J. Kenney– 171 pp.), Cambridge University Press corrected reprint 1984. ISBN 0-521-29177-1