De rerum natura

"On the Nature of Things" redirects here. For the documentary television series, see The Nature of Things.
Penguin Books' Classic edition of De rerum natura, under the title The Nature of Things, translated by A. E. Stallings

De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrũː naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic language and metaphors.[1]

Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, "chance," and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.[2]

Synopsis

Opening of De rerum natura, 1483 copy by Girolamo di Matteo de Tauris for Pope Sixtus IV
Book One of De rerum natura, from the 1675 edition by Tanaquil Faber

To Epicurus, the unhappiness and degradation of humans arose largely from the dread which they entertained of the power of the deities, from terror of their wrath. This wrath was supposed to be displayed by the misfortunes inflicted in this life, by the everlasting tortures that were the lot of the guilty in a future state (or, where these feelings were not strongly developed, from a vague dread of gloom and misery after death). To remove these fears, and thus to establish tranquility in the heart, was the purpose of his teaching. Thus the deities, whose existence he did not deny, lived forevermore in the enjoyment of absolute peace, strangers to all the passions, desires, and fears, which agitate the human heart, totally indifferent to the world and its inhabitants, unmoved alike by their virtues and their crimes.

To prove this position he called upon the atomism of Democritus, so as to demonstrate that the material universe was formed not by a Supreme Being, but by the mixing of elemental particles that had existed from all eternity governed by certain simple laws. Lucretius' task was to clearly state and fully develop these views in an attractive form; his work was an attempt to show that everything in nature can be explained by natural laws, without the need for the intervention of divine beings.[3]

Lucretius identifies the supernatural with the notion that the deities created our world or interfere with its operations in some way. He argues against fear of such deities by demonstrating, through observations and arguments, that the operations of the world can be accounted for in terms of natural phenomena. These phenomena are the regular, but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space. Meanwhile, he argues against the fear of death by stating that death is the dissipation of a being's material mind. Lucretius uses the analogy of a vessel, stating that the physical body is the vessel that holds both the mind (mens) and spirit (anima) of a human being. Neither the mind nor spirit can survive independent of the body. Thus Lucretius states that once the vessel (the body) shatters (dies) its contents (mind and spirit) can no longer exist. So, as a simple ceasing-to-be, death can be neither good nor bad for this being. Being completely devoid of sensation and thought, a dead person cannot miss being alive. According to Lucretius, 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 probably did not cause them much suffering.

Contents

The poem consists of six untitled books, in dactylic hexameter. 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, according to Lucretius, 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.

The poem opens with an invocation to Venus, whom Lucretius addresses as an allegorical representation of the reproductive power, after which the business of the piece commences by an enunciation of the proposition on the nature and being of the deities, which leads to an invective against the gigantic monster superstition, and a thrilling picture of the horrors which attends its tyrannous sway. Then follows a lengthened elucidation of the axiom that nothing can be produced from nothing, and that nothing can be reduced to nothing (Nil fieri ex nihilo, in nihilum nil posse reverti); which is succeeded by a definition of the Ultimate Atoms, infinite in number, which, together with Void Space (Inane), infinite in extent, constitute the universe. The shape of these corpuscles, their properties, their movements, the laws under which they enter into combination and assume forms and qualities appreciable by the senses, with other preliminary matters on their nature and affections, together with a refutation of objections and opposing hypotheses, occupy the first two books.[3]

In the third book, the general concepts proposed thus far are applied to demonstrate that the vital and intellectual principles, the Anima and Animus, are as much a part of us as are our limbs and members, but like those limbs and members have no distinct and independent existence, and that hence soul and body live and perish together; the argument being wound up by a magnificent exposure of the folly manifested in a dread of death, which will forever extinguish all feeling.[3]

The fourth book is devoted to the theory of the senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell, of sleep and of dreams, ending with a disquisition upon love and sex.[3]

The fifth book is described by Ramsay as the most finished and impressive,[3] while Stahl considers that its "puerile conceptions" indicate that Lucretius should be judged as a poet, not as a scientist.[4] This book addresses the origin of the world and of all things that are therein, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the changing of the seasons, day and night, the rise and progress of humankind, society, political institutions, and the invention of the various arts and sciences which embellish and ennoble life.[3]

The sixth book contains an explanation of some of the most striking natural appearances, especially thunder, lightning, hail, rain, snow, ice, cold, heat, wind, earthquakes, volcanoes, springs and localities noxious to animal life, which leads to a discourse upon diseases. This in its turn introduces an appalling description of the great pestilence which devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and thus the book closes. The abrupt ending suggests that Lucretius had not finished fully editing the poem before his death.[3]

Purpose

Lucretius wrote this epic poem to "Memmius", who may be Gaius Memmius, who in 58 BC was a praetor, a judicial official deciding controversies between citizens and the government.[5] There are over a dozen references to "Memmius" scattered throughout the long poem in a variety of contexts in translation, such as "Memmius mine", "my Memmius", and "illustrious Memmius". According to Lucretius's frequent statements in his poem, the main purpose of the work was to free Gaius Memmius's mind of the supernatural and the fear of death—and to induct him into a state of ataraxia by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius glorifies as the hero of his epic poem.

However, the purpose of the poem is subject to ongoing scholarly debate. Lucretius refers to Memmius by name four times in the first book, three times in the second, five in the fifth, and not at all in the third, fourth, or sixth books. In relation to this discrepancy in the frequency of Lucretius' reference to the apparent subject of his poem, Kannengiesse advances the theory that Lucretius wrote the first version of De rerum natura for the reader at large, and subsequently revised in order to write it for Memmius. However, Memmius' name is central to several critical verses in the poem, and this theory has therefore been largely discredited.[6] Bruns[7] and Brandt[8] have set forth an alternative theory that Lucretius did at first write the poem with Memmius in mind, but that his enthusiasm for his patron cooled. Stearns suggests that this is because Memmius reneged on a promise to pay for a new school to be built on the site of the old Epicurean school.[9] Memmius was also a tribune in 66, praetor in 58, governor of Bithynia in 57, and was a candidate for the consulship in 54 but was disqualified for bribery, and Stearns suggests that the warm relationship between patron and client may have cooled.[9][lower-alpha 1]

Manuscript history and rediscovery

Copies of the poem were preserved in a number of medieval libraries, with two ninth century manuscripts surviving to this day and references to a number of others dating from the tenth through the twelfth centuries. It was rediscovered in January 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini via a now lost medieval copy, probably in the Benedictine library at Fulda. The copy found by Poggio did not survive, but a copy of it by Poggio's friend, Niccolò de' Niccoli, did; it is kept today at the Laurentian Library in Florence ("Codex Laurentianus 35.30"). Machiavelli made a copy early in his life. Molière produced a verse translation which does not survive; John Evelyn translated the first book.[1]

It has been suggested that Dante (1265–1321) might have read Lucretius' poem, as a few verses of his Divine Comedy exhibit a great affinity with De rerum natura, which can hardly be explained otherwise.[10] The Italian scholar Guido Billanovich demonstrated that Lucretius' poem was well known in its entirety among some Paduan pre-humanists during the thirteenth century.[10][11] This proves that the work was known long before the official rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini.

The first printed edition of De rerum natura was produced in Brescia, Lombardy, in 1473. Other printed editions followed soon after.

Notable figures who owned copies include Ben Jonson whose copy is held at the Houghton Library, Harvard; Thomas Jefferson owned at least five Latin editions and English, Italian and French translations. Montaigne owned a Latin edition published in Paris, in 1563, by Denis Lambin which he heavily annotated.[12] His Essays contain almost a hundred quotes from De rerum natura.[1]

Lucretius' physics

Lucretius maintained that he could free humankind from fear of the deities by demonstrating that all things occur by natural causes without any intervention by the deities. Historians of science, however, have been critical of the limitations of his Epicurean approach to science, especially as it pertained to astronomical topics, which he relegated to the class of "unclear" objects.[13]

Thus, he began his discussion by claiming that he would

explain by what forces nature steers the courses of the Sun and the journeyings of the Moon, so that we shall not suppose that they run their yearly races between heaven and earth of their own free will [i.e., are gods themselves] or that they are rolled round in furtherance of some divine plan....[14]

However, when he set out to put this plan into practice, he limited himself to showing how one, or several different, naturalistic accounts could explain certain natural phenomena. He was unable to tell his readers how to determine which of these alternatives might be the true one.[15]

Let us now take as our theme the cause of stellar movements.
  • First let us suppose that the great globe of the sky itself rotates....
  • There remains the alternative possibility that the sky as a whole is stationary while the shining constellations are in motion. This may happen
  • because swift currents of ether ... whirl round and round and roll their fires at large across the nocturnal regions of the sky. Or
  • an external current of air from some other quarter may whirl them along in their course. Or
  • they may swim of their own accord, each responsive to the call of its own food, and feed their fiery bodies in the broad pastures of the sky.
One of these causes must certainly operate in our world.... But to lay down which of them it is lies beyond the range of our stumbling progress.[16]

Drawing on these, and other passages, William Stahl considered that "The anomalous and derivative character of the scientific portions of Lucretius' poem makes it reasonable to conclude that his significance should be judged as a poet, not as a scientist."[17]

The swerve

Determinism appears to conflict with the concept of free will. Lucretius attempts to allow for free will in his physicalistic universe by postulating an indeterministic tendency for atoms to swerve randomly (Latin: clinamen). This indeterminacy, according to Lucretius, provides the "free will which living things throughout the world have".[18]

Responses

The earliest recorded verdict of Lucretius' work is by Cicero, who calls Lucretius's poetry "full of inspired brilliance, but also of great artistry".[lower-alpha 2] However, Cicero is elsewhere critical of Lucretius and the Epicureans, and disparaged them for their omission from their work of historical study.[19]

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

Ovid, in his Amores, 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.

Michel de Montaigne, in one of his Essays, On Books, lists Lucretius along with Virgil, Horace, and Catullus as his four top poets.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry notes Lucretius in Southern Mail / Night Flight on page 20.

Lucretius has also had a marked influence upon modern philosophy, as perhaps the most complete expositor of Epicurean thought. His influence is especially notable in Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, who praised Lucretius (along with Dante and Goethe) in his book 'Three Philosophical Poets.'

Later works

At the start of the 7th century, Isidore of Seville produced De natura rerum, a book of astronomy and natural history dedicated to the Visigothic king Sisebut. About a century later, Bede produced a work of the same title, partly based on Isidore's work but apparently ignorant of Lucretius' poem.[20]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Greenblatt, Stephen (8 August 2011). "The Answer Man – An ancient poem was rediscovered—and the world swerved". The New Yorker (Condé Nast). LXXXVII (23): 28–33. ISSN 0028-792X.
  2. ↑ In particular, De rerum natura 5.107 (fortuna gubernans, "guiding chance" or "fortune at the helm"): see Monica R. Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge University Press, 1994, 1996 reprint), pp. 213, 223–224 online and Lucretius (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 238 online.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ramsay, 1867, pp. 829–30
  4. ↑ Stahl 1962, pp. 82–83.
  5. ↑ Walter Englert (2003). Lucretius: On the Nature of Things. Focus Pub./R. Pullins. p. xii. ISBN 978-0-941051-21-7. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  6. ↑ Stearns (1931), p. 67.
  7. ↑ Bruns, Lukrez-Studien (Freiburg, J.C.C. Mohr, 1884)
  8. ↑ Brandt (1885) NJbb (31: 601–613)
  9. 1 2 Stearns (1931), p. 68.
  10. 1 2 "Hortus Apertus – La fortuna – Dante e Lucrezio" (PDF).
  11. ↑ Guido Billanovich (1958). "'Veterum vestigia vatum' nei carmi dei preumanisti padovani". Italia Medievale e Umanistica (in Italian) (Padua: Antenore) I: 155–243. ISBN 978-88-8455-089-7.
  12. ↑ "Titi Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex (Montaigne.1.4.4)". Cambridge Digital Library. Retrieved 9 July 2015.
  13. ↑ Lloyd 1973, p. 26; Stahl 1962, pp. 81–3
  14. ↑ Lucretius, v. 76–81
  15. ↑ Alioto 1987, p. 97
  16. ↑ Lucretius, v. 510–533
  17. ↑ Stahl 1962, p. 83
  18. ↑ Lucretius, ii. 251–260
  19. ↑ Gale (2001), p. 35.
  20. ↑ Bede: 'On the Nature of Things' and 'On Times' translated by Calvin B. Kendall, Faith Wallis, p 191
  1. ↑ Lucretius I.140: Latin: sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas/ suavis amicitiae quemvis efferre laborem
    English: But still your merit, and as I hope, the joy/ Of our sweet friendship, urge me to any toil
  2. ↑ Cicero, QFr 2.10.3.: Lucreti poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis

References

Further reading

Translations

For a more comprehensive list, see List of English translations of De rerum natura.

Commentary

Sympathetic review of Campbell's book. At page 160, the reviewer concludes the following. "Lucretius on Creation and Evolution offers a bold and sophisticated attempt to come to terms with Lucretius' arguments on evolution in the spirit of the poem's most ambitious commentators. It deserves not only consultation but active perusal. I could not agree more with Campbell's commitment to putting Lucretius and Epicureanism into conversation with the present and with our own attempts to figure out where humans belong in a world of chance and impersonal necessity."

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