Born: Titus Lucretius Carus, c. 99-94 bc. His work is dedicated to C. Memmius Gemellus, the friend of Catullus and Cinna; may have been acquainted with Cicero; otherwise nothing is known of his life. Died: c. 55 BC.
Publications
Verse
De rerum natura, edited by Joseph Martin. 1953; also edited by William Ellery Leonard and Stanley Barney Smith, 1961, Alfred Ernout, 2 vols., 1964-66, and K. Muller, 1975; selections: edited and translated by Cyril Bailey, 1922, 1947, revised edition, 1977, and W.H.D. Rouse [Loeb Edition], 1928, revised by M.F. Smith, 1975; as On Matter and Man (Books I, II, IV, and V; in Latin), edited by A.S. Cox, 1967, Book III edited by E.J. Kenney, 1977, Book I edited by P.M. Brown, 1984, Book V edited by C.D.N. Costa, 1984, Book IV, 1986, and Book VI, 1991, both edited and translated by John Godwin; as On the Nature of Things, translated by J.S. Watson and J.M. Good, 1848; also translated by C.F. Johnson, 1872; H.A.J. Munro, 1907; Cyril Bailey, 1910; Robert Allison, 1919; R.C. Trevelyan, 1937; J.H. Maitland, 1965; Frank Copley, 1977; as The Way Things Are, translated by Rolfe Humphries, 1968; as The Poem on Nature, translated by C.H. Sisson, 1976; also translated in prose by Ronald Latham, 1951; R. Geer, 1965; M.F. Smith, 1969; Book I as De Rerum Natura, translated by J. Evelyn, 1656; Selections , translated by Henry, S. Salt, 1912; Selections , edited by G. Benfield and R.C. Reeves, 1967; Book IV translated by Robert D. Brown, in Lucretius on Love and Sex, 1987; as The Nature of Things, edited and translated by Anthony M. Esolen, 1995; as Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius De rerum natura, edited by Hugh de Quehen, 1996; as On the Nature of the Universe, with introduction and explanatory notes by Don and Peta Fowler, 1997; as Selections from De rerum natura, edited by Bonnie A. Catto, 1998.
Critical Studies:
Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe by George Santayana, 1910; Lucretius and His Influence by George D. Hadzsits, 1935; Lucretius by E.E. Sykes, 1936; Lucretius’ Imagery by G.J. Sullwood, 1958; Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius by Henri Bergson, 1959; Lucretius and English Literature, 1680-1740 by Wolfgang B. Fleischmann, 1964; Lucretius edited by Donald R. Dudley, 1965; The Lyre of Science: Form and Meaning in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura by Richard Minadeo, 1969; The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius by David A. West, 1969; Epicurean Political Philosophy: The De Rerum Natura of Lucretius by James Hunt Nichols, 1976; Lucretius and the Diatribe Against the Fear of Death: De Rerum Natura III, 830-1094 by Barbara Price Wallach, 1976; Lucretius by E.J. Kenney, 1977; Mode and Value in the De Rerum Natura: A Study in Lucretius’ Metrical Language, 1978, and Lucretius and the Late Republic: An Essay in Roman Intellectual History, 1985, both by John Douglas Minyard; Lucretius and the Transpadanes by Louise Adams Holland, 1979; Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura by Jane McIntosh Snyder, 1980; Lucretius and Epicurus by Diskin Clay, 1983; Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura IV, 1030-1287 with Prolegomena, Text and Translation, 1987, and Lucretius on Love and Sex, 1989, both by Robert D. Brown; Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura by Charles Segal, 1990; The Song of the Swan: Lucretius and the Influence of Callimachus by Harold Donohue, 1993; Myth and Poetry in Lucretius by Monica R. Gale, 1994; Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace , edited by Dirk Obbink, 1995; The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid by Alexander Dalzell, 1996; Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom by David Sedley, 1998; Lucretius and the Modern World by W.R. Johnson, 2000; Lucretius and the Didactic Epic by Monica R. Gale, 2001.
Little is known about the Roman poet Lucretius apart from what may be inferred from his work and the probably apocryphal tale that he committed suicide after suffering the shattering effects of a love potion. Only De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things ) survives, a long philosophical poem in six books of over 7,400 lines of Latin hexameters. The work itself proposes the modest task of liberating humankind from fear and superstition by explaining everything. Underlying this is the premise that fear derives from ignorance or uncertainty, especially in relation to the arbitrary actions of the gods and to the fate of the soul after death. By showing that the order of things is the result of orderly and predictable mechanical processes, Lucretius hoped to dissolve all mysteries, thereby eliminating all uncertainty and fear.
Lucretius saw his task as essentially didactic, expounding the ethical and mechanical theories of the Greco-Roman philosopher Epicurus, ”the first to break the close bars of nature’s portals” (1.71). In turn, Epicurus had adopted and developed the implications of the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus. Thus, for Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Atomists, all reality was composed of two basic elements, atoms or particles and void. They viewed reality as we know it as nothing more than elaborate configurations of atoms and void existing in a state of constant motion, a view that anticipates to some degree Galileo’s theory of atoms, Descartes’s corpuscles, and even some aspects of the modern atomic theory.
As Lucretius proceeds through his six books, he follows the basic metaphysical project of starting with the most fundamental, and showing how he can build on that to account for the cosmos as a whole. Thus he moves from the derivation of the basic elements to an account of life, mind, and reproduction, through larger structures and finally to an account of terrestrial and celestial phenomena. The observation of change in the world, of generation and decay, nutrition and growth, the cycles of the season, and even the larger cycles of the cosmos, is nothing more than the expression of the perpetual rearrangements of the basic constituent particles in the void. In this way, Lucretius attempts to account for the mutability of the world while defending the fundamental postulate that ”nothing can be produced from nothing,” and its corollary, that ”nothing is ever reduced to nothing.”
These postulates are crucial to Lucretius’ project of dispelling religious superstition, for they entail the principle that the gods are bound to the laws of nature, unable to act in an arbitrary, unreasonable, or unpredictable manner. Any fortune or disaster that might befall people is the result of predictable natural laws and not the caprice of Apollo or Jupiter. As such, Lucretius posits a responsibility for individuals to exercise reasonable caution, for within the limits of nature, their fates are in their own hands. Lucretius’ theory is most important, however, when applied to dispelling fear of death.
As with superstition and fear in general, Lucretius suggests that the fear of death is related to a fear of the unknown, and especially the prospect of some torment or retribution that the soul might encounter after death. In Book III, he argues why he believes such fears to be groundless. In effect, Lucretius argues that mental and vital processes, like any other natural phenomena, are a function of the motion of particles, in this case an especially fine grade of particles, but particles nonetheless. ”It must therefore necessarily be the case,” he argues, ”that the whole soul consists of extremely small seminal atoms, connected and diffused throughout the veins, and viscera, and nerves.” This being so, there is no substantive difference between the soul and the body. Accordingly, the death of the body also entails the death of the soul. In other words, insofar as death and decay of the body represent a dissociation and reconfiguration of the constituent particles, so they represent the same for the soul. The collection and configuration of atoms that combine to form one’s unique self and identity diffuse into the whole. Since the soul is inseparable from the body, the only way that a person might suffer after death is if all of the specific particles that formed the person were able to recombine in their original configuration. Since that is effectively impossible, Lucretius concludes that there is no after-life to anticipate.
We may be assured that in death there is nothing to be dreaded by us; that he who does not exist, cannot become miserable; and that it makes not the least difference to a man, when immortal death has ended his mortal life, that he was ever born at all.
Thus Lucretius offers the cold comfort that the life people live is the only life they have and may expect, and that since death is complete annihilation, they have nothing to fear.
On the Nature of Things proved an important vehicle for Epicurean thought, both in the Roman world and later with Voltaire and other figures of the Enlightenment who were drawn to his material vision of the cosmos and his ethics of the garden. At the same time, Lucretius’ flights of lyricism made his poem widely read and appreciated among those influenced by Latin literature. However, the enduring quality stems from Lucretius’ regard for the perennial problem of human mortality and the meaning of human existence: what philosopher George Santayana termed the ”art of accepting and enjoying what the conditions of our being afford.” Because of this, On the Nature of Things may be classed among the great philosophical poems in the Western tradition, comparable with Dante’s Divine Comedy, Wordsworth’s Prelude, or Goethe’s Faust.
