De Rerum Natura, Vol 1

by Lucretius, John Godwin

The purpose of this edition is to demonstrate the quality and interest of book the intellectual curiosity of the analyst of earthquakes, volcanoes and marvellous phenomena, the rhetorical and philosophical powers of a thinker who wants to make his interpretation of Epicureanism both cogent and vivid, the deep humane compassion of the ...

Genres: Philosophy, Poetry, Classics, Nonfiction, Science

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 56

About the author

Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem "De Rerum Natura" about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things.

Very little is known about Lucretius's life; the only certain fact is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, to whom the poem was addressed and dedicated.

Reviews

[Priceh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and prescient. All scholarly works should be written in iambic pentameter (if using English.) It would cut down on useless papers.

[U Recife · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ler Lucrécio numa tradução é aceitar, à partida, o muito que se assim se perde. Numa obra lírica, a tradução o mais que pode é conseguir dar, talvez, um aroma daquilo que o original canta. Ou seja, à partida a obra lida é menor. Todavia, justiça seja feita à tradução que António José da Silva Leitão fez e que, tanto quanto é possível na traição que é traduzir, mantém não só a lírica (a possível), mas também a força de um texto que quer ser muito mais do que um mero poema.

A presente edição foi publicada em 1851. O texto encontra-se disponível numa digitalização providenciada pela Google Books e que está no português de então. Lê-la, portanto, tem a dupla dificuldade de ser uma tradução lírica e de estar numa escrita que já não nos é familiar (exemplos ao acaso, já que todas as páginas estão deles repletas: lettras, communs, ceo, immensos, fructos, systemas, sciencia, difficil, contal-os, etc.) Ainda assim, e não obstante estas dificuldades, esta versão, quando comparada com outras mais recentes (a de Agostinho da Silva e a de Luís Manuel Gaspar Cerqueira), parece-nos mais viva, mais natural e, por isso mesmo, mais tocante. Nesse sentido, vale a pena o duplo esforço que a ela tem de se devotar.

Quanto ao texto de Lucrécio, tentar resumi-lo é tarefa ingrata. O poema é já uma síntese da filosofia epicurista, e a sua força reside precisamente nos notáveis exemplos usados por Lucrécio para demonstrar argumentativamente a veracidade das premissas de Epicuro. Num universo completamente composto de átomos (no sentido original grego) e vácuo; quando tudo o que é, é precisamente isso, matéria em colisão num somatório de acasos sem fim Ad Aeternum; quando até a alma não existe numa dimensão à parte, mas é também parte do todo e do todo fazendo parte, “Não mais a escuridão de espessa noite / Há de roubar-te a estrada onde consigas / Em todo o arcano entrar da natureza: / As coisas uma vez conhecidas / Dão luz para outras conhecidas serem” (LUCRÉCIO). O mundo mostra-se e mostra-se tal como deve ser visto: sem fantasia, desatrelado de superstições, cru, muito cru, no cru que incomoda, mas que é sincero.

Ou seja, por este caminho, sujeito à tradução, resumir Lucrécio é trai-lo pela segunda vez (tradução, traição). Resta-me, pois, apontar para o poema. No dedo estendido, a mensagem: lê, deixa que o poeta te cante e assim te encante. O mais que eu faça será sempre desonesto.

[Trounin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Салют шлёт Лукреций славным мужам, желает рассказать, до чего дошёл он сам. Что побудило его к тому? Настала пора дать объяснение всему. Жил до Лукреция философ Эпикур, был сей грек неизмеримо мудр, его труды восхитили поэта, решил воздать почести он ему за это. Много загадок от нас хранит природа, оставаясь неизменной год от года. Дабы понять суть вещей и значение, нужно изжить вековое сомнение. В шести книгах, к Меммию адресованных, Лукреций обрёл среди потомков заинтересованных, он изложил в стихотворной форме представление о мире, может потому мы их и не забыли.

(c) Trounin

[Sean Brenon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is super goofy as many philosophy books from Greece and Rome are. Still, as ridiculous as it is, Lucretius’ attempts to explain the purpose of an Epicurean in a meaningless world is actually relevant and contains some parallels with Sartre, 2000 years later.

[Hannah Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating.

[James F · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Apologies for what is probably my longest review ever, but I spent about two months working my way through this and wanted do it justice.)
De Rerum Natura has always been one of my favorite books, since I read it for the first time in the Rouse translation as a senior in high school more than fifty years ago (not for high school of course; no public school would dare to assign it without considerable censorship). This is my first time attempting it in the original. The edition I read, by H.A.J. Munro from the nineteenth century, is in two volumes; the first contains the text and critical notes, the second the explanatory notes — about a paragraph of notes for each line of the poem. There is also a third volume with a translation, which I was unable to find on Open Library, from which I borrowed the first two volumes. They do have some modern English translations available; I took out the 2008 verse translation by Ronald Melville to use as a "cheat", but it is not literal enough for that and also seems to misunderstand Lucretius on a number of points, so I would not recommend it. Since I read the two volumes together on my Kindle, I also read Gillespie and Hardie, edd., Cambridge Companion to Lucretius as my physical book for when the Kindle needs to recharge, which gives a more recent viewpoint than the century-and-a-half-year-old notes of Munro.

In the past, I was very impressed by the content of the poem, but reading it in translation I really didn't appreciate it as poetry; this time I am still impressed by his ideas, but very much more by his poetry.

In terms of content, he is the only surviving (more or less) complete source for the materialist tradition of ancient philosophy, which is otherwise represented only by some rather summary letters and a few fragments of Epicurus (most of which are included in the notes, as Lucretius is often giving a fairly close verse translation of his model.) Without this poem, we would be in the same position as we are with regard to Indian philosophy, where the materialist tradition has all but disappeared under the weight of idealist, religious thought. Leucippus, supposedly the first Atomist philosopher, we know nothing about, if he was even a real person. Democritus' voluminous works have all been lost apart from short testimonia; it appears that he was a genuine philosopher, if not what we would think of as a scientist, who was interested in explaining the world for its own sake. Epicurus seems to have taken the Democritean system and turned it into something of a dogmatic sect with himself as a sort of prophet; I remember once describing him in a paper (probably somewhat unfairly) as "the Ayn Rand of antiquity". To be just, the Stoics and other philosophers of the time do the same thing; philosophy after Plato and Aristotle ceases to be a single "conversation" and divides into separate sects, probably because the natural philosophies are bound up with the ethical positions and any serious disagreement with the central doctrines would seem to be a threat to the way of life they underpin. The Greek term for a philosophical school, αἵρεσῐς, literally means a separate opinion, equivalent to the Latin secta, which give us the English words heresy and sect. (Modern Marxist philosophy has a similar problem, with revisions to the theory seen as a threat to the revolutionary conclusions, hence the fear of "revisionism", but to discuss this would take me too far from Lucretius.)

This sectarian aspect is what has made me somewhat more ambivalent about the poem; it is especially obvious in his polemics against the Stoics — the worst example being at the end of the first book when he calls them "stupid" for thinking that people could live "upside down" on the other side of the Earth, which of course we do. (Epicurus and Lucretius admittedly do have a good reason for denying that everything is attracted to the center of the universe as other philosophers believed — if the universe is infinite as the Epicureans believed, there is no center; and as they also correctly pointed out, the void could offer no resistance to bodies passing through it or cause them to stop. No one at that time considered that things might be attracted to the center of bodies; Munro suggests that if Epicurus had been more willing to engage with the Stoics in dialogue rather than polemic, he might have discovered the idea of gravity long before Newton.) The dogmatic nature of Epicureanism also explains the anti-religious verses of the poem which I loved so much as a teenager; someone writing as a philosopher or scientist would just ignore religion as irrelevant, Lucretius' polemics are because Epicureanism, Stoicism, and religion were competing ethical dogmas rather than scientific theories. The Renaissance rediscovery of the poem was a major influence on the materialist, "corpuscular" views of the early modern scientists from Gassendi through Newton; Munro's notes quote passages from Newton's Optics which are paraphrased from Lucretius. The rapid development of the "corpuscular philosophy" into modern science after the Renaissance contrasts with the static nature of the doctrine from Epicurus on; there were many reasons for this, but certainly one was that the natural philosophy was separated from the Epicurean ethical teachings.

As a work of literature, De Rerum Natura is probably the best poem written in classical Latin; together with his acquaintance Catullus, he was the major influence on the poetry of Vergil and an influence on the style of Cicero as well (although in the case of Cicero, the influence may have been mutual), as Munro's notes document at length. Through Cicero and Vergil, he influenced all later Latin literature, and thus modern literature after the Renaissance.

The first book outlines the basic Epicurean physical doctrine of atoms and the void, and argues for the infinity of space and the infinite number of atoms. One of my favorite passages in the poem is his description of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, with language which is usually used for a wedding, ending with his exclamation, "What terrible things religion persuades men to do!"

The second book deals in more detail with the motion, forms and properties (or lack of properties) of the atoms. His view of the motion of the atoms seems somewhat inconsistent; he first says that they are always moving in all directions, which is what the atomists should have said, since if the universe is infinite there should be no special directions, but later follows the orthodox Epicurean view that they all travel in parallel lines at a constant speed because of their weight, thus assuming that the universe has an "up" and a "down". The problem of course is that they believed that motion (rather than changes of motion) needed an explanation, and that weight was an intrinsic property of matter which caused motion, not acceleration. (I remember reading an account of Aristotle's objections to atomism and particularly to the void, which called his argument that the atoms in the absence of resistance, i.e. in the void, would be travelling at infinite speed a non sequitur because there was no reason for him to think their motion would increase rather than be constant; but since for Democritus (and Epicurus, and Lucretius) they are falling by reason of weight he was perfectly right). Lucretius then introduces the famous Epicurean "swerve", which was the most significant difference between Epicurus and Democritus, to account for the fact that atoms can collide and form worlds and visible things. The Epicureans also used this spontaneous "swerve" to justify the idea of free will, somewhat as some modern philosophers (mis)use quantum indeterminacy, while Democritus was apparently a determinist. (Just as an aside, the comparison of Epicurus and Democritus was the subject of Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation.)

Lucretius "proves" the motion of the atoms by a comparison with motes in a sunbeam (much as modern physicists use Brownian motion in a liquid) and describes how atoms combine to form small bodies which combine to form larger bodies and so forth until they reach visible size. It would have been better had he used this idea more; one of the problems with Lucretius (and all the ancient atomists) is that they usually try to explain visible phenomena directly from the atoms, as he does with smell and taste. He gives a more or less correct explanation of why air and "fire" seem to move upwards, because they are forced up by the greater weight of the heavier matter pressing downward and displacing them, rather than as Aristotle and other philosophers believed because they had a natural upward motion. He also explains that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones through a medium such as air because of resistance, but that they fall at the same rate through the vacuum, which we generally learn in school was the discovery of Galileo.

He argues that the number of different shapes of atoms is finite, but that there are infinitely many atoms of each shape. His argument again seems somewhat inconsistent; he sometimes talks as if for example animals are all different because they are made from different kinds of atoms, while more often he takes the more sensible view that it is only their arrangements and motions which are different, using his favorite analogy of the same letters of the alphabet making different words and sentences. The arguments in this part of the book are less satisfying, in large part because as I noted above he tries to explain things from the shape of atoms themselves which would be better explained by the shapes and properties of intermediate particles (our molecules, etc.) On the other hand, it has some of the best poetry. Here he has one of the most poetic images of the poem, the description of the mother cow seeking her calf which has been sacrificed (another dig at religion?) Another great poetical passage is his description of the ceremonies of the Great Mother Earth, with the final verses which ironically deconstruct his own description.

He then turns to the properties of the atoms, mainly in a negative sense, trying to show that the atoms do not have the properties of the things they are made from, as colored things are not made from colored atoms and so forth. This seems to be an argument against the theories of Anaxagoras. He especially tries to show that atoms of sentient animals do not themselves have sense, but that the mind or soul emerges from their arrangements and motions in the body; the argument is somewhat obscure because we do not know what the theory was that he was arguing against — it sometimes seems to me as if he is arguing in advance against Leibniz's monads (which in fact were partially designed to reconcile Lucretian atomism with Christian Providence). However, the argument is also important to Lucretius in that it gives another proof that sentience cannot survive the death of the body. The book then turns briefly to another subject, the existence of multiple worlds, and ends with the forecast of the destruction of our own world into its constituent atoms.

Book three gives a general view of the nature of the mind (animus, translating the Greek ψυχη) and the spirits (animai), both made up for him as for Epicurus of very small (even for atoms) and round smooth bodies, which correspond in function to our central and peripheral nervous systems, respectively. After his argument that sensation is not in the atoms themselves but in their arrangements and motions, it is disconcerting to see him explaining the sentient mind from a particular kind of atom rather than from arrangements and structures. His positive descriptions in this book are less valuable because of this (although probably the best account available in antiquity); the real value of the book is in the negative arguments, which should have disposed permanently of the nonsense of an immortal soul.

Book four continues with the mind and sensation, beginning with the theory that all material objects give off a material film, which travels through space to our eyes and causes vision. He continually compares these films in swiftness and other ways with the particles of light, but never draws the conclusion which seems so obvious to us that what we see is simply the reflection of light itself. Partly this may be because he is committed to the doctrines of Epicurus without any development of his own; but to be fair, before Newton discovered that white light is a blend of all colors, it made sense to think that color was in the thing itself and that it gave off films of color atoms (though it is hard to understand this if, as he argued in book two, the atoms themselves have no color.) His theory does make it a problem for him to explain why we cannot see in the dark; he speaks rather at random of "dark air" which blocks the films. He then explains mirrors, ending with a verse which could be taken as a statement of the law of reflection at equal angles. From there he proceeds to discuss optical illusions, maintaining that they are caused not by any failure of the eyes but by incorrect processing by the mind. Next, he argues against the Academic or Skeptical position that no knowledge is possible, and for the accuracy of the senses. He explains the other senses in similar ways, always deriving their properties directly from the properties of individual atoms rather than arrangements of atoms. He then turns to the most bizarre of the Epicurean doctrines, that there are images which are made of such small atoms that they affect the mind directly rather than through the senses; a sort of materialistic telepathy. He asserts that the combinations of these images result in the mind having images of centaurs, mermaids, people long dead and other non-existent things. He gives the mind itself no power of combining images; everything comes somehow "as-is" from external images. He sees that this theory has problems, and struggles to meet them, not all that successfully; I think this is another case where the Epicureans are constrained by the need to agree with everything Epicurus said, rather than try to come up with something better. He rather jumps around at this point; he gives an argument against final causes which is probably the best that could be done without a theory of natural selection; the apparent teleology of biology was always the Achilles heel of atheism before Darwin, which is why of all the scientific theories which contradict the Bible the fundamentalists have always rightly singled out the theory of natural selection as the main enemy of religion. The book ends with explanations of various problems of physiology, which, although often far from what we now believe to be true, are reasonable enough within his system; the problem is again that he treats them as dogmatic truths rather than hypotheses.

Book five is the longest of the six books. It begins with arguments for the "mortality" of our world, and in passing presents the Epicurean doctrine regarding the gods (which totally contradicts his whole system; after having many times used the argument that the lightest atoms are the easiest to dissolve and that nothing in the world is permanent, he then describes the gods and their "seats" as made from the lightest possible atoms, and considers them as immortal and unaffected by anything else in the universe.) He then turns to discussing the particular phenomena of the world, and here we see that Epicureanism was in many of its details less "scientific" than other tendencies at the time, particularly in astronomy; apparently they consider the Earth to be flat, when most educated people at the time realized that it was spherical, and Lucretius explicitly argues that the sun and moon are no larger than they appear to be, rejecting the scientific measurements of their actual sizes and distances made even before the time of Epicurus, which were quite accurate given the ancients' lack of precision instruments. Hence they miss what in the Renaissance became the major proof of the Epicurean doctrine of the infinite universe, namely the idea that the stars were suns. Another problem with his astronomy is that after giving the correct explanation of a phenomenon, or at least the best available at the time, he also gives one or more outdated or fantastical theories (such as that there is a new sun and moon every day) and, completely ignoring the arguments for and against, states dogmatically that there is no way to tell which is correct. This is another proof that his primary interest is not in finding the correct explanations for things but only in showing that some mechanical, non-religious explanation is possible, it doesn't really matter which. (He does seem to be more interested in physics for itself than Epicurus was, however.) The first half of book five was to me the least interesting in the poem, and I rather got bogged down and procrastinated.

[Continued in the first comment]

[Garth · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Nature of Things, long poem written in Latin as De rerum natura by Lucretius that sets forth the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The title of Lucretius’s work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeōs (On Nature).

Lucretius divided his argument into six books, beginning each with a highly polished introduction. Books I and II establish the main principles of the atomic universe, refute the rival theories of the pre-Socratic cosmic philosophers Heracleitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, and covertly attack the Stoics, a school of moralists rivaling that of Epicurus. Book III demonstrates the atomic structure and mortality of the soul and ends with a triumphant sermon on the theme “Death is nothing to us.” Book IV describes the mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily functions and condemns sexual passion. Book V describes the creation and working of the world and the celestial bodies and the evolution of life and human society. Book VI explains remarkable phenomena of the earth and sky—in particular, thunder and lightning. The poem ends with a description of the plague at Athens, a sombre picture of death that contrasts with the depiction of spring and birth in the invocation to Venus with which the poem opens

The linguistic style of the poem is notable. Its author’s aim was to render the bald and abstract Greek prose of Epicurus into Latin hexameters at a time when Latin had no philosophic vocabulary. He succeeded by turning common words to a technical use. When necessary, he invented words. In poetic diction and style he was in debt to the older Latin poets, especially to Quintus Ennius, the father of Roman poetry. He freely used alliteration and assonance, solemn and often metrically convenient archaic forms, and old constructions. He imitated or echoed Homer, the dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides, the poet and critic Callimachus, the historian Thucydides, and the physician Hippocrates.

[Geeky Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully modern ideas from an ancient philosopher.

[David Petr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things that smell bad are made of sharp atoms that poke your nose

[Antonio Satya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inteligencia, retórica, curiosidad y lirismo en esta obra científica en verso.