LUCRETIUS ON THE

NATURE OF THINGS

TRANSLATED BY

CYRIL BAILEY

FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

PREFACE

No one can set about translating Lucretius into English without finding his head full of the great work of H. A. J. Munro. It is not only that certain striking phrases ring in one's ears-vitai claustra, 'the fastnesses of life,' alte terminus haerens,' the deepset boundary-mark,' &c.but one is possessed with a strong feeling that he has finally set the tone or colour which Lucretius in English must assume. It might indeed be thought that with so fine a model in existence it is unnecessary and unprofitable to undertake the task again. But there are, I think, good reasons to justify the attempt. In the first place, the study of Lucretius has made considerable advances since Munro's edition: thanks largely to Dr. Brieger and still more to the late Professor Giussani,1 the philosophy of Epicurus is far better understood than it was, and, as a consequence, much light has been thrown on many dark places in the poem, and its general grouping and connexion can be far more clearly grasped. Secondly, though Munro set the tone, he did not always keep it : in the more technical parts of the poem he is apt to drop almost into the language of a scientific textbook, and phrases and even passages of sheer prose give the

1 In our own country Dr. Masson (Lucretius: Epicurean and Poet) has recently written a very suggestive, though not always accurate, sketch of Lucretius's relations to his predecessors and to modern scientific ideas, and has most successfully represented the spirit of the poem.

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