INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE OF LUCRETIUS

THE life of Lucretius, as it is usually accepted, is given here without any examination of the conflicting accounts and theories put forward by different editors.

Titus Lucretius Carus was born probably B. C. 99 and died October 15, B. C. 55. The statement that his death was due to suicide during madness brought on by drugs must be viewed with suspicion. He was a man of good family. He had literary tastes and showed no inclination for a political life, more especially during the troublous times of the struggles between Pompey and Caesar. He lived the life of a student and devoted himself to the philosophy of Epicurus: the result of his lifework is the presentation of that philosophy in the didactic poem De Rerum Natura in six books, a work that is not the production of a madman, whatever defects it may contain. Moreover, as Mr. Mackail in his Latin Literature says: 'Many of the most important physical discoveries of modern times are hinted at or even expressly stated by Lucretius.' Indeed his theories of the atomic doctrine, of light, of evolution and of the ultimate constitution of atoms have won the admiration of modern scientists.

THE STYLE OF LUCRETIUS

Lucretius was, at any rate in literature, laudator temporis acti. He admired and imitated the older poets: Homer and Empedocles among the Greeks, Ennius and the older tragedians among the Latin poets, were studied diligently by him and influenced his language and turn of expression strongly. He is fond of using old and half-forgotten forms of words: he uses and invents compound adjectives of a Greek type, such as vulgivagus, levisomnus, anguimanus, pennipotens, bucerus: alliteration and assonance, a characteristic feature in the early period of the literature of any nation, play a prominent part, especially where the poet wishes to drive a point home.

The Lucretian hexameter is distinctly in advance of that of Ennius, yet it is closer to the rugged verse of the older poet than to the smoothness and elaboration of the Vergilian line. He is ready to use spondaic endings, archaic terminations of substantives and verbs: he makes free use of elision and frequently marks off the

first two feet from the rest of the line, interrupting the rhythm by a sudden jerk. One of the especial features in the verse of Lucretius is his method of dealing with the fourth foot, which is frequently contained in a single word and ends with it, while Vergil prefers to have a caesura. For instance Vergil writes 'arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris,' inverting the natural order of Troiae qui Lucretius would be content to retain the natural order qui Troiae and to dispense with the caesura which Vergil prefers to have. So in our passage Lucretius writes' per totum corpus adhaesu, quod tantis viribus auctos, nix venti fulmina grando'; in these lines Vergil would probably have written' totum per corpus adhaesu, tantis quod, venti nix.'

The poem leaves on the reader, and still more on the hearer, an impression of great vigour and freedom of expression untrammelled by the elaboration considered necessary by the later poets. Mr. Duff in his introduction aptly quotes the words of Munro: 'It has often struck me that his genius is akin to that of Milton. He displays a wonderful depth and fervour of thought, expressed in language of singular force and beauty; an admirable faculty of clear, vigorous and well-sustained philosophical reasoning; and a style equal in its purity and correctness to that of Terence, Caesar or Cicero, and superior to that of any writer of the Augustan age.'

Another great asset possessed by Lucretius is the imaginative insight and exuberant originality by which he pictures to himself and unfolds to his readers the long periods of the early struggles of mankind in the dim recesses of the past, until gradually they reached by the processes of evolution that development of civilization which culminated in the perfection of his own time (‘ad summum donec venere cacumen ').

Mommsen closes his sketch of Lucretius with this tribute: 'The

didactic poem concerning the Nature of Things, however much in it may challenge censure, has remained one of the most brilliant stars in the poorly illuminated expanse of Roman literature.'

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EPICURUS

Epicurus based his philosophy on the axiom that experience alone was the foundation-stone of certainty: experience is to be gained from the impressions of the senses: therefore sensation is the standard of truth. Moreover, he held that the study of Nature was desirable in so far as it freed mankind from the trammels of religion and superstition.

In Physics he denied divine agency in the creation of the world, maintaining that it was due to the collision and combinations of immutable and irreducible atoms, and that the meeting of these atoms was rendered possible by the existence of void. Similarly the soul itself is composed of the lightest atoms, and is therefore of

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EPICURUS

the same nature as the body, though more agile through the excessive lightness of its composition; yet it will perish with the body and will have no future existence as it, no less than the more material and tangible world, has no divine element.

In Ethics Epicurus held the view that pleasure is the sole good and pain the sole evil: pleasure is the absence of pain. Mental pleasures are the greater, for bodily pleasures are merely ephemeral. To ensure freedom from pain he taught the value of plain living, seeing in virtue not the end of life, but rather the means to the end of life, which offered to him a state of temperate equilibrium and pleasant tranquillity, both mental and physical (arapatía). So in Ethics, no less than in Physics, we see that all idea of higher and more spiritual life is absent, that the divine element is again lacking.

What was a philosophy to the master became a religion to the disciple, and Lucretius in his enthusiastic admiration for Epicurus preached the gospel of Epicureanism more fervently than its founder, exclaiming from the depths of his heart 'deus ille fuit, deus' (bk. 5. 8).

THE POEM DE RERUM NATURA'

Lucretius wished to expound the doctrine of Epicurus not merely from a desire to put before his readers his physical system, but chiefly from a deeply rooted wish to free mankind from fear of the gods and from the terrors of death which are caused by the belief in a future life: he therefore determined to explain the true nature of things.

Books one and two describe fully the physical theories of Democritus and Epicurus, dwelling on the nature of atoms and void, the chief component parts of the universe. Book three shows that the soul is a material part of man and perishes when the body dies: the next deals with the Epicurean theory of sense. The fifth book

describes the creation of the world, the evolution of man and the beginnings of society. In the last book Lucretius puts before us a number of natural phenomena and curiosities in nature, probably intending to rearrange and systematize them before it was actually published.

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE FIFTH

BOOK

The fifth book of Lucretius opens with a panegyric on Epicurus. The poet then promises a sketch of the creation of the world and of the heavenly bodies, in order that men realizing the mortal nature of the world may not be enslaved to the belief that it was created

by the gods, who were in reality indifferent to the affairs of mankind and had no inducement to exchange their leisured happiness for the anxiety of world-making. Surely too, if the gods had made the world, it would have been both better and happier. Το Lucretius Nature was the real creative power. The world and all that is in it is mortal; water, air, fire, stones, ether itself, all gradually decay and die away. Earth had its beginning and must have its end. He then goes on to describe the formation of the world out of indestructible atoms which collided and combined : the heavier particles forming the earth, the lighter ones composing the ether and the heavenly bodies, and so the earth sank and the ether rose. Next, he endeavours to describe the motions and courses of the stars and to explain the nature of the sun, which he with the Epicureans maintained was really of the size that it appeared to them. After this follows a description of the recurrence of days and nights, of the succession of the seasons, and an explanation of the causes of eclipses.

At this point our selection opens with the story of the creation of herbage, animals, birds, and lastly man produced from earth, the all-mother. Lucretius denies the possibility of beings of twofold nature, such as Centaurs, Satyrs, Scylla and the like. Then follows an account of the earliest life of man, the beginnings of social intercourse, the discovery of fire and the development of civilization. And now Lucretius launches out into a bitter indictment of religion and describes its evil effects on man. Next he tells of the discovery of the use of metals, the consequent development of war and its instruments, the cultivation of the soil, the beginnings of music, and the observance of the recurring seasons. Naturally resulting from these arts come the closer life and communion of man with man, the discovery of letters, the beginnings of history, and the progress of the arts and luxuries of life up to the elaborate civilization of his own day.