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. He argued that 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 affect humans—and totally indifferent to the world and its inhabitants, unmoved alike by their virtues and their crimes. Since that nothingness (which he likens to a deep, peaceful sleep) caused us no pain or discomfort, we should not fear the same nothingness that will follow our own demise:[5], According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Lucretius sees those who fear death as embracing the fallacious assumption that they will be present in some sense "to regret and bewail [their] own non-existence. [55][56], While there exist a handful of references to Lucretius in Romance and Germanic sources dating between the ninth and fifteenth centuries (references that, according to Ada Palmer, "indicate a tenacious, if spotty knowledge of the poet and some knowledge of [his] poem"), no manuscripts of De rerum natura currently survive from this span of time. [84][85] Additionally, Pliny the Elder lists Lucretius (presumably referring to his De rerum natura) as a source at the beginning of his Naturalis Historia, and Seneca the Younger quoted six passages from De rerum natura across several of his works. • Alioto, Anthony M. (1987). his assertion that the world was created from chaos, and his denials of Providence, divine participation, miracles, the efficacy of prayer, and an afterlife) as "proto-atheistic". In both this work, and as well as his more well-known Etymologiae (c. AD 600–625), Isidore liberally quotes from Lucretius a total of twelve times, drawing verses from all of Lucretius's books except his third. [89] Lactantius also disparages the science of De rerum natura (as well as of Epicureanism in general), calls Lucretius "the most worthless of the poets" (poeta inanissimus), notes that he is unable to read more than a few lines of De rerum natura without laughing, and sarcastically asks, "Who would think that [Lucretius] had a brain when he said these things? "[46] However, Kleve contends that four of the six books are represented in the fragments, which he argues is reason to assume that the entire poem was at one time kept in the library. Determinism appears to conflict with the concept of free will. De Rerum Natura. Sein wahrscheinlich unvollendetes Werk De rerum natura ist eine der Hauptquellen zur Philosophie Epikurs, die ansonsten nur in Fragmenten überliefert ist. Lucretius's task was to clearly state and fully develop these views in an attractive form; his work was an attempt to show through poetry that everything in nature can be explained by natural laws, without the need for the intervention of divine beings. [5] To further alleviate the fear of non-existence, Lucretius makes use of the symmetry argument: he argues that the eternal oblivion awaiting all humans after death is exactly the same as the infinite nothingness that preceded our birth. Jahrhundert v. Chr. "[37] His naturalistic explanations were meant to bolster the ethical and philosophical ideas of Epicureanism, not to reveal true explanations of the physical world.[36]. 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. I have translated from my own text published in the Bibliotheca Oxoniensi. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. These remnants were discovered among the Epicurean library in the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum. Lucretius attempts to allow for free will in his physicalistic universe by postulating an indeterministic tendency for atoms to veer randomly (Latin: clinamen, literally "the turning aside of a thing", but often translated as "the swerve"). quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam, te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse, quos ego de rerum natura pangere conor 25 Memmiadae nostro, quem tu, dea, tempore in … "[16][17] (Of note, Lucretius repeats these 25 lines, almost verbatim, in the introduction to the fourth book. Lucretius divided his argument into six 1620, gest. [5][64][65] According to David Sedley of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "With these admiring words, Virgil neatly encapsulates four dominant themes of the poem—universal causal explanation, leading to elimination of the threats the world seems to pose, a vindication of free will, and disproof of the soul's survival after death. And as a simple ceasing-to-be, death can be neither good nor bad for this being, since a dead person—being completely devoid of sensation and thought—cannot miss being alive. 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. Cuius, uti memoro, rei simulacrum et imago ante oculos semper nobis versatur et instat. "[35], Despite his advocacy of empiricism and his many correct conjectures about atomism and the nature of the physical world, Lucretius concludes his first book stressing the absurdity of the (by then well-established) round earth theory, favor instead a flat earth cosmology. Chr.) The poem consists of six untitled books, in dactylic hexameter. Die Kernstelle ist auf jeden Fall Lukrez (Titus Lucretius Carus), De rerum natura (Über die Natur der Dinge) 2, 112 – 141. [36], 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. To do this, Epicurus invoked the atomism of Democritus 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. Der kritische Kommentar rechtfertigt den Text der Neuausgabe des Lukrez in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana. with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Lucretius's De rerum natura. Your current position in the text is marked in blue. [66] This has led scholars like Katharina Volk to argue that "Manilius is a veritable anti-Lucretius". [61], The earliest recorded critique of Lucretius's work is in a letter written by the Roman statesman Cicero to his brother Quintus, in which the former claims that Lucretius's poetry is "full of inspired brilliance, but also of great artistry" (Lucreti poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis). Nevertheless, Lucretius writes as a complete Epicurean,offering his reader not just cosmological understanding but the fullrecipe for happiness. [23] Regardless, due to the ideas espoused in the poem, much of Lucretius's work was seen by many as direct a challenge to theistic, Christian belief. [95] His influence is especially notable in the work of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, who praised Lucretius—along with Dante and Goethe—in his book Three Philosophical Poets,[96] although he openly admired the poet's system of physics more so than his spiritual musings (referring to the latter as "fumbling, timid and sad"). [101][102], "On the Nature of Things" redirects here. In that case, nature would never have produced anything. [22], After the poem was rediscovered and made its rounds across Europe and beyond, numerous thinkers began to see Lucretius's Epicureanism as a "threat synonymous with atheism. [97], In 2011, the historian and literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt wrote a popular history book about the poem, entitled The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Lukrez, De rerum natura Titus Lucretius Carus: kaum verlässliche Informationen über die Vita von Lukrez Lebensdaten vielleicht 97–55 v. Chr. [51] The third and final ninth-century manuscript—which comprises the Schedae Gottorpienses fragment (commonly called G and located in the Kongelige Bibliotek of Copenhagen) and the Schedae Vindobonenses fragments (commonly called V and U and located in the Austrian National Library in Vienna)—was christened by Butterfield as S and has been dated to the latter part of the ninth century. [34] For instance, when considering the reason for stellar movements, Lucretius provides two possible explanations: that the sky itself rotates, or that the sky as a whole is stationary while constellations move. "Prolegomena". (3 Bde. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. This manuscript was likely copied after O, sometime in the mid-ninth century. 1st century AD), whose didactic poem Astronomica (written c. AD 10–20), alludes to De rerum natura in a number of places. (3). But to lay down which of them it is lies beyond the range of our stumbling progress. To the Greek philosopher 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. Berlin 1957, S. 168.: 5. [57] Rather, all the remaining Lucretian manuscripts that are currently extant date from or after the fifteenth century. DE RERVM NATVRA LIBRI SEX. line to jump to another position: Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics. "[5], 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. 1681) De Rerum Natura. [45] Nevertheless, a small minority of scholars argue that Jerome's assertion may be credible. [94], Notable figures who owned copies include Ben Jonson whose copy is held at the Houghton Library, Harvard; and Thomas Jefferson, who owned at least five Latin editions and English, Italian and French translations. Zur Ausstellung erscheint ein Katalog. For the documentary television series, see, Lucretius was quoted by several early Christian writers, including, List of English translations of De rerum natura, "Hortus Apertus – La fortuna – Dante e Lucrezio", "Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini" (2013), "The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Nonfiction", "2011 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction", "An Unearthed Treasure That Changed Things", "The Answer Man: An Ancient Poem Was Rediscovered—and the World Swerved", "Book review: 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=De_rerum_natura&oldid=993308149, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Articles with Latin-language sources (la), Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 9 December 2020, at 23:10. [27] The historian Ada Palmer has labelled six ideas in Lucretius's thought (viz. Epicurus thus made it his mission to remove these fears, and thus to establish tranquility in the minds of his readers. [68] (Coincidentally, De rerum natura and the Astronomica were both rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in the early 15th century. 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. [23] However, at that time the label was extremely broad and did not necessarily mean a denial of divine entities (for example, some large Christian sects labelled dissenting groups as atheists). [1] Additionally, in his essay "Of Books", he lists Lucretius along with Virgil, Horace, and Catullus as his four top poets. Click anywhere in the

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