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LUCRETIUS (TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS) (c....
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See also:LUCRETIUS (See also:TITUS LUCRETIUS See also:CARUS) (c. 98–55 B.C.) , the See also:great Latin didactic poet. Our See also:sole See also:information concerning his See also:life is found in the brief See also:summary of See also:Jerome, written more than four centuries after the poet's See also:death. Jerome followed, often carelessly, the accounts contained in the lost See also:work of Suetonius De Viris Illustrious, written about two centuries after the death of Lucretius; and, although it is likely that Suetonius used the information transmitted by earlier grammarians, there is nothing to See also:guide us to the See also:original See also:sources. According to this See also:account the poet was See also:born in 95 B.C.; he became mad in consequence of the See also:administration of a love-See also:philtre; and after composing several books in his lucid intervals, which were subsequently corrected by See also:Cicero, he died by his own See also:hand in the See also:forty-See also:fourth See also:year of his See also:age. See also:Donatus states in his life of See also:Virgil, a work also based on the lost work of Suetonius, that Lucretius died on the same See also:day on which Virgil assumed the toga virilis, that is, in the seventeenth year of Virgil's life, and on the very day on which he was born, and adds that the consuls were the same, that is . Cn. Pompeius See also:Magnus and M. See also:Licinius See also:Crassus, consuls in 70 and again in 55. The statements cannot be perfectly reconciled; but we may say with certainty that Lucretius was born between 98 and 95 B.C., and died in 55 or 54. A single mention of his poem, the De rerum nature (which from the See also:condition in which it has reached us may be assumed to have been published posthumously) in a See also:letter of Cicero's to his See also:brother See also:Quintus, written See also:early in 54 B.C., confirms the date given by Donatus as that of the poet's death. The statements of Jerome have been questioned or disbelieved on the ground of their See also:intrinsic improbability. They have been regarded as a fiction invented later by the enemies of Epicureanism, with the view of discrediting the most powerful work ever produced by any See also:disciple of that See also:sect. It is more in conformity with See also:ancient credulity than with See also:modern See also:science to attribute a permanent tendency to derangement to the accidental administration of any See also:drug, however potent. A work characterized by such strength, consistency and continuity of thought is not likely to have been composed " in the intervals of madness " as Jerome says. Donatus, in mentioning the poet's death, gives no hint of the See also:act of See also:suicide. The poets of the Augustan age, who were deeply interested both in his See also:philosophy and in his See also:poetry, are entirely silent about the tragical See also:story of his life. Cicero, by his professed antagonism to the doctrines of See also:Epicurus, by his inadequate appreciation of Lucretius himself and by the indifference which he shows to other contemporary poets, seems to have been neither fitted for the task of correcting the unfinished work of a writer whose See also:genius was so distinct from his own, nor likely to have cordially undertaken such a task. Yet these considerations do not See also:lead to the See also:absolute rejection of the story. The See also:evidence afforded by the poem rather leads to the conclusion that the tradition contains some germ of fact. It is remarkable that in more than one passage of his poem Lucretius writes with extraordinary vividness of the impression produced both by dreams and by waking visions. It is true that the philosophy of Epicurus put great stress on these, as affording the explanation of the origin of supernatural beliefs. But the insistence with which Lucretius returns to the subject, and the horror with which he recalls the effects of such abnormal phenomena, suggest that he himself may have been liable to such hallucinations, which are said to be consistent with perfect sanity, though they may be the precursors either of madness or of a See also:state of despair and See also:melancholy. Other passages, where he describes himself as ever engaged, even in his dreams, on his task of inquiry and See also:composition, produce the impression of an unrelieved See also:strain of mind and feeling, which may have ended in some extreme reaction of spirit, or in some failure of intellectual See also:power, that may have led him to commit suicide. But the strongest See also:confirmation of the tradition is the unfinished condition in which the poem has reached us. The subject appears indeed to have been fully treated in accordance with the See also:plan sketched out in the introduction to the first See also:book. But that book is the only one which is finished in See also:style and in the arrangement of, its See also:matter. In all the others, and especially in the last three,the continuity of the See also:argument is frequently broken by passages which must have been inserted after the first draft of the arguments was written out. Thus, for instance, in his account of the transition from See also:savage to civilized life, he assumes at v. ror1 the See also:discovery of the use of skins, See also:fire, &c., and the first beginning of See also:civil society, and proceeds at 1028 to explain the origin of See also:language, and then again returns, from logo to 1160, to speculate upon the first use of fire and the earliest stages of See also:political life. These breaks in continuity show what might also be inferred from frequent repetitions of lines which have appeared earlier in the poem, and from the rough workmanship of passages in the later books, that the poem could not have received the final revision of the author. Nor is there any great difficulty in believing that Cicero edited it; the word " emendavit," need not mean more than what we See also:call " preparing for See also:press." From the See also:absence of any claim on the See also:part of any other See also:district of See also:Italy to the See also:honour of having given See also:birth to Lucretius it is inferred that he was of purely See also:Roman origin. No writer certainly is more purely Roman in See also:personal See also:character and in strength of understanding. His silence on the subject of Roman greatness and See also:glory as contrasted with the prominence of these subjects in the poetry of men of provincial birth such as See also:Ennius, Virgil and See also:Horace, may be explained by the principle that familiarity had made the subject one of less wonder and novelty to him. The Lucretian gens to which he belonged was one of the See also:oldest of the great Roman houses, nor do we hear of the name, as we do of other great See also:family names, as being diffused over other parts of Italy, or as designating men of obscure or servile origin. It may well be assumed that Lucretius was a member of the Roman See also:aristocracy, belonging either to a senatorian or to one of the great equestrian families. If the Roman aristocracy of his See also:time had lost much of the virtue and of the governing qualities of their ancestors, they showed in the last years before the See also:establishment of See also:monarchy a See also:taste for intellectual culture which might have made See also:Rome as great in literature as in arms and See also:law. A new taste for philosophy had See also:developed among members of the governing class during the youth of Lucretius, and eminent See also:Greek teachers of the Epicurean sect settled at Rome at the same time, and lived on terms of intimacy with them. The inference that Lucretius belonged to this class is confirmed by the See also:tone in which he addresses See also:Gaius See also:Memmius, a See also:man of an eminent senatorian family, to whom the poem is dedicated. His tone is quite unlike that in which Virgil or even Horace addresses See also:Maecenas. He addresses him as an equal; he expresses sympathy with the prominent part he played in public life, and admiration for his varied accomplishments, but on his own subject claims to speak to him with authority. Although our conception of the poet's life is necessarily vague and meagre, yet his personal force is so remarkable and so vividly impressed on his poem, that we seem able to See also:form a consistent See also:idea of his qualities and characteristics. We know, for example, that the choice of a contemplative life was not the result of indifference to the See also:fate of the See also:world, or of any natural coldness or even calmness of temperament. In the opening lines of the second and third books we can See also:mark the recoil of a humane and sensitive spirit from the horrors of the reign of terror which he witnessed in his youth, and from the anarchy and confusion which prevailed at Rome during his later years. We may also infer that he had not been through his whole career so much estranged from the social life of his day as he seems to have been in his later years. Passages in his poem attest his familiarity with the pomp and luxury of See also:city life, with the attractions of the public See also:games and with the pageantry of great military See also:spectacles. But much the greater See also:mass of the illustrations of his philosophy indicate that, while engaged on his poem he must have passed much of his time in the open See also:air, exercising at once the keen observation of a naturalist and the contemplative See also:vision of a poet. He seems to have found a See also:pleasure, more congenial to the modern than to the ancient temperament, in ascending mountains or wandering . among their solitudes (vi. 469, iv. 575). References to companionship in these wanderings, and the well-known description of the See also:charm of a rustic See also:meal (ii. 29) speak of kindly sociality rather than of any austere separation from his See also:fellows. Other expressions in his poem (e.g. iii. to, &c.) imply that he was also a student of books. Foremost among these were the writings of Epicurus; but he had also an intimate know-ledge of the philosophical poem of See also:Empedocles, and at least an acquaintance with the See also:works of See also:Democritus, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, See also:Plato and the Stoical writers. Of other Greek See also:prose writers he knew See also:Thucydides and See also:Hippocrates; while of the poets he expresses in more than one passage the highest admiration of See also:Homer, whom he imitated in several places. Next to Homer See also:Euripides is most frequently reproduced by him. But his poetical sympathy was not limited to the poets of See also:Greece. For his own countryman Ennius he expresses an affectionate admiration; and he imitates his language, his See also:rhythm and his manner in many places. The fragments of the old tragedian See also:Pacuvius and of the satirist See also:Lucilius show that Lucretius had made use of their expressions and materials. In his studies See also:lie was attracted by the older writers, both Greek and Roman, in whose masculine temperament and understanding he recognized an See also:affinity with his own. His devotion to Epicurus seems at first sight more difficult to explain than his See also:enthusiasm for Empedocles or Ennius. Probably he found in his calmness of temperament, even in his want of See also:imagination, a sense of See also:rest and of exemption from the disturbing influences of life; while in his See also:physical philosophy he found both an See also:answer to the questions which perplexed him and an inexhaustible stimulus to his intellectual curiosity. The combative See also:energy, the sense of superiority, the spirit of See also:satire, characteristic of him as a Roman, unite with his See also:loyalty to Epicurus to render him not only polemical but intolerant and contemptuous in his tone toward the great antagonists of his See also:system, the See also:Stoics, whom, while constantly referring to them, he does not condescend even to name. With his admiration of the genius of others he combines a strong sense of his own power. He is quite conscious of the great importance and of the difficulty of his task; but he feels his own ability to See also:cope with it. It is more difficult to infer the moral than the intellectual characteristics of a great writer from the personal impress See also:left by him on his work. Yet it is not too much to say that there is no work in any literature that produces a profounder impression of sincerity. No writer shows a juster scorn of all See also:mere See also:rhetoric and exaggeration. No one shows truer courage, not marred by irreverence, in confronting the great problems of human destiny, or greater strength in triumphing over human weakness. No one shows a truer humanity and a more See also:tender sympathy with natural sorrow. The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique in literature, is that it is a reasoned system of philosophy, written in See also:verse. The prosaic See also:title De Rerum Nature, a See also:translation of the Gr. aepi 4uvews, implies the subordination of the See also:artistic to a speculative See also:motive. As in the See also:case of nearly all the great works of Roman See also:literary genius, the form of the poem was borrowed from the Greeks. The rise of speculative philosophy in Greece was coincident with the beginning of prose composition, and many of the earliest philosophers wrote in the prose of the Ionic See also:dialect; others, however, and especially the writers of the Greek colonies in Italy and See also:Sicily, expounded their systems in continuous poems composed in the epic See also:hexameter. Most famous in connexion with this See also:kind of poetry are See also:Xenophanes and Parmenides, the Eleatics and Empedocles of See also:Agrigentum. The last was less important as a philosopher, but greater than the others both as a poet and a physicist. On both of these grounds he had a greater attraction to Lucretius. The fragments of the poem of Empedocles show that the Roman poet regarded that work as his See also:model. In accordance with this model he has given to his own poem the form of a personal address, he has developed his argument systematically, and has applied the sustained impetus of epic poetry to the treatment of some of the driest and abstrusest topics. Many ideas and expressions of the Sicilian have been reproduced by the Roman poet; and the same tone ofimpassioned solemnity and melancholy seems to have pervaded both works. But Lucretius, if less original as a thinker, was probably a much greater poet than Empedocles. What chiefly distinguishes him from his Greek prototypes is that his purpose is rather ethical than purely speculative; the zeal of a teacher and reformer is more strong in him than even the intellectual See also:passion of a thinker. His speculative ideas, his moral teaching and his poetical power are indeed interdependent on one another, and this interdependence is what mainly constitutes their power and See also:interest. But of the three claims which he makes to See also:immortality, the importance of his subject, his See also:desire to liberate the mind from the bonds of superstition and the charm and lucidity of his poetry—that which he himself regarded as supreme was the second. The See also:main idea of the poem is the irreconcilable opposition between the truth of the See also:laws of nature and the falsehood of the old superstitions. But, further, the happiness and the dignity of life are regarded by him as absolutely dependent on the See also:acceptance of the true and the rejection of the false See also:doctrine. In the Epicurean system of philosophy he believed that he had found the weapons by which this See also:war of liberation could be most effectually waged. Following Epicurus he sets before himself the aim of finally crushing that fear of the gods and that fear of death resulting from it which he regards as the source of all the human ills. Incidentally he desires also to purify the See also:heart from other violent passions which corrupt it and See also:mar its See also:peace. But the source even of these—the passions of ambition and avarice—he finds in the fear of death; and that fear he resolves into the fear of eternal See also:punishment after death. The selection of his subject and the See also:order in which it is treated are determined by this motive. Although the title of the poem implies that it is a See also:treatise on the " whole nature of things," the aim of Lucretius is to treat only those branches of science which are necessary to clear the mind from the fear of the gods and the terrors of a future state. In the two earliest books, accordingly, he See also:lays down and largely illustrates the first principles of being with the view of showing that the world is not governed by capricious agency, but has come into existence, continues in existence, and will ultimately pass away in accordance with the See also:primary conditions of the elemental atoms which, along with empty space, are the only eternal and immutable substances. These atoms are themselves See also:infinite in number but limited in their varieties, and by their ceaseless See also:movement and combinations during infinite time and through infinite space the whole See also:process of creation is maintained. In the third book he applies the principles of the atomic philosophy to explain the nature of the mind and vital principle, with the view of showing that the soul perishes with the See also:body. In the fourth book he discusses the Epicurean doctrine of the images, which are See also:cast from all bodies, and which act either on the senses or immediately on the mind, in dreams or waking visions, as affording the ex-planation of the belief in the continued existence of the See also:spirits of the departed. The fifth book, which has the most See also:general interest, professes to explain the process by which the See also:earth, the See also:sea, the See also:sky, the See also:sun, See also:moon and stars, were formed, the origin of life, and the See also:gradual advance of man from the most savage to the most civilized condition. All these topics are treated with the view of showing that the world is not itself divine nor directed by divine agency. The See also:sixth book is devoted to the explanation, in accordance with natural causes, of some of the more abnormal phenomena, such as thunderstorms, volcanoes, earthquakes, &c., which are See also:special causes of supernatural terrors. The consecutive study of the argument produces on most readers a mixed feeling of dissatisfaction and admiration. They are repelled by the dryness of much of the matter, the unsuitableness of many of the topics discussed for poetic treatment, the arbitrary See also:assumption of premises, the entire failure to establish the connexion between the See also:concrete phenomena which the author professes to explain and these assumptions, and the erroneousness of many of the doctrines which are stated with dogmatic confidence. On the other hand, they are constantly impressed by his power of reasoning both deductively and inductively, by the subtlety and fertility of invention with which he applies analogies, by the clearness and keenness of his observa- It has been doubted whether Cicero,' in his See also:short See also:criticism in tion, by the fulness of matter with which his mind is stored, and by the consecutive force, the precision and distinctness of his style, when employed in the processes of scientific exposition. The first two books enable us better than anything else in ancient literature to appreciate the boldness and, on the whole, the reasonableness of the ancient mind in forming hypotheses on great matters that still occupy the investigations of physical science. The third and fourth books give evidence of acuteness in psychological See also:analysis; the fourth and sixth of the most active and varied observation of natural phenomena; the fifth of original insight and strong See also:common sense in conceiving the origin of society and the progressive advance of man to See also:civilization. But the See also:chief value of Lucretius as a thinker lies in his See also:firm grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of them to the See also:interpretation of human life and nature. All phenomena, moral as well as material, are contemplated by him in their relation to one great organic whole, which he acknowledges under the name of " Natura daedala rerum," and the most beneficent manifestations of which he seems to symbolize and almost to deify in the " See also:Alma See also:Venus," whom, in apparent See also:contradiction to his denial of a divine interference with human affairs, he invokes with See also:prayer in the opening lines of the poem. In this conception of nature are See also:united the conceptions of law and order, of ever-changing life and interdependence, of immensity, individuality, and all-pervading subtlety, under which the universe is apprehended both by his intelligence and his imagination. Nothing can be more unlike the religious and moral attitude of Lucretius than the old popular conception of him as an atheist and a preacher of the doctrine of pleasure. It is true that he denies the doctrines of a supernatural See also:government of the world and of a future life. But his arguments against the first are really only valid against the limited and unworthy conceptions of divine agency involved in the ancient religions; his denial of the second is prompted by his vital realization of all that is meant by the arbitrary infliction of eternal torment after death. His war with the popular beliefs of his time is waged, not in the interests of See also:licence, but in vindication of the sanctity of human feeling. The See also:cardinal See also:line of the poem, " Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum," is elicited from him as his protest against the See also:sacrifice of Iphigenia by her See also:father. But in his very denial of a cruel, limited and capricious agency of the gods, and in his imaginative recognition of an orderly, all-pervading, all-regulating power, we find at least a nearer approach to the higher conceptions of modern See also:theism than in any of the other imaginative conceptions of ancient poetry and See also:art. But his conception even of the ancient gods and of their indirect See also:influence on human life is more worthy than the popular one. He conceives of them as living a life of eternal peace and exemption from passion, in a world of their own; and the highest ideal of man is, through the exercise of his See also:reason, to realize an See also:image of this life. Although they are conceived of as unconcerned with the interest of our world, yet influences are supposed to emanate from them which the human heart is capable of receiving and assimilating. The effect of unworthy conceptions of the divine nature is that they render a man incapable of visiting the temples of the gods in a See also:calm spirit, or of receiving the emanations that " announce the divine peace " in peaceful tranquillity. The supposed " See also:atheism " of Lucretius proceeds from a more deeply reverential spirit than that of the See also:majority of professed believers in all times. His moral attitude is also far removed from that of See also:ordinary ancient Epicureanism or of modern See also:materialism. Though he acknowledges pleasure to be the law of life, yet he is far from regarding its attainment as the end of life. What man needs is not enjoyment, but " peace and a pure heart." The victory to be won by man is the See also:triumph over fear, ambition, passion, luxury. With the See also:conquest over these nature herself supplies all that is needed for happiness. Self-See also:control aqd renunciation are the lessons which he preaches.the letter already referred to, concedes to Lucretius both the gifts of genius and the accomplishment of art or only one of them. Readers of a later time, who could compare his work with the finished works of the Augustan age, would certainly disparage his art rather than his power. But with Cicero it was different. He greatly admired, or professed to admire, the genius of the early Roman poets, while he shows indifference to the poetical genius of his younger contemporaries. Yet he could not have been insensible to the immense superiority in rhythmical smoothness which the hexameter of Lucretius has over that of Ennius and Lucilius. And no reader of Lucretius can doubt that he attached the greatest importance to artistic See also:execution, and that he took a great pleasure, not only in " the See also:long See also:roll of his hexameter," but also in producing the effects of See also:alliteration, assonance,' &c., which are so marked a peculiarity in the style of See also:Plautus and the earlier Roman poets. He allows his taste for these tricks of style to degenerate into mannerism. And this is the only See also:drawback to the impression of absolute spontaneity which his style produces. He was unfortunate in living before the natural rudeness of Latin art had been successfully grappled with. His only important precursors in serious poetry were Ennius and Lucilius, and, though he derived from the first of these an impulse to shape the Latin See also:tongue into a fitting vehicle for the expression of elevated emotion and imaginative conception, he could find in neither a guide to follow in the task he set before himself. The difficulty and novelty of his task enhances our sense of his power. His finest passages are thus characterized by a freshness of feeling and enthusiasm of discovery. But the result of these conditions and of his own inadequate conception of the proper limits of his art is that his best poetry is clogged with a great mass of See also:alien matter, which no treatment in the world could have made poetically endurable. (W. Y. S.)
The philosophy of Lucretius has been much studied in See also:recent times. Amongst special See also:treatises may be mentioned K. H. Usener's Epicurea (1887); J. Woltjer's Lucretii philosophic cum fontibus comparata (1877); See also: See also:Sellar in chaps. xi. sqq. of the Roman Poets of the See also:Republic, may be consulted. There are useful See also:bibliographies in W. S. See also:Teuffel's See also:History of Roman Literature (See also:English trans. by G. C. W. Warr) and See also: See also:Busby (1813), C. F. See also: Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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