It was the year 45 before the Common Era,
we find ourselves in a pristine villa just outside of Rome. It’s quiet here,
a place which may come to mind for those searching for peace from the turbulence which was Rome.
Here in this villa owned by an ambiguous individual named
Mimmius we find the man who some would come to call the greatest poet, and philosopher of Rome.
His full name was Titus Lucretius Carus and what we know of him is very little.
A handful of accounts have survived the destructive force which is time,
but we also have what can be extracted from his lone work the “De Rerum Natura” roughly
translated to “On the Nature of Things.” The picture of his life which we crudely
stich together is, at first glance, one of obvious anguish
seasoned with melancholy and spiced with sorrow. But upon deeper analysis we find that this story
may be but a blatant fabrication grafted onto his legacy by those
that wished to see an enemy of religion defamed. If we can believe the narrative set forth by that
most famous poet Virgil in his Georgics, we can shed this veil of melancholy which
surrounds Lucretius’ life. For the words which Virgil chooses when describing him
is as if he were speaking of one who knew the ingredients which made for the happy life.
If and why our poet committed to taking his own life, we shall probably never know.
If one thing is evident by the work which he left behind it is the shear reverence which he
held for the 4th century philosopher Epicurus. Much of what the “De Rerum Natura” informs us
on can be directly linked to Epicurus’ primary work “On Nature,” most notably
the Physics which saturates each book. The remainder also falls in line with the
masters’ teachings; we may think of Lucretius as a sort of corridor which the teachings of
Epicurus travel through “my wish is to imitate” he said of Epicurus in a line in the poem.
He was resolved to defend the Epicurean way and to give to Rome the medicine which it did not want,
but in his eyes, so desperately needed. Now that we have established what I hope can
be called a reliable foreground shall we proceed on to the work which Professor Shotwell named
as “The most marvelous performance in all of antique literature”? We shall.
From the various texts which have been left to us we can say that this is the first work of poetry
written in Latin Hexameter. We find it in six books,
three matching pairs. His primary focus is Epicurean physics,
though he does occasionally branch off, but usually stays true to his cause.
Beginning in the first pair he sets his sights on the infinitely small, atoms, then moving on
to something more relatable to the ancient world in the second, this being the human condition,
then finally closing with the infinitely large, Cosmology.
When beginning a subject he first explains the basic nature of what is to be spoken on,
then following up in the second book he details
the various phenomena associated with and pertaining to the given subject.
Further you may find when making your way through the books a constant duality, one side life,
the other death; what he constructs, he also deconstructs.
Instead of jumping from book to book we will move from subject to subject, beginning with physics,
then Ethics, and finally his thoughts on religion and the gods.
We see him first and foremost, echoing the great Pre-Socratic atomist Democritus,
affirm that there is within the cosmos only body and void.
What we perceive around us is but the properties of these two entities.
Like Epicurus he believed the atom to be the elementary unit
which makes up all that surrounds us. The Cosmos of Lucretius is one of illimitable
space, holding within it illimitable atoms. These atoms, as he predicted, are in continuous
motion, only appearing stationary to our eyes secondary to the enormous size difference.
This, he explains to his readers by comparing the phenomenon to a flock of sheep,
which when observed from afar may seem only as a static white mass,
but upon closer examination is revealed to be a living group of organisms perpetually in motion,
occasionally even bumping into one another. At this point in the book we also see, for the
first time, his freshly minted Atomic Swerve. What this attempts to describe is the
unpredictable nature of atoms. By Lucretius’ account if this swerve were to be absent
we would be nothing but automata moving about the universe with a determinate future, doomed to the
end which was set in motion eons before. The exact correlation between swerve and
free will is a frequent topic of debate with seemingly limitless interpretations.
Toward the end of book one Lucretius tells us something which I am quite certain would
alarm those who saw earth as the footstool of God. He proposes that earth is but one of many worlds,
that there is no conceivable way that in an illimitable universe,
earth, is the only habitable formation. And like all other things, earth too, will see its end
at some indeterminate point far into the future. Now one might more clearly see why the Romans,
particularly those of religious piety, would turn to defaming our philosopher after his death.
Moving on, in book 3 he continues toward outlining the soul and its properties. He
begins by stating that the soul is made up of Anima (Spirit) and animus (mind).
The Spirit resides throughout the body while the mind is located within the chest.
He fights for a corporeal soul, one that, to the further dismay of the contemporary pious reader,
does not wander the Elysian fields after death. This he thought was due to the atomic properties
which make up the soul; these being air, wind, fire, and a fourth property unique to the soul.
Like the world around us, it must also, by necessity,
be destined for dissolution. He was thoroughly prepared, if ever propositioned, to defend this
startling claim with a multitude of proofs. When describing the soul’s properties he lays
down his theory of simulacra. This theory is meant to explain sense-perception.
Simulacra are images which come from the world around us and cause
vision and visualization. This same theory also applies to what we see in our dreams.
He does not believe it possible that what our senses perceive can be wrong or duplicitous, only
that our interpretation of the data is faulty. From this section he also describes
what can only be called a magnificent precursor to Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
He states that the different parts of our bodies are not what was then thought, given to us by god,
instead they were adapted to better fulfill functions which already existed in nature.
The Earth, too, has its processes of creation expounded upon here.
You will find that he gives more than one explanation for set phenomena,
never quite settling on any particular one, but in no sense does he rely on god
or superstition to uncover the mysteries which surround these scientific questions.
His vision of a young earth is one teeming with life,
though life which was sporadic and transient. Many species would be born into existence
only to perish shortly after; this is of course “shortly” in the cosmological sense.
The few species which remained reproduced and became eventually what we know and
experience today. Again here we see a marvelous anticipation of Darwin.
Civilizations developed only after, and when, nature prompted them to.
Fire and language each had their natural origin which humans then developed into
the innovations which are so vital to our continued survival in a hostile world.
Lastly in terms of physical phenomenon Lucretius gives us defensible naturalistic solutions
to questions which frequently invoked divine inspiration; i.e. lightning, earthquakes, and
other equally as devastating natural occurrences. It was not outside his code to trample over what
was then taught about these disasters by the established institutions of his day.
While what we find throughout the De Rerum Natura is primarily physics,
there is also plenty of thought provoking ethical ideas, after all he is an Epicurean
and is determined to relay, as completely as he can, the philosophy of his long dead master.
For one to achieve happiness the fear of death must first and foremost be conquered.
For what is death, Lucretius pondered, but simple annihilation.
It would be the height of foolishness to suppose that you, meaning your conscious self,
will even be around to concern yourself with the existence which you then lack.
It would be far better if we could accept that death is no different from the experiences which
so plagued us prior to our birth. See the ending of book 3 to hear his diatribe
on death and the fear that surrounds it. When death has finally been, metaphorically
speaking, laid to rest, we may move on to that which frequently causes human beings to suffer
needlessly, the ostentatious indulgence of desire. Like the problems of civilization
each answer leads promptly into another problem, so on, and on ad infinitum.
It was Lucretius’ thought that Epicurus held the key, not to a supernatural paradise,
but to one which was right here, obtainable if only we just open our ears and extend our hand.
He left behind his Tetrapharmakos, or “fourfold cure,” it reads as such “God holds no fears,
death no worries. Good is easily attainable,
evil easily endurable. For Lucretius’ part he wishes to simply act as the messenger.
Of these four statements, he speaks on three in the book,
in regard to the fourth it is nowhere to be found. This, some scholars believe, is likely secondary
to the book being unfinished, cut short by his early death.
Of all that Epicurus had had given mankind, what we should most thank him for, thought Lucretius,
was the defeat of organized religion and subsequent freeing of the soul.
Though it would be a mistake on our part to assume that Epicurus held no belief in the gods.
From what we know of his conception of the gods he believed them to be constituted of quasi-bodies.
As in the theory of simulacra from which the constitution of the soul is taken,
god, or gods, are taken to be maintained by the same.
These gods, if to be seen at all, enter into our eyes and minds as visions, imagination and dreams.
Whether what he meant by this was literal visions,
or whether it was his way of telling us that the gods were but the innate constructs of
our own intellect, remains to be seen, or agreed upon, and it is likely stay that way.
Their exact nature was is not transmitted through Lucretius; we can only say for certain
what Epicurus left us that the Gods should be thought of as blessed and immortal beings
who live a life of utmost tranquility, never disquieted by the affairs of humans.
Our thought should not be toward the appeasement of these gods, for they will show us no emotion,
be it negative or positive. We should instead seek to achieve what has always
been theirs, and may well be ours, lasting supreme happiness. It is within the human limitation to
be done, Lucretius paints us a clear image of the supreme human, this picture is Epicurus.
It was him that gave to humanity the remedy to all that most disturbs our peace,
who, through the clearness of his thought managed to achieve a state,
if not equal, then at least comparable to a god. Within some of the books Proem’s it may, at first
glance, appear that Lucretius is speaking to those same gods which he so often turns his back.
See the proem in book 1 where he begins by speaking a prayer to Venus,
“Thou, O Venus, art sole mistress of the nature of things, and without thee
nothing rises up into the divine realms of life, nothing grows to be lovely or glad.”
The twelve Olympians, to which Venus is a part, are not true Epicurean gods; they are
but the projection of different human emotions. Taken in this fashion we can read his prayer as
an aspiration, an aspiration that the Roman republic would abandon the debauchery which
led it down the path which now causes its deterioration, and begin to strive for the
peace of soul which the gods should embody. He believed that if this lesson which his poem
sought to teach could be learned then his prayer would be answered and Rome spared.
It is not surprising that, like the later Spinoza,
his legacy had for the first few centuries a bothersome fog of atheism.
This fog would not deter all as there were a few who, even in the early days of the Roman Empire,
read and accepted his doctrine. Widespread notoriety within the
western philosophical tradition would not arrive until later centuries.
What we know today as the Epicurean philosophy is predominately known to us through Lucretius,
as well as through Laertius’ “Life of Epicurus” written sometime between 271 and 341 B.C.E.
The De Rerum Natura has survived and been transmitted to us in
two 9th century manuscripts; O and Q are what they are known by,
and we have Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th century papal secretary to thank for their re-discovery.
Now I believe it fitting to end with a few paraphrased lines and to take from
them inspiration as so many before us have. “No single thing abides, but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings; the things thus grow until we know and name them. By degrees they melt,
and are no more the things we know. Globed from the atoms falling slow and swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift their forms; and even the systems and their suns
shall go back slowly to the eternal drift. Thou too, O Earth – thine empires, lands,
and seas – Least, why thy stars, of all the galaxies, Globed from the drift like these,
like these thou too Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these.”
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