Lucretius

c. 99 - c. 55 BC · Roman · Epicureanism, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, Latin Didactic Poetry

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BC) wrote one poem, On the Nature of Things, six books of Latin hexameters that set out the philosophy of Epicurus for a Roman reader, and nothing else of him survives: not a letter, not a second poem, not a reliable fact about his life beyond Cicero's remark in 54 BC that the poem had many flashes of genius and much art. The story that a love-philtre drove him mad and that he killed himself is Jerome's, four centuries later, and no one knows where he got it.

Topics Lucretius addresses

• nothing can be created out of nothing
• atoms and the void
• the first-beginnings and their shapes
• the infinite universe and the walls of the world
• the swerve of the atoms
• the mortality of the soul
• death is nothing to us
• the symmetry argument against the fear of death
• the punishments of the underworld as this life
• the simulacra and the theory of vision
• sense as the test of truth
• dreams, sleep and the images
• the physiology of love and the attack on passion
• the hymn to Venus
• the eulogies of Epicurus
• religion and the sacrifice of Iphianassa
• the gods who do not concern themselves with us
• the origin and mortality of the world
• the history of early man and the growth of civilisation
• the discovery of fire, metals and language
• the fall into luxury and the fear of the gods
• thunder, lightning and the Averna
• the magnet
• the plague of Athens

Questions to put to Lucretius

Atoms, Void, and the First-Beginnings

• What do you mean when you say nothing can be created out of nothing?
• If everything is atoms and void, what holds the atoms together into the things we see?
• How do you know the universe is infinite rather than bounded by some outer wall?
• What limits the shapes that atoms can take?
• Why does the world have so many faults and imperfections if matter has been combining forever?

The Swerve, Freedom, and the Chain of Fate

• What is the swerve, and why does the whole poem depend on it?
• If atoms fall through the void at equal speed, why do they ever collide at all?
• How does a tiny, undetermined push in an atom translate into a free choice in a human mind?
• Can you explain the swerve without it looking like you've simply invented a gap in the physics to save free will?
• What would the world look like if the swerve did not exist?

The Soul's Mortality and Death Is Nothing to Us

• How do you argue that the soul is a body that dies with the body, rather than something that survives it?
• What is the symmetry argument — why should the time before my birth comfort me about the time after my death?
• You say the man who imagines his own corpse mourned has made an error — what exactly is the error?
• How do you understand the torments of Tartarus — are you saying hell is real, or something else?
• What does Nature say to the old man who complains that life is too short?

Religion, the Gods, and the Fear They Breed

• You say religion prompted Agamemnon to kill his own daughter — what exactly do you mean by religion as a disease?
• Do you believe the gods exist, and if so, why don't they concern themselves with us?
• What's the difference between the fear of the gods you attack and what you call true piety?
• Why do thunder and lightning matter so much to your argument about religion?
• How should I read the hymn to Venus at the poem's opening — is it a prayer, a figure of speech, or something else?

Sense, Simulacra, and the Physiology of Love

• What are the simulacra streaming from the surfaces of things, and how do they produce vision?
• If the senses are the one test of truth, how do you account for illusions and dreams?
• How does the mind go wrong if the senses themselves never lie?
• You open the poem praising Venus and end Book IV warning men to flee passion — are those two things in tension?
• What exactly is the wound you describe in the lover who chases an image that can never be grasped?

The World's Birth, History, and the Plague of Athens

• How did a world as ordered as ours arise from the chance meeting of atoms, without any designer?
• What do you think the first human beings were like, and how did they become the people we are now?
• Why does the growth of civilization bring the fear of the gods along with it?
• Why did you choose to end the poem with the plague of Athens rather than a vision of the tranquil life?
• What does the mortality of the world itself — the idea that our earth will one day end — mean for how we should live?

Converse with Lucretius on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Lucretius's own writing, cited to the page.