LUCRETIUS

Roman poet and philosopher; b. c. 98 b.c.; d. 55 b.c. Lucretius was probably an aristocrat and a friend of Gaius Memmius, the patron of Catullus and Cinna. According to St. Jerome, he composed his only poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of the Universe), in the lucid intervals between bouts of insanity, and he died by his own hand, the unfinished poem being entrusted to Cicero for publication. Yet Lucretius was a poet of great ability and forged a strong link in the chain of Latin hexameter verse between Ennius and Vergil. His poem had earlier models in the works of Xenophanes, parmenides, and especially empedocles ("On Nature"). Indeed, the opening invocation to "kindly Venus" who alone has power to subdue Mars, the god of war, may refer to a wish not only for the end of civil strife in Rome, but also for the reconciliation of the cosmic forces of love and strife found in Empedocles.

The general aim of the poem is the elimination of superstitious fear—whether of the gods, unusual happenings, or death—by an account of nature that will be rational and will exclude any divine interference. Thus the poet's main purpose coincides with that of the epicureanism he professed. In a word it is ethical: it aims at tranquillity and peace of mind. However Lucretius does concentrate upon that division of Epicureanism called physics or philosophy of nature. No capricious agency, but the movement of atoms, eternally falling through the void, accounts for everything. The introduction of an arbitrary swerve (the ultimate source of man's free will) enables them to unite by collision, rebound, and interlinkage. Considerable ingenuity is shown in the naturalistic accounts of the origin of the world, heavenly bodies, man, and speech. Further it is argued that the mind or soul is also corporeal, being composed merely of finer atoms than body, and therefore, equally liable to dissolution. Knowledge comes about through material contact with the effluences or images that are constantly being given off by all things. Explanations of portents and extraordinary phenomena are provided in order to rid the mind of vain fears.

Perhaps, in his lengthy treatment of the emotion of love, Lucretius is speaking from personal experience. He is well aware that it is a pleasure not unmixed with pain and a desire that is sharpened rather than allayed by the attempt to satisfy it. Here he shows evidence of Epicurus's refined critique of pleasure. Man needs to live a life of peace with his soul purged alike from fear and vice, thus imitating the eternal peace and freedom from emotion of the gods, from whom come emanations that announce divine tranquillity.

The attitude of Christians toward Lucretius has been somewhat ambivalent. Early Christian writers, such as arnobius and lactantius, although opposed to Epicureanism, borrowed much from Lucretius and even made use of his attacks against the pagan gods. But medieval manuscripts of his work are rare, and the few copies made from one fourthor fifth-century original seem to owe their existence to the Carolingian literary revival. From the Renaissance onward greater interest was shown, and several printed editions appeared. Although valued as a poet, Lucretius was still opposed on doctrinal grounds; witness the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal Melchior de polignac—nine books of hexameter verse De Deo et Natura (On God and Nature), published in Paris in 1747. Since the nineteenth century, however, Lucretius has been studied sympathetically by many Christians.

Lucretius appears as a sensitive man of genius whose aim was to banish from human life the craven fear of deities, unreasoning terror at so-called supernatural phenomena, and anxiety over death. It is incorrect to call him either an atheist or a hedonist in the normal sense of these terms. His end was tranquillity of soul, a tranquillity that he himself perhaps never achieved. It is the Epicurean doctrine of the noninvolvement of deity within man's world that leads to the mechanistic materialism that he so skillfully describes in hexameter verses of great power and even beauty. Such a viewpoint seemed to him vastly superior to the rank superstition that characterized much so-called religion in the first century b.c. Lucretius excites sympathy as a noble character in an evil world; he never lived to see the advent of a religion characterized by a relationship of love and trust between God and man.

See Also: atomism; materialism.

Bibliography: Works. De rerum natura, ed. and tr. c. bailey (Oxford 1947); ibid., tr. w. h. d. rouse (Loeb Classical Library London-New York-Cambridge 1912); Titus Lucretius Carus on the Nature of Things, tr. t. jackson (Oxford 1929); Lucretius on the Nature of Things, tr. r. latham (Baltimore, Md. 1957). Literature. c. a. gordon, A Bibliography of Lucretius (London 1962). a. d. winspear, Lucretius and Scientific Thought (Montreal 1963). h. hagendahl, "The Apologists and Lucretius," pt.1 of Latin Fathers and the Classics (Göteborg 1958). l. alfonsi, Enciclopedia filosofica, 4 v. (Venice-Rome 1957) 3:187–190.

[w. h. o'neill]