Talk:Lucretius
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[edit] Content Breakdown
I once was driven to count and categorize the topic of each line in De Rerum Natura and found the following: "discussions of chemistry, the nature of atoms, and their effects takes up about 52% of the text, discussions of natural phenomena consist of 17.3%, origins of man takes up 10.2%, exploration of astronomy 8.3%, praise of Epicurus 3.6%, discussions of sex/love 3.5%, on death is about 2.7% of the text, a chemical analysis of nature of body and soul takes up about 1.7%, the authors own explanation of his work 0.5%, and finally the topic of money takes over 0.3% of the text." I find these statistics interesting, but I rarely see such a breakdown on wiki's... nevertheless I though it was at least worthy of the discussion page.
[edit] Lucretius' Personality and Ethics
Here is a prose layout selection of Latin ethical Epicureanism from De Rerum natura, fitter for philosophy, according to Philodemus On Poems and Palatinus Codex of Heidelberg fr. Gr. 129. 5; inflected language and therefore extremely free poetical word order bears starting or sometime insolvable meaning polysemy after possible rearrangement - but desired by mere poets … Notwithstanging that it remain a philosophical source of information of great value, of course. Latin rhythmic prosody - rap music-like - should be written with bar and length for our hard modern-day reading, roughly so: Niil igituur moors eest - aad noos neque peertinet hiilum / quaandoo quiidem natuur (a)'nimii - moortaalis habeetur./; but musical accompaniment, variable intonations and linked contextual intensification of the meaning are not reconstructible.
Lucretius' hexameters form was actually outdated (Ennius' model, in a time of neôteroi and polished Atticists), his lexicon is more frequently small-town; he knew Empedocles philosophical poem, Panaetius, Posidonius, and possibly the Megalè Epitomè of Epicurus, not Perì Physeos, no doubt awkward and critique for a poet; and he keeps only on first nine Books subject, and is not theoretically involved in Ethics.
He dreamed of poetic achievement, but his writing remained esoteric and sometime nightmarish. His 'friendship' with Memmius and persuasion were - under present data - a flop. Posthumous publishing by Cicero (by his freedman Tiron actually... perhaps a clever counter-propaganda about an odd human success) required some cuts (for sure "racy passages" (cum veneris) in favor of vulgivaga (mercenary) Venus; Cicero writes of 'poems' in the plural). Perhaps a too much blocked out book or long poem on the gods was not edited [“What (a treatment on the gods) I'll do for you, Memmius, publicly later on”; II, 182; “ Therefore even their dwellings too must needs be unlike our dwellings, fine even as are their bodies; what I'll prove to you with large argument”, V, 153-55]. By way of evidence, some unpublished lines, attributed by contemporaries to him, have been found. The poem is sometime repetitive and evidently interrupted out of sudden change/end of life or of former (“a god he was, a god!”: 5.8: but the same can be found also in Virgil Ecl. 1.6 -7; 5.64 and Ovid Met. 15.677) transferential (“you, a father are!”: 3,9) faith lability [see below 3,307]. His apocalyptic assessment of natural man (pre-Epicurean) cannot be interpreted by political/religious (Diog.Oin.) nor professional (scholarchs' fees) interests. His somatization descriptions of emotionality seem particular and inward looking, e.g. hypotensive black out in III; 592 ff. 155-160; hunger for breathing: pondus inesse animo quod se gravitate fatiget, "a weight in their mind [lit. breast; 592 ff], which wears them out with its heaviness" [III, 1054]; panic fear without grounds: quae res terrificet obvia mentis nobis vigilantibus affectis morbo et sepultis somno, "What thing is that meet us and affrights our minds [chest] in waking life, when we are touched with disease, or again when buried in sleep" [I, 132]. Perhaps he knew Asclepiades [musicotherapy for manic depression III, 131-4, pores theory IV, 865 ss. ; IV, 940: parva foramina perveniant ad primas partes] - or a successor in the school - as a patient. Speech or musicotherapy have their limits, in difficult position psychotropic drugs would have been more effective. Did he feel self-deceived? Faith tumble depression self-punishing sequelas are often masked as an accident, somatizations, or heroic martyrdom. As a result, some risky statements about religion and political depravity are alien to tactful flexibility of Epicurus: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. “Such evil deeds could religion prompt” [I, 1]; quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim obteritur “so religion is cast beneath feet and trampled”[I, 78]. Conflictive persons and youngsters relate indelicate truth ...
There is no common thematic between DRN and the concurrent fully developed philosophical debate in Rome and Naples. He know mostly Epicurean Physic (synopsis about On Nature books I-XIV), and is unaware of the kathegemones, of Polystratus, of Zeno for instance. Epicurean contemporaries shrugged off the already 'lone wolf' (a baffling silence: christian censorship was not so meticulous, so now are there papyri and palimpsest technique)and ignored him even if he refuses to use allegory [DRN I, 641-4], the poets and artists didn't: Nepos (Atticus Biogr); Vitruvius (IX, Proem, 41); Ovidius (Amores, I, 15, 23-24; Trist, II, 425-26 ) Statius (Silv, II, 776: “the oppressive madness of Lucretius”, furor arduus). So, possibly, the lay enemies of Epicureanism didn't gossip about his suicide because it was evidently not imputable to his philosophy (stoic suicides were anyway in fashion...), while for St. Jerome insanity was a well-deserved punishment of God. Alas, let's face it, Jerome – a scholar and philologist more than a religious fanatic – could easily have been belied in 382, nineteen year after paganism's had ended, thirty-three year before the end of Alexandrian school and almost a century before abolition of philosophical schools.
Nihil dulcius est quam tenere bene munita serena templa, edita doctrina sapientium, unde queas despicere alios errare passim et videre palantes quaerere viam vitae, ingenio certare, nobilitate contendere, noctes diesque niti emergere ad summas opes et praestante labore rerum potiri [2,7], “Nothing is sweeter than to behold well fortified quiet refuges, that sages' untroubled speculation has built, whence you can look on others, and see them wandering hither and thither , and going astray to seek the way of life, competing by cleverness, by rank, struggling night and day to rise up and to gain power”.
Nonne videris naturam nihil aliud sibi latrare, nisi ut absit dolor seiunctus corpore, et mens, cura et metu semota, iucundo sensu fruatur? Videmus ergo omnino pauca ad corpoream naturam opus esse, quaecumque demant dolorem ut possint quoque multas delicias substernere [2, 16], “Why don't you see that nature cries aloud for nothing else but pain may be kept out of the body, and that the mind, out of care and fear may enjoy pleasurable senses?” Quoniam nihil proficiunt gazae in corpore nostro, neque nobilitas, neque gloria regni, nihil quoque animo est putandum prodesse. [2, 37] “Since riches are of no profit in our body, nor nobility, nor glory of kingship, we must believe they are not good for the mind as well ”. Cum omnis vita in tenebris laboret, quid dubitas quin omnis potestas sit rationi? [2, 53], “As the whole of life is put on the alert in the dark, why do you doubt it's effective for sure (the light of) reason?”
Si quis vitam vera ratione gubernet, homini divitiae grandes sunt vivere parce ac aequo animo[5,111]. At nisi purgatum est pectus, quae proelia periculaque nobis ingratis tum est insinuandum! Quantae acres curae tum scindunt hominem sollicitum cupidinis, quantique perinde timores! [5,43], ”If a man was keeping steering his life by true wisdom, it would be elevated riches to live temperately with steady mind to him”. “But, unless the mind is cleared, what battles and perils must we let in! What thorny troubles rend then the man concerned about empty desires and what fears besides!”
Cum [Epicurus] vidit iam omnia, quae usus flagitat ad victum, esse parata mortalibus, et vitam posset proquam consistere tutam, hominesque potentes affluere divitiis, honore, laude, atque bona fama gnatorum excellere, nec tamen cuique domi corda esse minus anxia, atque sine ulla pausa animi vexare vitam ingratis, atque cogi saevire infestis querellis, intellexit vas ipsum ibi efficere vitium, partim quod videbat esse pertusum et fluxum ut nulla ratione posset umquam expleri, partim quod cernebat omnia, quaecumque receperat, quasi conspureare intus taetro sapore [6, 9], “When he saw that all things by which the needs for subsistence were at hand for men, and that their life was comparatively established in safety, that the mighty abounded in honors and renown, were proud of good name of their children, and yet not one of them had privately his heart less anguished, and without any respite the minds harassed the lives of these dissatisfied people, and constrained to rage with savage complaining, he then did understand that the vessel itself worked the disease, in part because he saw that it was leaking and full of holes, so that by no means could it ever be filled and in part because he realized that by its rottenness all things, attained in any case, were corrupted within it”.
Quamvis doctrina constituat quosdam politos, tamen illa relinquit prima vestigia cuiusque animi, et putandum est non posse radicitus mala evelli, quin hic decurrat proclivius ad acres iras, ille temptetur metu paulo citius, at ille tertius accipiat quaedam clementius aequo. Et necesse est in multis aliis rebus varias naturas hominum et mores sequaces differre [3,307]. Hoc modo quisque ipse se fugit, quem scilicet haud potis est effugere, sibi haeret et ingratus se odit, propterea quod aeger non tenet causam morbi [3,1068], "Even if sentences make some people to become refined, nevertheless they leave the earlier imprinting of each character, and it has to be held that malformations cannot be completely eradicated, [very far from Epicurus self-assurance ...] so that this man flies downhill into a sharp anger, that man is grabbed by trouble a little bit sooner, a third man agrees to some things more gently than on average. And in many other things it must needs be that the diverse characters of men differ"." In this way each man struggles to flee from himself, from which it's impossible to escape, stop off and hates himself because in his sickness he doesn't know the cause of his malady"
Cui non contrahitur animus formidine deorum, cui non correpunt membra pavore, cum torrida tellus contremit horribili plaga fulminis et murmura percurrunt magnum coelum? [5,1218], “Whose hearth does not shrink with terror of the gods, whose limbs do not crunch in fear, when the parched earth trembles beneath the awful stroke of lightning and thundering voices run across the great sky”.
Cum denique tota tellus vacillat sub pedibus, et urbes cadunt concussae et dubiae minantur, quid mirum si mortalia saecla se temnunt atque relinquunt magnas potestates et miras vires divorum gubernare cuncta in rebus? [5,1236], “When the whole earth rocks beneath men' s feet, and cities are shaken to their fall and threaten precariously, what wonder if the races of mortals despise themselves and admit mighty power and marvelous strength of gods to guide all things into the world?”
