By Stuart Gillespie, Philip Hardie
Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura ('On the character of Things') is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and some of the most robust poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it turned a arguable and seminal paintings in successive levels of literary heritage, the historical past of technology, and the Enlightenment. during this Cambridge significant other specialists within the background of literature, philosophy and technological know-how speak about the poem in its historical contexts and in its reception either as a literary textual content and as a motor vehicle for innovative principles. The significant other is designed either as an obtainable guide for the overall reader who needs to profit approximately Lucretius, and as a sequence of stimulating essays for college students of classical antiquity and its reception. it truly is thoroughly available to the reader who has in simple terms learn Lucretius in translation.
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Additional resources for The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
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734–41). We can now account for the antiquity of these thinkers, because Lucretius’ aim is to mount an a fortiori argument against these standard-bearers for all possible competing ontologies. When each of them is criticised, the intention is that their failings should be common to all relevantly similar ontologies descended from a particular originator. 705–11). Lucretius therefore fortifies his reader with arguments sufficient – in his eyes, at least – to see off any alternative ontology. Nothing should now 21 22 Epicurus discussed this in On Nature Book 14 (see PHerc.
The poem’s title, On the Nature of Things, is a nod to a title commonly given to early Greek philosophical works, themselves often in ¯ or verse: On Nature, or On the Nature of What Is (in Greek, Peri Physeos ¯ ton ¯ onton). ¯ Peri Physeos Parmenides’ hexameter poem was known by such a title at least in later antiquity, and Lucretius’ most important source of inspiration as a poet-philosopher, Empedocles, also wrote a poem known by that 2 3 4 5 Cic. Tusc. 1–8. Also see Cic. Nat. D. 7–14; Fin. 1–12.
B11 Diels–Kranz; cf. 876–9). In Lucretius’ interpretation, this amounts to the claim that the universe is composed of thoroughly intermingled ‘homoiomerous’ substances – that is, substances whose parts are the same in kind as the whole. )22 These three are also the leaders of their particular factions in this battle. 638). 734–41). We can now account for the antiquity of these thinkers, because Lucretius’ aim is to mount an a fortiori argument against these standard-bearers for all possible competing ontologies.