The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things [1910] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. 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Author: Titus Lucretius Carus Translator: Cyril Bailey About This Title: Lucretius expounds the Epicurian view that the world can be explained by the operation of material forces and natural laws and thus one should not fear the gods or death. He had a considerable influence on writers such as Montaigne. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2242 Online Library of Liberty: On the Nature of Things About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2242 Online Library of Liberty: On the Nature of Things Table Of Contents Preface Introduction Short Analysis of the Poem Lucretius On the Nature of Things Book I: Deals With the Ultimate Constitution of the Universe, Which Consists of Infinite Atoms Moving In Infinite Space Book II: Deals With the Motion and Forms of the Atoms, and Their Combination In Things Book III: Deals With the Soul, Its Nature, and Its Fate Book IV: Deals Mainly With the Psychology of Sensation and Thought, and Also With Certain Biological Functions Book V: Deals With Out World and Its Formation, Astronomy, the Beginnings of Life and Civilization Book VI: Explains From the Atomic Point of View a Variety of Occurrences, Partly Meteorological Phenomena, Partly Terrestrial Curiosities Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C. 4 glasgow new york toronto melbourne wellington bombay calcutta madras cape town Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University FIRST PUBLISHED 1910 REPRINTED 1920, 1921, 1923 1924, 1928, 1936, 1946, 1948 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2242 Online Library of Liberty: On the Nature of Things [Back to Table of Contents] PREFACE No one can set about translating Lucretius into English without finding his head full of the great work of H. A. J. Munro. It is not only that certain striking phrases ring in one’s ears—vitai claustra, ‘the fastnesses of life,’ alte terminus haerens, ‘the deepset boundary-mark,’ &c.—but one is possessed with a strong feeling that he has finally set the tone or colour which Lucretius in English must assume. It might indeed be thought that with so fine a model in existence it is unnecessary and unprofitable to undertake the task again. But there are, I think, good reasons to justify the attempt. In the first place, the study of Lucretius has made considerable advances since Munro’s edition: thanks largely to Dr. Brieger and still more to the late Professor Giussani,1 the philosophy of Epicurus is far better understood than it was, and, as a consequence, much light has been thrown on many dark places in the poem, and its general grouping and connexion can be far more clearly grasped. Secondly, though Munro set the tone, he did not always keep it: in the more technical parts of the poem he is apt to drop almost into the language of a scientific textbook, and phrases and even passages of sheer prose give the reader the idea that Lucretius’s muse allowed him only a fitful inspiration. While acknowledging then my debt to Munro for the main spirit of the translation and often for words and phrases which seemed to me inevitable, I have tried at once to embody the results of more recent Lucretian scholarship, and to preserve a more equable level of style, which will, I hope, leave the impression that the De Rerum Natura, even in its most scientific discussions, is still poetry. I have translated from my own text published in the Bibliotheca Oxoniensis in 1898, but in the—I fear—numerous places, where I have since altered my opinion, I have taken what I now believe to be the right reading or the best suggestion and added the warning of a footnote. I have appended some notes for the general reader, which are intended either to explain allusions or to elucidate what seemed to me difficult or obscure passages in the light of the general Epicurean theory. I wish to thank the Rector of Lincoln for several valuable suggestions, and Professor H. H. Turner for much help in the elucidation of the astronomical problems raised in Book V. C. B. 1910. In the present reprint the translation has been adapted to the second edition of the text in the Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (1921). C. B. March, 1921. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2242 Online Library of Liberty: On the Nature of Things [Back to Table of Contents] INTRODUCTION Of the three great Latin poets Lucretius seems to make the most peculiar appeal to our own age. Catullus and Virgil are for all time; the passionate love-history of a genuine soul and a poet of marvellously wide range, the all-embracing yet finely pessimistic sympathy of a mind which could focus past and future in the consciousness of present crisis, will find their response in all generations. But Lucretius—possibly because from the point of view of universality he stands a little below the other two—seems to demand for full appreciation a rather special temper. His are not the interests of every man, nor is his a common attitude to life. A fierce hatred of conventional superstitions and a yearning for intellectual liberty coupled with a sense of awe—deeply religious in reality—in the presence of nature, a strong desire for scientific method and accuracy of observation combined with a profound feeling of the beauty of the world and its works, an unswerving consciousness of natural law and the sequence of cause and effect counteracted by an equal stubbornness in defence of man’s moral freedom—these are qualities which may engage attention, but cannot at all times awaken a vital sympathy. Yet these are antitheses familiar enough to our generation, and this is an attitude of mind which we are peculiarly qualified to understand. The antagonism of Religion and Science, the relation of the investigation to the love of Nature, the opposition of Natural Law and Freewill are themes which seem very near to us. Only we must be careful not to interpret the past by the present. To each generation its problems present themselves in their own peculiar manner, and we must endeavour to understand Lucretius not as a contemporary, but as an Epicurean of the last century bc It was eminently a period of disturbance and dissolution, intellectually as well as socially and politically. The Republican régime was breaking down, and with it the system of morals and beliefs on which it rested. The genuine Roman religion—the belief in the numina, the countless little impersonal ‘spirits’, always ‘about man’s path and about his bed’, mostly hostile by instinct, but capable of pacification by simple gifts and easy acts of worship—had long ago lost its hold on the life of the city, or at the most lingered on here and there in the old-fashioned piety of a household cult. The imposing structure of the State-worship, raised as the primitive agricultural community developed into a commercial city, and consolidated when the great wave of Greek culture anthropomorphized numina into dei, gave them temples and statues, and organized ceremonials and priesthoods, remained still untouched in form, but the form was empty. Magistrates and priests duly sacrificed the appropriate victims, augurs watched for omens and blessed or stayed proceedings, the populace kept holiday on the festivals, but little real religious feeling remained, except a vague sense of the insecurity of life owing to the malevolent interference of divine beings, and an abiding fear of death and the punishments of a life to come.