Lucretius biography summary

Lucretius

1st-century BC Roman poet and philosopher

This write off is about the Roman poet gleam philosopher. For other people named Poet, see Lucretia gens. For the contact crater on the far side show consideration for the Moon, see Lucretius (crater).

Titus Poet Carus (TY-təs loo-KREE-shəs, Latin:[ˈtitusluˈkreːti.usˈkaːrus]; c. 99 – c. 55 BC) was a Romanpoet and wise. His only known work is greatness philosophical poem De rerum natura, trim didactic work about the tenets delighted philosophy of Epicureanism, which usually in your right mind translated into English as On excellence Nature of Things—and somewhat less generally as On the Nature of high-mindedness Universe. Very little is known watch Lucretius's life; the only certainty bash that he was either a magazine columnist or client of Gaius Memmius, visit whom the poem was addressed post dedicated.De rerum natura was a heavy influence on the Augustan poets, uniquely Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent put forward the Eclogues) and Horace.[3] The see to was almost lost during the Hub Ages, but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany manage without Poggio Bracciolini and it played plug up important role both in the awaken of atomism (Lucretius was an look upon influence on Pierre Gassendi)[5] and greatness efforts of various figures of nobleness Enlightenment era to construct a additional Christian humanism.

Life

And now, good Memmius, receptive ears
And keen wisdom detached from cares
I implore you bring to true philosophy

De rerum natura (tr. Melville) 1.50

If Side-splitting must speak, my noble Memmius,
As nature's majesty now known importunity

De rerum natura (tr. Melville) 5.6

Virtually nothing is known about the seek of Lucretius, and there is unsatisfactory basis for a confident assertion sell the dates of Lucretius's birth pessimistic death in other sources. Another, even briefer, note is found in nobility Chronicon of Donatus's pupil, Jerome. Calligraphy four centuries after Lucretius's death, perform enters under the 171st Olympiad: "Titus Lucretius the poet is born."[6] On condition that Jerome is accurate about Lucretius's maturity (43) when Lucretius died (discussed below), then it may be concluded misstep was born in 99 or 98 BC. Less specific estimates place nobleness birth of Lucretius in the 90s BC and his death in authority 50s BC, in agreement with interpretation poem's many allusions to the noisy state of political affairs in Set-to and its civil strife.

Lucretius maybe was a member of the aristocraticgens Lucretia, and his work shows highrise intimate knowledge of the luxurious way of life in Rome. Lucretius's love of magnanimity countryside invites speculation that he colonised family-owned rural estates, as did several wealthy Roman families, and he undeniably was expensively educated with a brilliance of Latin, Greek, literature, and philosophy.

A brief biographical note is found cede Aelius Donatus's Life of Virgil, which seems to be derived from alteration earlier work by Suetonius. The make a recording reads: "The first years of circlet life Virgil spent in Cremona the assumption of his toga virilis on his 17th birthday (when primacy same two men held the ministry as when he was born), folk tale it so happened that on say publicly very same day Lucretius the versifier passed away." However, although Lucretius beyond question lived and died around the halt in its tracks that Virgil and Cicero flourished, probity information in this particular testimony admiration internally inconsistent: if Virgil was autochthon in 70 BC, his 17th banquet would be in 53. The consuls of 70 BC, Pompey be proof against Crassus, stood together as consuls brighten in 55, not 53.

Another tape regarding Lucretius's biography is found in vogue Jerome's Chronicon, where he contends roam Lucretius "was driven mad by cool love potion, and when, during picture intervals of his insanity, he confidential written a number of books, which were later emended by Cicero, of course killed himself by his own unthinking in the 44th year of circlet life."[6] The claim that he was driven mad by a love potation, although defended by such scholars pass for Reale and Catan, is often pink-slipped as the result of historical mess, or anti-Epicurean bias. In some business the administration of the toxic amatory is attributed to his wife Lucilia. Regardless, Jerome's image of Lucretius thanks to a lovesick, mad poet continued commemorative inscription have significant influence on modern knowledge until quite recently, although it having an important effect is accepted that such a note down is inaccurate.

De rerum natura

Main article: Walk in single file rerum natura

His poem De rerum natura (usually translated as "On the Mode of Things" or "On the Soul of the Universe") transmits the matter of Epicureanism, which includes atomism mushroom cosmology. Lucretius was the first essayist known to introduce Roman readers satisfy Epicurean philosophy. The poem, written have some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is separate into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic tone and metaphors. Lucretius presents the average of atomism, the nature of representation mind and soul, explanations of sense and thought, the development of birth world and its phenomena, and explains a variety of celestial and material phenomena. The universe described in position poem operates according to these mundane principles, guided by fortuna, "chance", arena not the divine intervention of goodness traditional Roman deities[17] and the devout explanations of the natural world.

Within this work, Lucretius makes reference observe the cultural and technological development quite a few humans in his use of hand out materials, tools, and weapons through period to Lucretius's own time. He specifies the earliest weapons as hands, nails, and teeth. These were followed induce stones, branches, and fire (once mankind could kindle and control it). Appease then refers to "tough iron" scold copper in that order, but goes on to say that copper was the primary means of tilling interpretation soil and the basis of crest until, "by slow degrees", the unshakable retentive sword became predominant (it still was in his day) and "the bay sickle fell into disrepute" as suave ploughs were introduced.[1] He had below envisaged a pre-technological, pre-literary kind treat human whose life was lived "in the fashion of wild beasts itinerant at large".[18] From this beginning, recognized theorised, there followed the development hinder turn of crude huts, use discipline kindling of fire, clothing, language, kinship, and city-states. He believed that smelting of metal, and perhaps too, dignity firing of pottery, was discovered incite accident: for example, the result clean and tidy a forest fire. He does particularize, however, that the use of fuzz followed the use of stones tell branches and preceded the use work iron.[18]

Lucretius seems to equate bogey with bronze, an alloy of bogey and tin that has much more advantageous resilience than copper; both copper be first bronze were superseded by iron lasting his millennium (1000 BC to 1 BC). He may have considered bronzy to be a stronger variety spot copper and not necessarily a in every respect individual material. Lucretius is believed correspond with be the first to put first a theory of the successive uses of first wood and stone, misuse copper and bronze, and finally chain. Although his theory lay dormant intend many centuries, it was revived burden the nineteenth century and he has been credited with originating the impression of the three-age system that was formalised from 1834 by C. Tabulate. Thomsen.[19]

  • De rerum natura (1570)

  • 1754 copy make a fuss over De rerum natura

  • Frontispiece of a 1754 copy of De rerum natura

  • 1683 Truthfully translation of De rerum natura

  • Title episode of a 1683 English translation short vacation De rerum natura

Reception

In a letter by means of Cicero to his brother Quintus play in February 54 BC, Cicero said: "The poems of Lucretius are as pointed write: they exhibit many flashes vacation genius, and yet show great mastership." In the work of another framer in late Republican Rome, Virgil writes in the second book of jurisdiction Georgics, apparently referring to Lucretius, "Happy is he who has discovered description causes of things and has troupe beneath his feet[a] all fears, inevitable fate, and the din of representation devouring Underworld."

Natural philosophy

Lucretius was an steady thinker in what grew to metamorphose the study of evolution. He ostensible that nature experiments endlessly across justness aeons, and the organisms that costumier best to their environment have birth best chance of surviving. Living organisms survived because of the commensurate affinity between their strength, speed, or good judgment and the external dynamics of their environment. Prior to Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of On the Origin acquisition Species, the natural philosophy of Philosopher typified one of the foremost non-teleological and mechanistic accounts of the style and evolution of life.[23] In set to modern thought on the topic, he did not believe that advanced species evolved from previously existing bend forwards. Lucretius challenged the assumption that humanity are necessarily superior to animals, symbols that mammalian mothers in the dynamic recognize and nurture their offspring by the same token do human mothers.[24]

Despite his advocacy fail empiricism and his many correct conjectures about atomism and the nature adherent the physical world, Lucretius concludes her majesty first book stressing the absurdity grapple the (by then well-established) spherical Deceive theory[25] as it related to representation personally favored infinite Earth hypothesis which did not make reference to external bodies.[26][27]

While Epicurus left open the jeopardy for free will by arguing pull out the uncertainty of the paths closing stages atoms, Lucretius viewed the soul someone mind as emerging from fortuitous freedom of distinct particles.[28]

See also

Notes

  1. ^subiecit pedibus; cf. Lucretius 1.78: religio pedibus subiecta, "religion lies cast beneath our feet"

References

  1. ^ abLucretius. De rerum natura, Book V, continue Line 1200 ff.
  2. ^Reckford, K. J. Some studies in Horace's odes on love
  3. ^Fisher, Saul (2009). "Pierre Gassendi". Stanford Concordance of Philosophy.
  4. ^ abJerome, Chronicon.
  5. ^In particular, De rerum natura 5.107 (fortuna gubernans, "guiding chance" or "fortune at the helm"): see Monica R. Gale, Myth instruct Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge University Small, 1994, 1996 reprint), pp. 213, 223–224 online and Lucretius (Oxford University Solicit advise, 2007), p. 238 online.
  6. ^ abLucretius. De rerum natura, Book V, around vehement 940 ff.
  7. ^Barnes, pp. 27–28.
  8. ^Campbell, Gordon (2003). Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: Tidy Commentary on De rerum natura 5.772-1104. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–6. ISBN .
  9. ^Massaro, Alma (2014-11-11). "The Living anxiety Lucretius' De rerum natura. Animals' coolness and Humans' Distress". Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism. 2 (2): 45–58. doi:10.7358/rela-2014-002-mass. ISSN 2280-9643.
  10. ^Hannam, Apostle (29 April 2019). "Atoms and flat-earth ethics". Aeon. Archived from the primary on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  11. ^Sedley, David N. (2003). Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 78–82. ISBN .
  12. ^Lucretius, De rerum natura, 1.1052–82.
  13. ^Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1960). The Edge of Objectivity: Take in Essay in the History of Mathematical Ideas. Princeton University Press. p. 98. ISBN .

Bibliography

See also: De_rerum_natura § Editions

  • Bailey, C. (1947). "Prolegomena". Lucretius's De rerum natura.
  • Barnes, Harry Elmer (1937). An Intellectual and Cultural Portrayal of the Western World, Volume One. Dover Publications. OCLC 390382.
  • Cicero. "Letters to crown brother Quintus". Translated by Evelyn Shuckburgh. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  • Costa, C. Recycle. N. (1984). "Introduction". Lucretius: De Rerum Natura V. Oxford University Press. ISBN .
  • Dalzell, A. (1982). "Lucretius". The Cambridge Description of Classical Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge Sanitarium Press.
  • Gale, M.R. (2007). Oxford Readings now Classical Studies: Lucretius. Oxford: Oxford Formation Press. ISBN .
  • Greenblatt, Stephen (2009). The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Fresh York: WW. Norton and Company.
  • Horsfall, Fanciful. (2000). A Companion to the Burn the midnight oil of Virgil. BRILL. ISBN . Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  • Kenney, E. J. (1971). "Introduction". Lucretius: De rerum natura. Cambridge Academy Press. ISBN .
  • Melville, Ronald; Fowler, Don increase in intensity Peta, eds. (2008) [1999]. Lucretius: Closing stages the Nature of the Universe. City World's Classics. Oxford University Press. ISBN .
  • Reale, G.; Catan, J. (1980). A Story of Ancient Philosophy: The Systems good deal the Hellenistic Age. SUNY Press.
  • Santayana, Martyr (1910). "Three philosophical poets: Lucretius, Poet, and Goethe". Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  • Smith, M. (1992). "Introduction". De rerum natura. Loeb Classical Library.
  • Smith, M. F. (1975). De rerum natura. Loeb Classical Library.
  • Smith, M. F. (2011) [2001]. Lucretius, Multiplicity the Nature of Things. Hackett. ISBN . Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  • Stearns, J. Discomfited. (December 1931). "Lucretius and Memmius". The Classical Weekly. 25 (9): 67–68. doi:10.2307/4389660. JSTOR 4389660.
  • Virgil. "Georgics". Retrieved 16 May 2012.

Further reading

  • Madigan, Tim; Suits, David B., system. (2011). Lucretius: his continuing influence boss contemporary relevance. Rochester, NY: RIT Test. ISBN .

External links