On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics)

by Ronald Melville

  526 how a man | Passes slowly away: Lucretius polemically recalls Plato’s hagiographical account of the death of Socrates in Phaedo 117e ff. but makes the process much more one of decay and decomposition, so that a clean escape of the soul from the body seems less plausible.

  560 Nor without body can the mind alone | Make living movements: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 66.

  577 body’s clothing: the clothing metaphor goes back to accounts of early Pythagoreanism (cf. Aristotle, On the Soul 407b23) and was famously used by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo (87d).

  583 like smoke: see above on 456, but here linked to the notion of death as like the burning of a house.

  614 like a snake: the snake which sloughs off old age with its old skin was a common symbol for rejuvenation (perhaps already in Hesiod (seventh century BC), Catalogue of Women fr. 204. 138): Lucretius will use the snake model for his own very different purposes later in 657 ff.

  629 Painters and poets: especially Polygnotus (fifth century BC) in a famous painting at Delphi (Pausanias (second century AD), 10. 28) and Homer with Odysseus’ visit to the underworld in Odyssey 11.

  632 tongue: cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 37.

  642 chariots bearing scythes: famously used by Antiochus III at the battle of Magnesia (189 BC: cf. Livy 37. 41) and possibly described in Ennius’ Annals (frr. 483–4, recalled in Lucretius 3. 654–6). Cf. 5. 1301 (which may also specifically suggest the battle of Magnesia).

  646 the blow’s too sudden: with the delay for the transmission of sensation to the mind, compare the reverse process in 2. 261 ff.

  673 Why can we not remember time that’s past: a problem recognized but not fully answered by Plato (cf. Phaedo 72e) and others, for whom ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting’ (Wordsworth, ‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’, v: cf. Aristotle, On the Soul 430a23 ff.).

  679–80 if the body is complete | Before the quickened mind can enter it: cf. Ennius, Annals frr. 8–10 on birds’ eggs, ‘the soul itself by divine power comes later to the chicks’.

  684 a quiet hole: the Platonic imagery of the body as a cage or prison is suggested: cf. Plato, Phaedo 82e.

  696 safe and unharmed: the language is Platonic, see Phaedrus 250c1 ff.

  707 the channels of the body: see above on 3. 255.

  713 here’s another question: another use of the figure of dilemma: see above on 3. 525.

  719 worms: cf. 2. 871 ff.

  741 lions: cf. 3. 269 ff.

  749 the behaviour | Of animals would be all mixed up: the counterfactual confusion of nature (cf. e.g. 1. 161 ff.) recalls the poetic commonplace known as the adunaton or ‘impossibility’, where the impossibility of something happening is equated with a series of inversions of normal life: see e.g. Theocritus (third century BC), Idylls 1. 132 ff.

  753 Reason, in men | No more: Aristotle (On the Soul 407b20, 414a22) particularly objected to interchange between human and animal species in metempsychosis, and it was an early target of ridicule (Xenophanes (sixth century BC) fr. B7).

  756 For that which changes is | Dissolved: cf. above on 1. 670.

  784 A tree can’t grow in the sky: the ‘impossibilities’ (see above on 749) are the sort of natural perversion classified in Roman religion as omens or portents (cf. Livy 42. 2. 5, Juvenal 13. 65).

  806–18 Few things there are that last eternally… : 806–18 are repeated at 5. 351–63.

  820 fortified against all forms of death… : the reference is probably to the form of immortality enjoyed by the Epicurean gods in the spaces between the worlds, though the details are much disputed (cf. 5. 146, Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1. 18, Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 124, Philodemus, On the Gods 3. frr. 32a, 41, 77, Origen (second–third century AD), Against Celsus4. 14).

  829 lethargy’s black waters cover it: the section of arguments for the mortality of the soul, like the book as a whole, ends gloomily: see above on 2. 1173 ff. But the message of 830 ff. is that this need not in any way impede our happiness.

  830 death nothing is to us: the famous Epicurean catchphrase, from the second of the Master Sayings: ‘death is nothing to us, because what has been dissolved is without sensation, and what is without sensation is nothing to us.’ The final section of the book draws extensively on attacks on the fear of death from many non-Epicurean sources, especially those within the traditions of consolation and so-called ‘diatribe’ or practical philosophical exhortation. See B. P. Wallach, Lucretius and the Diatribe against the Fear of Death (Leiden, 1976), with many parallels.

  833 when the Phoenicians | Were coming in upon us: Lucretius uses a version of the so-called ‘symmetry’ argument from our lack of concern for events before our birth. Our state before birth is the same as that after death: non-existence. If we are unconcerned about events which took place when we were in the former state, we should also be unconcerned about the latter. This was a commonplace (cf. e.g. Euripides (fifth century BC), Trojan Women 636, the Axiochus (wrongly ascribed to Plato and of uncertain date) 365d, Bion (fourth–third century BC) fr. 67, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 90): Lucretius uses the Roman example of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), alluding to the treatment in Ennius’ Annals (frr. 309–10). We know of the terrors of that war only through the vicarious experience of literature: like the future after our death, they are really ‘nothing to us’.

  848–9 if time should after death | Collect our matter and bring it back: cf. Epicurus fr. 283a, 307. The Stoics believed in the infinite repetition of a fixed sequence of events, the Epicureans that in infinite time individual local states of the universe would be infinitely repeated, but in no fixed sequence.

  870 when you see a man resent his fate: philosophers united in rejecting the concern for the fate of the body after death common in literature and life (cf. e.g. Axiochus 365e ff., Bion fr. 70); the Stoic Chrysippus is said to have made a collection of burial practices amongst different nations (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 108). Epicurus said that the wise person will not take thought of burial (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 10. 118), and the argument is pursued at length in Philodemus’ On Death (4. 31 ff.; cf. also Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 73).

  881–2 he doesn’t separate | Himself from the body lying there: Lucretius alludes to a celebrated tragedy of the Roman dramatist Pacuvius (first century BC), the Iliona, in which the ghost of Deiphilus complained to his mother about his burial (frr. 197 ff., cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 106). Similar examples from Greek tragedy are frequent (cf. e.g. the Cynic Teles (third century BC) 30. 1 ff.).

  893 Be crushed under a weight of earth: cf. the formula on Roman tombs, ‘let the earth be light for you’.

  912 Men lie at table: 912–18 have been transposed. Lucretius’ picture ironically reflects popular views of the Epicurean life (cf. e.g. the Copa or Innkeeper ascribed to Virgil 29 ff., Horace, Odes 1. 11, Petronius, Satyricon 34; Cicero, On Ends 5. 3).

  894–6 No longer now a happy home will greet you… : famously translated by Thomas Gray in the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as ‘For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, | Or busy housewife ply her evening care: | No children run to lisp their sire’s return, | Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share’. Lucretius’ lines echo laments on tombs but are more satirical, and the simultaneous presence of pathos and sarcasm has a didactic point: the reader needs to feel the pull of conventional emotion to be able fully to reject it. There is more straightforward mockery in the treatise On Grief by Lucian (second century AD), 13–14, 16.

  904 the sleep of death: a commonplace of consolation, found often on tombstones, but here taken more seriously in Epicurean terms (920 ff.).

  931–2 suppose that nature suddenly |… upbraided one of us: Lucretius uses the figure of thought known as prosopopoeia or personification. Figures with a claim on the emotions such as one’s native country were commonly summoned up by speakers (e.g. Cicero, Against Catiline 1. 18, Demetrius (date uncertain), On Style 265: Plato in the Crito, 50a,
imagined Socrates addressed by the laws of Athens). Lucretius’ use of the more general (and Epicurean) figure of Nature especially recalls a celebrated personification of poverty by the Cynic Bion (fr. 17), but with much greater force. 936 through a broken jar: an allusion to the story of the Danaids or water carriers in Hades (cf. 3. 1003 ff.), especially as interpreted by Plato in Gorgias 493a–d. Cf. also 6. 20 ff.

  938 dined | Full well on life: the image of life as a banquet is common: cf. e.g. Epicurus fr. 499, Bion fr. 68, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5. 118.

  945 everything’s the same: a pointed application of the physical principle outlined at 2. 294 ff., that there is no real change in the universe.

  966 black Tartarus: cf. the description of Tartarus in Iliad 8. 13 ff., ‘where the deepest pit lies under the earth’.

  967 Matter is needed: cf. 1. 262 ff.

  971 life none have in freehold, all as tenants: the image of life as a loan is common, both in literary tradition (cf. e.g. Euripides, Suppliant Women 534, Axiochus367b, Bion fr. 68, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 93, the Consolation to Apollonius ascribed to Plutarch 116a ff.) and on tombstones.

  975 the mirror nature holds for us: see above on the ‘symmetry’ argument (833 ff.), but here the paragraph leads into the absence of mythological terrors in the afterlife.

  978–1023 all those things… which fables tell: attacks on belief in the terrors of the underworld are called an ‘Epicurean refrain’ by Seneca (Letters to Lucilius 24. 18): cf. especially Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 73, ‘I have no fear on account of the Tityoses and Tantaluses whom you describe in Hades’. Tityos (Tityrus), Tantalus, and Sisyphus are the three canonical sinners from the time of Homer (Odyssey 11. 576–600) on: cf. especially Plato, Gorgias 525d ff. (where the late commentator Olympiodorus (sixth century AD) offers an allegorical interpretation similar in part to that of Lucretius). Lucretius’ account is not exactly allegorical: the punishments exist ‘for us in this our life’.

  980 Tantalus: two versions of Tantalus’ punishment (usually for serving up his son Pelops to the gods) were current: either he was perpetually thirsty and hungry but ‘tantalized’ by water and fruit about him, or as here he was threatened by a hanging rock (cf. Pindar (sixth–fifth century BC), Olympian 1. 57, Isthmian 8. 10). The latter punishment suits Lucretius’ imagery for the fear of the gods (cf. 1. 62 ff.).

  984 Tityos: Tityos was a son of earth punished for trying to rape the goddess Leto.

  992 lying in love: cf. the picture in 4. 1177 ff. of the archetypal Roman unhappy lover.

  995 Sisyphus: Sisyphus was punished for trying to cheat death (cf. Homer, Odyssey 11. 593 ff.).

  996 the Lictor’s rods and axes: consuls and praetors were attended by lictors carrying axes and rods (the fasces or bundles appropriated by Mussolini for his Fascists).

  1001 the plain below: significantly, Roman elections took place on the ‘Plain of Mars’ (Campus Martius).

  1003 The Danaids: The Danaids (daughters of Danaus) were punished for killing their husbands on their wedding night: it is not known how far the identification of them with the mythical water-carriers in Hades (first explicit in Axiochus 371e) goes back. Compare Plato’s use of the image of the ‘leaky jar’ in Gorgias 493a–d (see above 936).

  1010 Cerberus: the monstrous dog who guarded the entrance to Hades.

  1016 dread hurling from the rock: the Tarpeian Rock on the Capitol, from which murderers and traitors were flung.

  1025 good Ancus: Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome. The line is a quotation from Ennius, Annals 137.

  1026 A better man than you: an echo of Homer, Iliad 21. 109, ‘Patroclus also died, a man much better than you’ (Achilles to the suppliant Lycaon).

  1027 many kings and powers: lists of the illustrious dead, as later in the ubi sunt or ‘where are now…?’ commonplace of medieval poetry (e.g. Dunbar, ‘I that in heill was… ’, Villon, Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis), are frequent in diatribe and consolation: cf. e.g. the Consolation to Apollonius ascribed to Plutarch 100d, Marcus Aurelius (second century AD) 3. 3, 6. 7.

  1029 he who laid a highway through the sea: the Persian king Xerxes, who bridged the Hellespont in his unsuccessful attack on Greece during the Persian Wars (480 BC: cf. Herodotus (fifth century BC) 7. 35 ff.). He was later murdered in 465 BC.

  1034 Great Scipio: more than one Scipio was great and terrified Carthage: the reference could be to either Scipio Africanus the elder, who defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama, not far from Carthage, in 202 BC, or Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the younger, who razed Carthage to the ground in 146 BC. the thunderbolt of war: probably echoing a phrase of Ennius, playing on the etymology of the name Scipio, as if from the Greek skeptos, a thunderbolt: cf. Cicero, For Balbus 34.

  1041 Offered his head right willingly to death: cf. Diogenes Laertius (third century AD), Lives of the Philosophers 9. 43.

  1042 Epicurus himself: the only time Epicurus is named in the poem.

  1045 will you doubt and feel aggrieved to die: again echoing Achilles’ words to Lycaon in the Iliad 21 106 (see above 1026).

  1060 A man leaves his great house: the vignette from everyday life is in the style of Roman satire: see Introduction.

  1071 Leave everything: the exhortation to abandon trivial concerns and concentrate on the important matters in life is a commonplace of the philosophical ‘protreptic’ or conversion discourse: cf. e.g. Aristotle, Protreptic fr. 52, Horace, Epistles 1. 3. 28 ff. The images offered of the unphilosophical life all belong to the first, diagnostic, stage of philosophic conversion: in a sense, the second half of On the Nature of the Universe provides the cure for the gloomy prognosis offered at the end of Book 3.

  1077 lust of life: philosophers frequently criticized excessive fondness for life: cf. e.g. Philodemus, On Death 4. 39. 6, Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 10. 5.

  Book Four

  1–25 A pathless country… : the second half of On the Nature of the Universe begins with a repetition of 1. 926–50, with some small changes. In their new position, the lines function as a ‘proem in the middle’, introducing the second half of the poem: similar central prologues are found in a number of other works (e.g. Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid). For the structure, see Introduction.

  25 Its value and its usefulness to men: slightly altered from Book 1, with ‘usefulness’ replacing a concern with the shape of things, perhaps signalling a move in the second half of the poem more towards the applications of the first principles.

  26 And since I have shown… : 26–215 outline the Epicurean theory of ‘images’ (Latin simulacra, Greek eidola), thin films of atoms continually cast off from bodies and responsible for perception. 216–721 then deal with the various senses (216–521 sight, with a long section on optical illusions and related phenomena (324–521), 522–614 hearing, 615–72 taste, and 673–705 smell, with 706–21 as a general conclusion and transition to the following section: see below) and 722–822 with thought. 823–57 then argue against the notion that the sense organs were created to perform their functions. 858–906 explain the role of images in hunger and thirst (858–77) and locomotion (878–906). 907 ff. then expound the nature of sleep (907–61) leading to the discussion of dreams (962–1057) and the final attack on the delusions of love (1058–1287). Throughout, the focus is on mental process, and the role of images within it.

  35 strange shapes and phantoms of the dead: Lucretius takes pains to relate the subject matter of Book 4 to that of the preceding book: cf. 1. 132 ff.

  41 I say therefore: as the manuscript text stands, we seem to have more than one version of the summary of the opening section of Book 4. Some believe we have traces of alternative beginnings for the book, one dating from a time when Book 4 followed on directly from Book 2, others that the text has been corrupted in transmission. The translation excises lines 45–50, and transposes line 44 after 53. Epicurus deals with the basic theory of images in Letter to Herodotus 46: cf. also frr. 317, 320. They were the principal subject of Book 2
of his major work On Nature.

  76 Spread over a great theatre: temporary wooden theatres had been common at Rome from early days, and a particularly elaborate one had been erected in 58 BC by M. Aemilius Scaurus when aedile (Pliny (first century BC), Natural Histories 36. 114), but the first readers of On the Nature of the Universe would have been able to experience Rome’s first stone theatre, built by Pompey in 55 BC. The sun awnings were spread from large masts, holes for which can still be seen in extant Roman theatres, and there was considerable competition amongst politicians to provide the most impressive arrangements (cf. Pliny, Natural Histories 19. 23).

  98 In mirrors: the phenomena of reflection were of constant interest to ancient scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers: cf. 150 ff., 269 ff. below, and especially Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 9. 1. 4–12.

  126 There are clearly some lines missing at this point in the manuscripts, although it is uncertain how many, and what they dealt with.

  131 of their own accord | Come into being: the mingling of images in the air to produce new forms (cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 46, 48) explains how we can think of non-existent objects such as Centaurs, as Lucretius later explains (724 ff.). The figures seen in clouds are a similar chance phenomenon: Lucretius also uses the comparison to suggest the airy unreality of mythological stories such as the battle of giants and gods.

  143 how easily and swiftly | These images arise: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 48.

  173 black face of fear: cf. 1. 64 ff. 170–3 are repeated at 6. 251–4.

  176 how fast these images move: again, cf. Letter to Herodotus 48.

  181 Better the swan’s brief song: Lucretius translates part of an epigram by the Hellenistic poet Antipater of Sidon (second century BC: Greek Anthology 7. 7. 13), drawing again on the imagery of small-scale precision associated with the aesthetics of the poet Callimachus (see above on 1. 926—the lines repeated at the beginning of this book).

  217 the bodies which strike our eyes: there may be further textual disruption at this point, with more lines lost.