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

by Ronald Melville

  73 in their untroubled peace: cf. Edwin Muir, ‘The Labyrinth’, ‘But they, the gods, as large and bright as clouds, | Conversed across the sounds in tranquil voices | High in the sky, above the untroubled sea, | And their eternal dialogue was peace.’

  75 To come before their shrines with quiet mind: cf. 5. 1161 ff.

  86 the sky | Divided into parts: in Etruscan augury (see below on 6. 381), it was significant from which part of the sky lightning came, and to which part it went (it not being known that the return path was identical to the path of arrival). The heavens were accordingly divided into sixteen regions (cf. Cicero, On Divination 2. 42–5, Seneca, Natural Questions 41–2).

  94 Calliope: the roles of the muses were still fluid in Lucretius’ day, although set functions had begun to be assigned to them. Calliope was usually the muse of epic poetry, but she had famously been invoked by Empedocles (fr. B131) and also had links with philosophy (cf. Plato, Phaedrus 259d): she was the mother and teacher of Orpheus.

  Solace of men, delight of gods: recalling the opening address to Venus in 1.1 ff.

  96 First, thunder shakes the blue expanse of sky: Lucretius deals first with thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts (96–422), the phenomena of the sky most associated with fears of divine action. He then deals with waterspouts (423–50), clouds (451–94), rain (495–523), rainbows (524–6), and miscellaneous phenomena of weather (527–34); earthquakes (535–607), the constancy of the sea (608–38), and Etna (639–702), followed by an excursus on multiple causation (703–11); the Nile (712–37), Avernian sites (738–839), wells and springs (840–905), and the magnet (906–1089); and finally the aetiology of disease (1090–1137) followed by the plague at Athens (1138–1286). All of these topics were frequent subjects of discussion amongst scientists and philosophers: see especially Aristotle’s Meteorologica (‘meteorologia’ in Greek has a wider semantic range than the English equivalent) and Seneca’s Natural Questions. Aristotle’s follower Theophrastus (fourth–third century BC) wrote an influential Meteorology (known through Syriac and Arabic translations: see Bibliography), and many of these topics were also discussed in his treatise Opinions of the Physicists, which was the foundation for the later ‘doxographic’ tradition (see above on 1. 635–920) seen in ‘Aetius’ (first century AD). The extant Letter to Pythocles, which may not be completely by Epicurus himself, deals with a number of these topics: for thunder and lightning, see 100–4. Lucretius offers ten possible explanations for thunder (seven are given in Theophrastus, Meteorology 1) and four each for lightning and thunderbolts: cf. in general ‘Aetius’ 3. 3, who deals in the same order with thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, waterspouts, and whirlwinds.

  96–107 clouds… | Are dashed together: explanations of thunder by means of cloud collisions were widespread: cf. e.g. Democritus A93, Aristophanes, Clouds383 ff., Theophrastus, Meteorology 1. 3–5, Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 100–1, Cicero, On Divination 2. 44.

  99 no sound comes from a clear sky: cf. 247 ff.

  109 awnings: see above on 4. 76.

  130 a small bladder: the analogy is already parodied in Aristophanes’ Clouds (404 ff.): cf. Theophrastus, Meteorology 1. 17, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 27. 3.

  148–9 As red-hot iron… | Hisses: for the comparison cf. Archelaus fr. A16, Theophrastus, Meteorology 1. 10–11, Pliny, Natural Histories 2. 112. The theory was widespread amongst the pre-Socratic philosophers (Empedocles fr. A63, Archelaus fr. A16, Diogenes of Apollonia fr. A16) but is not in the Letter to Pythocles.

  154 Phoebus’ Delphic laurel: the laurel or bay was sacred to Apollo, and was burnt by the priestess in his oracle at Delphi.

  161–2 as stone | Strikes stone or iron: for the analogy, cf. Pliny, Natural Histories 2. 113.

  164 Our ears receive the sound of thunder later: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 102–3, Democritus fr. A126a, Aristotle, Meteorologica 369b, Theophrastus, Meteorology 5, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 12. 1. Epicurus’ account was close to that of Theophrastus, giving two possible explanations: first, that lightning actually occurred before thunder, and, second, that they occurred simultaneously but the lightning moved faster. The woodcutter example is in Theophrastus (5. 5): cf. also Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 5. 69.

  178–9 leaden bullets | Melt: for the notion that sling bullets can travel so fast that they melt, cf. 306 ff. below, Aristotle, De Caelo 289a, Theophrastus, Meteorology 6. 20–1, Virgil, Aeneid 8. 588, Ovid, Metamorphoses 2. 726–9, 14. 825–6, Lucan, Civil War 7. 513, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 57. 2, Statius, Thebaid 10. 533–4.

  197 They vent their indignation with a roar: Lucretius takes over and demythologizes the traditional imagery of the winds controlled in a cave by the god Aeolus (cf. e.g. Homer, Odyssey 10. 47 ff.). Epicurus talks of the clouds as like ‘vessels’ (Letter to Pythocles 100).

  209 from the sun’s light: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 101, Empedocles fr. A. 63, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 12. 3.

  219–20 thunderbolts: ancient scientists distinguished between lightning flashes (fulgura in Latin) and thunderbolts (fulmina: cf. Seneca, Natural Questions2. 12. 1 ff.). Like Theophrastus (Meteorology 6. 3 ff.), Lucretius emphasizes that thunderbolts are fiery and have a penetrating power.

  221 sulphur: in fact the smell is due to ozone from the electrical discharge, but the belief that it was due to sulphur was widespread from the time of Homer (e.g. Iliad 8. 133), although this passage is the first explicit extant statement of the belief in scientific literature (cf. the Problems ascribed to Aristotle 937b25, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 21. 2).

  229 As sounds and voices do: cf. 1. 489 ff.

  231 wine inside a vessel: cf. e.g. Pliny, Natural Histories 2. 137.

  247–8 they never strike | From a clear sky: cf. 99. Later Horace will ascribe a conversion from Epicureanism to thunder from a clear sky (Odes 1. 34). See below 400 ff.

  251–4 so that we think… : 251–4 are repeated from 4. 170–3.

  257 like pitch: cf. Homer, Iliad 4. 275 ff. The reference to people seeking shelter is a typical feature of epic similes.

  278 in the hot furnace: the imagery of the forge (see above on 148–9, and below 681 ff.) suggests the myth of the Cyclopes toiling underground to make the thunderbolts of Zeus.

  287 A violent tremor now assails the earth: cf. 358. Belief in ‘underground thunder’ was widespread and often ascribed to supernatural sources (cf. e.g. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 993, Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1606, Euripides, Hippolytus 1201).

  292 the universal Flood: cf. 5. 412. We are reminded again of the fact that our world will one day be destroyed: we move from the everyday experience of thunder and lightning to future destruction on a cosmic scale.

  306 a leaden bullet: see above on 178–9.

  329 catapults: cf. Virgil, Aeneid 12. 921–3.

  335 all weights naturally possess | A downward momentum: cf. 2. 203 ff.

  349 the pores: the theory of small pores in compounds is used several times in the following accounts, e.g. 492, 776 ff., 979 ff., 1129; cf. 4. 344 ff., 949 ff., 976 ff.

  352 It readily dissolves bronze: cf. Aristotle, Meteorology 352b, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 31. 1, Pliny, Natural History 2. 137.

  357 In autumn thunder shakes the house of heaven: spring and autumn are usually seen as the main seasons for thunder (cf. Theophrastus, Meteorology 6. 68 ff., Horace, Odes 1. 4. 7 ff.), but Epicurus is said by one source to have claimed that it was more frequent in summer (John Lydus (fifth–sixth century AD), On Portents 21. 5, cf. Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 57. 2). For the imagery of the war of the elements, cf. 5. 381 ff.: as ever, the implication is that the world is not providentially ordered, and that, if the war got out of hand, the world could be destroyed.

  381 scrolls of Tuscan charms: augury was especially associated with and practised by the Etruscans (cf. Cicero, On Divination 1. 72, Seneca, Natural Questions2. 41 ff., Pliny, Natural Histories 2. 138, John Lydus, On Portents).

  383–5 And ask them whence the flying fi
re has come… : 383–5 are repeated from 87–9: see notes.

  386 what harm: i.e. in terms of religious pollution. A place struck by lightning was known as a bidental (perhaps from the sacrifice of sheep and goats, bidentes), and was enclosed as a sacred place: cf. Lucan, Civil War 1. 606–8, 8. 864, John Lydus, On Portents 47–52.

  390–1 Why do they not arrange that when a man | Is guilty of some abominable crime| He’s struck: cf. 2. 1101 ff. For the arguments here against divination, cf. Aristophanes, Clouds 397 ff., Epicurus fr. 370, Cicero, On Divination 2. 44–5, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 42 ff.

  400 Never when the sky is cloudless: see above on 247 ff.

  417 why does he wreck the holy shrines of gods: cf. 2. 1101–2, Aristophanes, Clouds 401, Cicero, On Divination 1. 19, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 42.

  424 Those whirlwinds which the Greeks name from their nature | Presters: Lucretius uses the Greek word prester, which has connections with words for ‘burn’ and ‘blow’ and covers both fiery and watery whirlwinds: hence the connection with thunderbolts (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 846), though Lucretius concentrates on waterspouts. Cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 104 ff., Aristotle, Meteorology 369a, Seneca, Natural Questions 5. 13. 3, Pliny, Natural Histories2. 131 ff.

  426 a kind of column: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 104.

  434 as though a fist thrust by an arm: Lucretius mocks the implicit anthropomorphism of religious explanations.

  451 Clouds form: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 99, Theophrastus, Meteorology 7, Vitruvius (first century BC), On Architecture 8. 1 ff. The connection between clouds and religious belief goes back to the beginnings of Indo-European culture: already in Homer, Zeus is termed the ‘cloud-gatherer’. Cf. 4. 131 ff. on the shapes of clouds as suggesting mythical monsters.

  470 from the surface of the sea: the (roughly) correct origin of clouds in water vapour goes back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, cf. Xenophanes (sixth century BC) fr. B26, A46, Anaximander A11.

  471–2 clothes… hung out on the shore: Lucretius uses the analogy several times: cf. 1. 305 and in this Book 6. 114, 504, 617 ff.

  483 come into our sky from outside: cf. 2. 1105 ff., 5. 366 ff., 6. 665 ff. and 954.

  492–3 channels of the ether |… breathing-holes: like all compounds, the world has a protective outer membrane, which is, however, permeable with the outside and permits interchange of atomic matter with the environment (cf. 2. 1105 ff., ‘Aetius’ 2. 7. 2, and see below on 6. 954).

  495–6 rainy moisture: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 99–100.

  526 the rainbow: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles 109 ff.

  527 all those other things: Lucretius abbreviates his treatment of the remaining meteorological phenomena such as snow (cf. Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles109–10, Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 99): they have fewer theological implications. He also omits any systematic discussion of the causes of wind (cf. e.g. Aristotle, Meteorology 365aff., immediately before the discussion of earthquakes).

  535 earthquakes: Epicurus’ treatment of earthquakes comes after whirlwinds but before other atmospheric phenomena: Lucretius’ order of treatment marks a clearer break between phenomena of the sky and of the earth. Lucretius details three causes (535–51 subsidence, 552–6 earth falling into pools, 557–607 circulation of underground winds). Epicurus has the third and first of these (in that order): Theophrastus, Meteorology 15, adds fire to provide an explanation in terms of each of the four elements. Aristotle, Meterology365b ff., makes winds the major cause. Cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus105 ff., fr. 350–1, Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 98, Seneca, Natural Questions bk. 6, Pliny, Natural Histories 2. 191 ff., ‘Aetius’ 3. 14. Both Greece and Italy were (and are) major centres of seismic activity, and the mysterious phenomena associated with earthquakes were long a source of religious awe, in Greece linked to Poseidon (Neptune), the sea-god. At Rome, earthquakes were seen as portents (cf. Livy 3. 10. 6 etc.), and, like thunderbolts, the subject of the ‘Etruscan discipline’ (see above on 6. 381).

  545 age and time: the personification of time and the stress on the role of decay are distinctively Lucretian: cf. e.g. 1. 225, 325 ff., 2. 69 ff.

  565 men fear to believe: cf. 5. 235 ff.

  585–6 Sidon in Syria | And Aegeum in the Peloponnese: sometime towards the end of the fifth century BC (cf. Strabo, Geography 158c, Seneca, Natural Questions6. 24. 6), and in 373–372 BC respectively.

  590 sunk down to the bottom of the sea: as well as Helice and Buris in the Aegeum earthquake (cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15. 293 ff.), compare the story of the mythical Atlantis in Plato, Timaeus 23e.

  608–9 nature does not cause | The sea to increase in size: already for Aristotle an old puzzle (Meteorology 355b, cf. e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 8. 835 ff.), and treated by Lucretius as one of a series of wonders (mirabilia) which must be given a rational explanation to avoid the temptation to lapse back into religion. The position of Lucretius’ treatment, between earthquakes and volcanoes, has often seemed strange, but all three are phenomena on a massive scale which need to be put in their place. For all the schools, the wise person is not affected by wonder at unusual phenomena: cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 7. 123, Horace, Epistles 1. 6. 1 ff. Collections of these phenomena (the so-called ‘paradoxographic’ literature) began to be made from the third century BC.

  617 clothes dripping with water: see above on 471–2.

  639 Mount Etna’s throat: the proverbial volcano for both Greeks (e.g. Pindar, Pythian 1, alluding to the eruption of 475 BC) and Romans (e.g. Seneca, Letters 79): the last eruption (presumably referred to in 641 ff.) had been in 122 BC (cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2. 96). A later one around the time of Caesar’s death was treated as a portent (Virgil, Georgics 1. 471 ff.). Vesuvius at this date appeared extinct. ‘Longinus’ in his treatise On the Sublime (35. 4, date uncertain) remarks on our wonder at ‘the craters of Etna in eruption, hurling up rocks and whole hills from their depths and sometimes shooting forth rivers of that earth-born, spontaneous fire’: there is a poem devoted to the subject amongst the works in the ‘Appendix Vergiliana’ ascribed to Virgil. Volcanoes were often discussed along with earthquakes and other ‘meteorological’ phenomena (e.g. Aristotle, Meteorology 367a, Strabo, Geography 1. 3. 16 (based on Posidonius) ) but also in a more general context of marvels (e.g. Pliny 2. 236 ff.). They do not seem to be discussed in the Letter to Pythocles, but there may be a missing section.

  660 The fiery rash: erysipelas, see below on 1167.

  670 the realms of heaven | Are set on fire: possibly just a reference to the glow of the sky from the lava, but the ancients were aware that lightning sometimes accompanies eruptions because of electrical discharges from the clouds above the crater: cf. Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 30. 1.

  681 Etna’s mighty furnaces: recalling Hephaestus’ forge in mythology (see e.g. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 363 ff.), but the role of a combination of wind and fire is similar to that in a blacksmith’s forge (cf. Aristotle, Meteorology366a).

  687 heated in fury: the description recalls the myths of the Titan Typhoeus and the giant Enceladus, said to be imprisoned under Etna: see e.g. Pindar, Pythian 1. 15 ff.

  694–5 the sea | Breaks on the mountain’s roots: the Mediterranean volcanoes are all on the coast, and the sea frequently figured in explanations of both volcanoes and earthquakes. Aristotle (Meteorology 366a) comments that in Sicily the sea is thought to run in channels beneath the earth, and to drive violent winds back into it, while Posidonius also associated volcanic activity with movements of the sea (cf. Strabo 6. 2. 11, Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 26. 4–7).

  700 great clouds of sand: volcanic ash was often termed ‘sand’ in antiquity: cf. Seneca, Natural Questions 2. 30. 1.

  701 mixing bowls: in Greek krater originally meant a bowl for mixing wine and water.

  703 It is not enough to state one cause: the Epicurean doctrine of ‘multiple explanations’: see above on 5. 528.

  705 The lifeless body of some man: argument
over the causes of death to be deduced from the appearance of a corpse also figured in rhetorical training: see for instance the contemporary Rhetoric to Herennius ascribed to Cicero, 2. 8.

  712 The Nile, the river of all Egypt: the annual inundation of the Nile was a topic of wonder and intense scientific interest throughout antiquity: the pre-Socratic philosophers Thales, Anaxagoras, and Democritus (sixth and fifth century BC) already speculated about it, Herodotus has a long excursus on the subject (2. 19 ff.), Aristotle wrote a treatise On the Flooding of the Nile, of which a Latin version survives, and Seneca devoted a book of the Natural Questions to it (‘IVa’ in modern numeration). The cause (rains in Ethiopia) was known in antiquity (cf. with 729 ff. Aristotle fr. 248, Theophrastus, On Waters fr. 211B), although the sources of the Nile were not fully explored until the nineteenth century, notably by Sir Henry Morton Stanley: there is a detailed discussion of the ancient theories in D. Bonneau, Le Cru du Nil (Paris, 1963). The river was also a typical example of the literary sublime: cf. [Longinus], On the Sublime 35. 4.

  716 Etesian: in Greek etesios means ‘annual’.

  738 the lakes | And other places that are called Avernian: as Lucretius explains, ‘avernus’, from the Greek aornos, means ‘without birds’. Lake Avernus at Cumae (near Naples) was regarded as the entrance to the Underworld (cf. most famously Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid): hence the term came to mean ‘infernal’, but does not seem to have been used in Latin in the general sense Lucretius gives it here (though aornos is used generally in Greek). The strange properties of various locations, especially rivers and springs, were a standard subject in the so-called ‘paradoxographical’ literature dealing with natural wonders: so, for instance, Antigonus of Carystus (third century BC) in his Collection of Paradoxical Stories (12, 122), as well as mentioning Lucretius’ example of the Athenian acropolis, reported that no bird could fly over the temple of Achilles in Leuce.

  750 Tritonian Pallas: the goddess Athena, whose temple, the Parthenon, stands on the acropolis at Athens. Of the various explanations current in antiquity for her epithet ‘Tritonian’, the most popular connected her with Lake Tritonis in Libya.