[24] What is more, Lucretius does not deny the existence of deities;[25][26] he simply argues that they did not create the universe, that they do not care about human affairs, and that they do not intervene in the world. These remnants were discovered among the Epicurean library in the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum. „DE RERUM NATURA” ... Aus den Dingen selbst, aus ihrer Beschaffenheit, erklärt Lukrez die Phänomene, die, zusammengenommen, unsere Welt ergeben. 1620, gest. De Rerum Natura. He argues against fear of such deities by demonstrating, through observations and arguments, that the operations of the world can be accounted for in terms of natural phenomena. Im Bereich der lateinischen Sprache ist Lukrez dagegen der erste, der im epischen Versmaß des Hexameters einen „Sach- zusammenhang“ (Reclam, S. 617) beschreibt. For instance, Diskin Clay sees Venus as a poetic substitute for sex, and Bonnie Catto sees the invocation of the name as a metonym for the "creative process of natura". Nevertheless, Lucretius writes as a complete Epicurean,offering his reader not just cosmological understanding but the fullrecipe for happiness. Click anywhere in the In that case, nature would never have produced anything. Certainly to eliminate fear of the divine throughphysical understanding is one component of this task, but not the onlyone. [54] However, while O is a direct descendant of the archetype,[54] Q and S are believed to have both been derived from a manuscript (Ψ) that in turn had been derived from a damaged and modified version of the archetype (ΩI). "Prolegomena". For the documentary television series, see, Lucretius was quoted by several early Christian writers, including, List of English translations of De rerum natura, "Hortus Apertus – La fortuna – Dante e Lucrezio", "Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini" (2013), "The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Nonfiction", "2011 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction", "An Unearthed Treasure That Changed Things", "The Answer Man: An Ancient Poem Was Rediscovered—and the World Swerved", "Book review: 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=De_rerum_natura&oldid=993308149, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Articles with Latin-language sources (la), Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 9 December 2020, at 23:10. [23] Regardless, due to the ideas espoused in the poem, much of Lucretius's work was seen by many as direct a challenge to theistic, Christian belief. [84][85] Additionally, Pliny the Elder lists Lucretius (presumably referring to his De rerum natura) as a source at the beginning of his Naturalis Historia, and Seneca the Younger quoted six passages from De rerum natura across several of his works. [88] The Early Christian apologist Lactantius, in particular, heavily cites and critiques Lucretius in his The Divine Institutes and its Epitome, as well as his De ira Dei. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Lukrez Herkunft und soziale Stellung sind nicht gesichert; Vermutungen, die von seinem Cognomen Carus auf eine niedrige Herkunft schließen, sind ebenso wenig zu belegen wie die Annahme, Lukrez habe der Nobilität angehört. Other printed editions followed soon after. [89] Lactantius also disparages the science of De rerum natura (as well as of Epicureanism in general), calls Lucretius "the most worthless of the poets" (poeta inanissimus), notes that he is unable to read more than a few lines of De rerum natura without laughing, and sarcastically asks, "Who would think that [Lucretius] had a brain when he said these things? Because, as W. H. D. Rouse notes, "the fragments are so minute and bear so few certainly identifiable letters", at this point in time "some scepticism about their proposed authorship seems pardonable and prudent. Lucretius's De rerum natura. [8] This book addresses the origin of the world and of all things therein, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the changing of the seasons, day and night, the rise and progress of humankind, society, political institutions, and the invention of the various arts and sciences which embellish and ennoble life. [31][32], Thus, he began his discussion by claiming that he would, explain by what forces nature steers the courses of the Sun and the journeyings of the Moon, so that we shall not suppose that they run their yearly races between heaven and earth of their own free will [i.e., are gods themselves] or that they are rolled round in furtherance of some divine plan....[33], However, when he set out to put this plan into practice, he limited himself to showing how one, or several different, naturalistic accounts could explain certain natural phenomena. [15] Near the end of his first book, Lucretius defends his fusion of Epicureanism and poetry with a simile, arguing that the philosophy he espouses is like a medicine: life-saving but often unpleasant. To do this, Epicurus invoked the atomism of Democritus to demonstrate that the material universe was formed not by a Supreme Being, but by the mixing of elemental particles that had existed from all eternity governed by certain simple laws. Your current position in the text is marked in blue. According to the Epicurean canon, the fear of death must also becountered, and the rational management of pleasures a… Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. To prove that neither the mind nor spirit can survive independent of the body, Lucretius uses a simple analogy: when a vessel shatters, its contents spill everywhere; likewise, when the body dies, the mind and spirit dissipate. [47] The oldest—and, according to David Butterfield, most famous—of these is the Codex Oblongus, often called O. This copy has been dated to the early ninth century and was produced by a Carolingian scriptorium (likely a monastery connected to the court of Charlemagne). Lukrez´ De rerum natura wurde von Poggio Bracciolini aufgespürt und gerettet. [5], The oldest purported fragments of De rerum natura were published by K. Kleve in 1989 and consist of sixteen fragments. Lucretius then dedicates time to exploring the axiom that nothing can be produced from nothing, and that nothing can be reduced to nothing (Nil fieri ex nihilo, in nihilum nil posse reverti). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. Perseus provides credit for all accepted Zumindest deutet sein W… In relation to this discrepancy in the frequency of Lucretius's reference to the apparent subject of his poem, Kannengiesse advances the theory that Lucretius wrote the first version of De rerum natura for the reader at large, and subsequently revised in order to write it for Memmius. Lucretius divided his argument into six [19] For instance, the poem concludes rather abruptly while detailing the Plague of Athens, there are redundant passages throughout (e.g., 1.820–821 and 2.1015–1016) alongside other aesthetic “loose ends”, and at 5.155 Lucretius mentions that he will spend a great deal of time discussing the nature of the gods, which never comes to pass. [41], Martin Ferguson Smith notes that Cicero's close friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus, was an Epicurean publisher, and it is possible his slaves made the very first copies of De rerum natura. with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. [95] His influence is especially notable in the work of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, who praised Lucretius—along with Dante and Goethe—in his book Three Philosophical Poets,[96] although he openly admired the poet's system of physics more so than his spiritual musings (referring to the latter as "fumbling, timid and sad"). Inhalt: Alle Dinge im Universum sind aus Atomen zusammengesetzt, woraus sich Erklärungen für … It has been suggested that Dante (1265–1321) might have read Lucretius's poem, as a few verses of his Divine Comedy exhibit a great affinity with De rerum natura, but there is no conclusive evidence that Dante ever read Lucretius. [1], Lucretius has also had a marked influence upon modern philosophy, as perhaps the most complete expositor of Epicurean thought. 1st century AD), whose didactic poem Astronomica (written c. AD 10–20), alludes to De rerum natura in a number of places. [23] However, at that time the label was extremely broad and did not necessarily mean a denial of divine entities (for example, some large Christian sects labelled dissenting groups as atheists). Hide browse bar [58] This is because De rerum natura was rediscovered in January 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini, who probably found the poem in the Benedictine library at Fulda. The last three books give an atomic and materialist explanation of phenomena preoccupying human reflection, such as vision and the senses, sex and reproduction, natural forces and agriculture, the heavens, and disease. [59][60] This proves that the work was known in select circles long before the official rediscovery by Poggio. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. [55][56], While there exist a handful of references to Lucretius in Romance and Germanic sources dating between the ninth and fifteenth centuries (references that, according to Ada Palmer, "indicate a tenacious, if spotty knowledge of the poet and some knowledge of [his] poem"), no manuscripts of De rerum natura currently survive from this span of time. In both this work, and as well as his more well-known Etymologiae (c. AD 600–625), Isidore liberally quotes from Lucretius a total of twelve times, drawing verses from all of Lucretius's books except his third. Chr.) Ein unendlich freier Gesang von Lukrez am 12. [34] For instance, when considering the reason for stellar movements, Lucretius provides two possible explanations: that the sky itself rotates, or that the sky as a whole is stationary while constellations move. Titus Lucretius Carus war ein römischer Dichter und Philosoph in der Tradition des Epikureismus. This introduces a detailed description of the great pestilence that devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian War. atque animi quoniam docui natura quid esset et quibus e rebus cum corpore compta vigeret quove modo distracta rediret in ordia prima, nunc agere incipiam tibi, quod vehementer ad has res attinet esse ea quae rerum simulacra vocamus, quod speciem ac formam similem gerit eius imago, cuius cumque cluet de corpore fusa vagari; [5] To further alleviate the fear of non-existence, Lucretius makes use of the symmetry argument: he argues that the eternal oblivion awaiting all humans after death is exactly the same as the infinite nothingness that preceded our birth. [27] The historian Ada Palmer has labelled six ideas in Lucretius's thought (viz. Commentary references to this page [7], After the opening, the poem commences with an enunciation of the proposition on the nature and being of the deities, which leads to an invective against the evils of superstition. [66] What is more, Manilius also seems to suggest throughout this poem that his work is superior to that of Lucretius's. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system. [57] Rather, all the remaining Lucretian manuscripts that are currently extant date from or after the fifteenth century. An XML version of this text is available for download, The poem consists of six untitled books, in dactylic hexameter. 1,485). This work is licensed under a DE RERVM NATVRA LIBRI SEX. [1] Additionally, in his essay "Of Books", he lists Lucretius along with Virgil, Horace, and Catullus as his four top poets. [1][38] According to Lucretius, this unpredictable swerve occurs at no fixed place or time: When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. [9] There are over a dozen references to "Memmius" scattered throughout the long poem in a variety of contexts in translation, such as "Memmius mine", "my Memmius", and "illustrious Memmius". Poetry, on the other hand, is like honey, in that it is a "a sweetener that sugarcoats the bitter medicine of Epicurean philosophy and entices the audience to swallow it. [93] His Essays contain almost a hundred quotes from De rerum natura. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna ("chance"),[2] and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities. Lucretius refers to Memmius by name four times in the first book, three times in the second, five in the fifth, and not at all in the third, fourth, or sixth books. According to Lucretius's frequent statements in his poem, the main purpose of the work was to free Gaius Memmius's mind of the supernatural and the fear of death—and to induct him into a state of ataraxia by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius glorifies as the hero of his epic poem. voluntas). Jump to navigation Jump to search The title of Lucretius’s work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeōs (On Nature). "[5], Lucretius maintained that he could free humankind from fear of the deities by demonstrating that all things occur by natural causes without any intervention by the deities. Aus "De Rerum Natura" liest Gert Heidenreich, der Schriftsteller mit einer der hierzulande bekanntesten und beliebtesten Vorlese-Stimmen. ("Agamemnon", "Hom. The entire proem is also written in the format of a hymn, recalling other early literary works, texts, and hymns and in particular the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Das Lehrgedicht „De rerum natura“ Mit seinem Lehrgedicht „De rerum natura“ stellte sich Lukrez in eine Reihe mit den berühmten griechischen Vorgängern wie Hesiod. The shape of these atoms, their properties, their movements, the laws under which they enter into combination and assume forms and qualities appreciable by the senses, with other preliminary matters on their nature and affections, together with a refutation of objections and opposing hypotheses, occupy the first two books. [68] (Coincidentally, De rerum natura and the Astronomica were both rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in the early 15th century. [45] Nevertheless, a small minority of scholars argue that Jerome's assertion may be credible. [28][29] She qualifies her use of this term, cautioning that it is not to be used to say that Lucretius was himself an atheist in the modern sense of the word, nor that atheism is a teleological necessity, but rather that many of his ideas were taken up by 19th, 20th, and 21st century atheists. [61], The earliest recorded critique of Lucretius's work is in a letter written by the Roman statesman Cicero to his brother Quintus, in which the former claims that Lucretius's poetry is "full of inspired brilliance, but also of great artistry" (Lucreti poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis). [11][12] Stearns suggests that this is because Memmius reneged on a promise to pay for a new school to be built on the site of the old Epicurean school. This meant that humans had nothing to fear from them. Epicurus thus made it his mission to remove these fears, and thus to establish tranquility in the minds of his readers. stammendes Lehrgedicht des römischen Dichters, Philosophen und Epikureers Titus Lucretius Carus, genannt Lukrez.Die Hommage an Epikur handelt von der Stellung des Menschen in einem von den Göttern nicht beeinflussten Universum. (3): Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page Über das Leben des Lukrez ist so gut wie nichts bekannt. line to jump to another position: Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics. Jahrhundert v. Chr. In seinem Werk „de rerum natura“ versucht er im Gewand der Dichtung dem römischen Volk die Lehre des Epikurs nahe zu bringen. Werk: philosophisches Lehrgedicht De rerum natura erstes bedeutendes und vollständig erhaltenes Lehrgedicht der römischen Antike einem Dichtermäzen namens C. Memmius gewidmet De rerum natura (Titus Lucretius Carus) E Wikisource. He was unable to tell his readers how to determine which of these alternatives might be the true one. Übersetzungen › Lukrez › De rerum natura (V) (7) › 348. [6] The choice to address Venus may have been due to Empedocles's belief that Aphrodite represents "the great creative force in the cosmos". Die spärlichen Angaben stammen großteils aus späten Quellen und sind widersprüchlich und zum Teil wenig glaubwürdig. The one major exception to this was Isidore of Seville, who at the start of the 7th century produced a work on astronomy and natural history dedicated to the Visigothic king Sisebut that was entitled De natura rerum. 9.1", "denarius"). [101][102], "On the Nature of Things" redirects here. Ergo hominum genus in cassum frustraque laborat semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom, ni mirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas; idque minutatim vitam provexit in altum et belli magnos commovit funditus aestus. [86][87], Because Lucretius was critical of religion and the claim of an immortal soul, his poem was disparaged by most early Church Fathers. [42] If this were the case, then it might explain how Cicero came to be familiar with Lucretius's work. Mutter der Aeneaden, o Wonne der Menschen und Götter, Holde Venus! Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system. Lucretius's task was to clearly state and fully develop these views in an attractive form; his work was an attempt to show through poetry that everything in nature can be explained by natural laws, without the need for the intervention of divine beings. changes, storing new additions in a versioning system. "[35], Despite his advocacy of empiricism and his many correct conjectures about atomism and the nature of the physical world, Lucretius concludes his first book stressing the absurdity of the (by then well-established) round earth theory, favor instead a flat earth cosmology. [13][14], There is a certain irony to the poem, namely that while Lucretius extols the virtue of the Epicurean school of thought, Epicurus himself had advised his acolytes from penning poetry because he believed it to make that which was simple overly complicated. [3], The fifth book is described by Ramsay as the most finished and impressive,[3] while Stahl argues that its "puerile conceptions" is proof that Lucretius should be judged as a poet, not as a scientist. Der kritische Kommentar rechtfertigt den Text der Neuausgabe des Lukrez in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana. [1], Machiavelli made a copy early in his life. This wrath was supposed to be displayed by the misfortunes inflicted in this life and by the everlasting tortures that were the lot of the guilty in a future state (or, where these feelings were not strongly developed, from a vague dread of gloom and misery after death). However, Memmius' name is central to several critical verses in the poem, and this theory has therefore been largely discredited. With this episode, the book closes; this abrupt ending suggests that Lucretius might have died before he was able to finalize and fully edit his poem.[3]. his assertion that the world was created from chaos, and his denials of Providence, divine participation, miracles, the efficacy of prayer, and an afterlife) as "proto-atheistic". [71][72] David Butterfield also writes that "clear echoes and/or responses" to De rerum natura can be detected in the works of the Roman elegiac poets Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus, as well as the lyric poet Horace. [46], Copies of the poem were preserved in a number of medieval libraries, with the earliest extant manuscripts dating to the ninth century. [13] Memmius was also a tribune in 66, praetor in 58, governor of Bithynia in 57, and was a candidate for the consulship in 54 but was disqualified for bribery, and Stearns suggests that the warm relationship between patron and client may have cooled (sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas / suavis amicitiae quemvis efferre laborem, "But still your merit, and as I hope, the joy / Of our sweet friendship, urge me to any toil").