ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

NOTES 1

BOOK ONE

1.  See Appendix A for the interpretation of this prologue.
2. The metaphor in 'unleashed' suggests the myth of the winds locked in the cave of Aeolus as in Homer, Odyssey 10. 19-27.
3. The title of the poem is a Latin translation of the Greek peri physeos, the title of the chief work of Epicurus and also the title of a poem by Empedocles.
4. On Memmius, see Appendix B.
5. See Introduction.
6. Epicurus.
7. L. attacks the theory that the gods cause thunder and lightning in 6.379-422.
8. At Aulis (in Boeotia) Iphigeneia was sacrificed by her father, the Greek general Agamemnon, to placate Artemis (the virgin goddess) and cause the wind to blow the fleet to Troy to fight the Trojan War.
9.  Early Roman poet (239-169 BC), believer in reincarnation, who at the beginning of his Annales claimed that his soul had 'been' Homer and Pythagoras in previous existences.
10. Mountain in Boeotia where the Muses were said to live.
11. Early Greek epic poet said to have composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.
12. Latin lacked the technical philosophical and scientific vocabulary of Greek: see L.'s problems with the Greek term homoeomeria below (830 ff.).
13. Friendship was especially praised by Epicurus as both an ethical ideal and as one of the highest pleasures available to man.
14. This argument proceeds as a reductio ad absurdum: since absurd inferences can be drawn from a proposition, it must itself be absurd.
15. Throughout this argument note how L. proceeds from our own empirical experience.
16. One of L.'s favorite analogies - letters make up words just as atoms make up objects. Cf. 823ff.
17. The examples chosen hint at feats of Greek gods and giants: Poseidon strides from Samothrace to Aegae in three steps (Homer, Iliad 13.2o-21), the giant Polyphemus tears the top off a mountain (Homer, Odyssey 9.481), and of course gods do not die.
18. On this passage see D. West, The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius 4-7.
19. That is, empty space for the atoms to exist and move in.
20. Most Greek philosophers, from Empedocles on, accepted the theory of antiperistasis here derided: cf. Plato, Timaeus 80c, Aristotle, Physics 213b-216b, Strato of Lampsacus fr. 63 Wehrli, Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 397-426.
21. That is, that there is condensed air between them which expands naturally as they separate.
22. That is, Helen of Troy, abducted from her husband Menelaus by Paris, thus starting the Trojan War. L. is perhaps attacking the Stoics, but on this see Furley, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 13 (1966) 13-14. Facts about the past are difficult for Epicurus: the indubitable fact 'Paris raped Helen' seems to exist although the matter of which it was an attribute (i.e., the bodies of Helen and Paris) no longer exist. Facts thus seem to exist independent of either matter or void.
23. Helen.
24. This only applies to the atoms themselves: if two atoms touch with no space in between them they can still be separated.
25. The four elements of Empedocles.
26. As argued by, e.g., Empedocles (see 753-8) and Anaxagoras (see 847-58).
27. A difficult paragraph. L. is probably still thinking of Anaxagoras' theory of homoeomeria ( see below, 830-920), arguing that as no known substance is hard enough to withstand eternal battering, atoms cannot be made up of any known substance.
28. For the background to, and difficulties in, L.'s theory of minimal parts, see Appendix C.
29. Heraclitus (floruit 500 BC). L. is hardly fair in his attack: H. is selected a) to represent the extreme Monist school of thought (and so his subtle theories of flux and concord are not considered), and b) to attack his more immediate rivals the Stoics, who were heavily influenced by him.
30. Heraclitus was nicknamed 'the Riddler' because of the obscurity of his language - obscurity well parodied in L.'s Latin here - note especially the synaesthetic metaphor 'dyed with ... sound.'
31. The impossibility of 'creation out of nothing' has already been established at 149-214. L. merely has to use the phrase ('creation out of nothing') to remind the reader of the earlier argument, cf. 757.
32. Stresses the neutrality of the atoms to prepare us for his attack on Anaxagoras' theory of homoeomeria below (830-920).
33. On the primacy and veracity of sense-experience see below Book 4.478-521.
34. Anaximenes of Miletus (floruit c. 546 BC).
35. Thales of Miletus (c. 625-545 BC).
36. A belief of some popular currency, according to Aristotle, Metaphysics 989a. It rounds off the four elements well.
37. Empedocles of Sicily (c. 493-433 BC) also wrote a didactic poem with the equivalent Greek title as Lucretius' poem. He is here chosen to represent Pluralism; as with Heraclitus, L. gives a partial and one-sided account of Empedocles' thought, omitting, for example, the vital doctrine of 'love and strife'.
38. That is, the south-western coast of Italy, near to the Aeolian islands. Rhegium is said to have been founded by Iocastus, son of Aeolus.
39. The whirlpool vividly described in Homer, Odyssey ! 2.101-110.
40. Explained fully at 6.639-702.
41. See Appendix C.
42. That is, neutral in substance, as opposed to, for example, Anaxagoras' elements (830-920).
43. The 'transformationist' theory mentioned is not Empedoclean, but is similar to one apparently held by Aristotle, On Coming into Being and Passing Away 2.4, the Stoics (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.84) and contains more than a hint of Heraclitus' 'upward and downward path'.
44. An axiomatic concept: cf. 2.750-54.
45. Pluralism is thus not complex enough to explain the wide variety of nutrition. On this topic see below 4.633-72.; 6.959-78, Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.40-61.
46. A common analogy to the atomic theory, appropriate for a writer: cf. 2.688-90.
47. Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor in about 500 BC and died in Athens in 428. He spent much of his life in Athens, where he was associated with Pericles and Euripides; he was however condemned and exiled from Athens on a charge of impiety when he asserted that the sun was not a divinity but rather a lump of red-hot stone. On this passage see R. D. Brown, Classical Quarterly 33 (1983) 146-6o.
48. That is, Heraclitus (see 658) and Empedocles and his followers (746-52).
49. A conventional poetic metaphor (cf. 4.450), but appropriate here to describe the hidden seeds of flame bursting out of the branches in the manner of flowers out of stalks.
50. L. uses the jingle ignis -lignum to illustrate the point verbally: the word he uses for 'letters' (elementa) can also mean 'particles'.
51. The Muses were the goddesses of literature and the arts, worshipped at Pieria, on the slopes of Mt Olympus, and Mt Helicon in Boeotia. This passage (926-50) is repeated almost verbatim at 4.1-25.
52. Pace Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 4.6-7), who claims that Epicureanism has 'taken over the whole of Italy'. For the appeal of Epicureanism see Introduction.
53. This would suggest that the poetry is of secondary, cosmetic significance compared to the philosophy being expounded. See on this Introduction and Appendix A.
54. Ancient 'books' were lengthy scrolls to be unwound sideways from one end to the other: L.'s verb evolvamus suggests the act of unrolling the scroll of the book further.
55. Cf. Locke, Essay on Human Understanding 2.13.21.
56. The observable downward force of gravity throughout infinite time would have dragged matter to the 'bottom' of a finite universe.
57. Gods are also made up of atoms and void like everything else. On Epicurean theology see Introduction.
58. L. opposes teleology on every possible occasion: cf. 4.823-42, 5.416- 508.
59. L. argues that finite matter would have dispersed out of all its atomic combinations throughout an infinite universe during infinite time. Again, the argument is: if P, then Q: not Q, therefore not-P.
60. One answer to the previous note: finite matter might be pushed together towards the centre of the universe. This theory can be found in Parmenides, Plato, the Peripatetics and the Stoics. L. is attacking the theory itself rather than any one exponent of it, but his contemptuous stolidis (1068) suggests Stoicis and was doubtless deliberate.
61. A gap of eight lines appears in the manuscript here: the translation supplies the minimum required to connect the lines we have. L. appears to have argued that if fire and air can escape to travel away from the earth, then other matter can do so also, and we thus face the dire consequences described. It may be, however, that this is a more substantial lacuna and that L. is here returning to the earlier argument for the infinity of matter, as Munro argued.
62. In the description of destruction, L. closes the book with a strong contrast to its opening paean of praise to the creative force of nature: just as the whole poem ends on a 'destructive' note.

BOOK TWO

1. For the apparent Schadenfreude of these lines see Introduction.
2. The life of futile relentless and even criminal struggling is often contrasted with the peaceful life of the wise man: cf. 3.6 2-93, which finishes with a repetition of 2. 55-61.
3. The three classes of pleasure are here adumbrated: the necessary ones to remove pain, the natural but unnecessary ones to provide 'pleasure', 'delight' (delicias), and then the empty ones which, being neither necessary nor natural, are to be avoided altogether. This interpretation is not agreed by all editors, some of whom - e.g., Munro - see a straight split between removing pain (good) and all forms of unnecessary pleasures (taking line 22 with what follows). On Epicurus' classification of pleasure see Introduction.
4. The description of the opulent household derives from Homer, Odyssey 7.100-102.
5. A truism often repeated by later writers of Epicurean sympathies, e.g. Horace, Epistles 1.2-47, Odes 3.1.25-48.
6.  The Plain of Mars, much used for army exercises, contained an altar of Mars in early times from which it derived its name.
7.  The imagery of the light of truth against the darkness of superstition recurs many times: e.g. 3.1ff. Lines 55-61 are repeated at 3.87-93 and 6.35- 41.
8. This notion of universal constancy in mutability will later be applied to human life, which has to give way to new generations by dying (3.964-71).
9.  The metaphor is of handing on the torch in a relay race: cf. Plato, Laws 776b.
10. The two causes of atomic movement. Epicurus postulated a universal downward movement in opposition to Aristotle's thesis of objects tending towards the centre of a spherical world - an argument rejected at 1.1050 1113.
11. It is axiomatic that atoms are constantly on the move because void can offer no resistance to their motion.
12. At 1.958-1007.
13. A traditional Atomist illustration: cf. Democritus fr. 200-203, 206, Aristotle, On the Soul 1.2.4o4a.
14. No atoms are visible, so L. has to postulate this 'snowballing' idea of cumulative force (cf. 4.193-4, 6.340-42) to explain the visibility of the movement of the particles.
15. Aristotle (Physics 215a24-216a21) had argued that the speed of moving bodies was 'determined by the ratio of their weight to the density of the medium' (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers vol. i p. 50): the zero density of void would leave no possibility of any such ratio, and would further leave all atoms moving at the same speed. Epicurus countered that the speed of atoms may be immeasurably great but that it is less than infinite, and that atomic speed is uniform (Letter to Herodotus 46-7,61-2.). 16.  That is, the atoms are made up of minimal parts but remain units as these minimal parts cannot be separated. See 1.599-634, Appendix C.
17. This paragraph argues against the Stoic (and Platonic) view of divine - and anthropocentric - creation of the world, citing the imperfection of the world as evidence: for the Stoic teleological view see, e.g., Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.37-9, 75-6.
18.  This follows at 5.156-234.
19. Cf.1.1092-3.
20. Cf.4.1049-51.
21. Cf.6.219-378.
22. On this vital topic and its implications, see Introduction.
23. This was a popular fallacy, and L. is not thinking of anybody in particular.
24. See note 17 above.
25. The Latin minimum translates Epicurus' term (elachiston) for the 'minimum magnitude' (see Appendix C, and Cicero, On Ends 1.19).
26. That is, the deterministic causation of, for example, Democritus and later the Stoics ( cf. Cicero, On Fate 39-43).
27. The mechanics of this are more fully explained at 4.877-906.
28.  The looseness of L.'s use of terms like 'mind' and 'heart' will be tightened up in the analysis of Book Three.
29. L. has not explained precisely how this happens, beyond postulating atomic indeterminacy to mirror the psychological indeterminacy we call free will.
30. This paragraph restates the principles of 1.159-264: despite the apparent flux of atomic motion, the universe is constant.
31. Answering the 'sunbeam' image of 112-41, where L. showed atomic movement in what is apparently still, he now demonstrates stability in matter, for all that it is made up of constantly moving atoms.
32. The following two sentences present an epic picture: cf. Homer, Iliad 2.457-8, 19.362-3; Odyssey 14.267-8.
33. A weak argument. Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus §42) has
a much stronger point when he argues that the obvious variety in the world could not be produced if all atoms were of the same shape. Nor is there any reason why an infinite number of atoms should not all be identical.
34. This famous passage shows L. at his most moving. Notice how the single scientific point (the calf is recognizably unique, hence individuals do differ) is expanded into a picture of immense artistry and power.
35. L. moves from the high pathos of the calf to lighter examples of the same phenomenon - note the humorous point that lambs on occasion go for the wrong udder.
36. A full account of lightning and thunderbolts is given below at 6.160-422.
37. L. imagines a lamp made of horn 'carried on a wet night' (M.F. Smith).
38. This point does not square well with Epicurus' belief that atoms were invisibly small - and anyway L. has already demolished the view that oil is not made up of 'oil' atoms, as Anaxagoras held (see above 1.830-920): either L. means 'atomic clusters' here, or else the persuasive power of the illustration outweighs its consistency with what has gone before.
39.  Cf. 4.615-72.
40.  The adjective 'stinking' suggests cremation rather than sacrifice of freshly slaughtered victims. For the smell of the dead cf. 6.1217.
41. Cilicia was famous for producing saffron - a solution of which was sprinkled in the Roman theatre: cf. Horace, Epistles 2.1.79. L. also uses the theatre for an analogy at 4.75-89.
42.  The axiomatic statement of Epicurean epistemology. Cf. 4.26-215.
43.  To be fully explained and commented on at 4.1037-1287.
44.  L. has already accounted for degrees of weight and density by the proportion of void within the matter (1.358-69; 2.100-108). He is now examining the degrees of fragility/hardness by arguing that atoms are either sharp or smooth and also either hooked or not. Surface hardness is caused by degrees of 'hookedness'.
45.  This conclusion is forced by Epicurus' refusal to believe in infinite divisibility of matter: if there is a lower limit (minimal parts1.599-634; see Appendix C), then each atom would contain a finite number of parts: infinity would extend the other way, causing atoms to be visible - and of even infinite size! - which we know that they are not.
46.  A town in Thessaly famous for the opulent purple murex dye obtained from shellfish.
47.  An interesting argument, working on the principle that things possess qualities to a greater or lesser degree: it is theoretically conceivable for qualities to be possessed to an infinite degree, unless there is only a finite number of atomic shapes that form the things possessing the qualities in question.
48.  Cf.1.1008-51.
49.  See 569-80 below.
50. There is no other evidence for this ivory wall in classical literature.
51.  For the moral aside on the folly of sailing the seas cf. 5.1004-6, Aratus, Phaenomena 110-11, Virgil, Georgics 1 .136f., Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.94ff.
52.  Matter is infinite, but nature observes a balance of forces, an equilibrium (isonomia) such that creation and destruction balance each other out: we infer this from the stability of the world around us, neither expanding nor shrinking.
53.  Cf. nature's rebuke to the man reluctant to die at 3.964- 8.
54.  Cf. 6.630-711.
55.  L. 'demythologizes' popular belief but here finds a philosophical justification for it.
56.  The Great Mother, Cybele, was a Phrygian goddess whose priests were called Corybantes, most of whom were said to be castrated ( cf. Catullus 63 for self-castration in worship of Cybele). Her worship was brought into Rome in 205-204 BC, the Corybantes becoming confused with the Curetes of Crete, partly because both Crete and Phrygia have a Mount Ida.
57.  Cf. St Augustine, City of God 7. 24.
58.  After Mount Ida in Phrygia. For the title of Idaean Mother cf. Livy xxix.10.5
59.  For the tale cf. Herodotus ii.2 and Dover's note on Aristophanes Clouds 398.
60.  Cf. Catullus 64.261-4.
61.  That is, a pruning-knife used for the castration of the frenzied devotee.
62.  Jupiter's mother Rhea hid him in a cave on Mount Dicte in Crete when his Father Saturn learned that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children: for fuller details see Graves, The Greek Myths vol. i pp. 39-44.
63.  Especially the Stoics: see Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.15.40. Of course L. himself can use the divine names for poetic purposes, e.g., 2.472, 3.221, 6.1076: the point being made is the reminder to avoid superstition.
64.  Cf 4.1209-32.
65.  But homogeneous: it was Anaxagoras' belief that the atoms are heterogeneous that L. has argued against at 1.830-920.
66.  The mechanics of sensation will be analysed in Book 4.
67.  Cf.1.823-5.
68.  Most obviously the legendary Centaurs, half man and half horse, whose non-existence is argued for at 5.878-924.
69.  The Scylla, a sea-monster with six heads, twelve feet and the voice of a dog (Homer, Odyssey 12.85 ff. ), later endowed with a girdle of dogs' heads around her waist (Virgil, Eclogue 6.74-5): see 5.893.
70.  The Chimera was a fire-breathing beast with the head of a lion, the body of a she-goat and the rear of a snake. Cf. 5.905-6, Homer, Iliad 6.181-2.
71. Cf.1122-43.
72.  Not only in excretion, but also in respiration and perspiration.
73.  A good example of the way L. can pass quickly from the microscopic to the telescopic, stressing the unity of the world.
74.  Size, shape and weight are the primary qualities of atoms: other qualities - the sensory qualities of color, taste, smell, heat, cold, sound - are secondary as they only apply to atomic compounds, not to individual atoms. He did not follow Democritus in regarding these secondary qualities as 'merely' subjective -- on the veracity of sense-impressions see 4.469-521. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is also not equivalent to that between sensory and non-sensory, as the primary qualities of size, weight and shape are also sensory, even if in practice the atoms are too small to be perceived.
75.  A deliberately stark statement: if colors can change, and atoms have colors, then atoms can change. If atoms can change they are not the permanent changeless foundation of matter, and the universe is no longer stable.
76.  This was probably the view of Anaxagoras.
77.  This is exactly the argument used against Anaxagoras' homoeomeria theory (1.875-96) applied to his theory of colors.
78.  L.'s reasoning for this perceptive argument is that the beams of light cause the atoms to rearrange themselves and so display a different color.
79.  L. does not explain why ravens are black: but see for example 4.1209-32 and 5.883-924 on the consistency of species.
80.  E.g. wind and water, the devastating effects of which have been graphically described at 1.265-97 in proving their atomic nature.
81.  Atoms cannot emit anything from themselves as they are indivisible: but L. is here confusing the qualities (heat, cold etc.) with the atomic emissions that communicate those qualities to our senses.
82.  Cf. Plato, Timaeus 50e.
83.  This is essential to the argument of Book 3 that the 'soul' is made up of insentient atoms which disperse at death and so kill all our conscious identity.
84.  Spontaneous production of animate from inanimate matter was attested by Aristotle (de generatione animalium 762a8ff.) and reflects deep uncertainty about the dividing-line between the animate and inanimate. On this see W. Capelle, 'Das Problem der Urzeugung bei Aristoteles und Theophrast und in der Folgezeit', Rheinisthes Museum 98 (1955) 150-80, Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy vol. vi pp. 236, 288-91.
85.  Cf. 1.900 Here, as there, L. is probably arguing against Anaxagoras.
86.  In the next book L. will tackle the difficult question of the difference between the - apparently identical - living body and the corpse.
87.  Anaxagoras again: at least the theory here attacked fits his homoeomeria theory perfectly (1.830-920).
88.  L. will go on to argue in the next book that sensation is communicated through the anima spread throughout the body.
89.  L.' S opponent here is usually seen as a Stoic, but see Furley, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 13 (1966) 24-5, for qualification of this. There is also perhaps a reminiscence of the theory of spontaneous generation of life, on which see note 87 above.
90.  This paragraph anticipates Book 3, especially 3.592-606 (fainting) and 476-86 (drunkenness).
91.  Cf. 434-41, 4.858-69. This sort of pleasure is kinetic pleasure, on which see Introduction.
92.  Cf. 1.919-20. L. as often creates a reductio ad absurdum to refute his opponents.
93.  Cf. 1.250-61, 5.795-836. L. uses the language of myth to great effect in this summary passage.
94.  As will be explained in Book Three.
95.  Cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.38.96.
96.  At 1.958-1001.
97.  Cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 45. The purpose of the argument here is at least partly to refute the idea of any being, even divine, being able to direct an infinity of worlds. Interestingly, the concept is not used to deny the anthropocentric nature of the universe.
98.  L. expressly denies all forms of teleology: cf. 4.823-57, 5.156-234 and 837-77. There remains the problem that L. appears to be stressing the random operation of chance in creating worlds, when the Atomists as a school preached iron determinism, with the caveats of Epicurus' notion of swerve and free will: L. presumably intends us to read the passage stressing the purposeless nature of the collisions, denying the volitional purposes of a creating deity.
99.  That is, male and female.
100.  Cf. 2.167-83, 5.110-234 and 6.379-422: Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 76, for the Epicurean anti-theological viewpoint.
101.  All these points are repeated and expanded at 6.379-422: see notes to pp. 176-8.
102.  The whole of this final passage is based on the idea that worlds are organisms like all others and so are subject to birth, growth, decay and death. The destruction of the world is as certain as our own death, cf. 5.91-415 and 6.601-7.
103.  Cf.4.858-69.
104.  L. appears to end the book with a pessimistic note of degeneration reminiscent of the 'Golden Age' idea found in, for example, Hesiod, Works and Days 109-201, Aratus, Phainomena 96-136, Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89-150.  Epicureanism of course denied the myth of primitive paradise, but L. stresses our moral backwardness until enlightened by Epicurus: cf. 3.59-86, 5.988-1010.
105.  Cf. Homer, Iliad 8.19, Plato, Theaetetus 153c.
106.  As held by, e.g., Anaximander cf. 5.793-4.
107.  As does, e.g., Nestor in Homer, Iliad 1.260-73 and Virgil, Aeneid 12.900.
108.  The image of the ship going aground on the rocks echoes the words with which the book began, where the wise man surveys serenely the plight of the foolish mariner in rough seas.

BOOK THREE

1.  Epicurus. L. begins Books 1, 3, 5 and 6 with panegyric of this sort.
2.  Epicurus was not the inventor of the Atomic theory, in fact. Cf. Introduction.
3.  Imagery of light of truth versus dark of ignorance and superstition: cf. 1.146-8, etc.
4.  The following description of the gods' abode is inspired by Homer, Odyssey 6.42-6. (See West, The Imagery and Poetry of Lutretius 31-3.) On the serenity of the gods, see Introduction.
5.  Acheron was one of the rivers of the Underworld.
6.  L. gives a quick resume of the first two books before launching into this one.
7.  As ever, the ethical purpose is all-important, the philosophy is expounded to eradicate the fear.
8.  For example, Empedocles and Anaximenes respectively (on whom see Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 472- 507). 'The whim' suggests, however, that L. is referring to people who wear their materialistic ideas without any deep philosophical commitment.
9.  The pose of being a tough-minded materialist is thus shown up for what it is.
10.  For the diatribe against contemporary society cf. Sallust Catiline 10.3-5, Catullus 64.397-408 and Fowler in Griffin and Barnes, Philosophia Togata 135ff.
11.  L. is clearly alluding to Rome's contemporary civil strife: see Introduction.
12.  L. here appears to be offering a more altruistic reason for adopting Epicureanism: not just to benefit the individual, but also to inculcate moral responsibility.
13.  'Mind' is the closest word in English to L.'s animus, the rational part of the soul.
14.  For this belief see, e.g., Plato, Phaedo 86b, Aristotle, On the Soul 407b27ff., Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 488-92.
15.  'Possession' of harmony simply means an arrangement of its parts so as to appear harmonious: it is of course not the same as possessing a heart or a leg.
16.  Whereas, if the soul were simply a condition of the body, it would have to feel the same as the body.
17.  Cf. 4.907-1036 for the analysis of sleep.
18.  Anima, the irrational part of the soul. L.'s clinching argument against the harmonia theory is saved until this paragraph: if the soul is a condition of the whole body, then why do bodies die when they have lost only wind and heat? ( cf. 211-15 below).
19.  Harmonia was a term used in music to describe the tuning of the strings of a lyre: it is not accidental that one of the chief exponents of the 'harmony' theory of the soul was the musician Aristoxenus (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.10.19).
20.  But L. only shows it to be the apparent seat of the emotions, not the intellect. For the 'soul within the breast' cf. Homer, Iliad 1.188-92, 9.255-6.
21.  Cf. Sappho fr. 31, Catullus 51.
22.  Cf.2.381-97.
23.  A double contrast is to be set up: poppy-seeds are light and smooth, contrasted to the heaviness of stones and the spikiness of corn respectively.
24.  Cf. 1 .331.
25.  That is, wine.
26.  That is, wind, air and heat; wind and air are seen as separate entities partly to fit the psychological 'types' L. will go on to infer from them (2.88-322). Air gives placidity, fire gives anger, wind gives fear ... but what gives sensation? The nameless fourth element.
27.  Whereas before (122) L. had the spirit leaving through the mouth.
28.  L. is apologizing, as Kerferd suggests, for the absence of a Latin term for the Greek krama (blending). Cf 1.136-9, 832.
29.  The blending is so complete that the atoms of the four substances are combined into a new substance.
30.  The 'fourth element' rules the spirit, and the spirit rules the body.
31.  L. first describes temporary changes in mood caused by temporary changes in the prominence of the four elements (282-93): he then describes permanent temperaments caused thus (294-322).
32.  This attempts to counter the obvious objection that if our nature is atomically predisposed as he argues, then we cannot change ourselves to become Epicureans as he would like. Again, the determinism of the Atomists has to be tempered by Epicurus to make our 'conversion' possible. On divine serenity, see Introduction.
33.  A good example, as the matter would look the same (as the corpse can look alive), but it would have ceased to have the essential properties of incense: unlike water losing its secondary quality of heat (339-40).
34.  L. is in this paragraph at his most dogmatic, stating rather than proving his contentions.
35.  Cf. the argument against Scepticism at 4.469-99.
36.  As did, apparently, Heraclitus (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 7.129) and especially the Stoics (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.2.0.46).
37.  Democritus of Abdera (c. 460-c.356 BC), the founder of the Atomic theory. For L.'s respect for his predecessor, cf. his words on Empedocles at 1.730.
38.  Cf. 179-230.
39.  Cf.278.
40.  The gaps between spirit atoms must be greater than the tiniest phenomena mentioned here.
41.  This is of course fallacious. All conscious people are alive, but not all living people are conscious.
42.  This demonstrates that the person can survive the loss of part of the spirit (anima) spread through the limbs, but not the loss of the mind (animus) in the breast.
43.  Alcmeon of Croton, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, medical expert and philosopher, is said to have dissected an eye: the gruesome detail here may suggest this great Presocratic thinker to the reader, especially as Alcmeon argued strongly for the immortality of the spirit. L. is thus using Alcmeon's own techniques against his own theories. See Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 114-20, 478-9.
44.  In fact this begins the next major section of the book (417-829), the 29 proofs of the mortality of the spirit.
45.  This is not idle rhetoric. Plato argued for the pre-existence of the soul before birth (Phaedo 70C-77d) as did also the Orphics, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Posidonius, Varro and Aristotle. On this see 670ff. L. here means that the spirit is unique to this body, born with it and dying with it.
46.  See Appendix B on Memmius.
47.  177-230.
48.  L. will analyse the mechanics of perception through images at 4.45-521 and 722-857.
49.  For the image of the vessel cf. 6.17-23. For the notion of the body as the prison or tomb of the soul cf. Plato Gorgias 493a.
50.  As does the earth itself: cf. 2.1144-5 2, 5.91-415, 6.601-7.
51.  L. has a scathing portrayal of mourners later in the book (894-911).
52.  Cf. 1024-52.
53.  The 'Sacred Disease' well analysed by Hippocrates, and suffered by Julius Caesar (Suetonius, Julius Caesar 45).
54.  The Greek medical writers ascribed diseases such as epilepsy to a surfeit of one of the 'humours' in the body (bile, phlegm and serum). Cf. 4.664, Plato Timaeus 82e.
55.  Greek writers seeking to display madness often used some of the symptoms of epilepsy (frothing mouth, rolling eyes, etc. ); cf. Euripides, Heracles 931-4, Medea 1173ff., Bacchae 1122-3.
56.  Anything that can be altered can be killed: not a water-tight argument, but resting on the vital atomic characteristic of 'impassivity' (cf. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 345-6) and the axiomatic statement of 519-20 (cf. 1.670-71, 792-3, 2.753-4). The same argument that proved the immortality of the atoms now proves the mortality of the soul.
57.  Reminiscent of the slow death of Socrates (Plato, Phaedo 117e-118a).
58.  A weak ending to the argument. The body is stripped of life, to be sure, but the spirit may be thus kept intact.
59.  Cf. 94-7 and 136-40. This is L.'s simplest line of attack; the spirit is part of the body, and the body is patently mortal ... the spirit is mortal.
60.  A weaker analogy, as the vessel does not have the sort of atomic interweaving with its contents that the spirit and body have (cf. 313-349). None the less L. continues the analogy into the picture of the 'bodily envelope' later.
61.  Another Lucretian reductio ad absurdum; cf. 367-9 above, 727-8 below.
62.  A staggering non sequitur. The dissolution of the body will not impress those who believe that it is merely the tomb from which the soul has happily escaped ( cf. 612-14).
63.  L. now has slightly stronger inductive reasons - so long as one accepts the analysis of the spirit as spread throughout the body.
64.  For example, Polygnotus (c. 475-445 BC), who painted a fresco of Odysseus talking in the Underworld with Tiresias.
65.  For example, Homer, Odyssey Book II, where Odysseus visits the underworld and talks with the dead.
66.  That is, the poet does not claim to have seen the Oriental tactic of using scythed chariots for himself. For their effects see Livy 37.41, Xenophon, Anabasis 1.8.10.
67.  That is, climb up on to the chariot to attack the driver.
68.  Unless the separate parts instantly become independent beings with their own spirits.
69.  After arguing against survival of death, L. now turns to the theory of the pre-existence of the soul: see note 45 above.
70.  As claimed by, for example, Empedocles (fr. 117, Diogenes Laertius 8.77: 'I have already been a boy and a girl, a bush, a bird and a leaping fish'). Plato attempts to prove this memory (anamnesis) at Meno 81ff.
71.  On this argument see Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 492-5.
72.  A reference perhaps to the Pythagorean doctrine soma sema (the body is the tomb <of the soul>).
73.  For the theory of spontaneous generation of living out of inanimate matter see 2.871-3 and note 87.
74.  There follows a series of comic questions to ridicule the theory of his opponent. For this tactic cf. 6.387-422.
75.  Alluding perhaps to the idea that the child is formed entirely by the father, the mother being merely a receptacle for its growth. Cf. Aeschylus, Eumemides 657- 66.
76.  Renowned for their ferocity and believed to have interbred with tigers (Aristotle, Natural History of Animals 8.607a). Hyrcania is on the Caspian Sea.
77.  Again, mocking questions to ridicule the opponent, as at note 75 above.
78.  Cf. 1.881-4. L. is here setting up the impossible scenario that belief in immortality would necessitate, a hyperbolic rhetorical device known as the adynaton: cf. e.g. 6. 1076-7.
70.  The following passage is repeated (with minor changes) at 5.351-63.
8o.  The first half of this paragraph suggests the carefree eternity of the gods ( cf. 18-24): the second half is a sharp reminder of the grim reality of human frailty, its defects both physical and moral.
81.  Here begins the final diatribe against the fear of death which closes the book. The axiom that death is nothing to us is from Epicurus himself (Key Doctrines 2).
82.  That is, in the Punic Wars, especially the second (218-201 BC). By L.'s day the war had been turned into high epic poetry by Ennius, and some of L.'s phrasing here suggests parody of the earlier poet.
83.  A sharp reminder that we are no more than the temporary union of atoms.
84.  As suggested by e.g. Pythagoras, the Stoics (see, for example, Nemesius 309.5-311.2.) and, much later, Nietzsche (see Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers 503-7).
85.  It is difficult to see how L. could deny this, having established infinity of time and the randomness of atomic collisions in Books One and Two.
86.  Perhaps a reference to the custom of the Persian Magi who exposed corpses to beasts and birds of prey (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.45.108).
87.  Exactly the fate that befell Polynices in Sophocles' Antigone, in which the eponymous heroine gave up her life to see him buried. The Epicurean would see her sacrifice as pointless.
88.  Honey was often used for embalming the dead. L. is here effectively pointing out that all methods of disposal of corpses are equally disgusting when imagined. For discussion of the relativity of burial customs - and a bizarre example - see Herodotus 3.38.
89.  A much admired and imitated passage, for all the irony of L.'s writing. Cf. Virgil, Georgics 2.523-4, Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' 21-4. That the sentiments expressed are conventional is shown by Lattimore Themes in Greek and Latin Epigraphs (1962) 172-7.
90.  An obvious example of exactly this scene is found at Petronius, Satyricon 34.6-10: the theme becomes a commonplace of later 'sympotic' poetry, e.g., Horace, Odes 1.11, Propertius 2.15.
91.  Personification of abstract forces (prosopopeia) is a common rhetorical device: cf. 6.1241-2. ('Negligence'), Plato, Crito 5oa-54d (the Laws), Cicero, Catilinarian Orations 1.7.18 (Rome). L.'s personification of nature is also to be found at e.g. 6.226 and 1135.  See Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex 229.
92.  Cf. 1003-10, 6.20-21.
93.  Epicurus addresses a similar challenge to pessimists at Letter to Menoeceus 126-7 , although the wise man will 'keep his share in life' even if he lose his eyes (Diogenes Laertius 10.119), unlike the Stoic acceptance of suicide (Diogenes Laertius 7.130)
94.  Perhaps a reference to the myth of the centaur Chiron, who was granted immortality but ended up begging for death: some say because he was in agony after being shot by an arrow from Heracles, others that he was sick of his long life (Graves, The Greek Myths 2.113).
95.  Cf. 1.263-4, 2.71-9. The eternal atoms are needed constantly and are only borrowed for a time.
96.  This section allegorizes superstitious myths in moral terms. The Homeric version of the myth shows Tantalus standing in a pool of water that recedes when he tries to drink it, with fruit-trees above him that the wind blows out of reach whenever he tries to grasp them: in this version he is punished for stealing the nectar and ambrosia of the gods by having a stone suspended over him. (Pindar, Olympian 1. 55-64, Virgil, Aeneid 6.6o2-3).
97.  A giant who tried to rape the goddess Leto. His punishment was to have his liver eaten by vultures (cf. Homer, Odyssey 11.576-81).
98.  Sisyphus betrayed Zeus' abduction of Aegina to her father, the river-god Asopus, and was punished by being made to roll a boulder uphill that would never reach the top (cf. Homer, Odyssey 11.593-600, Graves, The Greek Myths 1.216-18).
99. The Danaids, who murdered their husbands and were condemned to draw water in sieves.
100.  Three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld.
101.  Primeval beings, female in form, who avenge crimes especially of bloodshed within the family: cf. Aeschylus' Eumenides.
102.  Tartarus was that part of the Underworld where the wicked suffer their punishment.
103.  The Tarpeian Rock at the south-western corner of the Capitoline Hill, from which criminals sentenced to death were flung.
104.  Ancus Martius was the fourth King of Rome. The sentence is in imitation of the line of Ennius (Annales 149v): 'after good Ancus left the light with his eyes'.
105.  Xerxes King of Persia built a bridge of boats across the Hellespont in 480 BC (Herodotus 7.33-7).
106.  Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major, who defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 BC.
107.  Early Greek poet and traditionally seen as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
108.  Democritus (cf. note 37 above) is said to have starved himself to death (Diogenes Laertius 9.43).
109.  The only mention of Epicurus by name in the whole poem and the culmination of the catalogue of great men.
110.  That travel by itself does not free men of themselves became a commonplace: cf. Horace's famous line 'those who run across the sea change the climate but not themselves' (Epistles 1 .11.2.7: cf. Odes 2.16.18-20).
111.  The satirical portrait is unmistakably Roman.
112.  Cf. Plato, Republic 35 2.a, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1166b. 13-14: but whereas they speak of the wicked, L. speaks of the 'sick' man whose sickness could be cured with the knowledge granted by Epicureanism.
113.  For the simple reason that infinity minus x is still infinite, for any value of x except infinity.

Go to Next Page