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Lucretius
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Jerome's claim that Cicero "emended" Lucretius' work must be met with equal scepticism. The casual remark in Cicero's letter to his brother (see above) sounds like the remark of a first-time reader, not an editor. It might of course be argued that Cicero and his brother had been given access to Lucretius' unpublished manuscript, and that later, after writing the letter, Cicero took it upon himself to correct and edit the work. However, this seems to be quite out of character for Cicero. Firstly, there is no indication that he ever involved himself with the publication of any literary works but his own, and, secondly, there is no indication of any personal acquaintance with Lucretius, which might have prompted such an involvement.
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According to Lucretius what is the first principle of Nature (150)? What benefit does an understanding of this principle bring to man (151-158)? Give one argument that Lucretius uses to support this principle (159-214). What is needed for anything created to come into existence (205-206)? What are all things made of (215-224)? Why must these basic elements of matter be indestructible (225-237)?
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In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius sought to clear the mental rubbish that obscures reality. He exposed flaws in common assumptions about gods. To begin with, he scoffed at the anthropocentric notion that gods created the earth for humans. The terrain and climate are woefully inhospitable, he observed, unkind to our mortalities (as Herman Melville might say): "Of all that the sky covers with its mighty expanse, a great part is possessed by mountains and forests full of wild beasts, rocks and marshes, and seas that keep the lands far apart. Much of this land is barred to mortals by scorching heat and constant frost. Of the land that is left, nature would cover it with brambles except that man’s power resists.
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Lucretius certainly fares better here than Aristippus, but, nonetheless, Ficino states his philosophical allegiance plainly. The letter was evidently written before Ficino had begun work on the De Amore. In a sense, the last sentence of the quotation constitutes a summary of the culminating speech of the De Amore, wherein Ficino exalts divine Socratic love over its base and sensual worldly counterpart. And it is precisely to elaborate upon divine love's antithesis—erotic obsession, by which madness "man sinks back to the nature of beast"—that he presses Lucretius into service. 24
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Titus Lucretius Carus (c 99-55 BCE) is known as the author of the poem, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Other than that, virtually nothing is known about Lucretius other than what can be deduced from the poem itself. From this source (some 7,400 hexameter lines), he appears to have been a well-educated Roman who had traveled as far as Sicily and avoided falling victim to the murderous politics of his time. His poem was an attempt to popularize the “obscure discoveries” of Epicurus, who lived about 240 years earlier. By doing this, Lucretius provided what is now the fullest surviving exposition of Epicurean philosophy. In it, Lucretius argues that the darkness of the mind brought about by superstitious fears should be scattered by a dispassionate view of the inner laws of nature.
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In Doing Lucretius, Sidney Burris crosses a sensibility shaped by a classical education with a contemporary culture that finds such an education increasingly remote and forbidding. Molding his artistry and buttressing his response to modern society with the literature of the ancient world, Burris displays in his work an unabashed reverence for the various traditions—literary, cultural, familial—that guide him, but maintains that these conventions must now and again be interrogated and overthrown.
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