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Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 - 55
BC) was a Roman poet and
philosopher, whose contribution was to free men's minds of superstition and fear of death. He focused more on the law than did earlier Epicureans, but persuasively transmitted their physics and psychology. He was the first Epicurean to
write in Latin.
We know very little about Lucretius' life; one source of information (generally considered unreliable) is St. Jerome, who mentions Lucretius in the Chronica Eusebia. According
to Jerome, Lucretius was born in 94 BC, and
died at the age of 44. He claims that much of Lucretius's work was written under the influence of drugs, and he died after
drinking a love-potion. These claims about Lucretius' life have been discredited for two main reasons: firstly, the Epicurean
philosophy expounded by Lucretius sets great store on reason and discourages
romantic attachments; and secondly, it seems likely that Jerome, as one of the early church fathers, would have wanted to discredit Lucretius's philosophy, which includes disbelief in any kind
of life after death and in any divinity concerned with man's welfare.
Cicero implies in one of his letters to his brother that they had once read
Lucretius' poem. This is the last mention of Lucretius until Donatus, in his "Life" of Virgil, while stating that Virgil assumed
the toga virilis on
October 15, 55 BC, adds "it happened on that very day Lucretius the poet died."
If Jerome is accurate about Lucretius' age (44) when he died, then based on other evidence that confirms 55 BC as Lucretius' year
of death we can then conclude he was born in 99 BC.
However the only certain fact of Lucretius' life is that he was either a friend or a client of Gaius Memmius, to whom he dedicated his poem
On the Nature of Things (De Rerum
Natura). This poem is also unfinished, although Jerome says that Cicero "amended" it -- which may mean he edited it for its
eventual publication.
Lucretius attempts in his poem On the Nature of Things to present a total Epicurean worldview. Ranging from the nature of matter to sex, politics, and death, the poem is encyclopedic, and
is considered one of the masterpieces of Latin verse.
His use of the hexameter is very individual and ruggedly distinct from the
smooth urbanity of Virgil or Ovid. He hammers
home his message in verses that strike hard and stick. The poetic intensity of the whole poem is at its most concentrated in its
volcanic opening, an invocation to Venus, Spring and the power of love and human reason.
The sustained energy of Lucretius' writing is unparallelled in Latin literature, with the possible exception of parts of Tacitus's Annals, or perhaps books II and IV of the Aeneid.
External links
- The Perseus Project -- Latin and Greek authors (with
English translations), including Lucretius
- On the Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean
Philosophy of Nature -- Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation, 1841
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