On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (58 page)

280–9
just as water…
: the behaviour of wind is compared to that of water in an extended comparison which is at once an Epicurean scientific analogy and an epic simile with multiple correspondences between tenor and vehicle.

330
There is void in things
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
37. The Epicureans were one of the few philosophical schools to accept the notion of empty space within the universe.

402
these small traces
: the hunting simile here develops a central metaphorical complex of
On the Nature of the Universe
, the pursuit of the truth by following up the ‘traces’ (the Latin word also means footprints) visible in the phenomenal world. The metaphors go back to Epicurus (e.g.
Letter to Pythocles
96) and continue to underlie much scientific and other thinking.

419–20
All nature… consists | Of two things
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
40.

445–8
no third substance…
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
40, ‘besides these nothing can even be thought of either by conception or on analogy with things that can be conceived, if considered as an independent entity rather than the accidents or properties of such an entity’.

449–50
properties… | Or… accidents
: for the transition here see the passage from the
Letter to Herodotus
quoted in the previous note: Epicurus discusses the distinction in more detail later in the
Letter
, at 68–71.

459–63
Time… does not exist by itself…
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
72–3.

464–82
Helen’s rape | And Troy’s defeat…
: Lucretius simultaneously attacks rival semantic theories (the target is disputed, but it may be in part Stoic) and the epic tradition going back to Homer’s
Iliad
: in contrast Epicurean semantics retain a firm grip on reality.

483–4
Material objects are of two kinds
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
40 (immediately after the passage quoted on 445–8), ‘among bodies, some are compounds, others those of which compounds are formed’.

485–6
no force can ever quench
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
41, ‘and these latter [i.e. atoms] are indivisible and unchangeable… being completely solid in nature’.

499
In a few verses
: in fact, we get a series of eleven arguments, most of which are not found in the
Letter to Herodotus
. The plethora of proofs has an epic amplitude, and demonstrates how Lucretius has drawn ‘bounteous draughts from springs o’erflowing’ (412).

521
The universe
: the first explicit mention of the universe as a whole since the prologue (74), preparing for the arguments in 951 ff. In contrast, the
Letter to Herodotus
mentions ‘the all’ from the beginning.

567
air, water, earth, and fire
: the Epicureans accepted the notion of four elements, but denied that they were primary: see below 705 ff. attacking Empedocles.

596
deep-set boundary stone
: these important lines (594–6) recur at 76 ff., 5. 89 ff., and 6. 65 ff. Epicureanism laid great stress on the fact that the clear boundaries between what is possible and what is not bring certainty to human life.

601–2
the smallest | Thing that can possibly exist
: the Epicureans believed in a universe where there were minimal units of space and time. The smallest possible atom would be one minimal space unit in each dimension, but the dimensions of most atoms would be greater than this, since atoms varied in shape. Cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
56–9, in a discussion of primary qualities (treated by Lucretius in 2. 80 ff.).

635–920 Lucretius refutes in turn the views of three ‘pre-Socratic’ physical philosophers: Heraclitus (
c
.500
BC
), who made fire the principle of his cosmology, Empedocles (
c
.492–392
BC
), who had a system of four elements, and Anaxagoras (
c
.500–428
BC
), who believed that there was an unlimited number of different stuffs. They represent three rival approaches to the substance of the physical world: monism, limited pluralism, and unlimited pluralism. Lists of the opinions of the various philosophers (‘Doxography’) existed in various forms in antiquity, and establishing one’s own views through argument with rival approaches was a standard device of ancient as of modern philosophy: see especially Aristotle,
Metaphysics
1. 983
^a
. Epicurus’ discussion of the pre-Socratics came in Books 14 and 15 of
On Nature
(see Introduction): the later Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda (fr. 6) tackles a superset of Lucretius’ list. In each case the favoured approach is seen as the culmination of earlier efforts: similarly Lucretius (following in the footsteps of his master) comes immediately after the trio of earlier philosophers.

638
Heraclitus, famed for his dark sayings
: Heraclitus of Ephesus expounded in riddling aphorisms a system in which fire was the underlying substance of the universe, constantly changing into other forms. He was later popular 222
Notes to pp. 22–6
with the Stoics, who also made a form of fire their primary substance, and hence a good initial target (as in Diogenes of Oenoanda). Lucretius puns on the second element of his name, which means ‘renowned’ in Greek, and also attacks Heraclitus’ obscurity of language (in contrast to what he will claim for himself in 921 ff.) and military metaphors.

670
things have limits fixed
: the principle that change is a form of death is used on several occasions in
On the Nature of the Universe
(cf. 1. 792–3, 2. 753–4, 3. 519–20): ironically it goes back to Heraclitus (fr. B6: cf. also Melissus (fifth century
BC
) fr. B7).

707
air is the principle
: this was the view of Anaximenes (sixth century
BC
) and Diogenes of Apollonia (fifth century
BC
), while Thales (sixth century
BC
) was said to have made water his single principle: there was no major thinker who upheld the claims of earth.

716–17
Empedocles | Of Acragas
: see Introduction. The description of Sicily (Acragas, modern Agrigento, is in the south of the island) suggests a possible genesis for the four elements of his theory in his native land, and demythologizes the stories associated with it.

722
Charybdis
: a mythical whirlpool situated opposite Scylla (cf.
Odyssey
12. 101 ff.) and later located in the Straits of Messina, which separate Sicily from Reggio di Calabria.

738–9
more holy… | Than those the Delphic prophetess pronounced
: repeated in
Book 5
(111 ff.) of Lucretius himself. The priestess of Apollo at Delphi still in Lucretius’ day gave notoriously ambiguous verse oracles, sitting on the tripod of the god and crowned with laurel, but the imagery of oracular inspiration was often appropriated by philosophers, including Epicureans. Cf. Epicurus,
Vatican Sayings
29, Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
10. 12, Philodemus,
On Piety
71. 2044–5, Cicero,
On the Nature of the Gods
1. 66,
On Divination
1. 23.

782
these men
: Aristotle and the Peripatetics, and later the Stoics, believed in the interchangeability of the four elements.

824
letters common to many words
: a famous comparison of the composition of the world to the composition of the text (cf. 1. 196 ff., 912 ff., 2. 688 ff., 1013 ff.). The analogy of atoms and letters goes back to the early atomists (cf. Aristotle,
Metaphysics
1. 4. 985
^b
,
On Generation and Corruption
315
^b
), but Lucretius considerably extends the scope of the comparison.

830–920
Anaxagoras’ | Homoeomeria…
: Anaxagoras believed the basic stuffs of the world were infinitely divisible, and that the things we see around us were mixtures of all these stuffs. Modern scholars doubt that the word
homoeomeria
(Greek for ‘similar-partedness’) was used by him, but it was widely seen as his term in antiquity: it probably derives from Aristotle’s discussion (
Metaphysics
1. 984
^a
11 ff.). As with the other pre-Socratic philosophers in
this section, Anaxagoras’ linguistics come under scrutiny as well as his physics. Anaxagoras was said to be the pre-Socratic philosopher most admired by Epicurus (Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
10. 12), perhaps because of his scientific explanations for natural phenomena (he was exiled from Athens for denying the divinity of the sun: cf. 5. 114 ff.): Democritus praised his formulation of the empiricist principle that visible phenomena can be evidence for the unseen (Sextus Empiricus,
Against the Professors
7. 140).

919–20
shake their sides and rock with laughter
: the argument is repeated at 2. 976 ff.

923
holy wand
: the ‘thyrsus’ carried by Bacchants in their worship of Dionysus. The Bacchic trance was a symbol for inspiration from the time of Plato on (cf.
Ion
553e ff.); Lucretius again flirts with religious language in turning to his own rationalist account of the world.

926
A pathless country of the Pierides
: after describing and criticizing rival views, Lucretius uses the language of poetic initiation to describe his own mission. The details of the scene are common in poetry from the time of Hesiod (seventh century
BC
), who described in his
Theogony
a meeting with the Muses on Mt Helicon (in his home region of Boeotia) but who says that they were born further north in Pieria (near Mt Olympus: cf.
Theogony
53,
Works and Days
1). Lucretius perhaps pointedly dissociates his ‘Pierian’ inspiration (cf. 1. 946) from the commoner setting on Mt Helicon (cf. 1. 118, 3. 1037). The Hellenistic poet Callimachus (third century
BC
) dreamt of a meeting with the Muses on Helicon at the opening of his influential poem the
Aetia
and images such as those of the untrodden path and the untouched spring go back to his poetry and are associated with his aesthetic of small-scale precision. Lucretius appropriates this imagery (as had Ennius in the opening of his
Annals
, cf. 1. 117 ff.) but stresses that his revelation is ‘of matters high’ (931: cf. 5. 1 ff.): ‘the pathless country’ of poetic exclusivity is also the sublimely infinite universe of the Epicureans (cf. 1. 958 ff.).

933
of things so dark in verse so clear
: clarity was the sole virtue of style for Epicurus (Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
10. 13), and Lucretius sets himself against the obscurities of philosophers such as Heraclitus (cf. 1. 639 ff.) as well as against poetical fancy. Language is, however, not simply transparent: it is also itself a source of illumination (cf. 941 ff., 1114 ff.).

938
Sweet yellow honey on the goblet’s rim
: the celebrated image of the ‘honey round the cup’: poetry sweetens the philosophical message. This does not tell the whole story of the role of poetry in
On the Nature of the Universe
, but it stresses how the verse both brings the reader to drink and holds the reader in its grip while the ‘medicine’ of philosophy does its work. The image goes back to Plato (
Laws
2. 659e).

970
and threw a flying lance
: the argument from stretching out a hand or a stick at the end of the universe goes back to the Pythagorean mathematician Archytas (fourth century
BC
, fr. A24), but Lucretius rephrases it in terms of the Roman practice of declaring war by a priest launching the ‘fetial spear’ into enemy territory (cf. Livy 1. 32).

1052–3
the theory… | That all things press towards the centre of the universe
: versions of this view were held by both the Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle) and the Stoics.

1094–1101 There is an eight-line gap in the manuscripts at this point, caused by damage to an earlier copy.

1101–2
the ramparts of the world | Would burst asunder
: for the image of the ‘ram-parts’ or walls of the world, cf. 1. 73 (where Epicurus travels beyond them) and 2. 1144 ff. in another concluding description of cosmic destruction. Like all compounds, our world-system is held together by the interlacing of atoms (2. 99 ff.) and will one day decay. The image is not found in Epicurus, but he does remark that because of the fear of death all people live in a city without walls (
Vatican Sayings
31). The analogy between the world and a city state sets civil order within a wider cosmic perspective, especially for a Roman for whom the walls of Rome were sacrosanct (cf. Virgil,
Aeneid
1. 7).
Book 1
ends with a counter-factual destruction of the world:
Book 2
will end with its collapse in actuality.

1116
Right to the heart of nature’s mysteries
: after the preceding apocalypse,
Book 1
ends with the reader promised in the language of the Greek mysteries a continuing revelation and passage from darkness to light (see 3. 1 ff. and nn.). The lines are a partial translation of Empedocles fr. B110.

1–13
A joy it is…
: like
Book 1
,
Book 2
begins with pleasure: in the figure known to modern rhetoricians as the ‘Priamel’, the pleasures of watching others’ distress on sea or land when safe oneself are capped by those of the wise, for whom, as Francis Bacon paraphrased in his essay
On Truth
, ‘no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below’. (Cf. George Eliot,
Felix Holt
, ch. 30, and the heading ‘Lucretian Pleasure in a Hot Bath’ in John Betjeman,
Summoned by Bells
, ch. 7.)