1030–9 Take first the bright pure azure of the sky… : Lucretius here perverts to his own ends a theist argument used by Aristotle in his lost dialogue On Philosophy (fr. 12, Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2. 37): if people living underground suddenly saw the sky for the first time, they would believe it the work of god.
1101 Oft shatter his own temples: see below on 6. 417.
1105 Since the first natal hour of the world: 1077–89 had introduced the idea that worlds are born and die, and 1090–1104 had then in a sense concluded the section on the infinite number of worlds, highlighting the problems the notion poses for a belief in divine providence. The book concludes by returning to the birth, growth, acme, decay, and death of worlds, in relation to the specific example of our world-system. The model is that of human growth and decay, and the passage also therefore again leads into the discussion of human mortality in Book 3. Plato in the Timaeus (33a, 81b, etc.) had rejected the implications of the biological analogy (especially in relation to matter coming in from outside) for the mortality of the world-system, presumably in opposition to the use of it by Democritus (cf. fr. A40): Lucretius’ employment reflects elements of Plato’s attack as well as atomist tradition.
1107 added | In multitudes from outside: Epicurus (Letter to Pythocles 89) talks of ‘irrigations’ of the world by atoms from outside. See below on 6. 483 ff.
1153 No golden chain: Zeus in Homer, Iliad 8. 19, says that he could not be pulled down from heaven even if all the gods pulled on a golden chain. This was allegorized in various ways by philosophers and commentators, though there is no close parallel to Lucretius’ interpretation, which has more the air of parody.
1173 all things… |… are moving towards their end: the ‘pessimistic’ end to the book is paralleled by those to Books 3, 4, and 6, whereas 1 and 5 end more ‘optimistically’: in each case there is a reference to movement and change which is both closural and potentially suggestive of continuance. At the opening of Book 3 Epicurus will bring light into this darkness.
Book Three
1–30 You, who from so great darkness could uplift | So clear a light… : Book 3 begins with a ‘hymn to Epicurus’ which recalls the opening hymn to Venus: hence e.g. the repeated second-person address typical of hymns (cf. 9 ff.). There is a similar dispersal of darkness (cf. 1. 6 ff., 3. 16 ff.) and opening up of the world to joy and light, and Epicurus reveals the life of the gods in terms which recall 1. 44 ff. in the prologue to Book 1; he is the father (9 ff.) where she was the mother of things (1. 1 ff.).
3 glory of the Greeks: Epicurus is again referred to with an honorific periphrasis: cf. above on 1. 67 ff. ‘man of Greece’, and compare Venus’ address as ‘delight of men and gods’ in 1. 1 ff.
4 footprints: see above on 1. 402 and 926 ff. Lucretius follows up the tracks of Epicurus, which are also the tracks through the wilderness which lead us to the truth.
14–15 Starts to proclaim the nature of the world: Epicurus’ proclamation is phrased in terms which recall again the Eleusinian mysteries, at the climactic point of which the initiate was brought into a room filled with light and received a mystic announcement by the priest of the birth of a child and revelation of happiness after death (cf. e.g. Plutarch, On the Soul fr. 178, and, for the shout of the priest, Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 5. 8. 40). Lucretius’ revelation, on the other hand, is that there is no afterlife, and felicity must be sought and found in this world. Epicurus himself was said to have been initiated into the mysteries according to Lucretius’ contemporary Philodemus (On Piety 20. 554 ff.).
16 The walls of heaven open: see above on 1. 1101 ff. In the mysteries, a shrine was opened at the moment of revelation (cf. Plutarch, On Progress in Virtue 81e).
18–22 The gods appear now and their quiet abodes: Lucretius translates a celebrated description of life on Mt Olympus in Homer, Odyssey 6. 42–6, appending to it another version of the first of Epicurus’ Master Sayings (23 ff., cf. 1. 44 ff.). The easy and tranquil life of the Homeric gods is not only a model for that of the Epicurean gods, but also provides an example of how the individual Epicurean can and should live. The ‘appearance’ of the gods resembles a divine epiphany; they are not, however—and cannot be—physically present, but are perceptible only through contemplation. See below on 5. 148 ff.
28–9 delight and joy |… and awe: Lucretius reacts like an initiate before the revelation of nature’s mysteries, or like someone receiving a divine epiphany (cf. the Annunciation: Luke 1: 28 ff.). But there is a sense in which what he sees is nothing: nature ‘open and in every part displayed’ is no more than atoms moving endlessly in infinite void. The secret of the universe is that there is no secret.
39 suffusing all | With the blackness of death: Lucretius’ image for the soul, as a pool of water which is clear so long as the bottom is not stirred, but which for true salvation has to be cleaned out (cf. 4. 1133 ff.), anticipates Freudian views, although the precise nature of the ‘unconscious’ in Epicureanism is disputed, and in theory the cleansing of the soul for the Epicureans comes about through wholly rational means and leads to the complete elimination of the unconscious drive that is the fear of death.
41–93 For when men say… : Lucretius has two arguments against those who would say that there is no need to tackle the fear of death, as most people are not possessed of its terror (an accusation made by Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 48). First, while this may be true in normal circumstances, any hardship shows that the fear has been there all the time (41–58), and, second, even in normal circumstances, the fear is operative as a root cause of human unhappiness (59–93).
43–4 blood |… or even wind: similar views were held by early philosophers (cf. Empedocles fr. B105 for blood, Anaximenes fr. A23 and Diogenes of Apollonia fr. A20 for air), but here are representatives of the careless imprecision of those who believe that they do not need Epicurean truth. The third-century BC Epicurean Polystratus (third head of the school) has a similar attack on those who think that they can do without scientific reason in his treatise Against those who irrationally despise popular beliefs.
48 These men in exile: a member of the Roman élite accused or condemned on a serious charge might go into exile to escape punishment, as, for instance, Memmius later did when prosecuted for electoral corruption in 52 BC (see Introduction).
52 they slay black cattle: black animals were sacrificed to underworld gods.
67 lingering | Before the gates of death: death is figured as a Roman man of power, on whom the living attend like dependent clients.
71 murder upon murder | Piling in greed: the reference is especially to the literal murders of the ‘proscriptions’ under Sulla in 82–1 BC, but the day-to-day political strife of the late republic was also often expressed in hyperbolically violent terms.
73 A kinsman’s board supplies both hate and fear: there is an implied mythological model, that of Atreus serving up the children of his brother Thyestes: in the Atreus of Accius (170–86 BC) Atreus uttered the famous lines ‘let them hate, so long as they fear’ (frr. 203–4).
78 Some die to get a statue and a name: the desire for statues is listed amongst those desires which were neither necessary nor natural by an ancient commentator on Epicurus, Master Sayings 29 (see Introduction).
87–93 For we, like children frightened of the dark… : see above on 2. 55.
94–1094 First I say: 94–416 expound the nature of the soul, 417–829 argue for its mortality, and 830–1094 attack the fear of death directly.
99–100 A sort of vital essence of the body, | Called harmony by the Greeks: the view that consciousness is not located in a part of the body but is a state of the whole is espoused by Simmias and Echecrates (fifth–fourth century BC) in Plato’s Phaedo (85e, 88d) and later by the Aristotelian philosophers Dicaearchus (fourth century BC, frr. 5–12) and Aristoxenus (fourth century BC, frr. 118–21). The latter is especially significant here as an important theorist of music (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 19, 41). Another
thinker who may have held similar views was the first-century BC medical philosopher Asclepiades of Bithynia, sometimes linked to Dicaearchus (Tertullian (second–third century AD), On the Soul 15. 3, who also mentions the third-century BC doctor Andreas) and active in Rome for part of his life. The ‘harmony’ or attunement theory was criticized in the Phaedo and by Aristotle in his lost dialogue Eudemus (fr. 7, cf. On the Soul 1. 4. 407b27 ff.): Epicurus is said by John Philoponus (sixth century AD) in his commentary on this last passage to have criticized Plato’s arguments, but we do not know the context.
134 gave | The name to something till then nameless: Lucretius suggests the technical language of rhetoric and the definition of katachresis, or ‘necessary’ metaphor.
136 mind and spirit: in the Latin, two words from the same root, animus ‘mind’ and anima ‘soul’, ‘spirit’: Lucretius exploits an existing distinction in the language where Epicurus had referred rather to the reasoning and non-rational parts of the souls (cf. the ‘scholion’ or ancient comment on Letter to Herodotus 67 preserved with the text).
138 head and master as it were: Lucretius ironically alludes to rival theories that placed the seat of intelligence in the head rather than the chest, and to the Greek (especially Stoic) term for the controlling intelligence often used in such accounts, to hegemonikon (‘ruling element’). The Epicureans persisted in their view that sensations felt in the chest pointed to it as the location of thought as well as emotion despite the discovery of the nervous system by the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus (fourth–third century BC): some other thinkers, following Plato (Timaeus 44d, 69d) separated the two functions, placing the immortal function of rational thought in the head but emotion in the heart. Ancient summaries of philosophical views (so-called Placita Philosophorum) offer a variety of different locations for the functions by various thinkers: cf. ‘Aetius’ 4. 5 (in H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci (Berlin 1879): see Bibliography).
154–6 we sweat, grow pale, | Our speech is broken… : Lucretius translates part of a famous passage of Sappho (seventh century BC), describing her feelings on seeing a man talking to a girl she loves: ‘my tongue is paralysed, a subtle | flame has at once coursed beneath my skin, | with my eyes I see nothing, and my | ears are buzzing; | sweat pours down me, and trembling | seizes me all over, I am paler | than grass’ (fr. 31, translated by G. Goold). Significantly Sappho continues with the words ‘and I seem to be on the verge of dying’. The Sappho poem was also translated by Lucretius’ contemporary Catullus (51): the Greek text is later quoted by the critic ‘Longinus’ in his treatise On the Sublime (perhaps first century AD), where he comments on Sappho’s linking of mind and body and sees an element of fear as well as erotic passion in the original.
161–2 mind and spirit | Are bodily: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 67.
179–80 Most delicate… and formed | Of atoms most minute: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 63.
211 As soon as death’s calm quiet takes a man: throughout this section Lucretius’ exposition of the nature of the soul insinuates arguments also relevant to the later arguments for its mortality and assault on the fear of death.
231 do not suppose that this nature is single: for the parts of the soul, cf. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 63 (who, however, does not seem to distinguish between air and wind or breath: but a fourfold division similar to that of Lucretius is ascribed to Epicurus in fr. 315).
255 through all the channels of the body: the Epicureans (with many other theorists, including Empedocles and Asclepiades) believed in both visible and invisible passages or ‘pores’ within the body and leading to the outside. Matter both leaves and enters by these: see above 2. 1105 ff. Their role in death is also stressed in the treatise On Death by Lucretius’ Epicurean contemporary Philodemus (4. 8. 18 ff., 37. 31 ff.).
260 The poverty of our language: cf. 1. 139 ff., 832 ff.
265 a kind of single body: the soul is a special mixture of its four components, in which their constituent atoms recombine to form a new compound substance, in which, however, the individual properties of the components may be more or less manifest.
273 For deep deep down | This nature hidden lies: the spatial terms here are not literal, but refer to the perceptibility of the properties of the fourth nameless component within the mixture.
288–9 when anger | Boils: 288–93 explain differences of mood, 294–306 differences of temperament between animal species, 307–22 the limits within which temperamental differences in human beings may be changed by belief. Lines 294–5, however, sound at first as if they are referring to humans. For the effect of the different constituents of the soul, cf. Epicurus fr. 314–15.
296 Lions are most like this: the three animals used as examples of temperament—lion, deer, and cow—are traditional: cf. e.g. Aristotle, History of Animals 488b13 ff.
322 lives… like those of gods: cf. Epicurus, Letter to Monoeceus 135, ‘you shall live as a god among men’. The happiness of the wise person is literally equivalent to that of the gods, since the only difference, that divine happiness is everlasting, is not significant for an Epicurean: see below on 5. 8.
325 with common roots | They cling together: theories which make the soul a part of the organism are open to the possibility of that part being separated and potentially living on after death: but for the Epicureans, sensation and consciousness are only possible when the soul is mingled with the body, and there is no possibility of its existing separately.
360 mind looks out, as through a door: this view is ascribed to Heraclitus (fr. A16, ‘as it were through certain doors’) and to the Aristotelian philosopher Strato (third century BC) and (?) the first-century BC sceptic Aenesidemus (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 7. 350). Theaetetus holds that the soul rather than the sense organs perceive in Plato, Theaetetus 184b ff.: the Stoics held similar views, though allocating a greater role to the sense organs (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 46).
371 A view held by the great Democritus: Democritus is said by Aristotle to have held that the soul was ‘in the whole perceiving body’ (Aristotle, On the Soul 409b2), but this is the only testimony for the equality in number of soul and body atoms. The later Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda also argues that the number of soul-atoms is less than that of body-atoms, however (fr. 37).
396 The mind more strongly holds the barriers | Of life: Lucretius’ language is similar to that of Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 65, and especially Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 37, though both of those passages deal rather with the relation of the soul as a whole to the body.
417–829 Well now, that you may know that mind and spirit | Are born in living creatures and are mortal… : Lucretius now begins his great series of twenty-five to thirty proofs for the mortality of the soul (the exact number depends on whether some related points count as separate arguments). Although the arguments are grouped into sections (e.g. arguments against survival (417–669), arguments against pre-existence (670–783); proofs from non-mortal afflictions (445–547)), the main effect is of a continuous stream of arguments continually pressing the reader to admit mortality.
421 apply both these names to one thing: see above on 3. 136. Lucretius uses whichever of the terms is most appropriate to the phenomenon being discussed.
440 the body which is its vessel | As it were: the vessel imagery suits opponents (especially Platonists) for whom the body is just a temporary receptacle of the soul (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 52), but Lucretius perverts it to his own ends with the image of the breaking of the pot. Epicurus similarly talks of the body ‘containing’ the soul (Letter to Herodotus 64, 66); a fragment close at several points to Lucretius of the late Platonist Iamblichus (second–third century AD, quoted in the Eclogae or ‘Selections’ of John Stobaeus (fifth century AD), 1. 49. 43; Epicurus fr. 337) uses the image of air in a wine-skin in summarizing atomist views.
453 the intelligence | Limps, the tongue rambles, the mind gives way: Lucretius imitates the listing of symptoms in m
edical writing, cf. 6. 1145 ff., 1182 ff. Cf. also 3. 169 ff., 478 ff.
456 like smoke: the disappearance of souls like smoke into the air goes back to Homer (e.g. Iliad 23. 100, Patroclus’ ghost leaving Achilles) and remains an epic commonplace (cf. e.g. Virgil, Aeneid 5. 740), but was also used by philosophers, including Epicurus (cf. Empedocles fr. B2, Epicurus fr. 337).
461 we can see the mind to suffer also: the argument was used by the eclectic Stoic Panaetius (second century BC; see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. 79).
468 calling him back: it was a Roman death-bed ritual to ‘call back’ the dying person by name (conclamatio, extended for several days after death).
478–81 His legs give way… : see above on 3. 169 ff., 453 ff. Epicurus discussed the effects of wine in his lost Symposium (frr. 57–65).
487 Now, take another case: epilepsy, known in Greek as the ‘sacred disease’, was much discussed by philosophers and medical writers: see especially the treatise ascribed to Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease (fifth–fourth century BC). Another Hippocratic work, On Breaths (fifth century BC), has several points of contact with Lucretius’ account.
509 blown by strong winds: Socrates in Plato, Phaedo 77d, had described as childish the fear that the soul might be blown away by strong winds at death. Cf. again Epicurus fr. 337.
519 Its boundaries are fixed: see above on 1. 670.
525 a double refutation: Lucretius uses a form of the figure known in Greek as the dilemma or ‘double premiss’ (cf. 3. 713 ff.), but his word for ‘double’ also suggests a two-bladed axe.
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