Lucretius, De rerum natura

Ita:
Il rapporto di Lucrezio con il suo maestro, Epicuro, è una questione centrale nel De rerum natura di Lucrezio. Come devoto seguace dell'epicureo, Lucrezio sostiene di aderire fedelmente agli insegnamenti di Epicuro. Tuttavia, come poeta, Lucrezio smentisce apertamente la fede del suo padrone nell'immoralità intrinseca della poesia. Questa tesi vuole indagare come Lucrezio plasmi la figura di Epicuro al fine di rendere la poesia del De rerum natura conforme al pensiero epicureo. Attraverso questo studio, si giungerà alla conclusione che Lucrezio non solo trasformi Epicuro in un poeta, ma in uno distintamente lucreziano creato ex-novo. Lo fa in diversi modi. Lucrezio descrive Epicuro "poeticamente", ponendolo in situazioni più adatte ad un eroe epico o di un dio; parallelamente Epicuro con i suoi predecessori poetici; e forma associazioni tra sé come poeta, Epicuro, e vari ispiratori poetici delle “rerum natura”, come lo sono Venere, Ennio, Omero ed Empedocle.


Eng:
Lucretius' relationship with his teacher, Epicurus, is a central issue in De rerum natura. As a devoted follower of the epicurean philosophy, Lucretius claims to adhere faithfully to the teachings of Epicurus. However, as a poet, Lucretius openly denies his master's faith in the intrinsic immorality of poetry. This thesis aims to investigate how Lucretius shapes the figure of Epicurus in order to make the poetry of De rerum nature conform to Epicurean thought. Through this study, it will be concluded that Lucretius not only transforms Epicurus into a poet, but into a distinctly newly created Lucretian writer. It does this in several ways. Lucretius describes Epicurus "poetically", placing him in situations more suited to an epic hero or god; parallel Epicurus with his poetic predecessors; and forms associations between himself as a poet, Epicurus, and various poetic inspirers of “rerum natura”, such as Venus, Ennio, Homer and Empedocles.

This essay won the California Classics Association Award for Excellence in Classics Writing and is published in the California Classics Association Northern Section newsletter Notanda Borea Volume X no. 2. Fall 2014/ Winter 2015. http://www.ccanorth.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/NotandaBorea10-2.27090349.pdf

De rerum natura, Lucrèce insiste sur la permanence qui caractérise la summa summarum. Pourtant, il souligne également le changement perpétuel qui affecte toutes choses. Dans la Physique lucrétienne, la nouveauté est étroitement liée à la déclinaison, qui garantit la liberté humaine sans outrepasser les lois naturelles. La nouveauté est également présente dans la conception lucrétienne de l'histoire, qui allie cependant aux progrès techniques la permanence de la nature humaine. La seule véritable nouveauté réside donc dans la philosophie épicurienne, que Lucrèce choisit de transcrire au moyen d'une poésie nouvelle afin de répandre la lumière sur le secret des choses. Le poète associe ainsi la nouveauté poétique et la tradition issue d'Empédocle. EPITOME.-In carminibus De rerum natura, T. Lucretius Carus saepe dicit summam summarum eamdem semper manere. Scribit tamen omnes res perpetuo mutari. Nam Lucretius in Physica coniungit cum nouitate clinamen, quod seruat libertatem et simul paret naturae foederibus. Lucretius autem, cum humani generis historiam narrat, nouitatis rationem habet quia, hominum natura eadem manente, progredientis mentis experientia nouas artes semper adfert. Ergo una et uera nouitas in Epicuri ratione consistit. Quam Lucretio exponere placet nouis carminibus, quae lumina diffundant rebus occultis. Itaque poeta ueterum scriptorum morem, ab Empedocle traditum, cum poetica nouitate iungit.

Rappresentazione teatrale | dal 31 luglio al 28 agosto 2021 Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 18 agosto 2020 Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 20 luglio 2019 Segesta | 5 gennaio 2019, Teatro Massimo Comunale - Siracusa | 1 agosto 2018, Teatro romano - Ascoli Piceno | 14-15 luglio 2018, Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 25-26 agosto 2017, Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 9 agosto 2017, Fano |  | 30 luglio 2017, Sarsina, Arena Plautina | 21 febbraio 2008, Teatro Goldoni - Venezia  | 27 agosto 2005 Gipsoteca canoviana, Possagno

Con Sebastiano Lo Monaco.
Testo di Monica Centanni.
Da Omero, Eschilo, Lucrezio, Virgilio.

Un nuovo rapsodo ci racconta, ci ricorda, la guerra di Troia. La voce del cantore riannoda e ricompone i fili della narrazione omerica e la storia della spedizione achea contro la rocca di Priamo viene narrata così dall’inizio alla fine: dagli amori di Elena e Paride, fino all’inganno del cavallo, la conquista e l’incendio della città.

Storie di eroi – Achille Ettore Aiace Ulisse Diomede – che nell’impresa mettono alla prova il limite e la qualità del loro singolare valore e intanto, insieme, disegnano la variegata costellazione dei valori su cui si fonda, nel bene e nel male, la nostra civiltà occidentale: amicizia, coraggio, lealtà, carattere, astuzia, passione, ragione.
Storie di dei – Atena Poseidone Ares Afrodite – che si schierano in battaglia al fianco degli uomini per dar prova non solo del loro potere, ma della loro stessa esistenza.

L’attore si presenta nelle vesti di un moderno cantore che cuce in una nuova rapsodia i brani degli antichi racconti; ma presta anche corpo e voce agli attori del mito, dei ed eroi. Il testo è composto incastonando nel racconto epico dell’Iliade anche brani tratti dall’Odissea, dall’Agamennone di Eschilo, dal De rerum natura di Lucrezio, dall’Eneide di Virgilio, e dai poemi epici minori sulla conquista di Troia.

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 years.

Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura.

This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius--a Lucretius for today.

Con la presente ristampa anastatica dell’editio princeps del De rerum natura si restituisce all’attenzione degli studiosi di Lucrezio e agli storici del libro un’opera di eccezionale valore storico. La riscoperta di Lucrezio durante il quindicesimo secolo diede un impulso decisivo al rinnovamento della cultura europea. Anche se studi recenti hanno via via dipanato lo straordinario impatto storico del De rerum natura, la genealogia della prima edizione a stampa (Brescia, 1472-73) è rimasta avvolta nell’oscurità. Una delle ragioni principali della scarsa attenzione ricevuta da questo libro è quasi sicuramente dovuta alla sua estrema rarità. Dell’editio princeps infatti sono conosciute solo quattro copie. Eppure, il testo stampato dal tipografo bresciano Tommaso Ferrando è decisamente più corretto rispetto alle edizioni successive del 1486 e 1495 e si basa su un manoscritto non ancora identificato. Anche solo per queste ragioni una ristampa della princeps offre un contributo fondamentale alla storia della diffusione del De rerum natura durante il Rinascimento. La copia di cui si presenta la ristampa anastatica fu acquistata dal collezionista Angelo Maria d’Elci (1751-1824), aristocratico di origine senese, ed è oggi conservata presso la Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze. Pur con una lacuna di due carte, l’esemplare della Laurenziana è di particolare interesse perché è quello di cui si conoscono meglio le vicissitudini storiche. Inoltre è proprio a questo esemplare che dobbiamo i primi tentativi di ricostruire la storia dell’edizione. La ristampa è preceduta da un’ampia introduzione critica.

Lines 1073-5 of Lucretius' third book, that are problematic as for manuscript tradition, incongruosus in regard to their insertion into the context, clearly in contrast with the Epicurean thought, must be considered spurious; they are plausibly a work by a monastic hand.

The Roman poet Lucretius is one of the key figures in the history of Western philosophy, expounding in his work De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”) upon the primary tenets of Epicurean thought. In this course we will read selections from De Rerum Natura in Latin, aiming to acquire a greater knowledge of Latin grammar and vocabulary and to improve facility in reading Latin poetry. We will use Lucretius’ poem as a focal point to explore ancient Epicureanism, its views on human ethics and the workings of the physical world, its place within ancient philosophy more broadly, and its continuing relevance for modern thought.

Lucretius was the first philosopher of immanence. It is he and not Democritus or Epicurus who holds this title. If we want to understand the historical emergence of the concept of immanence, we should start by distinguishing its precursors in Greek atomism from its first complete incarnation in Lucretius. This way, we can see exactly what first defined and distinguished immanence from its past. Therefore in what follows I would like to make three, perhaps controversial, claims about the emergence of philosophical immanence. 1) Lucretius was not an atomist, 2) Greek atomism reintroduced transcendence, and 3) It is the primacy of motion in Lucretius that defines his philosophical immanence. Lucretius was not an atomist This thesis is as counterintuitive as it is straightforward. The first major difference between Lucretius and the earlier Greek atomists is precisely that—the atom. For Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus atoms are always in motion, but the atom itself remained fundamentally unchanged, indivisible, and thus internally static—even as it moved. Thus instead of positing discrete atoms as ontologically primary as both ancient Greek and later modern theories do, one of Lucretius's greatest novelties was to posit the movement or flow of matter as primary. Lucretius did not simply " translate Epicurus, " as the Greco-centric story goes; rather, he introduced the first immanent kinetic materialism in the West. For example, although the Latin word atomus (smallest particle) was available to Lucretius to use in his poem, he intentionally did not use it, nor did he use the Latin word particula or particle to describe matter. The English translations of " atom, " " particle, " and others have all been added to the text in translation based on a certain historical interpretation of it. The idea that Lucretius subscribed to a world of discrete particles called atoms is therefore both a projection of Epicureanism, who used the Greek word atomos, and a retroaction of modern scientific mechanism of the fifteenth century onto De Rerum Natura. Lucretius rejected entirely the notion that things emerged from discrete particles. To believe otherwise is to distort the original meanings of the Latin text as well as the absolutely enormous poetic apparatus he summoned to describe the flowing, swirling, folding, and weaving of the flux of matter. Although Lucretius rejected the term atomus, he remained absolutely true to one aspect of the original Greek meaning of the word, τομος (átomos, " indivisible "), from-(a-, " not ") + τέμνω (témnō, " I cut "). Being is not cut up into discrete particles, but is composed of continuous flows, folds, and weaves. Discrete " things " (rerum) are composed of corporeal flows (corpora) that move together (conflux) and fold over themselves (nexus) in a woven knot work (contextum). For Lucretius, things only emerge and have their being within and immanent to the flow and flux of matter in motion. Discreteness is an apparent product of continuous folded matter, uncut, undivided, and in motion and not the other way around.

Epicureans have been branded atheists since antiquity, but although they might have held unorthodox beliefs about divinity, they did nevertheless believe in gods, however unorthodox their beliefs about them were. They did not believe in the Olympians that Hesiod and Homer had depicted, but anthropomorphic yet bizarre gods: although these were compounds of atoms, they were immortal, unlike any other compound in the Epicurean universe, and there was quite possibly an infinite host of such deities, all alike and all nameless. These gods were not considered figments of the imagination by the Epicureans, but as real, living entities that actually existed, remotely, somewhere out there in the cosmos, doing very little aside from maintaining their supremely peaceful, painless, and tranquil dispositions. And these gods needed to be considered real in order to be genuine, ethical models for mankind to follow, which was their main function within the Epicurean world-view. The atoms of these gods, like everything in existence, were held to be perpetually in motion, constantly being emitted from their bodies as images that then travelled directly to the minds of mankind and thereby presented a true depiction of divinity, of peacefulness, and above all, of happiness, which would then be examples for individual Epicureans to follow on their individual journeys towards ἀταραξία, tranquillity.

The question of the ending of "De rerum natura", where even the "presence" of the long "description" of the pestilence represents a problem, is proposed again, in all its complexity. Lucretius begins his poem with a traditional invocation to the goddess Venus, mother of the Romans, and he concludes it with a piece of art, an interpretation of Thucydides that is both personal and related to the tradition of the Latin "vertere". A beginning and a conclusion which however had to be appreciated by the elitist and cultured public that was the recipient of the poem.

Except the philosopher Blossius Cumanus, living in the II century B.C., no poet nor writer was born in the Phlegrean Fields.The Phlegraea arva are reflected in in the works of the poets and prose writers of Rome, mostly the poetsVirgil, Ho- ratius and Propertius.Virgil gave the spiritual representation of these places in Ae- neid BookVI.

«Заметки о труде Лукреция» представляет собой попытку политического философа Лео Штрауса проанализировать эпикурейское учение, отраженное в поэме Тита Лукреция Кара «О природе вещей». Штраус последовательно разбирает все шесть книг поэмы, предлагая глубокую и увлекательную трактовку эпикурейской критики религии, ее цели, задач и методов, – двигаясь вместе с автором от красивой или успокаивающей лжи к отвратительной истине.

Machiavelli’s knowledge of Lucretius’ text had been proven thanks to a very relevant discovery by Sergio Bertelli, who in 1961 published an article in which he recognized Machiavelli’s handwriting in the Vatican codex Rossianus 884. This paper analyses the possible repercussions of De rerum natura with respect to the political potential that Lucretius’ thought could had transmitted to Machiavelli, in view of his return to the vita activa. In particular, the notes posted by Machiavelli in the marginalia of the Lucretius’ text he transcribed, prove his reflection on the “clinamen theory”. In the various profiles of the world generated by the vital trigger that the clinamen causes, lies a possibility for us of having a libera mens: the possibility of intercepting and correcting, by our own virtue, the twists and turns of Fate, opposes the individual liberty to the whims of Fortuna, but also to the idea of an ineffable Divine Providence with its mysterious and intractable designs.

Una traduzione perduta, un nobiluomo di spirito, un pericoloso poeta antico troppo affascinante per essere ignorato: sono gli elementi che tracciano i contorni di uno spaccato culturale del nostro Rinascimento nel quale letterati, Accademie, alti prelati e circoli aristocratici si confrontano con la poesia di Lucrezio e il suo irresistibile messaggio materialista.
Attraverso la lente di un episodio quasi dimenticato, questo libro indaga una costellazione di ambienti e personaggi toccati a vario titolo dall’ombra di Lucrezio sullo sfondo della Napoli del Cinquecento: è l’occasione per scoprire, ancora una volta, come dietro i proclami di condanna per la filosofia epicurea, il De rerum natura abbia lasciato la sua impronta profonda su tutti gli attori della cultura italiana del tempo.

Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a remarkably creative piece of writing that came down to us from the middle ages. It has been considered a classic of medieval Islamic philosophy, and a classic of Arabic novels that had a great influence on the medieval and renaissance west.
The theme of East and West is given prominence in this paper. The first part of my argument concerns the ideological and cultural coloring of the context in which this novel was written. The second part deals with the point of intersection of contesting ideologies in the novel. It also deals with the astonishing variety of conclusions the novel has yielded.
In estimating the novel as both philosophical literature and literary philosophy, which as I argue, cannot be studied in isolation from the famous translation movement (from Greek into Arabic in the middle ages), I would not exclude another possibility that Ibn Tufayl benefited from stoicism. This presupposes Ibn Tufayl's acquaintance with the stoics.
There are also similarities between Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and the cosmogony of the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in relation to his account of the creation and early history of man, which was influenced by the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius.
I would suggest that there might have been a common Greek source, read by Lucretius, Ovid and Ibn Tufayl (in translation in the last case).
Although, in a way, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was a direct consequence of Greek thought translated into Arabic, Ibn Tufayl, however, pursued his own Islamic way of reconciling philosophy with religion.

The following study is considering Democritus' suicide in De rerum natura. In his list of great dead men (III, 1024-1052), Lucretius is mentioning Democritus' name just before the one of Epicurus. He is therefore paying a tribute to the founder of atomism and implicitly admits the philosophical debt of Epicurus towards him. However, the mors uolontaria theme is contributing to fade Democritus' praise, as Epicurians had a severe judgement concerning suicide. That is the reason why, even if Democritus' figure is particularly enhanced by the style Lucretius is using, it is put in the shade by Epicurus, whose life offers a perfect example of wisdom.

Short summary
In the final line of Lucretius' DRN II, everything goes "to the grave" (ire ad capulum, Voss' conjecture) and not "to the reef" (ire ad scopulum, transmitted text). Supporting evidence is given by a contextual and intertextual analysis (in primis Varro's Kosmotoryne, a satire on the end of the world).

Breve sintesi
Nel verso finale del secondo libro del DRN di Lucrezio, tutto "va alla tomba" (ire ad capulum, Voss) e non "allo scoglio" (ire ad scopulum, testo tràdito). Un'analisi stilistica del contesto e degli intertesti (in primis, una satira apocalittica di Varrone) fornirà prove decisive.

Abstract
The aim of this article is to support Voss’ conjecture "ire ad capulum" against the transmitted text "ire ad scopulum" in Lucretius’ De rerum natura 2,1173-1174. The tropic use of capulus, meaning "ruin, death", is attested in Latin poetry from Plautus onwards: “ire ad capulum” is not a misleading «Semitic metaphor» introduced by Voss (Merrill), but rather an expression belonging to a low level of language. Moreover, a stylistic and rhetorical analysis of the final passage of this book (2,1164-1174) proves that “ire ad capulum” better suits its comic-diatribic context. A comparison between these verses and a similar passage in the fifth book (5,826-827) reveals that the real protagonist of the process of consumption described in 2,1173-1174 is the Earth (Tellus), represented as a human being, in accordance with the “μακράνθρωπος” analogic model. Furthermore, we find capulus and the metaphor of life as a path ‘from the cradle to the grave’ in a fragment of Varro’s Κοσμοτορύνη (frg. 222 Astbury), a Menippean satire which shares with Lucretius’ passage the theme of the mortality of our world.

Analysing the notebooks and the references to Lucretius in Marx's works, Morfino concludes that it is possible to excavate a major discontinuity in Marx's interpretation. The Lucretius of the juvenile notebooks on Epicureanism, who functions as a model of abstract self-consciousness, is overtaken, in the scattered references from the period of Die deutsche Ideologie and Das Kapital, by a Lucretius for whom nature becomes a continuous process of transformation of its parts-a process in which the human species is itself immersed.

In this paper I suggest that at the beginning of the Metamorphoses through narrative techniques and the structure of the verses, in particular lines 1.10-14, the poet claims to be a fabricator mundi and that his text exists before the creation of the world, becoming the model for its formation. In the epilogue, the poet also declares his certainty that his work will be eternal; it will live, that is, sine fine as he states at Tristia 2.63-4. This reading of sine fine actually alludes to the prophecy of Jupiter in the first book of the Aeneid where the phrase meant the eternity of the Roman dominion. The perpetuum carmen, as the poet characterised the Metamorphoses at 1.4, refers not only to the time-span of the work through to the poet's own time but more importantly to the eternal character of his poetry. It is the poetic genius which cannot be trapped in a specific time frame. There is a consensus among Ovidian scholars that in writing the Metamorphoses Ovid had Virgil and his work firmly in mind. In striving for originality, he also had to emulate almost the entire Greek and Roman literary tradition. In his perpetuum carmen, therefore, he was confronted with the task of composing an all-inclusive work with regard to time, subject-matter and literary genre. The purpose of this paper is to show how Ovid exploited certain methods and techniques in order to imply, through the narrative, the omnipotence of the poetic genius through the creation of his text.

In the middle of the second book of his De rerum natura, Lucretius inserts a long digression about the myth of the Goddess Cybele. This excursus, which interrupts an account on Epicurean Physics, opens with a biological metaphor concerning the maternal dimension of Earth. The figure of mother/Earth, which extends the analogy between atoms and seeds and with Lucretius' ideas on the origins of life, is perfectly integrated in the Epicurean explanatory system. However, in addition to some concerns about Physics, this digression presents a triple function involving Ethics, Polemic and Epistemology: refuting the mythical discourse related to Cybele's cult contributes to value the Epicurean theology. It leads to a criticism of Stoic allegorical interpretations while introducing a meta-literary reflection about the use of images and the conditions on which philosophical Poetry can exist. Le culte de Cybèle, honorée sous la forme d'une pierre noire, fut introduit à Rome en 204 avant notre ère pendant la deuxième guerre punique 1. La Grande Mère Idéenne de Pessinonte, souvent associée à Rhéa ou à Déméter, fut la première divinité orientale officiellement consacrée à Rome 2. Mais, bien que la venue de cette déesse étrangère pût paraître naturelle, en accord avec les origines troyennes assignées à Rome 3 , son culte, auquel

This article argues that the acrostic LUCE in Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.712-15, which occurs during discussion of the light of the moon, is intentional and engages with Homer’s LEUKĒ acrostic (Il. 24.1-5) and Aratus’ LEPTĒ acrostic (Phaen. 783-87). Lucretius uses the LUCE acrostic, as well as Aratus-inspired name-play in the surrounding lines, to reflect on his poetic relationship to Homer and Aratus and his philosophical relationship to Epicurus.

The purpose of this article is to support Voss' conjecture ire ad capulum against the transmitted text ire ad scopulum in Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.1173-1174. The tropic use of capulus meaning "death" is attested in Latin poetry from Plautus onwards: ire ad capulum is not a misleading Semitic metaphor introduced by Voss, but rather an expression belonging to a low level of language. A stylistic and rhetorical analysis of the final passage of Lucretius' Book II (2.1164-1174) reveals its comic-satiric character. The low register clearly caricatures the worldview of the protagonists of this ending: two farmers, who personify Roman traditional agricultural values. In such a context, the vivid and vernacular phrase ire ad capulum seems more appropriate than the rhetorical ire ad scopulum.

Le mouvement est une donnée fondamentale de la physique épicurienne et Lucrèce consacre trois chants du De rerum natura à l'évocation de ses différentes manifestations. Le livre II est en effet consacré aux mouvements des atomes, le livre IV à ceux des simulacres et le livre VI à ceux qui caractérisent les phénomènes célestes. Mais le mouvement n'est bien entendu pas exclu des autres livres puisqu'il intervient dans le premier à titre d'évidence dans la démonstration de l'existence du vide. Le troisième livre, consacré à la réfutation de l'immortalité de l'âme et à la lutte contre la crainte de la mort, fait également entrer le mouvement afin d'expliquer le phénomène de dissolution que constitue la mort. Et enfin, le livre V ne peut faire l'économie d'une référence à cette notion puisqu'il explique la formation du monde et donne à voir la spirale de l'histoire humaine. Le De rerum natura, à l'image du monde et de l'univers, est donc régi par le mouvement : le titre même adopté par Lucrèce évoque à la fois une activité de naissance et un principe de génération. La polysémie du substantif natura, qui, au terme d'une rapide évolution sémantique, apparaissait au premier siècle avant J.C. comme l'équivalent latin de phusis, offrait à Lucrèce le moyen de résumer sa conception dynamique de l'univers.

This short presentation seeks to spark discussion of the themes of Tibullus 1.1, in its Roman context of influential Stoic and Epicurean beliefs, by using Cicero as a proxy for Stoicism (especially in the De Officiis, which was strongly influenced by the Stoic Panaetius) and by using Lucretius as a proxy for Epicureanism (using De Rerum Natura). The themes include avarice, riches, ambition, poverty, the gods, the country life, choice of career and life, and, of course, the beloved.