Selections From De Rerum Natura

-- A brief biography of Lucretius -- History of materialist theory of the universe -- Detailed discussion of Lucretian originality and style -- Section on meter -- Bibliography The text includes 53 passages (1291 lines total) spanning the entire

Now available in paperback, this annotated scholarly edition of the Latin text of De Rerum Natura has long been hailed as one of the finest editions of this monumental work. It features an introduction to Lucretius's life and work by William Ellery Leonard, an introduction to and commentary on the poem by Stanley Barney Smith, the complete Latin text with detailed annotations, and an index of ancient sources. --University of Wisconsin Press.

'In Lucretius on Atomic Motion Don Fowler produces a commentary of Lucretius like no other. His commentary achieves the status of a meta-commentary... what makes this commentary claim our attention is the range of texts, both poetic and philosophical, ancient and modern, that Fowler brings to bear in revealing the deep background --and the later fortune - of Lucretius' poem.' -Diskin Clay, Times Literary SupplementThis is the first commentary on Lucretius' theory of atomic motion, one of the most difficult and technical parts of De rerum natura. The late Don Fowler sets new standards for Lucretian studies in his awesome command both of the ancient literary, philological, and philosophical background to this Latin Epicurean poem, and of the relevant modern scholarship.

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It gives an anti-teleological mechanistic theory of zoogony and the origin of species that does away with the need for any divine aidor design in the process, and accordingly it has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary locates Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts, and treats Lucretius' ideas as very much alive rather than as historical concepts. The recent revival of creationismmakes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer.

"The aim of this study is to track De Rerum Natura along two paths of satire. One is the broad boulevard of satiric literature from the beginnings of Greek poetry to the plays, essays, and broadcast media of the modern world. The other is the narrower lane of Roman verse satire, satura, whose canon begins in the Middle Republic with Ennius and Lucilius and closes with Juvenal, an author of the Flavian era. The first main portion of this book (chapters 2-3) focuses on Lucretius and Roman satura, while the following chapters broaden the scope to satiric elements of Lucretius more generally, but still with plenty of reference to the poets of Roman satura as satirists par excellence. By examining how Lucretius' poem employs the tools, techniques, and tactics of satire-by evaluating how and where in De Rerum Natura the speaker functions as a satirist-we gain, I argue, a fuller, richer understanding of how the poem works and how its poetry interacts with its purported philosophical program. Attention to the role of De Rerum Natura in the more specific tradition of Roman verse satire demonstrates that Lucretius' poem stands as a detour on the genre's highway, a swerve in the trajectory of satura. The numerous satiric passages and frequently satiric narrator of De Rerum Natura draw on earlier Roman satire, and in turn the poem influences the later satiric verse of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. While De Rerum Natura is not in and of itself a member of the Roman genre of satire, it is an important player in the genre's development"--

Verse translation of Lucretius's epic Latin poem explaining the universe, within the framework of Epicurean philosophy.