De rerum natura

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The beginning of De rerum natura in the manuscript Città del Vaticano written for Pope Sixtus IV in 1483, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 1569, fol. 1r
De rerum natura , edition by Denis Lambin , Paris 1570

De rerum natura ( German  about the nature of things or about the essence of the universe ) is a from the 1st century BC. Chr. Derived didactic poem by the Roman poet, philosopher and Epicurean Titus Lucretius Carus , called Lucretius. The homage to Epicurus is about the position of man in a universe not influenced by the gods.

Overview

The six-volume didactic poem in the form of dactylic hexameters reproduces the natural philosophy of Epicurus . Lucretius wanted to convey a philosophy that gives people peace of mind and serenity and removes them from the fear of death and the gods, which arises from the ignorance of man about his position in the world, about nature and essence and consequently through enlightenment must be overcome. It is critical of religion ("... the life of people / violently trampled under religion ... religion the mother of horrific deeds"), shaped by the materialistic atomic theory of ancient Greece and proclaims that the gods are neither able nor willing to meddle in people's lives.

According to Jerome's reports , the work is supposed to be corrected ( emended ) by the famous Roman orator Cicero and after the death of Lucretius in 50 BC. Have been published. As a source Lucretius today only z. T. have used the preserved writings of Epicurus himself

construction

The work consists of six books, each well over 1000 verses in length, which can be divided into three pairs of books:

  1. Atomic theory : basics (1st book) and phenomena (2nd book)
  2. Doctrine of the soul : transience of the soul and refutation of the fear of death (3rd book), theory of perception and affect (4th book)
  3. Representation of the empirical world: cosmology and theories of cultural development (5th book), meteorology (6th book)

content

The work presents the physics, psychology and cultural theory of Epicurus. Ethics is only treated in passing.

Lucretius tries to trace the emergence of society and culture to purely natural causes, without the intervention of any deities. Accordingly, people initially lived in an animal-like state, without language, knowledge and social cohesion, which only developed later through experience. The state arises on the basis of contract theory . Social development is driven by human reason. Lucretius turns against the deterministic world view of the Stoa, which is dominated by the idea of ​​divine penetration and divine action of the cosmos : the world is far too imperfect to be created by gods. In a further development of Epicurus' approach, he postulates a close connection between the random fluctuations ( fortuna ) of the atoms, which are, however, not visible, and the free will of living beings, i.e. between matter and psyche. In this way he justifies human individuality as well as the necessity of a purely observational study of nature, which can only recognize regularities by means of sensory perception, but no necessities.

Editions and translations

Total expenditure

  • Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex . Ed. And transl. by Cyril Bailey . 3 volumes, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1947 (critical edition with English translation and commentary; numerous reprints)
    • Volume 1: Foreword, Text, Critical Apparatus and Translation.
    • Volume 2: Commentary Books 1–3.
    • Volume 3: Commentary Books 4–6, Addenda, Indices and Bibliography.
  • T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex . Edited by Conrad Müller . Rohr, Zurich 1975.
  • T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex . Edited by Josef Martin . Teubner, Leipzig 1953 (numerous reprints).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: World of Atoms . Latin and German. Text design, introduction and translation by Karl Büchner . Zurich: Artemis 1956. (The library of the old world. Roman series). - revised New edition: Stuttgart: Reclam 1973 (Universal-Bibliothek; 4257) ISBN 3-15-004257-7 (numerous reprints).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: From nature . Ed. And transl. by Hermann Diels , with an introduction and explanations by Ernst Günther Schmidt . Artemis & Winkler, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-1564-2 .
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: About the nature of things. Latin and German (= writings and sources from the Old World 32). Ed. And transl. by Josef Martin. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1972.
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: Of the essence of the universe . Translated by Dietrich Ebener . Leipzig: Reclam 1989. (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. 1292) ISBN 3-379-00434-0 . - New edition: Berlin: Structure 1994 (Library of Antiquity. Roman Series) ISBN 3-351-02279-4
  • Lucretius: About the nature of things . Newly translated and richly commented by Klaus Binder . With a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt . Berlin: Galiani 2014. ISBN 978-3-86971-095-2
  • Lucretius, On the nature of things. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Martin Ferguson Smith . Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis / Cambridge 1969, revised edition 2001, (excerpts online) . - Review by: Robert Todd, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2002-02-08
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura. With an English Translation by WHD Rouse (first 1924). Revised by Martin Ferguson Smith. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma., London 1975, second edition 1982, reprinted with revisions 1992 ( Loeb Classical Library 181).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De rerum natura libri VI . Edited by Marcus Deufert. (Bibliotheca Scriptorum et Romanorum Teubneriana = BT 2028). Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter 2019. ISBN 978-3-11-026251-3

Partial editions and comments

  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura I . Edited by P. Michael Brown, Bristol Classical Press, Bristol 1984, ISBN 0-86292-076-0 (with English introduction and commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: Lucretius on atomic motion. A commentary on De rerum natura book two, lines 1-332 . Ed. Don Paul Fowler , posthumously ed. v. Peta Fowler, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, ISBN 0-19-924358-1 (commentary)
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De rerum natura III . Ed. And transl. by P. Michael Brown, Aris & Phillips, Warminster / Wiltshire 1997, ISBN 0-85668-695-6 (with English translation and commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De rerum natura. Book III . Ed. Edward J. Kenney , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-08142-4 (with English commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De rerum natura IV . Ed. And transl. by John Godwin, Aris & Phillips, Warminster / Wiltshire 1986, ISBN 0-85668-308-6 (with English translation and commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: Lucretius on love and sex. A commentary on De rerum natura IV, 1030-1287 . Ed. And transl. by Robert D. Brown, Brill, Leiden 1987, ISBN 90-04-08512-2 (critical edition with English translation and commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura V . Edited by CDN Costa, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1984, ISBN 0-19-814457-1 (with English commentary).
  • Titus Lucretius Carus: De rerum natura VI . Ed. And transl. by John Godwin, Aris & Phillips, Warminster / Wiltshire 1991, ISBN 0-85668-500-3 (with English translation and commentary).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: De rerum natura  - Sources and full texts (Latin)
  1. ↑ Lucretius: From the nature of things , Book I, verse 62 ff, May 1960, " Exempla Classica 4" in the "Library of the Hundred Books", Fischer Verlag, p. 11
  2. ↑ Marcus Deufert offers in 2019 in the 'reading text' of his most recent Teubneriana 1117 verses for book I, 1174 verses for book II, 1094 verses for book III, 1287 verses for book IV, 1457 verses for book V and 1286 verses for book VI (a total of 7415 hexameters ).
  3. ↑ Lucretius, De rerum natura , Book II, 179 ff.
  4. ↑ Book V, 195 ff.
  5. ↑ Book II, 1167
  6. ↑ Book II, 122 ff .: The movements of nature and the cosmos are only an image and simile of the atomic movements.
  7. ↑ Book II, 868 ff.