# De rerum natura *Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus). A Latin didactic poem in six books on Epicurean physics and ethics, written in the mid-first century BCE. Usually translated* On the Nature of Things *or* On the Nature of the Universe. > I did not read the poem through. The book-by-book outline is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Lucretius, checked against Wikipedia, and I searched William Ellery Leonard's translation (Project Gutenberg #785) for the passages quoted below and for the ending of book 6. I did not read the Latin or any other translation. The biography is thin because the ancient evidence is thin. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *De rerum natura*, "On the Nature of Things" (also rendered "On the Nature of the Universe") | | Author | Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE by Wikipedia's reckoning; see section 3 for why the dates are uncertain) | | Form | About 7,400 dactylic hexameters in six books, untitled in the manuscripts ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius); [SEP](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/)) | | Date | Not known exactly. The earliest external reference is Cicero's letter to his brother Quintus of February 54 BCE (*Q.F.* 2.10.3, as cited by SEP). The poem is probably unrevised (see section 5) | | Dedicatee | Memmius, named only in books 1, 2 and 5. SEP says he was most likely Gaius Memmius, praetor in 58 BCE | | Edition used here | Penguin Classics paperback, translated by A. E. Stallings with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns, 13 September 2007, ISBN 978-0-14-044796-5, 304 pages ([Penguin Australia](https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-nature-of-things-9780140447965)). A web-search summary says other catalogues give 265 pages (xxxi + 265); I did not confirm that on a page | | Language | Latin (original). English translations listed in section 2 | | Genre | Didactic poem; Epicurean philosophy | | Cover | [Open Library cover by ISBN](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780140447965-L.jpg) (lookup returned 200) | **Where it came up.** - Video: [The Epicurean Paradox: Smoking, Drinking, and the Brutal Truth About Pleasure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPm6HW8JkqE), *The HitchPoint*. - Mention: [1:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPm6HW8JkqE&t=93s). The video note records the line "Lucretius spent six books of hexameters on it. The moralists' reply was that he was a libertine." - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/The HitchPoint/The Epicurean Paradox Smoking, Drinking, and the Brutal Truth About Pleasure]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference pages** - Wikipedia: [De rerum natura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura); [Lucretius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius). - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: [Lucretius](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/) (first published 22 September 2023), with a bibliography of editions and translations. - Publisher: [Penguin Australia page for the Stallings edition](https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-nature-of-things-9780140447965) (opened; I did not find a US Penguin Random House page I could read). - Latin text: [The Latin Library, *De rerum natura* libri sex](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius.html) (page opened, with links to the six books; it gives the author's dates as c. 94 – c. 49 B.C., which differs from the dates in section 3). - Open Library, Google Books and WorldCat: not checked (Open Library search was unreachable, the Google Books API quota was exhausted, and WorldCat blocks automated requests). The Open Library *cover* lookup by ISBN worked. **Major English translations** (the list is Wikipedia's "Translations" section, plus SEP's bibliography; I have not read most of them) - **Hutchinson.** Lucy Hutchinson's translation, likely the first in English, was probably done in the 1640s or 1650s and not published until 1996 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura)). - **Munro.** H. A. J. Munro's text, notes and translation; first edition 1864, fourth revised edition 1886 (title page in the Internet Archive scan below). Public domain. - **Leonard.** William Ellery Leonard's metrical translation (Project Gutenberg #785; the Gutenberg text calls it "A Metrical Translation"). Free on Gutenberg; I did not verify its original publication date. - **Rouse, revised by Smith.** W. H. D. Rouse's translation (1924), revised by Martin Ferguson Smith, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1992 revision, ISBN 0674992008 per Wikipedia). - **Latham.** R. E. Latham, *On the Nature of the Universe*, Penguin (1994 printing per Wikipedia and SEP, with J. Godwin). - **Humphries.** Rolfe Humphries, *The Way Things Are*, Indiana University Press, 1968. - **Esolen.** Anthony M. Esolen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. - **Melville.** Ronald Melville, *On the Nature of the Universe*, Oxford, introduction and notes by D. and P. Fowler (1997 per SEP, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Wikipedia lists Oxford University Press, 1998). - **Smith (Hackett).** Martin Ferguson Smith, *On the Nature of Things*, Hackett, 2001 (ISBN 0872205878 per Wikipedia). - **Stallings.** A. E. Stallings, *The Nature of Things*, Penguin Classics, 2007. The edition used in this note. - **Slavitt.** David R. Slavitt, University of California Press, 2008 (titled *A Poetic Translation*). **Where to get it** - **Print and e-book:** [Penguin Classics (Stallings)](https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-nature-of-things-9780140447965), which lists paperback, hardback (25 March 2015) and e-book editions; Amazon was not checked (its pages give my script no readable text). - **Free full text, legal (public domain):** - [Project Gutenberg #785, *On the Nature of Things*, translated by William Ellery Leonard](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785) (released 1 January 1997, last updated 19 May 2025; I downloaded and read parts of the text). - [Munro's *Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex*, with notes and a translation, on the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/stream/lucreticariderer02lucruoft/lucreticariderer02lucruoft_djvu.txt) (this scan is volume II, the explanatory notes, from the 1900 printing of the fourth edition). The [Internet Archive's other scan, *De rerum natura libri sex*](https://archive.org/details/dererumnaturalib00lucr) also opened. - [The Latin Library](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius.html) for the Latin. - **Audiobook:** - Free: [LibriVox, John Selby Watson's translation](https://librivox.org/on-the-nature-of-things-by-titus-lucretius-carus/) (page opened; [Internet Archive copy](https://archive.org/details/on_the_nature_of_things_1001_librivox)). A web-search summary gives its length as 10 h 55 min; I did not confirm that. A search result also lists a YouTube upload of a Leonard-translation reading, which I did not open. - Audible: a search result links an Audible listing, [On the Nature of Things](https://www.audible.com/pd/On-the-Nature-of-Things-Audiobook/B002UZX528), which a search summary describes as unabridged, 9 h 13 min, December 2007. The Audible page returned a 503, so the date, length, narrator and price are all unverified. - **Libraries (free to members):** [Libby/OverDrive](https://libbyapp.com/search/query-lucretius%20on%20the%20nature%20of%20things) and [Hoopla](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=lucretius%20on%20the%20nature%20of%20things). These are search links; availability was not confirmed. - **Internet Archive lending / Open Library borrow:** not checked, apart from the public-domain scans above. ## 3. Author biography **Titus Lucretius Carus** (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE), Roman poet and Epicurean. His only known work is *De rerum natura*. - **Almost nothing is known.** Wikipedia: "Virtually nothing is known about the life of Lucretius." SEP agrees: "We know little about Lucretius' life beyond what we can infer from his work." The only external reference from his own time is Cicero's letter of February 54 BCE, which says the poem shows "many flashes of genius" and great craftsmanship (Wikipedia's translation of *Q.F.* 2.10.3; SEP paraphrases it). - **Later notes are unreliable.** Donatus's life of Virgil (derived from Suetonius, per Wikipedia) says Lucretius died the day Virgil took the toga virilis; SEP gives that date as 15 October 53 BCE and calls the coincidence "obviously a passing of the poetic torch". Jerome's *Chronicon* (about four centuries later) gives a birth year and says Lucretius was driven mad by a love potion, wrote the poem in intervals of sanity, and killed himself, and that Cicero edited the books. Wikipedia says it is now accepted that the report is inaccurate. SEP says the madness tale does not square with the early esteem shown by Virgil, Horace and Ovid. The detail that his wife administered the potion is not in Jerome and appears in medieval sources (SEP). - **Dates.** Wikipedia gives c. 99 – 15 October 55 BC, and notes the evidence does not support confident dates. SEP gives "mid-90s to mid-50s BCE". The Latin Library gives c. 94 – c. 49 B.C. Treat all of these as estimates. - **Social position.** Wikipedia says he was probably a member of the aristocratic gens Lucretia, expensively educated, with a mastery of Latin, Greek, literature and philosophy. That is inference from the poem. He was a friend or client of Memmius, to whom the poem is addressed. Sources: [Wikipedia, Lucretius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius); [SEP, Lucretius](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/). ## 4. Author interviews and talks None exist: Lucretius lived two thousand years ago. These are the nearest real items I verified: - [In Our Time: Epicureanism](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qf083), BBC Radio 4, 7 February 2013, 42 minutes, with Angie Hobbs, David Sedley and James Warren, hosted by Melvyn Bragg. The page describes Epicureanism, the atoms-and-void system of Epicurus. I read the programme page; I did not hear the audio, and the page text I read does not name Lucretius, so I cannot say how much of the programme is about him. - Stephen Greenblatt's popular book *The Swerve: How the World Became Modern* (2011) is about the poem's rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini. I did not locate a Greenblatt talk or interview and did not read the book. Wikipedia says it won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the 2011 National Book Award for Nonfiction. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** The poem argues that everything is made of atoms moving in void, that nothing is created or destroyed by the gods, and that the soul is a mortal part of the body. From this it draws an ethical conclusion: since there is no divine governance and no afterlife, fear of the gods and of death is groundless, and we can live in peace of mind. SEP notes Lucretius announces two programmes, the first (1.50-61) a cosmology including the gods and first principles, the second (1.127-35) adding the nature of the soul to dispel fear. Wikipedia and SEP both say it is a nearly unique ancient survival of an anti-teleological, materialist outlook. In the proem to book 1 (Leonard's translation) he states the starting principle: "Nothing from nothing ever yet was born." **Chapter-by-chapter outline** (line ranges are SEP's): 1. **Book 1: atoms and void.** The proem is a hymn to Venus and a plea for peace. Argues that nothing comes from nothing and nothing is destroyed into nothing (1.147-264), that invisible bodies exist, that void is needed for motion, and that the universe is body and void only. Argues for indivisible atoms with theoretically analysable minimal parts (483-634), criticises Heraclitus, Empedocles and Anaxagoras (635-920), and ends with the honey-and-wormwood simile (921-50), the infinite universe and a critique of geocentrism (951-1113). 2. **Book 2: atomic motion and shape.** Opens on the "lofty sanctuaries of the wise". Atoms fall through void at uniform speed, and a minimal random swerve (*clinamen*, 216-93) lets them collide and, SEP says, is also linked to voluntary action. Atoms have varied shapes, no colour, heat or smell, and no sensation; compounds do. Ends with infinite worlds forming by chance without gods. 3. **Book 3: the soul and death.** The soul is bodily. SEP distinguishes *animus* (mind, located in the chest) from *anima* (spread through the body). Thirty arguments for its mortality (417-829) are followed by the case that death is not to be feared. Leonard's rendering of the central claim: "Verily naught to us, us then no more, / Can come to pass" when body and soul are sundered. 4. **Book 4: perception, thought, dreams, love.** Thin films of atoms (*simulacra*, Greek *eidola*) stream from objects and cause vision. Lucretius defends the senses against scepticism, explains dreams, argues parts of the body were not designed for their uses, and criticises erotic love (from line 1058). 5. **Book 5: cosmology and history.** Rejects design: the world began and will end, and the gods did not make it for us. Gives a multiple-explanations account of the sun, moon and stars, an account of the earth's early life (SEP: "semi-Darwinian false starts") and a history of early humans and the origins of language, fire, cities, kings, laws, the belief in gods, metals, music and agriculture. SEP says Lucretius is not a progressivist: each advance has its drawbacks. 6. **Book 6: meteorology and earth.** Thunder and lightning, waterspouts, clouds and rain, earthquakes, Aetna, the fumes of Lake Avernus, magnetism, pestilences, and, last, the Athenian plague. The Leonard text ends in the middle of that account. **Key ideas.** - **Nothing from nothing; nothing to nothing.** The first principle of the system. - **The swerve.** SEP says Lucretius is our sole Epicurean source for it; the doctrine is attributed to Epicurus but not found in his surviving works. - **Symmetry argument on death.** Leonard: "Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld / Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth. / And Nature holds this like a mirror up / Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone." - **Poetry as honey.** He explains that he coats a "bitter" doctrine with poetry the way a physician coats wormwood with honey. Wikipedia says the simile is repeated in book 4 and notes Epicurus advised against poetry. - **Unfinished.** SEP says the poem is complete but "probably lacking its final revision". Wikipedia points to redundant passages, a discussion of the gods promised at 5.155 and not delivered, and the abrupt end of book 6. **Reception and transmission** (Wikipedia unless noted). Cicero praised it in 54 BCE. Virgil's *Georgics* 2.490-92 alludes to it ("Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things..."). The early Church Fathers largely disparaged it; Lactantius called Lucretius "the most worthless of the poets". The three earliest manuscripts date to the ninth century (Codex Oblongus and Codex Quadratus in Leiden, and the Vienna-Copenhagen fragments). Poggio Bracciolini rediscovered the poem in January 1417; the first printed edition appeared at Brescia in 1473. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **mixed**. The book's structure and authorship are well documented, but the video's framing of how moralists responded, and "libertine" in particular, is not something I could confirm from the Lucretius sources I read. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | *De rerum natura* is a poem of six books in hexameters | Supported | [Wikipedia, Lucretius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius); [SEP](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/). About 7,400 lines | | Lucretius wrote it about Epicurean pleasure | Partly supported | SEP says the poem is mostly Epicurean physics, with ethics concentrated in the proems. Pleasure (*voluptas*) opens books 1 and 2, and the goal is freedom from pain and peace of mind. The poem is not primarily a treatise on pleasure | | "The moralists' reply was that he was a libertine" | Unverified as stated | I found no source saying moralists called Lucretius a libertine. What I found: Lactantius disparaged him, other Church Fathers were negative, and Jerome's late madness story is dismissed as inaccurate and possibly anti-Epicurean bias (Wikipedia; SEP). An accusation of licentiousness may exist in sources I did not read | | Death is nothing to us | Supported as the poem's thesis | Book 3 (SEP); [Leonard translation](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785): "Verily naught to us, us then no more, / Can come to pass". Whether the argument is sound is a matter of philosophical debate | | Lucretius lived in the first century BCE and was a friend or client of Memmius | Supported, dates uncertain | Wikipedia; SEP. The exact years are not established | | Jerome's story that Lucretius was driven mad and killed himself | Disputed | Wikipedia: now accepted to be inaccurate. SEP: "hard to take at face value" (citing Holford-Strevens 2002) | | Cicero edited the poem | Disputed | Wikipedia: Jerome says so, but most scholars regard the claim as erroneous; a small minority think it may be credible. SEP: Cicero's involvement in initial diffusion is "just possible", but he never mentions it in his later philosophical works | | The poem was lost in the Middle Ages and rediscovered by Poggio in 1417 | Supported, with a caveat | Wikipedia says Poggio probably found it in the library at Fulda; the three ninth-century manuscripts survived, and the poem was known to some in select circles earlier (Lovato Lovati, thirteenth century) | | The poem is unfinished | Probable | SEP: "probably lacking its final revision". Wikipedia lists the textual signs | | The poem includes the swerve (*clinamen*) | Supported | Book 2; Leonard text, which I searched | | Free legal copy exists | Supported | Gutenberg #785 (Leonard), Munro on the Internet Archive, LibriVox (Watson). Munro's 1864/1886 edition is plainly old enough to be public domain under the [Cornell chart](https://guides.library.cornell.edu/ld.php?content_id=83345575) (works before 1931); I did not verify the publication dates of the Leonard or Watson translations, and I checked no jurisdiction other than the US. Project Gutenberg's own page says it is free to use in the United States | ## 7. Citations and references - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [Lucretius](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/) (first published 22 September 2023). - Wikipedia: [De rerum natura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura); [Lucretius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius). - Lucretius, [*On the Nature of Things*, trans. William Ellery Leonard](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785), Project Gutenberg #785. - H. A. J. Munro, [*Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex*, with notes and a translation](https://archive.org/stream/lucreticariderer02lucruoft/lucreticariderer02lucruoft_djvu.txt), Internet Archive. - [The Latin Library, Lucretius](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius.html). - [Penguin Australia, *The Nature of Things* (Stallings)](https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-nature-of-things-9780140447965). - [BBC Radio 4, *In Our Time: Epicureanism*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qf083), 7 February 2013. - [LibriVox, *On the Nature of Things* (Watson)](https://librivox.org/on-the-nature-of-things-by-titus-lucretius-carus/). - Cornell University Library, [Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States](https://guides.library.cornell.edu/ld.php?content_id=83345575). - Video: [The Epicurean Paradox: Smoking, Drinking, and the Brutal Truth About Pleasure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPm6HW8JkqE), *The HitchPoint*.