Apart from Lucretius' poem almost nothing is known about the life of Lucretius. . What little evidence   there is, is quite inconclusive. Jerome, a leading Latin Church Father, in his chronicle for the year 94 BC (or possibly 96 or 93 BC), stated that Lucretius was born in that year   and that years afterward a love potion drove him insane; and in lucid intervals having   written some books, which Cicero afterward emended, he killed himself in his 44th year (51 or 50 BC). The love potion story is almost certainly false, perhaps suggested by the important role Venus plays in the poem.  There are six books in all in On the Nature of Things, each  beginning with a highly   polished introduction. Books I and II established the main principles of the atomic   universe, refuted the rival theories of the pre-Socratic cosmic philosophers Heracleitus,   Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, and covertly attacked the Stoics, a school of moralists   rivaling that of Epicurus. Book III demonstrated the atomic structure and mortality of   the soul and ended with a triumphant sermon on the theme "Death is nothing to us."   Book IV described the mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily   functions and condemned sexual passion. Book V described the creation and working   of this world and the celestial bodies and the evolution of life and human society. Book VI explained remarkable phenomena of the earth and sky, in particular, thunder and lightning. The poem ends with a description of the plague at Athens, a somber picture of death contrasting with that of spring and birth in the invocation to Venus, with which it opened.

The aim of Epicurean philosophy is to achieve peace of mind. This peace is achieved by thinking correctly. The human mind is unsettled by fear of death, fear of the gods, fear of nature, and unruly passions. Epicureanism has solutions for all this.

To remove the fear of the gods, Lucretius relies on physics and a sort of primitive evolutionary biology and anthropology. Epicurus was a godlike man who fought against religion and the fears it caused in men, who abandoned superstitious explanations of the origins of the world and human society, myths of life after death and divine punishment, and probed into how the physical world really works.  According to Epicurus, the universe was originally composed of a wide variety of atoms which, falling vertically, on occasion swerved, collided and began to form matter. Thus due to  these indeterminate swerves there arises an infinite plurality of worlds, in which everything can come into being, including the gods. The swerve, because it makes the universe less determinate, allows for human free will, which allows us to choose our attitudes toward circumstances. All things are ultimately systems of moving atoms, separated  by greater or smaller intervals of void, which cohere more or less according to their  shapes. All systems are divisible and therefore perishable and all change is explainable in terms of the addition, subtraction, or rearrangement of changeless atoms.

From these atoms (which means in Greek that which cannot be cut) eventually our world formed, and life arose and developed by natural processes from lower to higher forms of life. Early humans too evolved in terms of society. We were wild and lonely savages at first, but the desire for sex and procreation brought people together, and when they had children, made them desire to give up some of their savage behaviors in a type of social contact, which was the beginning of society. Note how Lucretius shows how things like fire and song were not gifts from the gods, but arose from lightening strikes and from primitive men imitating birds.

Once people settled down  naturally the strong, more intelligent, more handsome took control and became the first kings, who built cities and fortresses. Now, with life more secure, wealth developed, which brought the first political crises between the haves and have-nots (think class struggle). Note how Lucretius again condemns the lust for power as something that disturbs our peace. To control this struggle, laws and systems of justice were created. Notice how for Lucretius all these historical and cultural developments follow naturally from the needs of the time and the physical circumstances of humans, not as a gift from the gods. For him, law is not the produce of a participation in Universal Reason that links humans with God, but arises naturally due to physical circumstances.

The reason that Lucretius spends time on explaining the growth of human society is in part because there were many myths that described the development of human society and its arts as a direct gift of one or more gods, like Prometheus. But he wants to remove all such superstition. For a similar reason Lucretius gives explanations for thunder, rain, earthquakes, seasons and other scary or awesome natural phenomena; he is afraid  that, if we did not understand their natural origins, we would naturally invoke gods as the explanations. He wants us completely free of any concern about the gods. Instead, he wants us to realize that the universe runs according to natural processes, which are neither for us or against us. Lucretius is a materialist, that is, one who sees all things around us as being able to be explained as a natural process of objects acting and interacting.

Lucretius, paradoxically, does believe in Gods, but only in the sense of perfect beings that exist far away and that have nothing to do with human beings, because to be bothered with humans would detract from their blessedness. However, because matter throws off thin ‘films’ of atoms, we can sometimes see the gods in our dreams, and thus we fell into the mistake of thinking these beings were responsible for our world.

Another fear we have is of death and life after death. Lucretius shows how the soul is as mortal as the body, and perishes with it. In fact, Lucretius shows how the whole universe is mortal; in fact, there is a certain sense that Lucretius feels that the universe is slowly wearing out, and thus note how the poem ends with the description of the great plague of Athens, the time of death that is in opposition to the beginning of life of the Spring. But, as with the Stoic, a central message was that ‘Death is Nothing to Us’ not only because we suffer no more after we are dead than before we were born, but also because once we understand the universal rhythm of life and death we can better endure it, seeing it as natural, not fearful. But he also realizes that this is hard for people to accept.

I mentioned in class the paradox, that although Lucretius violently attacks religion (for example, showing how his fear of the goddess Artemis caused Agamemnon to sacrifice his own daughter) he begins his poem with an invocation to Venus, the mother of Aeneas.  But here Venus is really not the pagan goddess, but the power of sex, fertility and production inherent in the matter of the universe, one of the central forces that cause the universe to come into being, as well as Lucretius’ poem. The other force, of course, that governs the universe is decay, and thus the book ends with the description of the Plague at Athens. Note too the uselessness of religion in the face of that plague is also demonstrated.

In fact Epicureans, although they are technically hedonists, that is, people who believe that we should live for pleasure, that pleasure is equal to the good, do not believe in endless wine, sex and song. Epicureans believe that excess of any pleasure bring more pain than pleasure, and this is particularly true of sex. But Epicureans likewise condemn excessive lust for wealth, power, fame, etc. The ideal is Epicurus’ garden, a withdrawn enclosure in which a man can enjoy the simple pleasures, including friendship, without too deeply engaging himself with the rest of the world and its troubles. Cicero complained that a belief that life led only for pleasure would not have motivated the great heroes of Roman history to do great deeds; Lucretius probably would have replied that most people who strive to do great deeds bring about war, revolution, and ruin more than good. Think about how much better the world might be if people simply minded their own business and did not ask for more than the simple things life really demands.
 

An epicurean home page at http://www.creative.net/~epicurus/index.html
 
 

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