On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (57 page)

1
mother of the Roman race
: in mythology, Venus was the mother of Aeneas, the traditional ancestor of the Romans: the story of her encounter with his father Anchises on Mt Ida is told in the
Hymn to Aphrodite
ascribed to Homer, and the introduction to that hymn is recalled in the prologue at several points.

delight
: pleasure was the central good of the Epicurean system: see Introduction.

2
Venus
: the Roman equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex. Her name in Latin means something like ‘attractiveness’, and her principal festival was on 1 April, the beginning of spring (cf. the opening of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
). The poem begins at dawn on the first day of spring (10 ff.), when navigation resumes again after the winter (3 ff.).

26
Memmius
: C. Memmius, praetor in 58
BC
and consular candidate in 54: see Introduction. Venus was used as an emblem on the coinage of the family of the
Memmii
.

33
Mars’ dominion
: Venus restraining the warlike impulse of her husband Mars was a frequent subject of ancient as of modern painting (see especially Botticelli’s
Venus and Mars
). Their union was sometimes allegorized as bringing about harmony: they also look back to the two cosmic principles of ‘Love’ and ‘Strife’ of the fifth-century
BC
Greek poet Empedocles, who was one of Lucretius’ major models (see Introduction).

44–8
for perfect peace…
: these lines translate the first of Epicurus’ ‘Master Sayings’: ‘The blessed and deathless [i.e. the divine] is neither itself troubled nor provides trouble to others, and so it is not compassed either by gratitude or by anger; for all such is weakness.’ Some scholars excise these lines (which are repeated at 2. 646 ff.) as at odds with the terms of the invocation to Venus and the run of thought: the lines are certainly shockingly abrupt about the real nature of divinity, but this is not necessarily without point.

56
Nature creates, increases, nourishes
: Nature begins to take over the functions of ‘Venus most bountiful’ (2 ff.).

66
a man of Greece
: Epicurus. The oblique reference is in oracular style: Empedocles so refers to Pythagoras (fr. B 129), and later Virgil will refer to Lucretius with similar anonymity (
Georgics knows the causes of things… ’). Epicurus is depicted as a giant in revolt against heaven (cf. 5. 117 ff.), a hero defeating the monster religion as Apollo defeated Python. This passage was widely imitated in later poetry: see the introduction for Abraham Cowley’s celebration of Francis Bacon’s victory over ‘Authority’ in his Ode ‘To the Royal Society’.

77
deep-set boundary stone
: 76–7 are repeated at 1. 595–6, 5. 89–90, and 6. 65–6. It was a sacrilege to move a boundary stone (Latin
terminus
): there was even a deity ‘Terminus’ who oversaw them (cf. Livy 1. 55. 3). Epicurus’ journey through the infinite universe ends in an expression of human finitude (for the image cf. also 2. 1087, 3. 1020).

84–101
as once at Aulis…
: Iphigenia (here called Iphianassa as in Homer, though the latter does not have the story of her sacrifice) was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon at the instigation of the priest Calchas in order to appease Diana (Artemis) and provide a following wind for the expedition against Troy. There were several versions of the story: Lucretius uses those details which reflect worse on religion, especially those found in Aeschylus’ play
Agamemnon
(228 ff.) and Euripides,
Iphigenia in Aulis
.

117
Our own Ennius
: Q. Ennius (239–169
BC
), the ‘father’ of Roman poetry. In the opening of his great historical epic the
Annales
he described a meeting with the shade of Homer in Pythagorean terms (frr. 3–11): the work survives only in fragments, but was clearly extensively used in the prologue to
On the Nature of the Universe
.

141
sweet friendship
: friendship played an important role in Epicurean communities, but the term was also used for the relationship between clients and patrons in Rome.

148
the face of nature and her laws
: lines 146–8 also conclude the opening sections of
Books 2
,
3
, and
6
. The dual reference to the outward appearance of the world and its inner workings reflects the Epicurean insistence on empiricism and reason (
physiologia
: see Introduction).

159
if things came out of nothing
: see Epicurus’
Letter to Herodotus
38, ‘nothing comes to be out of what is not, for everything would then come to be out of everything, without needing a seed’, a view described by Aristotle (
Metaphysics
1. 983
^b
) as the common belief of ancient natural philosophers. On the argument form used here, see Introduction.

174
why do roses flourish in the spring
: the opening address to Venus is recalled, but now science replaces myth. The ‘argument from design’ based on the orderly procession of the seasons is here turned against belief in providence: similarly in 208–14 myths of a Golden Age when human beings did not need to work are debunked.

215
The next great principle
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
38, ‘and if what disappears was destroyed into what does not exist, all things would have perished, since that into which they were dissolved would not exist’.

250–61
father ether…
: the ‘hieros gamos’ or wedding of earth and sky was a common literary and religious motif from the time of Homer’s account of the union of Zeus and Hera (
Iliad
14. 346–51): Lucretius’ account here is close to that in Aeschylus’
Danaids
(fr. 44), just as his later version in
Book 2
(991 ff.) is based on Euripides’
Chrysippus
(fr. 839). Lucretius sails close to the wind in perverting the commonplace to his own ends, and this is one of the passages that have led critics to see an underlying religious feeling belying Epicurean orthodoxy; the concluding lines, however, remind us that these are all natural processes.