On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (61 page)

138
head and master as it were
: Lucretius ironically alludes to rival theories that placed the seat of intelligence in the head rather than the chest, and to the Greek (especially Stoic) term for the controlling intelligence often used in such accounts,
to hegemonikon
(‘ruling element’). The Epicureans persisted in their view that sensations felt in the chest pointed to it as the location of thought as well as emotion despite the discovery of the nervous system by the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus (fourth–third century
BC
): some other thinkers, following Plato (
Timaeus
44d, 69d) separated the two functions, placing the immortal function of rational thought in the head but emotion in the heart. Ancient summaries of philosophical views (so-called
Placita Philosophorum
) offer a variety of different locations for the functions by various thinkers: cf. ‘Aetius’ 4. 5 (in H. Diels,
Doxographi Graeci
(Berlin 1879): see Bibliography).

154–6
we sweat, grow pale, | Our speech is broken…
: Lucretius translates part of a famous passage of Sappho (seventh century
BC
), describing her feelings on seeing a man talking to a girl she loves: ‘my tongue is paralysed, a subtle | flame has at once coursed beneath my skin, | with my eyes I see nothing, and my | ears are buzzing; | sweat pours down me, and trembling | seizes me all over, I am paler | than grass’ (fr. 31, translated by G. Goold). Significantly Sappho continues with the words ‘and I seem to be on the verge of dying’. The Sappho poem was also translated by Lucretius’ contemporary Catullus (51): the Greek text is later quoted by the critic ‘Longinus’ in his treatise
On the Sublime
(perhaps first century
AD
), where he comments on Sappho’s linking of mind and body and sees an element of fear as well as erotic passion in the original.

161–2
mind and spirit | Are bodily
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
67.

179–80
Most delicate… and formed | Of atoms most minute
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
63.

211
As soon as death’s calm quiet takes a man
: throughout this section Lucretius’ exposition of the nature of the soul insinuates arguments also relevant to the later arguments for its mortality and assault on the fear of death.

231
do not suppose that this nature is single
: for the parts of the soul, cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
63 (who, however, does not seem to distinguish between air and wind or breath: but a fourfold division similar to that of Lucretius is ascribed to Epicurus in fr. 315).

255
through all the channels of the body
: the Epicureans (with many other theorists, including Empedocles and Asclepiades) believed in both visible and invisible passages or ‘pores’ within the body and leading to the outside. Matter both leaves and enters by these: see above 2. 1105 ff. Their role in death is also stressed in the treatise
On Death
by Lucretius’ Epicurean contemporary Philodemus (4. 8. 18 ff., 37. 31 ff.).

260
The poverty of our language
: cf. 1. 139 ff., 832 ff.

265
a kind of single body
: the soul is a special mixture of its four components, in which their constituent atoms recombine to form a new compound substance, in which, however, the individual properties of the components may be more or less manifest.

273
For deep deep down | This nature hidden lies
: the spatial terms here are not literal, but refer to the perceptibility of the properties of the fourth nameless component within the mixture.

288–9
when anger | Boils
: 288–93 explain differences of mood, 294–306 differences of temperament between animal species, 307–22 the limits within which temperamental differences in human beings may be changed by belief. Lines 294–5, however, sound at first as if they are referring to humans. For the effect of the different constituents of the soul, cf. Epicurus fr. 314–15.

296
Lions are most like this
: the three animals used as examples of temperament—lion, deer, and cow—are traditional: cf. e.g. Aristotle,
History of Animals
488
^b
13 ff.

322
lives… like those of gods
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Monoeceus
135, ‘you shall live as a god among men’. The happiness of the wise person is literally equivalent to that of the gods, since the only difference, that divine happiness is everlasting, is not significant for an Epicurean: see below on 5. 8.

325
with common roots | They cling together
: theories which make the soul a part of the organism are open to the possibility of that part being separated and potentially living on after death: but for the Epicureans, sensation and consciousness are only possible when the soul is mingled with the body, and there is no possibility of its existing separately.

360
mind looks out, as through a door
: this view is ascribed to Heraclitus (fr. A16, ‘as it were through certain doors’) and to the Aristotelian philosopher Strato (third century
BC
) and (?) the first-century
BC
sceptic Aenesidemus (Sextus Empiricus,
Against the Professors
7. 350). Theaetetus holds that the soul rather than the sense organs perceive in Plato,
Theaetetus
184b ff.: the Stoics held similar views, though allocating a greater role to the sense organs (cf. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 46).

371
A view held by the great Democritus
: Democritus is said by Aristotle to have held that the soul was ‘in the whole perceiving body’ (Aristotle,
On the Soul
409
^b
2), but this is the only testimony for the equality in number of soul and body atoms. The later Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda also argues that the number of soul-atoms is less than that of body-atoms, however (fr. 37).

396
The mind more strongly holds the barriers | Of life
: Lucretius’ language is similar to that of Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
65, and especially Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 37, though both of those passages deal rather with the relation of the soul as a whole to the body.

417–829
Well now, that you may know that mind and spirit | Are born in living creatures and are mortal…
: Lucretius now begins his great series of twenty-five to thirty proofs for the mortality of the soul (the exact number depends on whether some related points count as separate arguments). Although the arguments are grouped into sections (e.g. arguments against survival (417–669), arguments against pre-existence (670–783); proofs from non-mortal afflictions (445–547)), the main effect is of a continuous stream of arguments continually pressing the reader to admit mortality.

421
apply both these names to one thing
: see above on 3. 136. Lucretius uses whichever of the terms is most appropriate to the phenomenon being discussed.

440
the body which is its vessel | As it were
: the vessel imagery suits opponents (especially Platonists) for whom the body is just a temporary receptacle of the soul (cf. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 52), but Lucretius perverts it to his own ends with the image of the breaking of the pot. Epicurus similarly talks of the body ‘containing’ the soul (
Letter to Herodotus
64, 66); a fragment close at several points to Lucretius of the late Platonist Iamblichus (second–third century
AD
, quoted in the
Eclogae
or ‘Selections’ of John Stobaeus (fifth century
AD
), 1. 49. 43; Epicurus fr. 337) uses the image of air in a wine-skin in summarizing atomist views.

453
the intelligence | Limps, the tongue rambles, the mind gives way
: Lucretius imitates the listing of symptoms in medical writing, cf. 6. 1145 ff., 1182 ff. Cf. also 3. 169 ff., 478 ff.

456
like smoke
: the disappearance of souls like smoke into the air goes back to Homer (e.g.
Iliad
23. 100, Patroclus’ ghost leaving Achilles) and remains an epic commonplace (cf. e.g. Virgil,
Aeneid
5. 740), but was also used by philosophers, including Epicurus (cf. Empedocles fr. B2, Epicurus fr. 337).

461
we can see the mind to suffer also
: the argument was used by the eclectic Stoic Panaetius (second century
BC
; see Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 79).

468
calling him back
: it was a Roman death-bed ritual to ‘call back’ the dying person by name (
conclamatio
, extended for several days after death).

478–81
His legs give way…
: see above on 3. 169 ff., 453 ff. Epicurus discussed the effects of wine in his lost
Symposium
(frr. 57–65).

487
Now, take another case
: epilepsy, known in Greek as the ‘sacred disease’, was much discussed by philosophers and medical writers: see especially the treatise ascribed to Hippocrates,
On the Sacred Disease
(fifth–fourth century
BC
). Another Hippocratic work,
On Breaths
(fifth century
BC
), has several points of contact with Lucretius’ account.

509
blown by strong winds
: Socrates in Plato,
Phaedo
77d, had described as childish the fear that the soul might be blown away by strong winds at death. Cf. again Epicurus fr. 337.

519
Its boundaries are fixed
: see above on 1. 670.

525
a double refutation
: Lucretius uses a form of the figure known in Greek as the
dilemma
or ‘double premiss’ (cf. 3. 713 ff.), but his word for ‘double’ also suggests a two-bladed axe.

526
how a man | Passes slowly away
: Lucretius polemically recalls Plato’s hagiographical account of the death of Socrates in
Phaedo
117e ff. but makes the process much more one of decay and decomposition, so that a clean escape of the soul from the body seems less plausible.

560
Nor without body can the mind alone | Make living movements
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
66.

577
body’s clothing
: the clothing metaphor goes back to accounts of early Pythagoreanism (cf. Aristotle,
On the Soul
407
^b
23) and was famously used by Socrates in Plato’s
Phaedo
(87d).

583
like smoke
: see above on 456, but here linked to the notion of death as like the burning of a house.

614
like a snake
: the snake which sloughs off old age with its old skin was a common symbol for rejuvenation (perhaps already in Hesiod (seventh century
BC
),
Catalogue of Women
fr. 204. 138): Lucretius will use the snake model for his own very different purposes later in 657 ff.

629
Painters and poets
: especially Polygnotus (fifth century
BC
) in a famous painting at Delphi (Pausanias (second century
AD
), 10. 28) and Homer with Odysseus’ visit to the underworld in
Odyssey
11.

632
tongue
: cf. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 37.

642
chariots bearing scythes
: famously used by Antiochus III at the battle of Magnesia (189
BC
: cf. Livy 37. 41) and possibly described in Ennius’
Annals
(frr. 483–4, recalled in Lucretius 3. 654–6). Cf. 5. 1301 (which may also specifically suggest the battle of Magnesia).

646
the blow’s too sudden
: with the delay for the transmission of sensation to the mind, compare the reverse process in 2. 261 ff.

673
Why can we not remember time that’s past
: a problem recognized but not fully answered by Plato (cf.
Phaedo
72e) and others, for whom ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting’ (Wordsworth, ‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’, v: cf. Aristotle,
On the Soul
430
^a
23 ff.).

679–80
if the body is complete | Before the quickened mind can enter it
: cf. Ennius,
Annals
frr. 8–10 on birds’ eggs, ‘the soul itself by divine power comes later to the chicks’.

684
a quiet hole
: the Platonic imagery of the body as a cage or prison is suggested: cf. Plato,
Phaedo
82e.

696
safe and unharmed
: the language is Platonic, see
Phaedrus
250c1 ff.

707
the channels of the body
: see above on 3. 255.

713
here’s another question
: another use of the figure of
dilemma
: see above on 3. 525.

719
worms
: cf. 2. 871 ff.

741
lions
: cf. 3. 269 ff.

749
the behaviour | Of animals would be all mixed up
: the counterfactual confusion of nature (cf. e.g. 1. 161 ff.) recalls the poetic commonplace known as the
adunaton
or ‘impossibility’, where the impossibility of something happening is equated with a series of inversions of normal life: see e.g. Theocritus (third century
BC
),
Idylls
1. 132 ff.

753
Reason, in men | No more
: Aristotle (
On the Soul
407
^b
20, 414
^a
22) particularly objected to interchange between human and animal species in metempsychosis, and it was an early target of ridicule (Xenophanes (sixth century
BC
) fr. B7).

756
For that which changes is | Dissolved
: cf. above on 1. 670.

784
A tree can’t grow in the sky
: the ‘impossibilities’ (see above on 749) are the sort of natural perversion classified in Roman religion as omens or portents (cf. Livy 42. 2. 5, Juvenal 13. 65).

806–18
Few things there are that last eternally…
: 806–18 are repeated at 5. 351–63.