Episode 001 - Lucretius - Book One Venus / Pleasure As Guide Of Life
Welcome to Episode 001 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Cassius hosts alongside co-moderators from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, walking line by line through Lucretius’s six books.
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 001 launches the Lucretius Today podcast with introductions from all panelists — Cassius (host), Elaine, Julie, Charles, and Martin — each sharing their prior experience with Lucretius. The episode then reads and discusses the opening invocation of On the Nature of Things, Book One, in which Lucretius addresses Venus as the allegorical representation of Pleasure, the driving force of all living things.
The panel works through multiple translations — the 1743 edition, Munro, Stallings, and Martin Ferguson Smith — comparing how each handles the Latin voluptas (pleasure), noting that some translators shy away from the word “pleasure” despite it being the explicit Latin. The discussion establishes that Lucretius begins not with avoiding pain but with pleasure as a positive guiding force for all life. The second passage — Mars at rest in Venus’s lap — is read as a call for peace not as an end in itself but as the precondition for pleasure.
The panel discusses the poem’s dedicatee Memmius (a Roman praetor), the non-supernatural Epicurean interpretation of gods like Venus and Mars, and Lucretius’s statement of his topic: the nature of atoms and natural processes. The episode closes on Lucretius’s frustration with people who reject philosophy before understanding it.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 1 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my co-moderators from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you line by line through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. My co-hosts in this podcast are Ellie from Greece, Elaine and Julie from the United States, and Martin from Germany. In each episode, we’ll bring you a new section of the poem and discuss what we think it means and how it applies today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is self-taught in Epicurean philosophy. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest as a good starting point the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.
Before we get started with today’s episode, let me tell you about three ground rules. First, the opinions stated on this podcast are those of the people making them. No one has the right to speak in Epicurus’ name, so our goal is to learn from Lucretius, just like Lucretius learned from Epicurus, and turned Epicurus’ ideas into a poem. Our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it — not to tell you what we think Epicurus might have said, or should have said, in our own opinions. Second, in this podcast we won’t be talking with you about modern political issues. How you apply Epicurus in your own life is entirely up to you. What you’re going to learn through Lucretius is that in the Epicurean universe there’s no center where you can stand and say that only your own perspective is correct. That means that no matter what your political viewpoint may be, you’re welcome to join us in studying Epicurus and thinking about how he applies to your own personal circumstances. Over at the EpicureanFriends.com web forum, you’ll find that we apply this approach by following a set of ground rules we call, not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. That’s the same approach we’re going to follow here. Epicurean philosophy isn’t Stoicism, it’s not Humanism, it’s not Libertarianism, it’s not Atheism, it’s not Marxism, and it’s not any kind of economic system like capitalism or communism. Epicurean philosophy is a system of thought that comes before all those social systems, and as we explore Lucretius’ poem, you’ll quickly see how that is the case. Third, be willing to re-examine whatever you think you already know about Epicurus. This is going to show us that Epicurus was not focused on fine food and wine, like some people say, but he’s also going to show us that Epicurus didn’t teach that we should live like a hermit on bread and water, as other people say. Most of all, we’re going to explore what Epicurus meant by pleasure. The real issue of pleasure is not what type you prefer for yourself, but that pleasure is a feeling — and that feeling, and not gods or abstract ideals or virtues, is what nature gave us for deciding how to live. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that the universe is not supernatural in any way, and that means that there’s no life after death, and that any happiness we’re ever going to experience comes in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.
As we get started today, remember that the home page of this podcast is LucretiusToday.com, and there you can find a free copy of the version of the poem from which we’re reading, and links to where you can discuss the poem between episodes at EpicureanFriends.com. Now let me introduce you to our co-hosts and panelists for today’s podcast. Doing this is part of a continuing series on Lucretius’ poem, so let’s go around the table and have everyone tell us what their background and experience is in reading Lucretius in the past.
Elaine:
Okay, so I read this sometime over 35 years ago in college, and to put it in context — I have always been a big reader, but back then even more prolific than I am now, so I probably read a book a day or every couple of days. I don’t think I spent a lot of time with it, and I don’t remember my reaction to it, anymore than that it seemed pretty obvious that at least a lot of it was correct. None of it was surprising to me because I had been raised non-religious — my dad is a physicist, my mother is a mathematician — so I don’t remember seeing anything surprising in it. So I’m really interested in rereading it now, knowing what I know about the competing philosophies and how they have so strongly influenced our culture in ways that I didn’t fully understand when I was 20. So yeah, I’m excited about rereading it. I didn’t give it the attention I think it deserved when I was so young, but I will now.
Cassius:
Okay great. Julie, what’s your background in Lucretius?
Julie:
So I read it once back in 2015 — that was the first time I read it, and when I read it, I guess I was expecting it to be more about the ethics, which there’s hardly any of that in there, and so I had a hard time enjoying it. But I reread it this year. I shouldn’t say I read it — I listened to the audiobook and followed along. I have a version that matches the audio version almost exactly, so I followed along earlier this year knowing that it’s mainly about the physics and the sensations, and enjoyed it much more the second time, now that I know that. That’s really about it, just those two passes.
Cassius:
Julie, you’ve hit on a couple of things I think we need to emphasize — that it’s much better for people to understand what they’re about to read or hear so that they’re not disappointed, and that they focus on understanding the reason for these particular topics that are being discussed. You also mentioned the audio version — are you talking about the Audible version by Charlton Griffin, or are you talking about the LibriVox version?
Julie:
The Audible one with the Charlton —
Cassius:
Okay, that’s the Charlton Griffin rendition, and that is the Rolfe Humphries translation, which I also think is an excellent translation. It’s sort of poetic but it still makes a lot of sense, and that version is what really pushed me over the line personally when I first listened to Charlton Griffin read it, because it was so much easier for me to understand it being read to me than when I tried to read it myself. So let’s go continue around the table. Charles, what is your background in Lucretius?
Charles:
Well, when I began to take Epicurean philosophy seriously back in like late January, I had known of the book then, just kind of being interested in the Renaissance and the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts. I have read sections of it and gotten a summary of it online, but it wasn’t until July I think that I bought it and started to read it. I never finished it — I’m not a fan of hexameter or that heroic type of prose — so I haven’t finished it, and I haven’t finished every single section in particular, but I’m more familiar with Book Four.
Cassius:
And Charles, you have the Stallings edition by Penguin Press — is that the one you’ve been reading?
Charles:
Yeah.
Cassius:
Very good. Martin, what is your background in Lucretius?
Martin:
Yeah, I’ve read the excerpts when they were discussed in our group, and that’s about it.
Cassius:
Okay. What version do you refer to when you read Lucretius?
Martin:
Yeah, based on your recommendation I will probably download Munro, and maybe the other I will download too, but actually read through the Munro edition, and hopefully start this week.
Cassius:
Okay, do you have a German edition that you refer to?
Martin:
No, because we discuss in English, then I will read it in English.
Cassius:
I see, I see. Okay, well let me give very briefly in summary form my own background in it. As I said a minute ago, I’ve been familiar with Lucretius and read certain parts of it for the last 30 or 40 years, but I never really understood it or got enthusiastic about it until I came across the Audible version that Charlton Griffin produced from the translation by Rolfe Humphries. I was able to get the Rolfe Humphries text and then listen along while Charlton Griffin read it, and it just made much more sense to me when someone was reading it and using proper tone and pauses and emphasis where it was appropriate. The combination of him reading it with the Rolfe Humphries translation finally allowed me to read basically the whole book and begin to understand why it was so important.
Since then I’ve been referring to a lot of different translations, and I do like to refer not only to the Humphries edition but also to the Cyril Bailey version and the Munro version and then the one that was published in 1743, because whenever I come into a passage that I find difficult or seemingly ambiguous, I think it helps a lot to compare different translations to see how different people are translating it. So with that as the background, I generally nowadays like to refer to the 1743 edition, but each of the editions have good things about them, and the Martin Ferguson Smith edition with his footnotes is one of the most valuable ones as well. We’ll be talking about each section of text hopefully and referring to each of these many editions so we can bring out the depth of the meaning of each section. Okay, with that as background for today, let’s get started reading the opening of the poem. Who’d like to start?
Martin:
I can start.
Cassius:
Yeah.
Martin:
[Reading from the 1743 edition of Lucretius, Book One:]
Master of Rome, delight of man and God, sweet Venus, who with vital power doth rear the sea bearing the ships, the fruitful earth, all things beneath the rolling signs of heaven. For it is by thee that creatures of every kind conceive, rise into life, and view the sun’s bright beams. The goddess, thee the winds avoid, the clouds fly thee and thy approach. With various art the earth for thee affords the sweetest flowers. For thee the sea’s rough waves put on their smiles, and the smooth sky shines with diffuse light. For when the buxom spring leads on the year, and genial gales of western winds blow fresh, unlocked from winter’s cold, the airy birds first greet thee, goddess, and express thy power. Thy active flame strikes through their very soul, and then the savage beasts with wanton play frisk over the cheerful fields and swim the rapid streams. So pleased with thy sweetness, so transported by thy soft charms, all living nature strives with sharp desire to follow thee, her guide, wherever thou art pleased to lead. In short, thy power, inspiring every breast with tender love, drives every creature on with eager heat — in seas, in mountains, in swift-running floods, in leafy forests, and in verdant plains — to propagate their kind from age to age.
Cassius:
Elaine, what do you think about what Martin just read?
Elaine:
Cassius, I do want to comment that unlike this version that we just had reading from, the Martin Ferguson Smith version says “Mother of Aeneas’s people,” and I wanted to look at the Latin and see.
Cassius:
Yes, the original Latin, which is on the other link that I put up there, definitely refers to Aeneas.
Elaine:
Yes, right, right. So this is an example of the translator translating not only the words but the meaning — because of course Aeneas being the traditional founder of Rome, the 1743 translator is choosing to explain to the reader what is meant by referring to Aeneas rather than just translating it literally. But I like using “Aeneas’s people.” I mean, I think that should be clear — unless you just don’t know anything at all about history, you should know what that means — and so I prefer that the translator preserve that. To me, this is one of the benefits of getting to go over this in detail: we can look at the different translations and think about the effects of the choices that the translator made, rather than just veering through it. So I’m excited about that. The overall meaning of this first part is, I think, obvious to me now — but it probably was not obvious to me the first time that I read it in college — that he’s talking about pleasure, and that pleasure is the thing that drives all of the creatures to do everything that they do, including to reproduce.
Cassius:
Elaine, the first point that you made — we could probably spend hours just talking about this, but everything in this book is so deep. And if the translator decides to use words that are different than what Lucretius included, you end up immediately relying on the translator, and the translator may be totally disconnected — he may disagree, he may just — especially on these poetry versions, it’s my observation that these poetic translators wish to preserve the feeling of it, and they do so by just totally extemporaneously picking what they think Lucretius said. And that’s the real problem: we are so distant from Epicurean philosophy that most of these people who are working with these translations may or may not have any clue at all as to where Epicurus was coming from, and therefore what Lucretius was trying to convey.
Elaine:
Yeah, and I like — in this Ferguson translation, I think I can quote small sections with that.
Cassius:
Yes.
Elaine:
The power of the words here, to me, is Epicurean. “The birds of the air, pierced to the heart with your powerful shaft, signal your entry.” It has the energy that I associate with Epicurean philosophy, rather than the sort of passive idea that some people — that the new Epicureans — have. This is obviously real pleasure, not just kind of sitting around belly-fed and gazing.
Cassius:
That’s right. Now, also for purposes of comparison — as we put together this material and make it available — we also can compare the Munro edition. I think Bailey is somewhere close to this as well. But what you’re talking about, Elaine, with referring to Aeneas — that is also what Munro says: “Mother of the Aeneads, darling of men and gods.” His translations are probably, if possible, more literal than what Martin Ferguson Smith is doing, sometimes at the expense of being clear. So Mr. Smith probably does the best job of making it both literal and clear. But it really helps to go back to the Latin words and try to do it literally, to see exactly what you’re talking about — because a lot of people will say you’ve got the huge issue of why are we talking about Venus if we’re Epicureans? But you’ve also got the issue of whether Venus really represents pleasure or represents some kind of life force that’s more generic than pleasure. I’ve seen people argue that they don’t necessarily agree that Venus is pleasure. So I think the way the Smith translation is worded makes it clear by context that this is pleasure. But then when you look at Stallings — even though it’s not as literal — she talks about “your delicious yearning goads the breast of every creature, and you urge all things you find to get new generations of their kind.” So that’s pretty cool also, and it has a vigorous spirit in it.
Elaine:
Well, not to mention that in the second line, the one that we’re covering uses “Mother of Rome, delight of men,” whereas Stallings says “Mother of Aeneas and of Rome, pleasure of men and gods.”
Cassius:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. What is the Latin word there?
Elaine:
We can look at the Latin word. Voluptas.
Cassius:
Voluptas, which is generally translated as pleasure, right? Yeah — I mean, that is the Latin. I don’t think there’s another word for pleasure more frequently used than voluptas. So in this one, I think Stallings was more accurate for that word. And you have to wonder: is this an editorial choice that these translators are making because they shrink away from using the word pleasure? Because the word “pleasure” is the lightning rod of so much of all of this. Martin, do you have any thoughts?
Martin:
Yeah, I found this translation, at least of this first paragraph, clearer than the Munro edition. This part I wouldn’t easily understand in the Munro edition.
Cassius:
That’s a great example of why I like the 1743 edition. You’re exactly right — even though it’s older by 100 years or more, whoever put together the 1743 edition made it more understandable to me in modern terms than Munro chose to do. So it’s going to constantly be a calculation and a choice of words by whoever’s doing it. But by comparing the different translations together and then even looking back at the Latin words when necessary, I think that’s the best way to come to an understanding of it.
Charles:
I’m not too familiar with the Munro translation, but it seems that if we read the 1743 and compare it with Stallings and the Latin, that might give us the best grasp.
Cassius:
Right. Right. Now, if you don’t have the Martin Ferguson Smith edition in front of you, one of the benefits of it is he has lots of good footnotes on each page as well. And he will explain through footnotes things that might not be clear otherwise. And so, Elaine, as you see footnotes that are relevant here, we can add those in as well and discuss it.
Elaine:
I mean, I think — for poetry, the Stallings is beautiful. It is not as exact because she’s trying to get — she actually has a meter and a rhyme scheme, and so she had to take some liberties. So I think when we get to some of the areas that are physics-wise more key, it will be interesting to see whether that makes any difference in what she has Lucretius saying.
Cassius:
Well, in the next paragraph we go on to the part where Lucretius is actually saying that he’s asking Venus’s help. But in this opening paragraph, we really need to hammer home the point that he has chosen in the very opening words of the poem to say that pleasure — allegorically through Venus — is the motivating force of all life. It’s probably difficult to overemphasize the importance of that, because that’s probably the foundation of Epicurean ethics, and the foundation of so much else that comes from it: that it’s pleasure that drives everything to do whatever it does.
Elaine:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Aphrodite kind of seen as like a mascot in Greece for the gardens, just as the pigs were in Herculaneum?
Cassius:
I wish Ellie were here to comment on that. One thing that comes to my mind is when I think back at Plato’s Philebus, and they talk about Philebus’s favorite goddess being Venus. But I don’t know that we have anything in the surviving texts about Venus directly. Maybe in the Selected Fragments. Does anybody remember Venus being referred to by Epicurus? Of course it would be Aphrodite by Epicurus — or by Diogenes of Oenoanda in the inscription. I don’t know that there are many direct references. Even in On the Nature of the Gods, that section that has Velleius talking about the nature of gods — I don’t think he specifically refers to Venus. Now Ellie brought up recently in the discussion — I doubt I’ll be able to remember the particular passage — but she was talking about one of Epicurus’ letters starting with a reference to Apollo. And of course later on in Lucretius he talks about those passages that say you can call upon Ceres or Neptune if you like, as long as you don’t believe that there’s any superstitious aspect to it. And so there’s a whole lot of discussion in the commentators about why and whether it’s appropriate to be referring to Venus or not. And whether this is also intended — because of course the whole book is dedicated to Memmius, the Roman that Lucretius apparently thought might be his patron, and to some extent that might be the “mother of Rome” reference — that he is writing to a particular Roman and to Romans, connecting Venus and Aphrodite to Rome and to Memmius for that reason. But regardless of any of the rest of that, he’s setting out in this first paragraph that pleasure is the driving force of all living things.
Elaine:
Right. And let’s talk about what there’s not here. Where’s the reference to avoiding pain in this opening paragraph? Does anybody see a call to…
Charles:
Oh, good point. “Let’s go live in our cave and avoid pain — that’s only bread and water.”
Cassius:
But I think that’s a significant point here. He’s starting out by talking about pleasure as the driving force. He’s not talking about avoiding pain. In fact, you could argue, I suppose, that the next paragraph — which starts talking about bringing peace to Rome — would arguably be that. But the very first paragraph, before you get to avoiding pain, is clearly: pleasure is what drives it. Martin, you want to read the second paragraph?
Martin:
Okay.
[Reading from the 1743 edition:]
Since I alone discovered nature’s laws, and nothing without thee can rise to light, without thee nothing can look gay or lovely, I beg thee a companion to my lays, which now I sing of nature, and I devote to my dear Memmius, whom thou art ever pleased, sweet goddess, to adorn with every grace. For him, kind deity, inspire my song, and give immortal beauty to my verse. Meantime, the bloody tumult of war, by sea and land, compose and lay asleep. For though alone man cried with quiet peace, none can bless, because it is Mars, potent Mars, that rules the bloody tumult of the war, and he, by everlasting pains of love bound fast, tastes in thy lap most sweet repose, turns back his smooth long neck, and views thy charms, and greedily sucks love at both his eyes. So, kindly, as he rests, his very soul hangs on thy lips. This god dissolved in ease, in the soft moments when thy heavenly limbs cling around him, melting with eloquence, implore a peace for all.
Cassius:
Let’s talk about what I was raising just a few minutes ago. The first paragraph talks about pleasure. This one you could definitely say is talking about avoiding the pain of war. But I don’t, in this context, gain any sense that he’s just talking about nothingness. He is talking about withdrawing the tumult of the war so that he can enjoy these things that are what’s really important to him.
Elaine:
Well, okay, you know, I agree, it sounds specific. On the other hand, when would be a time when you would prefer to have war if you could be having pleasure instead?
Cassius:
No, never.
Elaine:
Yeah, so I think it’s not just specific, it’s probably also general. He’s saying, you know, if you can’t have your peace and pleasure without going to war, then you’ve got to go to war. But he’s just hoping for some peace so he can get this done and enjoy his life.
Cassius:
Well, continuing to talk about that — one of the things I hope we can do as we go forward in reading through Lucretius is, as we see the very specific things that Lucretius says, we can bring maybe better context to some of the conclusions that we think we know about Epicurean philosophy in general. And so many people say that the heart of Epicurean philosophy is this issue of pleasure being the goal — what is the meaning of pleasure, and does pleasure merely mean absence of pain, and how does all that come together into a big picture. This opening section I think is helpful in that, because it is showing us that pleasure is the driving force in a way that we understand it to be. He’s talking about the birds and the animals and the fields, and all of nature with sharp desire following pleasure as guide wherever pleasure leads, and so we’re following that guide as our driving force. But at the same time we deal with issues such as wars that can distract us from that. And so it seems to me that you could put all of this together in this opening section and say that he’s calling upon the goddess of pleasure to do her work and to remove these obstructions from us in enjoying pleasures.
Elaine:
Yes, yes, exactly. That summed up what I would have added. So there’s just no sense whatsoever of nothingness, or tranquility for the sake of tranquility. It’s tranquility for the sake of pursuing pleasure. Everything is focused around a positive goal of pleasure, as opposed to just a negative avoidance.
Cassius:
And let’s see — the Smith version says “Meantime, cause the barbarous business of warfare to be lulled to sleep,” which is a little bit more emphatic to me than “bloody tumult.” And then Stallings says “make the mad machinery of war drift off to sleep.” So what is the Latin there? And then Munro says “cause the savage works of war to be lulled to rest.” And of course, a lot of this discussion is about the allegory of Mars and Venus. Mars representing the god of war — he’s not disposed of, he’s not dissolved into nothingness. He is actually himself, this god of war, redirecting his own focus.
Elaine:
Right, right — toward pleasure.
Cassius:
And the other translations I have are much sexier than the one that we just read, which makes me think that the Latin probably is a little sexier than the way it’s translated in what we read.
Elaine:
Right. Yeah. I wonder if some of the various translations have kind of glossed over that in favor of something a bit more palatable.
Cassius:
I think so too. It’s nice to give back to the original vividness.
Charles:
I’ve read many sections of Book Four of the Stallings translation and towards the end it gets very graphic.
Cassius:
Right, you’re talking about the sex section and the romantic love section, right? There’s a lot of very graphic description in that. So what else should we draw from this opening? I’m trying — I can’t think of the Vatican Saying, but we could possibly connect the section here about war with that Vatican Saying about challenging adversity to return to pleasure, or a greater pleasure.
Charles:
You know, yeah — the greater the challenge, the more pleasure in surmounting it.
Cassius:
I don’t remember that one. I don’t remember anything about a greater challenge and more pleasure — that’s interesting.
Charles:
Maybe it’s the wording.
Cassius:
Charles, could you repeat that — maybe it’s what?
Charles:
Maybe it’s — is it where he’s talking about, if your life is in danger, you get the greatest pleasure on escaping the deadly situation?
Cassius:
I can’t remember that. No — I do see Selected Fragment 442: “Although it is better to endure a given pain in order to experience a greater pleasure, it can also be better to abstain from a given pleasure in order to avoid an even greater pain.”
Elaine:
Yeah, okay, right, right. It doesn’t mean that you have to go out looking for severe challenges just to — unless you’re going to get greater pleasure. It’s not automatic that a greater challenge is going to give you more pleasure. It kind of sounded like what you’re…
Charles:
I’d have to find the original quote that I was looking for. Maybe it’s a different interpretation — maybe it’s done by Strodach or somebody else, in which case maybe I’m being a bit misled there. But with the section on the war, if you have no other alternative, maybe it is — not duty, but kind of your own personal obligation — otherwise you’ll just be completely overwhelmed by the consequences of it, or risk death. So it would be advisable to enlist to give a chance to save yourself in the future, even if you’re risking your short-term survivability.
Cassius:
It probably sounds like we need to find the original to pull the meaning out of that one. And I’ll look for that original quote that I was thinking of as well on my own.
And so with the section that comes next — “For neither can I write with cheerful strains in times so sad, nor can the noble house of Memmius desert the common good in such distress of things” — and then after that he turns to what he’s going to talk about in the poem. But that last sentence is something we talk about a lot as well. He seems to be saying here that Memmius — who is his target to understand Epicurean philosophy — is not going to desert the common good in such distress of things. So it’s almost as if he is saying that Memmius, in learning Epicurean philosophy, is not going to become a hermit by doing so — he’s going to continue to be involved in the common good. I don’t know if we know whether Memmius was a politician — I think he was a politician of some type in Rome, not a military leader so much as some type of politician. But —
Charles:
Well, there’s a footnote on it. It says Memmius — Lucretius inscribes in his poem — traveled with him to Athens where they studied philosophy together. He was derived from the noble family of the Memmii who claimed their extraction from the Trojans. He attained the dignity of Praetor.
Cassius:
Okay, so he was originally a magistrate. I don’t know exactly what that rank entails — a Praetorship is a military position, I’m pretty sure.
Elaine:
You might be thinking of Praetorian, yeah.
Charles:
I was thinking about the Praetorian Guard, I guess.
Cassius:
Yeah, definitely the Praetorian Guard was military, but whether the Praetor always was a military or civil position varies by era. Okay, it says it’s either the commander of an army or an elected magistrate. Praetor was a title granted by the ancient Roman government to a senator holding the magistrate rank inferior only to consuls. Praetors commanded armies in the absence of the consuls, and more routinely served as judges. So they didn’t have the separation of things that we have now. I heard a phrase one time that rang a bell with me: there was this guy saying that Rome did not have an army — Rome was an army. It’s like the whole thing was organized as military and civil simultaneously. But at any rate, the point I was raising is that this would appear to be — he’s not saying “learn Epicurean philosophy and resign your position.” He’s not saying “learn Epicurean philosophy and go live in a cave.” He’s saying “learn Epicurean philosophy and then still be of assistance to your country, because you can’t desert the common good” during the distress of — presumably we’re talking about the Roman civil war here, or early phases of it.
Martin:
So Cassius, I wouldn’t say “to practice the philosophy and still” — I would say that that’s part of the philosophy. Hold on. In the footnotes it says he arrived at the dignity of Praetor but obtained Bithynia for his province, but was soon recalled, being accused by Caesar of maladministration. So Bithynia was a province that was kind of like north and northwest Turkey.
Cassius:
You know, along with that, Charles — I think one of the other things we know about Memmius is that he ultimately got involved in Athens, and there’s some kind of story about how Memmius wanted to tear down some remaining house that belonged to Epicurus. Maybe he eventually did — or there’s some other historical reference that Memmius was eventually involved in Athens in a way that Cicero or some other people thought was disrespectful of the Epicurean garden, or the house — some physical structure, not the philosophy, but just some physical structure he got involved with later on. I know I’ve read that somewhere. So I don’t think we really know anything about whether Memmius became a devoted Epicurean, or anything about the history after this — just that the poem is being devoted to him, dedicated to him. So — do we read another sentence or two before we come to a conclusion? Why don’t we do that — Martin, could you read the rest of what’s listed as number three there on that screen?
Martin:
Okay.
[Reading from the 1743 edition:]
For neither can I write with cheerful strains in times so sad, nor can the noble house of Memmius desert the common good in such distress of things. The hours you spare, apply with close attention to my verse, and free from care, receive true reason’s rules. Nor these my gift, prepared with faithful pains, reject with scorn before they are understood. For I begin to write of lofty themes of gods and of the motions of the sky, the rise of things — how all things nature forms, and how they grow and to perfection rise, and into what by the same nature’s laws those things resolve and die. Which as I write I call by various names: sometimes it is matter, or the first principles, or seeds of things, or first of bodies, from which all else proceed.
Cassius:
Okay, so we can begin to summarize this opening section. I think this is what Lucretius says he’s going to talk about as what’s most important. He’s already talked about pleasure, and now he’s talking about how he’s going to explain the nature of the universe as being natural and non-supernatural — and the way he’s going to explain that is by explaining the theory of atoms and how they are the components from which all things are formed and to which all things return after they die. So that’s what Lucretius is saying is the heart of Epicurean philosophy: the understanding of nature as being natural and not supernatural.
Julie:
Yeah, it’s important to note that at least in this translation he says “lofty themes of gods” and then talks about how everything else in the world is natural and not — like you said — supernatural or created by unnatural deities. I’d have to look at the other translations, but I kind of see a snide quality there.
Cassius:
Hmm, okay — so I don’t think he’s being snarky. I think he’s actually talking about his interpretation of the gods. So the Smith translation says “where I will proceed to explain to you the workings of the heaven above and the nature of the gods, and unfold the primary elements of things,” because he does — we’ve talked about before — he has his own version of non-supernatural gods. I don’t think he’s contrasting supernatural gods with material gods here in this section. He’s going to explain what the nature of them is. Charles, what were you about to say — were you saying he was being snarky about gods?
Charles:
Snarky about gods. Because he was saying “lofty.” But I think he’s actually going to literally explain what the gods are — saying, like, “I begin to write of these lofty themes,” but then he’ll go on to explain a very dense, atomistic, and precise description of everything natural.
Cassius:
Right. I see “lofty” as in the sense of deep or hugely important — not intended to be snarky, but: these are hugely important issues I’m about to talk about.
Elaine:
Well, what is the Latin word?
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s good, let’s look for that. Because Smith doesn’t even put it in his translation, which is interesting.
Julie:
Yeah, I’m having trouble keeping up with the Stallings translation because they’re so different.
Cassius:
Yeah, let’s see — it looks like it’s around line 46 or so of the Latin, and I’m not always able to pick that out very easily.
Elaine:
Oh, I found the Stallings. Stallings says “lofty.” “For now I begin to make my discourse on the lofty law of gods and heaven above, and shall reveal the building blocks all things are fashioned of — nature’s prime particles from which she nourishes and grows all things, and into which once more she makes them decompose.” So I think that we’re basically just saying that what we’re going to be talking about are hugely important issues, including the issues of gods and how all things come into being and pass away.
Cassius:
The next sentence is “For the whole nature of the gods must spend an immortality in softest peace.” So I don’t think he’s being snarky about the gods there. He’s talking to them respectfully. But now he clearly is going to get very pointed about religion very quickly after this. But he’s making that distinction that we’ve been talking about — they considered it possible to talk about Venus and Mars as gods without them being supernatural in the way that we think of gods today.
Elaine:
The one thing I see here is that apparently Memmius was not an Epicurean.
Cassius:
Correct, right, he was not.
Elaine:
It didn’t take. Yes, he was definitely not an Epicurean at the time this was written, and like you say, it didn’t take — if he ever read it at all.
Cassius:
But that’s a hugely important point: he’s writing this book to people who are not Epicureans, to explain from scratch the essence of the system, which is why it’s so valuable. We’re not presuming that he’s talking to somebody who already understands all this. He’s starting at the very beginning and giving the basics.
Elaine:
Well, we’ve been going close to an hour. Let’s summarize our thoughts on these opening sections.
Cassius:
So basically one way to summarize it would be: he started out by emphasizing that pleasure is the guide of all living things. Then he said that even though pleasure is the guide, we’re going to look to pleasure also as our way of getting past obstacles such as the wars that are currently bothering him and that he needs to put aside while composing the poem. And after emphasizing that pleasure is the thing that motivates all life, and that that will help dissolve the pain of war, he says that we’re going to be talking about the essence of everything that controls the nature of things — how the universe operates from atoms and naturally occurring processes, and not from a supernatural intervention of gods.
And so — this is interesting — both Smith’s translation and Stallings’s both put this in: there’s a section that comes after here about the nature of the gods. In the version we’re going through, it’s inserted before the paragraph we just read on Memmius. So I guess we’ll get to that next time. As you say, Elaine, there are a few differences between the layout and the flow of the 1743 edition from some of the later ones, and so we will run into that occasionally. Anyway, the Smith version says: “For it is inherent in the very nature of the gods that they should enjoy immortal life and perfect peace, far removed and separated from our world, free from all distress, free from peril, fully self-sufficient, independent of us. They are not influenced by worthy conduct nor touched by anger.”
Elaine:
Right after the part about Mars — I think it belongs more there, you know, between the part about Mars and speaking to Memmius, because he’s contrasting war with — you know, what would it be like if you had reached the pinnacle of pleasure? What you just read is in the 1743 edition, but maybe like you say it’s in a different place. I think it’s going to come right after what we’ve just read, because the next thing starts “for the whole nature of the gods has spent an immortality in perfect peace.”
Cassius:
So why did they move that? Or was the original after? Both of my other translations have it before addressing Memmius. Yeah, my understanding is that there are a couple of different manuscripts that these people were working from during this period, and apparently the later scholarship is that it is the versions and the sequence that we see Martin Ferguson Smith using, but there are differences in the surviving manuscripts — more than one version has survived.
Elaine:
Okay, okay. So what interested me was that Smith has a footnote here where he says: “These lines occur in Book Two also, and are there well adjusted to their context. But in the present passage they come in abruptly and inappropriately. How is their appearance to be explained?” And there are two possibilities — one is that Lucretius himself wrote them here but did not live to use them or delete them; the other is that an early commentator quoted them and the quotation found its way into the text. But I feel like it does belong here, because it is following up this issue of war and peace and how that connects with pleasure, and it kind of surprises me that Smith wouldn’t think they belonged.
Cassius:
Yeah, to the point he puts them in brackets — he’s kind of questioning whether that was really in there.
Elaine:
Yeah, that’s just probably one way to look at it — it was one of the many, many text issues that we have to piece together for ourselves. Yeah, look for different translators for their comments and just try to make sense of it. But certainly to me it’s a little abrupt in the way it’s translated, but on the other hand it’s not something that’s just totally unrelated either.
Cassius:
Right. In fact, that reminds me of an observation that another commentator made one time. There are the twelve fundamental observations of nature that apparently were in a separate text that Epicurus wrote. And if I remember correctly, Diskin Clay makes the comment — you know, what you were just reading, Elaine — he’s talking about the elements and the seeds and that they are basically what you resolve everything down into. And Diskin Clay makes the point that there’s an analogy between an atom and its ability to stay single for eternity versus a god: if a god somehow has obtained for itself the ability to be deathless, then there’s almost a physics relationship between an element which always stays the same and a notion of a god always staying the same. I’m going to have to leave it there because I can’t develop it any further, but perhaps there’s some relationship going on there too.
And I have one more comment on his remark to Memmius. The Smith translation says “Be sure you do not contemptuously discard them without having understood them.” This resonates with me, because we have spent so much time on the larger public forum trying to explain the philosophy, but if people are not going to take time to understand it from the basics — including the physics — they’re either going to just discard it or just woefully misunderstand it and not be able to use it correctly. And I read a little bit of frustration in Lucretius there — apparently someone has not bothered to learn it before discarding it. This is not his first try to explain things to people.
Elaine:
That’s a very, very good point. He didn’t just come up with that phrase out of thin air — he’s had the experience of talking with people and having people just reject the ideas out of hand without even understanding them. If you don’t take the time to understand something, then you can’t even fairly say that you’re rejecting it. You’re just rejecting with scorn something that you don’t even understand. And he says how much time he has put into this. So: don’t reject it until you’ve learned it. I really appreciate that — I feel sympathetic with Lucretius.
Cassius:
And then of course next time we’ll move on to maybe one of the most meaningful sections, where he talks about Epicurus and what Epicurus achieved through his philosophy. But we can save that for the next discussion.
Elaine:
Yeah, I guess we’ve run over a little bit.
Cassius:
Well, that’s great. Thank you everybody. I’m so glad that we started doing this, because going through it like this in detail is exactly what I was hoping for.
Charles:
Oh, I did find that quote, by the way. It’s actually a bit confusing — it’s attributed to both Epicurus and Epictetus.
Cassius:
I was thinking that when you first said it — it sounds more like Epictetus.
Charles:
Yeah, that was one of those unclear quotes. But I found it — just replace “pleasure” with “glory” and then it’s Epictetus. But I’ve found it attributed to Epicurus in images and quotes with Epicurus’s statue, so it’s another one of those — it’s like “greater the exertion, the greater the glory” or something like that.
Cassius:
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I don’t know that that’s Epicurean — it didn’t sound Epicurean even the way you first phrased it. I thought: that doesn’t sound right, it sounds Stoic. And it just doesn’t — some things that are effortful will be pleasurable, and some things will not be. It’s not a useful rule for Epicurean decision-making — you just make it based on pleasure, not on how much effort is involved. Okay, and with that we’ll close this week’s podcast. Thanks to all our participants and listeners for being with us in this episode. We’ll be back with you soon with the continuation of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things.