Sunday December 7, 2025 - Zoom Discussion 12:30 PM EST - Lucretius Discussion Book 1:29-102

Sunday December 7, 2025 - Zoom Discussion 12:30 PM EST - Lucretius Discussion - Book 1:29-102

https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4836-sunday-december-7-zoom-meeting-12-30-pm-topic-session-two-lucretius-book-review/?postID=38042#post38042

1. Welcome and news / requests for new topics. We’ll continue to deal with individual topics as they occur. Just message me and we will set up an agenda each week that allows for new topics.

2. Our current series on Lucretius. Lucretius is the most complete summary of the philosophy left to us from the ancient world, and it was written by a fervent supporter of Epicurus. Where it speaks it can be trusted, and there is much more to be dug out even on areas such as prolepsis where it does not speak as explicitly as we would like. Lucretius gives us a model of how to explain Epicurean philosophy to a person who is not familiar with it.

3. Every session let’s try to cover questions like:

   1. Why was this section included at all?
   2. Why was this section included here - at this point in the presentation?
   3. What are the major points Lucretius is trying to convey?
   4. What are the significant implications of this point?

4. This week we will continue further into Lucretius starting at line 29 and we’ll go as far as line 102 if we get there:

   1-29

   Bring it to pass that meantime the wild works of warfare may be lulled to sleep over all seas and lands. For thou only canst bless mortal men with quiet peace, since ’tis Mavors, the lord of hosts, who guides the wild works of war, and he upon thy lap oft flings himself back, conquered by the eternal wound of love; and then pillowing his shapely neck upon thee and looking up he feeds with love his greedy eyes, gazing wistfully towards thee, while, as he lies back, his breath hangs upon thy lips. Do thou, goddess, as he leans resting on thy sacred limbs, bend to embrace him and pour forth sweet petition from thy lips, seeking, great lady, gentle peace for the Romans. For neither can we in our country’s time of trouble set to our task with mind undistressed, nor amid such doings can Memmius’s noble son fail the fortunes of the state. For it must needs be that all the nature of the gods enjoys life everlasting in perfect peace, sundered and separated far away from our world. For free from all grief, free from danger, mighty in its own resources, never lacking aught of us, it is not won by virtuous service nor touched by wrath.

   1-50

   For the rest, do thou (Memmius), lend empty ears and a keen mind, severed from cares, to true philosophy, lest, before they are understood, you should leave aside in disdain my gifts set forth for you with unflagging zeal. For of the most high law of the heaven and the gods I will set out to tell you, and I will reveal the first-beginnings of things, from which nature creates all things, and increases and fosters them, and into which nature too dissolves them again at their perishing: these in rendering our account it is our wont to call matter or the creative bodies of things, and to name them the seeds of things, and again to term them the first-bodies, since from them first all things have their being.

   1-62

   When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering upon mortals with dreadful mien, ’twas a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her, and first to stand forth to meet her: him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his mind to yearn to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts upon the doors of nature. And so it was that the lively force of his mind won its way, and he passed on far beyond the fiery walls of the world, and in mind and spirit traversed the boundless whole; whence in victory he brings us tidings what can come to be and what cannot, yea and in what way each thing has its power limited, and its deepset boundary-stone. And so religion in revenge is cast beneath men’s feet and trampled, and victory raises us to heaven.

   1-80

   Herein I have one fear, lest perchance you think that you are starting on the principles of some unholy reasoning, and setting foot upon the path of sin. Nay, but on the other hand, again and again our foe, religion, has given birth to deeds sinful and unholy. Even as at Aulis the chosen chieftains of the Danai, the first of all the host, foully stained with the blood of Iphianassa the altar of the Virgin of the Cross-Roads. For as soon as the band braided about her virgin locks streamed from her either cheek in equal lengths, as soon as she saw her sorrowing sire stand at the altar’s side, and near him the attendants hiding their knives, and her countrymen shedding tears at the sight of her, tongue-tied with terror, sinking on her knees she fell to earth. Nor could it avail the luckless maid at such a time that she first had given the name of father to the king. For seized by men’s hands, all trembling was she led to the altars, not that, when the ancient rite of sacrifice was fulfilled, she might be escorted by the clear cry of ‘Hymen’, but in the very moment of marriage, a pure victim she might foully fall, sorrowing beneath a father’s slaughtering stroke, that a happy and hallowed starting might be granted to the fleet. Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

• Discussion of the issue of calling out to the gods. Is this poetry and allegory or taking into account his audience? Was the audience educated enough(?) Is this irreconcilable with Epicurean philosophy? Is this directed to Memmius? is this intended as a bridge in communication to the audience to in a sense flatter them? Is use of over-the-top language a kind of suavity to appeal to the senses/emotions/attention. Whatever Lucretius was doing made sense to him and he expected it to make sense to his audience. Could be mainly allegorical.
• Comparison to text of Book 2:644 where the reference to the gods is very similar, and also a reference to calling upon Neptune and Ceres so long as you don’t have an unholy view of the gods.
• 1:50 - Transition to explain that he is going to talk about the way nature works. What was the relationship between Lucretius and Memmius?
• 1:62 - “Religio” vs superstition in the last sentence of this section. Even today there is the comparison and distinction between religious vs spiritual. Emphasis on hos this is an emphsais on nature rather